[Vision2020] FW: Party of Strivers

Sat Sep 1 14:35:01 PDT 2012

'Party loyalty is blind...and deaf and dumb...and cruel.'

I'm about half way through this interview of Jonathan Turley by John Cusack, looking at Obama's repugnant foreign policy:

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/11264-john-cusack-and-jonathan-turley-on-obamas-constitution

A s long as we support the people implementing these policies, they will go on. I'm not voting for Obama again, because of this.

Sunil 

> From: betsyd at turbonet.com
> To: vision2020 at moscow.com
> Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2012 10:57:13 -0700
> Subject: [Vision2020] FW:  Party of Strivers
> 
> 
> 
> -----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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