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“You have sacrificed wealth to need.” (For example, Bush’s prescription drug benefit and Obamacare, both enacted because people needed “free” health care.) “You have sacrificed self-esteem to self-denial.” (For example, attacks on Bill Gates for making a fortune; applause when he gives that fortune away.) “You have sacrificed happiness to duty.” (For example, every president’s Kennedyesque exhortations to “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”) The result? “Why . . . do you shrink in horror from the sight of the world around you? That world is not the product of your sins, it is the product and the image of your virtues. It is your moral ideal brought into reality . . .” This is what "Atlas Shrugged" is asking us to question: our ideals. Rethink our convictions and philosophy of life from the ground up. Without doing so, it argues, we won’t escape further crises.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/10/31/how-did-atlas-shrugged-and-ayn-rand-predict-america-spinning-out-control/#ixzz1cNcXfydM

1 posted on 10/31/2011 10:11:22 AM PDT by Para-Ord.45
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To: Para-Ord.45; Publius; Billthedrill

Ping


2 posted on 10/31/2011 10:13:47 AM PDT by r-q-tek86 ("It doesn't matter how smart you are if you don't stop and think" - Dr. Sowell)
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To: ADemocratNoMore; Aggie Mama; alarm rider; alexander_busek; AlligatorEyes; AmericanGirlRising; ...

Atlas ping.


3 posted on 10/31/2011 10:14:05 AM PDT by Publius
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To: Para-Ord.45
"How could she have anticipated, more than 50 years ago, a United States spinning out of financial control"

Philosophical consistency?

Natural Selection?

4 posted on 10/31/2011 10:15:03 AM PDT by YHAOS (you betcha!)
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To: Para-Ord.45

She nailed our progressives with a railroad stake.

One could change those names of the libtards in her book to our modern cast of undereducated and morals-lacking congresscritters without diminishing the truth of the novel whatsoever.

The onlyl thing I disagree with is how we’re gonna fix this.

I really think CW II is coming, and I want to be waiting at the airport when Pelosi, Reid, et all try to escape.


5 posted on 10/31/2011 10:17:08 AM PDT by Da Coyote (Ngs)
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To: Para-Ord.45

The remarkable thing is that her heavy-handed portrayal actually understated the reality we are facing today. Comunists like Obama and Pelosi, and their enablers in SEIU and UAW disgust me, and Rand was right.


7 posted on 10/31/2011 10:21:36 AM PDT by Pollster1 (Natural born citizen of the USA, with the birth certificate to prove it)
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To: Para-Ord.45

ayn rand nailed the boomer generation communists

in her book of essays “the new left”.

(it was reissued with a new name later.)

http://www.amazon.com/New-Left-Anti-Industrial-Revolution/dp/0452011256


8 posted on 10/31/2011 10:23:32 AM PDT by ken21
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To: Para-Ord.45
it's been argued -- quite reasonably -- that she caused it.

that she is, in fact, Marx's most effective evangelist.

Oh yeah.

11 posted on 10/31/2011 10:28:55 AM PDT by the invisib1e hand (...then they came for the guitars, and we kicked their sorry faggot asses into the dust)
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To: Para-Ord.45

Fer later


13 posted on 10/31/2011 10:33:13 AM PDT by vanilla swirl (We are the Patrick Henry we have been waiting for!)
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To: Para-Ord.45

Maybe she read The Naked Communist. I believe it was written in 1958. That pretty well outlines how we got to here from then.


15 posted on 10/31/2011 10:33:44 AM PDT by freeangel ( (free speech is only good until someone else doesn't like it)
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To: Para-Ord.45

Even more fascinating to me was the techniques she enumerated in “The Fountainhead” that Elsworth Toohey’s various organizations used to gain influence. It is almost the same roadmap that the Left uses today. I’m not sure if she was a “prophet” or just a very astute observer. Or maybe a little of both?

Just goes to show that there is very little new under the sun.


20 posted on 10/31/2011 10:42:10 AM PDT by rbg81
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To: Para-Ord.45
Rand was a monster. Her atheism alone is reason enough to discount her barbaric philosophy.

Without Christ there would have been no America and no American ideal of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

21 posted on 10/31/2011 10:46:42 AM PDT by Dr. Thorne (Fall on your knees before Christ, your only salvation!)
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To: Para-Ord.45

Stem cell research is thriving and progressing, and does not ineluctably require or demand the destruction of living nascent human beings.


22 posted on 10/31/2011 10:56:21 AM PDT by Elsiejay (I)
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To: Para-Ord.45
...blind faith that Mr. Obama’s deliberately empty rhetoric about hope and change will magically produce prosperity.)

Blind faith is a gross understatement. From the beginning, when I heard that line, "Change," I thought "uh oh." people can't be that stupid; can they? to accept "change," without the slightest suggestion as to what sort of change?

They were. The question now is are they still that stupid facing the disaster that resulted, and the suggestion that we need more of the same?

Possible. The "Great Uniter" has been an utter failure, judging by his results.

The Great Uniter has divided the Nation into two opposing and irreconcileable camps : The OWS fruitcakes, the idle useless parasites for whom the Nanny State and the elected power brokers do not provide enough. And the working citizens who are viewed by those groups as cash cows, a source of everything without limit.

In terms of societies, the most unstable and ephemeral of powder kegs.

24 posted on 10/31/2011 11:02:31 AM PDT by Publius6961 (My world was lovely, until it was taken over by parasites.)
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To: Para-Ord.45
here’s Wesley Mouch, who in the face of failed government programs screams like Rep. Barney Frank (D) of Massachusetts for wider powers.


31 posted on 10/31/2011 11:42:34 AM PDT by Donald Rumsfeld Fan ("Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." Richard Feynman father of Quantum Physics)
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To: Para-Ord.45
““You have sacrificed reason to faith.” (For example, attempts to prevent stem cell research on Biblical grounds, ....



Lost me right there.



First off, reason and faith are not necessarily in opposition. If your faith tells you that something is immoral, it is entirely reasonable to chose not to do it. You are then using reason to place your morality above baser considerations.



Second, a reasonable person would have learned that there is no conflict between morality and baser pragmatic considerations, with regard to most stem cell research. Only embryonic stem cell research involves insurmountable moral issues. Combine that with the fact that embryonic stem cell research has produced no viable therapies (and is unlikely to do so); while research has produced several promising therapies involving adult stem cells, or umbilical cord stem cells; and you have no reasonable conflict. Actually a reasonable person would stop wasting resources on embryonic stem cell research (just on pragmatic grounds); since there doesn't seem to be a path to profitability there.



The author is either ignorant about the issue — or is being deliberately misleading.

32 posted on 10/31/2011 11:55:00 AM PDT by USFRIENDINVICTORIA
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To: Para-Ord.45
“You have sacrificed reason to faith.” (For example, attempts to prevent stem cell research on Biblical grounds

This is a deliberate lie... There have been attempts to prevent embryonic stem cell research, which has proven to be less than fruitful. They have pushed for adult stem cell research, which it seems has become quite hopeful. The whole reason the left wants to push for embryonic stem cell research is simply to help justify abortion with the general public.

Abortion is the "slavery" issue of the modern age. I'm not comparing abortion to slavery. What I mean is that the issue of abortion are the same as that of slavery. The "Missouri Compromise" didn't work. A compromise on abortion isn't any more workable.

Mark

36 posted on 10/31/2011 1:10:52 PM PDT by MarkL (Do I really look like a guy with a plan?)
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To: Para-Ord.45

Re: stem cell research.

Government should not be involved in funding any kind of research except defense.


46 posted on 10/31/2011 2:25:31 PM PDT by TASMANIANRED (We kneel to no prince but the Prince of Peace)
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To: Para-Ord.45

Rand didn’t predict squat. She simply told a story based on man’s repeated tendency throughout history to abandon individualism and submit to tyranny.


48 posted on 10/31/2011 2:44:36 PM PDT by SaveTheChief
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To: Para-Ord.45

I hope this group can provide an answer for me.

I plan on buying copies of Atlas Shrugged, Part 1. The problem is there are four choices. Which one would be the best one? Atlas Society, Freedom Works, Reason and there’s the official, initial release.

If there are some Freepers who have suggestions I would appreciate learning them.

Thanks in advance.


50 posted on 10/31/2011 3:49:25 PM PDT by Morgan in Denver (Democrats: the law of unintended consequences in action.)
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