Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Obama's Philosophical Underpinning

Is greed, as so famously posited by Gorden Gecko, good? Well, I guess that depends on what, exactly, the object of said greed is:

This veneration of killers and hatred of the productive remains with us....Communism and fascism both draw their moral authority from the idea that those who control the violent power of the state are inherently more virtuous than those who produce and trade.

Citizen #1 works his whole life to build a business, sacrificing material needs, leisure time, family time, and social gatherings as he spends every waking hour working. The first few years are tough, but he reaches the break-even point and beyond, and finally is able to turn a handsome profit, much of which he plows back into his business, which now employs many local residents.

Citizen #2 - oh, let's call him Barack Obama - has never worked a day in his life, save for teaching a few classes, writing a book while on the beaches of Bali, and sitting on a few boards. His lust is not to build any kind of business for himself - hell, he doesn't even want to work - his lust is for power. And as someone who has only distributed wealth, but never earned it, he believes firmly that the monies being earned by citizen #1, despite his years of stuggle and effort, should be confiscated from him to be redistributed as he, Barack Obama, sees fit. It is only with the force of the state - the power of a gun - that Barack Obama can redistribute the earnings of citizen #1 (while at the same time earning a nice salary for himself and his wife).

So Mr. Obama spends a lifetime chasing power, doing very little "work" once in position save for reaching for the next rung on the ladder. His insatiable lust eventually drives him to the top, where he uses the force of the state to redistribute the hard-earned wealth of the productive to those who cannot produce.

Mr. Obama's justification? Again:

Communism and fascism both draw their moral authority from the idea that those who control the violent power of the state are inherently more virtuous than those who produce and trade.

And Obama what has Obama done since in office, but exploit that statement to the max, blaming bankers and Wall street for all the nation's ills, and using them as rationale for his party's systematic rape and pillage of the nation's most productive citizens.

Obama wants you to belive that he is virtuous. And he is, only if you belive that virtue is created from the barrel of a gun, not from the hands of a working man.

Ayn Rand once gave a talk at West Point that has since become a touchstone for the field itself, entitled Philosophy: Who needs it?:

As a human being, you have no choice about the fact that you need a philosophy. Your only choice is whether you define you philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation--or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified whishes, doubts and fears, thrown together by chance, but integrated by your subconscious into a kind of mongrel philosophy and fused into a single, solid weight....

Which of our citizens - the businessman, or Barack Obama - has a rational, disciplined process of thought? And which lives by generalizations, slogans, contradictions, and wishes?

The fact that we have defined the rational man as "greedy" (evil) and the irrational man as virtuous is a philosphical death sentence for our society. Prior to now, America has never accepted the "innate evil of capitalism" creedo that infects most of the rest of the world, and has limited its growth. Hence, our unparalled strength.

Up until now. We have accepted a philosophy that is guarenteed to drain us - morally, economically, and psychologically. It has proven to be the case worldwide, without exception.

If we don't "change our minds", we will have changed our nation. For the worse. Forever.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Nice piece. Unfortunately, people do not realize how much they "need" philososphy in their lives. And when they hire someone who has none, the result is evident in their work.

Just watch.