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  #21  
Vecchio 08-11-2012, 21.12.05
Nickname unavailable
 
Messaggi: n/a
Predefinito Re: google: "In a Nation of Children, Santa Claus Wins"

On Nov 8, 7:32Â*am, ПеаБраин <lapuant...@aol.com> wrote:[color=blue]
> google: "In a Nation of Children, Santa Claus Wins"
>
> Â*About 1,880 results (0.13 seconds)[/color]

Rand Worshipers Should Face Facts:Blue States Are the Providers:Red
States Are the Parasites:Rand predicted rightly that parasites
invariably despise the producers they feed on:you should be
embarrassed that red state behavior bears her out so clearly
[url]http://www.alternet.org/visions/154338/Ayn_Rand_Worshippers_Should_Fa[/url]...
AlterNet / By Sara Robinson
Ayn Rand Worshippers Should Face Facts: Blue States Are the
Providers, 
Red States Are the Parasites 
There's only one way to
demonstrate who America's producers and 
parasites really are. It's
time to go Galt. 
February 29, 2012 Â*|
Â*Last week, the New York Times published a widely discussed article
updating an argument that progressive bloggers noticed a very long
time ago. It's now well-understood that blue states generally export
money to the federal government; and red states generally import it.
TPM published a great map showing exactly how this redistribution
works:
(click for larger version) 
Progressives believe in the redistribution
of wealth, so we're not 
usually too upset by this state of affairs..
That’s what it means to be 
one country. E pluribus unum,Â*and all
that. We’re happy to help, 
because we think we’ve got a stake in
making sure kids in rural 
Alabama get educations and seniors in
Arizona get healthcare. What’s 
good for them is good for all of us.
We also like to think they’d help 
us out if our positions were
reversed. It’s an investment in making 
America stronger, and we feel
fine about that.
But maybe it's time to admit that we're being played for chumps, and
that there are people in the rest of the country who are taking way
too much advantage of our good nature. After all: it's now a stone
fact that the blue states and cities are the country's real wealth
creators. That's why we pay more taxes, and are able to send that
money to the red states in the first place. We're working our butts
off, being economically productive, going to college, raising good
kids, supporting reality-based schools, keeping our marriages
together,Â*tending to our busy and diverse cities, and generally
Playing By The Rules. And the fates have smiled on us in rough
proportion to the degree that we’ve invested in our own common good..
So we've got every right to get good and angry about the fact that,
by 
and large, the people who are getting our money are so damned
ungrateful -- not to mention so ridiculously eager to spend it on
stuff we don't approve of. We didn't ship them our hard-earned tax
dollars to see them squandered on worse-than-useless abstinence-only
education, textbooks that teach creationism, crisis-pregnancy
misinformation centers, subsidies for GMO crops and oil companies,
and 
so on. And we sure as hell didn't expect to be rewarded for our
productivity and generosity with a rising tide of spittle-flecked
insanity aboutÂ*how we’re just a bunch of immoral, godless, drug-
soaked, ***-crazed, evil America-hating traitors who can’t wait to
hand the country over to the Islamists and the Communists.
Ironically, the conservative movement's favorite philosopher had some
very insightful things to say about this exact situation. Ayn Rand's
novels divided the world into two groups. On one hand, she lionized
"producers" -- noble, intelligentÂ*Ăśbermenschen whose faith in their
own ideas and willingness to take risks to achieve their dreams
drives 
everything else in society. And she called out the evil of
"parasites," the dull, unimaginative masses who attach themselves to
producers and drain away their resources and thwart their dreams.
Conservatives love this story. They're eager to claim the gleaming
mantle of the producers, insisting loudly that their tax money is
going to support people (mostly in blue states and cities, it's
darkly 
implied) who won't or can't work as hard as they do. If you
want to 
arouse their class and race resentments, there are few
narratives that 
can get them rolling like this producers-versus-
parasites tale.
But the NYT story and that map up there prove beyond arguing that the
conservative interpretation of events is 100 percent, 180-degrees,
flat-out wrong. America's real producer class is overwhelmingly
concentrated in the blue cities and states -- the regions full of
smart, talented people who've harnessed technology and intellect to
money, and made these regions the best, most forward-looking places
in 
the country to live.
Advertisement
And the real parasites are centered in red states (the only
exceptions 
being states with huge resource reserves, like Alaska and
Texas) -- 
the unimaginative, exhausted places that have clung to a
fading past, 
rejected science, substituted superstition for sense,
and refused to 
invest in their own futures. It's not unfair to say
that those regions 
are simply feasting off the sweat of our ennobling
labor, and 
expecting us to continue supporting them as they go about
their wealth- 
destroying ways.
And we producers have had enough.
Progressives Go Galt!
If you're a conservative who thinks Ayn Rand called it true with this
producers/parasites thing, then by all means: let's go there. All the
way there — and then some. But fair warning is in order: you may not
like where we end up. 
By way of a modest proposal, I hereby declare
the birth of a new 
Progressive Objectivism — a frankly producerist
personal- 
responsibility crusade aimed at getting these whiny red
leeches off 
our collective blue hide. If they think they can get by
without us, 
let’s not stand in their way. What these people need from
us, at 
minimum, is some tough talk — the kind of stern, grown-up
verbal whoop- 
ass the conservatives wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to
unload on us 
if the roles were reversed. 
The time has come for blue
America to go Galt. Our farewell rant — 
long and epic, as Rand's
turgid writing style would have required — 
might sound a bit like
this: 
First off, dear Red Staters: If your town’s economy depends on
a 
nearby dam, canal, harbor, airport, military base, interstate
highway, 
national park or monument, or prison, just STFU. Because you
are, in 
every way possible, a parasite, living off something the rest
of us 
paid to build.
Second: If you are a homeowner who takes a mortgage interest
deduction 
— which is how the rest of us subsidize your house, and
with it your 
status in the middle-class — we don’twant to hear
another word from 
you about how you made it all on your own. And that
goes for those of 
you who got your education via the GI Bill, or took
out an SBA loan, 
or went to well-funded public schools back when such
things existed. 
You are what you are because we believed in you, and
invested in you. 
And we’re deeply insulted that you refuseto even
acknowledge that 
fact.Â*

Third: Don't come crawling to us to support
those kids you 
couldn't afford to have, but refused to allow
contraception or 
abortions or actual fact-based *** education to
prevent. It's just 
that simple. Our blue-state babies are better off
in every way that 
mattersÂ*because we plan our families. A failure to
plan on your part 
does not create an obligation on ours. Your
policies force women to 
have kids, even when they're patently not
ready to have them. Now (as 
you’re so fond of telling women who find
themselves unhappily 
pregnant), you get to live with the consequences
of those choices.
Fourth: Don't ask us to pay to educate your kids if you're not
willing 
to have us teach them what we know about the world. We
believe in 
free, comprehensive, rigorous and reality-based public
education 
because it’s done more than any other governmentservice to
make us 
rich, powerful and successful; and we want the same for you.
We realize some of you aren't too keen on public schools. It's great
that you want to take on more personal responsibility for educating
your own kids. Just be warned: if you don't teach them real science
and real history — including evolution, climate change and the actual
contents of the US Constitution — we're probably not going to hire
them. So we hope you're also ready to take responsibility for that,
too, which will probably mean supporting your grown kids in your
basement until you die.
Advertisement
Fifth: Between federal water reclamation projects and farm subsidies,
we are paying you zillions of dollars to grow stuff we'd actually
rather not eat. Don’t look now, but those of us in blue cities and
states are moving away from your petrochemical-saturated GMO-bred
CAFO- 
grown industrial “food” products as fast as we possibly can.
There 
aren’t enough organic and community-supported farms to feed all
of us 
yet — but we have taken responsibility for this, andare
working hard 
on the problem. You can either get on this train, or
holler at it 
while it flattens you. What you cannot do is yell at us
because we 
don’t want to eat what you choose to grow. 
Notice, too,
that the only reason we’re having to subsidize you in the 
first place
is that the all-holy free market does not bless you with 
profits on
this ****. In your own book, that makes you a capital-L 
Loser. In
ours, we’ll settle for “parasite.” 
Sixth: We are so over your
bigotry. Again: we know from our own long 
experience that including
women, gays and minorities makes us not only 
culturally richer; it
also makes us more economically productive as 
well. And the recent
economic meltdown has shown us that monocultures 
run exclusively by
rich white men tend to stagnate into breeding pools 
for all kinds of
social and financial parasites, who then come forward 
to prey on
those least able to resist -- like you. 
Diversity isn’t just an
idealistic fetish for us: we do it because we 
think it makes us
richer on every front that matters. If “parasite” is 
just another
word for “people who willfully make bad choices that keep 
them poor
and ignorant,” then your prejudices by definition make you 
parasites.
And we are not, therefore, obliged to deal with you. 
And finally: If
you want to pretend global warming isn't happening, 
you do not getto
come whining to us when you get hit with droughts or 
floods. We're
not going to send FEMA to bail you out. We're not going 
to build
canals to give you our water. We're not going to fund your 
levees.If
you're so sure God will provide, go ask him to keep your 
reservoirs
full and your cities dry. Because we resign. 
But will we come back?
Yep. It all sounds really ugly. But that’s the point of going Galt:
it’s a big fat tantrum designed to prove just how important you are
in 
the grand scheme of things. (The tactic is also not unfamiliar to
any 
mother who’s gone on a protracted housekeeping strike to gain
appreciation from an uncooperative family.) If others have to suffer
hardship to learn the lesson — well, that’ll teach 'em. The
emotionally satisfying goal is to get the parasites to come back,
begging on their knees for your vital help and resources. They know
now, in a way they didn't before, that they cannot survive without
you. 
So: if that fantasy moment were to come, what would it take to
convince us Progressive Objectivists to emerge once again from our
cool blue producerist enclave, and take responsibility for the
chastened masses once again? We have just five simple demands: 
1.
Stop taking more money from the federal government pot than you put
into it. If you believe in paying your own freight, then do it. If
you 
can’t, that’s fine -- we'll go back to helpingyou out -- but you
have 
to let go of that producerist superiority ****, because you’re
simply 
not entitled to it. 
2. Admit that we were right. Admit that
nobody in America ever makes 
it on their own, and that we are all in
this together, and that 
there’s such a thing as the commonwealth and
the common good. Admit 
that regulation is necessary to keep the
unprincipled strong from 
preying on the weak. Admit that there has
never in history ever been 
any such thing as a free market: markets
are created by governments, 
and need to be overseen by them. And
finally: admit that your 
conservative leaders got us into this
economic mess, and don’t know 
squat about how to get us out of it.
3. Join the reality-based world. Accept that America’s prosperity
utterly depends on how well-educated its kids are, especially on
topics like science and history. Accept that evolution happened, and
that climate change is happening now. Embrace nuance. Learn something
about how to assess evidence and think rationally, without a pre-
determined conclusion. Remember that God only helps those who've
gained the real-world skills to help themselves. 
4. Admit that we
love our country every bit as much as you do — and 
that, given our
much greater success at creating strong families, 
productive 21st-
century industries and excellent places to live, we 
might actually
know more that you do about how to make it work better 
in the
future. 
5. Last but by no means least: Knock off the hate-mongering,
threats 
and name-calling. Your heroine, Ms. Rand, predicted rightly
that 
parasites invariably despise the producers they feed on; you
should be 
embarrassed that your own behavior bears her out so
clearly. And, just 
once, say thank you to us for all the
contributions we’ve made (or, at 
least, tried to make) toward your
well-being. We don’t ask for much, 
but a little gratitude now and
then wouldn’t hurt. 
Five easy steps. Do this, and we’ll come back and
work with you as co- 
creators of an America we all can love. Until
then, though, you can 
pay your own bills. We’ve decided wehave
better things to invest that 
money in — upgraded schools, single-
payer healthcare, expanded college 
systems, mass transit, sustainable
technology investments, and forward- 
looking research to launch new
industries that will make us richer 
yet. And you’ll have achoice,
too: you’ll either learn what it takes 
to produce like we do, or
you’ll get to find out what real poverty 
feels like. 
Would that we
had the guts to go Galt. We probably don't; it's just 
not in our
natures to tell people who are hurting to go to hell, or 
leverage our
economic might to get the political upper-hand. But 
there's nothing
stopping us from pointing out, loudly and often, 
exactly who is
really who in this producers-versus-parasites 
relationship. We didn't
draw that ridiculous battle line -- but maybe 
it's time for us to
accept their terms of engagement, stake our 
rightful claim as the
country's actual producer class, and show them 
just how tall and
proud we are to stand on our far more fertile 
ground.
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  #22  
Vecchio 08-11-2012, 21.12.05
Nickname unavailable
 
Messaggi: n/a
Predefinito Re: google: "In a Nation of Children, Santa Claus Wins"

On Nov 8, 7:32Â*am, ПеаБраин <lapuant...@aol.com> wrote:[color=blue]
> google: "In a Nation of Children, Santa Claus Wins"
>
> Â*About 1,880 results (0.13 seconds)[/color]

Rand Worshipers Should Face Facts:Blue States Are the Providers:Red
States Are the Parasites:Rand predicted rightly that parasites
invariably despise the producers they feed on:you should be
embarrassed that red state behavior bears her out so clearly
[url]http://www.alternet.org/visions/154338/Ayn_Rand_Worshippers_Should_Fa[/url]...
AlterNet / By Sara Robinson
Ayn Rand Worshippers Should Face Facts: Blue States Are the
Providers, 
Red States Are the Parasites 
There's only one way to
demonstrate who America's producers and 
parasites really are. It's
time to go Galt. 
February 29, 2012 Â*|
Â*Last week, the New York Times published a widely discussed article
updating an argument that progressive bloggers noticed a very long
time ago. It's now well-understood that blue states generally export
money to the federal government; and red states generally import it.
TPM published a great map showing exactly how this redistribution
works:
(click for larger version) 
Progressives believe in the redistribution
of wealth, so we're not 
usually too upset by this state of affairs..
That’s what it means to be 
one country. E pluribus unum,Â*and all
that. We’re happy to help, 
because we think we’ve got a stake in
making sure kids in rural 
Alabama get educations and seniors in
Arizona get healthcare. What’s 
good for them is good for all of us.
We also like to think they’d help 
us out if our positions were
reversed. It’s an investment in making 
America stronger, and we feel
fine about that.
But maybe it's time to admit that we're being played for chumps, and
that there are people in the rest of the country who are taking way
too much advantage of our good nature. After all: it's now a stone
fact that the blue states and cities are the country's real wealth
creators. That's why we pay more taxes, and are able to send that
money to the red states in the first place. We're working our butts
off, being economically productive, going to college, raising good
kids, supporting reality-based schools, keeping our marriages
together,Â*tending to our busy and diverse cities, and generally
Playing By The Rules. And the fates have smiled on us in rough
proportion to the degree that we’ve invested in our own common good..
So we've got every right to get good and angry about the fact that,
by 
and large, the people who are getting our money are so damned
ungrateful -- not to mention so ridiculously eager to spend it on
stuff we don't approve of. We didn't ship them our hard-earned tax
dollars to see them squandered on worse-than-useless abstinence-only
education, textbooks that teach creationism, crisis-pregnancy
misinformation centers, subsidies for GMO crops and oil companies,
and 
so on. And we sure as hell didn't expect to be rewarded for our
productivity and generosity with a rising tide of spittle-flecked
insanity aboutÂ*how we’re just a bunch of immoral, godless, drug-
soaked, ***-crazed, evil America-hating traitors who can’t wait to
hand the country over to the Islamists and the Communists.
Ironically, the conservative movement's favorite philosopher had some
very insightful things to say about this exact situation. Ayn Rand's
novels divided the world into two groups. On one hand, she lionized
"producers" -- noble, intelligentÂ*Ăśbermenschen whose faith in their
own ideas and willingness to take risks to achieve their dreams
drives 
everything else in society. And she called out the evil of
"parasites," the dull, unimaginative masses who attach themselves to
producers and drain away their resources and thwart their dreams.
Conservatives love this story. They're eager to claim the gleaming
mantle of the producers, insisting loudly that their tax money is
going to support people (mostly in blue states and cities, it's
darkly 
implied) who won't or can't work as hard as they do. If you
want to 
arouse their class and race resentments, there are few
narratives that 
can get them rolling like this producers-versus-
parasites tale.
But the NYT story and that map up there prove beyond arguing that the
conservative interpretation of events is 100 percent, 180-degrees,
flat-out wrong. America's real producer class is overwhelmingly
concentrated in the blue cities and states -- the regions full of
smart, talented people who've harnessed technology and intellect to
money, and made these regions the best, most forward-looking places
in 
the country to live.
Advertisement
And the real parasites are centered in red states (the only
exceptions 
being states with huge resource reserves, like Alaska and
Texas) -- 
the unimaginative, exhausted places that have clung to a
fading past, 
rejected science, substituted superstition for sense,
and refused to 
invest in their own futures. It's not unfair to say
that those regions 
are simply feasting off the sweat of our ennobling
labor, and 
expecting us to continue supporting them as they go about
their wealth- 
destroying ways.
And we producers have had enough.
Progressives Go Galt!
If you're a conservative who thinks Ayn Rand called it true with this
producers/parasites thing, then by all means: let's go there. All the
way there — and then some. But fair warning is in order: you may not
like where we end up. 
By way of a modest proposal, I hereby declare
the birth of a new 
Progressive Objectivism — a frankly producerist
personal- 
responsibility crusade aimed at getting these whiny red
leeches off 
our collective blue hide. If they think they can get by
without us, 
let’s not stand in their way. What these people need from
us, at 
minimum, is some tough talk — the kind of stern, grown-up
verbal whoop- 
ass the conservatives wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to
unload on us 
if the roles were reversed. 
The time has come for blue
America to go Galt. Our farewell rant — 
long and epic, as Rand's
turgid writing style would have required — 
might sound a bit like
this: 
First off, dear Red Staters: If your town’s economy depends on
a 
nearby dam, canal, harbor, airport, military base, interstate
highway, 
national park or monument, or prison, just STFU. Because you
are, in 
every way possible, a parasite, living off something the rest
of us 
paid to build.
Second: If you are a homeowner who takes a mortgage interest
deduction 
— which is how the rest of us subsidize your house, and
with it your 
status in the middle-class — we don’twant to hear
another word from 
you about how you made it all on your own. And that
goes for those of 
you who got your education via the GI Bill, or took
out an SBA loan, 
or went to well-funded public schools back when such
things existed. 
You are what you are because we believed in you, and
invested in you. 
And we’re deeply insulted that you refuseto even
acknowledge that 
fact.Â*

Third: Don't come crawling to us to support
those kids you 
couldn't afford to have, but refused to allow
contraception or 
abortions or actual fact-based *** education to
prevent. It's just 
that simple. Our blue-state babies are better off
in every way that 
mattersÂ*because we plan our families. A failure to
plan on your part 
does not create an obligation on ours. Your
policies force women to 
have kids, even when they're patently not
ready to have them. Now (as 
you’re so fond of telling women who find
themselves unhappily 
pregnant), you get to live with the consequences
of those choices.
Fourth: Don't ask us to pay to educate your kids if you're not
willing 
to have us teach them what we know about the world. We
believe in 
free, comprehensive, rigorous and reality-based public
education 
because it’s done more than any other governmentservice to
make us 
rich, powerful and successful; and we want the same for you.
We realize some of you aren't too keen on public schools. It's great
that you want to take on more personal responsibility for educating
your own kids. Just be warned: if you don't teach them real science
and real history — including evolution, climate change and the actual
contents of the US Constitution — we're probably not going to hire
them. So we hope you're also ready to take responsibility for that,
too, which will probably mean supporting your grown kids in your
basement until you die.
Advertisement
Fifth: Between federal water reclamation projects and farm subsidies,
we are paying you zillions of dollars to grow stuff we'd actually
rather not eat. Don’t look now, but those of us in blue cities and
states are moving away from your petrochemical-saturated GMO-bred
CAFO- 
grown industrial “food” products as fast as we possibly can.
There 
aren’t enough organic and community-supported farms to feed all
of us 
yet — but we have taken responsibility for this, andare
working hard 
on the problem. You can either get on this train, or
holler at it 
while it flattens you. What you cannot do is yell at us
because we 
don’t want to eat what you choose to grow. 
Notice, too,
that the only reason we’re having to subsidize you in the 
first place
is that the all-holy free market does not bless you with 
profits on
this ****. In your own book, that makes you a capital-L 
Loser. In
ours, we’ll settle for “parasite.” 
Sixth: We are so over your
bigotry. Again: we know from our own long 
experience that including
women, gays and minorities makes us not only 
culturally richer; it
also makes us more economically productive as 
well. And the recent
economic meltdown has shown us that monocultures 
run exclusively by
rich white men tend to stagnate into breeding pools 
for all kinds of
social and financial parasites, who then come forward 
to prey on
those least able to resist -- like you. 
Diversity isn’t just an
idealistic fetish for us: we do it because we 
think it makes us
richer on every front that matters. If “parasite” is 
just another
word for “people who willfully make bad choices that keep 
them poor
and ignorant,” then your prejudices by definition make you 
parasites.
And we are not, therefore, obliged to deal with you. 
And finally: If
you want to pretend global warming isn't happening, 
you do not getto
come whining to us when you get hit with droughts or 
floods. We're
not going to send FEMA to bail you out. We're not going 
to build
canals to give you our water. We're not going to fund your 
levees.If
you're so sure God will provide, go ask him to keep your 
reservoirs
full and your cities dry. Because we resign. 
But will we come back?
Yep. It all sounds really ugly. But that’s the point of going Galt:
it’s a big fat tantrum designed to prove just how important you are
in 
the grand scheme of things. (The tactic is also not unfamiliar to
any 
mother who’s gone on a protracted housekeeping strike to gain
appreciation from an uncooperative family.) If others have to suffer
hardship to learn the lesson — well, that’ll teach 'em. The
emotionally satisfying goal is to get the parasites to come back,
begging on their knees for your vital help and resources. They know
now, in a way they didn't before, that they cannot survive without
you. 
So: if that fantasy moment were to come, what would it take to
convince us Progressive Objectivists to emerge once again from our
cool blue producerist enclave, and take responsibility for the
chastened masses once again? We have just five simple demands: 
1.
Stop taking more money from the federal government pot than you put
into it. If you believe in paying your own freight, then do it. If
you 
can’t, that’s fine -- we'll go back to helpingyou out -- but you
have 
to let go of that producerist superiority ****, because you’re
simply 
not entitled to it. 
2. Admit that we were right. Admit that
nobody in America ever makes 
it on their own, and that we are all in
this together, and that 
there’s such a thing as the commonwealth and
the common good. Admit 
that regulation is necessary to keep the
unprincipled strong from 
preying on the weak. Admit that there has
never in history ever been 
any such thing as a free market: markets
are created by governments, 
and need to be overseen by them. And
finally: admit that your 
conservative leaders got us into this
economic mess, and don’t know 
squat about how to get us out of it.
3. Join the reality-based world. Accept that America’s prosperity
utterly depends on how well-educated its kids are, especially on
topics like science and history. Accept that evolution happened, and
that climate change is happening now. Embrace nuance. Learn something
about how to assess evidence and think rationally, without a pre-
determined conclusion. Remember that God only helps those who've
gained the real-world skills to help themselves. 
4. Admit that we
love our country every bit as much as you do — and 
that, given our
much greater success at creating strong families, 
productive 21st-
century industries and excellent places to live, we 
might actually
know more that you do about how to make it work better 
in the
future. 
5. Last but by no means least: Knock off the hate-mongering,
threats 
and name-calling. Your heroine, Ms. Rand, predicted rightly
that 
parasites invariably despise the producers they feed on; you
should be 
embarrassed that your own behavior bears her out so
clearly. And, just 
once, say thank you to us for all the
contributions we’ve made (or, at 
least, tried to make) toward your
well-being. We don’t ask for much, 
but a little gratitude now and
then wouldn’t hurt. 
Five easy steps. Do this, and we’ll come back and
work with you as co- 
creators of an America we all can love. Until
then, though, you can 
pay your own bills. We’ve decided wehave
better things to invest that 
money in — upgraded schools, single-
payer healthcare, expanded college 
systems, mass transit, sustainable
technology investments, and forward- 
looking research to launch new
industries that will make us richer 
yet. And you’ll have achoice,
too: you’ll either learn what it takes 
to produce like we do, or
you’ll get to find out what real poverty 
feels like. 
Would that we
had the guts to go Galt. We probably don't; it's just 
not in our
natures to tell people who are hurting to go to hell, or 
leverage our
economic might to get the political upper-hand. But 
there's nothing
stopping us from pointing out, loudly and often, 
exactly who is
really who in this producers-versus-parasites 
relationship. We didn't
draw that ridiculous battle line -- but maybe 
it's time for us to
accept their terms of engagement, stake our 
rightful claim as the
country's actual producer class, and show them 
just how tall and
proud we are to stand on our far more fertile 
ground.
Rispondi citando Condividi su facebook
  #23  
Vecchio 08-11-2012, 21.12.05
Nickname unavailable
 
Messaggi: n/a
Predefinito Re: google: "In a Nation of Children, Santa Claus Wins"

On Nov 8, 7:32Â*am, ПеаБраин <lapuant...@aol.com> wrote:[color=blue]
> google: "In a Nation of Children, Santa Claus Wins"
>
> Â*About 1,880 results (0.13 seconds)[/color]

Rand Worshipers Should Face Facts:Blue States Are the Providers:Red
States Are the Parasites:Rand predicted rightly that parasites
invariably despise the producers they feed on:you should be
embarrassed that red state behavior bears her out so clearly
[url]http://www.alternet.org/visions/154338/Ayn_Rand_Worshippers_Should_Fa[/url]...
AlterNet / By Sara Robinson
Ayn Rand Worshippers Should Face Facts: Blue States Are the
Providers, 
Red States Are the Parasites 
There's only one way to
demonstrate who America's producers and 
parasites really are. It's
time to go Galt. 
February 29, 2012 Â*|
Â*Last week, the New York Times published a widely discussed article
updating an argument that progressive bloggers noticed a very long
time ago. It's now well-understood that blue states generally export
money to the federal government; and red states generally import it.
TPM published a great map showing exactly how this redistribution
works:
(click for larger version) 
Progressives believe in the redistribution
of wealth, so we're not 
usually too upset by this state of affairs..
That’s what it means to be 
one country. E pluribus unum,Â*and all
that. We’re happy to help, 
because we think we’ve got a stake in
making sure kids in rural 
Alabama get educations and seniors in
Arizona get healthcare. What’s 
good for them is good for all of us.
We also like to think they’d help 
us out if our positions were
reversed. It’s an investment in making 
America stronger, and we feel
fine about that.
But maybe it's time to admit that we're being played for chumps, and
that there are people in the rest of the country who are taking way
too much advantage of our good nature. After all: it's now a stone
fact that the blue states and cities are the country's real wealth
creators. That's why we pay more taxes, and are able to send that
money to the red states in the first place. We're working our butts
off, being economically productive, going to college, raising good
kids, supporting reality-based schools, keeping our marriages
together,Â*tending to our busy and diverse cities, and generally
Playing By The Rules. And the fates have smiled on us in rough
proportion to the degree that we’ve invested in our own common good..
So we've got every right to get good and angry about the fact that,
by 
and large, the people who are getting our money are so damned
ungrateful -- not to mention so ridiculously eager to spend it on
stuff we don't approve of. We didn't ship them our hard-earned tax
dollars to see them squandered on worse-than-useless abstinence-only
education, textbooks that teach creationism, crisis-pregnancy
misinformation centers, subsidies for GMO crops and oil companies,
and 
so on. And we sure as hell didn't expect to be rewarded for our
productivity and generosity with a rising tide of spittle-flecked
insanity aboutÂ*how we’re just a bunch of immoral, godless, drug-
soaked, ***-crazed, evil America-hating traitors who can’t wait to
hand the country over to the Islamists and the Communists.
Ironically, the conservative movement's favorite philosopher had some
very insightful things to say about this exact situation. Ayn Rand's
novels divided the world into two groups. On one hand, she lionized
"producers" -- noble, intelligentÂ*Ăśbermenschen whose faith in their
own ideas and willingness to take risks to achieve their dreams
drives 
everything else in society. And she called out the evil of
"parasites," the dull, unimaginative masses who attach themselves to
producers and drain away their resources and thwart their dreams.
Conservatives love this story. They're eager to claim the gleaming
mantle of the producers, insisting loudly that their tax money is
going to support people (mostly in blue states and cities, it's
darkly 
implied) who won't or can't work as hard as they do. If you
want to 
arouse their class and race resentments, there are few
narratives that 
can get them rolling like this producers-versus-
parasites tale.
But the NYT story and that map up there prove beyond arguing that the
conservative interpretation of events is 100 percent, 180-degrees,
flat-out wrong. America's real producer class is overwhelmingly
concentrated in the blue cities and states -- the regions full of
smart, talented people who've harnessed technology and intellect to
money, and made these regions the best, most forward-looking places
in 
the country to live.
Advertisement
And the real parasites are centered in red states (the only
exceptions 
being states with huge resource reserves, like Alaska and
Texas) -- 
the unimaginative, exhausted places that have clung to a
fading past, 
rejected science, substituted superstition for sense,
and refused to 
invest in their own futures. It's not unfair to say
that those regions 
are simply feasting off the sweat of our ennobling
labor, and 
expecting us to continue supporting them as they go about
their wealth- 
destroying ways.
And we producers have had enough.
Progressives Go Galt!
If you're a conservative who thinks Ayn Rand called it true with this
producers/parasites thing, then by all means: let's go there. All the
way there — and then some. But fair warning is in order: you may not
like where we end up. 
By way of a modest proposal, I hereby declare
the birth of a new 
Progressive Objectivism — a frankly producerist
personal- 
responsibility crusade aimed at getting these whiny red
leeches off 
our collective blue hide. If they think they can get by
without us, 
let’s not stand in their way. What these people need from
us, at 
minimum, is some tough talk — the kind of stern, grown-up
verbal whoop- 
ass the conservatives wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to
unload on us 
if the roles were reversed. 
The time has come for blue
America to go Galt. Our farewell rant — 
long and epic, as Rand's
turgid writing style would have required — 
might sound a bit like
this: 
First off, dear Red Staters: If your town’s economy depends on
a 
nearby dam, canal, harbor, airport, military base, interstate
highway, 
national park or monument, or prison, just STFU. Because you
are, in 
every way possible, a parasite, living off something the rest
of us 
paid to build.
Second: If you are a homeowner who takes a mortgage interest
deduction 
— which is how the rest of us subsidize your house, and
with it your 
status in the middle-class — we don’twant to hear
another word from 
you about how you made it all on your own. And that
goes for those of 
you who got your education via the GI Bill, or took
out an SBA loan, 
or went to well-funded public schools back when such
things existed. 
You are what you are because we believed in you, and
invested in you. 
And we’re deeply insulted that you refuseto even
acknowledge that 
fact.Â*

Third: Don't come crawling to us to support
those kids you 
couldn't afford to have, but refused to allow
contraception or 
abortions or actual fact-based *** education to
prevent. It's just 
that simple. Our blue-state babies are better off
in every way that 
mattersÂ*because we plan our families. A failure to
plan on your part 
does not create an obligation on ours. Your
policies force women to 
have kids, even when they're patently not
ready to have them. Now (as 
you’re so fond of telling women who find
themselves unhappily 
pregnant), you get to live with the consequences
of those choices.
Fourth: Don't ask us to pay to educate your kids if you're not
willing 
to have us teach them what we know about the world. We
believe in 
free, comprehensive, rigorous and reality-based public
education 
because it’s done more than any other governmentservice to
make us 
rich, powerful and successful; and we want the same for you.
We realize some of you aren't too keen on public schools. It's great
that you want to take on more personal responsibility for educating
your own kids. Just be warned: if you don't teach them real science
and real history — including evolution, climate change and the actual
contents of the US Constitution — we're probably not going to hire
them. So we hope you're also ready to take responsibility for that,
too, which will probably mean supporting your grown kids in your
basement until you die.
Advertisement
Fifth: Between federal water reclamation projects and farm subsidies,
we are paying you zillions of dollars to grow stuff we'd actually
rather not eat. Don’t look now, but those of us in blue cities and
states are moving away from your petrochemical-saturated GMO-bred
CAFO- 
grown industrial “food” products as fast as we possibly can.
There 
aren’t enough organic and community-supported farms to feed all
of us 
yet — but we have taken responsibility for this, andare
working hard 
on the problem. You can either get on this train, or
holler at it 
while it flattens you. What you cannot do is yell at us
because we 
don’t want to eat what you choose to grow. 
Notice, too,
that the only reason we’re having to subsidize you in the 
first place
is that the all-holy free market does not bless you with 
profits on
this ****. In your own book, that makes you a capital-L 
Loser. In
ours, we’ll settle for “parasite.” 
Sixth: We are so over your
bigotry. Again: we know from our own long 
experience that including
women, gays and minorities makes us not only 
culturally richer; it
also makes us more economically productive as 
well. And the recent
economic meltdown has shown us that monocultures 
run exclusively by
rich white men tend to stagnate into breeding pools 
for all kinds of
social and financial parasites, who then come forward 
to prey on
those least able to resist -- like you. 
Diversity isn’t just an
idealistic fetish for us: we do it because we 
think it makes us
richer on every front that matters. If “parasite” is 
just another
word for “people who willfully make bad choices that keep 
them poor
and ignorant,” then your prejudices by definition make you 
parasites.
And we are not, therefore, obliged to deal with you. 
And finally: If
you want to pretend global warming isn't happening, 
you do not getto
come whining to us when you get hit with droughts or 
floods. We're
not going to send FEMA to bail you out. We're not going 
to build
canals to give you our water. We're not going to fund your 
levees.If
you're so sure God will provide, go ask him to keep your 
reservoirs
full and your cities dry. Because we resign. 
But will we come back?
Yep. It all sounds really ugly. But that’s the point of going Galt:
it’s a big fat tantrum designed to prove just how important you are
in 
the grand scheme of things. (The tactic is also not unfamiliar to
any 
mother who’s gone on a protracted housekeeping strike to gain
appreciation from an uncooperative family.) If others have to suffer
hardship to learn the lesson — well, that’ll teach 'em. The
emotionally satisfying goal is to get the parasites to come back,
begging on their knees for your vital help and resources. They know
now, in a way they didn't before, that they cannot survive without
you. 
So: if that fantasy moment were to come, what would it take to
convince us Progressive Objectivists to emerge once again from our
cool blue producerist enclave, and take responsibility for the
chastened masses once again? We have just five simple demands: 
1.
Stop taking more money from the federal government pot than you put
into it. If you believe in paying your own freight, then do it. If
you 
can’t, that’s fine -- we'll go back to helpingyou out -- but you
have 
to let go of that producerist superiority ****, because you’re
simply 
not entitled to it. 
2. Admit that we were right. Admit that
nobody in America ever makes 
it on their own, and that we are all in
this together, and that 
there’s such a thing as the commonwealth and
the common good. Admit 
that regulation is necessary to keep the
unprincipled strong from 
preying on the weak. Admit that there has
never in history ever been 
any such thing as a free market: markets
are created by governments, 
and need to be overseen by them. And
finally: admit that your 
conservative leaders got us into this
economic mess, and don’t know 
squat about how to get us out of it.
3. Join the reality-based world. Accept that America’s prosperity
utterly depends on how well-educated its kids are, especially on
topics like science and history. Accept that evolution happened, and
that climate change is happening now. Embrace nuance. Learn something
about how to assess evidence and think rationally, without a pre-
determined conclusion. Remember that God only helps those who've
gained the real-world skills to help themselves. 
4. Admit that we
love our country every bit as much as you do — and 
that, given our
much greater success at creating strong families, 
productive 21st-
century industries and excellent places to live, we 
might actually
know more that you do about how to make it work better 
in the
future. 
5. Last but by no means least: Knock off the hate-mongering,
threats 
and name-calling. Your heroine, Ms. Rand, predicted rightly
that 
parasites invariably despise the producers they feed on; you
should be 
embarrassed that your own behavior bears her out so
clearly. And, just 
once, say thank you to us for all the
contributions we’ve made (or, at 
least, tried to make) toward your
well-being. We don’t ask for much, 
but a little gratitude now and
then wouldn’t hurt. 
Five easy steps. Do this, and we’ll come back and
work with you as co- 
creators of an America we all can love. Until
then, though, you can 
pay your own bills. We’ve decided wehave
better things to invest that 
money in — upgraded schools, single-
payer healthcare, expanded college 
systems, mass transit, sustainable
technology investments, and forward- 
looking research to launch new
industries that will make us richer 
yet. And you’ll have achoice,
too: you’ll either learn what it takes 
to produce like we do, or
you’ll get to find out what real poverty 
feels like. 
Would that we
had the guts to go Galt. We probably don't; it's just 
not in our
natures to tell people who are hurting to go to hell, or 
leverage our
economic might to get the political upper-hand. But 
there's nothing
stopping us from pointing out, loudly and often, 
exactly who is
really who in this producers-versus-parasites 
relationship. We didn't
draw that ridiculous battle line -- but maybe 
it's time for us to
accept their terms of engagement, stake our 
rightful claim as the
country's actual producer class, and show them 
just how tall and
proud we are to stand on our far more fertile 
ground.
Rispondi citando Condividi su facebook
  #24  
Vecchio 08-11-2012, 21.12.05
Nickname unavailable
 
Messaggi: n/a
Predefinito Re: google: "In a Nation of Children, Santa Claus Wins"

On Nov 8, 7:32Â*am, ПеаБраин <lapuant...@aol.com> wrote:[color=blue]
> google: "In a Nation of Children, Santa Claus Wins"
>
> Â*About 1,880 results (0.13 seconds)[/color]

Rand Worshipers Should Face Facts:Blue States Are the Providers:Red
States Are the Parasites:Rand predicted rightly that parasites
invariably despise the producers they feed on:you should be
embarrassed that red state behavior bears her out so clearly
[url]http://www.alternet.org/visions/154338/Ayn_Rand_Worshippers_Should_Fa[/url]...
AlterNet / By Sara Robinson
Ayn Rand Worshippers Should Face Facts: Blue States Are the
Providers, 
Red States Are the Parasites 
There's only one way to
demonstrate who America's producers and 
parasites really are. It's
time to go Galt. 
February 29, 2012 Â*|
Â*Last week, the New York Times published a widely discussed article
updating an argument that progressive bloggers noticed a very long
time ago. It's now well-understood that blue states generally export
money to the federal government; and red states generally import it.
TPM published a great map showing exactly how this redistribution
works:
(click for larger version) 
Progressives believe in the redistribution
of wealth, so we're not 
usually too upset by this state of affairs..
That’s what it means to be 
one country. E pluribus unum,Â*and all
that. We’re happy to help, 
because we think we’ve got a stake in
making sure kids in rural 
Alabama get educations and seniors in
Arizona get healthcare. What’s 
good for them is good for all of us.
We also like to think they’d help 
us out if our positions were
reversed. It’s an investment in making 
America stronger, and we feel
fine about that.
But maybe it's time to admit that we're being played for chumps, and
that there are people in the rest of the country who are taking way
too much advantage of our good nature. After all: it's now a stone
fact that the blue states and cities are the country's real wealth
creators. That's why we pay more taxes, and are able to send that
money to the red states in the first place. We're working our butts
off, being economically productive, going to college, raising good
kids, supporting reality-based schools, keeping our marriages
together,Â*tending to our busy and diverse cities, and generally
Playing By The Rules. And the fates have smiled on us in rough
proportion to the degree that we’ve invested in our own common good..
So we've got every right to get good and angry about the fact that,
by 
and large, the people who are getting our money are so damned
ungrateful -- not to mention so ridiculously eager to spend it on
stuff we don't approve of. We didn't ship them our hard-earned tax
dollars to see them squandered on worse-than-useless abstinence-only
education, textbooks that teach creationism, crisis-pregnancy
misinformation centers, subsidies for GMO crops and oil companies,
and 
so on. And we sure as hell didn't expect to be rewarded for our
productivity and generosity with a rising tide of spittle-flecked
insanity aboutÂ*how we’re just a bunch of immoral, godless, drug-
soaked, ***-crazed, evil America-hating traitors who can’t wait to
hand the country over to the Islamists and the Communists.
Ironically, the conservative movement's favorite philosopher had some
very insightful things to say about this exact situation. Ayn Rand's
novels divided the world into two groups. On one hand, she lionized
"producers" -- noble, intelligentÂ*Ăśbermenschen whose faith in their
own ideas and willingness to take risks to achieve their dreams
drives 
everything else in society. And she called out the evil of
"parasites," the dull, unimaginative masses who attach themselves to
producers and drain away their resources and thwart their dreams.
Conservatives love this story. They're eager to claim the gleaming
mantle of the producers, insisting loudly that their tax money is
going to support people (mostly in blue states and cities, it's
darkly 
implied) who won't or can't work as hard as they do. If you
want to 
arouse their class and race resentments, there are few
narratives that 
can get them rolling like this producers-versus-
parasites tale.
But the NYT story and that map up there prove beyond arguing that the
conservative interpretation of events is 100 percent, 180-degrees,
flat-out wrong. America's real producer class is overwhelmingly
concentrated in the blue cities and states -- the regions full of
smart, talented people who've harnessed technology and intellect to
money, and made these regions the best, most forward-looking places
in 
the country to live.
Advertisement
And the real parasites are centered in red states (the only
exceptions 
being states with huge resource reserves, like Alaska and
Texas) -- 
the unimaginative, exhausted places that have clung to a
fading past, 
rejected science, substituted superstition for sense,
and refused to 
invest in their own futures. It's not unfair to say
that those regions 
are simply feasting off the sweat of our ennobling
labor, and 
expecting us to continue supporting them as they go about
their wealth- 
destroying ways.
And we producers have had enough.
Progressives Go Galt!
If you're a conservative who thinks Ayn Rand called it true with this
producers/parasites thing, then by all means: let's go there. All the
way there — and then some. But fair warning is in order: you may not
like where we end up. 
By way of a modest proposal, I hereby declare
the birth of a new 
Progressive Objectivism — a frankly producerist
personal- 
responsibility crusade aimed at getting these whiny red
leeches off 
our collective blue hide. If they think they can get by
without us, 
let’s not stand in their way. What these people need from
us, at 
minimum, is some tough talk — the kind of stern, grown-up
verbal whoop- 
ass the conservatives wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to
unload on us 
if the roles were reversed. 
The time has come for blue
America to go Galt. Our farewell rant — 
long and epic, as Rand's
turgid writing style would have required — 
might sound a bit like
this: 
First off, dear Red Staters: If your town’s economy depends on
a 
nearby dam, canal, harbor, airport, military base, interstate
highway, 
national park or monument, or prison, just STFU. Because you
are, in 
every way possible, a parasite, living off something the rest
of us 
paid to build.
Second: If you are a homeowner who takes a mortgage interest
deduction 
— which is how the rest of us subsidize your house, and
with it your 
status in the middle-class — we don’twant to hear
another word from 
you about how you made it all on your own. And that
goes for those of 
you who got your education via the GI Bill, or took
out an SBA loan, 
or went to well-funded public schools back when such
things existed. 
You are what you are because we believed in you, and
invested in you. 
And we’re deeply insulted that you refuseto even
acknowledge that 
fact.Â*

Third: Don't come crawling to us to support
those kids you 
couldn't afford to have, but refused to allow
contraception or 
abortions or actual fact-based *** education to
prevent. It's just 
that simple. Our blue-state babies are better off
in every way that 
mattersÂ*because we plan our families. A failure to
plan on your part 
does not create an obligation on ours. Your
policies force women to 
have kids, even when they're patently not
ready to have them. Now (as 
you’re so fond of telling women who find
themselves unhappily 
pregnant), you get to live with the consequences
of those choices.
Fourth: Don't ask us to pay to educate your kids if you're not
willing 
to have us teach them what we know about the world. We
believe in 
free, comprehensive, rigorous and reality-based public
education 
because it’s done more than any other governmentservice to
make us 
rich, powerful and successful; and we want the same for you.
We realize some of you aren't too keen on public schools. It's great
that you want to take on more personal responsibility for educating
your own kids. Just be warned: if you don't teach them real science
and real history — including evolution, climate change and the actual
contents of the US Constitution — we're probably not going to hire
them. So we hope you're also ready to take responsibility for that,
too, which will probably mean supporting your grown kids in your
basement until you die.
Advertisement
Fifth: Between federal water reclamation projects and farm subsidies,
we are paying you zillions of dollars to grow stuff we'd actually
rather not eat. Don’t look now, but those of us in blue cities and
states are moving away from your petrochemical-saturated GMO-bred
CAFO- 
grown industrial “food” products as fast as we possibly can.
There 
aren’t enough organic and community-supported farms to feed all
of us 
yet — but we have taken responsibility for this, andare
working hard 
on the problem. You can either get on this train, or
holler at it 
while it flattens you. What you cannot do is yell at us
because we 
don’t want to eat what you choose to grow. 
Notice, too,
that the only reason we’re having to subsidize you in the 
first place
is that the all-holy free market does not bless you with 
profits on
this ****. In your own book, that makes you a capital-L 
Loser. In
ours, we’ll settle for “parasite.” 
Sixth: We are so over your
bigotry. Again: we know from our own long 
experience that including
women, gays and minorities makes us not only 
culturally richer; it
also makes us more economically productive as 
well. And the recent
economic meltdown has shown us that monocultures 
run exclusively by
rich white men tend to stagnate into breeding pools 
for all kinds of
social and financial parasites, who then come forward 
to prey on
those least able to resist -- like you. 
Diversity isn’t just an
idealistic fetish for us: we do it because we 
think it makes us
richer on every front that matters. If “parasite” is 
just another
word for “people who willfully make bad choices that keep 
them poor
and ignorant,” then your prejudices by definition make you 
parasites.
And we are not, therefore, obliged to deal with you. 
And finally: If
you want to pretend global warming isn't happening, 
you do not getto
come whining to us when you get hit with droughts or 
floods. We're
not going to send FEMA to bail you out. We're not going 
to build
canals to give you our water. We're not going to fund your 
levees.If
you're so sure God will provide, go ask him to keep your 
reservoirs
full and your cities dry. Because we resign. 
But will we come back?
Yep. It all sounds really ugly. But that’s the point of going Galt:
it’s a big fat tantrum designed to prove just how important you are
in 
the grand scheme of things. (The tactic is also not unfamiliar to
any 
mother who’s gone on a protracted housekeeping strike to gain
appreciation from an uncooperative family.) If others have to suffer
hardship to learn the lesson — well, that’ll teach 'em. The
emotionally satisfying goal is to get the parasites to come back,
begging on their knees for your vital help and resources. They know
now, in a way they didn't before, that they cannot survive without
you. 
So: if that fantasy moment were to come, what would it take to
convince us Progressive Objectivists to emerge once again from our
cool blue producerist enclave, and take responsibility for the
chastened masses once again? We have just five simple demands: 
1.
Stop taking more money from the federal government pot than you put
into it. If you believe in paying your own freight, then do it. If
you 
can’t, that’s fine -- we'll go back to helpingyou out -- but you
have 
to let go of that producerist superiority ****, because you’re
simply 
not entitled to it. 
2. Admit that we were right. Admit that
nobody in America ever makes 
it on their own, and that we are all in
this together, and that 
there’s such a thing as the commonwealth and
the common good. Admit 
that regulation is necessary to keep the
unprincipled strong from 
preying on the weak. Admit that there has
never in history ever been 
any such thing as a free market: markets
are created by governments, 
and need to be overseen by them. And
finally: admit that your 
conservative leaders got us into this
economic mess, and don’t know 
squat about how to get us out of it.
3. Join the reality-based world. Accept that America’s prosperity
utterly depends on how well-educated its kids are, especially on
topics like science and history. Accept that evolution happened, and
that climate change is happening now. Embrace nuance. Learn something
about how to assess evidence and think rationally, without a pre-
determined conclusion. Remember that God only helps those who've
gained the real-world skills to help themselves. 
4. Admit that we
love our country every bit as much as you do — and 
that, given our
much greater success at creating strong families, 
productive 21st-
century industries and excellent places to live, we 
might actually
know more that you do about how to make it work better 
in the
future. 
5. Last but by no means least: Knock off the hate-mongering,
threats 
and name-calling. Your heroine, Ms. Rand, predicted rightly
that 
parasites invariably despise the producers they feed on; you
should be 
embarrassed that your own behavior bears her out so
clearly. And, just 
once, say thank you to us for all the
contributions we’ve made (or, at 
least, tried to make) toward your
well-being. We don’t ask for much, 
but a little gratitude now and
then wouldn’t hurt. 
Five easy steps. Do this, and we’ll come back and
work with you as co- 
creators of an America we all can love. Until
then, though, you can 
pay your own bills. We’ve decided wehave
better things to invest that 
money in — upgraded schools, single-
payer healthcare, expanded college 
systems, mass transit, sustainable
technology investments, and forward- 
looking research to launch new
industries that will make us richer 
yet. And you’ll have achoice,
too: you’ll either learn what it takes 
to produce like we do, or
you’ll get to find out what real poverty 
feels like. 
Would that we
had the guts to go Galt. We probably don't; it's just 
not in our
natures to tell people who are hurting to go to hell, or 
leverage our
economic might to get the political upper-hand. But 
there's nothing
stopping us from pointing out, loudly and often, 
exactly who is
really who in this producers-versus-parasites 
relationship. We didn't
draw that ridiculous battle line -- but maybe 
it's time for us to
accept their terms of engagement, stake our 
rightful claim as the
country's actual producer class, and show them 
just how tall and
proud we are to stand on our far more fertile 
ground.
Rispondi citando Condividi su facebook
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Advertisement
  #25  
Vecchio 08-11-2012, 21.12.05
Nickname unavailable
 
Messaggi: n/a
Predefinito Re: google: "In a Nation of Children, Santa Claus Wins"

On Nov 8, 7:32Â*am, ПеаБраин <lapuant...@aol.com> wrote:[color=blue]
> google: "In a Nation of Children, Santa Claus Wins"
>
> Â*About 1,880 results (0.13 seconds)[/color]

Rand Worshipers Should Face Facts:Blue States Are the Providers:Red
States Are the Parasites:Rand predicted rightly that parasites
invariably despise the producers they feed on:you should be
embarrassed that red state behavior bears her out so clearly
[url]http://www.alternet.org/visions/154338/Ayn_Rand_Worshippers_Should_Fa[/url]...
AlterNet / By Sara Robinson
Ayn Rand Worshippers Should Face Facts: Blue States Are the
Providers, 
Red States Are the Parasites 
There's only one way to
demonstrate who America's producers and 
parasites really are. It's
time to go Galt. 
February 29, 2012 Â*|
Â*Last week, the New York Times published a widely discussed article
updating an argument that progressive bloggers noticed a very long
time ago. It's now well-understood that blue states generally export
money to the federal government; and red states generally import it.
TPM published a great map showing exactly how this redistribution
works:
(click for larger version) 
Progressives believe in the redistribution
of wealth, so we're not 
usually too upset by this state of affairs..
That’s what it means to be 
one country. E pluribus unum,Â*and all
that. We’re happy to help, 
because we think we’ve got a stake in
making sure kids in rural 
Alabama get educations and seniors in
Arizona get healthcare. What’s 
good for them is good for all of us.
We also like to think they’d help 
us out if our positions were
reversed. It’s an investment in making 
America stronger, and we feel
fine about that.
But maybe it's time to admit that we're being played for chumps, and
that there are people in the rest of the country who are taking way
too much advantage of our good nature. After all: it's now a stone
fact that the blue states and cities are the country's real wealth
creators. That's why we pay more taxes, and are able to send that
money to the red states in the first place. We're working our butts
off, being economically productive, going to college, raising good
kids, supporting reality-based schools, keeping our marriages
together,Â*tending to our busy and diverse cities, and generally
Playing By The Rules. And the fates have smiled on us in rough
proportion to the degree that we’ve invested in our own common good..
So we've got every right to get good and angry about the fact that,
by 
and large, the people who are getting our money are so damned
ungrateful -- not to mention so ridiculously eager to spend it on
stuff we don't approve of. We didn't ship them our hard-earned tax
dollars to see them squandered on worse-than-useless abstinence-only
education, textbooks that teach creationism, crisis-pregnancy
misinformation centers, subsidies for GMO crops and oil companies,
and 
so on. And we sure as hell didn't expect to be rewarded for our
productivity and generosity with a rising tide of spittle-flecked
insanity aboutÂ*how we’re just a bunch of immoral, godless, drug-
soaked, ***-crazed, evil America-hating traitors who can’t wait to
hand the country over to the Islamists and the Communists.
Ironically, the conservative movement's favorite philosopher had some
very insightful things to say about this exact situation. Ayn Rand's
novels divided the world into two groups. On one hand, she lionized
"producers" -- noble, intelligentÂ*Ăśbermenschen whose faith in their
own ideas and willingness to take risks to achieve their dreams
drives 
everything else in society. And she called out the evil of
"parasites," the dull, unimaginative masses who attach themselves to
producers and drain away their resources and thwart their dreams.
Conservatives love this story. They're eager to claim the gleaming
mantle of the producers, insisting loudly that their tax money is
going to support people (mostly in blue states and cities, it's
darkly 
implied) who won't or can't work as hard as they do. If you
want to 
arouse their class and race resentments, there are few
narratives that 
can get them rolling like this producers-versus-
parasites tale.
But the NYT story and that map up there prove beyond arguing that the
conservative interpretation of events is 100 percent, 180-degrees,
flat-out wrong. America's real producer class is overwhelmingly
concentrated in the blue cities and states -- the regions full of
smart, talented people who've harnessed technology and intellect to
money, and made these regions the best, most forward-looking places
in 
the country to live.
Advertisement
And the real parasites are centered in red states (the only
exceptions 
being states with huge resource reserves, like Alaska and
Texas) -- 
the unimaginative, exhausted places that have clung to a
fading past, 
rejected science, substituted superstition for sense,
and refused to 
invest in their own futures. It's not unfair to say
that those regions 
are simply feasting off the sweat of our ennobling
labor, and 
expecting us to continue supporting them as they go about
their wealth- 
destroying ways.
And we producers have had enough.
Progressives Go Galt!
If you're a conservative who thinks Ayn Rand called it true with this
producers/parasites thing, then by all means: let's go there. All the
way there — and then some. But fair warning is in order: you may not
like where we end up. 
By way of a modest proposal, I hereby declare
the birth of a new 
Progressive Objectivism — a frankly producerist
personal- 
responsibility crusade aimed at getting these whiny red
leeches off 
our collective blue hide. If they think they can get by
without us, 
let’s not stand in their way. What these people need from
us, at 
minimum, is some tough talk — the kind of stern, grown-up
verbal whoop- 
ass the conservatives wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to
unload on us 
if the roles were reversed. 
The time has come for blue
America to go Galt. Our farewell rant — 
long and epic, as Rand's
turgid writing style would have required — 
might sound a bit like
this: 
First off, dear Red Staters: If your town’s economy depends on
a 
nearby dam, canal, harbor, airport, military base, interstate
highway, 
national park or monument, or prison, just STFU. Because you
are, in 
every way possible, a parasite, living off something the rest
of us 
paid to build.
Second: If you are a homeowner who takes a mortgage interest
deduction 
— which is how the rest of us subsidize your house, and
with it your 
status in the middle-class — we don’twant to hear
another word from 
you about how you made it all on your own. And that
goes for those of 
you who got your education via the GI Bill, or took
out an SBA loan, 
or went to well-funded public schools back when such
things existed. 
You are what you are because we believed in you, and
invested in you. 
And we’re deeply insulted that you refuseto even
acknowledge that 
fact.Â*

Third: Don't come crawling to us to support
those kids you 
couldn't afford to have, but refused to allow
contraception or 
abortions or actual fact-based *** education to
prevent. It's just 
that simple. Our blue-state babies are better off
in every way that 
mattersÂ*because we plan our families. A failure to
plan on your part 
does not create an obligation on ours. Your
policies force women to 
have kids, even when they're patently not
ready to have them. Now (as 
you’re so fond of telling women who find
themselves unhappily 
pregnant), you get to live with the consequences
of those choices.
Fourth: Don't ask us to pay to educate your kids if you're not
willing 
to have us teach them what we know about the world. We
believe in 
free, comprehensive, rigorous and reality-based public
education 
because it’s done more than any other governmentservice to
make us 
rich, powerful and successful; and we want the same for you.
We realize some of you aren't too keen on public schools. It's great
that you want to take on more personal responsibility for educating
your own kids. Just be warned: if you don't teach them real science
and real history — including evolution, climate change and the actual
contents of the US Constitution — we're probably not going to hire
them. So we hope you're also ready to take responsibility for that,
too, which will probably mean supporting your grown kids in your
basement until you die.
Advertisement
Fifth: Between federal water reclamation projects and farm subsidies,
we are paying you zillions of dollars to grow stuff we'd actually
rather not eat. Don’t look now, but those of us in blue cities and
states are moving away from your petrochemical-saturated GMO-bred
CAFO- 
grown industrial “food” products as fast as we possibly can.
There 
aren’t enough organic and community-supported farms to feed all
of us 
yet — but we have taken responsibility for this, andare
working hard 
on the problem. You can either get on this train, or
holler at it 
while it flattens you. What you cannot do is yell at us
because we 
don’t want to eat what you choose to grow. 
Notice, too,
that the only reason we’re having to subsidize you in the 
first place
is that the all-holy free market does not bless you with 
profits on
this ****. In your own book, that makes you a capital-L 
Loser. In
ours, we’ll settle for “parasite.” 
Sixth: We are so over your
bigotry. Again: we know from our own long 
experience that including
women, gays and minorities makes us not only 
culturally richer; it
also makes us more economically productive as 
well. And the recent
economic meltdown has shown us that monocultures 
run exclusively by
rich white men tend to stagnate into breeding pools 
for all kinds of
social and financial parasites, who then come forward 
to prey on
those least able to resist -- like you. 
Diversity isn’t just an
idealistic fetish for us: we do it because we 
think it makes us
richer on every front that matters. If “parasite” is 
just another
word for “people who willfully make bad choices that keep 
them poor
and ignorant,” then your prejudices by definition make you 
parasites.
And we are not, therefore, obliged to deal with you. 
And finally: If
you want to pretend global warming isn't happening, 
you do not getto
come whining to us when you get hit with droughts or 
floods. We're
not going to send FEMA to bail you out. We're not going 
to build
canals to give you our water. We're not going to fund your 
levees.If
you're so sure God will provide, go ask him to keep your 
reservoirs
full and your cities dry. Because we resign. 
But will we come back?
Yep. It all sounds really ugly. But that’s the point of going Galt:
it’s a big fat tantrum designed to prove just how important you are
in 
the grand scheme of things. (The tactic is also not unfamiliar to
any 
mother who’s gone on a protracted housekeeping strike to gain
appreciation from an uncooperative family.) If others have to suffer
hardship to learn the lesson — well, that’ll teach 'em. The
emotionally satisfying goal is to get the parasites to come back,
begging on their knees for your vital help and resources. They know
now, in a way they didn't before, that they cannot survive without
you. 
So: if that fantasy moment were to come, what would it take to
convince us Progressive Objectivists to emerge once again from our
cool blue producerist enclave, and take responsibility for the
chastened masses once again? We have just five simple demands: 
1.
Stop taking more money from the federal government pot than you put
into it. If you believe in paying your own freight, then do it. If
you 
can’t, that’s fine -- we'll go back to helpingyou out -- but you
have 
to let go of that producerist superiority ****, because you’re
simply 
not entitled to it. 
2. Admit that we were right. Admit that
nobody in America ever makes 
it on their own, and that we are all in
this together, and that 
there’s such a thing as the commonwealth and
the common good. Admit 
that regulation is necessary to keep the
unprincipled strong from 
preying on the weak. Admit that there has
never in history ever been 
any such thing as a free market: markets
are created by governments, 
and need to be overseen by them. And
finally: admit that your 
conservative leaders got us into this
economic mess, and don’t know 
squat about how to get us out of it.
3. Join the reality-based world. Accept that America’s prosperity
utterly depends on how well-educated its kids are, especially on
topics like science and history. Accept that evolution happened, and
that climate change is happening now. Embrace nuance. Learn something
about how to assess evidence and think rationally, without a pre-
determined conclusion. Remember that God only helps those who've
gained the real-world skills to help themselves. 
4. Admit that we
love our country every bit as much as you do — and 
that, given our
much greater success at creating strong families, 
productive 21st-
century industries and excellent places to live, we 
might actually
know more that you do about how to make it work better 
in the
future. 
5. Last but by no means least: Knock off the hate-mongering,
threats 
and name-calling. Your heroine, Ms. Rand, predicted rightly
that 
parasites invariably despise the producers they feed on; you
should be 
embarrassed that your own behavior bears her out so
clearly. And, just 
once, say thank you to us for all the
contributions we’ve made (or, at 
least, tried to make) toward your
well-being. We don’t ask for much, 
but a little gratitude now and
then wouldn’t hurt. 
Five easy steps. Do this, and we’ll come back and
work with you as co- 
creators of an America we all can love. Until
then, though, you can 
pay your own bills. We’ve decided wehave
better things to invest that 
money in — upgraded schools, single-
payer healthcare, expanded college 
systems, mass transit, sustainable
technology investments, and forward- 
looking research to launch new
industries that will make us richer 
yet. And you’ll have achoice,
too: you’ll either learn what it takes 
to produce like we do, or
you’ll get to find out what real poverty 
feels like. 
Would that we
had the guts to go Galt. We probably don't; it's just 
not in our
natures to tell people who are hurting to go to hell, or 
leverage our
economic might to get the political upper-hand. But 
there's nothing
stopping us from pointing out, loudly and often, 
exactly who is
really who in this producers-versus-parasites 
relationship. We didn't
draw that ridiculous battle line -- but maybe 
it's time for us to
accept their terms of engagement, stake our 
rightful claim as the
country's actual producer class, and show them 
just how tall and
proud we are to stand on our far more fertile 
ground.
Rispondi citando Condividi su facebook
  #26  
Vecchio 08-11-2012, 21.12.05
Nickname unavailable
 
Messaggi: n/a
Predefinito Re: google: "In a Nation of Children, Santa Claus Wins"

On Nov 8, 7:32Â*am, ПеаБраин <lapuant...@aol.com> wrote:[color=blue]
> google: "In a Nation of Children, Santa Claus Wins"
>
> Â*About 1,880 results (0.13 seconds)[/color]

Rand Worshipers Should Face Facts:Blue States Are the Providers:Red
States Are the Parasites:Rand predicted rightly that parasites
invariably despise the producers they feed on:you should be
embarrassed that red state behavior bears her out so clearly
[url]http://www.alternet.org/visions/154338/Ayn_Rand_Worshippers_Should_Fa[/url]...
AlterNet / By Sara Robinson
Ayn Rand Worshippers Should Face Facts: Blue States Are the
Providers, 
Red States Are the Parasites 
There's only one way to
demonstrate who America's producers and 
parasites really are. It's
time to go Galt. 
February 29, 2012 Â*|
Â*Last week, the New York Times published a widely discussed article
updating an argument that progressive bloggers noticed a very long
time ago. It's now well-understood that blue states generally export
money to the federal government; and red states generally import it.
TPM published a great map showing exactly how this redistribution
works:
(click for larger version) 
Progressives believe in the redistribution
of wealth, so we're not 
usually too upset by this state of affairs..
That’s what it means to be 
one country. E pluribus unum,Â*and all
that. We’re happy to help, 
because we think we’ve got a stake in
making sure kids in rural 
Alabama get educations and seniors in
Arizona get healthcare. What’s 
good for them is good for all of us.
We also like to think they’d help 
us out if our positions were
reversed. It’s an investment in making 
America stronger, and we feel
fine about that.
But maybe it's time to admit that we're being played for chumps, and
that there are people in the rest of the country who are taking way
too much advantage of our good nature. After all: it's now a stone
fact that the blue states and cities are the country's real wealth
creators. That's why we pay more taxes, and are able to send that
money to the red states in the first place. We're working our butts
off, being economically productive, going to college, raising good
kids, supporting reality-based schools, keeping our marriages
together,Â*tending to our busy and diverse cities, and generally
Playing By The Rules. And the fates have smiled on us in rough
proportion to the degree that we’ve invested in our own common good..
So we've got every right to get good and angry about the fact that,
by 
and large, the people who are getting our money are so damned
ungrateful -- not to mention so ridiculously eager to spend it on
stuff we don't approve of. We didn't ship them our hard-earned tax
dollars to see them squandered on worse-than-useless abstinence-only
education, textbooks that teach creationism, crisis-pregnancy
misinformation centers, subsidies for GMO crops and oil companies,
and 
so on. And we sure as hell didn't expect to be rewarded for our
productivity and generosity with a rising tide of spittle-flecked
insanity aboutÂ*how we’re just a bunch of immoral, godless, drug-
soaked, ***-crazed, evil America-hating traitors who can’t wait to
hand the country over to the Islamists and the Communists.
Ironically, the conservative movement's favorite philosopher had some
very insightful things to say about this exact situation. Ayn Rand's
novels divided the world into two groups. On one hand, she lionized
"producers" -- noble, intelligentÂ*Ăśbermenschen whose faith in their
own ideas and willingness to take risks to achieve their dreams
drives 
everything else in society. And she called out the evil of
"parasites," the dull, unimaginative masses who attach themselves to
producers and drain away their resources and thwart their dreams.
Conservatives love this story. They're eager to claim the gleaming
mantle of the producers, insisting loudly that their tax money is
going to support people (mostly in blue states and cities, it's
darkly 
implied) who won't or can't work as hard as they do. If you
want to 
arouse their class and race resentments, there are few
narratives that 
can get them rolling like this producers-versus-
parasites tale.
But the NYT story and that map up there prove beyond arguing that the
conservative interpretation of events is 100 percent, 180-degrees,
flat-out wrong. America's real producer class is overwhelmingly
concentrated in the blue cities and states -- the regions full of
smart, talented people who've harnessed technology and intellect to
money, and made these regions the best, most forward-looking places
in 
the country to live.
Advertisement
And the real parasites are centered in red states (the only
exceptions 
being states with huge resource reserves, like Alaska and
Texas) -- 
the unimaginative, exhausted places that have clung to a
fading past, 
rejected science, substituted superstition for sense,
and refused to 
invest in their own futures. It's not unfair to say
that those regions 
are simply feasting off the sweat of our ennobling
labor, and 
expecting us to continue supporting them as they go about
their wealth- 
destroying ways.
And we producers have had enough.
Progressives Go Galt!
If you're a conservative who thinks Ayn Rand called it true with this
producers/parasites thing, then by all means: let's go there. All the
way there — and then some. But fair warning is in order: you may not
like where we end up. 
By way of a modest proposal, I hereby declare
the birth of a new 
Progressive Objectivism — a frankly producerist
personal- 
responsibility crusade aimed at getting these whiny red
leeches off 
our collective blue hide. If they think they can get by
without us, 
let’s not stand in their way. What these people need from
us, at 
minimum, is some tough talk — the kind of stern, grown-up
verbal whoop- 
ass the conservatives wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to
unload on us 
if the roles were reversed. 
The time has come for blue
America to go Galt. Our farewell rant — 
long and epic, as Rand's
turgid writing style would have required — 
might sound a bit like
this: 
First off, dear Red Staters: If your town’s economy depends on
a 
nearby dam, canal, harbor, airport, military base, interstate
highway, 
national park or monument, or prison, just STFU. Because you
are, in 
every way possible, a parasite, living off something the rest
of us 
paid to build.
Second: If you are a homeowner who takes a mortgage interest
deduction 
— which is how the rest of us subsidize your house, and
with it your 
status in the middle-class — we don’twant to hear
another word from 
you about how you made it all on your own. And that
goes for those of 
you who got your education via the GI Bill, or took
out an SBA loan, 
or went to well-funded public schools back when such
things existed. 
You are what you are because we believed in you, and
invested in you. 
And we’re deeply insulted that you refuseto even
acknowledge that 
fact.Â*

Third: Don't come crawling to us to support
those kids you 
couldn't afford to have, but refused to allow
contraception or 
abortions or actual fact-based *** education to
prevent. It's just 
that simple. Our blue-state babies are better off
in every way that 
mattersÂ*because we plan our families. A failure to
plan on your part 
does not create an obligation on ours. Your
policies force women to 
have kids, even when they're patently not
ready to have them. Now (as 
you’re so fond of telling women who find
themselves unhappily 
pregnant), you get to live with the consequences
of those choices.
Fourth: Don't ask us to pay to educate your kids if you're not
willing 
to have us teach them what we know about the world. We
believe in 
free, comprehensive, rigorous and reality-based public
education 
because it’s done more than any other governmentservice to
make us 
rich, powerful and successful; and we want the same for you.
We realize some of you aren't too keen on public schools. It's great
that you want to take on more personal responsibility for educating
your own kids. Just be warned: if you don't teach them real science
and real history — including evolution, climate change and the actual
contents of the US Constitution — we're probably not going to hire
them. So we hope you're also ready to take responsibility for that,
too, which will probably mean supporting your grown kids in your
basement until you die.
Advertisement
Fifth: Between federal water reclamation projects and farm subsidies,
we are paying you zillions of dollars to grow stuff we'd actually
rather not eat. Don’t look now, but those of us in blue cities and
states are moving away from your petrochemical-saturated GMO-bred
CAFO- 
grown industrial “food” products as fast as we possibly can.
There 
aren’t enough organic and community-supported farms to feed all
of us 
yet — but we have taken responsibility for this, andare
working hard 
on the problem. You can either get on this train, or
holler at it 
while it flattens you. What you cannot do is yell at us
because we 
don’t want to eat what you choose to grow. 
Notice, too,
that the only reason we’re having to subsidize you in the 
first place
is that the all-holy free market does not bless you with 
profits on
this ****. In your own book, that makes you a capital-L 
Loser. In
ours, we’ll settle for “parasite.” 
Sixth: We are so over your
bigotry. Again: we know from our own long 
experience that including
women, gays and minorities makes us not only 
culturally richer; it
also makes us more economically productive as 
well. And the recent
economic meltdown has shown us that monocultures 
run exclusively by
rich white men tend to stagnate into breeding pools 
for all kinds of
social and financial parasites, who then come forward 
to prey on
those least able to resist -- like you. 
Diversity isn’t just an
idealistic fetish for us: we do it because we 
think it makes us
richer on every front that matters. If “parasite” is 
just another
word for “people who willfully make bad choices that keep 
them poor
and ignorant,” then your prejudices by definition make you 
parasites.
And we are not, therefore, obliged to deal with you. 
And finally: If
you want to pretend global warming isn't happening, 
you do not getto
come whining to us when you get hit with droughts or 
floods. We're
not going to send FEMA to bail you out. We're not going 
to build
canals to give you our water. We're not going to fund your 
levees.If
you're so sure God will provide, go ask him to keep your 
reservoirs
full and your cities dry. Because we resign. 
But will we come back?
Yep. It all sounds really ugly. But that’s the point of going Galt:
it’s a big fat tantrum designed to prove just how important you are
in 
the grand scheme of things. (The tactic is also not unfamiliar to
any 
mother who’s gone on a protracted housekeeping strike to gain
appreciation from an uncooperative family.) If others have to suffer
hardship to learn the lesson — well, that’ll teach 'em. The
emotionally satisfying goal is to get the parasites to come back,
begging on their knees for your vital help and resources. They know
now, in a way they didn't before, that they cannot survive without
you. 
So: if that fantasy moment were to come, what would it take to
convince us Progressive Objectivists to emerge once again from our
cool blue producerist enclave, and take responsibility for the
chastened masses once again? We have just five simple demands: 
1.
Stop taking more money from the federal government pot than you put
into it. If you believe in paying your own freight, then do it. If
you 
can’t, that’s fine -- we'll go back to helpingyou out -- but you
have 
to let go of that producerist superiority ****, because you’re
simply 
not entitled to it. 
2. Admit that we were right. Admit that
nobody in America ever makes 
it on their own, and that we are all in
this together, and that 
there’s such a thing as the commonwealth and
the common good. Admit 
that regulation is necessary to keep the
unprincipled strong from 
preying on the weak. Admit that there has
never in history ever been 
any such thing as a free market: markets
are created by governments, 
and need to be overseen by them. And
finally: admit that your 
conservative leaders got us into this
economic mess, and don’t know 
squat about how to get us out of it.
3. Join the reality-based world. Accept that America’s prosperity
utterly depends on how well-educated its kids are, especially on
topics like science and history. Accept that evolution happened, and
that climate change is happening now. Embrace nuance. Learn something
about how to assess evidence and think rationally, without a pre-
determined conclusion. Remember that God only helps those who've
gained the real-world skills to help themselves. 
4. Admit that we
love our country every bit as much as you do — and 
that, given our
much greater success at creating strong families, 
productive 21st-
century industries and excellent places to live, we 
might actually
know more that you do about how to make it work better 
in the
future. 
5. Last but by no means least: Knock off the hate-mongering,
threats 
and name-calling. Your heroine, Ms. Rand, predicted rightly
that 
parasites invariably despise the producers they feed on; you
should be 
embarrassed that your own behavior bears her out so
clearly. And, just 
once, say thank you to us for all the
contributions we’ve made (or, at 
least, tried to make) toward your
well-being. We don’t ask for much, 
but a little gratitude now and
then wouldn’t hurt. 
Five easy steps. Do this, and we’ll come back and
work with you as co- 
creators of an America we all can love. Until
then, though, you can 
pay your own bills. We’ve decided wehave
better things to invest that 
money in — upgraded schools, single-
payer healthcare, expanded college 
systems, mass transit, sustainable
technology investments, and forward- 
looking research to launch new
industries that will make us richer 
yet. And you’ll have achoice,
too: you’ll either learn what it takes 
to produce like we do, or
you’ll get to find out what real poverty 
feels like. 
Would that we
had the guts to go Galt. We probably don't; it's just 
not in our
natures to tell people who are hurting to go to hell, or 
leverage our
economic might to get the political upper-hand. But 
there's nothing
stopping us from pointing out, loudly and often, 
exactly who is
really who in this producers-versus-parasites 
relationship. We didn't
draw that ridiculous battle line -- but maybe 
it's time for us to
accept their terms of engagement, stake our 
rightful claim as the
country's actual producer class, and show them 
just how tall and
proud we are to stand on our far more fertile 
ground.
Rispondi citando Condividi su facebook
  #27  
Vecchio 08-11-2012, 21.12.05
Nickname unavailable
 
Messaggi: n/a
Predefinito Re: google: "In a Nation of Children, Santa Claus Wins"

On Nov 8, 7:32Â*am, ПеаБраин <lapuant...@aol.com> wrote:[color=blue]
> google: "In a Nation of Children, Santa Claus Wins"
>
> Â*About 1,880 results (0.13 seconds)[/color]

Rand Worshipers Should Face Facts:Blue States Are the Providers:Red
States Are the Parasites:Rand predicted rightly that parasites
invariably despise the producers they feed on:you should be
embarrassed that red state behavior bears her out so clearly
[url]http://www.alternet.org/visions/154338/Ayn_Rand_Worshippers_Should_Fa[/url]...
AlterNet / By Sara Robinson
Ayn Rand Worshippers Should Face Facts: Blue States Are the
Providers, 
Red States Are the Parasites 
There's only one way to
demonstrate who America's producers and 
parasites really are. It's
time to go Galt. 
February 29, 2012 Â*|
Â*Last week, the New York Times published a widely discussed article
updating an argument that progressive bloggers noticed a very long
time ago. It's now well-understood that blue states generally export
money to the federal government; and red states generally import it.
TPM published a great map showing exactly how this redistribution
works:
(click for larger version) 
Progressives believe in the redistribution
of wealth, so we're not 
usually too upset by this state of affairs..
That’s what it means to be 
one country. E pluribus unum,Â*and all
that. We’re happy to help, 
because we think we’ve got a stake in
making sure kids in rural 
Alabama get educations and seniors in
Arizona get healthcare. What’s 
good for them is good for all of us.
We also like to think they’d help 
us out if our positions were
reversed. It’s an investment in making 
America stronger, and we feel
fine about that.
But maybe it's time to admit that we're being played for chumps, and
that there are people in the rest of the country who are taking way
too much advantage of our good nature. After all: it's now a stone
fact that the blue states and cities are the country's real wealth
creators. That's why we pay more taxes, and are able to send that
money to the red states in the first place. We're working our butts
off, being economically productive, going to college, raising good
kids, supporting reality-based schools, keeping our marriages
together,Â*tending to our busy and diverse cities, and generally
Playing By The Rules. And the fates have smiled on us in rough
proportion to the degree that we’ve invested in our own common good..
So we've got every right to get good and angry about the fact that,
by 
and large, the people who are getting our money are so damned
ungrateful -- not to mention so ridiculously eager to spend it on
stuff we don't approve of. We didn't ship them our hard-earned tax
dollars to see them squandered on worse-than-useless abstinence-only
education, textbooks that teach creationism, crisis-pregnancy
misinformation centers, subsidies for GMO crops and oil companies,
and 
so on. And we sure as hell didn't expect to be rewarded for our
productivity and generosity with a rising tide of spittle-flecked
insanity aboutÂ*how we’re just a bunch of immoral, godless, drug-
soaked, ***-crazed, evil America-hating traitors who can’t wait to
hand the country over to the Islamists and the Communists.
Ironically, the conservative movement's favorite philosopher had some
very insightful things to say about this exact situation. Ayn Rand's
novels divided the world into two groups. On one hand, she lionized
"producers" -- noble, intelligentÂ*Ăśbermenschen whose faith in their
own ideas and willingness to take risks to achieve their dreams
drives 
everything else in society. And she called out the evil of
"parasites," the dull, unimaginative masses who attach themselves to
producers and drain away their resources and thwart their dreams.
Conservatives love this story. They're eager to claim the gleaming
mantle of the producers, insisting loudly that their tax money is
going to support people (mostly in blue states and cities, it's
darkly 
implied) who won't or can't work as hard as they do. If you
want to 
arouse their class and race resentments, there are few
narratives that 
can get them rolling like this producers-versus-
parasites tale.
But the NYT story and that map up there prove beyond arguing that the
conservative interpretation of events is 100 percent, 180-degrees,
flat-out wrong. America's real producer class is overwhelmingly
concentrated in the blue cities and states -- the regions full of
smart, talented people who've harnessed technology and intellect to
money, and made these regions the best, most forward-looking places
in 
the country to live.
Advertisement
And the real parasites are centered in red states (the only
exceptions 
being states with huge resource reserves, like Alaska and
Texas) -- 
the unimaginative, exhausted places that have clung to a
fading past, 
rejected science, substituted superstition for sense,
and refused to 
invest in their own futures. It's not unfair to say
that those regions 
are simply feasting off the sweat of our ennobling
labor, and 
expecting us to continue supporting them as they go about
their wealth- 
destroying ways.
And we producers have had enough.
Progressives Go Galt!
If you're a conservative who thinks Ayn Rand called it true with this
producers/parasites thing, then by all means: let's go there. All the
way there — and then some. But fair warning is in order: you may not
like where we end up. 
By way of a modest proposal, I hereby declare
the birth of a new 
Progressive Objectivism — a frankly producerist
personal- 
responsibility crusade aimed at getting these whiny red
leeches off 
our collective blue hide. If they think they can get by
without us, 
let’s not stand in their way. What these people need from
us, at 
minimum, is some tough talk — the kind of stern, grown-up
verbal whoop- 
ass the conservatives wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to
unload on us 
if the roles were reversed. 
The time has come for blue
America to go Galt. Our farewell rant — 
long and epic, as Rand's
turgid writing style would have required — 
might sound a bit like
this: 
First off, dear Red Staters: If your town’s economy depends on
a 
nearby dam, canal, harbor, airport, military base, interstate
highway, 
national park or monument, or prison, just STFU. Because you
are, in 
every way possible, a parasite, living off something the rest
of us 
paid to build.
Second: If you are a homeowner who takes a mortgage interest
deduction 
— which is how the rest of us subsidize your house, and
with it your 
status in the middle-class — we don’twant to hear
another word from 
you about how you made it all on your own. And that
goes for those of 
you who got your education via the GI Bill, or took
out an SBA loan, 
or went to well-funded public schools back when such
things existed. 
You are what you are because we believed in you, and
invested in you. 
And we’re deeply insulted that you refuseto even
acknowledge that 
fact.Â*

Third: Don't come crawling to us to support
those kids you 
couldn't afford to have, but refused to allow
contraception or 
abortions or actual fact-based *** education to
prevent. It's just 
that simple. Our blue-state babies are better off
in every way that 
mattersÂ*because we plan our families. A failure to
plan on your part 
does not create an obligation on ours. Your
policies force women to 
have kids, even when they're patently not
ready to have them. Now (as 
you’re so fond of telling women who find
themselves unhappily 
pregnant), you get to live with the consequences
of those choices.
Fourth: Don't ask us to pay to educate your kids if you're not
willing 
to have us teach them what we know about the world. We
believe in 
free, comprehensive, rigorous and reality-based public
education 
because it’s done more than any other governmentservice to
make us 
rich, powerful and successful; and we want the same for you.
We realize some of you aren't too keen on public schools. It's great
that you want to take on more personal responsibility for educating
your own kids. Just be warned: if you don't teach them real science
and real history — including evolution, climate change and the actual
contents of the US Constitution — we're probably not going to hire
them. So we hope you're also ready to take responsibility for that,
too, which will probably mean supporting your grown kids in your
basement until you die.
Advertisement
Fifth: Between federal water reclamation projects and farm subsidies,
we are paying you zillions of dollars to grow stuff we'd actually
rather not eat. Don’t look now, but those of us in blue cities and
states are moving away from your petrochemical-saturated GMO-bred
CAFO- 
grown industrial “food” products as fast as we possibly can.
There 
aren’t enough organic and community-supported farms to feed all
of us 
yet — but we have taken responsibility for this, andare
working hard 
on the problem. You can either get on this train, or
holler at it 
while it flattens you. What you cannot do is yell at us
because we 
don’t want to eat what you choose to grow. 
Notice, too,
that the only reason we’re having to subsidize you in the 
first place
is that the all-holy free market does not bless you with 
profits on
this ****. In your own book, that makes you a capital-L 
Loser. In
ours, we’ll settle for “parasite.” 
Sixth: We are so over your
bigotry. Again: we know from our own long 
experience that including
women, gays and minorities makes us not only 
culturally richer; it
also makes us more economically productive as 
well. And the recent
economic meltdown has shown us that monocultures 
run exclusively by
rich white men tend to stagnate into breeding pools 
for all kinds of
social and financial parasites, who then come forward 
to prey on
those least able to resist -- like you. 
Diversity isn’t just an
idealistic fetish for us: we do it because we 
think it makes us
richer on every front that matters. If “parasite” is 
just another
word for “people who willfully make bad choices that keep 
them poor
and ignorant,” then your prejudices by definition make you 
parasites.
And we are not, therefore, obliged to deal with you. 
And finally: If
you want to pretend global warming isn't happening, 
you do not getto
come whining to us when you get hit with droughts or 
floods. We're
not going to send FEMA to bail you out. We're not going 
to build
canals to give you our water. We're not going to fund your 
levees.If
you're so sure God will provide, go ask him to keep your 
reservoirs
full and your cities dry. Because we resign. 
But will we come back?
Yep. It all sounds really ugly. But that’s the point of going Galt:
it’s a big fat tantrum designed to prove just how important you are
in 
the grand scheme of things. (The tactic is also not unfamiliar to
any 
mother who’s gone on a protracted housekeeping strike to gain
appreciation from an uncooperative family.) If others have to suffer
hardship to learn the lesson — well, that’ll teach 'em. The
emotionally satisfying goal is to get the parasites to come back,
begging on their knees for your vital help and resources. They know
now, in a way they didn't before, that they cannot survive without
you. 
So: if that fantasy moment were to come, what would it take to
convince us Progressive Objectivists to emerge once again from our
cool blue producerist enclave, and take responsibility for the
chastened masses once again? We have just five simple demands: 
1.
Stop taking more money from the federal government pot than you put
into it. If you believe in paying your own freight, then do it. If
you 
can’t, that’s fine -- we'll go back to helpingyou out -- but you
have 
to let go of that producerist superiority ****, because you’re
simply 
not entitled to it. 
2. Admit that we were right. Admit that
nobody in America ever makes 
it on their own, and that we are all in
this together, and that 
there’s such a thing as the commonwealth and
the common good. Admit 
that regulation is necessary to keep the
unprincipled strong from 
preying on the weak. Admit that there has
never in history ever been 
any such thing as a free market: markets
are created by governments, 
and need to be overseen by them. And
finally: admit that your 
conservative leaders got us into this
economic mess, and don’t know 
squat about how to get us out of it.
3. Join the reality-based world. Accept that America’s prosperity
utterly depends on how well-educated its kids are, especially on
topics like science and history. Accept that evolution happened, and
that climate change is happening now. Embrace nuance. Learn something
about how to assess evidence and think rationally, without a pre-
determined conclusion. Remember that God only helps those who've
gained the real-world skills to help themselves. 
4. Admit that we
love our country every bit as much as you do — and 
that, given our
much greater success at creating strong families, 
productive 21st-
century industries and excellent places to live, we 
might actually
know more that you do about how to make it work better 
in the
future. 
5. Last but by no means least: Knock off the hate-mongering,
threats 
and name-calling. Your heroine, Ms. Rand, predicted rightly
that 
parasites invariably despise the producers they feed on; you
should be 
embarrassed that your own behavior bears her out so
clearly. And, just 
once, say thank you to us for all the
contributions we’ve made (or, at 
least, tried to make) toward your
well-being. We don’t ask for much, 
but a little gratitude now and
then wouldn’t hurt. 
Five easy steps. Do this, and we’ll come back and
work with you as co- 
creators of an America we all can love. Until
then, though, you can 
pay your own bills. We’ve decided wehave
better things to invest that 
money in — upgraded schools, single-
payer healthcare, expanded college 
systems, mass transit, sustainable
technology investments, and forward- 
looking research to launch new
industries that will make us richer 
yet. And you’ll have achoice,
too: you’ll either learn what it takes 
to produce like we do, or
you’ll get to find out what real poverty 
feels like. 
Would that we
had the guts to go Galt. We probably don't; it's just 
not in our
natures to tell people who are hurting to go to hell, or 
leverage our
economic might to get the political upper-hand. But 
there's nothing
stopping us from pointing out, loudly and often, 
exactly who is
really who in this producers-versus-parasites 
relationship. We didn't
draw that ridiculous battle line -- but maybe 
it's time for us to
accept their terms of engagement, stake our 
rightful claim as the
country's actual producer class, and show them 
just how tall and
proud we are to stand on our far more fertile 
ground.
Rispondi citando Condividi su facebook
  #28  
Vecchio 08-11-2012, 21.12.05
Nickname unavailable
 
Messaggi: n/a
Predefinito Re: google: "In a Nation of Children, Santa Claus Wins"

On Nov 8, 7:32Â*am, ПеаБраин <lapuant...@aol.com> wrote:[color=blue]
> google: "In a Nation of Children, Santa Claus Wins"
>
> Â*About 1,880 results (0.13 seconds)[/color]

Rand Worshipers Should Face Facts:Blue States Are the Providers:Red
States Are the Parasites:Rand predicted rightly that parasites
invariably despise the producers they feed on:you should be
embarrassed that red state behavior bears her out so clearly
[url]http://www.alternet.org/visions/154338/Ayn_Rand_Worshippers_Should_Fa[/url]...
AlterNet / By Sara Robinson
Ayn Rand Worshippers Should Face Facts: Blue States Are the
Providers, 
Red States Are the Parasites 
There's only one way to
demonstrate who America's producers and 
parasites really are. It's
time to go Galt. 
February 29, 2012 Â*|
Â*Last week, the New York Times published a widely discussed article
updating an argument that progressive bloggers noticed a very long
time ago. It's now well-understood that blue states generally export
money to the federal government; and red states generally import it.
TPM published a great map showing exactly how this redistribution
works:
(click for larger version) 
Progressives believe in the redistribution
of wealth, so we're not 
usually too upset by this state of affairs..
That’s what it means to be 
one country. E pluribus unum,Â*and all
that. We’re happy to help, 
because we think we’ve got a stake in
making sure kids in rural 
Alabama get educations and seniors in
Arizona get healthcare. What’s 
good for them is good for all of us.
We also like to think they’d help 
us out if our positions were
reversed. It’s an investment in making 
America stronger, and we feel
fine about that.
But maybe it's time to admit that we're being played for chumps, and
that there are people in the rest of the country who are taking way
too much advantage of our good nature. After all: it's now a stone
fact that the blue states and cities are the country's real wealth
creators. That's why we pay more taxes, and are able to send that
money to the red states in the first place. We're working our butts
off, being economically productive, going to college, raising good
kids, supporting reality-based schools, keeping our marriages
together,Â*tending to our busy and diverse cities, and generally
Playing By The Rules. And the fates have smiled on us in rough
proportion to the degree that we’ve invested in our own common good..
So we've got every right to get good and angry about the fact that,
by 
and large, the people who are getting our money are so damned
ungrateful -- not to mention so ridiculously eager to spend it on
stuff we don't approve of. We didn't ship them our hard-earned tax
dollars to see them squandered on worse-than-useless abstinence-only
education, textbooks that teach creationism, crisis-pregnancy
misinformation centers, subsidies for GMO crops and oil companies,
and 
so on. And we sure as hell didn't expect to be rewarded for our
productivity and generosity with a rising tide of spittle-flecked
insanity aboutÂ*how we’re just a bunch of immoral, godless, drug-
soaked, ***-crazed, evil America-hating traitors who can’t wait to
hand the country over to the Islamists and the Communists.
Ironically, the conservative movement's favorite philosopher had some
very insightful things to say about this exact situation. Ayn Rand's
novels divided the world into two groups. On one hand, she lionized
"producers" -- noble, intelligentÂ*Ăśbermenschen whose faith in their
own ideas and willingness to take risks to achieve their dreams
drives 
everything else in society. And she called out the evil of
"parasites," the dull, unimaginative masses who attach themselves to
producers and drain away their resources and thwart their dreams.
Conservatives love this story. They're eager to claim the gleaming
mantle of the producers, insisting loudly that their tax money is
going to support people (mostly in blue states and cities, it's
darkly 
implied) who won't or can't work as hard as they do. If you
want to 
arouse their class and race resentments, there are few
narratives that 
can get them rolling like this producers-versus-
parasites tale.
But the NYT story and that map up there prove beyond arguing that the
conservative interpretation of events is 100 percent, 180-degrees,
flat-out wrong. America's real producer class is overwhelmingly
concentrated in the blue cities and states -- the regions full of
smart, talented people who've harnessed technology and intellect to
money, and made these regions the best, most forward-looking places
in 
the country to live.
Advertisement
And the real parasites are centered in red states (the only
exceptions 
being states with huge resource reserves, like Alaska and
Texas) -- 
the unimaginative, exhausted places that have clung to a
fading past, 
rejected science, substituted superstition for sense,
and refused to 
invest in their own futures. It's not unfair to say
that those regions 
are simply feasting off the sweat of our ennobling
labor, and 
expecting us to continue supporting them as they go about
their wealth- 
destroying ways.
And we producers have had enough.
Progressives Go Galt!
If you're a conservative who thinks Ayn Rand called it true with this
producers/parasites thing, then by all means: let's go there. All the
way there — and then some. But fair warning is in order: you may not
like where we end up. 
By way of a modest proposal, I hereby declare
the birth of a new 
Progressive Objectivism — a frankly producerist
personal- 
responsibility crusade aimed at getting these whiny red
leeches off 
our collective blue hide. If they think they can get by
without us, 
let’s not stand in their way. What these people need from
us, at 
minimum, is some tough talk — the kind of stern, grown-up
verbal whoop- 
ass the conservatives wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to
unload on us 
if the roles were reversed. 
The time has come for blue
America to go Galt. Our farewell rant — 
long and epic, as Rand's
turgid writing style would have required — 
might sound a bit like
this: 
First off, dear Red Staters: If your town’s economy depends on
a 
nearby dam, canal, harbor, airport, military base, interstate
highway, 
national park or monument, or prison, just STFU. Because you
are, in 
every way possible, a parasite, living off something the rest
of us 
paid to build.
Second: If you are a homeowner who takes a mortgage interest
deduction 
— which is how the rest of us subsidize your house, and
with it your 
status in the middle-class — we don’twant to hear
another word from 
you about how you made it all on your own. And that
goes for those of 
you who got your education via the GI Bill, or took
out an SBA loan, 
or went to well-funded public schools back when such
things existed. 
You are what you are because we believed in you, and
invested in you. 
And we’re deeply insulted that you refuseto even
acknowledge that 
fact.Â*

Third: Don't come crawling to us to support
those kids you 
couldn't afford to have, but refused to allow
contraception or 
abortions or actual fact-based *** education to
prevent. It's just 
that simple. Our blue-state babies are better off
in every way that 
mattersÂ*because we plan our families. A failure to
plan on your part 
does not create an obligation on ours. Your
policies force women to 
have kids, even when they're patently not
ready to have them. Now (as 
you’re so fond of telling women who find
themselves unhappily 
pregnant), you get to live with the consequences
of those choices.
Fourth: Don't ask us to pay to educate your kids if you're not
willing 
to have us teach them what we know about the world. We
believe in 
free, comprehensive, rigorous and reality-based public
education 
because it’s done more than any other governmentservice to
make us 
rich, powerful and successful; and we want the same for you.
We realize some of you aren't too keen on public schools. It's great
that you want to take on more personal responsibility for educating
your own kids. Just be warned: if you don't teach them real science
and real history — including evolution, climate change and the actual
contents of the US Constitution — we're probably not going to hire
them. So we hope you're also ready to take responsibility for that,
too, which will probably mean supporting your grown kids in your
basement until you die.
Advertisement
Fifth: Between federal water reclamation projects and farm subsidies,
we are paying you zillions of dollars to grow stuff we'd actually
rather not eat. Don’t look now, but those of us in blue cities and
states are moving away from your petrochemical-saturated GMO-bred
CAFO- 
grown industrial “food” products as fast as we possibly can.
There 
aren’t enough organic and community-supported farms to feed all
of us 
yet — but we have taken responsibility for this, andare
working hard 
on the problem. You can either get on this train, or
holler at it 
while it flattens you. What you cannot do is yell at us
because we 
don’t want to eat what you choose to grow. 
Notice, too,
that the only reason we’re having to subsidize you in the 
first place
is that the all-holy free market does not bless you with 
profits on
this ****. In your own book, that makes you a capital-L 
Loser. In
ours, we’ll settle for “parasite.” 
Sixth: We are so over your
bigotry. Again: we know from our own long 
experience that including
women, gays and minorities makes us not only 
culturally richer; it
also makes us more economically productive as 
well. And the recent
economic meltdown has shown us that monocultures 
run exclusively by
rich white men tend to stagnate into breeding pools 
for all kinds of
social and financial parasites, who then come forward 
to prey on
those least able to resist -- like you. 
Diversity isn’t just an
idealistic fetish for us: we do it because we 
think it makes us
richer on every front that matters. If “parasite” is 
just another
word for “people who willfully make bad choices that keep 
them poor
and ignorant,” then your prejudices by definition make you 
parasites.
And we are not, therefore, obliged to deal with you. 
And finally: If
you want to pretend global warming isn't happening, 
you do not getto
come whining to us when you get hit with droughts or 
floods. We're
not going to send FEMA to bail you out. We're not going 
to build
canals to give you our water. We're not going to fund your 
levees.If
you're so sure God will provide, go ask him to keep your 
reservoirs
full and your cities dry. Because we resign. 
But will we come back?
Yep. It all sounds really ugly. But that’s the point of going Galt:
it’s a big fat tantrum designed to prove just how important you are
in 
the grand scheme of things. (The tactic is also not unfamiliar to
any 
mother who’s gone on a protracted housekeeping strike to gain
appreciation from an uncooperative family.) If others have to suffer
hardship to learn the lesson — well, that’ll teach 'em. The
emotionally satisfying goal is to get the parasites to come back,
begging on their knees for your vital help and resources. They know
now, in a way they didn't before, that they cannot survive without
you. 
So: if that fantasy moment were to come, what would it take to
convince us Progressive Objectivists to emerge once again from our
cool blue producerist enclave, and take responsibility for the
chastened masses once again? We have just five simple demands: 
1.
Stop taking more money from the federal government pot than you put
into it. If you believe in paying your own freight, then do it. If
you 
can’t, that’s fine -- we'll go back to helpingyou out -- but you
have 
to let go of that producerist superiority ****, because you’re
simply 
not entitled to it. 
2. Admit that we were right. Admit that
nobody in America ever makes 
it on their own, and that we are all in
this together, and that 
there’s such a thing as the commonwealth and
the common good. Admit 
that regulation is necessary to keep the
unprincipled strong from 
preying on the weak. Admit that there has
never in history ever been 
any such thing as a free market: markets
are created by governments, 
and need to be overseen by them. And
finally: admit that your 
conservative leaders got us into this
economic mess, and don’t know 
squat about how to get us out of it.
3. Join the reality-based world. Accept that America’s prosperity
utterly depends on how well-educated its kids are, especially on
topics like science and history. Accept that evolution happened, and
that climate change is happening now. Embrace nuance. Learn something
about how to assess evidence and think rationally, without a pre-
determined conclusion. Remember that God only helps those who've
gained the real-world skills to help themselves. 
4. Admit that we
love our country every bit as much as you do — and 
that, given our
much greater success at creating strong families, 
productive 21st-
century industries and excellent places to live, we 
might actually
know more that you do about how to make it work better 
in the
future. 
5. Last but by no means least: Knock off the hate-mongering,
threats 
and name-calling. Your heroine, Ms. Rand, predicted rightly
that 
parasites invariably despise the producers they feed on; you
should be 
embarrassed that your own behavior bears her out so
clearly. And, just 
once, say thank you to us for all the
contributions we’ve made (or, at 
least, tried to make) toward your
well-being. We don’t ask for much, 
but a little gratitude now and
then wouldn’t hurt. 
Five easy steps. Do this, and we’ll come back and
work with you as co- 
creators of an America we all can love. Until
then, though, you can 
pay your own bills. We’ve decided wehave
better things to invest that 
money in — upgraded schools, single-
payer healthcare, expanded college 
systems, mass transit, sustainable
technology investments, and forward- 
looking research to launch new
industries that will make us richer 
yet. And you’ll have achoice,
too: you’ll either learn what it takes 
to produce like we do, or
you’ll get to find out what real poverty 
feels like. 
Would that we
had the guts to go Galt. We probably don't; it's just 
not in our
natures to tell people who are hurting to go to hell, or 
leverage our
economic might to get the political upper-hand. But 
there's nothing
stopping us from pointing out, loudly and often, 
exactly who is
really who in this producers-versus-parasites 
relationship. We didn't
draw that ridiculous battle line -- but maybe 
it's time for us to
accept their terms of engagement, stake our 
rightful claim as the
country's actual producer class, and show them 
just how tall and
proud we are to stand on our far more fertile 
ground.
Rispondi citando Condividi su facebook
  #29  
Vecchio 08-11-2012, 21.12.05
Nickname unavailable
 
Messaggi: n/a
Predefinito Re: google: "In a Nation of Children, Santa Claus Wins"

On Nov 8, 7:32Â*am, ПеаБраин <lapuant...@aol.com> wrote:[color=blue]
> google: "In a Nation of Children, Santa Claus Wins"
>
> Â*About 1,880 results (0.13 seconds)[/color]

Rand Worshipers Should Face Facts:Blue States Are the Providers:Red
States Are the Parasites:Rand predicted rightly that parasites
invariably despise the producers they feed on:you should be
embarrassed that red state behavior bears her out so clearly
[url]http://www.alternet.org/visions/154338/Ayn_Rand_Worshippers_Should_Fa[/url]...
AlterNet / By Sara Robinson
Ayn Rand Worshippers Should Face Facts: Blue States Are the
Providers, 
Red States Are the Parasites 
There's only one way to
demonstrate who America's producers and 
parasites really are. It's
time to go Galt. 
February 29, 2012 Â*|
Â*Last week, the New York Times published a widely discussed article
updating an argument that progressive bloggers noticed a very long
time ago. It's now well-understood that blue states generally export
money to the federal government; and red states generally import it.
TPM published a great map showing exactly how this redistribution
works:
(click for larger version) 
Progressives believe in the redistribution
of wealth, so we're not 
usually too upset by this state of affairs..
That’s what it means to be 
one country. E pluribus unum,Â*and all
that. We’re happy to help, 
because we think we’ve got a stake in
making sure kids in rural 
Alabama get educations and seniors in
Arizona get healthcare. What’s 
good for them is good for all of us.
We also like to think they’d help 
us out if our positions were
reversed. It’s an investment in making 
America stronger, and we feel
fine about that.
But maybe it's time to admit that we're being played for chumps, and
that there are people in the rest of the country who are taking way
too much advantage of our good nature. After all: it's now a stone
fact that the blue states and cities are the country's real wealth
creators. That's why we pay more taxes, and are able to send that
money to the red states in the first place. We're working our butts
off, being economically productive, going to college, raising good
kids, supporting reality-based schools, keeping our marriages
together,Â*tending to our busy and diverse cities, and generally
Playing By The Rules. And the fates have smiled on us in rough
proportion to the degree that we’ve invested in our own common good..
So we've got every right to get good and angry about the fact that,
by 
and large, the people who are getting our money are so damned
ungrateful -- not to mention so ridiculously eager to spend it on
stuff we don't approve of. We didn't ship them our hard-earned tax
dollars to see them squandered on worse-than-useless abstinence-only
education, textbooks that teach creationism, crisis-pregnancy
misinformation centers, subsidies for GMO crops and oil companies,
and 
so on. And we sure as hell didn't expect to be rewarded for our
productivity and generosity with a rising tide of spittle-flecked
insanity aboutÂ*how we’re just a bunch of immoral, godless, drug-
soaked, ***-crazed, evil America-hating traitors who can’t wait to
hand the country over to the Islamists and the Communists.
Ironically, the conservative movement's favorite philosopher had some
very insightful things to say about this exact situation. Ayn Rand's
novels divided the world into two groups. On one hand, she lionized
"producers" -- noble, intelligentÂ*Ăśbermenschen whose faith in their
own ideas and willingness to take risks to achieve their dreams
drives 
everything else in society. And she called out the evil of
"parasites," the dull, unimaginative masses who attach themselves to
producers and drain away their resources and thwart their dreams.
Conservatives love this story. They're eager to claim the gleaming
mantle of the producers, insisting loudly that their tax money is
going to support people (mostly in blue states and cities, it's
darkly 
implied) who won't or can't work as hard as they do. If you
want to 
arouse their class and race resentments, there are few
narratives that 
can get them rolling like this producers-versus-
parasites tale.
But the NYT story and that map up there prove beyond arguing that the
conservative interpretation of events is 100 percent, 180-degrees,
flat-out wrong. America's real producer class is overwhelmingly
concentrated in the blue cities and states -- the regions full of
smart, talented people who've harnessed technology and intellect to
money, and made these regions the best, most forward-looking places
in 
the country to live.
Advertisement
And the real parasites are centered in red states (the only
exceptions 
being states with huge resource reserves, like Alaska and
Texas) -- 
the unimaginative, exhausted places that have clung to a
fading past, 
rejected science, substituted superstition for sense,
and refused to 
invest in their own futures. It's not unfair to say
that those regions 
are simply feasting off the sweat of our ennobling
labor, and 
expecting us to continue supporting them as they go about
their wealth- 
destroying ways.
And we producers have had enough.
Progressives Go Galt!
If you're a conservative who thinks Ayn Rand called it true with this
producers/parasites thing, then by all means: let's go there. All the
way there — and then some. But fair warning is in order: you may not
like where we end up. 
By way of a modest proposal, I hereby declare
the birth of a new 
Progressive Objectivism — a frankly producerist
personal- 
responsibility crusade aimed at getting these whiny red
leeches off 
our collective blue hide. If they think they can get by
without us, 
let’s not stand in their way. What these people need from
us, at 
minimum, is some tough talk — the kind of stern, grown-up
verbal whoop- 
ass the conservatives wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to
unload on us 
if the roles were reversed. 
The time has come for blue
America to go Galt. Our farewell rant — 
long and epic, as Rand's
turgid writing style would have required — 
might sound a bit like
this: 
First off, dear Red Staters: If your town’s economy depends on
a 
nearby dam, canal, harbor, airport, military base, interstate
highway, 
national park or monument, or prison, just STFU. Because you
are, in 
every way possible, a parasite, living off something the rest
of us 
paid to build.
Second: If you are a homeowner who takes a mortgage interest
deduction 
— which is how the rest of us subsidize your house, and
with it your 
status in the middle-class — we don’twant to hear
another word from 
you about how you made it all on your own. And that
goes for those of 
you who got your education via the GI Bill, or took
out an SBA loan, 
or went to well-funded public schools back when such
things existed. 
You are what you are because we believed in you, and
invested in you. 
And we’re deeply insulted that you refuseto even
acknowledge that 
fact.Â*

Third: Don't come crawling to us to support
those kids you 
couldn't afford to have, but refused to allow
contraception or 
abortions or actual fact-based *** education to
prevent. It's just 
that simple. Our blue-state babies are better off
in every way that 
mattersÂ*because we plan our families. A failure to
plan on your part 
does not create an obligation on ours. Your
policies force women to 
have kids, even when they're patently not
ready to have them. Now (as 
you’re so fond of telling women who find
themselves unhappily 
pregnant), you get to live with the consequences
of those choices.
Fourth: Don't ask us to pay to educate your kids if you're not
willing 
to have us teach them what we know about the world. We
believe in 
free, comprehensive, rigorous and reality-based public
education 
because it’s done more than any other governmentservice to
make us 
rich, powerful and successful; and we want the same for you.
We realize some of you aren't too keen on public schools. It's great
that you want to take on more personal responsibility for educating
your own kids. Just be warned: if you don't teach them real science
and real history — including evolution, climate change and the actual
contents of the US Constitution — we're probably not going to hire
them. So we hope you're also ready to take responsibility for that,
too, which will probably mean supporting your grown kids in your
basement until you die.
Advertisement
Fifth: Between federal water reclamation projects and farm subsidies,
we are paying you zillions of dollars to grow stuff we'd actually
rather not eat. Don’t look now, but those of us in blue cities and
states are moving away from your petrochemical-saturated GMO-bred
CAFO- 
grown industrial “food” products as fast as we possibly can.
There 
aren’t enough organic and community-supported farms to feed all
of us 
yet — but we have taken responsibility for this, andare
working hard 
on the problem. You can either get on this train, or
holler at it 
while it flattens you. What you cannot do is yell at us
because we 
don’t want to eat what you choose to grow. 
Notice, too,
that the only reason we’re having to subsidize you in the 
first place
is that the all-holy free market does not bless you with 
profits on
this ****. In your own book, that makes you a capital-L 
Loser. In
ours, we’ll settle for “parasite.” 
Sixth: We are so over your
bigotry. Again: we know from our own long 
experience that including
women, gays and minorities makes us not only 
culturally richer; it
also makes us more economically productive as 
well. And the recent
economic meltdown has shown us that monocultures 
run exclusively by
rich white men tend to stagnate into breeding pools 
for all kinds of
social and financial parasites, who then come forward 
to prey on
those least able to resist -- like you. 
Diversity isn’t just an
idealistic fetish for us: we do it because we 
think it makes us
richer on every front that matters. If “parasite” is 
just another
word for “people who willfully make bad choices that keep 
them poor
and ignorant,” then your prejudices by definition make you 
parasites.
And we are not, therefore, obliged to deal with you. 
And finally: If
you want to pretend global warming isn't happening, 
you do not getto
come whining to us when you get hit with droughts or 
floods. We're
not going to send FEMA to bail you out. We're not going 
to build
canals to give you our water. We're not going to fund your 
levees.If
you're so sure God will provide, go ask him to keep your 
reservoirs
full and your cities dry. Because we resign. 
But will we come back?
Yep. It all sounds really ugly. But that’s the point of going Galt:
it’s a big fat tantrum designed to prove just how important you are
in 
the grand scheme of things. (The tactic is also not unfamiliar to
any 
mother who’s gone on a protracted housekeeping strike to gain
appreciation from an uncooperative family.) If others have to suffer
hardship to learn the lesson — well, that’ll teach 'em. The
emotionally satisfying goal is to get the parasites to come back,
begging on their knees for your vital help and resources. They know
now, in a way they didn't before, that they cannot survive without
you. 
So: if that fantasy moment were to come, what would it take to
convince us Progressive Objectivists to emerge once again from our
cool blue producerist enclave, and take responsibility for the
chastened masses once again? We have just five simple demands: 
1.
Stop taking more money from the federal government pot than you put
into it. If you believe in paying your own freight, then do it. If
you 
can’t, that’s fine -- we'll go back to helpingyou out -- but you
have 
to let go of that producerist superiority ****, because you’re
simply 
not entitled to it. 
2. Admit that we were right. Admit that
nobody in America ever makes 
it on their own, and that we are all in
this together, and that 
there’s such a thing as the commonwealth and
the common good. Admit 
that regulation is necessary to keep the
unprincipled strong from 
preying on the weak. Admit that there has
never in history ever been 
any such thing as a free market: markets
are created by governments, 
and need to be overseen by them. And
finally: admit that your 
conservative leaders got us into this
economic mess, and don’t know 
squat about how to get us out of it.
3. Join the reality-based world. Accept that America’s prosperity
utterly depends on how well-educated its kids are, especially on
topics like science and history. Accept that evolution happened, and
that climate change is happening now. Embrace nuance. Learn something
about how to assess evidence and think rationally, without a pre-
determined conclusion. Remember that God only helps those who've
gained the real-world skills to help themselves. 
4. Admit that we
love our country every bit as much as you do — and 
that, given our
much greater success at creating strong families, 
productive 21st-
century industries and excellent places to live, we 
might actually
know more that you do about how to make it work better 
in the
future. 
5. Last but by no means least: Knock off the hate-mongering,
threats 
and name-calling. Your heroine, Ms. Rand, predicted rightly
that 
parasites invariably despise the producers they feed on; you
should be 
embarrassed that your own behavior bears her out so
clearly. And, just 
once, say thank you to us for all the
contributions we’ve made (or, at 
least, tried to make) toward your
well-being. We don’t ask for much, 
but a little gratitude now and
then wouldn’t hurt. 
Five easy steps. Do this, and we’ll come back and
work with you as co- 
creators of an America we all can love. Until
then, though, you can 
pay your own bills. We’ve decided wehave
better things to invest that 
money in — upgraded schools, single-
payer healthcare, expanded college 
systems, mass transit, sustainable
technology investments, and forward- 
looking research to launch new
industries that will make us richer 
yet. And you’ll have achoice,
too: you’ll either learn what it takes 
to produce like we do, or
you’ll get to find out what real poverty 
feels like. 
Would that we
had the guts to go Galt. We probably don't; it's just 
not in our
natures to tell people who are hurting to go to hell, or 
leverage our
economic might to get the political upper-hand. But 
there's nothing
stopping us from pointing out, loudly and often, 
exactly who is
really who in this producers-versus-parasites 
relationship. We didn't
draw that ridiculous battle line -- but maybe 
it's time for us to
accept their terms of engagement, stake our 
rightful claim as the
country's actual producer class, and show them 
just how tall and
proud we are to stand on our far more fertile 
ground.
Rispondi citando Condividi su facebook
  #30  
Vecchio 08-11-2012, 21.12.05
Nickname unavailable
 
Messaggi: n/a
Predefinito Re: google: "In a Nation of Children, Santa Claus Wins"

On Nov 8, 7:32Â*am, ПеаБраин <lapuant...@aol.com> wrote:[color=blue]
> google: "In a Nation of Children, Santa Claus Wins"
>
> Â*About 1,880 results (0.13 seconds)[/color]

Rand Worshipers Should Face Facts:Blue States Are the Providers:Red
States Are the Parasites:Rand predicted rightly that parasites
invariably despise the producers they feed on:you should be
embarrassed that red state behavior bears her out so clearly
[url]http://www.alternet.org/visions/154338/Ayn_Rand_Worshippers_Should_Fa[/url]...
AlterNet / By Sara Robinson
Ayn Rand Worshippers Should Face Facts: Blue States Are the
Providers, 
Red States Are the Parasites 
There's only one way to
demonstrate who America's producers and 
parasites really are. It's
time to go Galt. 
February 29, 2012 Â*|
Â*Last week, the New York Times published a widely discussed article
updating an argument that progressive bloggers noticed a very long
time ago. It's now well-understood that blue states generally export
money to the federal government; and red states generally import it.
TPM published a great map showing exactly how this redistribution
works:
(click for larger version) 
Progressives believe in the redistribution
of wealth, so we're not 
usually too upset by this state of affairs..
That’s what it means to be 
one country. E pluribus unum,Â*and all
that. We’re happy to help, 
because we think we’ve got a stake in
making sure kids in rural 
Alabama get educations and seniors in
Arizona get healthcare. What’s 
good for them is good for all of us.
We also like to think they’d help 
us out if our positions were
reversed. It’s an investment in making 
America stronger, and we feel
fine about that.
But maybe it's time to admit that we're being played for chumps, and
that there are people in the rest of the country who are taking way
too much advantage of our good nature. After all: it's now a stone
fact that the blue states and cities are the country's real wealth
creators. That's why we pay more taxes, and are able to send that
money to the red states in the first place. We're working our butts
off, being economically productive, going to college, raising good
kids, supporting reality-based schools, keeping our marriages
together,Â*tending to our busy and diverse cities, and generally
Playing By The Rules. And the fates have smiled on us in rough
proportion to the degree that we’ve invested in our own common good..
So we've got every right to get good and angry about the fact that,
by 
and large, the people who are getting our money are so damned
ungrateful -- not to mention so ridiculously eager to spend it on
stuff we don't approve of. We didn't ship them our hard-earned tax
dollars to see them squandered on worse-than-useless abstinence-only
education, textbooks that teach creationism, crisis-pregnancy
misinformation centers, subsidies for GMO crops and oil companies,
and 
so on. And we sure as hell didn't expect to be rewarded for our
productivity and generosity with a rising tide of spittle-flecked
insanity aboutÂ*how we’re just a bunch of immoral, godless, drug-
soaked, ***-crazed, evil America-hating traitors who can’t wait to
hand the country over to the Islamists and the Communists.
Ironically, the conservative movement's favorite philosopher had some
very insightful things to say about this exact situation. Ayn Rand's
novels divided the world into two groups. On one hand, she lionized
"producers" -- noble, intelligentÂ*Ăśbermenschen whose faith in their
own ideas and willingness to take risks to achieve their dreams
drives 
everything else in society. And she called out the evil of
"parasites," the dull, unimaginative masses who attach themselves to
producers and drain away their resources and thwart their dreams.
Conservatives love this story. They're eager to claim the gleaming
mantle of the producers, insisting loudly that their tax money is
going to support people (mostly in blue states and cities, it's
darkly 
implied) who won't or can't work as hard as they do. If you
want to 
arouse their class and race resentments, there are few
narratives that 
can get them rolling like this producers-versus-
parasites tale.
But the NYT story and that map up there prove beyond arguing that the
conservative interpretation of events is 100 percent, 180-degrees,
flat-out wrong. America's real producer class is overwhelmingly
concentrated in the blue cities and states -- the regions full of
smart, talented people who've harnessed technology and intellect to
money, and made these regions the best, most forward-looking places
in 
the country to live.
Advertisement
And the real parasites are centered in red states (the only
exceptions 
being states with huge resource reserves, like Alaska and
Texas) -- 
the unimaginative, exhausted places that have clung to a
fading past, 
rejected science, substituted superstition for sense,
and refused to 
invest in their own futures. It's not unfair to say
that those regions 
are simply feasting off the sweat of our ennobling
labor, and 
expecting us to continue supporting them as they go about
their wealth- 
destroying ways.
And we producers have had enough.
Progressives Go Galt!
If you're a conservative who thinks Ayn Rand called it true with this
producers/parasites thing, then by all means: let's go there. All the
way there — and then some. But fair warning is in order: you may not
like where we end up. 
By way of a modest proposal, I hereby declare
the birth of a new 
Progressive Objectivism — a frankly producerist
personal- 
responsibility crusade aimed at getting these whiny red
leeches off 
our collective blue hide. If they think they can get by
without us, 
let’s not stand in their way. What these people need from
us, at 
minimum, is some tough talk — the kind of stern, grown-up
verbal whoop- 
ass the conservatives wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to
unload on us 
if the roles were reversed. 
The time has come for blue
America to go Galt. Our farewell rant — 
long and epic, as Rand's
turgid writing style would have required — 
might sound a bit like
this: 
First off, dear Red Staters: If your town’s economy depends on
a 
nearby dam, canal, harbor, airport, military base, interstate
highway, 
national park or monument, or prison, just STFU. Because you
are, in 
every way possible, a parasite, living off something the rest
of us 
paid to build.
Second: If you are a homeowner who takes a mortgage interest
deduction 
— which is how the rest of us subsidize your house, and
with it your 
status in the middle-class — we don’twant to hear
another word from 
you about how you made it all on your own. And that
goes for those of 
you who got your education via the GI Bill, or took
out an SBA loan, 
or went to well-funded public schools back when such
things existed. 
You are what you are because we believed in you, and
invested in you. 
And we’re deeply insulted that you refuseto even
acknowledge that 
fact.Â*

Third: Don't come crawling to us to support
those kids you 
couldn't afford to have, but refused to allow
contraception or 
abortions or actual fact-based *** education to
prevent. It's just 
that simple. Our blue-state babies are better off
in every way that 
mattersÂ*because we plan our families. A failure to
plan on your part 
does not create an obligation on ours. Your
policies force women to 
have kids, even when they're patently not
ready to have them. Now (as 
you’re so fond of telling women who find
themselves unhappily 
pregnant), you get to live with the consequences
of those choices.
Fourth: Don't ask us to pay to educate your kids if you're not
willing 
to have us teach them what we know about the world. We
believe in 
free, comprehensive, rigorous and reality-based public
education 
because it’s done more than any other governmentservice to
make us 
rich, powerful and successful; and we want the same for you.
We realize some of you aren't too keen on public schools. It's great
that you want to take on more personal responsibility for educating
your own kids. Just be warned: if you don't teach them real science
and real history — including evolution, climate change and the actual
contents of the US Constitution — we're probably not going to hire
them. So we hope you're also ready to take responsibility for that,
too, which will probably mean supporting your grown kids in your
basement until you die.
Advertisement
Fifth: Between federal water reclamation projects and farm subsidies,
we are paying you zillions of dollars to grow stuff we'd actually
rather not eat. Don’t look now, but those of us in blue cities and
states are moving away from your petrochemical-saturated GMO-bred
CAFO- 
grown industrial “food” products as fast as we possibly can.
There 
aren’t enough organic and community-supported farms to feed all
of us 
yet — but we have taken responsibility for this, andare
working hard 
on the problem. You can either get on this train, or
holler at it 
while it flattens you. What you cannot do is yell at us
because we 
don’t want to eat what you choose to grow. 
Notice, too,
that the only reason we’re having to subsidize you in the 
first place
is that the all-holy free market does not bless you with 
profits on
this ****. In your own book, that makes you a capital-L 
Loser. In
ours, we’ll settle for “parasite.” 
Sixth: We are so over your
bigotry. Again: we know from our own long 
experience that including
women, gays and minorities makes us not only 
culturally richer; it
also makes us more economically productive as 
well. And the recent
economic meltdown has shown us that monocultures 
run exclusively by
rich white men tend to stagnate into breeding pools 
for all kinds of
social and financial parasites, who then come forward 
to prey on
those least able to resist -- like you. 
Diversity isn’t just an
idealistic fetish for us: we do it because we 
think it makes us
richer on every front that matters. If “parasite” is 
just another
word for “people who willfully make bad choices that keep 
them poor
and ignorant,” then your prejudices by definition make you 
parasites.
And we are not, therefore, obliged to deal with you. 
And finally: If
you want to pretend global warming isn't happening, 
you do not getto
come whining to us when you get hit with droughts or 
floods. We're
not going to send FEMA to bail you out. We're not going 
to build
canals to give you our water. We're not going to fund your 
levees.If
you're so sure God will provide, go ask him to keep your 
reservoirs
full and your cities dry. Because we resign. 
But will we come back?
Yep. It all sounds really ugly. But that’s the point of going Galt:
it’s a big fat tantrum designed to prove just how important you are
in 
the grand scheme of things. (The tactic is also not unfamiliar to
any 
mother who’s gone on a protracted housekeeping strike to gain
appreciation from an uncooperative family.) If others have to suffer
hardship to learn the lesson — well, that’ll teach 'em. The
emotionally satisfying goal is to get the parasites to come back,
begging on their knees for your vital help and resources. They know
now, in a way they didn't before, that they cannot survive without
you. 
So: if that fantasy moment were to come, what would it take to
convince us Progressive Objectivists to emerge once again from our
cool blue producerist enclave, and take responsibility for the
chastened masses once again? We have just five simple demands: 
1.
Stop taking more money from the federal government pot than you put
into it. If you believe in paying your own freight, then do it. If
you 
can’t, that’s fine -- we'll go back to helpingyou out -- but you
have 
to let go of that producerist superiority ****, because you’re
simply 
not entitled to it. 
2. Admit that we were right. Admit that
nobody in America ever makes 
it on their own, and that we are all in
this together, and that 
there’s such a thing as the commonwealth and
the common good. Admit 
that regulation is necessary to keep the
unprincipled strong from 
preying on the weak. Admit that there has
never in history ever been 
any such thing as a free market: markets
are created by governments, 
and need to be overseen by them. And
finally: admit that your 
conservative leaders got us into this
economic mess, and don’t know 
squat about how to get us out of it.
3. Join the reality-based world. Accept that America’s prosperity
utterly depends on how well-educated its kids are, especially on
topics like science and history. Accept that evolution happened, and
that climate change is happening now. Embrace nuance. Learn something
about how to assess evidence and think rationally, without a pre-
determined conclusion. Remember that God only helps those who've
gained the real-world skills to help themselves. 
4. Admit that we
love our country every bit as much as you do — and 
that, given our
much greater success at creating strong families, 
productive 21st-
century industries and excellent places to live, we 
might actually
know more that you do about how to make it work better 
in the
future. 
5. Last but by no means least: Knock off the hate-mongering,
threats 
and name-calling. Your heroine, Ms. Rand, predicted rightly
that 
parasites invariably despise the producers they feed on; you
should be 
embarrassed that your own behavior bears her out so
clearly. And, just 
once, say thank you to us for all the
contributions we’ve made (or, at 
least, tried to make) toward your
well-being. We don’t ask for much, 
but a little gratitude now and
then wouldn’t hurt. 
Five easy steps. Do this, and we’ll come back and
work with you as co- 
creators of an America we all can love. Until
then, though, you can 
pay your own bills. We’ve decided wehave
better things to invest that 
money in — upgraded schools, single-
payer healthcare, expanded college 
systems, mass transit, sustainable
technology investments, and forward- 
looking research to launch new
industries that will make us richer 
yet. And you’ll have achoice,
too: you’ll either learn what it takes 
to produce like we do, or
you’ll get to find out what real poverty 
feels like. 
Would that we
had the guts to go Galt. We probably don't; it's just 
not in our
natures to tell people who are hurting to go to hell, or 
leverage our
economic might to get the political upper-hand. But 
there's nothing
stopping us from pointing out, loudly and often, 
exactly who is
really who in this producers-versus-parasites 
relationship. We didn't
draw that ridiculous battle line -- but maybe 
it's time for us to
accept their terms of engagement, stake our 
rightful claim as the
country's actual producer class, and show them 
just how tall and
proud we are to stand on our far more fertile 
ground.
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