Reason.tv

3 Reasons The FCC Shouldn't "Touch" The Internets...

The very last thing we need is an analog electromechanical bureaucracy, from the last century, thrusting itself unwanted on a new digital technology for this century.


1. Where's the fire?


2. The FCC F2%#ING SUCKS


3. MISSION CREEP


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLyUeiR7djQ

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Written and Produced by Meredith Bragg and Nick Gillespie

A Cut Above From Below

What is the meaning of elite?

It's all in the context of personal perception and interpretation


I've been having an ongoing discussion recently with a friend of 45 years over the word elite and what it means. We have similar education backgrounds (we went to the same high school and colleges, different degrees) but come from different socio-economic backgrounds. Over the decades we have had a lot of discussions on topics of "great political and social import," to borrow a phrase from Janis Joplin.

In this case it started with my using the word "elite" which I intended in the first dictionary definition of "the choice or best of anything considered collectively, as a group or class of persons and partly in the second definition sense of "persons of the highest class." Let me state that I personally never have associated class with money, prominent position, aristocracy, name-your-upper-crust. In my mind class has always been associated with any social, economic or political individual or group that carries themselves with a certain dignity and respect for others, which in turn gives them dignity and respect.

I have never understood the visceral reaction so many Americans have to the word elite. They automatically assume it means the third dictionary definition "a group of persons exercising the major authority or influence within a larger group," as in Power Elite and Big Boss Man and in a reactionary way, vehemently call it inherently evil. The idea that elite might merely mean someone or something that exceeds or is more educated, intelligent, accomplished is just considered wrong. Because in America no one better be better than me or anyone else.

Is this what the notion of equality has become? It no longer is about equal rights and opportunity but about equal entitlement? 

Inevitably I get accused of classism or something of the sort if I suggest that human nature and selection of the species indicates that some people, are in fact just better in some ways than others. That somehow this is snobbishness and it's wrong to think that someone can rise above others, are natural leaders and should fill that role. Inevitably I discover that these same people also resent anyone in leadership position of any kind, although they would loath to themselves be a leader instead of the "chosen one."

I suggest that it is peculiarly American trait, born out of a misguided idea that this is a pure democracy coupled with an ignorance of what a democratic republic really means. It almost always springs from someone who is from or perceives themselves to be "working class" and I have concluded it is also classism, only in reverse and the worst kind. "I can't envision myself (or am too lazy) being able to improve or rise above my station, therefore anyone who does is an elitist snob who looks down on me."

It is the worst kind because the concept of achievement, ability, knowledge, skills are to be derided rather than lauded. It assumes that everyone who has "gotten somewhere" gained it without some effort, education and work and is in it purely for themselves with total disregard for others. Perhaps this is why so many people with elite qualities stick to themselves and others like them.

Who Is John Galt?

Liberty vs Socialism...

Mike Wallace interview of Ayn Rand: 1959


"I am opposed to all forms of control...I am for the separation of state and economics."

In this segment of the interview a finger pointing Mike Wallace strikes an attitude common to most Liberals, that people who are achievers will by nature act in evil ways towards others taking a "devil take the hindmost, dog eat dog society and one of the main reasons for the growth of government controls is to fight robber barons...who perverted their use of power." Therefore it is up to good (liberal) people to lead in protecting people by government intervention and legislation. He speaks as if it is common sense and it never occurs to this mindset, that abuses of power inevitably fail when left to their own devices, since they are inherently evil. Achievement oriented people are smart enough to figure out ways to get people to follow (work) for them without force. Human nature will prevail and people won't work for "robber barons" if they are being abused and are not as weak willed and in need of the protection of government as people such as Wallace suggest. Liberals perpetuate the stereotype of weakness through fear in order to secure their own moral power. Ayn Rand deconstructs this notion in a firm logical, step by step, rational manner.

On labor and social welfare legislation: "It actually sprang out from the same source as the abuses, if by abuses you mean the legislation which originally had been established to help industrialists, which was already a breach of complete free enterprise...if then in reaction labor leaders get together to initiate legislation to help labor, that is only acting on the same principle, namely all parties agree that it is proper for the state to legislate in favor of one economic group over another. What I am saying is nobody should have the right to use, neither employers or employees, to use state compulsion and force." 

In other words, the Political Class acquiesces to the will of Industrialists, in total disregard of the principles they were elected under the US Constitution, to protect the interests of the people who elected them and instead protect the industrialists. This creates a conspiratorial system where the Industrialists were the originators of collectivism and socialism by making a social contract through legislation. In turn the pattern is repeated by other members of the Political Class to protect Labor, reinforcing the disregard of the reason they were elected. This pattern is clearly evident today and largely the reason for the current social, economic and political disruption we are currently undergoing.

"This country was made not by robber barons but by independent men, by industrialists who succeeded on sheer ability. I mean without political force, help or compulsion but...at the same time there were men, industrialists, who did use government power as a club to help them against competitors. THEY WERE THE ORIGINAL COLLECTIVISTS. Today the Liberals believe that the same compulsion should be used against the industrialists for the sake of workers, but the basic principle there is...SHOULD there be any compulsion, and the regulations are creating Robber Barons, THEY (government intervention) ARE CREATING CAPITALISTS WITH GOVERNMENT HELP, which is the WORST OF ALL ECONOMIC PHENOMENON."


The result is we do not have true capitalism today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1RxKW-P5V8&feature=channel_video_title

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