When I saw that the schedule promised an appearance by NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre and a pajama party, I knew I had to check it out.

The Young Womens Leadership Summit, put on this year in Dallas by right-leaning nonprofit Turning Point USA, brings together high school- and college-aged conservative women from all over the country. This year, the invite-only conference drew more than 1,000 to the Hyatt Regency near DFW International Airport.

Its an interesting time to be a conservative young woman. I wondered who they followed on Twitter (spoiler: Ben Shapiro). I wanted to see what kind of young person would choose to spend a summer weekend in a hotel talking about politics. I wondered how they felt about supporting a president whod been criticized for being anti-women, who had once bragged about sexual assault. I wondered how they felt about the Womens March, and whether they worried about things like the gender wage gap and restricted abortion access. Most of all, I was curious if being a conservative woman meant ignoring womens issues.

When I arrived at the hotel last Thursday, the place was teeming with scores of bright, energetic young women. As they stood in line, they introduced themselves to each other and took endless rounds of selfies. They hovered around a plate of cake pops, reconnecting with friends theyd met at last years summit. They wore heels and blazers and skirts patterned with little Republican elephants. Their excitement was palpable.

I picked up my press credentials from Turning Points communications director. He showed me to the press corral at the back of the conference hall, gave me a program, and noted what I could and could not attend during the four-day summit. Most of the breakout sessions were closed. He wrote a 5 on my schedule by the college meet-and-greet to denote that I was allotted five minutes there.

Meanwhile, outside the main conference hall, the line for the meet-and-greet with Ben Shapiro (also known as Bae Shapiro among these ranks) snaked around the foyer. Organizations like the Ayn Rand Institute and pro-gun group Empowered were putting the finishing touches on their booths. As they waited in line, women took turns holding frames emblazoned with phrases like Future Senator and posing for photos along a red carpet-style backdrop. I sidled up in line and asked as many women as I could why theyd come to this summit. Some offered full names while others declined to identify themselves.

I think big government sucks, said Sonia, who attends the College of DuPage in Illinois. (At the time, I didnt realize just how often I was going to hear Sonias sentiment.)

Some had come to learn more about starting Turning Point chapters at their schools. Many envisioned a future in politics and wanted to make connections. Most were glad for the opportunity to be away from the liberal worlds of their college campuses and among other women with whom they agreed. Samantha, clad in blue pants, goes to Messiah College in Pennsylvania and is staunchly against abortion. My college campus is really liberal, and its hard to connect with people who have the same beliefs as me, she told me. There were five people at my college campus who went to the March for Life and like 50 who went to the Womens March.

My college campus is really liberal, and its hard to connect with people who have the same beliefs as me.

Some women wore their conservatism like a badge; some skewed a little more moderate. Some loved Trump; others merely supported him. One woman told me that she had first championed Rubio, then Cruz, then finally resigned herself to Trump. He really does want to make America great again, she said.

Soon it was time for the opening session, so I ventured back to the auditorium and slipped to the back of the press corral. Pop songs blasted overhead. Each seat came with a Big Govt Sucks poster, and as cameras swept over the crowd, the women waved their signs and cheered. Soon a confetti cannon burst and Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point, strode on stage. He thanked the headline sponsor (the NRA) and pointed out that there is no war on womenevidenced, he said, by all the conservative women in attendance. This weekend, he told the gathered crowd, There will be no safe spaces. He repeated it again, for the media.

I looked down at my schedule for this invite-only, women-only summit. The banquet keynote (Laura Ingraham, a few days shy of reports that shes being considered to hold the routine White House briefings) was off limits to the press. We were allowed five minutes in the lunch hall, seven minutes to witness the Krav Maga self-defense workshop, and zero minutes at the pajama party. Political commentator Tomi Lahren, clad in a jacket with shiny sleeves, was up first. She talked a bit about the difficulty of being a conservative and urged the gathered women to stand up for themselves.

The first female president, thats a big deal for all of us, she said. Id rather it not be Hillary ClintonId rather it not be a liar or a crook.

Lock her up! someone in the audience shouted.

We dont need to lock her up, shes at Whole Foods, shes hiking through the woods, Lahren said. Though I cant talkIm unemployed too, so Hillary and I are in the same boat.

When she opened the floor up to questions, no one mentioned her recent pro-choice remarks or departure from Glenn Becks media company.

Instead: I just wanna ask what were all thinking, one attendee said. Wheres your blazer from?

Lahren said she didnt remember, but pointed out her merchandise booth to the right of the stage.

I dont live my life based off the color of my skin, or my gender. Im an American, Im a Christian, I have my beliefs, and thats how I live.

As the speakers progressed, they speculated that one of the summit attendees might become the first woman president. There was also much discussion about the strength it requires to be conservative. And even though the recent shooting had some hopeful sense of bipartisanship, there was little of that reflected here. At the end of each speakers presentation, he or she answered a brief Q&A (with mostly questions like Coke or Pepsi?). The last question, though, was always about big government, and the response was always that it sucks.

Antonia Okafor, a Second Amendment activist, told the cheering crowd: Yes, Im a black woman, and I cling to my guns, my God, and my country! Ginni Thomas, a columnist for the Daily Caller, invited attendees whod faced discrimination for being a conservative to share their stories. A high schooler was blocked from starting a Young Americans for Freedom club at her school. A young professional wept on stage while describing how she was fired from her job when a co-worker discovered her political beliefs. Another woman wanted relationship advice.

So, my boyfriends a liberal, she began. The crowd erupted in a chorus of boos.

Get a new one, Thomas said.

The hapless young woman pressed on. Apparently she really liked the guy.

If you think she should find another guy, Thomas said, stand up.

Hundreds of women clamored to their feet.

Lara Trump, the presidents daughter-in-law, came across as genuine and personable. She told the crowd about her fear in moving to New York for culinary school and her pride in helping her father-in-law win North Carolina during the election. She explained that shes going to be part of his 2020 reelection campaign. Near the end of her talk the entire assemblage sang Happy Birthday to Donald Trump.

Wayne LaPierre talked about the recent congressional shooting, which involved a female Capitol police officer.

The surest way to stop a bad guy with a gunis a good woman with a gun, he said.

In between the speakers, the young women attended 45 minute breakouts. In the Using Digital Media to Amplify Your Voice session, the presenter gave tips on posts that do well on social media and how to use plugins to find peoples contact information. Of-the-moment topics were largely closed to press, including one titled What Does Conservative Healthcare Look Like? Ironic, considering the Senate has been debating its own bill in secret.

Afterwards, I talked to Estrella Gonzales, who attends the University of Texas at Arlington. Her mother was born in Mexico, and her family were laborers and former Democrats. I wondered how she reconciled her family history with the presidents immigration policies. She told me about how her grandfather, a field worker in South Texas, used to carry sandwiches for immigrants who stopped to ask for directions. One day her grandpa discovered that his co-worker had been robbed and murdered in the fields. She conceded that immigration policy requires some meet-in-the-middle, but stressed that the presidents negative comments about immigrants werent about all immigrants and that there are bad ones.

In the end, though, it came down to this: I dont live my life based off the color of my skin, or my gender, she told me. Im an American, Im a Christian, I have my beliefs, and thats how I live.

That summed up the views of most of the women I came across. To many, gender was just another thing, as Calli Norton, from West Virginia State University, put it. I dont think it means you have a leverage, or a disadvantage. I feel like were all on an equal playing field.

The attendees had strong feelings about abortion, religion, immigration reform, and, of course, the size of the government. They admired Ben Shapiros intelligence; they were inspired by Carly Fiorinas success. Many had well-thought-out opinions, and their futures seemed bright. But I found it interesting that women (at a gathering of women) didnt feel that being a woman had much to do with their world views.

As I was leaving on the second day, attendees were lining up to be photographed with NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre. There I found Samantha, the pro-life advocate from Messiah College I had talked to earlier. She gushed about the speakers so far, all of whom shed enjoyed. When it was her turn to snap a photo with LaPierre, she smiled brightly. Then she held out her journal.

Shed been taking notes on every speaker, she explained. She asked LaPierre to sign beneath her notes on his speech.

Samanthaproud of you, his inscription read. Keep fighting.

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Wayne LaPierre, Tomi Lahren, and a Rally Cry From Young Conservative Women - D Magazine

When I was younger I once woke up to a bright light, and people around me saying, Dont duck on an uppercut.

I remember that when I discuss the illiterate economic policies by which Republicans and Democrats afflict society. Neoliberal economics was dubbed in the mid-30s by Milton Friedman as a purer form of Adam Smiths opinions. Originally promoted by Republicans as cheap sophistry with which to fleece the great unwashed, it was later adopted by the elite, backstabbing faction of the allegedly workers Democratic Party. It has manifested in the Chicago School, trickle down, voodoo, varieties of junk and supply side economics with the Laufer curve, etc.

Hiding out in contorted vocabulary, obfuscating left and right, the main idea is The Wealth of Nations is holy writ and the market a divinely inspired manifestation of the superior entitlement of rich over everybody else. Failure to recognize that assumption is jealous apostasy from those assigned by moral failing to keep society going through actual work. Devoid of empirical justification, the neoliberal cult thrives on a liturgy invoking the market, invisible hand, austerity, balanced budget, privatization, etc. The common good is a curse to neoliberals. Republican neoliberals who actually read consume approved selections from Adam Smith and Ayn Rand, while Democratic neoliberals read Adam Smith and Kafka. Democrats have substantially avoided Randian moral contamination, while Republicans have been seduced by it, and the education system is sufficiently sabotaged by knowledge aversion to keep people voting for both parties.

We now seem headed for a plague of privatization, selling societys assets at firesale prices to predators, removing protections from market manipulation by elite institutions, derecognizing labor rights, and another disaster candidate from corrupt DNC that opposes universal health care.

Another replay of 1929 and 2008? Duh. Dont duck on an uppercut.

Bob Greene CPC

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NewsBusters (press release) (blog)

NY Times, After 'Corrections,' Still Has Palin-Giffords 'Targeting' Myth in Scalise Shooting Editorial NewsBusters (press release) (blog) despite the New York Times' fondest desires, it turned out Loughner wasn't a conservative at all but a babbler of nonsense who adopted a mish-mash of views from both the left and the right and whose tastes in literature ran the gamut from Ayn Rand to ... and more »

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NY Times, After 'Corrections,' Still Has Palin-Giffords 'Targeting' Myth in Scalise Shooting Editorial - NewsBusters (press release) (blog)

The Fountainhead, part 1, chapter 9

After months of hitting one dead end after another, Howard Roark finally gets a lucky break in his job hunt not that Ayn Rand ever acknowledged the existence of luck:

John Erik Snyte looked through Roarks sketches, flipped three of them aside, gathered the rest into an even pile, glanced again at the three, tossed them down one after another on top of the pile, with three sharp thuds, and said:

Remarkable. Radical, but remarkable. What are you doing tonight?

Why? asked Roark, stupefied.

Are you free? Mind starting in at once? Take your coat off, go to the drafting room, borrow tools from somebody and do me up a sketch for a department store were remodeling. Just a quick sketch, just a general idea, but I must have it tomorrow Can you stay?

Yes, said Roark, incredulously. I can work all night.

We never find out how Roark learned about John Erik Snyte the first time his name is spoken in the text is the first line of the passage I quoted above which is just a little strange. We saw last week that Roark had been unemployed so long and gotten so desperate, he was reapplying to firms that had already rejected him. How did Snyte come into this picture? From the evidence, his firm isnt brand-new.

Was he someone Roark had known about, but held in such contempt that he refused to interview there until he literally had nowhere else to turn? Or was Roark tipped off about a job opening there but by who, since he has no friends or colleagues?

An obvious answer is that he saw a help-wanted ad in the paper and thought the position might suit him, but were never told that if so. Its possible that Rand deliberately chose to omit this information, because she couldnt think of how to have Roark find out about the job opening in a way that didnt seem like a stroke of good luck.

As I said above, Rand was fiercely opposed to the idea that theres such a thing as luck or random chance, since that might call into question her view of the world as a perfect meritocracy. Having her hero stumble across a job opening that suits him, something that would have been easy to overlook or miss, wouldnt accord with her view of how the world works. (As possible evidence of this, I skipped a section where Roark comes across an editorial by an unfamiliar architect named Gordon L. Prescott, who claims to want fresh blood and originality; but when Roark goes to interview there, it turns out he just wants to build more copies of the Parthenon.)

Personally, my headcanon is that Henry Cameron told Roark to apply with Snyte, and then secretly sent the recommendation letter that Roark always refused to accept, figuring his protege was too stubborn for his own good. It does fit with a line where Snyte says about his new hire, saying, Thats just what Ive always needed a Cameron man, even though we never see Roark actually tell his new boss anything about his background. Did it ever occur to him to wonder how Snyte knew?

Heres how the text describes John Erik Snyte:

He considered Guy Francon an impractical idealist; he was not restrained by an Classic dogma; he was much more skillful and liberal: he built anything. He had no distaste for modern architecture and built cheerfully, when a rare client asked for it, bare boxes with flat roofs, which he called progressive; he built Roman mansions which he called fastidious; he built Gothic churches which he called spiritual. He saw no difference among any of them.

Snytes system is to hire five designers, each specializing in a different style, and to blend the best ideas from each of their sketches to create the final product. Roark is the modernistic designer in the room, although he dislikes being called that:

He met his fellow designers, the four other contestants, and learned that they were unofficially nicknamed in the drafting room as Classic, Gothic, Renaissance and Miscellaneous. He winced a little when he was addressed as Hey, Modernistic.

Roark takes individuality to comical heights. Hes so obstinate about it that he cant even stand to be described as part of a movement. Whatever he does, its important to him to believe that hes the only one doing it.

Of course, its impossible for every architect in the world to be a movement of one, with styles and aesthetic choices that are completely unlike anything else in the history of humanity. All culture is a mix of imitation and improvisation. We coin terms like Gothic or Modernist to describe broad trends and patterns that, yes, are influenced by the fashions of their era. This is as true for Roark or his real-life inspiration, Frank Lloyd Wright as it is for architects of the ancient past. But Ayn Rand conceived of herself as a special snowflake, someone who stood apart from the crowd, and she wrote her protagonists the same way.

Youd think that Snytes mix-and-match design scheme would infuriate Roark, since he hates anyone else altering his work with the ferocity of a Klan member opposing miscegenation. Instead, he grudgingly goes along with it:

Roark knew what to expect of his job. He would never see his work erected, only pieces of it, which he preferred not to see; but he would be free to design as he wished and he would have the experience of solving actual problems. It was less than he wanted and more than he could expect. He accepted it at that.

What explains this temporary outbreak of reasonable behavior? It seems that long months of unemployment have worn him down, to the point where hes actually angry with himself for feeling relief at getting a job:

Roark looked at the clean white sheet before him, his fist closed tightly about the thin stem of a pencil. He put the pencil down, and picked it up again, his thumb running softly up and down the smooth shaft; he saw that the pencil was trembling. He put it down quickly, and he felt anger at himself for the weakness of allowing this job to mean so much to him, for the sudden knowledge of what the months of idleness behind him had really meant.

Its difficult to tell what Rand intends us to make of this. Some commentaries, like this one from SparkNotes, call Snyte a supposedly progressive architect who is in fact the ultimate plagiarizer, but I dont buy that. I doubt even Ayn Rand could have believed that its plagiarism for a boss to use ideas from his employees.

I think this is the more accurate description of the fault were meant to find in him:

As a man willing to give the public anything it wants, no matter how vulgar or inane, Snyte represents conformity in yet another form.

Snyte is another illustration of Rands belief that selling what your customers want to buy is a sin in business. The proper attitude is to be like Howard Roark: tell your customers what theyre going to accept, rather than vice versa, and on no account consider their preferences or tastes. Her ideal businessman is someone who sticks so obstinately to this principle that hed rather go broke and hungry than accept money from someone who insists on having opinions of their own about what the end product should look like.

Other posts in this series:

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The Fountainhead: American Eclectic - Patheos (blog)

The Jerusalem Post

Tech Talk: Israel's Fortune 500 companies The Jerusalem Post The award was developed, according to Boaz Arad, executive director of Ayn Rand Center Israel, in recognition of the entrepreneurial spirit which creates wealth that improves our lives, and we wanted to recognize and show appreciation to those people ...

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Tech Talk: Israel's Fortune 500 companies - The Jerusalem Post

By day, Rob Eldridge adopts the mantle of teacher and boys varsity soccer coach at South Fayette High School. By night, he morphs into a musician for Steelesque, which will release its latest CD, Toro Toro, at a bash set for 8 p.m. June 23 at Cefalos Banquet & Event Center in Carnegie.

Im absolutely a goal-oriented person, whether its developing a strong soccer program that is competing for WPIAL or state titles, or leading a group of musicians in creating art and producing a finished product that we can be proud of, Eldridge said.

As a songwriter, Rob Eldridge is no Bob Dylan, but he advises budding bards to put the ROLL in their rock. The South Fayette resident recommends reading, observing, living and learning to aspiring lyricists

An avid reader, Eldgridge enjoys historical fiction to fantasy. No one particular genre of literature, he said. He likes the classics. His favorite authors include Stephen King, Michael Crichton and Ayn Rand while his best book is The Fountainhead.

Ill read anything placed in front of me. If I get through the first couple of chapters, Ill pretty much read the whole thing.

A lot of my songs are from personal experiences and some are based on stories that I have read, he continued. Living every day also inspires me to be creative.

I like books and observing people. Going into the city and visiting museums and seeing the art, he added.

Hanging out with the master for a day also helped Eldridge. In 1994, he spent 10 a.m. to 1 a.m. with Dylan as his runner when the Nobel Prize winner appeared in Burlington, Vt.

It was surreal, Eldridge said of the experience. Of Dylan, he added, He was a kind man, small in stature but he had an aura that filled an arena.

While Eldridge hopes to fill Cefalos Banquet and Event Center in Carnegie on Jun 23 with fans to hear the release of his CD Toro Toro, he knows songwriting is no easy task.

There is no set recipe or ingredients, he said. Its about expression and interpretation. Writing on you own is a process that is lonely. You spend many hours and days with your song. Sometimes it talks back to you and tells you where it wants to go and other times it remains a puzzle unwilling to be solved.

Yet Eldridge is happy to be able to help solve issues for others and fuel their creative juices. As a teacher, who also happens to coach soccer, in a school district that appreciates the arts, he is grateful to work in a supportive environment.

Sports are important but the arts are too, he said. Our superintendent (Bille Rondinelli) champions the arts, and we are fortunate here at South Fayette that she is behind them and that we have her guidance and leadership to make sure that the arts are an important part of the education and that they dont go away like whats been happening at other places.

I have no illusions of being on a tour bus with U2, he added. Im happy to be an inspiration to young men and women at school and on the soccer field, and to be creative with my band and writing songs.

By Eleanor Bailey

I have a strong competitive spirit, and sometimes that needs to be calmed, he added. I do that by reading, songwriting and through my music. For me, its the yin and yang of life. It works well together.

Throughout his life, Eldridge weaved sports and music together successfully. A Vermont native, he started skiing at age 5. He began playing soccer at 7 and evolved into an All-American while excelling on the Johnson State College team that competed in national championships. While earning his masters degree in education, Eldridge helped coach the James Madison University mens soccer team.

At that Harrisonburg, Va., school, he met his wife, Kim. When she took the lacrosse coaching gig at Duquesne University, the Eldridge family moved to Pittsburgh, where Rob took the assistant coaching job with the Dukes mens soccer squad in 1996.

In addition, he joined the Beadling Soccer Club as a head coach, directing teams to multiple state championships and one regional title. From 2002-07, he served as Peters Township head coach, guiding the Indians to three section banners, one WPIAL championship and two district runner-up titles.

Since 2007, he has been at South Fayette, claiming several Coach of the Year laurels in consistently guiding the Lions to the district and state playoffs. The Lions won a WPIAL title in 2015.

Music has been with Eldridge every step of the way. Raised in a classical formal tradition, as his maternal grandparents, Elizabeth and Herbet Kenyon, were a concert pianist and opera singer, respectively, Eldridge taught himself how to play various instruments, including piano, bass and electric guitar, which he plays on stage. Never took formal lessons, he said.

Eldridge said he started playing because he had written songs he has more than 100 published pieces so he decided to learn the instruments to be in a position to write better what I wanted to sing.

While his mother, Roxy, is a classical vocalist, his father, Bob, introduced him to the sound he prefers and performs.

He exposed me to all the 60s, 70s and 80s music, Eldridge said. I caught the rock n roll bug from him. Hes an artist, painter and illustrator. He designed the cover for the release.

Toro Toro features six songs written by Eldridge. The CD was recorded by Mike Ofca from Innovation Studio in Steubenville, Ohio, and Eldridge at his in-home studio, dubbed Sonic Planet Studios.

Eldridge is the lead vocalist. He plays guitar, keys and banjo. His next-door-neighbor, Sam Baldigowski, excels on the mandolin and lap steel. Ron Castelluci (percussion and noise makers), Jerry Courtney (bass guitar and backing vocals), Eric Drake (lead guitar and back vocals) and Bruce Virtue (drums) complete the band, which Eldridge started three years ago in Pittsburgh.

Weve had a couple of different lineups, but its mostly made up of professionals and buddies, all accomplished musicians. I know they were auditioning me as much as I was auditioning them, Eldridge said of the players, most of whom hail from Weirton, W.Va.

Featuring a blend of genres, Eldridge described the CD as rock n roll with blues elements. The six-piece ensemble delivers the swagger of bands from days gone by while echoing its own influences. If it has a sound similar to British blues and the Rolling Stones, there is good reason: Mick Jagger and the boys are Eldridges favorite.

I only wish I could perform like Mick, he laughed. Usually I have a guitar around my shoulder, so I am unable to move around the way he does.

During his youth, Eldridge moved around a bit. He started with The Warehouse Band playing music from a range of bands like the Hollies, Stones, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Led Zeppelin, The Cult and Tom Petty. He moved on to the Voodoo Dolls, which included one member that currently plays bass for the Jersey Boys production in Las Vegas. The Voodoo Dolls covered more recent bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Janes Addiction and supported national acts like Govt Mule, the Jayhawks, Blue Rodeo and Edgar Winter. One of his biggest groups was the Spring Heeled Jacks.

Eldridges experiences have included encounters with Mick Taylor, who replaced founder Brian Jones in the Rolling Stones after he mysteriously drowned, along with Bob Dylan, Frankie Vallie and Govt Mule frontman Warren Haynes, who also played with the Allman Brothers and Phil Lesh and Friends.

I met a lot of awesome musicians, said Eldridge, and its been wonderful, but not my real desire.

As he aged, Eldridge said his goals changed. While he has released a solo record on vinyl that can be heard on Pandora and Spotify, written background music for independent films and documentaries, and provided soundtracks for a local outdoor adventure show produced by Joe Rossi of Peters Township, Eldridges main focus is his family.

He is a father to three sons. His eldest, Ray, plays football. Heading into his senior season, he already has 15 Division I scholarship offers.

Hes a self-made kid, good student, hard worker, said Eldridge. He did all the right things and followed Joe Rossis ground rules, and that had a big payoff.

Eldridges two other boys Gavin, a sophomore, and Chad, a freshman have followed in their fathers footsteps and play soccer.

I have been driven by raising my sons, Eldridge said.

Through his music, he is driven to expose others to the art of writing songs and performing. Eldridge says that there are other things he wants to do, but sharing is foremost on his list. While hes excited about his CD release and calls it a celebration and culmination of the process, he is pushing for other endeavors.

I have an opportunity to help other artists, he said. You know, it only takes one song.

Link:

South Fayette educator and coach has the music in him - Observer-Reporter

Reprinted with permission from MediaMatters. ByBRETT ROBERTSON

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and her department have pushed for an expansion of privatized school choice programs in the proposed budget for fiscal year 2018, particularly in the form of private school vouchers. Now a propagandistic three-part documentary series called School Inc.will help DeVos in her efforts to gain public support for expanded private school choice options. The series has alreadyaired on PBS stations insome markets and will be shown on more this month,

A majority of people across the partisan spectrum oppose private school vouchers, programs that redirect public education money to pay for private school tuition. Vouchers are problematic for many reasons, including their history of allowing for discrimination against LGBTQ, disabled, and special education students, their impact on reducing public education funding, and their ineffectiveness in boosting academic achievement.

Despite these problems, private school vouchers are a long-standing priority of the corporations and right-wing funders backing the education privatization movement. The late Andrew Coulson, long-time head of the Cato Institutes Center for Educational Freedom, was the driving force behind School Inc. The Cato Institute is a right-wing, libertarian think-tank that calls for the elimination of public schools in support of greater educational freedom to choose from a free market of privately run schools.

In addition to School Inc.s roots in the radical, libertarian Cato Institute, education historian and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch found that the film was funded by a number of arch-conservative foundations with ties to the dark money ATM DonorsTrust and the Ayn Rand Institute. Ravitch has prescreened School Inc. and provided this scathing review to The Washington Post:

This program is paid propaganda. It does not search for the truth. It does not present opposing points of view. It is an advertisement for the demolition of public education and for an unregulated free market in education. PBS might have aired a program that debates these issues, but School Inc. does not.

Why would a public broadcast channel air a documentary that is produced by a right-wing think tank and funded by ultra-conservative donors, and that presents a single point of view without meaningful critique, all the while denigrating public education? PBS responded in part with a statement to the Post, saying,PBS and local member stations aim to offer programs that reflect diverse viewpoints and promote civic dialogue on important topics affecting local communities.

However, as Ravitch notes, when a documentary fails to objectively present information about a topic that may not be well understood by the general public, the result is unlikely to promote civic dialogue. And when major media outlets uncritically provide a platform to right-wing ideologues, they further misinform and polarize the debate around important issues such as public education.

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PBS Is Airing Right-Wing-Sponsored School Privatization Propaganda - The National Memo (blog)

"We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately." Benjamin Franklin

There are two basic philosophies in this world: "We're all in this together" versus "Every man for himself." At various times, one or the other philosophy has prevailed.

One example of the first philosophy is Christianity. Early Christians sold their property, shared, and contributed to those in need. (Acts 2:44-45). Both Jesus and Paul used the image of the body to illustrate how Christians should work together. They knew f one suffered, they all suffered. (I Corinthians 12:15-27). Hoarding wealth and ignoring the needs of others is the exact opposite of what Christianity teaches. (Matthew 25:31-46).

The second philosophy is embodied by the teachings of Ayn Rand. Rand believed in what she called "enlightened self-interest," which is actually selfishness. She even wrote a book called "The Virtue of Selfishness." Several current Republican leaders have said they admire Rand's philosophy. They seem to believe that the ultimate goal of life is to gain wealth, and if others suffer, too bad.

Three recent LVN columns, written by local and state-wide conservatives, illustrate this "Me first" philosophy. The first column (Chuck Muth, 5/17/17) seemed to celebrate failure. The point of the column was not just that we should learn from our mistakes, with which I agree. Muth's point was that people should learn how to fail, like President Donald Trump, so they can become rich. To highlight this, Muth quoted Trump: "If 'A' students are considered the smartest people of all, why don't they all become extremely wealthy entrepreneurs?"

Becoming educated in order to help others nurses, teachers, social workers, etc. is pointless, according to Muth. The only goal of education is to learn how to become a wealthy entrepreneur. This illustrates one Republican value, that achieving individual wealth is more important than serving others.

The second column (Tom Riggins, 5/26/17) then belittled college graduates, explaining that they're not special, implying they somehow coasted through college and will now find out what "real" life is like. It seemed to imply that their achievements were meaningless unless they got some high-paying job as a result. Education for its own sake is useless.

From a young age, I wanted to go to college and knew my parents couldn't pay for it. I worked hard in school and earned a four-year, full tuition scholarship. Failure wasn't a beneficial goal. When I got to college, I worked part-time since I was responsible for my room and board, books, fees, and personal expenses. I also had to keep up my grades to maintain my scholarship.

I didn't have the luxury of knowing my parents would bail me out if I failed. I also never wanted to become a wealthy entrepreneur. So according to these columnists, I was a loser who hadn't learned about "real" life. I still felt pretty special when I got my degree.

I became a teacher and eventually was privileged to teach at the Douglas and Fallon campuses of Western Nevada College. My students worked hard in "real" life and in their classes. And if I had told them that to really learn a life experience, they should fail a few classes, they probably would have walked out on me.

The third column (Ron Knecht, 5/26/17) was an attack on unions. Unions were created by working people who realized there is strength in numbers. These people fought and died to gain such rights as the 8-hour workday, the 40-hour work week, workplace safety rules, paid sick leave, paid vacations, and other benefits workers take for granted today and many businesses would love to abolish. Conservatives like to pretend that workers would have achieved these rights individually, but that just isn't true.

Liberals believe we should work together. We should extend opportunities and a helping hand to those who need it, through private charities and government programs, so everyone can reach their full potential.

Conservatives pretend they're promoting rugged individualism but what they're really promoting is selfishness. In 2002, John Kenneth Galbraith summarized it this way: "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."

A week ago, we celebrated the 73rd anniversary of D-Day. If those troops had stayed isolated to protect themselves, D-Day would have failed. Now President Trump is isolating America by insulting our allies and cozying up to dictators. That doesn't make America great. It makes us alone and irrelevant.

Jeanette Strong, whose column appears every other week, is a Nevada Press Association award-winning columnist. She may be reached at news@lahontanvalleynews.com.

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Shall we all hang separately? - Nevada Appeal

This post is the opinion of the author and does not necessarily represent The Good Men Project.

I would just say that of course there needs to be a degree of independence between [the Department of Justice], FBI, and the White House and a line of communications established. The presidents new at this. Hes new to government, and so he probably wasnt steeped in the long-running protocols that establish the relationships between DOJ, FBI, and White Houses. Hes just new to this.

Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, stated this at a press conference in defense of President Donald Trumps hope that former FBI Director, James Comey, would suspend investigating fired National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, for possibly negotiating or colluding with the Russians prior to Trumps taking office.

Though all new presidents face a learning curve when moving into the Oval Office, Donald Trump knows virtually nothing about the functions and running of the federal government, and he seemingly lacks any desire to learn. He should have at least taken Gold Star father, Khizr Khans, impassionedoffer at the Democratic National Convention last summer to borrow his copy of the U.S. Constitution to understand the very basics of the job.

Trump most certainly does not understand, while Ryan was weaned on the philosophy of objectivism (or rational individualism in which proponents assert there are objective standards of truth) articulated by Ayn Rand in her novels and non-fiction works.

Having a very steep learning curve in understanding the selling of merchandise in a department store is one thing, but just [being] new to this in arguably the most powerful and impactful office on the planet is quite another.

I expect the surgeon who operates on my cataracts, and similarly, the president of my country to have a superior degree of competence, show a high standard of care, and continually update their knowledge base as additional information comes forward. Anything less places people at risk for severe injury and sets up the conditions for malpractice.

Paul Ryans attempted excuse for Trump this week, and, more generally in his spineless refusal to speak out against this presidents abusive and morally bankrupt antics in word and action begs the question: Why does Ryan support a president who he previously had serious doubts about during the primaries regarding Trumps temperament and ability to lead?

Both men agree on one primary assumption attributed to Thomas Jefferson: That government is best which governs least. Trump and Ryan (Tryan), however, take this to the extreme.

Tryans agenda centers on a market-driven approach to economic and social policy, including such tenets as reducing the size of the national government and granting more control to state and local governments; severely reducing or ending governmental regulations over the private sector; privatization of governmental services, industries, and institutions including education, health care, and social welfare; permanent incorporation of across-the-board non-progressive marginal federal and state tax rates; and possibly most importantly, market driven and unfettered free market economics.

One need simply look at Tryans attempts to eliminate the Affordable Care Act; to severely curtail environmental regulations on industry and, for example, the Dodd-Frank legislation passed to reduce the chances in the banking sector of repeating the disastrous policies leading to the last economic recession; to push for the privatization of social institutions such as education with the confirmation of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of the Department of Education; to pass a draconian so-called tax reform plan and a national budget that places billions more dollars into the pockets of the rich and super rich, while imposing increasingly greater hardships on the remainder of our people by taking away many of the safety nets and programs needed by deserving U.S.-Americans and countries in the form of aid.

Trump most certainly does not understand, while Ryan was weaned on the philosophy of objectivism (or rational individualism in which proponents assert there are objective standards of truth) articulated by Ayn Rand in her novels and non-fiction works.

Ayn Rand, who has become the intellectual center for the economic/political/social philosophy of Libertarianism, constructs a bifurcated world of one-dimensional characters in her novels. On one side, she presents the noble, rational, intelligent, creative, inventive, self-reliant heroes of industry, music and the arts, science, commerce, and banking who wage a noble battle for dignity, integrity, personal, and economic freedom, and for the profits of their labors within an unregulated free market Capitalist system.

The so-called Libertarian battle cry of liberty and freedom through personal responsibility sounds wonderful on the surface

On the other side, she portrays the looters represented by the followers, the led, the irrational, unintelligent, misguided, misinformed, the corrupt government bureaucrats who regulate and manipulate the economy to justify nationalizing the means of economic production, who confiscate personal property, who dole out welfare to the unentitled, the lazy, and in so doing, destroy personal incentive and motivation resulting in dependency. Welfare Ayn Rand terms unearned rewards, while she argues for a system of laissez-faire Capitalism separating economics and state.

Ayn Rand bristles against the notion of collectivism, of shared sacrifice and shared rewards. Rather, she argues that individuals are not and should not be their brothers and sisters keepers; that one must only do unto oneself; that one must walk only in ones own shoes and not attempt to know the other by metaphorically walking in anothers shoes; that personal happiness is paramount; and that ones greatest good is what is good for oneself rather than for the greatest number of people.

In other words, Ayn Rand paints a world in which the evil and misguided takers wage war against the noble and heroic makers.

Paul Ryan blamed men in the inner city on their real culture problem for their higher rates of unemployment during his appearance March 12, 2014 on Bill Bennetts Morning in America program:

We have got this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work, and so there is a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with.

Earlier, Ryan spoke in 2012 that:

Right now about 60 percent of the American people get more benefits in dollar value from the federal government than they pay back in taxes. So were going to a majority of takers versus makers in America and that will be tough to come back from that. Theyll be dependent on the government for their livelihoods [rather] than themselves.

Ryan, who demanded personal family time as a major condition for taking over the House Speakership, consistently opposes legislation that would extend paid family leave benefits for new parents. For example, in 2009, he voted against the proposed Federal Employees Paid Parental Act.

Paul Ryan claimed that he read Ayn Rand growing up, and it taught me quite a bit about who I am and what my value systems are, and what my beliefs are, he told members of the Atlas Society, an organization devoted to Any Rand in a 2005 speech.

The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand. He went on to say, And the fight we are in here, make no mistake about it, is a fight of individualism versus collectivism.

The so-called Libertarian battle cry of liberty and freedom through personal responsibility sounds wonderful on the surface, but we must ask ourselves as individuals and as a nation, what do they really mean by and what are the costs of this alleged liberty and freedom?

We must, first, cut through the coded xenophobic, racialized, and classist language, for often when politicians use the words poor, welfare, inner city, food stamps, entitlements, bad neighborhoods, foreign, culture of poverty, they tap into many white peoples anxieties and past racist teachings of people of color.

Ayn Rand and by extension, Tryan would rather blame poverty within our communities and low achievement in our schools on the cultures of those suffering from the social inequities. This cultural deficit model detracts and undermines us from interrogating and truly addressing the enormousstructural inequities pervasive throughout our society, which these Libertarians would have us multiply if we were to follow their lead.

So-called social issues become wedge issues to attract people to a particular candidate. In the final analysis, though, when middle and working class people vote for these candidates, they essentially vote against their own economic self-interests.

Ragnar Danneskjld, Ayn Rands so-called moral crusading pirate and symbol for justice in Atlas Shrugged, quite tellingly expresses Ayn Rands true purpose when she puts these words in the pirates mouth:

Ive chosen a special mission of my own. Im after a man whom I want to destroy. He died many centuries ago, but until the last trace of him is wiped out of mens minds, we will not have a decent world to live in.

Hank Rearden, one of Ayn Rands righteous industrialists asks: What man.

Danneskjld replies:

Robin Hood.He was the man who robbed the rich and gave to the poor. Well, Im the man who robs the poor and gives to the rich or, to be exact, the man who robs the thieving poor and gives back to the productive rich.

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Trump & Ryan's (Tryan's) Co-Conspiracy in Moral Bankruptcy - The Good Men Project (blog)

People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, Im not a crook. So said President Nixon.

What about President Trump?

Crook is a funny word. The armchair Nietzscheans out there will be warmed by the knowledge that crook over the years has described both a bishops crozier and an instrument of deceit crook meant trick in Middle English, but that noun sense of the word did not quite survive into modern English except for in the expression by hook or by crook, the first recorded use of which is found in a John Wycliffe tract from 1380.

The episcopal and criminal applications of crook both are straightforwardly metaphorical, hence the modern English crooked as well as the punchier bent, which has been used both to mean deviant (often as a synonym for homosexual) as well as corrupt: Mickey Spillane, whose literary output since the time of his death has been remarkable, wrote of the danger of a bent cop, two perfectly Spillanean syllables.

(Mickey Spillane was Ayn Rands favorite novelist not named Ayn Rand.)

Nixon seems to have been using crook to mean criminal. His famous Im not a crook declaration came during a controversy involving his personal finances, and the next sentence was: Ive earned everything Ive got. Merriam-Webster defines crook as a person who engages in fraudulent or criminal practices. If by crook we mean criminal, then President Trump is not that: He has been on the wrong side of the law on a few occasions, but those were civil rather than criminal matters, for instance his payment of a settlement in a federal housing-discrimination lawsuit. We settled the suit with zero with no admission of guilt, Trump insists.

No admission of guilt is not quite Im not a crook, but something closer to Al Gores pleading that no controlling legal authority prevented him from engaging in various questionable fundraising antics. As Charles Krauthammer wrote at the time: Controlling legal authority. Whatever other legacies Al Gore leaves behind between now and retirement, he forever bequeaths this newest weasel word to the lexicon of American political corruption.

The American Heritage dictionary defines crook as one who makes a living by dishonest methods. That sounds a bit more like Trump, who is inordinately proud of his own adventures in apple-stealing, boasting of his buying political favors from the likes of the Clintons: When you give, they do whatever the hell you want them to do. Trump made clear that what he is talking about is quid pro quo political corruption: When they call, I give. And you know what, when I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me. The real-estate business is heavily regulated, from planning and zoning to labor rules. (That touches another Trump legal misadventure: a dispute over unpaid wages to the illegal immigrants who worked on Trump Tower.) A friendly decision from a local agency can be worth millions of dollars, maybe hundreds of millions. So, is Trump a crook in the American Heritage sense? Yes, by his own description.

The president is ensnared in a mess of nested corruption claims: that he or members of his campaign had improper contact with shady Russians monkeying about with the U.S. presidential election and/or other foreign actors; that he pressured subordinates to show him political favoritism in investigating these claims; that he fired James Comey because the FBI director would not promise him favorable treatment; that these alleged actions constitute obstruction of justice or a similar serious offense.

Assume, for the sake of argument, that all of these claims end up being completely without merit. How should we go about investigating them?

It is impossible to get at that in a meaningful way without considering the unsettling question: What sort of man is the president of these United States? We know he is a habitual liar, one who tells obvious lies for no apparent reason, from claiming to own hotels that he does not own to boasting about having a romantic relationship with Carla Bruni, which never happened. (Trump is obviously a lunatic, Bruni explained.) He invented a series of imaginary friends to lie to the New York press about both his business and sexual careers. He has conducted both his private and public lives with consistent dishonesty and dishonor. He is not a man who can be taken at his word.

Conservatives used to care about that sort of thing: Bill Bennett built a literary empire on virtue, and Peggy Noonan wrote wistfully of a time When Character Was King. But even if we set aside any prissy moral considerations and put a purely Machiavellian eye on the situation, we have to conclude that having a man such as Trump as president and presumptive leader of the Republican party is an enormous problem for conservatives and for the country corporately. Allegations of petty corruption against Donald Trump cannot simply be dismissed out of hand, because no mentally functioning and decently informed adult thinks that Donald Trump, of all people, is above that sort of thing. Quid pro quo patronage? Hes proud of it. Dishonesty? He boasts about it in a book published under his name. Question: If a young, attractive, blonde woman employed by the Trump Organization came forward claiming to be having an affair with the president, why wouldnt you believe her? Because Donald Trump isnt that kind of guy? Hes precisely that kind of guy thats the main reason anybody outside of New York ever knew his name in the first place.

Of course it is the case that Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans are predisposed to believe the worst about the man. But the fact is that doing so is not obviously wrong or unreasonable. Trump apologists instinctively want to treat Democrats exaggeration and hysteria as contemptible scandal-mongering, but their defenses no hard evidence of collusion with the Putin regime! sound a lot like no controlling legal authority.

The question isnt whether the president is a crook. The question is: What kind of crook is he?

Kevin D. Williamson is National Reviews roving correspondent.

The rest is here:

Trump's Credibility Problem - National Review

New York Times

How the Dark Web's Dread Pirate Roberts Went Down New York Times He was fond of the same Ayn Rand quotes as other founders: The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me. He had his own version of a consigliere, in the form of Variety Jones. (Ulbricht's ex-girlfriend gets a lot of space ...

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How the Dark Web's Dread Pirate Roberts Went Down - New York Times

Once again we have a letter from someone who is convinced that government regulations are what caused the Great Recession.

To make things right we have to give people more freedom in the marketplace. Mr. Stubblefield cites John A. Allisons book as a source for the real truth. Mr. Allison is a member of the Cato Institute a libertarian think tank and a big fan of Ayn Rand.

So, it is no surprise that Mr. Allison would lay the blame for the economic crisis of 2008 and its aftermath on the government.

I, too, have read several books about this economic calamity and all of them have given substantial evidence that the deregulation of the financial sector is the primary cause of that horrific mess. And the basis for the push to deregulate is the world view that is espoused by Mr. Allison, Mr. Stubblefield and far too many others.

The essence of their world view is that people, be they consumers or producers, are protected from bad deals by their own self-interest. So, people should have the freedom to buy what they want and companies should have the freedom to sell what they want.

When the government intrudes into this natural relationship with regulations, it simply mucks things up.

When this world view was applied to the financial sector, industry lobbyists put constant pressure on Congress to allow the financial institutions to modernize. So, the regulations that had protected the financial sector from major catastrophes for 50 years, should be eliminated.

In 1982 the Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act was enacted which allowed banks to offer a wide variety of mortgages, e.g., ones with adjustable rates, interest-only payments or even negative amortization. Also in the 1980s financial institutions developed derivatives. Credit Default Swap derivatives are bets that some company will or will not default on its loan.

In 1994, Congress passed the Secondary Mortgage Market Enhancement Act which allowed investment banks to securitize mortgage loans, i.e., package them into bond like products called MBSs (mortgage backed securities). They then sold them to hedge funds, pension funds, etc.

Finally, in 1999 Congress overturned the Glass-Stegall Act and approved the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which allowed investment banks, commercial banks and insurance companies to combine into a single firm.

Each of these acts enabled more freedom in the market by allowing consumers a wider choice of products and investment banks to create new markets for risk. There was nothing to fear because Alan Greenspan another devoted advocate of Ayn Rand proclaimed that the sophisticated players in these markets could police themselves. Of course we all know they didnt and what dismal consequences followed thereafter.

The folks who adhere to the simplistic world view outlined above never learn from history. They are so devoted to their theory, that no amount of evidence will ever convince them that it is incorrect. Unfortunately, too many of those with the power to steer us on a more correct course are also beguiled by these ideas.

Tom Tillery

Aiken

Link:

Letter: Deregulation is not always best - Aiken Standard

BOOM + ELECTION = BUBBLE, proclaims University of Dortmund economics and journalism professor Henrik Mller in a provocative op-ed in Der Spiegel this week.

Go ahead, dude, rub it in: The German economy, thanks to either its peoples inherent genius or their indiscriminate Europe-wrecking penny-pinching, is allegedly boomingor, to use the German, it boomt. Employment, state revenue, exports, corporate moraleall at record highs, Mller explains. Real estate prices are rising rapidly, both in large cities and rural areas. The construction sector is expanding. GREAT.

But wait! Economists, largely in agreement, warn that German companies have been working beyond their production capacities for some time, and that the economy is, and will remain, berhitzt (OO-bur-HITST), or overheated. Yes, Mller allows, this boom could last for years. But that doesnt make it any less dangerous, he warns. For the longer the boom, the harder the bust. Unless someone (possibly someone in a brightly colored pantsuit?) does something, the German economy is headed for a bubble.

The problem, says Mller, is that Germanys in an election year, and apparently nobodys eager to campaign on the platform WE MUST STOP THIS IMPRACTICAL BOOMeven though, from at least this outsiders perspective, that would be the single Germanest campaign slogan in the history of Menschheit.

Mllers is your standard-issue mildly interesting Krugmanian/Keynesian boilerplate, just in BUSINESS GERMAN, so automatically more authoritative-sounding. But its interest is compounded for American observers (GET IT? MONEY JOKE!) when we consider the multitudinous cross-cultural delights that lurk inside.

First, the German word for election is der Wahlkampf (VAHL-komff), which literally means vote fight, and who doesnt enjoy the mental picture of she who so recently jilted us in the boxing ring, kicking the asses of a bunch of balding dudes in tiny glasses? I bet shed have a special boxing suit jacket made, or perhaps one in every color, and theyd all look amazing.

Second, the German word for bubble, as you can see in the Spiegel headline, is die Blase (BLAH-suh), which, coincidentally, is the same as the word for bladder, which for anyone who has ever read Little House in the Big Woods, makes perfect sense.

But Blase is also the nominalization of the verb blasen, which means to blow, which, as in English, carries meanings in both the bubble-based and fellatial sense. To say blow me in German, for example, you say Blas mir einen, which literally means blow me one, BUTas my flatmate Henrik was clear to point out when I asked him for this very translation in 1997is not to be used as an insult, but simply a request.

Speaking of which: Mller suggests that the only way to avoid the bubble is to do the economic equivalent of stopping mid-hookup to inquire about your paramours most recent HIV test and the whereabouts of his or her prophylactics. And, even though its the 90s and everybody cool does it, that conversation is a 100-percent boner killer, with boner here being Business German for elections. (Let it not be said that I dont put the shaft in Wirtschaft.)

Anyway, according to Mller, who I am sure definitely supports this extended sex metaphor (and Im just getting started), the German-economy-saving equivalent of Where the Gummis at? is to raise federal interests rates in the name of gegensteuern (GAY-gun stoy-urn), which technically means countersteering, but also carries within it the word for to tax, steuernwhich also means to steer, to pilot, to govern and to regulate, which is where the second part of Mllers boner-ruining plan comes in.

For, he argues, another crucial way to prevent a bubble isPaul Ryan, you might want to look awayto steer the German economy in the right direction by curbing demand, by raising individual income taxes on the middle class specifically. WUT? IS THAT EVEN LEGAL TO WRITE? You read me right, he assures me. To only increase taxes on the wealthy (as the Left demands) would bring little stability, because these additional burdens would hardly slow down high earners lust for consumption.

Wait, so taxing the bejeezus out of the rich doesnt stop them from buying shit? But thats not even his point. His point is that they have to get ordinary Germans to stop buying so much shit. But this suggestion is the electoral equivalent of not just asking where the rubbers is, but of explaining in detail the symptoms of advanced gonorrhea. Or, in the Business German: Politically, this idea is not feasible.

Some perspective: Current German income tax rates range from zero to 45 percent of ones taxable income, with a middle-class earner of about 50,000 Euros per year taxed at what Americans would see as an extortionate 42 percent. (Although, because university is free, it just might end up balancing itself out, considering.) German goods also include VAT in all prices (be prepared for an earful if you ask about the American practice of adding on sales tax at the register), and Germans pay a set 8 percent of their pre-tax salary toward the Krankenkasse, or national health insurance Koffer.

So on the one hand, you can see why anyone who wants to win an election isnt campaigning on a promise to raise those rates even higher. Its logical, agrees Mller, that nobody wants to be the buzzkillthe person who turns the music down and the lights up.

On the other hand, youd think that if there was one thing Germans would be great at, it would be ruining a party.

Theres no quicker and more efficient way to put the brakes, as Mller says, on a great time than to tell a joke to a German that involves any measure of sarcasm or exaggerationyou can almost hear the record-scratching sound, as all merriment halts in the afterglow of the universal German anti-mating call of Ektually, zets not right.

Also, honestly, if youre already paying 42 percent of your income toward your countrys staggering array of immaculate free parks, roads, bridges, schools, universities, doctors, spa cures and day cares, and you do so out of a completely different understanding of what it means to be in a free society, whats another few hundred Euros to insure against den Crash? I mean, Germans insure everything else on Gods green earth, why not their economy?

It appears to me, a seasoned economist if ever there were one, that the major German political parties resistance to running on a very Teutonic cautious boom-dampening may be a result of GLOBALISM RUN AMOK!!! If the Paris climate agreement, a.k.a. The One-World Government of Gun Taking and the Antichrist masquerading as people who understand scientific fact, can infect America despite our brave Presidents ability to see the TRUTH, whats to stop globalism from operating in reverse? The Information Superhighway runs both ways, after all: If the Elitist Cosmopolitan Polyglots can infect us with their bogus climate stuff, clearly we can also infect them with our ridiculous belief that unfettered Capitalism is virtuous.

Yes, Germany may think its broken up with us, but not before the metaphorical mutual Blasen of our years as super close allies left a little something in its wake: It appears the worst aspect of American influence has lingered in Germany, like if Ayn Rand were an STD.

As Mller suggests, if the politicians dont start counter-steering the ship, Germany may have already blown it. (Or, at any rate, it comforts me to think so, and have a little Schadenfreude in my continued time of heartbreak.)

Read this article:

Is Germany Blowing It? - The Awl

Veteran stage actor and play director Darryl Maximilian Robinson, who received a 2015 / 2016 Elate Season Ticket Holder Award Nomination as Best Actor for his performance as the debonair, but aging, leading man Ernest in Tad Mosel's "Impromptu" as part of the Elate staging of four one-acts entitled "Just 4 Fun," returns to the stage of the Lincoln Stegman Theatre of North Hollywood to play District Attorney Flint, a prosecutor deeply involved in the case of "The People of The State of New York vs. Karen Andre" in The Emmanuel Lutheran Actors Theatre Ensemble - ELATE revival of Russian-American author and playwright Ayn Rand's 1935 classic Broadway courtroom drama "Night Of January 16th."

Mr. Robinson, a Chicago Joseph Jefferson Citation Award Winner as Outstanding Actor In A Principal Role In A Play ( for his performance as Sam Semela in Athol Fugard's "Master Harold...And The Boys" ), and who for 15 years served as The Founder, Artistic Director and Producer of the multiracial, non-Equity professional, classical and contemporary chamber theatre, The Excaliber Shakespeare Company of Chicago, has played numerous roles in courtroom dramas during the course of his 43-season stage career including: The Angry Man in Director / Producer Ray Hayman's 1980 staging of The At Random Players' production of C. B. Gilford's "The Jury Room" presented at Chicago's McCormick Inn; The Professor in Director Jonathan Wilson's 1998 staging of The Pegasus Players' Jeff Citation Award-winning world premiere production of Robert Myers' "The Lynching of Leo Frank" performed at Chicago's O'Rourke Center For The Performing Arts; and The Reverend Sykes in Director Diedra Celeste Miranda's 2011 staging of The Glendale Centre Theatre's five-time Stage Scene L A "Scenie" Award-winning production of playwright Christopher Sergel's adaptation of Harper Lee's "To Kill A Mockingbird." However, Ayn Rand's "Night Of January 16th" marks the first time Mr. Robinson has appeared as a lawyer onstage since he played the role of Sir Thomas More, the condemned Lord Chancellor of England, in Director John Grassilli's 1984 staging of The University Players' revival production of Robert Bolt's "A Man For All Seasons" presented at Benton Hall Theatre of The University of Missouri-St. Louis ( UMSL).

Co-Produced by long-time ELATE Members Norma Burgess and Deb Sadlouskos, Ayn Rand's "Night Of January 16th" reunites Mr. Robinson with his "Impromptu" director Jeff Zimmer. A multiple Emmy Award-nominated television producer ( noted for his work on such programs nas "The Doctors" and "America's Funniest Home Videos" ), Mr. Zimmer will stage Rand's 82-year-old Broadway success "Night" in modern dress attire, and add a few touches to make the piece resemble a slightly more recent "Trial of The Century."

This includes casting several talented actresses in roles traditionally played by males including: Gerrie Wilkowski as Judge Heath; Therese Hawes as the writing expert, Chandler; and Lisa Cicchetti as the medical examiner, Dr. Kirkland. Mr. Robinson's District Attorney Flint prosecutes his case opposite experienced actress and Co-Producer Ms. Burgess as Defense Attorney Stevens, the legal counsel of accused murder suspect Karen Andre. The pivotal role of The Defendant Andre is played by Erin Cote', who earned a 2015 / 2016 Elate Season Ticket Holder Award Nomination as Best Actress for her performance as Jane in Elate playwright Stan Brown's "Ride Share," another of the four one-acts of "Just 4 Fun". MR. Brown, who won two 2015 / 2016 Elate Season Ticket Holder Awards for Best Actor and Best Director ( shared with Mr. Zimmer ) for his work in "Ride Share" as part of "Just 4 Fun," appears in the revival production of "Night," as the multimillionaire and philanthropist, John Graham Whitfield.

Other performers featured in ELATE'S revival of "Night January 16th" include: Rod French as the elderly night watchman, Mr. Hutchins; Judith Miller as the Swedish housekeeper, Magda Svenson; Tom Reilly as the private investigator, Homer Van Fleet; Terry Bratcher as Police Inspector Sweeney, Tim Aberdeen as accountant Siegurd Jungquist, Mr. Zimmer in the blended roles of The Bailiff and The Court Clerk; and ELATE newcomer Lauren Waites as Nancy Lee Faulker, beautiful young widow of murder victim Bjorn Faulkner, and only daughter of John Graham Whitfield. The role of love-smitten gangster Lawrence "Guts" Regan ( a part that revitalized the stage and screen acting career of Hollywood Legend Walter Pidgeon during the original 1935 Broadway production ) will be played in this new revival by Elate audience favorite Tony Cicchetti.

The ELATE revival will be staging Ayn Rand's final, 1968 definitive version of her script, and utilize the device that made it a hit in 1935 on Broadway: At every performance audience members will be asked to participate as Jury Members and, by their verdict, determine one of two endings of the play!

Performances of ELATE's revival of Ayn Rand'S "NIGHT OF JANUARY 16th" will take place Saturday June 3rd at 8pm., Sunday June 4th at 2pm., Saturday June 10th at 8 pm., Sunday June 11th at 4pm., Saturday June 17th at 8pm., and Sunday June 18th at 2pm. All performances are onstage at The Lincoln Stegman Theatre, 6020 Radford Ave., North Hollywood, CA. 91606. For Tickets and Reservations Information as well as to request special "Jury Box" ( premium view ) seats call ELATE at ( 818 ) 509-0882.

Excerpt from:

Elate's Revival of Ayn Rand's NIGHT OF JANUARY 16TH Opens 6/3 - Broadway World

Ayn Rand valued Aristotles philosophy and developed her own philosophy of reason called Objectivism. Aristotles philosophy adhered to the logic of A is A, but Alfred Korzybski took is away. Frank R Wallace replaced it all with Neo-Tech Objectivism.

Frank R Wallace quoted Ayn Rand saying save me from the Radians. Ayn Rand was her self repulsed by the cult-ish obsession coming from Objectivists at that time.

Ayn Rand, the founder of Objectivism, was an inspiration to Frank R Wallace. Ayn Rands influence on early versions of Neo-Tech Power is obvious. Wallace showed great admiration for Objectivism, particularly Ayn Rands novel Atlas Shrugged.

Neo-Tech sought to convert that rigid dogmatic cult following of Ayn Rand into a highly leveraged force of intelligence and influence.

Wallace once suggested that Ayn Rands character John Galt had influential powers probably beyond realistic possibility. Ayn Rand claimed that her heros revealed the reality of man. Ayn Rands Objectivism seems to have provided no such real life hero (that I am aware of). Wallaces Neo-Tech later went on to describe The Greatest Discovery Ever! and the wpgsh phenomenon of societal influence.

In fact, reading Ayn Rands early fiction, you can clearly see a natural dislike of reality that Rand seems to have imbued. Cuts from The Fountainhead show Howard Roarke as almost schizophrenic in his lack of mindfulness. I seem to remember the character even claiming he was incapable of love. He clearly seemed that way in the cut edits that never made it into the published version of The Fountainhead. Neo-Tech approaches human experience from a very different angle. Neo-Techs evolution rises from research into the history of love, with human happiness as being the primary goal. This was not clearly expressed in Ayn Rands writings. Perhaps it would have been her next novel.

I believe Ayn Rands Objectivism cleared a path for Neo-Tech to evolve for providing the human side of the hard facts of reality.

What differences are there between Neo-Tech and Objectivism?

Objectivism used 5 classifications of philosophy. Here they are with Objectivism keyword for each category in the brackets.

Im going to call them Objectivism Metaphysics (Reality), Objectivism Epistemology (Reason), Objectivism Politics (Capitalism), Objectivism Aesthetics (never defined), and Objectivism Ethics (self-interest).

Neo-Techs definitions for Neo-Tech Metaphysics (Business), Neo-Tech Epistemology (Neo-Think), Neo-Tech Politics (Free competition), Neo-Tech Ethics (Value production), and Neo-Tech Aesthetics (Value reflection).

Perhaps Frank R Wallace and Ayn Rand would have come to rather narrow agreements in a personal discussion. Wallace would certainly have seen far and wide. Ayn Rand might have slapped his face.

Neo-Tech broadens the reach of Objectivism, both philosophically, and commercially.

Similarities between Neo-Tech and Objectivism

Both Neo-Tech and Objectivism posit the primacy of existence to consciousness. In easier language that simply means that reality exists before consciousness has a place to exist. Platonic mysticism and Kant would argue that consciousness is primary, that reality is seated within this thing we call consciousness. Both Neo-Tech and Objectivism strongly disagree.

Nathan Shaw has begun a site on Neo-Tech history, Neo-Tech Publishing, and The Neo-Tech Discovery and Nouveau-Tech . Nathan has also created an Life Direction and Career Development Workshop program online at Life Direction

Photo By PIRO4D from Pixabay

Read the rest here:

Neo-Tech Views On Ayn Rand and Objectivism | Good Herald - Good Herald

Almost all money comes into this world out of thin air, writes MPA Hankey. Photograph: Sukree Sukplang/Reuters

Tory politicians now frequently accuse Labour of believing in the existence of a magic money tree that will enable a Labour government to pay for it (Front page, 3 June). They hope that none of us will remember that in its 2014 Q1 Quarterly Bulletin the Bank of England published a graphic and explicit account of the facts of money: almost all money comes into this world out of thin air, conjured into existence by the book-keeping act in which whenever a bank makes a loan, it simultaneously creates a matching deposit in the borrowers bank account, thereby creating new money. This had for very many years been well understood by bankers, but for some reason most of them had been too shy to admit such facts outside a small circle of consenting adults.

The secret of political understanding is that most accusations hide guilty secrets. In this case the money tree is by no means a fantasy: it is the very real tree of quantitative easing, a tree that has dropped billions of pounds of new money into banks and financial institutions. The resulting inflation of asset values has allowed the few to become obscenely wealthy while the Tories have increased the national debt by nearly 800bn since 2010.

Meanwhile, what needs to be done and what Labour says must be done, cannot be done because of austerity. For now the money tree operates to Tory advantage. The question on Thursday is, who owns it and what should it properly do? MPA Hankey Northmoor, West Oxfordshire

Austerity, the Tories tell us, is a tough road. The implication is that austerity will rebuild the economy, giving us once again the level of services that existed before. However, the first seven years of austerity have almost doubled the debt they were supposed to eradicate. Sowhy would anyone believe that a further eight years of the same will do any more towards that end? The real reason for austerity is an Ayn Rand-esque assault on the public sector.

In an Ayn Rand society, there would be no public sector and no taxes. If you want to drive your car, you pay to use the road; if you want an education for your child, you pay for it; a public health service would be inconceivable.

It works out extremely well for those who can already pay for everything they want they do so while enjoying even lower taxes. For everyone else its a nightmare. To see a past Ayn Rand society, look at Victorian Britain, with its extremes of wealth and poverty, and actual starvation. To see a future one, check out any of many dystopian sci-fi movies, where the rich live in fortified palaces, protected by private armies and police forces, and everyone else fights forsurvival in a living hell outside.

The creeping privatisation of prisons, schools, the NHS and so much more is work in progress. Austerity is about completing and normalising this and getting us used to the privation and exploitation that come with it. Dr Stephen Riley Bruton, Somerset

In last Wednesdays live BBC televised debate, home secretary Amber Rudd accused Jeremy Corbyn, of relying on the fairytale money tree that would be needed to honour the spending pledges in Labours election manifesto.

The real elephant in the British fiscal coffers room, which the Tories strenuously refuse to see, is huge income inequality, appropriation of insane chunks of wealth by the top 1% and systematic public underinvestment due to relatively low direct income tax rates for the highest earners.

Besides configuring the fiscal revenue space (together with other direct/indirect taxes, insurance contributions and government borrowing), we would like to point to another, much neglected, redistributive function that progressive income tax should serve in a rich, albeit highly polarised and divided advanced economy such as the UK.

Instead on focusing on the absolute income tax contribution, in our research we have developed a novel and holistic index which tracks the ratio of the effective income tax rate per income group divided by the percentage of total personal wealth (alternatively, one may use the percentage of national income) owned by the same income group.

Under this metric, we show that the bottom 99% pays in relative terms at least 10 times (1,000%) more tax than the top 1%.

From the social justice perspective the money tree will blossom when the richest 1% will pay a higher and fairer income tax rate. Professor John Hatgioannides Faculty of Finance, Cass Business School, City, University of London Dr Marika Karanassou School of Economics and Finance, Queen Mary, University of London

In your editorial on the general election (3 June) you mention Labours economic reputation. It is a myth that a Conservative government is better for the economy. In the last 25 years, the only time there has been a budget surplus was under a Labour government. The recovery since the financial crash has been the slowest in 300 years. Why? Because the Conservatives imposed austerity rather than increasing productivity.

Currently, the profit of large companies accrues to the shareholders at the expense of investing in the company and improving productivity. Long-term gain is sacrificed for short-term profit. The chief of Unilever tells Nils Pratley (21 May) that he could easily manufacture a higher share price by cutting jobs, factories and research. Graveyards are full of companies that have been cutting costs

In Germany it has been found that including employees on the board of a company improves productivity. It is in the interest of employees for their company to succeed. But the Conservatives recently decided not to take this simple step: one example, among many, of their economic weakness.

Instead of improving productivity, the government is relying on consumer debt to fuel economic growth. This is not wise or sustainable. Consumer debt in the US led to the last financial crash.

Labours economic policies focus on how to lessen the likelihood of consumer debt and how to support companies to improve productivity. A Labour government is essential for the economic wellbeing of the country. Jean Lally Little Hayfield, Derbyshire

Philip Inmans article (Double edge of debt, 1 June) rightly notes that Britains credit habit is returning, despite a decrease in consumer confidence.

AtNational Debtline we see the human cost of this with a huge rise in contact from people who are struggling to pay their household bills, council tax, rent arrears, water and utilities. The effects of being in debt on mental and physical health have been well documented. While credit can be a valuable tool, equally we need to look again at households using credit as a way of keeping their heads above water. There are better protections, too, for people in debt that could be explored, such as enhanced rules on enforcement by bailiffs.

As politicians seek the publics support, we urge them to be thoughtful about how the increasing gap between wages and prices affects people struggling to make ends meet, and to focus on addressing underlying causes and possible remedies. Joanna Elson Chief executive of the Money Advice Trust, the charity that runs National Debtline

There isnt a magic money tree, says Theresa May. That perverse branch of financial services, the tax avoidance industry, is a veritable forest of magic money trees, the rich fruit of which is harvested by those who need it least. Denis Ahern Stanford-le-Hope, Essex

Join the debate email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

Read more Guardian letters click here to visit gu.com/letters

Read more here:

Make the magic money tree work for everyone, not just the rich - The Guardian

In its zeal to trot out the most mendacious humans alive to defend the president and his policies, the Trump administration has recently turned to Mick Mulvaney. A haircut in search of a decent suit, Mulvaney serves as the director of the Office of Management and Budget. Before that, he was known mostly to political junkies as a backbench Tea Party congressman from South Carolina.

Now that he works for Donald Trump, Mulvaney is quickly becoming the latest in a long line of exhibits for how completely the Republican Party has turned itself over to charlatans who spent their youth sleeping through math class.

About 10 days ago, Mulvaney stood in front of the White House press corps and the nation to defend the presidents draconian budget with a $2 trillion counting error at its heart. Last week having apparently not embarrassed himself enough, he resurfaced with an interview at the Washington Examiner to take potshots at the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office for reaching conclusions he does not like about his work.

It is important to note that Mulvaney did not challenge the budget officeon the merits of its work, such as its score of the American Health Care Act recently passed by the House of Representatives. What he did instead is cast doubt on the motives of the people who work for and run the office, hinting without providing a lick of evidence that they are a bunch of partisans out to sandbag a Republican administration.

Mulvaney explicitly took issue with the budget offices assertion that the AHCAs $900 billion in cuts to Medicaid will result in fewer people having health coverage throughMedicaid. Those of us familiar with the concept of cause and effect might think this obvious. But not Mulvaney. Since kicking off the rolls Medicaid users, who tend to be poorand old andhave disabilities, makes the GOP look like Ebenezer Scrooges meaner cousin, he deflected by suggesting it is no longer feasible to think of the Congressional Budget Office as a nonpartisan organization.

He went on to feed conservative paranoia by suggesting that the person in charge of scoring the AHCA had also scored Hillary Clintons health care plan in the early 1990s and the Affordable Care Act early in the Obama administration, with the clear implication that the AHCAs bad score was the result of liberal sabotage. (For what its worth, the budget offices score of the ACA was fairly accurate, while its unfavorable scoreof the so-called Hillarycare proposal helped sink that plan in Congress.)

The clear message is this: The anti-Trumpian swamp or the deep state, or whatever Trumps most fervent supporters are calling Washington these days, is lying to make the AHCA and the administration look bad.

In dismissing facts and figures as out of hand, Mulvaney is staying true to his roots as a member of the Tea Party and the House Freedom Caucus, having aligned himself with both when he entered Congress after the 2010 election. He was one of the congressmen who, in 2013, dismissed the warnings of virtually every economist and financial wonk about the dangers of not raising the debt ceiling as arrant nonsense and fearmongering. This led to a government shutdown and the nations near default on its debt, a potentially catastrophic blow to the worlds economy.

The intransigence of Mulvaney and his fellow Tea Partiers for a while led to theirbeingforced to the sidelines by the Republican leadership in the House. Instead, former Speaker John Boehner and later his replacement Paul Ryan started making deals with Democrats on the debt ceiling. That was fine in terms of at least keeping the government open and functioning andnot ending up incatastrophe for the millions of people who depend on it for their livelihoods and health care.

But now, with Tea Party true believers like Mulvaney holding high positions in the administration, the groups nonsense that could be intermittently checked during the Obama era has invaded the executive branch. And it has a president who is extremely malleable, who is inclined by his nature toward cruelty and who, like Mulvaney, is happy to blow up the public trust in political institutions in order to serve his own partisan ends, no matter how divorced from reality they may be.

Add to that the GOPs control of Congress that has allowed both the House and Senate caucuses to unleash their inner Ayn Rand, and you have a very dangerous moment in American history, as last weeks pullout from the Paris climate accordby the president shows. The Tea Party itself might have seemed beaten for a couple of years. But its intransigence and know-nothingism is now driving the car and could steer the entire country off a cliff.

The rest is here:

Mick Mulvaney's snake oil: A blend of bad science, bad math and really bad politics - Salon

Trumps secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, has said Ayn Rands novel Atlas Shrugged is his favorite book. Mike Pompeo, head of the CIA, cited Rand as a major inspiration. Before he withdrew his nomination, Trumps pick to head the Labor Department, Andrew Puzder, revealed that he devotes much free time to reading Rand.

Such is the case with many other Trump advisers and allies: The Republican leader of the House of Representatives, Paul Ryan, famously made his staff members read Ayn Rand. Trump himself has said that hes a fan of Rand and identifies with Howard Roark, the protagonist of Rands novel, The Fountainhead, an architect who dynamites a housing project he designed because the builders did not precisely follow his blueprints.

As a philosopher, I have often wondered at the remarkable endurance and popularity of Ayn Rands influence on American politics. Even by earlier standards, however, Rands dominance over the current administration looks especially strong.

Whats in common with Ayn Rand?

Recently, historian and Rand expert Jennifer Burns wrote how Rands sway over the Republican Party is diminishing. Burns says the promises of government largesse and economic nationalism under Trump would repel Rand.

That was before the president unveiled his proposed federal budget that greatly slashes nonmilitary government spending and before Paul Ryans Obamacare reform, which promised to strip health coverage from 24 million low-income Americans and grant the rich a generous tax cut instead. Now, Trump looks to be zeroing in on a significant tax cut for the rich and corporations.

These all sound like measures Rand would enthusiastically support, in so far as they assist the capitalists and so-called job creators, instead of the poor.

Though the Trump administration looks quite steeped in Rands thought, there is one curious discrepancy. Ayn Rand exudes a robust elitism, unlike any I have observed elsewhere in the tomes of political philosophy. But this runs counter to the narrative of the Trump phenomenon: Central to the Trumps ascendancy is a rejection of elites reigning from urban centers and the coasts, overrepresented at universities and in Hollywood, apparently.

Liberals despair over the fact that they are branded elitists, while, as former television host Jon Stewart put it, Republicans backed a man who takes every chance to tout his superiority, and lords over creation from a gilded penthouse apartment, in a skyscraper that bears his own name.

Clearly, liberals lost this rhetorical battle.

What is Ayn Rands philosophy?

How shall we make sense of the gross elitism at the heart of the Trump administration, embodied in its devotion to Ayn Rand elitism that its supporters overlook or ignore, and happily ascribe to the left instead?

Ayn Rands philosophy is quite straightforward. Rand sees the world divided into makers and takers. But, in her view, the real makers are a select few a real elite, on whom we would do well to rely, and for whom we should clear the way, by reducing or removing taxes and government regulations, among other things.

Rands thought is intellectually digestible, unnuanced, easily translated into policy approaches and statements.

Small government is in order because it lets the great people soar to great heights, and they will drag the rest with them. Rand says we must ensure that the exceptional men, the innovators, the intellectual giants, are not held down by the majority. In fact, it is the members of this exceptional minority who lift the whole of a free society to the level of their own achievements, while rising further and ever further.

Mitt Romney captured Rands philosophy well during the 2012 campaign when he spoke of the 47 percent of Americans who do not work, vote Democrat and are happy to be supported by hardworking, conservative Americans.

No sympathy for the poor

In laying out her dualistic vision of society, divided into good and evil, Rands language is often starker and harsher. In her 1957 novel, Atlas Shrugged, she says,

The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time. The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all their brains.

Rands is the opposite of a charitable view of humankind, and can, in fact, be quite cruel. Consider her attack on Pope Paul VI, who, in his 1967 encyclical Progressio Populorum, argued that the West has a duty to help developing nations, and called for its sympathy for the global poor.

Rand was appalled; instead of feeling sympathy for the poor, she says

When [Western Man] discovered entire populations rotting alive in such conditions [in the developing world], is he not to acknowledge, with a burning stab of pride or pride and gratitude the achievements of his nation and his culture, of the men who created them and left him a nobler heritage to carry forward?

Telling it like it is

Why doesnt Rands elitism turn off Republican voters? or turn them against their leaders who, apparently, ought to disdain lower and middle class folk? If anyone like Trump identifies with Rands protagonists, they must think themselves truly excellent, while the muddling masses, they are beyond hope.

Why hasnt news of this disdain then trickled down to the voters yet?

The neoconservatives, who held sway under President George W. Bush, were also quite elitist, but figured out how to speak to the Republican base, in their language. Bush himself, despite his Andover-Yale upbringing, was lauded as someone you could have a beer with.

Trump has succeeded even better in this respect he famously tells it like it is, his supporters like to say. Of course, as judged by fact-checkers, Trumps relationship to the truth is embattled and tenuous; what his supporters seem to appreciate, rather, is his willingness to voice their suspicions and prejudices without worrying about recriminations of critics. Trump says things people are reluctant or shy to voice loudly if at all.

Building ones fortune

This gets us closer to whats going on. Rand is decidedly cynical about the said masses: There is little point in preaching to them; they wont change or improve, at least of their own accord; nor will they offer assistance to the capitalists. The masses just need to stay out of the way.

The principal virtue of a free market, Rand explains, is that the exceptional men, the innovators, the intellectual giants, are not held down by the majority. In fact, it is the members of this exceptional minority who lift the whole of a free society to the level of their own achievements

But they dont lift the masses willingly or easily, she says: While the majority have barely assimilated the value of the automobile, the creative minority introduces the airplane. The majority learn by demonstration, the minority are free to demonstrate.

Like Rand, her followers who populate the Trump administration are largely indifferent to the progress of the masses. They will let people be. Rand believes, quite simply, most people are hapless on their own, and we simply cannot expect much of them. There are only a few on whom we should pin our hopes; the rest are simply irrelevant. Which is why she complains about our tendency to give welfare to the needy. She says,

The welfare and rights of the producers were not regarded as worthy of consideration or recognition. This is the most damning indictment of the present state of our culture.

So, why do Republicans get away with eluding the title of elitist despite their allegiance to Rand while Democrats are stuck with this title?

I think part of the reason is that Democrats, among other things, are moralistic. They are more optimistic about human nature they are more optimistic about the capacity of humans to progress morally and live in harmony.

Thus, liberals judge: They call out our racism, our sexism, our xenophobia. They make people feel bad for harboring such prejudices, wittingly or not, and they warn us away from potentially offensive language, and phrases.

Many conservative opponents scorn liberals for their ill-founded nave optimism. For in Rands world there is no hope for the vast majority of mankind. She heaps scorn on the poor billions, whom civilized men are prodded to help.

The best they can hope for is that they might be lucky enough to enjoy the riches produced by the real innovators, which might eventually trickle down to them in their misery.

To the extent that Trump and his colleagues embrace Rands thought, they must share or approach some of her cynicism.

Firmin DeBrabander, Professor of Philosophy, Maryland Institute College of Art

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Trumps secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, has said Ayn Rands novel Atlas Shrugged is his favorite book. Mike Pompeo, head of the CIA, cited Rand as a major inspiration. Before he withdrew his nomination, Trumps pick to head the Labor Department, Andrew Puzder, revealed that he devotes much free time to reading Rand.

Such is the case with many other Trump advisers and allies: The Republican leader of the House of Representatives, Paul Ryan, famously made his staff members read Ayn Rand. Trump himself has said that hes a fan of Rand and identifies with Howard Roark, the protagonist of Rands novel, The Fountainhead, an architect who dynamites a housing project he designed because the builders did not precisely follow his blueprints.

As a philosopher, I have often wondered at the remarkable endurance and popularity of Ayn Rands influence on American politics. Even by earlier standards, however, Rands dominance over the current administration looks especially strong.

Whats in common with Ayn Rand?

Recently, historian and Rand expert Jennifer Burns wrote how Rands sway over the Republican Party is diminishing. Burns says the promises of government largesse and economic nationalism under Trump would repel Rand.

That was before the president unveiled his proposed federal budget that greatly slashes nonmilitary government spending and before Paul Ryans Obamacare reform, which promised to strip health coverage from 24 million low-income Americans and grant the rich a generous tax cut instead. Now, Trump looks to be zeroing in on a significant tax cut for the rich and corporations.

These all sound like measures Rand would enthusiastically support, in so far as they assist the capitalists and so-called job creators, instead of the poor.

Though the Trump administration looks quite steeped in Rands thought, there is one curious discrepancy. Ayn Rand exudes a robust elitism, unlike any I have observed elsewhere in the tomes of political philosophy. But this runs counter to the narrative of the Trump phenomenon: Central to the Trumps ascendancy is a rejection of elites reigning from urban centers and the coasts, overrepresented at universities and in Hollywood, apparently.

Liberals despair over the fact that they are branded elitists, while, as former television host Jon Stewart put it, Republicans backed a man who takes every chance to tout his superiority, and lords over creation from a gilded penthouse apartment, in a skyscraper that bears his own name.

Clearly, liberals lost this rhetorical battle.

What is Ayn Rands philosophy?

How shall we make sense of the gross elitism at the heart of the Trump administration, embodied in its devotion to Ayn Rand elitism that its supporters overlook or ignore, and happily ascribe to the left instead?

Ayn Rands philosophy is quite straightforward. Rand sees the world divided into makers and takers. But, in her view, the real makers are a select few a real elite, on whom we would do well to rely, and for whom we should clear the way, by reducing or removing taxes and government regulations, among other things.

Rands thought is intellectually digestible, unnuanced, easily translated into policy approaches and statements.

Small government is in order because it lets the great people soar to great heights, and they will drag the rest with them. Rand says we must ensure that the exceptional men, the innovators, the intellectual giants, are not held down by the majority. In fact, it is the members of this exceptional minority who lift the whole of a free society to the level of their own achievements, while rising further and ever further.

Mitt Romney captured Rands philosophy well during the 2012 campaign when he spoke of the 47 percent of Americans who do not work, vote Democrat and are happy to be supported by hardworking, conservative Americans.

No sympathy for the poor

In laying out her dualistic vision of society, divided into good and evil, Rands language is often starker and harsher. In her 1957 novel, Atlas Shrugged, she says,

The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time. The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all their brains.

Rands is the opposite of a charitable view of humankind, and can, in fact, be quite cruel. Consider her attack on Pope Paul VI, who, in his 1967 encyclical Progressio Populorum, argued that the West has a duty to help developing nations, and called for its sympathy for the global poor.

Rand was appalled; instead of feeling sympathy for the poor, she says

When [Western Man] discovered entire populations rotting alive in such conditions [in the developing world], is he not to acknowledge, with a burning stab of pride or pride and gratitude the achievements of his nation and his culture, of the men who created them and left him a nobler heritage to carry forward?

Telling it like it is

Why doesnt Rands elitism turn off Republican voters? or turn them against their leaders who, apparently, ought to disdain lower and middle class folk? If anyone like Trump identifies with Rands protagonists, they must think themselves truly excellent, while the muddling masses, they are beyond hope.

Why hasnt news of this disdain then trickled down to the voters yet?

The neoconservatives, who held sway under President George W. Bush, were also quite elitist, but figured out how to speak to the Republican base, in their language. Bush himself, despite his Andover-Yale upbringing, was lauded as someone you could have a beer with.

Trump has succeeded even better in this respect he famously tells it like it is, his supporters like to say. Of course, as judged by fact-checkers, Trumps relationship to the truth is embattled and tenuous; what his supporters seem to appreciate, rather, is his willingness to voice their suspicions and prejudices without worrying about recriminations of critics. Trump says things people are reluctant or shy to voice loudly if at all.

Building ones fortune

This gets us closer to whats going on. Rand is decidedly cynical about the said masses: There is little point in preaching to them; they wont change or improve, at least of their own accord; nor will they offer assistance to the capitalists. The masses just need to stay out of the way.

The principal virtue of a free market, Rand explains, is that the exceptional men, the innovators, the intellectual giants, are not held down by the majority. In fact, it is the members of this exceptional minority who lift the whole of a free society to the level of their own achievements

But they dont lift the masses willingly or easily, she says: While the majority have barely assimilated the value of the automobile, the creative minority introduces the airplane. The majority learn by demonstration, the minority are free to demonstrate.

Like Rand, her followers who populate the Trump administration are largely indifferent to the progress of the masses. They will let people be. Rand believes, quite simply, most people are hapless on their own, and we simply cannot expect much of them. There are only a few on whom we should pin our hopes; the rest are simply irrelevant. Which is why she complains about our tendency to give welfare to the needy. She says,

The welfare and rights of the producers were not regarded as worthy of consideration or recognition. This is the most damning indictment of the present state of our culture.

So, why do Republicans get away with eluding the title of elitist despite their allegiance to Rand while Democrats are stuck with this title?

I think part of the reason is that Democrats, among other things, are moralistic. They are more optimistic about human nature they are more optimistic about the capacity of humans to progress morally and live in harmony.

Thus, liberals judge: They call out our racism, our sexism, our xenophobia. They make people feel bad for harboring such prejudices, wittingly or not, and they warn us away from potentially offensive language, and phrases.

Many conservative opponents scorn liberals for their ill-founded nave optimism. For in Rands world there is no hope for the vast majority of mankind. She heaps scorn on the poor billions, whom civilized men are prodded to help.

The best they can hope for is that they might be lucky enough to enjoy the riches produced by the real innovators, which might eventually trickle down to them in their misery.

To the extent that Trump and his colleagues embrace Rands thought, they must share or approach some of her cynicism.

Firmin DeBrabander, Professor of Philosophy, Maryland Institute College of Art

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Firmin DeBrabander | The Conversation

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Continue reading here:

How Ayn Rand's 'elitism' lives on in the Donald Trump ...

President Donald Trumps secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, has said Ayn Rands novel Atlas Shrugged is his favorite book. Mike Pompeo, head of the CIA, cited Rand as a major inspiration. Before he withdrew his nomination, Trumps pick to head the Labor Department, Andrew Puzder, revealed that he devotes much free time to reading Rand.

Such is the case with many other Trump advisers and allies: The Republican leader of the House of Representatives, Paul Ryan, famously made his staff members read Ayn Rand. Trump himself has said that hes a fan of Rand and identifies with Howard Roark, the protagonist of Rands novel, The Fountainhead, an architect who dynamites a housing project he designed because the builders did not precisely follow his blueprints.

As a philosopher, I have often wondered at the remarkable endurance and popularity of Ayn Rands influence on American politics. Even by earlier standards, however, Rands dominance over the current administration looks especially strong.

Whats in common with Ayn Rand?

Recently, historian and Rand expert Jennifer Burns wrote how Rands sway over the Republican Party is diminishing. Burns says the promises of government largesse and economic nationalism under Trump would repel Rand.

That was before the president unveiled his proposed federal budget that greatly slashes nonmilitary government spending and before Paul Ryans Obamacare reform, which promised to strip health coverage from 24 million low-income Americans and grant the rich a generous tax cut instead. Now, Trump looks to be zeroing in on a significant tax cut for the rich and corporations.

These all sound like measures Rand would enthusiastically support, in so far as they assist the capitalists and so-called job creators, instead of the poor.

Though the Trump administration looks quite steeped in Rands thought, there is one curious discrepancy. Ayn Rand exudes a robust elitism, unlike any I have observed elsewhere in the tomes of political philosophy. But this runs counter to the narrative of the Trump phenomenon: Central to the Trumps ascendancy is a rejection of elites reigning from urban centers and the coasts, overrepresented at universities and in Hollywood, apparently.

Liberals despair over the fact that they are branded elitists, while, as former television host Jon Stewart put it, Republicans backed a man who takes every chance to tout his superiority, and lords over creation from a gilded penthouse apartment, in a skyscraper that bears his own name.

Clearly, liberals lost this rhetorical battle.

What is Ayn Rands philosophy?

How shall we make sense of the gross elitism at the heart of the Trump administration, embodied in its devotion to Ayn Rand elitism that its supporters overlook or ignore, and happily ascribe to the left instead?

Ayn Rands philosophy is quite straightforward. Rand sees the world divided into makers and takers. But, in her view, the real makers are a select few a real elite, on whom we would do well to rely, and for whom we should clear the way, by reducing or removing taxes and government regulations, among other things.

Rands thought is intellectually digestible, unnuanced, easily translated into policy approaches and statements.

Small government is in order because it lets the great people soar to great heights, and they will drag the rest with them. Rand says we must ensure that the exceptional men, the innovators, the intellectual giants, are not held down by the majority. In fact, it is the members of this exceptional minority who lift the whole of a free society to the level of their own achievements, while rising further and ever further.

Mitt Romney captured Rands philosophy well during the 2012 campaign when he spoke of the 47 percent of Americans who do not work, vote Democrat and are happy to be supported by hardworking, conservative Americans.

No sympathy for the poor

In laying out her dualistic vision of society, divided into good and evil, Rands language is often starker and harsher. In her 1957 novel, Atlas Shrugged, she says,

The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time. The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all their brains.

Rands is the opposite of a charitable view of humankind, and can, in fact, be quite cruel. Consider her attack on Pope Paul VI, who, in his 1967 encyclical Progressio Populorum, argued that the West has a duty to help developing nations, and called for its sympathy for the global poor.

Rand was appalled; instead of feeling sympathy for the poor, she says:

When [Western Man] discovered entire populations rotting alive in such conditions [in the developing world], is he not to acknowledge, with a burning stab of pride or pride and gratitude the achievements of his nation and his culture, of the men who created them and left him a nobler heritage to carry forward?

Telling it like it is

Why doesnt Rands elitism turn off Republican voters? or turn them against their leaders who, apparently, ought to disdain lower and middle class folk? If anyone like Trump identifies with Rands protagonists, they must think themselves truly excellent, while the muddling masses, they are beyond hope.

Why hasnt news of this disdain then trickled down to the voters yet?

The neoconservatives, who held sway under President George W. Bush, were also quite elitist, but figured out how to speak to the Republican base, in their language. Bush himself, despite his Andover-Yale upbringing, was lauded as someone you could have a beer with.

Trump has succeeded even better in this respect he famously tells it like it is, his supporters like to say. Of course, as judged by fact-checkers, Trumps relationship to the truth is embattled and tenuous; what his supporters seem to appreciate, rather, is his willingness to voice their suspicions and prejudices without worrying about recriminations of critics. Trump says things people are reluctant or shy to voice loudly if at all.

Building ones fortune

This gets us closer to whats going on. Rand is decidedly cynical about the said masses: There is little point in preaching to them; they wont change or improve, at least of their own accord; nor will they offer assistance to the capitalists. The masses just need to stay out of the way.

The principal virtue of a free market, Rand explains, is that the exceptional men, the innovators, the intellectual giants, are not held down by the majority. In fact, it is the members of this exceptional minority who lift the whole of a free society to the level of their own achievements.

But they dont lift the masses willingly or easily, she says: While the majority have barely assimilated the value of the automobile, the creative minority introduces the airplane. The majority learn by demonstration, the minority are free to demonstrate.

Like Rand, her followers who populate the Trump administration are largely indifferent to the progress of the masses. They will let people be. Rand believes, quite simply, most people are hapless on their own, and we simply cannot expect much of them. There are only a few on whom we should pin our hopes; the rest are simply irrelevant. Which is why she complains about our tendency to give welfare to the needy. She says,

The welfare and rights of the producers were not regarded as worthy of consideration or recognition. This is the most damning indictment of the present state of our culture.

So, why do Republicans get away with eluding the title of elitist despite their allegiance to Rand while Democrats are stuck with this title?

I think part of the reason is that Democrats, among other things, are moralistic. They are more optimistic about human nature they are more optimistic about the capacity of humans to progress morally and live in harmony.

Thus, liberals judge: They call out our racism, our sexism, our xenophobia. They make people feel bad for harboring such prejudices, wittingly or not, and they warn us away from potentially offensive language, and phrases.

Many conservative opponents scorn liberals for their ill-founded nave optimism. For in Rands world there is no hope for the vast majority of mankind. She heaps scorn on the poor billions, whom civilized men are prodded to help.

The best they can hope for is that they might be lucky enough to enjoy the riches produced by the real innovators, which might eventually trickle down to them in their misery.

To the extent that Trump and his colleagues embrace Rands thought, they must share or approach some of her cynicism.

Firmin DeBrabanderis a professor of philosophy at theMaryland Institute College of Art.

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No sympathy: How Ayn Rand's elitism lives on in the Trump ... - Salon - Salon

Rep. Justin Amash, far right, exits the Senate chamber on Capitol Hill on May 31, 2015.

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Congressman Justin Amash of Michigan was speaking to the press about the GOPs Obamacare replacement in the speaker's lobby of the House of Representatives when, as Politico reported Friday afternoon, a sudden realization dawned on him. He asked the gaggle the status of a vote on the floor. A reporter informed him that she believed a vote on an amendment was underway. Then this happened:

Amash approached floor staff and leadership to see if they could either re-open the vote or call it again. Staff said there was no precedent for doing so. Amash hung his head low and was overcome with emotion, those on the floor told POLITICO.

Amash, after a 4,289 vote streak stretching back to his 2011 arrival in the House, had just missed his first vote. When he realized his streak had just ended, Politicos Rachael Bade and Jennifer Haberkorn wrote, the blunt-spoken congressman broke down in tears.* The new streak-holder, Arkansas Rep. Steve Womack, released a statement immediately. I am humbled by the opportunity to serve my constituents and thank God that no personal hardships have kept me from representing them on a single vote since taking office, Amash's fellow Republican said.

Why was Amash brought to tears? Does he genuinely believe missing a single vote in more than half a decade is a substantive fault on his record? Politico implies, and Amash would certainly have voters believe, this is the casehe is one of the few House members who personally justifies and explains his every vote on his Facebook page for constituents.

This suggests a commitment to the service of others that might have puzzled one of Amashs idols, Ayn Rand, whose portrait he hangs in his congressional office. Amash has praised the author of The Virtue of Selfishness for her vision of a society where limited government makes possible the unleashing of rational heroes. It is plausible that Amash will be turning to the consoling words of one Randian hero to console himself tonight. I came here to say that I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life, Howard Roark says in The Fountainhead. No matter who makes the claim, how large their number or how great their need.

The need for Amash's voice on this vote, which failed 225 to 185, with 19 not voting, was perhaps not that great.

*Correction, March 10, 2017: This post originally misspelled Rachael Bades first name.

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Cheer Up, Justin Amash! There's No Need to Cry Over One Missed Vote. - Slate Magazine (blog)