Posted on 08/30/2009 10:37:39 AM PDT by balls
If you are not familiar with Atlas Shrugged, this short video in context with the current times and the tea party movement may help explain all the interest.
Thanks!
It is interesting how the “social justice” committees in Catholic and other Churches always have a few lefties, on board, quick to point out that Rand was an atheist.
Funny, the “Liberation Theology” folks rarely resist Communist Atheists, but a Capitalist Atheist MUST be discredited!
It is interesting how the “social justice” committees in Catholic and other Churches always have a few lefties, on board, quick to point out that Rand was an atheist.
Funny, the “Liberation Theology” folks rarely resist Communist Atheists, but a Capitalist Atheist MUST be discredited!
If you want the Atlas Shrugged audio book, go to Audible.com or Borders.com and buy it. The people who own the rights and the people who produce it deserve to be paid for their property and work. Don’t steal it.
For twelve years you've been asking "Who is John Galt?" This is John Galt speaking. I'm the man who's taken away your victims and thus destroyed your world. You've heard it said that this is an age of moral crisis and that Man's sins are destroying the world. But your chief virtue has been sacrifice, and you've demanded more sacrifices at every disaster. You've sacrificed justice to mercy and happiness to duty. So why should you be afraid of the world around you?
Your world is only the product of your sacrifices. While you were dragging the men who made your happiness possible to your sacrificial altars, I beat you to it. I reached them first and told them about the game you were playing and where it would take them. I explained the consequences of your 'brother-love' morality, which they had been too innocently generous to understand. You won't find them now, when you need them more than ever.
We're on strike against your creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. If you want to know how I made them quit, I told them exactly what I'm telling you tonight. I taught them the morality of Reason -- that it was right to pursue one's own happiness as one's principal goal in life. I don't consider the pleasure of others my goal in life, nor do I consider my pleasure the goal of anyone else's life.
I am a trader. I earn what I get in trade for what I produce. I ask for nothing more or nothing less than what I earn. That is justice. I don't force anyone to trade with me; I only trade for mutual benefit. Force is the great evil that has no place in a rational world. One may never force another human to act against his/her judgment. If you deny a man's right to Reason, you must also deny your right to your own judgment. Yet you have allowed your world to be run by means of force, by men who claim that fear and joy are equal incentives, but that fear and force are more practical.
You've allowed such men to occupy positions of power in your world by preaching that all men are evil from the moment they're born. When men believe this, they see nothing wrong in acting in any way they please. The name of this absurdity is 'original sin'. That's inmpossible. That which is outside the possibility of choice is also outside the province of morality. To call sin that which is outside man's choice is a mockery of justice. To say that men are born with a free will but with a tendency toward evil is ridiculous. If the tendency is one of choice, it doesn't come at birth. If it is not a tendency of choice, then man's will is not free.
And then there's your 'brother-love' morality. Why is it moral to serve others, but not yourself? If enjoyment is a value, why is it moral when experienced by others, but not by you? Why is it immoral to produce something of value and keep it for yourself, when it is moral for others who haven't earned it to accept it? If it's virtuous to give, isn't it then selfish to take?
Your acceptance of the code of selflessness has made you fear the man who has a dollar less than you because it makes you feel that that dollar is rightfully his. You hate the man with a dollar more than you because the dollar he's keeping is rightfully yours. Your code has made it impossible to know when to give and when to grab.
You know that you can't give away everything and starve yourself. You've forced yourselves to live with undeserved, irrational guilt. Is it ever proper to help another man? No, if he demands it as his right or as a duty that you owe him. Yes, if it's your own free choice based on your judgment of the value of that person and his struggle. This country wasn't built by men who sought handouts. In its brilliant youth, this country showed the rest of the world what greatness was possible to Man and what happiness is possible on Earth.
Then it began apologizing for its greatness and began giving away its wealth, feeling guilty for having produced more than its neighbors. Twelve years ago, I saw what was wrong with the world and where the battle for Life had to be fought. I saw that the enemy was an inverted morality and that my acceptance of that morality was its only power. I was the first of the men who refused to give up the pursuit of his own happiness in order to serve others.
To those of you who retain some remnant of dignity and the will to live your lives for yourselves, you have the chance to make the same choice. Examine your values and understand that you must choose one side or the other. Any compromise between good and evil only hurts the good and helps the evil.
If you've understood what I've said, stop supporting your destroyers. Don't accept their philosophy. Your destroyers hold you by means of your endurance, your generosity, your innocence, and your love. Don't exhaust yourself to help build the kind of world that you see around you now. In the name of the best within you, don't sacrifice the world to those who will take away your happiness for it.
The world will change when you are ready to pronounce this oath:
I swear by my Life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man,
nor ask another man to live for the sake of mine.
My goodness the audio version is realtively cheap. I spent the better part of last spring listening to it on the way to and from jobs. It cost like $25.
Don’t steal it. Thats like stealing candy from the local drug store. Just silly.
As an aside: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2352038,00.asp
I thought it was in the public domain. If not, I would like the moderator to remove the link.
I’ve read that in the last year or so since Obama got elected the sales of this book has skyrocketed. I went to a Borders to buy Michelle Malkin’s book and I was going to buy Atlas Shrugged but was surprised to see how big it was. It was over 1000 pages (not as long as the health care bill granted). I’ll probably buy sometimes this month next time I go back there.
Here is a more detailed video that runs less than 10 minutes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGWuNq66v_0&feature=related
just for the sake of a friendly discussion here-
If I went to a library and checked out an audio book, listened to it, and returned it, all without spending a dime, how is that different from downloading it for free?
Or if someone who had the audiobook (which they purchased) already digitized gave it to me and another friend, how is that different from someone giving me a paperback book?
At what point to literary works become public domain, such as the audio and printed works that are available for free on internet libraries?
I have never illegally downloaded anything, but I’m just asking....
Free at your local library. If they don’t have it, ask about interlibrary loans. They can borrow it from another library for you. That’s free too.
I’m no expert but it seems to me that if it’s for your personal consumption only, it is not pirating. Otherwise the library is a criminal enterprise bigtime.
Laws concerning digital media are different. Thank your legislators, both Republican and Democrat for that. Generally speaking, a lot of things that used to be fair use under earlier copyright law are no longer protected for digital content. Morally, it's crap. But it is the law.
LOL. Good questions. As an author, I hate libraries. I think people should pay for their books. But as a capitalist, I see merit in George Gilder’s dictum that if one person is stealing your product, you have a theft problem but if a million are stealing it, you have a marketing problem.
As you said, you return library books. It's a copyright violation to copy the book. Downloads are copies.
The library paid for the book; so the publisher and author collect a royalty.
If everyone simply downloads what they want “for free” — how does the author ever get paid?
I’m still reading the book. I’m on about page 270 of 1000+something. It’s over due at the library. I may have to purchase it so I can finish it.
Atlas Shrugged was written in 1957. Am I not right in saying that copyright only lasted for 50 years in 1957?
Extending copyright to 75 years to appease Disney and other vested interests is a revisionist law. Laws should not be retroactive, ever.
Rand expected her book to be free in 2009.
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