Atlas Heaved
Over the past three and a half weeks, I have doggedly finished the 1100+ page epic that is Atlas Shrugged. It's a book that I've contemplated reading for many years, my curiosity piqued by the Ayn Rand mystique. References to her philosophy had always intrigued me but, frankly, the gargantuan size of the book was more than a little intimidating.
Taking it upon sage advice that now was the time to read the book, I set nose to grindstone and plowed my way through. After about 50 or 60 pages of acclimating to Rand's very detailed, meticulous style, I found myself swept up in a tale that is frighteningly prescient. So much so that I found the book difficult to put down. It's been a long time since I've found myself dog-earing pages of a book so as to memorialize their gravity.
I won't venture into anything close to an analysis of what the book means or try to offer any insights that much smarter people than I have made a career out of cultivating. Suffice to say that the book details a United States that eerily mirrors today's imploding nation. The striking similarities have left me with a lingering sense of deja vu. Like I just had lunch with Nostradamus.
There's been a lot made lately of the roots of the left versus right battle in this country and the philosophical struggle's genesis in 19th century Europe. We're seeing all kinds of loose moral and ethical threads exposed in the past six months: military, political, financial and gender.
We're realizing that Depression-era fiscal experiments and the advent of Keynesian economics have conclusively proven that spending more than you have, while politically convenient, has slowly eroded personal responsibility and common sense. This mess wasn't Bush's fault. Or Clinton's fault. It's been a slowly mounting erosion of accountability for at least 80 years. Yes, we're reaping what we've sown. Yes, birds have come home to roost. All the cliches that the press have been tossing around lately are appropriate. But the truth is that it's going to take some legitimate scorched earth tactics to halt this country's retreat from integrity. And it's going to get ugly.
We're realizing that the women's movement championed by the NOW and similar shadow socialist organizations was never really about women's rights. It's about liberal women's rights. The days when Madonna and Rosie O'Donnell are considered more informed and virtuous than Sarah Palin is a scary day. (And that day has been virtually every day for weeks.)
We're realizing that the patriotic euphoria we were all bound by post-9/11 was not meant to last. While we all sang "America the Beautiful" out one side of our mouths, it was about March '02 when we started saying "it won't last" out the other. By the end of that year, the WTC conspiracy theories started flying. Exacerbated by the war in Iraq, the cynical left starting propagating the Great American Guilt Complex, trying like hell to make us all feel like it was our fault that terrorists hate us. That's been, perhaps, the greatest fallacy of the left during the past decade among myriad irrational fallacies.
This has paved the way for electing a black man with an Islamic name as the ultimate act of contrition -- regardless of his complete lack of experience for the position. Let me tell you, we're definitely going to be serving penitence under Obama...just not the kind the left thinks we will.
Prepare for the Barackalypse, my friends.
We're realizing that it's scary as hell when the media tries to soothe us by rationalizing how much worse the Europeans' tax rates are when discussing the imminent tax hikes Obama's veiling so thinly (and the media compulsively denies.) Like we should be happy that we have so far to catch up.
According to Joe Biden, paying taxes is patriotic. I'm not sure I've heard a more terrifying quote in my life. Plucked right out of the pages of Atlas Shrugged, I swear. What's worse, the media just glossed it over. That's the most insidious, unnerving thing I think I've EVER heard a politician say. Honestly. Good God, that horrifies me.
No one, right or left, has the courage to acknowledge that the top 5% of the wealthiest people in this country pay 60% of the taxes. The bottom 30-40% pay NO taxes. Someone, for the love of God, speak that truth. I can't believe the gall of Obama to defend his coming tax policies for small businesses by saying that 65% of small businesses in America don't make $250,000 a year, hence making them immune to his higher taxes. Like that's a defense! That mentality is unfathomable to me. Not only is he then discouraging businesses to be successful, he's also put some kind of stigma on them. Like when they magically cross that $250,000 threshold, they'll be part of the oil-mongering profiteers he so loves to demonize. It's the vacuous, liberal class warfare equation that being poor is virtuous and rich is corrupt. That IS straight out of Atlas Shrugged.
We're realizing that when the sensational, self indulgent, morally-bankrupt Hollywood media culture tries to dictate right and wrong, we've really lost our way. Actors and musicians vilify big business while they drive Hummers, own ten houses, and demand obscene amounts of money for pitiful skillsets. Adopting Malawi kids or coordinating photo-ops in the streets of New Orleans will never cleanse the soiled souls of the glitterati. Keep on biting that hand that's feeding you Sean Penn, Whoopi Goldberg, Barbara Streisand, P-Diddy. You'll need some of that protein later to stave off the scurvy.
We're realizing that labor unions are simply unholy unions. Obama likes to talk so much about revising our financial policies to reflect a 21st century economy. Okay, put your money where your mealy mouth is, Barack, and shut down the labor unions. Shut down the Teamsters. Shut down the UAW. Shut down the Hollywood Writers Union. Shut down the teachers unions. Make them EARN every dollar instead of growing fat and lazy on entitlements. The vulture-like media of the 21st Century would love to show 12 year-olds making clothes for WalMart. They would never let industry return to the genuine abuses of the 20th Century, correct? So, there's no need for unions. Ban them first and then talk to me about change.
And I'm realizing that Atlas Shrugged is among the most important books I've ever read. Reading it at this time in history only magnifies its magnificence.
Buy a copy. Read it with urgency. Let yourself highlight passages. (I intend to share some in future blog entries.) You owe it to your country. Or, as I'm sure Ayn would insist, you owe it only to yourself.
Kind of ironic that the Ayn Rand Institute is but a few miles from here. Or providence.
Taking it upon sage advice that now was the time to read the book, I set nose to grindstone and plowed my way through. After about 50 or 60 pages of acclimating to Rand's very detailed, meticulous style, I found myself swept up in a tale that is frighteningly prescient. So much so that I found the book difficult to put down. It's been a long time since I've found myself dog-earing pages of a book so as to memorialize their gravity.
I won't venture into anything close to an analysis of what the book means or try to offer any insights that much smarter people than I have made a career out of cultivating. Suffice to say that the book details a United States that eerily mirrors today's imploding nation. The striking similarities have left me with a lingering sense of deja vu. Like I just had lunch with Nostradamus.
There's been a lot made lately of the roots of the left versus right battle in this country and the philosophical struggle's genesis in 19th century Europe. We're seeing all kinds of loose moral and ethical threads exposed in the past six months: military, political, financial and gender.
We're realizing that Depression-era fiscal experiments and the advent of Keynesian economics have conclusively proven that spending more than you have, while politically convenient, has slowly eroded personal responsibility and common sense. This mess wasn't Bush's fault. Or Clinton's fault. It's been a slowly mounting erosion of accountability for at least 80 years. Yes, we're reaping what we've sown. Yes, birds have come home to roost. All the cliches that the press have been tossing around lately are appropriate. But the truth is that it's going to take some legitimate scorched earth tactics to halt this country's retreat from integrity. And it's going to get ugly.
We're realizing that the women's movement championed by the NOW and similar shadow socialist organizations was never really about women's rights. It's about liberal women's rights. The days when Madonna and Rosie O'Donnell are considered more informed and virtuous than Sarah Palin is a scary day. (And that day has been virtually every day for weeks.)
We're realizing that the patriotic euphoria we were all bound by post-9/11 was not meant to last. While we all sang "America the Beautiful" out one side of our mouths, it was about March '02 when we started saying "it won't last" out the other. By the end of that year, the WTC conspiracy theories started flying. Exacerbated by the war in Iraq, the cynical left starting propagating the Great American Guilt Complex, trying like hell to make us all feel like it was our fault that terrorists hate us. That's been, perhaps, the greatest fallacy of the left during the past decade among myriad irrational fallacies.
This has paved the way for electing a black man with an Islamic name as the ultimate act of contrition -- regardless of his complete lack of experience for the position. Let me tell you, we're definitely going to be serving penitence under Obama...just not the kind the left thinks we will.
Prepare for the Barackalypse, my friends.
We're realizing that it's scary as hell when the media tries to soothe us by rationalizing how much worse the Europeans' tax rates are when discussing the imminent tax hikes Obama's veiling so thinly (and the media compulsively denies.) Like we should be happy that we have so far to catch up.
According to Joe Biden, paying taxes is patriotic. I'm not sure I've heard a more terrifying quote in my life. Plucked right out of the pages of Atlas Shrugged, I swear. What's worse, the media just glossed it over. That's the most insidious, unnerving thing I think I've EVER heard a politician say. Honestly. Good God, that horrifies me.
No one, right or left, has the courage to acknowledge that the top 5% of the wealthiest people in this country pay 60% of the taxes. The bottom 30-40% pay NO taxes. Someone, for the love of God, speak that truth. I can't believe the gall of Obama to defend his coming tax policies for small businesses by saying that 65% of small businesses in America don't make $250,000 a year, hence making them immune to his higher taxes. Like that's a defense! That mentality is unfathomable to me. Not only is he then discouraging businesses to be successful, he's also put some kind of stigma on them. Like when they magically cross that $250,000 threshold, they'll be part of the oil-mongering profiteers he so loves to demonize. It's the vacuous, liberal class warfare equation that being poor is virtuous and rich is corrupt. That IS straight out of Atlas Shrugged.
We're realizing that when the sensational, self indulgent, morally-bankrupt Hollywood media culture tries to dictate right and wrong, we've really lost our way. Actors and musicians vilify big business while they drive Hummers, own ten houses, and demand obscene amounts of money for pitiful skillsets. Adopting Malawi kids or coordinating photo-ops in the streets of New Orleans will never cleanse the soiled souls of the glitterati. Keep on biting that hand that's feeding you Sean Penn, Whoopi Goldberg, Barbara Streisand, P-Diddy. You'll need some of that protein later to stave off the scurvy.
We're realizing that labor unions are simply unholy unions. Obama likes to talk so much about revising our financial policies to reflect a 21st century economy. Okay, put your money where your mealy mouth is, Barack, and shut down the labor unions. Shut down the Teamsters. Shut down the UAW. Shut down the Hollywood Writers Union. Shut down the teachers unions. Make them EARN every dollar instead of growing fat and lazy on entitlements. The vulture-like media of the 21st Century would love to show 12 year-olds making clothes for WalMart. They would never let industry return to the genuine abuses of the 20th Century, correct? So, there's no need for unions. Ban them first and then talk to me about change.
And I'm realizing that Atlas Shrugged is among the most important books I've ever read. Reading it at this time in history only magnifies its magnificence.
Buy a copy. Read it with urgency. Let yourself highlight passages. (I intend to share some in future blog entries.) You owe it to your country. Or, as I'm sure Ayn would insist, you owe it only to yourself.
Kind of ironic that the Ayn Rand Institute is but a few miles from here. Or providence.
Labels: Barackalypse
posted by JabberDrew at 8:00 PM
1 Comments:
Amen, brother!
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