Obama going Socialist, America going Galt?



Mr. Reiland is the B. Kenneth Simon Professor of Free Enterprise at Robert Morris University and a columnist at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Atlas Shrugs: Doctors ‘Going Galt’
by Ralph R. Reiland


10/13/2009


The headline in Investor’s Business Daily, Sept. 16, 2009: “45% of Doctors Would Consider Quitting If Congress Passes Health Care Overhaul.”

The headline in the Boston Globe, Sept. 28, 2009: “States risk it, raise tax on rich.”

The problem with four of nine U.S. doctors saying they “would consider leaving their practice or taking an early retirement” is that “the number of doctors is already lagging population growth,” reports IBD.


Add millions of new patients to a shrinking supply of doctors and the obvious result is an English-style queue, longer waits in pain, and a centrally directed rationing of service.

That Boston Globe article on soaking the rich explains that New York’s increased confiscation of income from the “deep-pocketed rich” through higher taxes is producing a “millionaires’ exit.”

Said New York’s lieutenant governor, Richard Ravitch, regarding the flight of the state’s millionaires and the decline in government revenues that has already occurred as a result of the higher tax rates: “People aren’t wedded to a geographic place as they once were.”

In Atlas Shrugged, a novel by Ayn Rand, the most productive and creative citizens in the United States -- the innovators, risk-takers, artists, entrepreneurs, capitalists, intellectuals, industrialists -- overturn the conventional concept of victimhood and go on strike, refusing any longer to be exploited by society, refusing to be demonized as too successful, too rich, too individualistic, too free.

Led by John Galt, the novel’s hero, the industrious organize a strike against the ever-expanding yoke of government coercion. They strike to halt the murder of man’s spirit, to halt the confiscation of man’s work, to defend individualism, reason, liberty, human achievement and the market economy.

They strike by mysteriously disappearing, by withdrawing their productivity from society, by withdrawing their minds and ingenuity, in a walkout that Galt describes as “stopping the motor of the world.”

Near the climax of the novel, Galt takes over a radio broadcast to reveal the strike and its rationale, explain why society has collapsed into an ever-growing crisis of scarcity and misery, and deliver a manifesto for liberty to a corrupt society:

I am the man who has deprived you of victims and thus has destroyed your world...

All the men who have vanished, the men you hated, yet dreaded to lose, it is I who have taken them away from you. We are on strike against self-immolation. We are on strike against the creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. We are on strike against the dogma that the pursuit of one’s happiness is evil. We are on strike against the doctrine that life is guilt …

You have sacrificed justice to mercy. You have sacrificed independence to unity. You have sacrificed reason to faith. You have sacrificed wealth to need. You have sacrificed self-esteem to self-denial. You have sacrificed happiness to duty ...

Your ideal had an implacable enemy, which your code of morality was designed to destroy. I have withdrawn that enemy. I have taken it out of your way and out of your reach. I have removed the source of all those evils you were sacrificing one by one. I have ended your battle. I have stopped your motor. I have deprived your world of man’s mind ...

While you were dragging to your sacrificial altars the men of justice, of independence, of reason, of wealth, of self-esteem, I beat you to it -- I reached them first. I told them the nature of the game you were playing and the nature of that moral code of yours, which they had been too innocently generous to grasp ...

There is a difference between our strike and all those you’ve practiced for centuries: our strike consists, not of making demands, but of granting them. We are evil, according to your morality. We have chosen not to harm you any longer. We are useless, according to your economics. We have chosen not to exploit you any longer. We are dangerous and to be shackled, according to your politics. We have chosen not to endanger you, nor to wear the shackles any longer.

The inauguration of Barack Obama took place on Jan. 20, 2009. The Economist magazine reported that week that Atlas Shrugged, published in 1957, had moved up to 33rd place among Amazon’s top-selling books.

~

Jill Stanek puts it this way-

"MI Right to Life's Brian Cusack made the point at a banquet I recently attended that there is a schism between believing what 53% of Americans responded to a December 2005 Zogby poll, that "abortion destroys a human life and is manslaughter," and putting it into practice.

Cusack called it "the great disconnect" that people would willingly stand by and even condone what they consider "manslaughter."

A clear example of the great disconnect came Oct. 9 when the Nobel Peace Prize committee chose Barack Obama as its 2009 recipient.



Obama had only been in office 12 days when nominations closed and had furthermore done "jack and squat" in the nine months following, as a Saturday Night Live skit recently put it.

But the committee awarded Obama because he gave the world "hope for a better future," according its statement.

The disconnect, of course, is Obama is the most pro-abortion president in US history, to the point of advocating postborn baby killing if it would interfere with preborn baby killing.

Actually, from a pro-abortion perspective, Obama has done "jack and pot" since becoming president...." Click the link to read the entire article.

The Nobel Prize ain't what it used to be, what with famous terrorist and homosexual predator Yasser Arafat and lying windbag Al Gore listed among the recipients. Not that I have an opinion or anything...


Obama Brainwashing

Obama promises to give ACORN and similar groups a part of shaping his agenda


McCain tied Barack to ACORN back when they were just in the voter fraud and bank-scamming business and before they branched out (as far as we know) into child prostitution and fraud.

Barack refuses to agree he will sign the ACORN cut-off legislation. Want to guess why?

Investigative journalist Michelle Malkin was all over this three months ago.

ACORN - Soros - SEIU - Obama - Chicago Machine. All connected. Wake up!!! Barack Obama told the world that he was a socialist years ago but he put on the cloak of secrecy as he took the Democratic nomination and then the election.

"One of the tragedies of the Civil Rights movement was because the Civil Rights movement became so court-focused I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change."


Barack Obama discussing the Supreme Court and Constitutional issues on PBS radio interview in 2001.

Barack Obama's mentors have been communists and terrorists. His "church" was a racist and communist pretense. Barack Obama has always wanted to bring about a socialist society and now he is the chief executive of the USA. This is why Tea Parties are springing up all over the country. This is why the 2010 election is critical. We must elect legislators who actually believe in America and the Constitution and do not want to change the nation into something else. We do not want to be Sweden or Canada or Commmunist China or the USSR! This is a land of equal opportunity and free enterprise and Barack Obama and his cronies want to change that. They are stupid. Communism/socialism never works. Millionaires run away to another country, workers lose their reason to work hard, good become scarce and over-priced and eventually the entire nation becomes impoverished. How is it that the lessons of the countries behind the Iron Curtain have not been learned?

Remember when the Berlin Wall fell? Remember the joy of the people freed from communist rule? The explosion of the economies of Eastern Europe once freed from the communists? Again I say, Wake UP!!!!!!! Because if you sit there doing nothing, your rights as an American will be stolen from you. Write a letter or an email to your legislators. Send them a fax. Go to a Tea Party. Tell them all that those who vote for socialist agendas will lose your vote, so they will get tossed out of Washington if they go along with the Obamites.

Or, do nothing. One day you will be waiting in a long line to get your weekly toilet paper ration and you will remember the days when America was a land of free enterprise and opportunity.


The Perspective of a Russian Immigrant, by Svetlana Kunin



In the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, I was taught to believe individual pursuits are selfish and sacrificing for the collective good is noble.


In kindergarten we sang songs about Lenin, the leader of the Socialist Revolution. In school we learned about the beautiful socialist system, where everybody is equal and everything is fair; about ugly capitalism, where people are exploited and treat each other like wolves in the wilderness.


Life in the USSR modeled the socialist ideal. God-based religion was suppressed and replaced with cultlike adoration for political figures.


The government-assigned salary of the proletariat (blue-collar worker) was 30%-50% higher then any professional. Without incentive to improve their life, professionals drank themselves to oblivion. They — engineers, lawyers, doctors, teachers — earned a government-determined salary that barely covered the necessities, mainly food.


Raising children was a hardship. It took four to six adults (parents and grandparents) to support a child. The usual size of the postwar family was one or two children. Every woman had the right to have an abortion and most of them did, often without anesthesia.


There is a comparative historical reality that plays out the consequences of two competing ideologies: life in the USSR and in America. When the march to the worker's paradise — the Socialist Revolution — began in 1917, many people emigrated from Russia to the U.S.


In the USSR, economic equality was achieved by redistributing wealth, ensuring that everyone remained poor, with the exception of those doing the redistributing. Only the ruling class of communist leaders had access to special stores, medicine and accommodations that could compare to those in the West.


The rest of the citizenry had to deal with permanent shortages of food and other necessities, and had access to free but inferior, unsanitary and low-tech medical care. The egalitarian utopia of equality, achieved by the sacrifice of individual self-interest for the collective good, led to corruption, black markets, anger and envy.


Government-controlled health care destroyed human dignity.


Chairman Nikita Khrushchev released facts about Stalin and his purges. People learned of the horrific purge of more than 20 million citizens, murdered as enemies of the state.


Those who left Russia found a different set of values in America: freedom of religion, speech, individual pursuits, the right to private property and free enterprise. The majority of those immigrants achieved a better life for themselves and their children in this capitalist land.


These opportunities let the average immigrant live a better life than many elites in the Soviet Communist Party. The freedom to pursue personal self-interest led to prosperity. Prosperity generated charity, benefiting the collective good.


The descendants of those immigrants are now supporting policies that move America away from the values that gave so many immigrants the chance of a better life. Policies such as nationalized medicine, high tax rates and government intrusion into free enterprise are being sold to us under the socialistic motto of collective salvation.


Socialism has bankrupted and failed every society, while capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than any other system.


There is no perfect society. There are no perfect people. Critics say that greed is the driving force of capitalism. My answer is that envy is the driving force of socialism. Change to socialism is not an improvement on the imperfections of the current system.


The slogans of "fairness and equality" sound better than the slogans of capitalism. But unlike at the beginning of the 20th century, when these slogans and ideas were yet to be tested, we have accumulated history and reality.


Today we can define the better system not by slogans, but by looking at the accumulated facts. We can compare which ideology leads to the most oppression and which brings the most opportunity.


When I came to America in 1980 and experienced life in this country, I thought it was fortunate that those living in the USSR did not know how unfortunate they were.


Now in 2009, I realize how unfortunate it is that many Americans do not understand how fortunate they are. They vote to give government more and more power without understanding the consequences.


Svetlana Kunin, Stamford, Conn.


Editor's note: Mrs. Kunin, an IBD subscriber, is a retired software developer. In the Soviet Union, she was a civil engineer.






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