Posted on 03/20/2014 4:51:43 PM PDT by PaulCruz2016
RUSH: Rand Paul went to Berkeley yesterday, last night. Rand Paul got a standing O from the students at the University of California-Berkeley. Do you know the issue that he hit on that they just jumped out of their seats and applauded him on was the government spying on the citizens? He came out firmly against it, highly critical of it, and they couldn't be quiet.
They were just cheering him like Republicans don't get cheered on college campi. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Rand Paul "delivered a scathing rebuke to the US intelligence community Wednesday, calling it 'drunk with power.' 'I don't know about you, but I'm worried,' the Kentucky senator told 400 people who filled a hall at UC Berkeley's International House. 'If the CIA is spying on Congress, who exactly can or will stop them?'"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vFhXpfEfQg
Reporters talked to the students after the speech, and they just thought it was one of the greatest that they had heard anybody make at Berkeley. Now, he said other things, but that issue of spying, I happen to have seen this reported elsewhere. I've seen it on my tech blogs. These young people that just slavishly support Obama and global warming and every cockamamie idea, when it comes to this NSA business, it's the one area there's not even any confusion about it.
I mean, they're a little confused that Obama would do it, but there is no middle ground on it. They universally oppose it, and they can't blame Republicans for it. I think we get an indication here how Rand Paul's gonna run his campaign. He's gonna go to groups of people, and he's gonna talk about, as a Republican, the things important to them. He's gonna identify whatever it is important. Like to these students, he knew it was spying.
He went to the belly of the beast, UC Berkeley. He's been to Howard University, which is an all-black university. I think other Republican contenders had better take note of what he's doing, 'cause it's very abundantly clear to me what his strategy is. He'll go talk to Hispanics, and whatever he identifies as the issue that gets them out of their seats, he'll talk about.
I don't know what it would be, but he will have one. It might be immigration/amnesty. Who knows? I have no idea. But he obviously knew that the Millennials/college students want no part of this spying. I mean, they're all really tech savvy, and they understand the depths to which the spying is possible. You know, keep a sharp eye.
The war may already be lost, but it was lost in California Berkeley many years ago. Consider what I said and meant…that this particular meeting of 400 young liberals will never vote Republican. For you to extrapolate this to mean no young folks will ever vote Republican is absurd.
These kids give zero, but they will go to the fundraisers and scarf up the goodies. Fools errand.
are you so idiotic as to not understand hyperbole? Apparently….
See #13
That one doesn’t have the date.
? NC
OK.
I’m not in any doubt that he, like the title states, is organized toward getting votes, etc. It’s what RUsh was talking about. He is not a typical GOPe, not a conservative. If he’s a libertarian, whatever, what he is a sleazy politician who speaks out of both sides of his mouth and more. And BTW, that does not win against Dems, as they hold the corner on that market.
I mean he is not organized in his ideology, that would represent any one constituency.
He is unpredictable and is not loyal.
Not hyperbole, just sloppy writing and/or thinking on your part. I think now it is time for you to show how clever you are by calling me more names.
Rand and the libertarians parted ways in the 1960's. She pushed Rothbard out because he wouldn't divorce his wife for being a Christian. After that, Rand denounced libertarianism.
If you're interested in the libertarian take on Rand, you have to watch the comedy sketch Mozart was a Red.
I do remember that when it is mentioned, when I read her books I just appreciated what I could take from them, I sure wasn’t interested in joining a cult of Randians, or later, around 1974 or 1975 when I first met them, the libertarians, I was interested enough to talk to them, but I quickly, almost instantly unpeeled the deeper layers, although they do that Mormon thing, where they edit the message to match the individual, or whichever audience they are speaking to.
On a lighter note, Rand once gave Alan Greenspan a nickname. She called him "The Undertaker".
I don’t think freepers brasp how many kids want to vote for the libertarian thing. My daughter is in high school and she said all the kids wanted to vote for ron paul. Yeah, the kids don’t understand what libertarianism is but they will vote for it. I love it because this is the only path republicans have to get moron voters on our side. For this reason alone I am for rand paul.
FURP and yer crazy azz crackuh pappy ....
Interesting read...
Murray Rothbard - founder of modern libertarianism, chief academic officer of leading libertarian think tank the Mises Institute, and one of the most important thinkers in the Austrian School of Economics - argued in 1972 that Rand was a champion for her own aggrandizement, not for liberty or reason. Rothbard accused Rand -in a long but must-read essay - of being acting like a typical cult leader: The Ayn Rand cult ... flourished for just ten years in the 1960s.... It also promoted slavish dependence on the guru in the name of independence; adoration and obedience to the leader in the name of every person’s individuality; and blind emotion and faith in the guru in the name of Reason. *** Since every cult is grounded on a faith in the infallibility of the guru, it becomes necessary to keep its disciples in ignorance of contradictory infidel writings which may wean cult members away from the fold. *** Just as Communists are often instructed not to read anti-Communist literature, the Rand cult went further to disseminate what was virtually an Index of Permitted Books. *** The philosophical rationale for keeping Rand cultists in blissful ignorance was the Randian theory of “not giving your sanction to the Enemy.” *** In a development eerily reminiscent of the organized hatred directed against the arch-heretic Emanuel Goldstein in Orwell’s 1984, Rand cultists were required to sign a loyalty oath to Rand; essential to the loyalty oath was a declaration that the signer would henceforth never read any future works of the apostate and arch-heretic Branden [Rand’s number 2]. After the split, any Rand cultist seen carrying a book or writing by Branden was promptly excommunicated. *** Cultists were required to swear their unquestioning belief that Rand was right and Branden wrong, even though they were not permitted to learn the facts behind the split. In fact, the mere failure to take a stand, the mere attempt to find the facts, or the statement that one could not take a stand on such a grave matter without knowledge of the facts was sufficient for instant expulsion. For such an attitude was conclusive proof of the defective “loyalty” of the disciple to his guru, Ayn Rand. *** Just as the Marxist movements developed jargon and slogans which were clung to for fear of uttering incorrect deviations, the same was true in the Randian movement. In the name of “precision of language,” in short, nuance and even synonyms were in effect prohibited. *** Wit and humor, as might be gathered from this incident, were verboten in the Randian movement. The philosophical rationale was that humor demonstrates that one “is not serious about one’s values.” The actual reason, of course, is that no cult can withstand the piercing and sobering effect, the sane perspective, provided by humor. One was permitted to sneer at one’s enemies, but that was the only humor allowed, if humor that be. Personal enjoyment, indeed, was also frowned upon in the movement and denounced as hedonistic “whim-worship.” In particular, nothing could be enjoyed for its own sake – every activity had to serve some indirect, “rational” function. Thus, food was not to be savored, but only eaten joylessly as a necessary means of one’s survival; sex was not to be enjoyed for its own sake, but only to be engaged in grimly as a reflection and reaffirmation of one’s “highest values”; painting or movies only to be enjoyed if one could find “rational values” in doing so. All of these values were not simply to be discovered quietly by each person – the heresy of “subjectivism” – but had to be proven to the rest of the cult. In practice, as will be seen further below, the only safe aesthetic or romantic “values” or objects for the member were those explicitly sanctioned by Ayn Rand or other top disciples. *** Any such confession meant a harrowing process of ideological and psychological purification, supposedly ending in one’s success at achieving rationality, independence, and self-esteem and therefore an unquestioning and blind devotion to Ayn Rand. *** One top young Randian ... was deathly afraid to ask the question, it being so basic that he knew he would be excommunicated on the spot for simply raising the point; but he had complete faith that if Rand should be asked the question, she would answer it satisfactorily and resolve his doubts. And so he waited, year after year, hoping against hope that someone would ask the question, be expelled, but that his own doubts would then be resolved in the process. In the manner of many cults, loyalty to the guru had to supersede loyalty to family and friends – typically the first personal crises for the fledgling Randian. If non-Randian family and friends persisted in their heresies even after being hectored at some length by the young neophyte, they were then considered to be irrational and part of the Enemy and had to be abandoned. The same was true of spouses; many marriages were broken up by the cult leadership who sternly informed either the wife or the husband that their spouses were not sufficiently Randworthy. Indeed, since emotions resulted only from premises, and since the leaders’ premises were by definition supremely rational, that top leadership presumed to try to match and unmatch couples. *** One girl, a certified top Randian, who experienced the misfortune of falling in love with an unworthy non-Randian. The leadership told the girl that if she persisted in her desire to marry the man, she would be instantly excommunicated. She did so nevertheless, and was promptly expelled. *** But the most important sanction for the enforcement of loyalty and obedience, the most important instrument for psychological control of the members, was the development and practice of Objectivist Psychotherapy. In effect, this psychological theory held that since emotion always stems from incorrect ideas, that therefore all neurosis did so as well; and hence, the cure for that neurosis is to discover and purge oneself of those incorrect ideas and values. And since Randian ideas were all correct and all deviation therefore incorrect, Objectivist Psychotherapy consisted of (a) inculcating everyone with Randian theory – except now in a supposedly psycho-therapeutic setting; and (b) searching for the hidden deviation from Randian theory responsible for the neurosis and purging it by correcting the deviation. *** It is no wonder that the enormous psychological pressure of cult membership led to an extremely high turnover in the Randian movement, relatively far more so than among the Communists. *** Such fear was greater than that of a Communist member, because the Randian had far less leeway for ideological or personal deviation. Furthermore, since Rand had an absolute and total line on every conceivable question of ideology and daily life, all aspects of such life had to be searched – by oneself and by others – for suspicious heresies and deviations. Everything was the object of fear and suspicion. There was the fear of making an independent judgment, for suppose that the member was to make a statement on some subject on which he did not know Rand’s position, and then were to find out that Rand disagreed. *** Every Randian lived in – and indeed was himself – a community of spies and informers, ready to ferret out and denounce any deviations from Randian doctrine. Thus, one time a Randian, walking with a girl friend, told her that he had attended a party at which several Randians had made an impromptu tape imitating the voices of the top Randian leaders. Stricken by this dire information and after spending a sleepless night, the girl rushed to inform the top leadership of this terrible transgression. Promptly, the leading participants were called on the carpet by their Objectivist Psychotherapist and bitterly denounced in their “therapy” sessions: “After all,” said the therapist, “you wouldn’t mock God.” When the owner of the tape refused the therapist’s demand to relinquish it so that it could be inspected in detail, his doom as a member of the movement was effectively sealed. No Randian, even the top leadership, was exempt from the all-pervasive fear and repression. Every one of the original cadre, for example, was placed on probation at least once, and was forced to demonstrate his loyalty to Rand at length and in numerous ways.
more. much more.....
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2012-11-29/ayn-rand-was-not-libertarian
I spent a week at the Mises Institute over a decade ago, as part of my MBA studies. I went in, having studied Austrian economics, expecting to hear hard-core conservatism. Most of the people I met there, lecturers and classmates alike, were just this side of the tinfoil crowd, and all of them would have despised Reagan and his conservatism as well--except when they were discussing Austrian economics, that is.
Incidentally, when Hans Hermann Hoppe started talking about how we should all get over 9/11, I was the only one who didn't clap, and I was the only one who walked out.
Yeah, I forgot the old skulls full of mush thingy.
I’m sure that is a great read. But dude seriously! Paragraphs are your friend.
...”his Dad” over 0 anytime. No comparison no question and there would still be a semblance of our Constitutional Republic remaining.
I’m not much interested in Ayn Rand, although I do intend to read Atlas Shrugged again, and maybe a couple of others, but it doesn’t interest me enough to get into deep discussions about her here, I never cared about her as a person one way or the other, she was just an author to me, and while I read their books, I never much cared about them outside of that.
That couldn’t have been fun, it must have been a shock.
I know, sorry. But there are no paragraphs at the source. And I aint adding them either.
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