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Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Rush Limbaugh quoting Ayn Rand
I'm not always a fan of Rush, but he's on fire in this particular monologue. For the full effect, listen to the audio. Here's a partial transcript with some juicy bits:
When you vote for politicians who take from your back pocket to give to others, you think it's compassionate, you think it's caring? It's not. It's depriving the recipient of his own quest for self-interest. The brilliant writer and novelist, Ayn Rand, has written about this. Let me give you a couple quotes from Ayn Rand on this. "It only stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master." That is President Obama. "Where there is sacrifice, there's somebody collecting the sacrificial offerings." What does it mean? President Obama says, "We all need to sacrifice," for this reason or that reason. What it means is we all need to pay more; we need to have less affluent lives; we need to dial down our prosperity, and we need to give the money to him, not a charity. He's going to eliminate, for all intents and purposes, the tax deductibility, it's going to be 28 cents for every dollar, charitable donations. He wants to be the distributor of the charitable donations. He wants to be the distributor of the goods because he wants the glory.
Again, check out the audio. Perhaps Rush will become a libertarian someday! (No, not really.)
Posted by Terrence Watson on March 31, 2009 | Permalink
Comments
And Atlas Shrugged has apparently moved way up on Amazon's sales charts. Maybe having a statist President focuses the mind, sort of like a hanging.
Posted by: Craig | 2009-03-31 9:28:47 PM
Excellent stuff. I always seem to like Limbaugh more than I think I'm going to. His style can be too partisan for my tastes, but he is pretty solid.
I was hoping his own personal struggle with drug addiction would soften his views on prohibition. Has this happened?
Posted by: Matthew Johnston | 2009-03-31 9:38:45 PM
Was he quoting Rand when Bush was running up the debt and expanding government and spying on Americans? Where was the Rand stuff then, Rush?
Posted by: Realist | 2009-03-31 10:03:00 PM
One of the benefits of a Democrat as president is plenty of conservatives stop being mindless, partisan cheerleaders and remind themselves of the small government principles that are supposed to animate the movement. Suddenly, Rush Limbaugh is fun to listen to; Sean Hannity is busy thinking, rather than mouthing the latest talking points from the White House. Fox News is no longer unbearable to watch. National Review publishes articles worth reading again. And the conservative movement as a whole begins to look a lot more cozy for libertarian anti-statists like myself. Conservatives remember the importance of individual liberty, and that the real fight isn't blue vs. red, but liberty vs. the state.
Then the Republicans (or Conservatives) win again, and too many so-called conservatives suffer another bout of amnesia. Well, maybe not this time. Maybe this time, they'll remember... It's worth hoping for, even if I expect disappointment.
Posted by: P.M. Jaworski | 2009-03-31 10:24:22 PM
Realist has it exactly right. When Rush starts pointing out that if McCain had been elected, we'd be getting exactly the same hardcore altruism driven morality driving hardcore socialist/fascist politics, maybe with minor differences in the trimmings, then I'll consider him an honest and worthwhile commentator.
"The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master." That is President Obama.", says the bolded section of the quote. Well, that's wannabe-president McCain, too, in spades. When Rush fails to point this out, he's being disingenuous, to put it kindly.
No one today on either side of the aisle can conceive of a morality where self-interest isn't evil and sacrifice isn't virtuous. Not Obama, not McCain, not Rush, not any of them. Until altruism is rejected as a morality, on principle, the political effects will be what we see today, and worse. Rush certainly isn't prepared to do that, despite any lip service he may pay to self-interest where it suits him for ridiculing Obama.
More people reading Atlas Shrugged... gotta be a good thing, really. To the extent that Rush quoting it helps that, all the better, I suppose, but I don't delude myself for a moment that Rush really believes in anything that Rand espoused for anything more than what he can use it to bash Obama (and ignore identical failings among his own party).
In other worse, Atlas Shrugged, good. Rush, not so much.
Posted by: offsuit | 2009-03-31 11:46:53 PM
The invention of the motor which Ayn Rand envisioned in Her novel Atlas Shrugged; ie) one which is compatible with Her Philosophy For Living On Earth, marks a new phase in Her Philosophical Movement. So...
“By the rules and terms of my code one owes a rational statement to those whom it does concern and who’re making an effort to know.” - ThisIsJohnGaltSpeaking\AtlasShrugged\AynRand
There is some cause for uncertainty for “those whom it does concern…” and it happens ‘after’-”going JohnGalt” and it’s --- “What now?”
To this I can make a significant and reassuring contribution to this commentary section, through a citation of what the fictional JohnGalt says to all potential strikers in the novel as well as in answer to the castaway Dagny Taggart's question:
"What did you tell them to make them abandon everything?"
“I told them that they were right.” … he said - “that it is a moral crisis and it has to run for once it’s undisguised course.”
You see folks, John Galt and his motor are no longer just fiction as the missing piece of the puzzle has been actualized and the motor that Miss Rand envisioned in the novel, as well as “The Gulch” are now real entities.
We meet every year during the month of June. Any of your readers that have “withdrawn their moral sanction” and/or feel compelled to “withdraw their support” for the ‘looter/moocher’s code’, can now do so with the intention of actually getting toward an Object.
Details and information for 'Getting To Atlantis' you can e-mail:
*this is good news for Objectivists and Ayn Rand admirers - like the fulfilling of a prophecy, only more exact*
“We found that we liked to meet - in order to be reminded that human beings still existed. So we came to set aside one month of the year…to rest, to live in a rational world, to bring our real work out of hiding, to trade our achievements - here, where achievements meant payment, not expropriation. …- for one month out of twelve. It made the eleven easier to bear.”
- JohnGalt:DagnyTaggart@GatecrashersDinner\AtlasShrugged\AynRand -
And I mean it.
A $ A
Posted by: MoralMotorMan | 2009-04-01 1:17:10 AM
I read Rand when I was a teen and understood perfectly well that in Atlas Shrugged she was saying SMART people should run the world and DUMB people should step aside and let them do it and then reward the appropriately. There are a lot of dumb, rich leeches in Atlas Shrugged. These are the people John and his friends object to. The reason the societal machine is breaking down is because the dumb, rich people are coasting on the hard work and savvy of the smart people. John Galt askes the smart people to go on strike. Rush is exactly the sort of person Rand held in scorn. Rush has never added one single iota of value to our culture and is certainly not among the smart people. In fact, to my complete shock and awe, Americans have finally elected a genius to the White House. How amusing the dumb, rich people are invoking John Galt to drag Obama down.
Posted by: Tira | 2009-04-02 2:21:27 PM
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