“In 1980, David Koch ran for vice president with the Libertarian Party, an organization created by the real estate lobby to give an air of legitimacy to their efforts to outlaw rent control and end government regulation of their industry.”
Among other things, this article details David Koch’s platform. And yes, I know the Daily KOS is a very left-leaning publication, but I look forward to hearing arguments as to why any of this is untrue. Please try to read the entire article, painful as it might be.
Do you support “the eventual repeal of all taxation?” Abolishing Social Security? Medicare? Do you support “the complete separation of government and education?” Do you “condemn compulsory education laws?” How about “the repeal of state usury laws?” I know you want to abolish the Department of Energy, but what about the Consumer Safety Commission? The Federal Aviation Administration? The entire government of the United States of America???
In other words, what is your vision for America’s future? Should America even exist? Should there be such a thing as a “middle class?” Or do you see a feudal system wherein a few Trillionairs own all the land and pay mercenaries to keep the peasants in line? (Keep in mind, Trillionairs don’t TAX anything. They TAKE everything.)
BONUS: Did you ever wonder where Ayn Rand got the inspiration for her hero in “Fountainhead?” https://hartmannreport.com/p/how-a-child-killer-set-the-stage
Tidewater News and Opinion Forum 
RE: “In other words, what is your vision for America’s future?”
I don’t think America has a future. We are a failed state and no longer a nation. So, I assume that the USA will cease to exist sometime soon.
RE: “Should America even exist?”
Sure, why not?
RE: “Should there be such a thing as a ‘middle class?'”
I have no idea. I’m in favor of adequate food, clothing and shelter for everyone, but I don’t see upper, middle and lower classes as any kind of a necessity. I certainly reject the marxian notion that history is driven by class struggle.
RE: “Or do you see a feudal system wherein a few Trillionairs own all the land and pay mercenaries to keep the peasants in line?”
In many ways, that’s what we already have today. This is our legacy from the Roman Empire, but it is not the only way to organize society. Because people are not equal there will always be elites of one kind or another. One can hope that any governing elite will also possess wisdom, but there is no sure way to make it so.
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…”but there is no sure way to make it so.”
Actually, I believe there is. Stop electing CRAZIES (not party specific).
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“I don’t think America has a future. We are a failed state and no longer a nation. So, I assume that the USA will cease to exist sometime soon.”
Such a pessimist. The country didn’t have much of a future in the 1860’s either. But is alive and kicking since.
Why such a negative response? In what way are we a “failed state”? Oh, wait. You have spent so much time spouting pro-Putin word vomit, that you actually believe you live in Russia now. Explains a lot.
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RE: “Oh, wait. You have spent so much time spouting pro-Putin word vomit, that you actually believe you live in Russia now. Explains a lot.”
What are you Mr. Green, two years old?
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My age is not of importance. However, you seem to be obsessed with it.
And once again, telling the truth about you has wadded your panties so much you have nothing to counter what I said. Typical.
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So you contend that the Freedom Caucus is the Libertarian Party in designer suits?
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I think of the Freedom Caucus as the Libertarian Lite.
The Libertarian Party has a platform. Instead of basing your opinion on the ravings of people who hate liberty if it goes with responsibility, read the platform.
I don’t agree with every element of it, but then Libertarians believe in individual thought, so that’ OK
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“Read the platform”
I have. Several times. It is anachronistic in most respects. It might have seemed sensible in the 19th century. In the 21st? Not so much. There is a reason that the Libertarian party can get no traction with the voters. This document makes it clear why that is.
“Libertarians believe in individual thought.”
And nobody else does is your silly implication. Too bad is all you seem to think about is what is going to maximize YOUR personal pleasure. Ayn Rand may have not liked your party but her philosophy is at the heart of it.
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Well, your support of censorship repeatedly here shows they you and the left in general have no respect for individual thought.
What you don’t het about Rand’s heroes is that they pursue their own success, but they are inherently ethical men and demand ethical behavior from others. They seek their own happiness, but through excellence and persistence
They despise those who live off the efforts of others by force.
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“Well, your support of censorship repeatedly here shows they you and the left in general have no respect for individual thought.”
Laughable. Lies, slanders, alternative facts, dangerous disinformation, seditious conspiracy, and incitements to violence are not “individual thought” in any meaningful sense.
The government has limited power to censor the expression of such “thoughts” but non-government, for-profit companies have the FREEDOM to disseminate what they think is best for their business. Why do you hate freedom?
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Private companies cannot rely upon the protections of Section 230 of the CDA, which are subject to the regulators and censor on the behalf of government agencies, without being proxies for those government agencies.
For example, Adam Schiff tried to get twitter to ban journalists critical of him.
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Adam Schiff is not the government. Duh!
And I understand your lingo – “critical of him” means “egregious slanders.”
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Schiff does have a great deal of power through government to harm those individual companies.
Schiff is one of those politicians so vile that it is impossible to slander him, no matter what anyone says about him, the truth is worse.
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“Schiff is one of those politicians so vile . . .”
What is really vile is people who call others vile without anything to support the slander but their own extremist opinions.
Whatever influence Schiff may have, he is NOT the government. You twisting his REQUEST that Twitter take down ugly personal slanders – such as the ones vile people engage in – to be government censorship is a poor old dog that can’t hunt. IMHO, of course.
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“They despise those who live off the efforts of others by force.”
And yet these sainted captains of industry are people who do exactly that.
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Show me where any of Rand’s heroes interacts with anyone other than in free trade.
They drive hard bargains, but everyone has the option to walk away.
The villains are those who prey upon others by government force or social intimidataion.
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“but everyone has the option to walk away”
Maybe in a novel. In the real world most people do not have that option. Not if they want to feed, house and clothe their children. What you pretend not to understand is that economic force is just as real as a gun to the head and infinitely more common.
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That is only true when the government either fails its duty to exclude force from the economy or exceeds that duty.
Human effort to too valuable to waste. and unless government inhibits free enterprise it will find its value in the marketplace.
You have just never seen a free market and have no faith in its ability to take care of everyone if free of cronyism and manipulation for political ends.
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“That is only true when the government either fails its duty to exclude force from the economy ”
Your tautologies are not evidence or even arguments. Just doctrinaire mantra.
Economic force used against the people doing the work is how great fortunes are made. It is going on to this day. Every day. Everywhere.
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Nope.
Great fortunes are made by serving the public better and more efficiently than your competitors.
Fortunes are made by force only where government suppresses competitors.
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“Nope.”
Nope.
Repeating your doctrinaire mantra does not make it conform to reality one whit better. Great fortunes have been made by ruthless people using overpowering FORCE on suppliers, competitors, and workers. What you do not understand about economic REALITY would fill many books.
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Marxist dogma.
Bargaining power is not force.
How as Home Depot, or Target, used force on anyone?
The wind and solar industries have used force through the proxy of government to enrich themselves, but where people have a choice, wealth is generated exactly as I said.
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“Marxist dogma.”
Nope.
Your ignorance is unbounded. Did you ever study ANY history?
The only point I am making is the simple truth that there are forms of force that have nothing to do with physical violence. You can call raw force “bargaining power” all you want. What it actually means is that some people are in the position to force the labor of other people in such a way that fortunes are built. It has been that way since the beginning of time.
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“ You have just never seen a free market and have no faith in its ability to take care of everyone if free of cronyism and manipulation for political ends.”
There is a reason for that: it never existed and never will. The moment someone amasses power cronyism will takeover. Period. And in the American culture there is no recognition of success other than through wealth. And wealth is power. We regularly hear that students who study the arts are wasting time. Or history. Or literature. Why, because we won’t quantify anything other than cash. When cash is king, political power is the route for “cronyism and manipulation”.
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You say the United States of America is a failed state. I say you’re wrong. Today, President Biden awarded medals of honor to ordinary citizen who remained loyal to the country despite threats to their own lives from insurrectionists, traitors, and terrorists.
https://balloon-juice.com/2023/01/06/president-biden-ceremony-honoring-heroes/
Granted, some of them were police officers, paid to do a job. But some of them were volunteers, working to see that our elections were fair. So long as we have Jocelyn Bensons, and Rusty Bowers, and Harry Dunns, and Caroline Edwards, and Michale Fanones, and Ruby Freemans, and Eugene Goodmans, and Shaye Mosses, and Brian Sicknicks, and Aquilino Gonells, and Daniel Hodges, and Al Schmidts, we’ll be okay.
What we have today is not our “legacy from the Roman Empire.” It’s a legacy from a handful of sociopathic, egotistical, oligarchs who have used their money to bamboozle racists and misogynists and religious bigots into giving them power to enrich themselves beyond all reason.
Adam says it best: “Stop electing CRAZIES!” When you elect people who tell you that government is bad, EXPECT BAD GOVERNMENT!
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RE: “You say the United States of America is a failed state. I say you’re wrong.”
You asked a question. I gave you my answer. It’s a little strange to be told I’m wrong when I gave you what you asked for.
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“So you contend that the Freedom Caucus is the Libertarian Party in designer suits?”
Their goals to dismantle the government are the same. Their heroes are the same. Call them the John Birch Society, the Tea Party, or the Libertarian Party, they are all the spawn of the Koch family.
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Have any of you actually read The Fountainhead? Roark was an architect. The book is about artistic integrity.
BTW, Rand hated the Libertarian party.
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Rand didn’t base the character of Roark on the profession of William Edward Hickman. She based it on Hickman’s character, which she admired. To her, Hickman was a “hero.”
“Ayn Rand saw in Hickman the “ideal man” she based The Fountainhead on, and used to ground her philosophy and her life’s work. His greatest quality, she believed, was his unfeeling, pitiless selfishness. Hickman’s words were carefully recounted by Rand in her Journals. His statement that, “I am like the state: what is good for me is right,” resonated deeply with her. It was the perfect articulation of her belief that if people pursued their own interests above all else — even above friends, family, or nation — the result would be utopian.”
Did you read the part about what Hickman did? He kidnapped a 12 year old girl and demanded ransom from her father. When the father agreed to pay the ransom, Hickman strangled the girl, cut off her arms and legs, put her in a bathtub and drained the blood from her body, sewed her eyelids open so it would look like she was alive, put her in the backseat of his car and went to meet her father. After he collected the ransom, he pushed the stump of the girl’s body out of the car and sped off, leaving the father in tears over the body of his daughter.
And knowing all of that, Ayn Rand was “astounded that Americans didn’t recognize the heroism Hickman showed when he proudly rose above simply conforming to society’s rules.” She wrote, “It is not the crime alone that has raised the fury of public hatred. It is the case of a daring challenge to society. … It is the amazing picture of a man with no regard whatever for all that society holds sacred, with a consciousness all his own.”
And if you believe Fountainhead was about artistic integrity, you may have read the book but you didn’t understand a word in it. It’s a handbook for MAGA.
Rand may have hated the Libertarian party, but the Libertarian party was in love with her… or at least the characters she created based on her sociopathic idol. Fountainhead was required reading for all of Paul Ryan’s staff.
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You really should avoid forming opinions about people from the writings of people who hate them. You can’t get the nature of a person from out-of-context snippets of their words.
Rand found some things Hickman said intriguing, but she said he was a degenerate and a man without purpose. She looked at him as individuality ruined by baseness.
Peter Benchley wrote a lot about the perfection of the shark as a predator, but JAWS was about the horror of people being eaten. It was not about admiration for the shark, it was about our visceral response to being prey.
Rand’s heroes were self-motivated and exceptional men and women. They were not about greed, they were about excellence. Yes, they pursued success and their own happiness, but they also respected the rights of others to do the same. They would have starved to death before they would have stolen a crust of bread.
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“Thus, the particular case gave an idea of a rotten society that transforms a potentially unique person into to a rotten human being—which society then condemns and destroys.”
So how is this a praise of individualism? It sounds more like the classic defense that the defendant was abused as a child.
Like it or not, society is not composed of exceptional people. If that were the case, they would obviously not be “exceptional “.
Nor is that the ideal. Lake Wobegon professed that all the children were above average. The reason there are a small percentage of business owners versus employees is a good indicator of the balance needed to have a productive economy.
And a productive economy, in my view, does not leave people behind as a paean to the brilliant, or seemingly brilliant, owners and innovators.
We are tribal animals. Success lies in cooperation and support by all citizens.
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You really should read Rand with an open mind.
The last character to speak in ATLAS SHRUGGED is Eddie Willers and he is clearly one of Rand’s favorite characters.
He is not as creative or capable as Galt or Reardon, but he is their moral equal. He is loyal, and does his duty to the end. He is free of envy of his more successful allies and admires their ability, seeking to support their vision, especially Dagney’s’
But Rand was well aware that not everyone can be a Galt or a Readon, but we can all be a Willers and that is just as admirable.
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“You really should read Rand with an open mind.”
How do you know Ms. Radford has a closed mind? Is it because you never agrees with you and will not like ever agree with you. Maybe it is YOU who is closed minded.
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No, because she is commenting Rand’s intentions based on what a hostile source says about her without bothering to seek other opinions are checking on her source.
It would be like reading the Birther conspiracy about Obama and accepting it uncritically and without concern for its origins.
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“because she is commenting Rand’s intentions based on what a hostile source says about her without bothering to seek other opinions are checking on her source.”
Yeah. SO now you are calling Ms. Radford lazy for not using other sources to form an opinion.
You have no idea what sources she has used to form her opinion. And you do exactly what you accuse her of doing, using sources that only discredit the one’s you disagree with. Blind to one’s own hypocrisy….again.
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“You really should avoid forming opinions about people from the writings of people who hate them.”
Okay, here’s a quote from the link you provided from someone who supposedly admires her:
“This is what I think of the case. I am afraid that I idealize Hickman and that he might not be this at all. In fact, he probably isn’t. But it does not make any difference. If he isn’t, he could be, and that’s enough. The reaction of society would be the same, if not worse, toward the Hickman I have in mind. The case showed me how society can wreck an exceptional being, and then murder him for being the wreck that it itself has created. This will be the story of the boy in my book.» (p. 38)”
She blamed “society” for wrecking “an exceptional being.” And that is “the story of the boy in my book.”
Hickman had been an employee of Mr Palmer, the girl’s father, years before. Palmer had testified against Hickman regarding stolen and forged checks and Hickman spent time in prison for the crime. When he got out of prison, Hickman needed money so he came up with a plan to kidnap Palmer’s daughter. The father agreed to pay the money but by then, Hickman said the girl had recognized him and he decided to kill her rather than let her go. So he strangled her to death and began cutting up the body in order to hide it. He said he wasn’t sure she was dead when he began cutting. But after he had cut off her arms and legs, it occurred to him that the father wouldn’t pay the ransom unless he saw his daughter. That’s when he decided to sew her eyes open so it would look like she was alive, wrap her body in a blanket, and prop her up in his car to fool her father until he could get the money. Then, when he got the money, he tossed the stump of her body out of his car and drove away.
That is the “exceptional being” Ayn Rand said was the “story of the boy in my book.” That was the exceptional being the jury ruled was not insane, but the press called a “moral moron.” And so it is with Ayn Rand and her characters. Moral morons. People with absolutely no conscience. No empathy. Soulless shells that walk the earth with no purpose beyond pleasuring themselves.
They were, in fact, all about greed. They respected the rights of others only so long as those rights didn’t interfere with their own goals. They would have sat unconcerned eating their crust of bread, watching all around them starve to death.
I have tried to read her screed. It is bland. It has no life. She would flunk a freshman creative writing class. The woman could not write. Writers have to write what they know. Ayn Rand knew nothing worth writing about.
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While this nauseous article attempts to demonize those “rich billionaires” who don’t want to pay for “moochers”, wealth envy again, the simple fact is the top 25% of taxpayer already pay almost 90% of income taxes collected and the top 1% already pays over 42% of income taxes collected. In other words, socialist peons like the Daily KOs are complete liars with their pity the poor who should have more of other peoples money narrative. The reason the middle class has gone down some is due to manufacturing moving overseas because the US had the highest corporate tax rate in the world and our labor costs are very much higher. Find a way to level the labor costs worldwide and you will see manufacturing return and a higher middle class. That is if you can convince those living off of “big government” to actually work.
https://www.ntu.org/foundation/tax-page/who-pays-income-taxes
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…”wealth envy again, the simple fact is the top 25% of taxpayer already pay almost 90% of income taxes collected and the top 1% already pays over 42% of income taxes collected”…
Yet the tax RATE that they pay is much LOWER than what you or I pay.
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