A New Textbook of Americanism: The Politics of Ayn Rand
Jonathan HoenigA New Textbook of Americanism: The Politics of Ayn Rand Sözleri ve Alıntıları
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The alliance with Pakistan, sealed with a handshake by George W. Bush, is hardly an outlier. Take the impossible-to-satirize situation with a major organ of American foreign policy that enjoys longstanding, bi-partisan support: foreign aid. Where do $28-odd-billion go every year? To countries where many, many people view us as an “enemy.” The Pew Global Attitudes Survey queried more than 325,000 people in 60 countries that receive U.S. aid. It asked whether they saw America as more of a “partner,” or more of an “enemy” (or neither). The countries with the highest percentage of respondents who viewed us as an “enemy” were also among those receiv-ing significant amounts of U.S.-backed aid: the Palestinian territories (76 percent of respondents saw us as an “enemy”), Pakistan (64 percent), Turkey (49 percent), Lebanon (46 percent), Venezuela (39 percent).
So, yes, we are the world’s mightiest nation, but we serve as a global ATM for people hostile to us and our interests. We spend years chasing down Osama Bin Laden and fighting his minions in Afghanistan, while at the same time we support Pakistan’s jihadist-enabling regime. Look broadly and deeply at American foreign policy, and you will find it crowded with many more instances of the same depressing theme. When considered as a whole, American foreign policy does not add up to a whole. It is a bewildering mish-mash of diverging, inconsistent goals. It lacks a unifying, guiding principle.
Sayfa 170
So there’s such a thing as “don’t bombard hospitals.” Well, it is valid if both sides see an advantage in it. But the idea of “don’t murder women and children,” I don’t think it is particularly relevant if you’re murdering men.
What’s the difference? And it’s demonstrated in Vietnam all the time, because women and children are right there with the guerrillas. How are you going to make a distinction? If it’s tactically necessary to bomb civilians during a war, you have to. More than that, it’s your moral duty to do so. Because otherwise what are you doing? A kind of medieval tournament where people are dying while waving ladies’ handkerchiefs?
Sayfa 119 - Damn so mean
Imagine how difficult it was for those living in Soviet Russia to think independently after they were forced to allow other individuals or families to live with them in their once private homes or apartments. Susette Kelo’s freedom to think was likewise destroyed when, here in the U.S., the Supreme Court upheld, as legal, government confiscation of her home via eminent domain. Freedom of speech is similar in that it requires the ability to use and dispose of money to purchase access to the Internet and other broadcast media, or perhaps pay for design and printing services, rent lecture halls, etc.
Sayfa 64
Fortunes are made by rational, creative minds operating in a context of freedom—and great fortunes are made by the great minds amidst the greatest degree of freedom. American business history alone exhibits such superlative examples as Astor (fur trade), Vanderbilt (railroads), Rockefeller (oil), Carn-egie (steel), Morgan (finance), Mellon (finance), Ford (automobiles), Disney (entertainment), Kroc (fast food chains), Walton (discount retail), Buffett (investments), Gates (software), and Bezos (internet retail). Th ese varied for-tunes were made possible not only by the freedom and security capitalism ensures, but also by a rare combination of character traits: rationality, self-esteem, independence, ambition, productiveness, honesty, integrity, courage, and perseverance.
Sayfa 51 - How are fortunes made in capitalist system?
"Voting is merely a proper political device—within a strictly, constitutionally delimited sphere of action—for choosing the practical means of implementing a society’s basic principles. But those principles are not determined by vote."
Sayfa 82 - Rand
That’s the issue from the side of goods. Now consider it from the side of money. When we buy foreign goods, such as a Samsung phone, we pay in U.S. dollars. Why does Samsung accept dollars in payment for their phones? Because the dollars can be spent here. Samsung’s dollar-receipts represent a demand for American exports. Even if Samsung exchanges its dollars for Korean currency, rather than spending them here, the provider of the Korean currency accepts U.S. dollars only because they can be spent here.
Ultimately, then, the trade is Korean phones for American cars, or American apps—or American real estate, stocks, bonds, or just American bank accounts. This last set of alternatives—investment in America—is what shows up in the accounting as “a trade deficit.”
A trade “deficit” means: we have imported more than we have exported. But how did we accomplish that? How did we get more than we gave? We didn’t—some of what we gave was not consumer goods but capital goods.
It’s just that foreigners’ purchase of our capital goods doesn’t get entered under “exports” in the accountant’s ledger.
Sayfa 165
As Ayn Rand put it, “The right to life is the source of all rights—and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible.”
Property, then, is crucial to understanding the meaning of other rights, and also to understanding what it means to exercise those rights. Th e right to property is, in effect, a precondition to the exercise of all legitimate rights.
This doesn’t mean, however, that you have a right to be given, e.g., a home or apartment, healthcare (or health “insurance”), a minimum standard of living, an education, etc.
Sayfa 65
Individual rights enshrine self-assertion, not self-sacrifice; the quest for material wealth, not poverty ennobling the soul; the profit motive, not the heaven motive; independence, not obedience; the pursuit of happiness, not of duty.
Sayfa 178 - Peikoff
“All things excellent,” said Spinoza, “are as dif f i cult as they are rare.” Since human values are not automatic, his statement is undeniable.
In another respect, however—and this is Ayn Rand’s unique perspec-tive—the task ahead is not dif f i cult.
To save the world is the simplest thing in the world.
All one has to do is think.
Sayfa 104
Capitalist theory, consistently interpreted, requires a “wall of separation” between Church and state, just as it does between economy and state. Th e government may not establish religion or any other ideology; nor may it redistribute wealth or regulate any other aspect of the economy in this system. A church may gain spiritual power over man, and a business economic power, but neither can exercise political power—that is, neither can advance its goals by seeking special government action. The whole apparatus of the absolute state—and implicitly of the modern welfare state—is thus swept away. The government is nothing but a policeman charged with arresting criminals at home and abroad.
The state, in Jefferson’s words, is to concern itself only with that which “picks my pocket or breaks my bones.”
Sayfa 178