Rewarding Failure, Punishing Success

Posted on | July 17, 2012 | 24 Comments

Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged is in many ways too radical — with dangerous overtones of Nietzsche — but clearly enunciates certain basic insights. In one of her characters’ monologues, Rand expresses the fundamental problem with the Marxist maxim, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

What’s wrong with that? It turns “need” into a virtue, a permanent license to take from others, and makes ability a burden.

The resemblance between Marxism and modern liberalism is a subject that conservatives aren’t supposed to mention, nor are we supposed to notice that the Left values loyalty to its agenda over competence or virtue. Warner Todd Huston reminds us how this works:

Proving that no misdeed goes unrewarded on the left, reports have it that once Microsoft and NBC News break up housekeeping and put an end to MSNBC.com in its current form, the resulting new Internet outlet will be getting a new chief. And that new chief will be none other than Vivian Schiller, the disgraced former head of National Public Radio (NPR).
You may remember Vivian Schiller for her bungled firing of the NPR commentator Juan Williams back in 2010.

As a loyal leftist, Schiller can only fail upward, just as Anthony Weiner’s disgrace cannot disqualify him from aspiring to disgrace Democrats in some new office, and Ted Kennedy . . .

Well, Mary Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment.

Not content to reward failure and celebrate vice, however, the Left’s perverse beliefs require them also to mock virtue and punish success:

Barack Obama wants us to live in an America of his imagining — a magical land of perfect equality where the laws of economics and human nature do not apply, where everyone gets his own unicorn and the only ones who have to pay are the mythical “rich,” who toil endlessly to provide for us all without complaint. . . .

Read the whole thing.

Category: Barack Obama, Jimmie Bise Jr., NBC

Comments

24 Responses to “Rewarding Failure, Punishing Success”

Red
July 17th, 2012 @ 3:56 pm

“Candy Mountain Stacy!” I so totally can’t wait for my very own unicorn!::SQUEEEE!::

…Don’t wake me Stacy. It’s better than the current political nightmare…
Adobe_Walls
July 17th, 2012 @ 3:58 pm

Comrade President may have really stepped in it this time. He’s been bashing big business and “fat cats” for years now but his Roanoke remarks are blatantly anti-small business. While many small business owners are too busy or as politically apathetic as the next guy to even be aware of Obamsky’s remarks their business groups are not. It is their job to make their members aware of this regimes attitude towards all businesses large and small and give them some advice and guidance on how to impart this information to their employees. The time is long past when any pro-growth organization can safely remain politically neutral. Far too few in this country seem capable of recognizing the threat this regime and it’s Social Democratic party pose to our liberties and national character but even the densest should be able to appreciate the threat to them and their employees lively hoods. It is the responsibility of their associations to make a maximum effort to insure their members survival. There is no place in a high tax command economy for independent small businesses and if OccupyResoluteDesk is reelected there never will be ever again.
Fashionable Horseshit About Ayn Rand | Daily Pundit
July 17th, 2012 @ 10:16 pm

[…] Horseshit About Ayn Rand Posted on July 17, 2012 7:16 pm by Bill Quick Rewarding Failure, Punishing Success : The Other McCain Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged is in many ways too radical — with dangerous overtones of […]
Adjoran
July 17th, 2012 @ 11:49 pm

Schiller’s treatment of Juan Williams wasn’t a “bungled firing” – she did fire him, he was gone and did not get rehired.

It was really only conservatives who objected. Liberals clearly recognized that he had committed BadSpeak, and there had to be a Thought Crime behind it.

So Williams went to Fox News, where is a faithful Obama toady.
McGehee
July 18th, 2012 @ 12:11 am

I think you mean “UngoodSpeak.” It might even have been double plus.
Lee Reynolds
July 18th, 2012 @ 4:39 am

Unfortunately Obama is not the problem, but merely the most visible symptom. He was ELECTED, and not all of the people voting for him were conned into doing so under a bait-and-switch scheme.

There are many people in this country who agreed with everything Obama said — and they vote.

They are the problem.

Some, possibly most, are merely ignorant, or are otherwise befuddled by bullshit produced by leftist propaganda artists and talking point regurgitators. They can be reached. They can be saved.

Others, exactly how many is unclear, promote these malignant ideas knowing full well what they will achieve. These individuals are evil. They cannot be saved, rather it is the world that must be saved from them.
rhhardin
July 18th, 2012 @ 5:33 am

What was dangerous about Nietzsche?
mechanic540
July 18th, 2012 @ 7:24 am

SO, do you think anyone would have bought Rands book if her theme was ” the bad guys are kinda icky so don’t be like them” Stacy? If you dont make a loud noise in literature your just wasting words and god knows lots of people accuse her af using way too many words to make her point. No matter what she was right, there are creators and parasites and the rest are just filling in the creases.
Kent
July 18th, 2012 @ 7:43 am

I remember playing D andD as a kid. My character was fighting a chaotic evil cult and had finally gotten to their altar. The dungeon master said I had to desecrate it. Knowing something about history, i said, “what should I do, pee on it?”
“No. They are a chaotic evil cult. That’s how they consecrated it!”

The hard left has never been a mystery to me since.
jsn2
July 18th, 2012 @ 7:45 am

Right you are.
The idiots vote thay way because they don’t know anything about World History, U.S. History or Economics. Some can’t even read. Why? Because public education in this country sucks. This may piss off some, but any idiot can get a teaching certificate. Uniformed, uneducated voters have tipped the scales enough to give us Obama and his allies. Indoctrinated journalists promote these idiots once they are elected and we all suffer. The stupid out number the smart.
Aaron1960
July 18th, 2012 @ 8:14 am

Obama is to the presidency what the band Cinderella was to Heavy Metal.
theBuckWheat
July 18th, 2012 @ 8:28 am

Socialism is the ideology that society will be better when we all live at the expense of everyone else. This is a pervasive system that is built first upon coveting and then using government coercion and compulsion to enforce and manage the organized theft.

Because of how government actions tend to leave an imprint of moral authority upon many citizens, when government sends strong signals that coveting and theft are laudable, citizens start to practice open coveting and theft at first towards the state and then towards their fellow man.

Those who love God’s Law as expressed in the Ten Commandments will see that socialism must of necessity violate the Commands that forbid coveting and theft. The Apostle Paul twice called coveting idolatry, which is worshiping another god. (eg: Ephesians 5:5)

On the practical level, the economist Ludwig von Mises said that because socialism destroys the free market price of goods and labor, that the various participants in the economy cannot reliably know when they were making a real profit and thus were running sustainable businesses. He concluded that a socialist economy was “impossible”. [1]

In his Nobel Prize lecture, F.A. Hayek, spoke about how socialism was a failed economic system because no committee of central planning experts could not know enough to reliablty run a sustainable economy. The title of his Nobel Lecture was “The Pretense of Knowledge”. [2]

These things taken together show that socialism is far worse for humanity in all aspects than the free market. Indeed, in the last century, socialism is responsible for the deaths of upwards of 100 million people. This is a system we should be moving away from as fast as possible. Instead we seem to be moving towards it as fast as the Left can arrange it.

[1] Why a Socialist Economy is “Impossible” by Joseph T. Salerno
http://mises.org/econcalc/POST.asp

[2] The Pretense of Knowledge
http://mises.org/daily/3229
Mr. Bingley
July 18th, 2012 @ 8:36 am

So what did you do?

Place a copy of “Robert’s Rules of Order” on the altar?
DirtyDave
July 18th, 2012 @ 8:57 am

You know, I used hove a lot of sympathy or empathy for the bait and switch argument. Now, I don’t. I think those who voted for him, and I have met a fair number who did, just what stuff and don’t want to earn it. They have no problem taking. They knew Obama was going to offer stuff.

There are some rubes, sure, but most knew what he stood for and they wanted the goodies they knew he was going to offer. They will be out in droves again, voting for Obama.

Last time it was his centrist appeal that could make many feel fine voting for a guy whom they knew was going to put them on any and every kind of government hand out program imaginable. Now it will be under the rubric of fairness from a guy from whom they know will put them on any and every kind of government hand out program imaginable. It’s like a code. It says one thing and means the opposite or something else entirely.

Honest communications from government is something else that is dying in this country. It’s not going to come back anytime soon, if ever, under our present form or arrangement of government. Indeed, it seems to be getting worse. Too many benefits in being dishonest. Of course it won’t last and what comes after will probably be worse.
McGehee
July 18th, 2012 @ 9:49 am

The guys I played D&D with would have doused it with holy water.
richard mcenroe
July 18th, 2012 @ 10:39 am

Never go after the kulaks before you’ve finished off the aristocrats.
richard mcenroe
July 18th, 2012 @ 10:42 am

We have to realize that public education in this country sucks ON PURPOSE.

Why? Because an ignorant, resentful, envious populace is a people divided against each other, enough of whom can be persuaded to vote against their own unrecognized best interests by a couple of tatty free clinics, free pot and social mores redefined to suit their convenience. In short, Democrat voters.
BooMushroom
July 18th, 2012 @ 11:57 am

Yes, it’s called “lifetime TV.”
BooMushroom
July 18th, 2012 @ 12:00 pm

Maybe we should print out a picture of Obama with the “you didn’t build that” quote, and give it to all the businesses downtown.
Lee Reynolds
July 18th, 2012 @ 12:01 pm

It’s even worse than you think:

http://teach1776.ning.com/
Lee Reynolds
July 18th, 2012 @ 12:09 pm

This is why the left is oh so keen to deprive human beings of their fundamental right to keep and bear arms.

There is only so much that can be stolen from someone who has the power to fight back with force.

Mao was quite right when he said that political power comes from the barrel of a gun. The left wants a monopoly on political (and every other kind) of power, so naturally they seek to confiscate the fundamental instrument of political power: the ability to use force.
W.F.N.
July 18th, 2012 @ 12:11 pm

“I am no man. I am dynamite.”
richard40
July 18th, 2012 @ 6:21 pm

Good points. I dont blame everybody who voted for Obama in 2008. He did a good job of concealing his radicalism, lots of people had Bush fatigue, and McCain was a weak candidate. But if the country somehow reelects Obama, after what he has done for the last 4 yrs, it will then be plain that this country does not deserve the freedom it presently has, and will soon lose it.
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