Here's an article from AEIR.ORG by Phillip W. Magness
Twelve Times...
From the article linked below.
"This has been a year of astonishing policy failure. We are surrounded by devastation conceived and cheered by intellectuals and their political handmaidens. The errors number in the thousands so please consider (these 12) to be little more than a first draft -
Twelve-times-the-lockdowners-were-wrong/
"I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing. Make them intelligent, and they will be vigilant; give the the means of detecting the wrong, and they will apply the remedy." (1837)
H/T: The Savvy Street
Excerpts:
About twenty-four hundred years ago, the Greek philosopher Plato came up with the idea of constructing the state and society according to an elaborate plan. Plato wanted “wise men” (philosophers) at the helm of the government, but he also made it clear that his kind of state would need a transformation of the humans. In modern times, the promoters of the omnipotent state want to substitute Plato’s philosopher with the expert and create the new man through eugenics, which is now called transhumanism. The United Nations and its various suborganizations play a pivotal role in this project which has reached its present stage in promoting initiatives such as Agenda 2030 and the Great Reset.
The next decisive step toward the global economic transformation was taken with the first report of the Club of Rome. In 1968, the Club of Rome was initiated at the Rockefeller estate Bellagio in Italy. Its first report was published in 1972 under the title “The Limits to Growth.”
The horror scenario of global warming has been a useful tool in their hands to gain political influence and finally rule over public discourse.
"IT IS YOUR MIND THAT THEY WANT YOU TO SURRENDER - ALL THOSE WHO PREACH THE CREED OF SACRIFICE, WHATEVER THEIR TAGS OR THEIR MOTIVES, WHETHER THEY DEMAND IT FOR THE SAKE OF YOUR SOUL OR OF YOUR BODY, WHETHER THEY PROMISE YOU ANOTHER LIFE IN HEAVEN OR A FULL STOMACH ON THIS EARTH. THOSE WHO START BY SAYING:"IT IS SELFISH TO PURSUE YOUR OWN WISHES, YOU MUST SACRIFICE THEM TO THE WISHES OF OTHERS" - END UP BY SAYING:"IT IS SELFISH TO UPHOLD YOUR CONVICTIONS, YOU MUST SACRIFICE THEM TO THE CONVICTIONS OF OTHERS."
GALT'S SPEECH
FOR THE NEW INTELLECTUAL
Peter Schwartz has a blistering analysis of why American's should repudiate Trump. Don't Miss It.
In the absence of - intellectual - polarization, we are witnessing the growth of the ugliest kind of divisiveness or - existential - polarization, if you will; pressure-group warfare. The country is splitting into dozens of blind, deaf, but screaming camps, each drawn together not by loyalty to an idea, but by the accident of race, age, sex, religious creed, or the frantic whim of a given moment -- not by values held in common, but by a common hatred of some other group -- not by choice but by terror.
Ayn Rand 1971
What objectivity and the study of philosophy require is not an "open mind" but an active mind - a mind able and eagerly willing to examine ideas, but to examine them critically. An active mind does not grant equal status to truth and falsehood; it does not remain floating forever in a stagnant vacuum of neutrality and uncertainty; by assuming the responsibility of judgement, it reaches firm convictions and holds to them. Since it is able to prove its convictions, an active mind achieves an unassailable certainty in confrontations with assailants - a certainty untainted by spots of blind faith, approximation, evasion and fear.
From her essay, Philosophical Detection, in her book Philosophy: Who Needs It
Reposting this from the Ayn Rand Institute:
Nowadays, however, an embarrassed, guilty silence descends on the nation each Columbus Day. We’ve been taught that Columbus opened the way for rapacious European settlers to unleash a stream of horrors on a virgin continent: slavery, racism, warfare, epidemic, and the cruel oppression of Indians.
This modern view of Columbus represents an unjust attack upon both our country and the civilization that made it possible. Western civilization did not originate slavery, racism, warfare, or disease — but with America as its exemplar, that civilization created the antidotes. How? By means of a set of core ideas that set Western civilization apart from all others: reason and individualism.
There is no future for the world except through a rebirth of the Aristotelian approach to philosophy. This would require an Aristotelian affirmation of the reality of existence, of the sovereignty of reason, of life on earth - and of the splendor of man.
Aristotle and Objectivism agree on fundamentals and, as a result, on this last point, also. Both hold that man can deal with reality, can achieve values, can live non-tragically. Neither believes in man the worm or man the monster; each upholds man the thinker and therefore man the hero. Aristotle calls him "the great-souled man." Ayn Rand calls him Howard Roark or John Galt.
Leonard Peikoff
The Ominous Parallels
I thought of this driving into work today. It'll be a weekly quote from Ayn Rand or one of her associates. Sometimes I'll have where the quote is taken from and sometimes not.
Here's the first one:
Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values.
Martin and I did a bit of 'housecleaning' in this short episode. Still, we talk about shows to come and ideas we will talk about. Click the link above to listen. Any feedback or comments are welcome.
UPDATED: 10/5/2020
There are much more serious and freedom affirming issues behind the pathetic circus that's about to descend on us October 12th when the hearings begin to confirm Justice Barrett to the Supreme Court.
I've recently been studying the horrifying apparatus known as the Administrative State. Plaguing us here in America. It has grown with unchecked power over all of us, for decades. Since it is populated with 99% leftist/progressive - and unelected - "goose-steppers," that answer only to Democratic operatives, is it any wonder there is any freedom's left for individual Americans?
I subscribe to the New Civil Liberties Alliance newsletter and in its latest issue, they produce a White Paper outlining her work defending the individual against the state. Of course, by no means is she perfect. Who is?
Speaking for myself, ANY rollback of state power over the individual is a step for genuine progress. I tentatively endorse her nomination.
