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Earlier threads:
Our First Freeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged
FReeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged, The Theme
FReeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged, The Chain
Our vote on posting frequency is:
I think it’s a landslide.
This is the world begotten by procrustean socialism, and a misplaced sense of human empathy.
It is hypocrisy, but it is also willful self-delusion. Modern parallel: Al Gore is telling us how to "live green", yet has an energy-munching mansion, flies in private planes, etc.
Another parallel: that stupid Ashton Kuchner "I pledge" video. Those people are living a much more extravagant, selfish life than I am, yet deem it necessary to preach to me on how to live a good life in service of "the greater good".
I really think all of these people who are truly greedy (Al Gore making money on his crusade) have to convince themselves that they are working for good.
It isn't just self-delusion, it is rationalization.
Read the entire book. Let 3 months pass, then read it AGAIN. Read slowly, digest the words of principal characters and then sicken as you recognize the insipid words of many of today’s political big-wigs. Study the pronouncements of certain “teacher’s associations” and be upset..be very upset at the words coming from those who are charged today with the education of America’s children. Turn another page and watch as “those who cannot” work the angles to gain control over “those who can and do”. Does it appear familiar? It should, it is happening. Those in our society who commit the crime of SUCCESS are to be scorned as greedy..those who proudly proclaim their “failure” are to be cherished and held as proud examples.
You think that ATLAS would NOT shrug? He already has. Atlas is the doctor who practices medicine with both eyes on legal ramifications of any decisions. Atlas is the manufacturer who ceases production of a given product because its blatant MISUSE will leave him financially responsible for some else’s stupidity. Atlas is the business man who refuses to allow his business to grow, because one additional employee makes him a target for government operatives, armed with .45 caliber regulations. Atlas is the teacher who if AFRAID to give extra help to the young student who MAY accuse him of mis-deeds.
No, Atlas IS indeed shrugging, look around, you may see him lift a shoulder.
Man, she came up with some weird character names.
Nothing but a play on reputation.
The others all said it in resignation of hopelessness and loss of spirit. The old cig guy is the first to show a spark of defiance.
Just finished reading Atlas Shrugged...what a great book...I feel like Dagny...
The bar at the top of the skyscraper but designed to look like a cellar seems to be typical of the self-delusion these people carry - they are sitting in a setting that looks like that of the common man so they can feel good about themselves. Yet a common man would not have access to that particular bar at the top of the skyscraper. Like celebrities that brag about giving up plastic shopping bags. I remember reading about some actress who bragged that she didn’t even own a car - of course she hired a driving service so the limo wasn’t technically hers.
ping
when we get government medicine, there will be shortages. It will be the same in other industries. The economy is hurting and thier answer is to bankrupt the country through massive spending.
bTW- I would pronounce it moosh
Not sure if you got my late reply to the first thread, so if you haven’t already, please put me on the list. (finally got caught up.)
Well it looks as if I’ve, once again, arrived late to the party and all the good incites are already made so Ill just follow along quietly.
I highly reccomend any and all Freepers to read Atlas Shrugged. Don’t let the size of it stop you.
I first read it over 30 years ago, and this past Dec 1-Dec 12, I read it for the 7th time.
Amazing how accurate the author was- and the book was published in 1957. I don’t know for sure, but I think it took her a number of years to write it.
It must be Mooch like in moocher.
Slang.
–verb (used with object)
1. to borrow (a small item or amount) without intending to return or repay it.
2. to get or take without paying or at another's expense;
sponge: He always mooches cigarettes.
3. to beg.
4. to steal.
–verb (used without object)
5. to skulk or sneak.
6. to loiter or wander about.
–noun
7. Also, moocher. a person who mooches.
Also, mouch.
Thought you might be interested.
(I don’t know if you’re on Publius’ Freeper Book Club ping list for Atlas Shrugged or not.)
But the religious ideas is right out there glaring in our eyes today. Combine both philosophies, we have an obamanation in the making. Those who believe in a higher being versus those who believe man will destroy ourselves. Does the end of western civ matter how people view the outcome? How we get there is really unimportant, we're heading down this path, extremely fast. I have some videos, some writings etc, that you can take or leave on how religion plays into this. But, the bottom line is, if we don't stem this assault on Freedom, we're doomed. There is no other nation in the World that will promote Freedom today.. A book that is over 2000 years old, it's hard to dismiss.
I'm struggling with A=A.
This chapter brings us to a recurrent topic in AS, that of "fairness" and how that ambiguous phrase is used to cover a grand rhetorical con game. One hears it in the mouths of both sides, the bad guys somewhat more often than the good, but what they mean by it is two very different things. Just as no two cultures agree on the definition of the term "justice" (more on that one later) they don't agree on "fair."
In the mouths of Rand's protagonists the term "fair" might be considered interchangeable with "merited" or "earned"; that is, one's desserts being a function of one's actions. In the mouths of such as James Taggart it represents an equitable division of material possessions regardless of one's actions: meritless. Rand considers the latter immoral and I am inclined to agree.
This is the fundamental philosophical conflict between the two sides. The notion that material possessions are somehow "naturally" evenly distributed is central to such systems as Marxism, (that state of nature existing nowhere in fact but between the theoretician's ears). It is a premise central to collectivist approaches at building a society, and its corollaries are (1) that inequities of such distribution are undesirable and constitute theft by the individual from the collective, and (2) that it is the proper function of authority to remediate them.
This sort of "fairness" is reminiscent of my parents doling out blocks to my brother and myself - a game we used to call "twofer" as in "two for you, two for you," - which is a perfect metaphor for the socialist view of private property in general, to be held in the name of the collective and doled out to its individual members as deemed desirable by those entrusted to lead - the cadre, if you will. "Fair" here is to be taken however that authority chooses to define it. It is equitable only in theory - in practice never turns out that way as commentators from Orwell to Djilas have shown. Ironically, the ones calling most for this sort of "fairness" tend to be not the disadvantaged, but the advantaged, and the reason isn't that they want more material possessions, but that they want the power to distribute them. That sort of "fairness" is always arbitrary, and the power of arbitration is the power to rule.
Contrasted to this is Rand's view that "fairness" in the distribution of material goods is a function of creative activity and that those who manage it by jobbing the system are the thieves - "moochers and looters," as she puts it. It is easy to envisage Mouch and James Taggart as moochers, useless parasites on a system that heretofore could muster the surplus necessary to support them. The death of the host is in the interest of no competent parasite.
In fact, they are not. To Rand they truly are looters, and the death of the host is inconsequential to them so long as the system may be maintained. It is the system, and not the looters, that Atlas must shrug from his shoulders.
Clearly the roots of economic value within this system are creative activity, the likes of Taggart adding little value to the product but a good deal of cost. At first glance this skirts the Ricardan/Marxian Labor Theory of Value (Marx insisted it was a definition, not a theory, and refused to debate it as the latter). In fact, under the strict laissez-faire capitalism that is the root of Rand's system a commodity is worth what it takes to acquire it, and nothing more. There is, in fact, room for mooching and looting there, which is probably why all economic systems tend to display them. It is unclear that they necessarily would be absent from the post-Shrug world of Galt's Gulch writ large, but more of that later.
Substitute the phrase "social justice" for "fairness" and we may read precisely this case in every day's newspapers. Inequities in the distribution of material goods are presented as the results of systemic theft, "institutional racism," "Whiteness studies," and a host of other neologisms - and it is the putative responsibility of authority to remediate them. It's a pity Rand didn't name one of AS's villains "Jesse Jackson," or "Cornel West" because they belong there. IMHO, of course.
Sorry, late to the book club.
Add me to the ping list?
Great topic. Enjoyed your insights.