Posted on 07/25/2011 7:22:50 AM PDT by FreedomPoster
Ya’ll are living a bit like we are, sounds like. Husband is almost 68, me 65. Drawing a little bit of SS, he is still keeping busy doing the same work he did before retiring, just not officially in business now; but they won’t let him totally quit. He works at a home office here, has to go on the road a bit; just enough to do to keep interested and have a bit extra. We grow our own organic garden, drive an older car and keep it repaired, live well and thank the Lord for what we do have each day. My motto now is “simplify, simplify, simplify”. We still go to town too often, I guess, eat out at cheap places pretty often, shop Walmart probably too much, dress simple, etc.
Same thing in California as you probably know. There they are just starving the crops of water from some river. Soon we will all be starving because we can’t even grow food in this country anymore. It’s really terrifying when you look at the big picture. I think they are going after everyone’s 401 accounts soon but first they will have to cause another crash where everyone gets ‘hurt’ again..then they will offer to ‘fix’ everyone’s account or ‘guarantee’ it..after they steal what is left of course. They will call it ‘revenue enhancement’ or some other grandly worded bill of course. But it will be nothing more sanctioned thievery of the masses.
We had all better fight to get these marxists out of office next November like our very lives depend on it..because they do.
"...The best one sentence summary of Ayn Rand’s thought came from the appendix to her greatest novel, Atlas Shrugged: “My philosophy in essence is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity and reason as his only absolute” (1085). As an atheist and a thoroughgoing laissez-faire capitalist (F, viii),28 she opposed all philosophies and ethical systems based on supernaturalism or collectivism. The one opposes and destroys man’s life on earth by calling for self-sacrifice in hope of a non-existent future life; the other opposes and destroys man’s life by demanding his self-immolation for the sake of an ethereal entity called society. For Ayn Rand, all the emotions of exaltation, worship, reverence, grandeur, and nobility which religion arrogated to God, and collectivism arrogated to society, belonged in fact to man as a rational individual. Thus she said in a commencement address in 1963, “This is the motive and purpose of my writing: the projection of an ideal man.”29 She wanted to portray her characters so that “the pleasure of contemplating these characters is an end in itself” (F, vii). Accordingly, she designated “the sense of life dramatized in The Fountainhead as man-worship” (F, ix)."
The Ethics of Ayn Rand
One does not have to be a collectivist to see that for someone who claimed to provide an integrated and consistent view of life, her atheism and naturalism contradict and self-vitiate not only her moral demands, but knowledge and rationality itself, None of these can be derived from a non-rational, purposeless universe governed solely by brute forces of chance or necessity. In such a universe good and evil cannot exist.
The moral, ethical and rational categories she so presumptuously borrowed originate from, and belong to God Himself, the Creator, and she never paid back what she borrowed. She was a philosophical looter.
Cordially,
"Why would I want to build new buildings, buy new machinery, and hire new staff when the president makes it very clear that if I am successful, he will punish me? People like the President and Alan Blinder (the writer of a column to which he is responding) have no idea of how to start or operate a business. They only know how to take the wealth from hard-working, successful people and distribute it to those less inclined to do hard work."
I'll leave the author's name out, but he gets right to the point. He's a business owner with about 100 employees. He knows what he's up against with the left.
I wish that I had started this type of lifestyle simplification 30 years ago.
Re: “wish I had started this type of lifestyle simplification 30 years ago.”
Me, too. Oh, we’ve learned a lot the hard way. I’ve learned that “perfectionism” is the enemy of “good enough”, and to live with what I can do and not agonize over it.
I remind myself often, “Keep it simple!” Whatever I’m doing. So, I simplify, simplify, simplify wherever I can, and I don’t worry about what the Joneses have or don’t have.
Good luck; and I appreciate any helpful hints and how-to’s to live the simple life.
It sounds like you have everything down pat as far as simplifying your life. What we do now is teach our neighbors. You probably already have folks commenting on the garden. Show them how to bake their own bread and can their own vegetables.
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