A New Textbook of Americanism: The Politics of Ayn Rand
Jonathan HoenigSözler ve Alıntılar
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