I read the book when I was 18, in the military and had just seen Lyndon Johnson morph into a character in the book. Atlas Shrugged formed my basis of belief concerning governments, peoples reaction to it and what happens when the mooches outnumber the producers. I read the book again in the 70’s and 80’s. Ayn Rand was perceptive beyond belief.
BTW: Read the book. It’s long – most don’t get it and think its boring – some of you won’t be able to put it down.
I think the global warming thing is another example.
You are correct, I powered through it and could ;t put t down, several friends couldn’t get through the first 100 pages.
The similarities to today is amazing. Perhaps speaks to human nature more than we would like to believe.
If you think a lawn jockey is racist but judging people by the color of their skin isn’t, you might be a Social Justice Warrior.
Being generous “at the voting booth”, “with other people’s money”…
Long ago the rhetoric arose that real charity was inadequate. On the surface I guess it seemed as if the progressives were chiding because people fell through the cracks; however, it should have been obvious that government welfare would still come with plenty of cracks to fall through … the reason why government welfare isn’t inadequate is because supporting it isn’t voluntary.
And I’m convinced that the voluntary aspect of charity had everything to do with why it was deemed inadequate.
Progressivism, from its earliest days, was in part about finding ways to force people to pay for these things, ultimately through the income tax to force everyone to “give at the office”.
And the progressives have been so “generous”, have taxed and have stolen from savings via inflation spurred through deficit spending to be even more “generous” beyond that, that they’ve largely managed to put us in a position that what we have is inadequate … two often have to work where one used to and they’ve got gadgets aplenty but little left over to give of their own means and from their own discretion.
Government has no money just what they take from citizens. The problem is you cannot manage a welfare system from 80K eft as one size doesn’t fit all as we have found with the ACA. What LA needs isn’t what Iowa City needs, 2 different places, 2 different economies, different people.
Why do local charities address the local needs so well? Because they address local needs.
Great point LouMan,
Which brings us back to the concerted effort to destroy the last sovereignty of the individual states and the warnings of the “Anti-federalists”.
If you trust a bureaucrat hundreds of miles away with a big stack of tax money to take care of your neighbor for you because they’re the professionals paid to do it, then you may be a progressive.
Interestingly, or perhaps not but interestingly to me, I’ve realized that when Scrooge had to learn that humanity was his business he really also had to unlearn that it was someone else’s. By that I mean that all through the story we get glimpses of the welfare systems of the day, the ways in which the paid professionals sought to manage and ameliorate poverty and suffering. I think we even get a hint in how Scrooge reacts to those seeking funds for this system that he had infact had his pockets picked by them, that he may have given at the office enough, he thought, to satisfy what conventionality demands. In the story learning that humanity is your business isn’t, at progressives have applied it, really just having the paid professionals manage a more agreeable to the poor class of welfare programs … but actually having humanity be your business.
1168 pages was a bit much for me.
Not much worse than some of my long posts. 
The more I think about this, the more it bothers me. If you haven’t seen it, I encourage you to do so.
Haven’t seen it but will put in on my “immediate” bucket list.
Good piece but I have to disagree. Hank is doing public service and “collective good” by very fact that he’s generating wealth, jobs that keeps the flow of revenue in which it is then taxed…whether it is for schools, roads and many other services that public requires.
I would goes as far to say that Hank is doing far more “Public good” then any bureaucrats and thus helping the “Collective good”.
That narrative dropped the ball on this one. But overall good piece.
If you’re watching the video, watch it a second time. You miss so much the first time around.
Disagree with whom?
…
What am I missing?
I don’t consider a suspended sentence a win.
Think about public accommodation laws and watch it again.
I’ve often said that despite their competition to be the richest amongst themselves once they had already become wealthy, that the so-called “robber barons”, the banker Morgan aside, all made their mark and first earned their fortunes by producing goods at prices people found attractive for quality product. Unlike the socialists they and their English industrialist predecessors industrialized the nation without filling it with mass graves, gulags, and secret police.
And TR and other progressives were very wrong, for every time someone voluntarily bought their products they were voting for them in ways nearer and dearer than they ever voted once every two, four or six years for politicians who increasingly have only enough interest in the apparent welfare of the people when they are either seeking election or seeking to liberate wealth from them for their endless public ambitions and mad schemes of government advancing some common good.
Think about the Obamacare “tax”.