I posted this a few years ago under the title, "Dont Go Back To Starnesville." Back then, the idea of Marxist America seemed fairly far fetched. But today, on the eve of a critical election and turning point for the American experiment, poised on the precipice of change, it is critically important that those Americans considering a vote for Barack Obama or any Democrat running for Congress this year understand the consequences. Obama is now openly running on the slogan, "I am my brothers keeper." He says he is running against "The Virtue of Selfishness." I submit, this is direct terminology of marxism, and he is unabashed in saying it. Pelosi and Reid are likelwise unashamed in supporting his language, and that means his mission... of change.
Over 50 years ago, the pre-eminent American Philosopher and champion of Capitalism, Ayn Rand, warned the world and America specifically about the dangers of marxism - also known as collectivism, statism, and communism. She warnmed us about men who preach that they and YOU are "Your brother's keeper." She wrote a collection of essays on Capitalism and Liberty titled, "The Virtue of Selfishness." And if Senator Barack Hussein Obama now wishes to direct his assault on America by attacking its foremost philosophical champion, then do let's take a close look at the America that Obama, Reid, and Pelosi are attempting to sell us by way of this election.
The Obama Plan...
"We voted for that plan at a big meeting, with all of us present, six thousand of us, everybody that worked in the factory. The Starnes heirs made long speeches about it, and it wasn't clear, but nobody asked any questions. None of us knew just how the plan would work, but every one of us thought that the next fellow knew it. And if anybody had doubts, he felt guilty and kept his mouth shut - because they made it sound like anyone who'd oppose the plan was a child-killer at heart and less than a human being. They told us that the plan would achieve a noble idea. Well, how were we to know otherwise? Hadn't we heard it all our lives - from our parents and our schoolteachers and our ministers, and in every newspaper we ever read and every movie and every public speech? Hadn't we always been told that this was righteous and just? Well, maybe there's some excuse for what we did at that meeting. Still, we voted for the plan - and what we got, we had it coming to us. You know,ma'am, we are marked men, in a way, those of us who lived through thefour years of that plan of the Twentieth Century factory. What is it that hell is supposed to be? Evil - plain, naked smirking evil, isn't it? Well, that's what we saw and helped to make - and I think we're damned, every one of us, and maybe we'll never be forgiven...(excerpted from Atlas Shrugged, Book 2, Chapter 10, Ayn Rand, 1957)
"Do you know how it worked, that plan, and what it did to people? Try pouring water into a tank where there's a pipe at the bottom draining it out faster than you can pour, and each bucket you bring breaks the pipe an inch wider, and the harder you work the more is demanded of you, and you stand slinging buckets forty hours per week, then forty-eight, then fifty-six - for your neighbour's supper, for his wife's operation - for his child's measles - for his mother's wheel chair-for his uncle's shirt - for his nephew's schooling - for the baby next door - for the baby to be born - for anyone anywhere around you -it's theirs to receive, from diapers to dentures - and yours to work, from sun up to sun down, month after month, year after year, with nothing to show for it but your sweat, with nothing in sight for you but their pleasure, for the whole of your life, without rest, without hope, without end.... From each according to his ability, to each according to his need....
"God help us, ma'am! Do you see what we saw? We saw that we'd been given a law to live by, a moral law, they called it, which punished those who observed it - for observing it. The more you tried to liveup to it, the more you suffered; the more you cheated it, the bigger reward you got. Your honesty was like a tool left at the mercy of the next man's dishonesty. The honest ones paid, the dishonest collected. The honest lost, the dishonest won. How long could men stay good under this sort of a law of goodness? We were a pretty decent bunch of fellows when we started. There weren't many chiselers among us. We knew our jobs as were proud of it and we worked for the best factory in the country, where old man Starnes hired nothing but the pick of the country's labor. Within one year under the new plan, there wasn't anhonest man left among us. That was the evil, the sort of hell-horror evil that preachers used to scare you with, but you never thought to see alive. Not that the plan encouraged a few bastards, but that it turned decent people into bastards, and there was nothing else it could do - and it was called a moral ideal!"
Originally I posted this in response to a story at Stones Cry Out, where Rick posted a sad tale of debauchery as a testiment to the dehumanization of collectivism. At that time recent events in Angers, France revive recollections of Ayn Rand's fictional illustration of Starnesville from her novel, Atlas Shrugged - an excerpt of which can be read below and the entire account here.
In 21st century America, a generation lives devoid of any direct experience with totalitarianism - the inevitable bi-product of the collectivist principle. The glossy impressions of change offered by Obama seem seductive in promise, while the reality of the misery of millions of sufferers of statism should reveal his sheen to be a greasy stain on the legacy of humanity. Would that this generation were interested to know it. Sadly for them, the glossy idea that they covet is be to their brother's burden, free of obligation. They see their rewards coming from above, distributed to them from their wealthy brothers by some messiah-like benefactor. And yet, they miss the abyss of bloodthristy impoverished insects below, waiting on that same benefactor. You see, Obama's noble vision is Ivy Starnes' legacy, and sadly a certain macrocosm of Angers. And the reality of that legacy is that it takes a Village "to turn decent people into bastards" and children into livestock...
...and I should add, a proud strong nation into a dismal rusted wreck.
Vote wisely!
