Margaret Thatcher, The Iron Lady - Freedom Fighter and Icon Dies at 87

By Marion Algier

Lady Thatcher Pushed Back

“Margaret Thatcher was a freedom fighter, a lover of capitalism and promoter of free societies and the rights of the people; a symbol of strength for the world!!  You either loved her or hated her, but nobody ignored her!!  Had she not been suffering from dementia (caused by a series of strokes… and a stroke ultimately killed her) the past several years, like her good friend Ronald Reagan suffered from Alzheimer’s the last years of his life, she would not have believed what has happened to America and the West and would certainly have been a vocal opponent of the Obama administration  and many of the policies  in her own country ”  …Marion Algier - Ask Marion~

British Prime Minister Cameron said Margaret Thatcher not only led Great Britain, she saved Her.  Thatcher took on the unions, turned her country around and helped change the course of the world.  She was the longest serving British Prime Minister of the 20th Century.  Prime Minister Tony Blair said Thatcher’s global influence was immense.

RUSH/EIB: She was purely formal and sophisticated. I don't mean boring and dull and old-fashioned. She carried herself with a dignity and a self-respect and a seriousness that led no one to question who she really was. If you ever had the chance to be around her, you would know that she was in person as you saw her on television. She was committed, she was serious. She was formal. She was great woman, a great human being…

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Margaret Thatcher has passed away, and that will be the first thing we get into when we come back from the break. We've got some audio sound bites from Lady Thatcher. Lady Thatcher, I was very fortunate to know. Because of some friends of mine who knew her, I was often invited to social occasions with her. I must have spent quality time with Lady Thatcher on 10 to 15 different occasions, all in the 1990s. I've regaled you with some of the stories.

In every one of those instances -- every one -- she was identically the same. She was purely formal and sophisticated. I don't mean boring and dull and old-fashioned. She carried herself with a dignity and a self-respect and a seriousness that led no one to question who she really was. If you ever had the chance to be around her, you would know that she was in person as you saw her on television. She was committed, she was serious. She was formal. She was great woman, a great human being.

Some people call it a coincidence -- I think it's more than that -- that at the same time in the world we had Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, and Margaret Thatcher. During those years were the only time in my lifetime where the left was actually turned back. Not just stopped, but defeated and turned back. It was the only time in my life. Poland, Berlin, Moscow, the United States. Wherever. Those three leaders on the political stage, the world stage at the same time, did more for freedom and liberty for people all over this world than any three people since the founding of this country -- and they all served at the same time, overlapping.

Lady Thatcher is the only one of the three that I met, and I got to know her very well.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here's a little trivia question. Does anybody out there know who it was that decided to call Margaret Thatcher "the Iron Lady"? Any idea who it was? It was not Neil Kinnock, and therefore not Joe Biden. It was not a British politician. It was not an American politician. It was no one in the media, at least in the Western media. It was the Soviet news agency Tass that called her, that dubbed Margaret Thatcher the Iron Lady, and the West's Drive-By Media gleefully picked up on that.

Tass did not mean it to be a compliment, neither did the American Drive-By Media, but of course it turned out to be one. Margaret Thatcher reminded me of my grandfather. My grandfather was serious all the time. He wore a jacket and tie every day of the year -- Saturday, Sunday, no matter what -- because he worked every day. Lady Thatcher was serious. She was funny, but she was serious. Everything mattered. One of the many things she said that I've never forgotten -- and there were a lot of them, but this one has always stuck with me -- was "Consensus is the absence of leadership."

Consensus is now the objective in this country.

To her, it meant no leadership.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, don't misunderstand when I say that Lady Thatcher was serious. I don't mean that she was boring and constantly talking about weighty things that only a few people were interested in. Quite the opposite. She was filled with self-respect and dignity. And she knew who she was. She's the former prime minister of the United Kingdom, this during the time I knew her. She was proud of that, but that meant something, that had requirements that she was never, ever going to lapse. She was always going to fulfill. She had a great sense of humor, and it was a very dry wit.

The friends of mine who made it possible for me to know her are great people here in Palm Beach, Gay and Stanley Gaines, and they'd known her for many, many years, and Lady Thatcher was entirely willing to attend dinner parties with their friends. Many people would beg off something like that. "Please, I don't want to hang around a bunch of people I don't know. Please, Gay, I came to see you." No, there would be dinner parties with ten people, 25, 30 people. And whatever was asked of her, she attempted to comply, every question. Everybody that wanted to ask her about something was given her full attention. I remember one particular evening, it was the end of the week, it had been a long week for me, and I showed up, cocktail party, dinner. I sit down at dinner and Gay immediately says, "Okay, Rush, what's the latest in..."

I said, "Gay, I'm tired. I just don't want to talk about politics right now." Of course the table looked, "You don't want to talk politics? Do you understand who's sitting here?" She was seated next to me. And I said, "No." At the time I just didn't want to be on stage. I was exhausted, I was worn out, and I just wanted to listen. And Gay kept trying to urge me, and Lady Thatcher said, "Gay, he doesn't wish to speak about politics. So let's talk of the rule of law," and, bam, there we are off on a discussion, the rule of law. She loved the founders. She absolutely thought they were the most brilliant people, 'cause they were Brits, don't forget. Our founders were British. She loved them.

She loved Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson was it. But she loved them all. She knew the history of this country better than most people in this country do, and she revered it. She was one of the greatest Americans, quote, unquote, that I've ever met.

Let's go to the some audio sound bites. First up, we have her appearing with William Buckley on Firing Line, 1977. At the time she's a member of parliament, Conservative Party leader. She's not the Prime Minister yet. Buckley said, "What is there to be learned from the failure of British socialism?" This is important. At the time, British socialism was in the process of crumbling, 1977. Of course today it's back with a vengeance, with its tentacles more deeply hooked than ever. But in 1977 it was collapsing. It was on the way. She finished the job.

"What is there to be learned from the failure of British socialism; and what, in fact, has been learned from the failure of British socialism? In a recent speech, Mrs. Thatcher said, 'We observe what happens elsewhere and draw lessons from it, but we are aware that different national traditions, experience, and religious values affect the total political and economic situation.' Question: Does the failure of British socialism have the same meaning for the United States as, say, for Venezuela?"

Video:  Margaret Thatcher - Capitalism and a Free Society

THATCHER: There are two ways in which any government can proceed. One is a way based on what you and I would call a free society, which is enshrined right at the heart of the American Constitution. The other one is a way which allows only one view both of economics and politics and which almost everything is either owned or controlled by the state, including the media, including the ideas, including freedom of discussion and everything. There is no freedom of discussion. Now, between those two ways, the free society and the totally controlled society, there are, of course, variations. I think what we've learned in Britain is that we've gradually, over the last certainly 12 or 13 years, with perhaps a little interruption, gone slowly further and further away from the free society towards something else.

RUSH: So she was in a way disagreeing with Buckley, who was asking about the failure of -- well, not really disagreeing. He was talking about the failure, but not the demise that had yet to happen, and it didn't begin to happen until she became Prime Minister. So after pointing out that Britain had moved further away from a free society in 1977, she continued with this.

THATCHER: At the same time we've found -- I don't find it strange, but some other people do -- that we have stopped creating wealth. We've had a large number of increasing restrictions. And you've been finding two things: First, that we are more and more concentrating on redistributing the wealth we've got, rather than creating any more. To create more, you need a slightly freer society, and you need an incentive society. Naturally when I see that happening, I look with very great alarm to societies which have gone even further left. That is, they've tried to redistribute even more and haven't had the incentives for people working hard on their own account, doing well for their families and often then being able to create jobs for others, they've produced a much more prosperous society than we have. But by and large you've got the two broad, different economic and political approaches.

RUSH: Here we are, 1977, and again, the value here, not just an illustration of who Lady Thatcher was, for those who don't know, but rather in 1977 it was known what is known today. And it was being executed then, as it's being executed now. And in 1977 it failed, i.e., the redistribution of wealth, the stoppage and the creation of wealth, which happens at the same time. The moment a society becomes redistributive, it stops creating wealth. She was cataloging current circumstances in Britain in 1977. And this was, of course, to set up her eventual triumph as prime minister.

But, you see, it serves to illustrate that the left is always what it is. There's nothing new about it. Its failure is commonplace. It has never worked. It has never succeeded. The left, after destroying one free society after another, has to keep finding another to run their experiments on because each time they try, they destroy. They destroy the creation of wealth. They disincentivize the creation of wealth with the redistribution of wealth by creating more and more recipients for having done nothing. And so they create a vicious cycle, spinning in onto itself, which is self-destructive, and it's happening here now. It's happening throughout the world. The thing that is most difficult for me to understand is it's never succeeded. And yet people turn to it still with as much hope as they ever have.

So what's the allure? It's never worked. It never will work. But in the short term, it does work for those who don't wish to work. That's the problem. It does work temporarily for those who are the beneficiaries of all this. In America today, 90 million people aren't working, 90 million. Last month, folks, talked about this on Friday, 633,000 people stopped looking for work. The labor force participation rate grew by over half a million people, in one month. Those are jobs that have vanished. Every one of those people is eating, and pretty much what they want to eat. Every one of them has a cell phone, and every one of them has no trouble getting around. They all live somewhere. And so to them, you say, "Well, it's not working."

"Well, it is for me; I don't have a job, and I'm doing well. It's working fine for me."

And this is how they sell it, catalog it, success. They're never around when the total implosion takes place. And while a society is crumbling and imploding, an implosion and crumbling that they are causing, the people on the left, they succeed in blaming their opponents for it, which is where we are now. Republicans are responsible for everything rotten happening in the country. It's all part of the left's tactics. The thing is, my friends, the people on the left know it's going to fail always, too. They are not -- I mean, you've got maybe some young leftists coming out of college with rosy scenarios of their future, rose-colored glasses, and they think they're onto something here, utopia.

But the left, the adults know it isn't gonna work, never has worked, that's not its purpose. Its purpose is to enshrine them as elites. Its purpose is to gain them power. But in terms of a workable way of governing a country, it fails, has failed, every time it's tried. Brief time-out. More Margaret Thatcher sound bites when we come back.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: November 22nd, 1900, House of Commons in London, Margaret Thatcher delivering her final speech as prime minister. During the speech, she yielded time to a member of Parliament, Mr. Simon Hughes, who said, "There is no doubt the Prime Minister has in many ways achieved substantial success. But there is one statistic that I understand has not, however, challenged you, and that is that over her 11 years, the gap between the richest 10% and the poorest 10% in this country has widened substantially.

"How can she say at the end of her chapter of British policies that she can justify many people in the constituency such as mine being relatively poorer, much less well housed, much less well provided than it was in 1979? Surely the gentlelady accepts that it is not a record that she or any prime minister can be proud of," and of course there were the hoots and hollers, and this is what she said, again, delivering her final speech as PM...

Video: Margaret Thatcher - "They'd rather have the poor poorer!"

THATCHER: He would rather have the poor poorer, provided the rich were less rich. That was the liberal policy! Yes, it came out! He didn't intend it to, but he did. I give way to the honorable gentleman.

MAN: The prime minister is aware but I detest every single one of her domestic policies and I have never hidden that fact..

THATCHER: And I think that the honorable gentleman knows that I have the same contempt for his socialist policies as the people of East Europe who have experienced them. I think I must have hit the right nail on the head when I pointed out that the logic of those policies are they'd rather have the poor poorer. Once they start to talk about "the gap," they'd rather the gap was that, down there. That. Not there. But that. So long as the gap is smaller -- so long as the gap is smaller -- they'd rather have the poor poorer. You do not create wealth and opportunity that way. You do not create a property-owning democracy that way.

RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, that's called push-back. That's called standing up for what you believe. That's called standing up for your principles. It's called not being shouted down, not being a coward, not being afraid, not worrying about what is said about you. Which, by the way, she also detested: People who were consumed with what other people thought about them. She said, "They will never amount to anything, and we will never know who they truly are," but she called these people out.

The same argument here.

"Under your policies the rich are getting rich and the poor are getting poorer." No, under your policies the poor are getting poorer and everybody's getting poorer and that's all you care about. If the poor get poorer, that's fine with you as long as the rich do! That's what she was shouting back at this liberal. One woman against all these liberals in the House of Commons. There is no such leader in America today. There is no such push-back. There is no one defending the founding, conservatism, whatever. The concept of private property, wealth creation. Not publicly, not defiantly, not pushing back. It doesn't happen.

Here is her tribute to Ronald Reagan, February 3rd, 2004, Simi Valley, California.

Video:  The Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher, and Ronald Reagan's 83rd Birthday [1/5]

THATCHER: You strode into our midst at a time when America needed you most. This great country had been through a period of national malaise bereft of any sense of moral direction. Through it all, throughout eight of the fastest-moving years in memory, you were unflappable and unyielding. You were not only America's president, important as that is, you were a great leader. In a time of average men, you have stood taller than anyone else.

RUSH: Margaret Thatcher, Simi Valley, California, February 3rd, 1994. This was at a birthday gala for Reagan. Here she wraps it up, praising Reagan's toughness...

THATCHER: With a toughness unseen for the long time, you stood face-to-face with the Evil Empire, and with an unexpected diplomacy which confused your foes -- and even some of your friends --

AUDIENCE: (rippling laughter)

THATCHER: -- you reached out to that empire, perhaps no longer evil but still formidable. You met its leaders on their turf, but on your terms.

RUSH: That's Reagan's 83rd birthday gala in Simi Valley, California.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Lady Thatcher really was transformative in the true sense of the word. She transformed the UK, during her time, from socialist left to a free market, wealth-creating free society -- and she is hated and reviled today in her own country, by the media, much as conservatives in this country are, but there's the no denying what she accomplished, what she achieved, and how she did it.

END TRANSCRIPT

Margaret Thatcher Bio

Thatcher was born on October 13, 1925, in Grantham, England, Margaret Thatcher became Britain's Conservative Party leader and in 1979 was elected prime minister, the first woman to hold the position. During her three terms, she cut social welfare programs, reduced trade union power and privatized certain industries. Thatcher resigned in 1991 due to unpopular policy and power struggles in her party. She died on April 8, 2013, at age 87.

Politician and former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher was born as Margaret Hilda Roberts on October 13, 1925, in Grantham, England. Nicknamed the "Iron Lady," Thatcher served as the prime minister of England from 1979 to 1990. The daughter of a local businessman, she was educated at a local grammar school, Grantham Girls' High School. Her family operated a grocery store and they all lived in an apartment above the store. In her early years, Thatcher was introduced to conservative politics by her father, who was a member of the town's council.

A good student, Thatcher was accepted to Oxford University, where she studied chemistry at Somerville College. One of her instructors was the Dorothy Hodgkin, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist. Politically active in her youth, Thatcher served as president of the Conservative Association at the university. She earned a degree in chemistry in 1947, and went on to work as a research chemist in Colchester. Later, she worked as a research chemist in Dartford.

Two years after graduating from college, Thatcher made her first bid for public office. She ran as the conservative candidate for a Dartford parliamentary seat in the 1950 elections. Thatcher knew from the start that it would be nearly impossible to win the position away from the liberal Labour Party. Still she earned the respect of her political party peers with her speeches. Defeated, Thatcher remained undaunted, trying again the following year, but once more her efforts were unsuccessful. Two months after her loss, she married Denis Thatcher.

In 1952, Thatcher put politics aside for a time to study law. She and her husband welcomed twins Carol and Mark the next year. After completing her training, Thatcher qualified as a barrister, a type of lawyer, in 1953. But she didn't stay away from the political arena for too long. Thatcher won a seat in the House of Commons in 1959, representing Finchley.

Clearly a woman on the rise, Thatcher was appointed parliamentary under secretary for pensions and national insurance in 1961. When the Labour Party assumed control of the government, she became a member of what is called the Shadow Cabinet, a group of political leaders who would hold Cabinet-level posts if their party was in power. 

When Conservatives returned to office in June 1970, Thatcher was appointed secretary of state for education and science, and dubbed "Thatcher, milk snatcher," after her abolition of the universal free school milk scheme. She found her position frustrating, not because of all the bad press around her actions, but because she had difficulty getting Prime Minister Edward Heath to listen to her ideas.  Read Full Bio HERE

16 of the Greatest Margaret Thatcher Quotes

Cold Warriors: President Roland Reagan, Blessed John Paul II, & Baroness Margaret Thatcher (The Blaze)

There must be a great reunion going on in Heaven right now!!

Thatcher, Reagan, Pope John Paul II and Gorbachev ended the Cold War

Daniel Janin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images  -  Prime Minister Thatcher greeted residents who gathered to see her in Moscow during a visit in 1987. More Photos »

We’re deeply saddened at the loss of Margaret Thatcher. While the Iron Lady is sadly gone, her iron will, her unfailing trust in what is right and just, and her lessons to all of us will live on forever. She was a trailblazer like no other. We lost an icon, but her legacy, as solid as iron, will live on in perpetuity. ~ Sarah Palin

"I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left." ~ Margaret Thatcher  Hmmm… Sound like anyone we know?

Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were political partners and ideological soul mates, as written about in Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher: A Political Marriage & Reagan and Thatcher: The Difficult Relationship, and many feel that torch has been passed to Sarah Palin, who considers them both her mentors and idols.

Meryl Streep recently played the ‘The Iron Lady’ [Blu-ray/DVD/Digital Combo). Although political opposites, Streep found Thatcher a remarkable woman and a leader in the role of women in politics!  Although the film was hailed as a success, garnering Streep her third  Oscar win, Margaret Thatcher’s family was appalled at the depiction of the former prime minister as a dementia sufferer looking back at her life with sadness… as usual a little too much artistic license and looking at a Conservative who reforged her country from a Progressive perspective.  It is a film worth seeing, but not to be taken as the gospel.  Watch it, but do your homework and read about this remarkable woman!!  It was not only filmed from a sad and uncomfortable perspective but was full of historical inaccuracies… like two other  recent examples of based-on-a-true-story films: "Lincoln" and "Zero Dark Thirty"

Books on Thatcher: Margaret Thatcher: A Portrait of the Iron Lady, The Margaret Thatcher Book Of Quotations, Margaret Thatcher: Power and Personality

Meryl Streep, left, and Margaret Thatcher (Photo: Weinstein Company/Getty Images)

Related:

• Gorbachev says "exceptional" Thatcher helped end Cold War
• SkyNews: Margaret Thatcher Dies After Stroke
• UKDM: Former Prime Minister Baroness Thatcher Dies Peacefully In Her Suite At The Ritz After Suffering A Massive Stroke. She Was 87
• UK Telegraph: Margaret Thatcher Dies: Latest Reaction
• New York Times: Margaret Thatcher, Conservative Who Reforged Britain, Dies
• UK Independent: 'A Heroine And A Hate Figure': Indifference Wasn't An Option When It Came To Lady Thatcher
• Washington Post: Margaret Thatcher: In Every Sense A Leader
• No state funeral for Margaret Thatcher
• Britain's "Iron Lady" Margaret Thatcher dies
• Thatcher Video: Why Socialism Fails
• ‘The Iron Lady’: What Meryl Streep and Co. Got Wrong About Margaret Thatcher
• For Thatcher and Reagan, it was a very "special relationship"

Technorati Tags: Margaret Thatcher,freedom,Iron Lady,strength,freedom fighter,remembering,Ronald Reagan,EIB,Riush,Rush Limbaugh,Capitalism,free society,Britain,England,Free World,irreplaceable,Sarah Palin,Meryl Streep,sadness,icons,Cold War,Cold War Warrior,Barroness Margaret Thatcher,John Paul II

Obama is a ‘vulture socialist’

Food for thought…

Exclusive: Roger Hedgecock asks, 'Is Mitt Romney the bad guy?'

Bernie Madoff is in jail for life for using other people’s money under false pretenses in a Ponzi scheme that fooled some of America’s most sophisticated investors. This is an example of fraud, not capitalism.

Raj Rajaratnam is in jail for 11 years for insider trading of securities of Galleon Group, the hedge fund he founded. This is an example of violating a law passed by Congress restricting capitalism. If Raj had been a member of Congress, which exempted itself from that insider trading law, he would not be in jail today.

Steve Jobs will be remembered forever as the American who envisioned products that didn’t exist and the world later found indispensable. His was American capitalism in the Edison, Bell, and Ford tradition. American innovative capitalism has changed the world. Jobs made Apple Inc., which he famously started at home, into a worldwide giant with a net worth greater than the country of Greece.

Mitt Romney and the investors in his private equity firm made a boatload of money buying risky failing companies and turning them around to profitability. Many companies failed anyway. Others became household names. Many employees lost jobs they were going to lose anyway; many more Americans found jobs in Staples, Domino’s Pizza, Brookstone, Sports Authority, etc.

What Mitt did goes by many fancy names today in MBA courses and in the business media, but it is still old-fashioned capitalism. Private investors risking their own money to make a profit.

To critics, it’s called “vulture capitalism.” This losing leftist rant has been validated by its adoption by Romney’s rival Republican, Newt Gingrich. (Perhaps something that the party as well as the country based on free market economics should seriously think about.)

If you are one of those critics (Republican or Democrat), what do you call what Barack Hussein Obama is doing?

Obama took money from Americans by force (did you think the IRS was voluntary?) and borrowed money from the Chinese when taxation did not yield enough money. Obama then applied the money to create/subsidize companies to make products he knew people didn’t want at prices they could not afford.

Bought a Volt yet? Not only more expensive (at $42,000) to the consumer than comparable hybrid cars from both domestic and foreign companies, the Volt’s real cost is estimated at $250,000 each when all the costs/subsidies are counted. Do you think the $56 billion “invested” by Obama in the Volt’s maker, General Motors, was really worth it?

Unless you are the United Auto Workers union, which received 17 percent of GM for nothing, the answer is no.

The irony here is that the total CO2 emissions from the manufacturing of the Volt, including the fire prone battery setup, are about the same as any other vehicle. Mother Gaia is not amused.

Then there were the green energy start-up companies.

Obama has been on a spending spree with you as the forced partner. Solyndra, Beacon Power, Evergreen Solar, Spectrawatt and Eastern Energy are just a few of the dozens of companies that have received more than $6.5 billion in grants and loans to create the green energy of Obama’s fantasy future. Every one of these companies has either failed or is on the verge of failing, taking your money with it. Thousands of “good-paying, middle-class jobs” promised by Obama are evaporating.

Obama was hell bent on creating a brave, new, green world. By choking off the use of America’s natural bounty of coal, oil and natural gas, and by promising an even greater bounty from a world of “alternative energy” supposedly more pleasing to the planet, Obama embarked on the same government-knows-best program that has impoverished countries from Zimbabwe to Cuba to North Korea.

Afraid that Americans are catching on to his “vulture socialism,” Obama is already running TV ads for his re-election touting the creation of “2.7 million jobs” from “America’s clean energy industry.” Many of those jobs were already in place before Obama took office, and many more are now endangered by the fact that the market is not buying what Obama is selling. As happened in Spain, for every green job created, 2.5 jobs in existing manufacturing have been lost.

In a final irony, the same TV ad also brags that America’s foreign oil dependence has declined to below 50 percent of our daily need. That is true and has nothing to do with Obama’s force-fed green-energy program. The recession made worse by Obama’s policies has reduced consumer gasoline demand. The U.S. still uses twice the oil it produces and still tolerates a federal government that spends nearly twice what it takes in.

Using government force, Obama spends $10 billion per day (and borrows more than $4 billion of that per day) to keep the federal Leviathan on course to “utterly transform” our economy and erode American freedoms.

And Mitt Romney, the guy who specializes in turning around failing enterprises and would apply that expertise to the failing federal government, is the bad guy?

by Roger Hedgecock - a nationally syndicated talk-show host. Prior to his broadcasting career, he worked as an attorney and political leader. Hedgecock is a strong supporter of the military and founded Homefront. – Posted at WND

Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead - A Work That Endures…

 

Video:  The Fountainhead – Howard Roark Speech (Ayn Rand)

See full film The Fountainhead HERE

The Fountainhead

"Howard Roark laughed." So begins Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, the improbable bestseller that established Rand's fame and reputation as a novelist-philosopher.

Rejected by twelve publishers, The Fountainhead was finally accepted by Bobbs-Merrill when a young editor taken with the book threatened to quit if it were not. "If this is not the book for you," he wired the publisher's head office, "then I am not the editor for you." His confidence was justified: to date, The Fountainhead has sold some six million copies all told, and continues to sell over 100,000 copies each year. At the time of its publication, Lorine Pruette wrote in the New York Times that "it was the only novel of ideas written by an American woman that I can recall," with characters who are "amazingly literate, romanticized as larger-than-life representatives of good and evil." However, it was not critical adulation, but the incredible word of mouth that spread about the book that made it a bestseller.

From its memorable opening line, Rand's prose camera pans out to reveal Howard Roark, a young student of architecture, poised nude on a cliff's edge and preparing to dive into the lake below. The scene sets the tone for the book, and hints at the "sense of life" that animated Rand's fiction: Roark has just been expelled from architecture school for refusing to ape the styles of past masters in his designs. His response is not despair, but an indifference grounded in a supreme confidence in his own artistic vision. Explaining that vision to the school's dean several scenes later, Roark says:

Here are my rules: what can be done with one substance must never be done with another. No two materials are alike. No two sites on earth are alike. No two buildings have the same purpose. The purpose, the site, the materials determine the shape. Nothing can be reasonable or beautiful unless it's made by one central idea, and the idea sets ever detail. A building is alive, like a man. Its integrity is to follow its own truth, its one single theme, and to serve its own single purpose. A man doesn't borrow hunks of its soul. Its maker gives it the soul and every wall, window and stairway to express it.

Like Pruette, Rand saw her characters as ideal types, embodied principles. She always denied that her protagonists were modeled on any actual people, and in particular was adamant that Roark was not a fictionalized Frank Lloyd Wright. Still, it is hard not to hear in Roark's own theories of architecture echoes of Wright, especially his 1930–31 lectures at Princeton, which Rand had read. Wright had said of his own buildings: "Consistency from first to last will give you the result you seek and consistency alone." Even their biographies overlap: Roark's mentor Henry Cameron, a brilliant innovator whose star had faded, evokes Wright's own, Louis Sullivan.

Rand sought unsuccessfully to interview Wright as a source for The Fountainhead. (Instead, she gathered source material for the book by working without pay as a typist for New York architect Ely Jacques Kahn.) In her letter to Wright, Rand described her project as a "story of human integrity. That is what I am writing. That is what you have lived. And to my knowledge you are the only one among the men of this century who has lived it." She wanted to interview Wright, not for information, but for "the inspiration of seeing before me a living miracle." The two later became acquainted, and Wright even began designing a house for Rand, though it was never built.

The reference to "integrity" must be taken to refer not only to the internal coherence of Wright's architectural philosophy, but also his famous stubbornness with clients when it came to seeing his plans realized as he had intended. Roark's fidelity to his own vision makes it difficult for him to find work, despite his genius, and the conflicts this creates drive the book's plot.

Roark's own approach is thrown into relief by a parallel portrayal of the career of his classmate Peter Keating. A thorough mediocrity, Keating's sense of self is as derivative as his building designs. While Roark toils in obscurity, Keating rises through the ranks of the prestigious New York firm Francon & Heyer. But on major commissions, Keating's lack of inspiration forces him to seek help from Roark, who is the unacknowledged designer of Keating's most renowned buildings.

The contrast between the two is meant to illustrate what Rand would later call "the virtue of selfishness." A conventional story would have set up Roark's "selfless devotion to his art" against Keating's "grasping, selfish careerism." Rand reverses this expectation. Keating's pathology, Rand shows, is precisely the result of selflessness. Lacking a strong identity of his own, he seeks to construct one second-hand by absorbing the opinions of others. Lacking self-respect, he struggles to do whatever will please others and win him their adulation. Roark's apparent "sacrifice," on the other hand, is nothing of the sort. If he insists on his own methods and designs, it is because they arehis own. The true sacrifice, Rand makes clear, would be to compromise his artistic integrity for mere popular approval, or even material comfort.

That integrity makes it impossible for Roark to fit in with conventional architecture firms, and equally difficult to secure commissions when he opens his own office. Eventually, he leaves the city to work as a manual laborer at a granite quarry owned by Guy Francon of Francon & Heyer—which by now has become Francon & Keating. There, he meets Francon's fiercely independent daughter Dominique. Recognizing Roark as a kindred spirit, she begins to pursue him, and in what has become the book's most famous scene, they make violent, passionate love that, while consensual, seems on the surface like an act of rape. But Francon, unsure she is prepared for a serious romantic affair with Roark, pulls back. Soon, a businessman who admires the buildings Roark managed to have built finds him at the quarry and brings him back to New York to work on an apartment building. There, he finds growing success—and a new enemy.

While Keating is Roark's professional rival, he is not quite Roark's adversary: by turns contemptible and pathetic, Peter Keating is not up to the role of archenemy. That is left to journalist and architecture critic Ellsworth Toohey. Toohey is something of an aberration in Rand's fiction, in that he is perhaps her only really memorable villain.

In Rand's Objectivist philosophy, intelligence, rationality, and achievement are all associated with her own ethics, and therefore with her protagonists. Typically, these are opposed by bland, bromide-mouthing mobs who evoke nothing so much as Hannah Arendt's phrase "the banality of evil." Toohey is the exception: he is the one character in Rand's work who fully comprehends the difference between good and evil, between individualism and collectivism, and consciously chooses evil. Incapable of Roark's form of creative achievement, which he despises, Toohey has made his own goal power over the opinions of others. A clue to his motive is provided by his childhood reaction to the famous Biblical query: "What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" Toohey asks in response: "Then in order to be truly wealthy, a man should collect souls?" His adult life has been devoted to precisely that end, through the formation of a series of organizations across many different fields, including a collective of fashionable second-rate writers who promote each other's work ceaselessly.

Determined to crush Roark, Toohey manipulates a spiritually inclined pawn, Hopton Stoddard, to commission an ecumenical temple from the atheistic architect. Stoddard, on Toohey's advice, convinces Roark to take the job by telling him: "But you're a profoundly religious man, Mr. Roark—in your own way. I can see that in your buildings." Toohey has detected, not religious reverence in the ordinary sense, but the reverence for the best in the human spirit that permeates Roark's designs. Once the temple—a masterpiece, of course—is complete, Toohey denounces it as blasphemous, and pushes Stoddard to sue Roark for breach of contract. Roark's defense is merely to offer the jury photographs of the temple—but swayed by the testimony of an architectural expert (Toohey, of course) they vote against him, destroying his reputation.

The verdict comes as a blow to Dominique Francon, who more than ever despairs that individual achievement and integrity have little chance of surviving in the world as it is. She resolves to purge herself of the capacity to appreciate heroic achievement—and to destroy Roark, who is a constant reminder of the individualism society cannot tolerate. Attempting to drown herself in inanity, she marries Peter Keating, only to leave him for newspaper tycoon Gail Wynand, publisher of the Banner, where Toohey's column appears. Like Roark in many ways, Wynand differs from the architect in having decided that the only way to survive and flourish is to pander to the public, which he does on a daily basis in his widely read newspaper. Wynand, though, cannot help but respond with admiration to Roark's work... and to Roark himself when they meet. Through Wynand's influence, Roark once again begins to work.

Keating's fortunes, in the meantime, have soured. Lacking his own creative voice, he is at a loss when the architectural trends he has spent his career emulating cease to be fashionable. Desperate to salvage his career, he begs Roark to design one last building for him: a low-income housing project to be called Cortland Homes. Roark, knowing that the project is under Toohey's control, and that a plan under his own name would never be accepted, agrees, on the condition that his plan be built precisely as designed.

When Toohey has some frivolous ornamentation added at the last moment, spoiling the integrity of the building, Roark dynamites it, with help from Dominique. Wynand believes he can use his media empire to sway public opinion in Roark's favor as the trial approaches, but he discovers that power over others is ephemeral. Once he is no longer telling the people what they want to hear, his papers stop selling. In a bid to take over the Banner, Toohey engineers a strike. Finally, Wynand caves and reverses his editorial position on Roark. At the trial, however, Roark offers an eloquent defense of his right to destroy his creation, whose integrity had already been destroyed in violation of his agreement with Keating. He tells the jury:

Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. Man has no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt it. To plant, he needs a process of thought. To hunt, he needs weapons, and to make weapons—a process of thought. From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from a single attribute of man—the function of his reasoning mind.
But the mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain. There is no such thing as a collective thought. An agreement reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average drawn upon many individual thoughts. It is a secondary consequence. The primary act—the process of reason—must be performed by each man alone. We can divide a meal among many men. We cannot digest it in a collective stomach. No man can use his brain to think for another. All the functions of body and spirit are private. They cannot be shared or transferred.

Roark is acquitted. Wynand, realizing at last the necessity of integrity, shuts down the Banner rather than allow Toohey to control it in the wake of the strike. Roark is commissioned to rebuild the Cortland Homes by a private businessman, and Wynand decides the time has come to build his Wynand Building, which will be the city's tallest skyscraper. The book closes with Roark standing triumphant atop his work in progress, alongside an admiring Dominique.

The book's surprising success led to the production of a 1949 movie version of The Fountainhead starring Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal, and directed by King Vidor. Warner Brothers had sought to have Wright himself design the film's sets, but that plan was scrapped when Wright demanded 10 percent of the film's gross profits on top of his $250,000 fee. The screenplay was, of course, penned by Ayn Rand. It is safe to assume that Warner Brothers didn't dare change the dialogue.

Source:  The CATO Institute

Atlas Shrugged Trailer

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Tonight, our friend, JOHN STOSSEL, is on Hannity at 9pm ET on Fox . . . and the topic . . . “New Movie Hated by Hollywood?!”

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Dennis Miller on the War and Troops…Etc

Dennis Miller on the War

Beware the Prophet who stands to make a Profit… Dennis Miller (paraphrased Dennis on the O’Reilly Factor) after seeing the clip of the film maker that Gore would not answer and basically disallowed to speak about his concerns.

Watch and take Part in Big Hollywood Premiere: Not Evil Just Wrong – The Movie Al Gore does not want you to see!!! Perhaps after seeing the video below, this film will have to be re-titled. There appears to be lots of evil!!

Is Obama Poised to Cede American Sovereignty by Signing Global Warming Treaty?

Candid Discussion by Real Doctors on Healthcare Plus RFK Jr on the Truth About Vaccines

America for Sale

The U.S. Debt Clock

Posted: Knowledge Creates Power – Cross-Posted: the Daily Thought Pad - Marion’s Place

It’s All Just A Little Bit Of History Repeating…Yet Again!

A fantastic cartoon from 1934, entitled “Planned Economy or Planned Destruction”

Amazingly accurate, incredibly prescient. Note Stalin in the bottom right corner. This cartoon, according to sources, was created in 1934. The Great Depression was on, people were destitute, things were lousy – yet here is a cartoon that exhibits the same beliefs that a growing number of Americans feel. You can not spend your way into prosperity. Capitalism is good. The Republic (and the rule of law) is always better than the oligarchy (and being ruled by a few.) That the last thing we need is another “new deal.”

The past is trying to tell us something.

Carthago Delenda Est!

What a great find and a reminder that history does indeed repeat itself if we don’t pay attention (and don’t teach our kids history or accurate history)!

Source: Tony Katz - Posted on July 11, 2009

Posted: Knowledge Creates Power

Related Resources:

• American Progressivism
• Liberal Fascism
• Liberty and Tyranny
• One-Party Classroom
• Expelled
• Glenn Beck's Common Sense
• John Adams
• Catastrophe
• We the Sheeple?
• American Capitalism Gone With A Whimper - Pravda

'Capitalism Will Fail,' Marijuana Leaf Part of California School Mosaic

zombietime.com

Communism's hammer and sickle is seen in the "Class of 2007" mosaic outside of the Black Pine Circle School in Berkeley, Calif.

Symbols of communism and marijuana and a prediction that "capitalism will fail" aren't exactly the sort of end-of-year messages you'd expect from an eighth grader.

But that's precisely what some students at the Black Pine Circle School, a private school in Berkeley, Calif., chose to include in their "Class of 2007" mosaic.

The symbols, which are prominently displayed outside the school, have prompted questions about the appropriateness of images like a hammer and sickle and a marijuana leaf on school grounds — and have led critics to say they are blatant proof of political indoctrination of young children.

Black Pine Circle bills itself as a day school where students from kindergarten through eighth grade will be "maximally free of all the 'isms' which pervade most aspects of the world around them: from racism to sexism to the less obvious forms of discrimination," according to its Web site.

Capitalism, even if it fails, apparently isn't one of those: Tuition for a 10-month term costs more than $17,000.

Laura Wolff, assistant director and head of BPCS's Lower School, told FOXNews.com that each graduating student makes a tile to commemorate his or her time there, sometimes teaming up with other students to make a "dual tile." She said school officials do not edit or otherwise influence the end products.

"Being Berkeley, of course, we don't censor their creative expression," Wolff said. "It's fun to see what they come up with."

During a brief interview, Wolff said she was not familiar with the images in question — including the four-tile hammer and sickle depiction — and referred inquiries to John Carlstroem, director of the school, and art teachers Kieren Dutcher and Kim Buckingham. Multiple messages seeking additional comment were not returned.

Ron Reynolds, executive director of the California Association of Private School Organizations, said the images were in "bad taste," but stopped short of calling for their removal.

"I am certainly not enamored by that particular expression and I certainly disagree, but I don't think there's a law against someone expressing a stupid thought," Reynolds told FOXNews.com. "If they felt capitalism will fail, I'd be curious to see what their alternative is."

The mosaic's location on the perimeter of the school serves as an "advertisement for discriminating parents," according to Reynolds, who said he thought the images were conjured up solely by the students.

"Living in Berkeley, I don't think it's a tremendous stretch," he said. "If it were in Irvine or Van Nuys, yeah, I think there would be some raised eyebrows."

Alice Davis, 21, attended Black Pine Circle School from 1998 to 2001 and remembers painting her own tile — a "cityscape scene at nighttime." Davis, now living in Brooklyn, N.Y., said she doesn't recall receiving any instruction regarding the content of her creation.

"They left it up to a bunch of 13-year-olds to decide," Davis told FOXNews.com. "They were hands off in telling us what was appropriate and what wasn't. It was left to our judgment."

Meanwhile, Danae Condos, president of the Berkeley College Republicans, said she found the images "shocking" and not suitable for young children.

"I know some people might say it fits in with the Berkeley atmosphere, but it does say something about the type of education the students are receiving," she told FOXNews.com. "It's obvious that they're receiving some political indoctrination from the school or from their parents. There's no doubt in my mind they're being politically influenced in their education."

Condos, a 19-year-old student at the University of California-Berkeley, said she doubted that school administrators would allow any and all symbols.

"They wouldn't allow a swastika symbol," she said. "It shows where the school's standards lie. If you're seeing this at one of the top-notch schools in the area, imagine what's going on it other schools that don't have the same privileges."

By Joshua Rhett Miller

Posted: Marion’s Place

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• Michelle Obama is Building Her Boot Camps For Radicals with Tax-Payer Money

We the Sheeple? – Glenn Beck

America's March to Socialism: Why we're one step closer to giant missile parades
is now available as an audio book...

GLENN: Okay, so I'm reading the story in Pravda, American Capitalism Gone With a Whimper. They are taking us that it's happening at breathtaking speed because we're sheeple, that Russia, they already went through this, and you need to learn the lesson. And this is what they say is happening. First the population in America was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education based on pop culture rather than the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas than the drama in D.C. that directly affects their lives. True. They care more for their right to check down a McDonald's burger or a Burger King burger than for their constitutional rights and then they turn around and lecture us in Russia about our rights and about our democracy? Pride blind the foolish.

That line sticks out to me: Pride blind the foolish. We're arguing over things we should not be arguing about. The other line that sticks out to me is the substandard education based on pop culture rather than the classics. I was with George Wythe University who was the guy who was really the mentor to Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson had a way of education, and it's all based in the classics. At George Wythe University, they only have textbooks. They only use the classics. I've seen the difference.

Pravda goes on and says, "Then their faith in God was destroyed until their churches, all tens of thousands of different branches and denominations were for the most part little more than Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega-preachers were more than happy to sell their souls in flocks to be on the winning side of one pseudo-Marxist politician or another. Their flock may complain but when explained that they would be on the winning side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes of earthly power. The final collapse came with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months have been truly impressive. His spending and money‑printing has been record‑setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more than another year ‑‑ and there is no sign that it will not ‑‑ America will best resemble the Weimar Republic and, at worst, Zimbabwe."

My friend, I have told you these things were coming. I tell you now, they are coming. We must educate ourselves and be involved and put down our differences and connect with ‑‑ make a vow to yourself today that there are Democrats out there, if you're a Republican, that there are Democrats out there that truly get it. They don't hate America. There are Democrats now that are saying in their own circles, they don't want to say anything. I really, truly believe not enough people are reaching out to the other party and to the independents as well. They are saying to each other, this is crazy. This can't... but they want to believe. There's nothing, there's nothing wrong with being wrong. What's wrong is being wrong and then not admitting that you were wrong and just keep going down the path because you're too proud. Pride blind the foolish. The media elite will ask me, "Where were you when George Bush..." well, for the first half, blind. For the second half, speaking out. It doesn't matter. I'm not on any side. Are you? When it really comes down to it, are you on any side other tha n your children's side? The minute the Democrats say, "Whoa, Marxism, oh, wow," and they turn around and they say small government, I'm with them. I'll call myself a Democrat. I don't care. Minute the Republicans do it, fine. If the it's the, you know, polka dot purple people eater party, then guess what button I'm wearing. I don't care.

Let's just start speaking the truth to each other. These past two weeks have been the most breathtaking of all, Pravda continues. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system by the they thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loss and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look more than ordinary street thugs in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in sheer volumes. These men, of course, are not elected panels but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs of their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American dollars in one bailout after another. They are also usurping the rights, duties and powers of the American congress. Again congress has put up little more than a whimper to their masters. And then came Barack Obama's command that GM's president step down from leadership of his company. That is correct, dear reader of Pravda. In the land of pure free markets, the American president now has the power, the self‑given power to fire CEOs, and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will. Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions. More advice to us and then to the people of Russia from the e ditorial this weekend in Pravda, next.

(OUT 10:43)

GLENN: So this weekend I'm reading an article out of Pravda, an editorial, American Capitalism Gone With a Whimper, and it has so much in it. They are warning us against Marxism and saying that it is coming at a breathtaking speed here in America. The article continues, "So it's no surprise that the American president is followed up with his bold move of declaring that he and another group of unelected chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automotive policies. I'm sure that if given a chance, they would happily try to redesign for the whole world. Prime minister Putin less than two months ago warned Obama and the U.K.'s Blair not to follow the path to Marxism; it only leads to disaster. Apparently even though we suffered 70 years of this Western‑sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish drunken Russians. So let our wise Anglo‑Saxon fools find the folly of their own pride. But again the American public has taken this with barely a whimper, but a free man whimper. So it shouldn't be any surprise to discover that the Democratically congress of America is working on regulation that would give the American treasury department the power to set fair minimum salaries, evaluate performance and control how private businesses give out pay raises and bonuses. Barney Frank stresses that this only a ffects the companies that receive government monies. But it is retroactive. And taken to a logical extreme, this would include any company or industry that has ever received a tax break or incentive. The Russian owners of American companies ‑‑ listen carefully, America. The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at what is happening in America and look at the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left. The proud American will go down into his slavery without a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world how free he really is. And the world will only snicker.

Now, there are going to be those who dismiss this coming out of Pravda as political games. They will dismiss this as, "Well, of course they are saying that because they want to destroy America." Whatever. Sometimes there's a great amount of truth in an imperfect messenger. There is an awful lot of truth in this editorial. We'll include it in our free e‑mail newsletter. Don't have to agree with it, don't have to agree with everything in it. Some of the stuff is pretty harsh. But let's just make sure that the last sentence isn't true. The proud American will go down into his slavery without a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world how freely he truly is. That is why I say we must stop arguing back and forth about the parties because we're not seeing the real issues. They are giving you the scraps off the table and we beat our chest and we say, "We're free. No, but I like freedom because the Republicans." "No, no, the Democratic freedom is better." They are both slavery. One's just slavery light and the other is socialism. The world will only snicker because of our arrogance for so long. Let's just think the unthinkable. Think of it as an actual possibility so we can avoid it. And unite together and rediscover who we truly are, not what we've allowed ourselves to become.

Posted:  Knowledge Creates Power

Related Resources:

• American capitalism gone with a whimper – Pravda
• The Weimar Solution
• "The Future of Capitalism" - Capitalism Could Fail
• HOW OBAMA'S SOCIALISM WORKS
• March to Socialism: Out of Money – Glenn Beck
• Senior creditors: Chrysler deal violates 5th Amendment
• Confusion: Fascism vs Socialism... Progressivism... And What Happened to Capitalism?
• Confirmed: The Obama DHS hit job on conservatives is real
• Michael Farris - United Nation’s Convention on Rights of a Child Material
• Click here to read the DHS extremism report
• OBAMA'S LEAP TO SOCIALISM
• The Late Great U.S.A.
• American Progressivism – A Must Read
• Liberal Fascism – Just out in paperback

American capitalism gone with a whimper - Pravda

Wow… Is this really how we want to go out… without a fight??

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.

Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonalds burger or a Burger King burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our "democracy". Pride blind the foolish.

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different "branches and denominations" were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the "winning" side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the "winning" side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?

These men, of course, are not an elected panel but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs and their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American dollars, in one bailout after another. They are also usurping the rights, duties and powers of the American congress (parliament). Again, congress has put up little more then a whimper to their masters.

Then came Barack Obama's command that GM's (General Motor) president step down from leadership of his company. That is correct, dear reader, in the land of "pure" free markets, the American president now has the power, the self given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will. Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions.

So it should be no surprise, that the American president has followed this up with a "bold" move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies. I am sure that if given the chance, they would happily try and redesign it for the whole of the world, too. Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK's Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our "wise" Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.

Again, the American public has taken this with barely a whimper...but a "freeman" whimper.

So, should it be any surprise to discover that the Democratically controlled Congress of America is working on passing a new regulation that would give the American Treasury department the power to set "fair" maximum salaries, evaluate performance and control how private companies give out pay raises and bonuses? Senator Barney Franks, a social pervert basking in his homosexuality (of course, amongst the modern, enlightened American societal norm, as well as that of the general West, homosexuality is not only not a looked down upon life choice, but is often praised as a virtue) and his Marxist enlightenment, has led this effort. He stresses that this only affects companies that receive government monies, but it is retroactive and taken to a logical extreme, this would include any company or industry that has ever received a tax break or incentive.

The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left.

The proud American will go down into his slavery without a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker.

By: Stanislav Mishin

Source:  Pravda.Ru – 04.27.09

The article has been reprinted from the author and originally appears on his blog, Mat Rodina – Posted on Hannity.com

Comment:

This is why when I hear someone say "I have faith in the American people",  I just *sigh*!
Americans have become like bugs going directly for the "bright light".
The most frustrating thing is Nobody is doing anything about it.

Posted:  Knowledge Creates Power

Related Resources:

• The Weimar Solution 
• "The Future of Capitalism" - Capitalism Could Fail 
• HOW OBAMA'S SOCIALISM WORKS 
• March to Socialism: Out of Money – Glenn Beck 
• Senior creditors: Chrysler deal violates 5th Amendment
• Confusion: Fascism vs Socialism... Progressivism... And What Happened to Capitalism?
• Confirmed: The Obama DHS hit job on conservatives is real 
• Michael Farris - United Nation’s Convention on Rights of a Child Material
• Click here to read the DHS extremism report
• OBAMA'S LEAP TO SOCIALISM
• The Late Great U.S.A.
• American Progressivism – A Must Read
• Liberal Fascism – Just out in paperback
  

"The Future of Capitalism" - Capitalism Could Fail

President Obama: Neo-Marxist The topic: "The Future of Capitalism." Time magazine, to discuss this, assembled a "stellar cast." One such "honoree" works as a Public Broadcasting Service/National Public Radio host. The tax dollars produced by the capitalism he criticizes help pay his salary. (The irony was apparently lost.) At least other "business roundtable" panelists -- commentator/publisher/author Arianna Huffington and singer John Legend -- make their money the old-fashioned way, by enticing consumers to buy what they sell. "I don't think that left to its own devices," the taxpayer-supported broadcaster/pundit said, "capitalism moves along smoothly and everyone gets treated fairly in the process. Capitalism is like a child: If you want the child to grow up free and productive, somebody's got to look over the shoulder of that child." Good grief. Every dollar spent by government is one less dollar spent by taxpayers. Money comes from somewhere -- taxes, borrowing (taxes on layaway) or printing, which, if not offset by productivity, causes inflation, a stealth tax on everyone. Who can spend, save or invest more efficiently and humanely, you or some tenured bureaucrat in D.C. who's never run so much as a hot dog stand or lent himself out as a United Way volunteer? Private enterprise is the most proficient job- and wealth-creating "system" ever designed. But many, if not most, Americans think only government can and should build and run "infrastructure" and that government "investment" creates jobs of which the private sector is incapable of creating. Really? People point to President Dwight D. Eisenhower's construction of the interstate highway system. It is, they say, an example of both an appropriate and productive federal government expenditure and an obviously legal role of the federal government necessary to spark economic growth. In the early 1900s, a businessman, Carl Fisher, owned the Prest-O-Lite headlight company. He organized an association to finance coast-to-coast paved roads so that motorists could drive both day and night, ideally using his headlights. The association soon disbanded, when Congress passed the Federal Road Aid Act of 1916. What would have happened had government not built an interstate highway system? A consortium of truckers/gas stations/hotels/motels/roadside restaurants would likely have built one with their own money in order to make more money. They would have charged tolls for maintenance. Motorists actually using the roads would bear their costs. Private business built the first leg of the New York subway system. And it made money -- at least before local government used taxpayer money to build competing systems and undercut the fare charged by the private operator. Tax dollars hid the true cost, allowing the city-owned service to charge less. Ultimately, the private operators sold out to the city. Did Eisenhower have the constitutional authority to build the interstate highway system? Yes, but not to improve economic development -- and he knew it. In fact, the official name of the interstate highways is the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and DefenseHighways. Ike argued that the country needed paved highways to move missiles around to protect the country. From a military standpoint, the argument was dubious. Missiles could be launched from fixed positions, as technology continually increased range, speed, accuracy and power. The Founding Fathers identified a handful of allowable federal duties, not least of which is national security. But what about economic development? President James Monroe cast his only veto when Congress appropriated money to expand the Cumberland Road -- even though the road went through and would have helped his home state of Virginia. The Constitution, said Monroe, prohibits spending money for this purpose. Rather than expanding "entitlements," they must be dealt with -- and eventually ended. What about selling land (the fed is by far the largest landholder) and using the proceeds to pay for current and near-term obligations to Social Security and Medicare -- with a view toward complete eventual privatization? What about private charity instead of Medicaid? What about a free market approach to making health care more accessible and affordable? This means IRA-type accounts; cutting health care insurance regulation; allowing nonlicensed practitioners to perform tasks now done only by government-licensed doctors and other medical practitioners -- which shuts out competition and keeps prices high; allowing health care plans to be purchased out of state; allowing individuals to deduct their health care premiums as businesses do now; and adopting an English-style "loser-pays" legal system, which would likely minimize the incentive for doctors to practice expensive "defensive" medicine. Even if all of this makes sense, the toothpaste is out of the tube, right? So let's just try to stop things from getting worse. Unraveling the welfare state can be done. Indiana, for example, just leased one of its highways to a private consortium that charges tolls for maintenance and profit. Obama's anti-capitalist, Big Government, command-and-control economic vision exceeds mere "childishness." It is dangerous. After 100-plus days, the jury reached its verdict. Obama is a neo-Marxist. By Larry Elder

Investment guru Marc Faber says the financial system must be cleansed to save capitalism.

"I think the final low in markets will occur when the system is cleaned out," Faber told CNBC.

Unless that happens, "the way communism collapsed, capitalism will collapse," he says. "The best way to deal with any economic problem is to let the market work it through."

He sees the Federal Reserve and other central banks continuing to print piles of money. And the outcome won’t be pretty.

"The U.S. government for sure will go bust,” Faber says. “That I guarantee you. Not tomorrow, but it will go bust."

He isn’t optimistic for the fate of the global economy either.

“I don’t think that the global economy will recover anytime soon,” he says. “And we have to define what a recovery is.”

If economic output drops far enough, a mere revival of inventories can push growth up a bit, creating a mild rebound, Faber says.

“I take 2006 and early 2007 as the peak of prosperity in this long cycle, and I don’t think we’re going back there anytime soon.”

Many other experts share Faber’s bearish view of the global economy.

“The debate will continue on whether it’s going to be a V, U or L-shaped recession,” former World Bank president James Wolfensohn said at a recent conference.

“My own judgment is that it’s more likely the latter. I don’t believe we’ll get a quick fix any time soon.”

By: Dan Weil – NewsMax