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Twentieth Century Motor Company - so relevant
Conservablogs Blue Collar Muse ^ | Ayn Rand

Posted on 10/22/2008 8:01:44 AM PDT by BobbyT

So I see a lot of Atlas Shrugged references here, but not as many as I should given the current environment. It's a great novel, and John Galt's speech is fantastic, but not having read the novel in 6 or 8 years I realized I've been overlooking something even more relevant right now.

The story of the Twentieth Century Motor Company! The link just happened to be the first place I found it excerpted online, but the author has it dead on: it stands just fine on its own without the rest of the novel. It's the story of what happens when O'Teleprompter's philosophy is put into motion.

The results are predictable (for anyone with a shred of common sense), but the execution is brilliant (detail, etc). It even hits on Obama's view of children as a punishment...and bear in mind this was written over 50 years ago. Read it now!

Twentieth Century Motor Company


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: atlasshrugged; aynrand; johngalt

1 posted on 10/22/2008 8:01:45 AM PDT by BobbyT
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To: BobbyT
Forgot to add, there are several paragraphs of the author's commentary before he excerpts the story, but it's got a bold heading so if you scroll down a little you'll see where it begins.
2 posted on 10/22/2008 8:03:12 AM PDT by BobbyT
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To: BobbyT

The part about the guy who likes to buy records makes me sad.


3 posted on 10/22/2008 8:05:48 AM PDT by Tublecane
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To: BobbyT
....till we had nothing left except the men of need, but none of the men of ability..... - Obammy Hussein is up 10 points, promising to reward the men of need at the expense of men of ability. Very sad.
4 posted on 10/22/2008 8:20:48 AM PDT by bobsatwork
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To: BobbyT

One paragraph

“God help us, ma’am! Do you see what we saw? We saw that we’d been given a law to live by, a moral law, they called it, which punished those who observed it - for observing it. The more you tried to live up to it, the more you suffered; the more you cheated it, the bigger reward you got. Your honesty was like a tool left at the mercy of the next man’s dishonesty. The honest ones paid, the dishonest collected. The honest lost, the dishonest won. How long could men stay good under this sort of a law of goodness? We were a pretty decent bunch of fellows when we started. There weren’t many chiselers among us. We knew our jobs and we were proud of it and we worked for the best factory in the country, where old man Starnes hired nothing but the pick of the country’s labor. Within one year under the new plan, there wasn’t an honest man left among us. That was the evil, the sort of hell-horror evil that preachers used to scare you with, but you never thought to see alive. Not that the plan encouraged a few bastards, but that it turned decent people into bastards, and there was nothing else that it could do - and it was called a moral ideal!


5 posted on 10/22/2008 8:27:35 AM PDT by listenhillary (Should we turn Alaska or Texas into our Galt's Gulch?)
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To: BobbyT

Bump!


6 posted on 10/22/2008 8:31:14 AM PDT by JimRed ("Hey, hey, Teddy K., how many girls did you drown today?" TERM LIMITS, NOW AND FOREVER!)
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To: BobbyT

read rand’s 20th cent motor company


7 posted on 10/22/2008 8:33:12 AM PDT by Taffini (Mr. Pippin and Mr. Waffles do not approve)
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To: BobbyT

This story so impressed me that I typed it from the book many years ago and placed it in my book of favorites.

Ms. Rand was dead on with this analysis of human nature.


8 posted on 10/22/2008 8:45:51 AM PDT by AlligatorEyes
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To: BobbyT

I have always thought that Hillary Clinton should play Ivy Starnes in the movie, should one ever be made. Hillary Clinton IS Ivy Starnes.


9 posted on 10/22/2008 8:48:43 AM PDT by Maceman (If you're not getting a tax cut, you're getting a pay cut.)
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To: BobbyT
Rand said it in her afterword to her first novel, Anthem: "Those who want slavery should have the grace to name it by its proper name."

This is the great failure of our modern intellectuals AND our leaders. Conservatives no longer have the stones to call things by their proper names. They've ceded the high ground of language, facts, reason and logic to those who respect none of it. That was a deadly concession, for it reduces debate down to the barrel of a gun. It's coming, folks. War is coming.

10 posted on 10/22/2008 9:04:08 AM PDT by Noumenon (Time for Atlas to shrug - and to pick up a gun)
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To: Maceman

And Bill could play Gerald.

Maybe Barney Franks for Eric?


11 posted on 10/22/2008 9:07:46 AM PDT by dblshot
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To: BobbyT
Sep '62 and I was a sophomore at Rutgers. I was living in the Dorm "On the Banks of the Old Raritan!" The teasrs were the stickers that appeared all over campus.

"Who Is John Galt?"

I asked around and was told to go to the bookstore and read Atlas Shrugged.

Wowser!

12 posted on 10/22/2008 10:10:20 AM PDT by Young Werther (Julius Caesar (Quae Cum Ita Sunt. Since these things are so.))
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To: BobbyT

Excellent post! It’s been almost ten years since I last read Atlas Shrugged — this was the best part of the entire book for me. Time for a re-read, I think.


13 posted on 10/22/2008 12:24:22 PM PDT by BfloGuy (It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we can expect . . .)
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To: BobbyT

Renewing rebump!


14 posted on 10/23/2008 6:19:34 AM PDT by JimRed ("Hey, hey, Teddy K., how many girls did you drown today?" TERM LIMITS, NOW AND FOREVER!)
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To: Houmatt

Ping


15 posted on 11/01/2008 6:44:49 AM PDT by listenhillary (4 legs good, 2 legs baaaad!, ~~ Obama Hussein - You make it, we take it.)
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Bump!


16 posted on 04/30/2009 5:47:49 AM PDT by listenhillary (Rahm Emmanuel slip - A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.)
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To: listenhillary

Bump


17 posted on 04/30/2009 5:53:00 AM PDT by listenhillary (Rahm Emmanuel slip - A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.)
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