House of Eratosthenes

Here you go, you so-called “Objectivists” with your goth clothes and your black lipstick and matching fingernail polish and your candles and your pentagrams. This is what it’s all about, right here. It isn’t centered around denying the existence of God or overly concerned with killing babies.

It’s about being objective. Staying true to yourself. Living your life for the sake of none other, nor asking another man to live for yours.

I have had it up to my eyeballs with the ever-growing government, the nanny-state, the collectivism, the whole world demanding more and more from the producers. I am done with the corrupt politicians, the slackers, the deadbeats, and all the looters and moochers.

I am sick of a government which has drifted from its early Constitutional foundation of limited central goverment and great individual freedom, and become a bloated behemoth consuming 40 percent of our economy and hungry for more. I am finished with out-of-control political correctness and its attendant thought police outlawing truth in order to cater to those who would destroy us.

HERE I STAND. I AM JOHN GALT.

Whether the world around me likes it or not, I will put my foot down and insist on personal responsibility and accountability. I will tell my government to take its hands off my rights, my freedom, and my wallet. If the people of other nations are content to allow their countries to devolve into Hell, that’s their business. I’m sick of financing their destruction. They can plunge into chaos on their own dime.

As for my own, I will be a call for my government to return to doing those things which are right for a legitimate government to do – to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity. Not to regulate the price of milk, meddle with the mortgage market, bail out failing companies, or tell me how to raise my children.

HERE I STAND. I AM JOHN GALT.

And I have a pulpit. I may not be able to stop the motor of the world, but I will stomp on the brake, and I will fight for control of the steering wheel before the motor seizes up on its own – and believe me, that motor is on its way to seizing up.

I will give Caesar his due, but I will not bow to him.

I am John Galt. Come and join me, or come and get me. Here I stand.

H/T: Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler.

Or…perhaps: “I am John Galt. Here I stand, pissing in the wind. But I am righteous. And that is all that matters. Me. Screw all the rest of you.”

Your mileage obviously varies.
- Buck | 09/25/2008 @ 20:35
Right about now, I can give ya 700 billion reasons why it does.
- mkfreeberg | 09/25/2008 @ 20:48
I can give ya 700 billion reasons why it does.

Would that be before or after assets are sold? See: “Mark to market.”
- Buck | 09/25/2008 @ 20:52
I suppose this bears enough resemblance to the subject under discussion to go ahead and start our back-n-forth.

To me, m’friend, it’s all about the leaders. The Ayn Rand meritocracy sounds a bit harsh, especially when you start talking about economic Darwinism, Devil take the hindmost, letting companies fail that deserve to fail.

But when you let companies sink or swim, the CEOs that end up in charge, are the ones who know their craft. They may be characterized as a bunch of big ol’ meanies…because they didn’t shake enough hands and make enough backroom deals. But they remain where they are because of their abilities to keep things afloat. These are guys you want as friends.

When you engage in this James Taggart gotta-do-something hysteria, the CEOs that end up in charge in those circumstances are communist apparatchucks. Happy-happy-joy-joy bullshit guys. Gift-o-gabbers like Barack Obama. Guys with expensive suits and lots of important names in their iPhones…who don’t know jack about how work gets done, how things fit together, cause and effect. Guys who don’t care about things succeeding or failing. Because they have been refining and honing their blame-sidestepping skills since the second grade.

Wesley Mouches. “It was not within their method of thinking to know that Wesley Mouch was the zero at the meeting point of forces unleashed in destruction against one another.” That’s the kind of boss that ends up at the “top,” if you wanna call it that, when business becomes nothing but glorified panhandling.

So as welcome as you are to try to topple John Galt from his pedestal in my worldview, now does not seem like a particularly opportune time for you to attempt this…
- mkfreeberg | 09/25/2008 @ 21:29
So as welcome as you are to try to topple John Galt from his pedestal in my worldview, now does not seem like a particularly opportune time for you to attempt this…

Toppling your idol wasn’t my intention at all. Taking issue with the laissez-faire, “let ’em fail” POV was. I’m as much of a free-market capitalist as anyone (well, perhaps not… given the subject matter of this thread), but I have limits… such as letting the whole damned system fail because of the idiocy and bad judgment of a few participants. I’d prefer NOT to go there… simply out of self-interest. The thought of my 401(k) being halved, or worse, at this point in life just doesn’t sit well with me, ya know?

I’m no economist, but from what I can glean by reading about this mess is (a) accounting rules play no small part in the melt-down and (b) the institutions in the “system” are SO intertwined at this point that “failure” of one, two, or three large banks means a domino effect resulting in TOTAL collapse of the financial system as we know it. Ergo: Depression. Not a fun way to spend my dotage, nor a fun way to raise a family, nor the way to begin life if you’re fresh out of school.

But some would risk that calamity in the name of Principle. Screw that.
- Buck | 09/26/2008 @ 12:14
Yes, they are connected in this domino fashion because we’ve made them that way. We didn’t listen to John Galt. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I know you read my stuff so it doesn’t come as news to you that I see pretty much everything this way. Every single example held aloft as a failure of capitalism — isn’t capitalism at all. I seem to recall you’re familiar with Atlas Shrugged; I compare this situation to the debate between James and Dagny that starts on pg. 25. Dagny’s in business to run a railroad. James, on the other hand, is in business to give chances to nations & peoples, and is neglecting his primary responsibilities to Taggart Transcontinental stockholders to try to bring that about. The point isn’t so much that Dagny’s strategies succeed and James’ fail — it’s that in this dystopian society, it becomes likely that authority figures will be persuaded to do things James’ way, and once everything goes to hell, nobody inspects the real cause. Nobody looks back and says “that, there, was a bad decision.” They blame the capitalists, and demand more of what started the problem in the first place.

That’s exactly where we are, m’friend. I scribbled a few notes about it early this morning, and my information is sourced, & so far as I know, not called into question. They were substantiating ability to pay mortgages, based on attendance in credit counseling sessions. Good grief!

We can debate about where to go from here. But I think you’d have to agree, what we should try to avoid, is perpetuating some kind of cyclical motion with regard to a calamity like this. I’m mighty concerned that this very situation has had some kind of tilting effect on the election, away from McCain, and toward Obama. In a sane universe this week should’ve brought an abrupt and bone-shaking end to Obama’s candidacy. Chosen One would be forced to withdraw, maybe compelled to apologize for bothering us, against abject fear of making an enormous fool of himself. Instead, he gets to blame Republicans and “corporate greed” and a willing media complies.
- mkfreeberg | 09/26/2008 @ 12:35

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Here I Stand. I Am John Galt.Thursday, September 25th, 2008

Here I Stand. I Am John Galt.
Thursday, September 25th, 2008