Ayn Rand and Mao

So let me get this straight. Paul Ryan citing Atlas Shrugged, the novel by Ayn Rand, is proof of his radical, hate-filled agenda. But Anita Dunn citing Mao, the butcher of 70 million, as one of her favorite political philosophers demonstrates her breadth of knowledge, wide ranging inquisitiveness and general sophistication?

And anyway, it appears that President Obama is getting a lot of his material from Atlas Shrugged:

There’s no such thing as the intellect. A man’s brain is a social product. A sum of influences that he’s picked up from those around him. Nobody invents anything, he merely reflects what’s floating in the social atmosphere. A genius is an intellectual scavenger and a greedy hoarder of the ideas which rightfully belong to society, from which he stole them. All thought is theft.

That is a passage from the book but sounds very much like what President Obama has been saying recently.  His 'you didn't build that' proclamations seem eerily familiar; more from the book:

He didn’t invent iron ore and blast furnaces, did he?

Who?

Rearden. He didn’t invent smelting and chemistry and air compression. He couldn’t have invented his Metal but for thousands and thousands of other people. His Metal! Why does he think it’s his? Why does he think it’s his invention? Everybody uses the work of everybody else. Nobody ever invents anything.

Harry Binswanger in his Forbes article continues:

The collectivists rely on two implicit premises which they dare not make explicit.

1. If you do not create everything, you create nothing.

Since Thomas Edison didn’t discover electricity, invent glass, learn how to forge metal, and devise language, he didn’t invent the light bulb. An artist doesn’t create a painting because the pigments are already there on his palette. A child putting together Lego blocks is not building anything because the Lego blocks were provided for him.

The only act that would count as creation is making something out of nothing–creation ex nihilo.

In fact, creation is precisely the re-arrangement of materials into a new and more valuable form. Building is precisely the assembly of pre-existing materials to form a structure that didn’t exist before.

2. Here’s the second collectivist premise. When an alleged creator pays for the goods and services of other individuals, he has actually stolen them from that anonymous collective which is “society.” The artist who buys his pigments in an art-supply store has actually appropriated them from “society”–including the welfare recipients he is taxed to support. When Steve Jobs benefited from the discoveries of William Shockley and the other inventors of the transistor, he actually was appropriating discoveries made by “society”–including Lee Harvey Oswald and Bernie Madoff.

Blame the Right

If a person of the left who "has strong opinions with respect to those he believes do not treat homosexuals in a fair manner," and "had been volunteering recently at a community center for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people," shoots innocents at a politically active organization of the right then the shooter is acting out frustrations and we should try to compassionately understand what may have driven a person to commit such a heinous act. Or he just "expressed a disagreement with the group's conservative views" during a "scuffle". For sure, it is "an anomaly, something very rare and very random." But you really can't know for sure if ideology motivated the shooter.

Similarly, if a man shoots fellow members of the military in cold blood while shouting "Allahu Akbar", then the shooter is possibly suffering from "secondary trauma", was sadly "swept up in patients' displays of war-related paranoia, helplessness and fury," snapped in advance, perhaps had a “toothache” that set him off and "It's unclear if religion was a factor in this shooting." But you really can't know for sure if religion motivated the shooter.

However, if we know nothing about a person and that person opens fire on innocents and nobody can figure out why he may have done what he did, the shooter must be a right-wing wacko who is deeply disturbed as the result of right-wing hate. Because "violent acts are what happen when [Republicans] create a climate of hate" and the fomenting and agitating by right-wing wackos like Palin, Limbaugh and Beck. Research consists of Googling shooter's name and the words "Tea Party" while forgetting to search for the name and "Occupy Wall Street". Tweets from those on the left tell us it is OK to score political points by connecting the Tea Party, Republicans and anyone close to the right to murder sprees, whether perpetrated by those on the right or not, because the "Bottom line is that policy decisions are driven by scoring political points."

I guess they didn't read the last paragraph of Michelangelo Signorile's, Editor-at-large of HuffPost Gay Voices, column wherein he admonishes, "What no one should be doing is exploiting this tragedy to make political points or to attack an entire group of people because of the actions of one man."

Strangely missing are the lectures about polarization, heated rhetoric or overdue conversations. No connections to those on the left who share the rostrum with the President and with fist-pumping fury tell the audience that "There can only be one winner", "And, let's take these son of a bitches out..."

The lack of self-awareness is breathtaking. The double standard is, well, standard. And all of this from those who fancy themselves to be psychologically sophisticated and uniquely able to see nuance.

Link, link.

Regressive FORWARDism

Is this what FORWARD means?

Forward has a rich history as a slogan.

Maybe Romney should use "CATCH UP DEMS" as his campaign slogan with a tag line "They're moving FORWARD from a centurys old starting point." REGRESSIVE FORWARDISM might better describe many of the policies.

Obama (Comments on this excerpt):

A New Vision Of An America In Which Prosperity Is Shared

"Too many folks still don't have a sense that tomorrow will be better than today. And so, the question in this election is which way do we go?" President Obama asked at a fundraiser in Chicago on Sunday.

"Do we go forward towards a new vision of an America in which prosperity is shared?" Obama asked. "Or do we go backward to the same policies that got us in the mess in the first place?"

"I believe we have to go forward," Obama said. "I believe we have to keep working to create an America where no matter who you are, no matter what you look like, no matter where you come from, no matter what your last name is, no matter who you love, you can make it here if you try. That's what's at stake in November. That's what is why I am running for a second term as president of the United States of America."

New and Improved: Ryan Adds Even More Callousness to the Republican Ticket

According to this NYT editorial, adding Ryan to the ticket showed that the Republican vision is against many things including: job training, help for struggling students, miner's hardhats, MRIs and prescriptions for the elderly, preventative care for the poor and uninsured, job training for the displaced, Pell grants, food stamps for the hungry, mass transit, highways, sewage treatment plants, asphalt for streets, replacing retired police officers and firefighters, watchdogs over the environment, mine safety, and food quality.

And in case you have been living under a rock, guess why all this "callousness" is necessary. That's right, to give "even greater tax giveaways to the rich and extravagant benefits to powerful military contractors." (By noting "even greater", does this imply that the current administration is doing it too, but just to a less greater extent than these two awful bits of human debris doody heads?)

But do not despair, the Republicans are for at least one thing: crumbling bridges.

Additionally, lurking in the opining about midway through was an interesting little insight. The writer explains:

These cuts are so severe that the nation’s Catholic bishops raised their voices in protest at the shredding of the nation’s moral obligations.

Mr. Ryan’s budget “will hurt hungry children, poor families, vulnerable seniors and workers who cannot find employment,” the bishops wrote in an April letter to the House. “These cuts are unjustified and wrong.”

Why is this NYT writer concerned when a Catholic Bishop is upset that the government is not doing the work of the church? What happened to the wall of separation between church and state?

In typical leftist fashion, the writer is blissfully un-self-aware and is happy for government to do the Lord's work when it lines up with the NYT ideology. One supposes that the good Bishop's opinions would not be so well received were he discussing the government's role vis-à-vis abortion. The left is happy to impose its morality on others and even justify its actions with Biblical admonitions and parables, but let the right suggest such an unholy alliance and the wall-of-separation caterwauling of the left can be heard all the way to the pearly gates.

As Robert Bork noted in his book Slouching Towards Gomorrah:

Modern liberals try to frighten Americans by saying that religious conservatives want to impose their morality on others That is palpable foolishness. All participants in politics want to impose on others as much of their morality as possible, and no group is more insistent on that than liberals. Religious conservatives are not authoritarian. To the degree they have their way, it will be through democratic processes.

Obama Administration to Teachers: You're All Racist

Heather Mac Donald's article in City Journal examines the discipline problem in schools. Because the Department of Education uses the disparate impact standard, any disproportionate incidence of discipline is thought to be the result of racism. This from the group that self-congratulates for their uncanny ability to sniff out nuance. Mac Donald writes:

Under disparate-impact theory, even if a school applies its discipline code fairly and in a color-blind fashion, it can still be liable for civil rights violations if minorities are disproportionately affected and it cannot demonstrate the absolute necessity of its disciplinary practices.

But when a black teacher said that the “achievement gap / suspension gap is a black issue. My community must take the lead in correcting our children’s behavior,” he was predictably dismissed by Victoria Davis, an education advocate with St. Paul’s NAACP chapter, who said, “People who think like that are like the people who believe that [black people] are . . . less than civil or human."

The reality is that she is treating the students as inferiors. She apparently doesn't think they are capable of rising to the same standards as their white peers. It is the soft bigotry of lower standards.

Mac Donald continues:

That rhetoric is irresponsible and dangerous, only serving to alienate blacks in general further from society and black students in particular from those institutions that are their best hope for success.

It cannot be that culture plays a role in this discipline problem. We know that to suggest such a thing would constitute a gaffe. So if not culture, then what? The old standby: racism. Of course this all assumes "that teachers and school administrators are a racist bunch." This is a little odd since:

Teachers also constitute one of the most liberal occupation groups, as a visit to any education school will confirm. Yet if we’re to believe the Obama administration, when they enter the classroom or become administrators, these eager proponents of white-privilege theory suddenly become retributive bigots, favoring fractious white students over pacific black students.

When you want see racism everywhere, you see it everywhere. Even your supporters can be thrown under the bus by besmirching their reputations and dignity in the pursuit of the racism meme.

The bigger question is why would teachers vote for the party that calls them a bunch of racists? Could it be the ever increasing compensation and benefits bestowed by the unions? And if that is the case - that they are looking out for their own interests by choosing money, compensation and benefits over all else including their dignity - doesn't that make them just as greedy as those nasty Wall Street fat cats?

Shouldn't the teacher's unions stick up for their rank and file? Shouldn't they defend their member's good name and speak truth to the powers that are smearing them with the despicable charge of racism? That the rank and file do not force the leadership to do so suggests that they are more interested in padding their pocketbooks than pursuing truth. And in the end it doesn't matter what the administration says about teachers, the teachers will lend their support.

Greed trumps personal dignity.

BTW, no word on how the obvious sexism is to be corrected:

Here we go again

Harry Reid shares this free speech notion with John Kerry.

It's time for us all – whether we're leaders in Washington, members of the media, scientists, academics, environmentalists or utility industry executives – to stop acting like those who ignore the crisis or deny it exists entirely have a valid point of view. They don't.

Right Is Evil Redux

Just sit back and drink it in. First Goldberg:

As Noah Glyn noted the other day, apparently Nancy Pelosi is not content to let Harry Reid win the title of shabbiest congressional leader uncontested. She says Republicans want to poison children with E. coli. Or something.

“I say to [Republicans], do you have children that breathe air? Do you have grandchildren that drink water?,” Pelosi asked. “I’m a mom and I have five kids . . . as a mom I was vigilant about food safety, right moms? If you could depend on the government for one thing it was that you had to be able to trust the water that our kids drank and the food that they ate. But this is the E. coli club. They do not want to spend money to do that.”

Link to video.

The dishonesty and/or stupidity of all this is really quite breathtaking -- and obvious. First of all, you could cut government funding down to 1950 levels and still have money for food safety. But this is what liberals do. They metaphorically lash children to the fenders of government so that the budget cutting blade must slice through them first. Then, after insanely putting them in harm's way, they proclaim it is the sane budget cutters who seek to harm children. In fairness, sometimes liberals hold the young human shields in reserve and put firehouses, historic monuments, and old-age homes outside the budgetary walls of the fiscal keep. And, again, they declare that the fiscally sane want to get rid of firefighters and the Washington Monument -- and not, say, the Export-Import Bank or agricultural subsidies.

But this is an old complaint. What is infuriating about Pelosi's comments is the silence that greets them from the same cloying mob of bleaters and emoters who demanded a "new tone" not so long ago. How is saying the Republicans want to kill your children less "extreme" and irresponsible than anything uttered by Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin? Why hasn't it occurred to all of these media outlets currently reporting the news that Jared Loughner has pled guilty to mass murder to do a story on how the new tone they demanded hasn't materialized with Nancy's Pelosi's repugnant musings as exhibit A? Perhaps it is because the whole "new tone" censorial fraud was always aimed rightward. When liberals accuse conservatives of wanting children to die, that's hardball politics. When conservatives put banal targets on congressional maps, that's incitement to murder.

And then Steyn:

Jonah, it's not just that Mitt Romney hasn't paid any taxes since 1975 and that Bain Capital is the planet's largest distributor of E. coli which it manufactures in petri dishes offshored to Mitt's safe deposit box in the Cayman Islands, but that Mitt will kill your loved ones five years after his minions lay you off. Just because he can. He doesn't have to meet you. You might show no outward signs of ill health. You might even have a job and health insurance. But you bear the Mark of Mitt, and decades later when you keel over and expire it'll be because he once laid off your brother, or your cousin, or your hairdresser's sister, or someone who once heard something from someone who knows Harry Reid.

Don't get hung up on details, folks. Details are how the vampire capitalist seduces you into surrendering to his vise-like death grip. Remember, when Obama was a youngster, he fought for social justice and opened up a Jakarta dog shelter in his digestive tract. But the young Romney traveled around Europe opening numbered bank accounts in Zurich and biting women in the neck.

So don't fall for esoteric concepts like details. Details are for subprime mortgages. Like David Axelrod says, keep to the big picture here. Mitt Kills. Warning From The Surgeon General: Voting For Romney Will Result In Death. Voting For Romney While Pregnant Will Result In Your Unborn Child's Death. Mitt = Death. Silence = Acceptance.

And when Mitt responds by chuckling and saying, "Well, I can't comment because a mass killing spree's not part of my campaign, and Nancy and Harry and the oppo-research lads at that super PAC are all good friends of mine", that just shows how vicious and murderous he is.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) recently slandered Nuclear Regulatory Commission member Bill Magwood, an African-American, as “one of the most unethical, prevaricating, incompetent people I’ve dealt with.” Reid, furious with Magwood because of his support for the Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste repository in Reid’s state, also called Magwood a “treacherous, miserable liar,” “a first-class rat,” and a “sh-t stirrer.”

But there really isn't anything new to report here. There is a legacy of this kind of mean-spirited character assassination and Right Is Evil stuff. Remember when Howard Dean when he was Chairman of the Democratic Party said, "Our moral values, in contradistinction to the Republicans', is we don't think kids ought to go to bed hungry at night."

Greedy Shopper

If you go into a store and there is a basketball made in the USA for $40 and an identical one from China for $20 and you buy the one from China, aren't you just as greedy as those greedy corporations or wealthy tax dodgers because you too are looking out for your bottom line and trying to keep as much money in your pocket as you can?

You Didn't Do That

Olympics demotivation you didn't do that

Culture To Blame

It is an interesting fact that the left thinks that economics determines culture and that the right thinks that culture determines economics. Romney said as much when he said "Culture makes all the difference" when comparing the relative differences between Israel and neighboring Palestinian areas (as well as those of U.S. and Mexico, and Chile and Ecuador). Romney reiterates the idea in his article here.

This has caused the left to wring their hands and worry that these "offhand" remarks are overshadowing, that it is tearing at his campaign, was a gaffe and is a problem for Romney. Why? Because the left does not see values or culture as the basis for societal success. They are inclined to blame economics when the poor commit crimes. Blaming the culture, values or the individual is viewed as unsophisticated and lacking nuance whereas blaming poverty is considered enlightened and progressive.

However, when the rich commit crimes, the left cannot use poverty as the scapegoat for crime. They are then forced to conclude what everyone else concludes, that values and culture may have more to say about why a person committed a crime and hold the individual accountable. This must create some level of cognitive dissonance for the left.

Another bout of dissonance must certainly erupt when those on the left contemplate why crime isn't rampant in some of the places around the globe where there is grinding poverty. To be sure, some impoverished places are smothered with crime, but if poverty is the major reason for crime, those poverty stricken places that have low crime rates must cause mental indigestion. The 'but Palestine is occupied' argument creates similar hiccups.

How are areas of low crime and high poverty explained by those on the left? How are financially and morally backward places that are not occupied explained by the left? They aren't. But here's a hint: values may be the answer you are looking for.

So the left is unhappy with Romney's assertion that culture might be the cause of financial disparities. And how does the left counter an argument that makes them unhappy? You guessed it - cry racism.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat informs:

Oh, my God, this man needs a lot of education. What he said about the culture is racism.

If culture is a set of ideas, beliefs, and ways of behaving of a particular group of people and race is essentially genetics, what about what Romney said was racist?

As Prager has noted, "Just about every value the left claims to uphold Israel upholds and its enemies do not." Israel shares the western world's views on issues ranging from corrupt dictator-types, to feminism, to homosexual rights, to independent judiciaries. But the left loves leftism more than it loves the causes for which it professes love.

Culture, not race, has determined the successes and failures. Romney solidified this argument in both the Israel/Palestine comparison and the Chile/Ecuador comparison. Both comparisons juxtapose similar races with different cultures.

The left's reflexive dismissal of Romney as racist is embarrassing and depressing in that it suggests that the left is incapable of distinguishing between race and culture. They are happy to explain the differences between weather and climate, but for some reason their nuance filters get clogged on the race/culture issue.

As John Podhoretz notes:

Of course, for saying this, Romney was called a “racist” by Saeb Erakat, the longtime slavering lackey of every Palestinian murderer and thief. Erakat blames “occupation” for Palestinian poverty. But the PA has dominion over almost all of the West Bank and Hamas has control over all of Gaza, so the word “occupation” is all but meaningless — except as shorthand for “Israel still holds Jerusalem.”

Poverty. Occupation. Racism - anything but culture and values.

Romney eloquently makes the case that culture determines economics:

But what exactly accounts for prosperity if not culture? In the case of the United States, it is a particular kind of culture that has made us the greatest economic power in the history of the earth. Many significant features come to mind: our work ethic, our appreciation for education, our willingness to take risks, our commitment to honor and oath, our family orientation, our devotion to a purpose greater than ourselves, our patriotism. But one feature of our culture that propels the American economy stands out above all others: freedom. The American economy is fueled by freedom. Free people and their free enterprises are what drive our economic vitality.

The right believes that it is values that are responsible for the relative success of the US and other democracies around the world. This is the root of the American exceptionalism that runs deep for those on the right. The right doesn't attribute America's exceptionalism to race, but rather to culture. Because the left sees economics, egalitarianism and equalism as the foundations of great cultures, and not values, they are not able to see America as exceptional.

UPDATE: (8/2) Victor Davis Hanson

Few believe that a unique micro-geography in North Korea explains why its way of life differs from the South, or that climate ensures that Tijuana is a very different place from San Diego, or that the differences between East and West Germany were due to genetic or racial variables, or that China between 1964 and 2012 underwent climate change. “Western” does not denote a race, but rather a set of values and protocols that originated in Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem and were adopted, modified, and expanded through the next two millennia of European history -- and are undergoing radical changes as we speak.

...the hysteria is over candor, not truth

UPDATE: (8/8) Goldberg:

Though conservatives are more likely to tout this fact than are liberals, the truth is virtually every serious liberal believes it to be true to one extent or another. When you hear liberal politicians celebrate diversity as essential to a 21st century economy, they are making a point about culture. When they lament the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow as a partial cause for the various challenges facing the black community, they are making an argument about culture. When they talk about the “culture of corruption” on Wall Street, they’re not talking about advances in computerized trading.