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She was ahead of her time

  
By:  Vic Eldred  •  3 years ago  •  30 comments


She was ahead of her time
In all the propaganda of the ecologists - amist all their appeals to nature and pleas for harmony with nature - there is no discussion of man's needs and the requirements of his survival.

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Our time's most relevant book may be one that was written over 40 years ago. In her book Return to the Primitive - The Anti-Industrial Revolution, Ayn Rand seems to have exposed the purpose of the climate change movement:

"The immediate goal is obvious: the destruction of the remnants of Capitalism in today's mixed economy and the establishment of a global dictatorship. The goal does not have to be inferred - many speeches and books on the subject state explicitly that the ecological crusade is a means to an end."

"The enemies of reason - the mystics, the man-haters and life-haters, the seekers of the unearned and the unreal - have been gathering their forces for a counterattack, ever since....The enemies of the Industrial Revolution - it's displaced persons - were of the kind that had fought human progress for centuries...Today, they are..reduced, like cornered animals, to baring their teeth and their souls, and to proclaiming that man has no right to exist."

In fact, the movement's refrain is a relentless condemnation of modern man's way of life - such as "man-made climate change."



As of right now the US government has put a stop to America's breif experience with energy independence and there is a $3.5 Trillion bill, which is the Green New Deal packaged under a different name, sitting in congress. America's future is in the hands of a few moderate democrats.


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Vic Eldred
Professor Principal
1  author  Vic Eldred    3 years ago

"In a number of essays, she analyzes the campus protests and the ideology of the New Left, concluding that far from rebelling, they were slavishly following every basic idea of their teachers — and that far from being idealistic, they were attacking the key foundations of a rational, free society.

Rand’s writings on these and related topics were collected in  The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution (1971). A 1999 edition,  Return of the Primitive , added supplementary articles, including three by editor Peter Schwartz analyzing the New Left’s enduring legacy."




ARO_NonFiction_The_New_Left.jpg

 
 
 
JBB
Professor Principal
2  JBB    3 years ago

[deleted]

 
 
 
JBB
Professor Principal
3  JBB    3 years ago

[deleted]

 
 
 
JohnRussell
Professor Principal
4  JohnRussell    3 years ago

[Deleted]

 
 
 
JohnRussell
Professor Principal
4.1  JohnRussell  replied to  JohnRussell @4    3 years ago

Ridiculous censorship. 

 
 
 
Perrie Halpern R.A.
Professor Principal
4.1.1  Perrie Halpern R.A.  replied to  JohnRussell @4.1    3 years ago

This is a discussion site. Make some commentary. If the is a meme that goes with it, post it.

 
 
 
Nerm_L
Professor Expert
5  Nerm_L    3 years ago

Oh come on.  Ayn Rand only seems prescient because the consequences of neoliberalism are so very predictable.  Capitalism is not about concentrating money.  And printing boatloads of money to maintain a fiction of price stability will always undermine capitalism.  Neoliberalism is not, and cannot be, sustainable.  Recognizing that neoliberalism is unworkable is not prescient.

Exploiting nature for resources to support temporary consumption and then burying those same resources in unrecoverable mixed landfills is capitalism for idiots.  Neoliberals hail that as the market place performing efficiently.  Neoliberals are idiot capitalists because they rely upon destruction and loss of resources.  Neoliberals create scarcity (and inflation) the same way neoliberals create money.  Neoliberals aren't about using capital to create wealth; neoliberals create inflation to concentrate money by tossing tangible capital on the scrap heap.  Neoliberals are like bitcoin miners; destroying tangible resources to create currency that has arbitrary value derived from artificial scarcity.

Neoliberalism leading to some outcome like climate change or environmentalism or social unrest was inevitable.  That's baked into how neoliberalism works.  That doesn't make Ayn Rand prescient; that only means Ayn Rand understood that neoliberalism would result in inevitable consequences.  

 

 
 
 
Vic Eldred
Professor Principal
5.1  author  Vic Eldred  replied to  Nerm_L @5    3 years ago

Rand always understood that freedom and Capitalism were inextricably linked.

 
 
 
Nerm_L
Professor Expert
5.1.1  Nerm_L  replied to  Vic Eldred @5.1    3 years ago
Rand always understood that freedom and Capitalism were inextricably linked.

Really?  Somehow being a slave to capital doesn't seem very liberating.  I always thought freedom was inextricably linked to sustainable self-sufficiency.

 
 
 
Vic Eldred
Professor Principal
5.1.2  author  Vic Eldred  replied to  Nerm_L @5.1.1    3 years ago
Somehow being a slave to capital

The flow of migrants from the third into the US world kind of disproves the idea of Capital creating slaves. Shall I quote her again: "Take a look at the conditions of existence in the underdeveloped countries, which means: on most of this earth, with the exception of the blessed island which is Western civilization.

 
 
 
JohnRussell
Professor Principal
5.1.3  JohnRussell  replied to  Vic Eldred @5.1    3 years ago

Capitalism exploits the underclass. Always has, always will. That is understood, which is why we have a welfare state. Without it  America would be a dystopia for half the population. 

Ayn Rand is one of the most widely rejected "philosophers" in history. 

 
 
 
SteevieGee
Professor Silent
5.1.4  SteevieGee  replied to  Vic Eldred @5.1    3 years ago

Freedom for the capitalists.  For the workers?  Not so much.

 
 
 
Vic Eldred
Professor Principal
5.1.5  author  Vic Eldred  replied to  JohnRussell @5.1.3    3 years ago
Capitalism exploits the underclass.

Gee, who said that?

 
 
 
Vic Eldred
Professor Principal
5.1.6  author  Vic Eldred  replied to  SteevieGee @5.1.4    3 years ago
For the workers?  Not so much.

Tell that to the millions of migrants Joe Biden just let in this year.

 
 
 
Nerm_L
Professor Expert
5.1.7  Nerm_L  replied to  Vic Eldred @5.1.2    3 years ago
The flow of migrants from the third into the US world kind of disproves the idea of Capital creating slaves. Shall I quote her again: "Take a look at the conditions of existence in the underdeveloped countries, which means: on most of this earth, with the exception of the blessed island which is Western civilization.

Why doesn't capitalism work in the third world?  For that matter, why doesn't capitalism work in rural America?  Why is it necessary for people to migrate?

And if people have to migrate to seek capital then why aren't they slaves to capital?  Capital is dictating migration, after all.  Even Ayn Rand acknowledges that slavery to capital is necessary to improve conditions of existence.  Without capital, just take a look at conditions of existence in the underdeveloped countries.

The reality is that the land upon which these people live is capital.  What they lack is money.  So, Any Rand isn't really talking about capitalism; Rand is talking about moneyism.  That's a very neoliberal perversion of capitalism.

 
 
 
Vic Eldred
Professor Principal
5.1.8  author  Vic Eldred  replied to  Nerm_L @5.1.7    3 years ago
Why doesn't capitalism work in the third world

How often is it implemented in the third world? Let's use Cuba as an example. It had both didn't it? It was constructed as a Spanish Colony. Later a dictatorship gave it an inauthentic form of Capitalism and then Castro took control and imposed Communism. Only once did the Cuban people give an important vote and they voted with their feet. When Castro came to power one quarter of the population fled.


For that matter, why doesn't capitalism work in rural America? 

Unions gave them a high standard of living and Globalization impovershided them. Capitalism can use some modifications.


Why is it necessary for people to migrate?

Where do the migrants come from?  As far as the eye can see they come mostly from socialist failed states.


And if people have to migrate to seek capital then why aren't they slaves to capital?  

They are not slaves to it they are voting for it - with their feet. 

 
 
 
SteevieGee
Professor Silent
6  SteevieGee    3 years ago

It's been a long time since I've read Ayn Rand.  My take away from Atlas Shrugged?  Investment in infrastructure pays off.

 
 
 
Perrie Halpern R.A.
Professor Principal
7  Perrie Halpern R.A.    3 years ago

I would like to point out that Ayn Rand was a hypocrite. In her senior years, she use the very system she professed to despised, despite the fact that she had accumulated a lot of wealth. 

[Ayn Rand's] books provided wide-ranging parables of "parasites," "looters" and "moochers" using the levers of government to steal the fruits of her heroes' labor. In the real world, however, Rand herself received Social Security payments and Medicare benefits under the name of Ann O'Connor (her husband was Frank O'Connor). As Michael Ford of Xavier University's Center for the Study of the American Dream wrote, "In the end, Miss Rand was a hypocrite but she could never be faulted for failing to act in her own self-interest."

She was elderly and sick and needed surgery (lung surgery, after knocking down two packs a day for decades). Presumably she had a fair amount of money. But she turned to Social Security and Medicare. And under her husband's name!

All right, I hear some of you now. We're all hypocrites to some extent. I accepted the Bush tax cuts I oppose (although I do make charitable contributions that I think cover the difference, so I give the money back).

But I am not the leading "moral" philosopher of my age on the subject of rates of taxation, as Rand was to her many disciples on the question of the state. Besides which, there is no way to tell the IRS, look, I want to be taxed at the old Clinton rate. Whereas Mrs. O'Connor could surely have turned to other sources. What a hypocrite and fraud.

I don't believe that anyone like this should be celebrated. If the system she felt was wrong, then don't use it. Obviously, she didn't, but it was a good way to make a buck.

 
 
 
Vic Eldred
Professor Principal
7.1  author  Vic Eldred  replied to  Perrie Halpern R.A. @7    3 years ago

Well, even a hypocrite can be right!

 
 
 
Hallux
Masters Principal
7.1.1  Hallux  replied to  Vic Eldred @7.1    3 years ago

... and even from the right.

 
 
 
Perrie Halpern R.A.
Professor Principal
7.1.2  Perrie Halpern R.A.  replied to  Vic Eldred @7.1    3 years ago

Not if she is using the very system she is complaining about. It shows that it is needed and therefore she is wrong.

 
 
 
Vic Eldred
Professor Principal
7.1.3  author  Vic Eldred  replied to  Perrie Halpern R.A. @7.1.2    3 years ago
It shows that it is needed and therefore she is wrong.

I beg to differ. Who wouldn't have done the same thing? The wrong was that Social Security wasn't means tested.  The rich shouldn't be able to tap into those benefits.

And that is why I would never, ever be a democrat.

 
 
 
JohnRussell
Professor Principal
7.1.4  JohnRussell  replied to  Vic Eldred @7.1.3    3 years ago

I doubt Ayn Rand was rich when she relied on Social Security. 

Who wouldn't have done the same thing?

Someone who spent her adult life berating weaklings? 

 
 
 
Vic Eldred
Professor Principal
7.1.5  author  Vic Eldred  replied to  JohnRussell @7.1.4    3 years ago

When Rand died in 1982, she left nearly $800,000 in her estate, much of which she kept in a savings bank across the street from her apartment.


 
 
 
Hallux
Masters Principal
8  Hallux    3 years ago

No mention of Ayn's 'love' affair with sociopath serial killer William E. Hickman?

 
 
 
Vic Eldred
Professor Principal
8.1  author  Vic Eldred  replied to  Hallux @8    3 years ago

No, we are talking about ideas. One that must be confronted is the idea that every group must be harnessed in a coalition to protect "Mother Earth" as if she were some kind of walflower or victim.

 
 
 
Hallux
Masters Principal
8.1.1  Hallux  replied to  Vic Eldred @8.1    3 years ago
One that must be confronted ...

According to you and your bonafides are what exactly other than a hatred for the left? 

 
 
 
Vic Eldred
Professor Principal
8.1.2  author  Vic Eldred  replied to  Hallux @8.1.1    3 years ago
hatred for the left? 

Put me right on top of that list.

 
 
 
Kavika
Professor Principal
8.1.3  Kavika   replied to  Vic Eldred @8.1.2    3 years ago
hatred for the left? 
Put me right on top of that list.

We see that every day from you, nice that you admitted to being a hateful person. In addition to hating the ''left'' does it also extend to religious/racial/cultural lines as well? 

 
 
 
Kavika
Professor Principal
8.1.4  Kavika   replied to  Kavika @8.1.3    3 years ago

Nothing like a hateful commentator calling a Blatant violation for asking a question.

Now that's hypocrisy at its finest. 

Carry on, Vic.

 
 

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