AynRandLover,
Smear rich people? I am only questioning the wisdom of worshipping rich people, obviously. Allow me to wax schmaltsy for two sentences. My dad was a Navy guy way back when. He used to tell me the simple shipboard philosophy that has been around since rope rigging days: “One hand for yourself, one for the ship.” I like this for some reason. Why should we pave an economic road and allow the first ones to succeed to burn down the bridge? Or push away the ladder? Whichever metaphor you prefer. There is no way this is justified logically, so you must resort to sentiment.
Again, why should we give up and say the billionaires beat us fair and square? We never signed on to a contest to end the system! I am cynical of wealth, because I know that people who are driven to control usually need it to achieve their ends. The elites semi-rationally look down on the so-called poor for being stupid enough for letting them walk all over them. That’s why communism is a virus that attacks a polarized nation, and it enters from the elite’s own dogma, entering through the religious dogma door of universal opposition and need for control.
This may interest you. I saw “The Fountainhead” the other night on TV with Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal. I caught a line in there that summed up the movie for me. It was Cooper’s diatribe against doing anything for free (charity) because it makes a slave of someone, “And slavery is not noble.” Now, I personally despise charity in favor of equality and Swedish-style equal opportunity, so I agree, but I disagree with the motive, since there is nothing more noble than slavery. Now, I also agree with the basic Nietzschean tenets that Rand is supplying here, ie, that a human cannot be tied to mediocrity. But, by the same token, a human cannot be sucked into thinking they must measure their worth by those beneath them, and this is the danger to such an idea.
Slaves, mental or physical, train their young to overcome slavery by being masters. That’s all they know. It never occurs to the majority to get off the parasite wheel of demonization. We should, I believe, be individualists, but foster a society that is conducive to it (egalitarianism) and exceed the alternative, which is to use elitism to foster a society opposed to achieving individualism. As the Greeks knew, freedom must go with justice and equality, or one has the freedom to own slaves and lives a contradiction (and enforces it), which is very anti-intellectual and un-philosophical. By the way, the ancient Greeks, and other free-thinking cultures like them, were often matched 10 to 1 against on the battle field and the seas and still beat their elitist-slave enemy armies. That’s greatness, and I’d rather admire a great culture (that allows everyone to seek their potential) than a weak noble who merely has the power to declare themselves great (and even has the power to destroy the competition, the ultimate cowardliness).
Note: A Slate magazine writer recently compared the egos of Gore and Bush, saying that Gore claims he is the smartest person in the room by sheer arrogance, while Bush stoops to limit admission to the room to achieve it. I don’t think Rand would be proud that the religiously sentimental elitist who is less articulate, scored a hundred points lower on a college admission test, and who got mediocre grades just won the presidency by less than a majority. That’s the definition of mediocre obsessed culture. Thanks.
