[Vision2020] FW: Party of Strivers

Betsy Dickow betsyd at turbonet.com
Fri Aug 31 10:57:13 PDT 2012 


-----Original Message-----
From: Betsy Dickow [mailto:betsyd at turbonet.com] 
Sent: Friday, August 31, 2012 10:57 AM
To: 'Joe Campbell'
Subject: RE: [Vision2020] Party of Strivers

And most of the poor will be poor through not fault of their own...how many
people are working hard and often overtime at the University of Idaho and
not making ends meet...many many many.  And here it's no different from the
Wall Street corporate model...administrators win big and everyone else is a
peon, working for peanuts.
This is democracy?  No, this is the will of a few billionaires and the
Republican Party...Get your head out of the sand and stop thinking in terms
of party loyalty.
Party loyalty is blind...and deaf and dumb...and cruel.





-----Original Message-----
From: vision2020-bounces at moscow.com [mailto:vision2020-bounces at moscow.com]
On Behalf Of Joe Campbell
Sent: Friday, August 31, 2012 10:46 AM
To: lfalen
Cc: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Party of Strivers

How is Ayn Rand's philosophy basically correct? Do you think the poor are
lazy? Do you disagree that some people have a bad lot and without some kind
of outside assistance, they are unlikely to realize the American dream? If
so, then Rand is just plain wrong. Tweaking her view to allow for compassion
is in this case equivalent to rejecting her view. That is what separates
Rand's philosophy from the kind of view that Brooks is suggesting. Brooks'
offers a much better, more realistic take on humanity, as I see it. Joe

On Fri, Aug 31, 2012 at 10:18 AM, lfalen <lfalen at turbonet.com> wrote:
> I am not a big fan of David Brooks, but this is not a bad article. I like
Rice also. I have some problems with Ayn Rand. Her philosophy is basicly
correct, but it need s to be tempered by some compassion, which she seems to
lack.
> Roger
> -----Original message-----
> From: Art Deco art.deco.studios at gmail.com
> Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2012 03:51:28 -0700
> To: vision2020 at moscow.com
> Subject: [Vision2020] Party of Strivers
>
>>   [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>
>>
>> <http://www.nytimes.com/adx/bin/adx_click.html?type=goto&opzn&page=ww
>> w.nytimes.com/printer-friendly&pos=Position1&sn2=336c557e/4f3dd5d2&sn
>> 1=34aeaaa2/80e4ddbc&camp=FSL2012_ArticleTools_120x60_1787508c_nyt5&ad
>> =BOSW_120x60_June13_NoText&goto=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Efoxsearchlight%2Ec
>> om%2Fbeastsofthesouthernwild>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>> August 30, 2012
>> Party of Strivers By DAVID
>> BROOKS<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/c
>> olumnists/davidbrooks/index.html>
>>
>> America was built by materialistic and sometimes superficial 
>> strivers. It was built by pioneers who voluntarily subjected 
>> themselves to stone-age conditions on the frontier fired by dreams of 
>> riches. It was built by immigrants who crammed themselves into 
>> hellish tenements because they thought it would lead, for their 
>> children, to big houses, big cars and big lives.
>>
>> America has always been defined by this ferocious commercial energy, 
>> this zealotry for self-transformation, which leads its citizens to 
>> vacation less, work longer, consume more and invent more.
>>
>> Many Americans, and many foreign observers, are ambivalent about or 
>> offended by this driving material ambition. Read "The Great Gatsby."
>> Read D.H. Lawrence on Benjamin Franklin.
>>
>> But today's Republican Party unabashedly celebrates this ambition and 
>> definition of success. Speaker after speaker at the convention in 
>> Tampa, Fla., celebrated the striver, who started small, struggled 
>> hard, looked within and became wealthy. Speaker after speaker argued 
>> that this ideal of success is under assault by Democrats who look 
>> down on strivers, who undermine self-reliance with government 
>> dependency, who smother ambition under regulations.
>>
>> Republicans promised to get government out of the way. Reduce the 
>> burden of debt. Offer Americans an open field and a fair chance to 
>> let their ambition run.
>>
>> If you believe, as I do, that American institutions are hitting a 
>> creaky middle age, then you have a lot of time for this argument. If 
>> you believe that there has been a hardening of the national arteries 
>> caused by a labyrinthine tax code, an unsustainable Medicare program 
>> and a suicidal addiction to deficits, then you appreciate this 
>> streamlining agenda, even if you don't buy into the whole Ayn
Rand-influenced gospel of wealth.
>>
>> On the one hand, you see the Republicans taking the initiative, 
>> offering rejuvenating reform. On the other hand, you see an exhausted 
>> Democratic Party, which says: We don't have an agenda, but we really 
>> don't like theirs. Given these options, the choice is pretty clear.
>>
>> But there is a flaw in the vision the Republicans offered in Tampa. 
>> It is contained in its rampant hyperindividualism. Speaker after 
>> speaker celebrated the solitary and heroic individual. There was 
>> almost no talk of community and compassionate conservatism. There was 
>> certainly no conservatism as Edmund Burke understood it, in which 
>> individuals are embedded in webs of customs, traditions, habits and
governing institutions.
>>
>> Today's Republicans strongly believe that individuals determine their 
>> own fates. In a Pew Research Center 
>> poll<http://www.people-press.org/2012/06/04/partisan-polarization-sur
>> ges-in-bush-obama-years/>, for example, 57 percent of Republicans 
>> believe people are poor because they don't work hard. Only 28 percent 
>> believe people are poor because of circumstances beyond their 
>> control. These Republicans believe that if only government gets out 
>> of the way, then people's innate qualities will enable them to 
>> flourish.
>>
>> But there's a problem. I see what the G.O.P. is offering the 
>> engineering major from Purdue or the business major from Arizona 
>> State. The party is offering skilled people the freedom to run their 
>> race. I don't see what the party is offering the waitress with two 
>> kids, or the warehouse worker whose wages have stagnated for a 
>> decade, or the factory worker whose skills are now obsolete.
>>
>> The fact is our destinies are shaped by social forces much more than 
>> the current G.O.P. is willing to admit. The skills that enable people 
>> to flourish are not innate but constructed by circumstances.
>>
>> Government does not always undermine initiative. Some government 
>> programs, like the G.I. Bill, inflame ambition. Others depress it.
>> What matters is not whether a program is public or private but its effect
on character.
>> Today's Republicans, who see every government program as a step on 
>> the road to serfdom, are often blind to that. They celebrate the race 
>> to success but don't know how to give everyone access to that race.
>>
>> The wisest speech departed from the prevailing story line. It was 
>> delivered by Condoleezza Rice. It echoed an older, less libertarian 
>> conservatism, which harkens back to Washington, Tocqueville and 
>> Lincoln. The powerful words in her speech were not "I" and "me" - the 
>> heroic individual They were "we" and "us" - citizens who emerge out 
>> of and exist as participants in a great national project.
>>
>> Rice celebrated material striving but also larger national goals - 
>> the long national struggle to extend benefits and mobilize all human 
>> potential. She subtly emphasized how our individual destinies are 
>> dependent upon the social fabric and upon public institutions like 
>> schools, just laws and our mission in the world. She put less 
>> emphasis on commerce and more on citizenship.
>>
>> Today's Republican Party may be able to perform useful tasks with its 
>> current hyperindividualistic mentality. But its commercial soul is 
>> too narrow. It won't be a worthy governing party until it treads the 
>> course Lincoln trod: starting with individual ambition but ascending 
>> to a larger vision and creating a national environment that arouses 
>> ambition and nurtures success.
>>
>>
>> --
>> Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
>> art.deco.studios at gmail.com
>>
>>
>
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