Posted on 03/27/2010 6:33:29 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
Appearing on the radical-left public radio network Pacifica on Tuesday to promote his DVD of Capitalism: A Love Story, filmmaker Michael Moore called the passage of ObamaCare a victory...for capitalism:
Well, I mean, to me, it all comes back to this issue of an economic system that is truly evil. And the healthcare bill that was passed ultimately will be seen as a victory for capitalism, because it protected the capitalist model of providing healthcare for people. In other words, were not to help people unless theres money to be made from it. That is so patently disgusting and immoral, but thats the system. Thats where we live.
Moore wanted the leftists to get right back to pushing a "single payer" option that outlaws insurance companies:
Theres nothing to be proud of with this bill being passed, other than maybe a temporary satisfaction of watching Republicans -- you know, watching their spray-on tan fall off out of utter -- through utter anger.
Moore doesn't feel that Obama is authentically leftist. He's a sellout:
I dont think he really cared about a public option. I dont think he really believes in true universal healthcare thats managed by we the people. He was the number one recipient of health industry money in the Senate and when he was running for president, so Im not surprised that he had very little interest in doing any of that.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsbusters.org ...
Thanks so much for this quote:
It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder. - Bastiat
Which treatise did it come from?
From “The Law”....here....
http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html#SECTION_G726
FReeper raygun provided the link a couple of years ago (on the state [Michigan] board IIRC). I had heard the name “Bastiat” before but was not familiar with any of his work. I consider him one of the greatest thinkers I have ever read.
Interestingly I was never exposed or directed to this thinker in my 16+ years of public education or in all the years listening to conservative talkers.
Thank you.
“to me, it all comes back to this issue of an economic system that is truly evil.”
Hey Mikey, (he ate it!)
Capitalism is not an “economic system.” It is the natural state of human economic interaction. Any attempt to harness it into a “system” will result in alternate markets or severe damage to the societies involved.
Do you make that evil profit from the making of your bilge?
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mean people expect most others to be mean.
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You've heard of the "bait-and-switch" con? Well, guess what? This is the "scare-and-switch" con: "Selfish" has two entirely different meanings. One is: "taking advantage of people against their will." The other is: "taking care of yourself and your family first and foremost and to whatever degree YOU deem appropriate." Obviously, the latter is a virtue, and the former is a vice. But if you fail to distinguish between the meanings you're prey to being suckered by con artists of either the deliberate variety* or of the more common unwitting, unthinking "disease carrier" kind.
First they make you extremely fearful of ever being seen to take advantage of anyone unwilling, and then they twist it with the sneakiness of a magician and the cleverness of a lawyer to make you extremely fearful of ever being seen to take care of yourself and your family first.
Then, while trying to get you to accept the ridiculous notion that every kind of "selfishness," even just making money in the private sector (earning a living and growing a nest egg) is morally vicious,** they also try to get you to accept the even more absurd idea that the accumulating of political power by government employees and politicians (and their legal machinations to steal or control the property of others) is morally good. This is sold along with an implicit demand that their professed concern for "others" be accepted without question at face value, together with an implicit threat: "Don't you DARE point out that grasping for and accumulating political power definitely IS a kind of 'selfishness,' only this time it's the bad kind, the vicious taking-unwilling-advantage kind, the kind that's the hallmark of criminals, politicians, their intellectual excuse-makers and other aggressive parasites." ***
This is so important that it bears rephrasing: There are two different kinds of selfishness, the good kind and the bad kind. Keep them straight so you don't get suckered. Even more importantly, keep them straight so you can feel proud -- and not ashamed -- of taking care of yourself and your family. And remember this always: America's unprecedented freedom and the worldwide spread of prosperity which it spawned WAS BUILT UPON ACCEPTANCE OF, AND PROTECTION OF, THE GOOD KIND OF SELFISHNESS. |
Perhaps now you can appreciate how so many people can get caught up in the fashions of the moment, as popularized by today's politicians, journalists, entertainers and educators. And/or how people don't have (or don't use) enough of their logical, critical abilities or a world-view large enough in terms of both time and geography. If so, I encourage you to question authority, apply logic, and think for yourself from now on. Look at the forest, not the trees. And the centuries, not the months. Or you might risk being lead willingly, as a sheep, to the slaughter. And always remember, as Ayn Rand said with the piercing clarity of her insightful wisdom, "Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive." And here she said, "The meaning ascribed in popular usage to the word 'selfishness' is not merely wrong: it represents a devastating intellectual 'package-deal,' which is responsible, more than any other single factor, for the arrested moral development of mankind."
Further, now that you recognize the "scare-and-switch" con, I'm sure you won't fall for it any more. And for freedom's (and honesty's) sake, please don't use it.
Politically correct double-talk
I can't think of many other words or concepts having such vastly different meanings, one being a virtue and another being a vice, but they can be a pretty powerful and evil weapons in the hands (mouth?) of a politician, con artist, clergyman, parent, teacher, or celebrity or journalist with an agenda, right? Especially when they get you to accept the vice as a virtue and the virtue as a vice. That's how they get the unthinking many to sacrifice so much so willingly to the conniving few, actually getting them to feel guilty about the virtue of taking care of themselves and their families first! If you've ever wondered why the American housewife has marched quietly into the workplace because she had to (not because she wanted to) now that it takes two incomes to maintain the same standard of living that one income provided before, well, now you know.
And if you'd previously thought it was an inexplicable paradox that some of the most self-serving people (far-sighted capitalists) have brought more blessings, opportunities and powerful tools of productivity to more people than anyone else, and that some of the most supposedly "compassionate" and "caring" people (socialists) have brought more misery and death to more people than anyone else, well now you know why.
It's important for your own personal clarity to reject any conception of selfishness which includes the thoughtless indulgence in random temptations or disregard of others' interests. Those definitely do NOT represent genuinely self-interested behaviors, and people who think they do are hurting themselves in the long run. Such thinking actually clouds their minds and restricts their thinking to an extremely narrow, strictly altruist view of ethics, and the confusion and self-sabotage which ultimately results from that.****
Finally, there is no rational basis on earth for accepting altruism as your personal moral code. It is so fundamentally foreign to life itself that it can only be smuggled into your psyche in the first place by peer pressure and blind faith. Your enlightenment about that fact would be dramatically enhanced by reading THIS brief essay about "altruism ... the poison of death in the blood of Western civilization."
*Many of the deliberate con artists are the "true believers" of fanatical religious or political sects who actually accept the dogma that it is a mortal sin for you to take care of yourself and your family first and in any way exercise your right to the pursuit of happiness while their precious cause is in any way neglected, underfunded or even unaccepted.
**I thought it should have gone without saying, but judging from some of the inquiries I get, I guess it doesn't. So here goes: NO, making money does NOT have to include ANY type of criminal or shady activity. In fact, literally millions of people have generated a terrific living through totally honest work and trade. If you have a hard time seeing that, it's YOUR motives and character which should be suspect, and no one else's.
***Always remember the difference between economic power and political power: You can refuse to hire someone's services or buy his products in the private sector and go somewhere else instead. In the public sector, though, if you refuse to accept a politician's or bureaucrat's product or services you go to jail. Ultimately, after all, all regulations are observed and all taxes are paid at gunpoint. I believe those few who can't even see that have been short-sighted sheep, and I suggest they learn how to think conceptually, develop consistency and grasp principles soon.
****For further elaboration on this cautionary admonition, see What does Ayn Rand mean when she describes selfishness as a virtue? HERE. And the context in which she says the concept of selfishness, in its exact and purest sense, is "concern with one's own interests ... It is not a concept that one can surrender to man's enemies, nor to the unthinking misconceptions, distortions, prejudices and fears of the ignorant and the irrational." HERE.
"The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbor as ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves. We hate others when we hate ourselves. We are tolerant toward others when we tolerate ourselves. We forgive others when we forgive ourselves. We are prone to sacrifice others when we are ready to sacrifice ourselves" -- Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind
"Approximately 1.3 Billion Dollars (Pounds 900m) has been donated to benefit the victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks. While this is a considerable sum, it is consistent with Americans' generosity. According to the American Association of Fundraising Counsel, in 2000 Americans gave 203 Billion Dollars to charitable organisations, or 2 per cent of gross domestic product, far surpassing the contributions of any other nation. Further, those other countries that were runners-up in private philanthropy were nations that share US values and traditions. "Why are Americans such big givers? Some say this generosity is merely the outgrowth of the spectacular success of capitalism at wealth creation. And no one should argue with capitalism's success in generating wealth, or that possessing wealth beyond that required to meet one's immediate needs makes contributing to humanitarian causes easier. "But surely there is more to the link between capitalism and humanitarianism than wealth creation. After all, there are plenty of things one can do with one's wealth other than contribute it to meeting the needs of others. Humanitarianism rests not just on wealth but on an ethos. And two aspects of the ethos of capitalism - materialism and individualism - are what make humanitarianism possible. "Materialism is the belief that the quality of one's life on earth is important: that life should be more than a daily struggle to meet immediate needs. This is important, for if one does not believe that the material conditions of life are important, no value exists in meeting the material needs of others. "The individuals who commandeered the aeroplanes and flew them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon did not think the material conditions of life mattered. Indeed, they did not think life itself mattered. They willingly brought death to themselves and thousands of others and suffering to tens of thousands for a non-material purpose. "Indeed, their acts and the rhetoric of their leaders are not just non-material, but anti-material. They believe in tearing down. Capitalism, by contrast, is the ideology of building up; it is the best ethos for making our dreams and aspirations concrete that mankind has ever found." -- Lawrence Lindsey, "The generosity of capitalism: The US is the world's biggest giver because its ethos of individualism encourages humanitarianism" Financial Times, London, Nov 22, 2001 |
See:"Popular understanding of economics is at least two centuries behind economists' understanding of the economy" HERE. And:"Wealth is not a fixed quantity and one person's success does not come at the expense of others ... Economists have understood [that] for over two centuries, but moralists have not caught up." HERE. And:"One byproduct of individualism is benevolence -- a general attitude of good will towards one's neighbors and fellow human beings. Benevolence is impossible in a society where people violate each others' rights."-HERE And:"There is a non-sacrificial code of morality -- and an objective standard of value on which it is based."-HERE |
"Many academicians and self-styled intellectuals, with a habitually arrogant and condescending attitude, treat the rest of the world with contempt. These so-called 'intelligentsia' congratulate themselves for, not only having high IQs and lots of education in their particular fields, but for having achieved the allegedly momentus insight that free-market capitalism and altruism are ultimately incompatible (duh). Yet they're still too damned stupid to realize and too damned ignorant to acknowledge that altruism is NOT the only moral code available to mankind. (It is, in fact, the bloodiest and most regressive one of all). This stunted thinking has resulted in their committing the intellectual atrocity of rejecting the capitalism and freedom instead of the altruism and coercion." -- Rick Gaber "The secret dread of modern intellectuals, liberals and conservatives alike, the unadmitted terror at the root of their anxiety, which all of their current irrationalities are intended to stave off and to disguise, is the unstated knowledge that Soviet Russia [was] the full, actual, literal, consistent embodiment of the morality of altruism, that Stalin did not corrupt a noble ideal, that this is the only way altruism has to be or can ever be practiced." -- Ayn Rand "As the death toll mounts--as many as 25 million in the former Soviet Union, 65 million in China, 1.7 million in Cambodia, and on and on--the authors systematically show how and why, wherever the millenarian ideology of Communism was established, it quickly led to crime, terror, and repression. An extraordinary accounting, this book amply documents the unparalleled position and significance of Communism in the hierarchy of violence that is the history of the twentieth century." -- Harvard University Press' review of The Black Book of Communism "The myth of the well-intentioned founders--the good czar Lenin betrayed by his evil heirs--has been laid to rest for good." -- Tony Judt, New York Times "Anything other than free enterprise always means a society of compulsion and lower living standards, and any form of socialism strictly enforced means dictatorship and the total state. That this statement is still widely disputed only illustrates the degree to which malignant fantasy can capture the imagination of intellectuals." -- Lew Rockwell "The three values which men held for centuries and which have now collapsed are: mysticism, collectivism, altruism. Mysticism -- as a cultural power -- died at the time of the Renaissance. Collectivism -- as a political ideal -- died in World War II. As to altruism -- it has never been alive. It is the poison of death in the blood of Western civilization, and men survived it only to the extent to which they neither believed nor practiced it. ..." -- Ayn Rand |
The Ultimate Absurdity During the 1990's politicians and journalists alike heaped scorn on Microsoft Founder Bill Gates for not giving "enough" to charity. Here is a man who could be called the greatest benefactor of mankind in our lifetimes who, by the nature of his business, doubled, tripled, and even QUADRUPLED the productivity of millions of people. Yet these philosophical barbarians could measure his value only by what he had or hadn't given away to whomever THEY thought should receive his attention. Beyond disgusting. Sadly, the philosophically crippled Mr. Gates finally gave upwards of 20 Billion dollars to charities which likely did less than ten percent as much good as his donating it to his friend Warren Buffett could have done. The investment genius Buffett, of course, could have invested it in vastly more wisely in tremendously more productive, and thus life-improving, enterprises if Gates couldn't invest the money in his own business. Philosophy does matter. |
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The Ultimate Absurdity During the 1990's politicians and journalists alike heaped scorn on Microsoft Founder Bill Gates for not giving "enough" to charity. Here is a man who could be called the greatest benefactor of mankind in our lifetimes who, by the nature of his business, doubled, tripled, and even QUADRUPLED the productivity of millions of people. Yet these philosophical barbarians could measure his value only by what he had or hadn't given away to whomever THEY thought should receive his attention. Beyond disgusting. Sadly, the philosophically crippled Mr. Gates finally gave upwards of 20 Billion dollars to charities which likely did less than ten percent as much good as his donating it to his friend Warren Buffett could have done. The investment genius Buffett, of course, could have invested it in vastly more wisely in tremendously more productive, and thus life-improving, enterprises if Gates couldn't invest the money in his own business. Philosophy does matter. |
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"Man's life, as required by his nature, is not the life of a mindless brute, of a looting thug or a mooching mystic, but the life of a thinking being -- not life by means of force or fraud, but life by means of achievement -- not survival at any price, since there's only one price that pays for man's survival: reason." -- John Galt in Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand |
"I have presented the barest essentials of my system, but they are sufficient to indicate in what manner the Objectivist ethics is the morality of life -- as against the three major schools of ethical theory, the mystic, the social, and the subjective ... which represent the morality of death. ... These three schools differ only in their method of approach, not in their content. In content. they are merely variants of altruism, the ethical theory which regards man as a sacrificial animal, which holds that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only viable option." -- Ayn Rand, "The Objectivist Ethics" |
"The foundation of individualism lies in one's moral right to pursue one's own happiness. This pursuit requires a large amount of independence, initiative, and self-responsibility. "But true individualism entails cooperating with others through trade, which facilitates the pursuit of each party's happiness, and which is carried out not just on the level of goods but on the level of knowledge and friendship. Trade is essential for life; it provides one with many of the goods and values one needs. Creating an environment where trade flourishes is of great importance and great interest for the individualist. "Politically, true individualism means recognizing that one has a right to his own life and happiness. But it also means uniting with other citizens to preserve and defend the institutions that protect that right." -- Shawn E. Klein, HERE |
"For the first time in history, the rational and the good are fully armed in the battle against evil. Here we finally find the answer to our paradox; now we can understand the nature of the social power held by evil. Ultimately, the evil, the irrational, truly has no power. The evil mens control of morality is transient; it lives on borrowed time made possible only by the errors of the good. In time, as more honest men grasp the truth, evils stranglehold will be easily broken." -- Dr. Andrew Bernstein, HERE |
Classical Individualism |
... BECAUSE IT'S A NECESSARY PART OF THE ETERNAL VIGILANCE REQUIRED FOR LIBERTY
"We are here on earth to do good for others. What the others are here for, I don't know." -- W. H. Auden, THE WEEK, Nov. 16, 2002, p. 19 |
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"I'm fed up with "one-size-fits-all" religions and child-rearing guidelines. Shy children should be taught to be more assertive, even as selfish as they can be. Otherwise they could become suicidal. I know; I speak from personal experience. And in my opinion, those who teach unselfishness to shy children are guilty of spiritual murder. It's the bullies who really need to be taught respect, both self-respect and respect and consideration for others. But out of far-sightedness, good will, and an enthusiasm for giving and receiving affection, not out of any fear of any authority anyone can see through; that's obviously going to backfire sooner or later. Usually sooner." -- Rick Gaber
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