All together now, Shrug!

Today I started reading (for the umpteenth time) "Atlas Shrugged" and as chance would have it on this very same day my spouse received in the mail that wonderful bit of propaganda that is sent out annually by the Social Security Administration. You know the one… it tells you your annual contribution amounts, your monthly payout if you retire at such and such an age, etc. Anyhow as oft times happens two unrelated items occur, it gooses the muse, and Bingo a “Brilliant Idea” vomits forth from the depths of whereverthehell “Brilliant Ideas” come from! But first let me set up my premise.

Social Security sucks, for so many reasons they are too numerous to list! But, I will touch on one major reason… Politicians! Let us take and aside here to list the first and most important of Mad Dawgg’s Laws of Reality:

Law 1: All money sent to the Federal Government of the USA and without regard to party affiliation, religious denomination, or sign of the zodiac of the senders and/or the receivers of said money will in fact be spent in the most wasteful manner possible and most likely will end up spent on a totally different issue than was intended by the sender of said money!

Which perfectly illustrates the dilemma of Social Security! If you are of the belief there is a Social Security Trust Fund, stand back cause I am about to drag you kicking and screaming into reality… (If that word can even be applied to anything dealing with that section of real estate known as Washington DC) See normally in a Retirement System, such as one finds in the private sector, money you pay into such is placed in some sort of financial account with your name on it and as such this account is subject to rules and regulations on what can be done with it by the governing body of that Retirement plan. Unless of course you are a Politician in the Federal Government of the USA and you want to play around with the money in that retirement system like say Social Security. See the congress critters just take the money you pay into SS and write you and millions of other Americans an IOU (Government Bond) and Spend the Money on whatever they think will get them re-elected like giving financial aide to Saudi Arabia (yup the same guys that sell us oil for Billions of dollars a year) or wonderful programs like the Osprey; that magnificent ground-breaking tilt-wing aircraft! (Which is literally true, the Osprey literally lifts into the air, then the tilt-wings literally tilt, and then the Osprey literally “Breaks” when it hits the “ground”!) And here is the really fun part… See no one can really stop these guys from spending your Social Security money in these fun and amusing ways because… THEY MAKE THE RULES! So that brings us to my Brilliant Idea!

Let’s Shrug! I say to all you hard working Americans out there who are tired of hearing how the Republicans are trying to destroy Social Security or the Democrats want to raise your taxes to “Fix” Social Security, let’s just all take our ball and go home! Let’s get us an excellent Lawyer and bring a Class Action suit against the government to allow us to opt out of the Social Security system! Of course we will have to give up something, like maybe the money we already paid into the system but hey since I seriously doubt I will ever see a penny of the dough I sent to those blood-suckers err I mean Politicians I figure it is worth the price. Or in other words I am willing to give those ninnys all the money they took and don't plan on giving back because, Damn it, I am on Strike from the Social Rip-off System!

My best summary of Ayn Rand is that she was right about what's wrong and wrong about what's right.

Her criticisms of many aspects of liberalism were very accurate. Her villians do not understand that we cannot consume what we do not produce, and ignoring this fact is a basic part of liberalism. The evasions that her villians go through to avoid facing the truth of what they are doing reminded me exactly of what Clinton defenders did to defend him and his policies.

Unfortunately, her beliefs about what makes the world work are completely wrong. Maybe others interpreted the book differently, but my impression was that fewer than 400 people inhabited "Galt's Gulch" and yet the loss of these 400 people plunged the United States into an economic crash. The notion that the loss of even our best 400 people would throw the country into a panic is silly. Most people are fairly hard workers and know their jobs. Losing a few people, particularly at the top, would not destroy most companies. Within the last ten or twenty years (if I remember correctly) a plane crashed killing the top five executives of Conoco, the big oil company. Many people expected the company to go into some kind of swoon without the top guys. The company mourned but never really missed a beat. What those executives know that Ms. Rand didn't is that a good executive clearly communicates plans and actions to those under him and is developing good people as replacements.

Another area where Ms. Rand is wrong about what's right is her fanatical hatred of God. She has the right not to believe in God and to speak her mind about the issue, but the extent to which she expressed this hatred would have been funny if it hadn't been so sad. Belief in God is not what makes people turn to the "looter" mentality. The Bible even teaches that if any man doesn't work, neither should he eat.

Another point on which I strongly disagree with Ms. Rand is the notion that a faithful wife who takes care of a home hasn't played a big part in her husband's success. One of the things that I found most disturbing in the book was that the engineer who had been John Gault's boss was working to create an economic crash but hadn't taken steps to save his widow from that crash. The implication is that Ms. Rand doesn't see the wife as a part of his success and instead sees her as another kind of "looter."

Atlas Shrugged is a good book. I've read it a couple of times. It has some good lessons even though they are overdrawn in some cases. It is also wrong on some points. I became a little tired of the idea that all heroes had blond hair and blue eyes. As a metallurgist, I have to suspend my disbelief at all of the things that she thinks a copper-iron alloy could do. I hope you enjoy the rest of the book.

WFTR
Bill

Ayn was writing in the Industrial Age where confrontation with the Looters was the only means. As we enter the Information Age, the simple truth is that the returns on finding anonymous ways around the 'system' are far better than taking on the looters head on.

What many do not realize is that we have already 'won;' the looters were exposed on 9/11 as incompetents. The barbarians have entered the city; the Generals plot wars on the fringes of the empire and the Senators debate the price of corn in 2006.

It's over. Our efforts should not be focused on dealing with the past but on how we preserve our culture, our language and our Christian ethic in a world with out borders.

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