Will Robinson wrote:tunnelcat wrote:..
Ayn Rand herself brought up the term "Rational Egoism", not me. I'm just connecting the dots here.
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I didn't take issue with the term or the concept. I took issue with the dot connecting you do.
You sure do a lot of strawman construction with your creative interpretations of events and comments. Same ****, different day.
The absolute revulsion to anything pertaining to socialism (collectivism) coming from the Tea Party seems to say otherwise. The signs they hold up at their rallies are always vilifying Obama and those evil liberals and their programs as commie and socialistic, AND, which they claim are destroying our country. Prove it. They and their representatives keep yelling that we need to get rid of that big, bad government and keep it totally out of our lives. Sounds a like something Ayn Rand herself would champion.
Foil wrote:Hm, tc's post seems to be driven by her perspective (she admitted as much), and I personally think she's wrong to apply it to tea party ethical values... but there is some validity to the original post:
A central tenet of Tea Party economics is "sink or swim, everyone should fight for their own piece of the pie". It's effectively "do what's in one's own interest", which is a pretty good definition of egoism (and IMO, runs counter to Christ's example in many ways).
Foil, I disagree. I don't think it's wrong to apply it to the Tea Party. Everything I've heard from them is all about self,
me, me, me, not about others. What they forget is that we live as a vast society that forms the United States. We're not a bunch of individuals out trying to survive by ourselves. We're mostly a group that all depend on one another to make this nation great and strong. Only as a collective can this nation be powerful and live in bounty. If we were a bunch of little towns and settlements, we'd be steamrolled by some other nation that happened to believe in a little strength in collectivism. There's power in numbers.
Now I'm not for full collectivism, even though I tend towards liberalism. We'd stifle and die under our own laziness. What bothers me is that as a nation, we need to have a little of both systems if we are to function as a whole, and people are forgetting that. If people didn't do things for their own benefit or enjoyment, we end up no better than the Soviet Union. But this shift towards pure Capitalism may even violate Ayn Rand's own tenets, that the government should exist for protecting the people. That shouldn't mean just national security by the way. I notice that both right wing parties go all collective on that
one aspect of our government. What I'm talking about is food and drug safety, clean water and air, fair markets that don't favor the select few at the expense of the masses, a stable infrastructure for travel and commerce, etc, etc. These things all affect us one way or another. Tea Partiers and Republicans are trying to destroy all those government programs EXCEPT defense spending. What do they want, to defend a nation of poor people at any expense? What good is that?
I haven't even touched on health care cost and housing, which is slowly eating away at our middle class. All the right wingers want to do is privatize things and make them MORE expensive for people that can least afford it. Unregulated Capitalism does not value people, only profits. There needs to be some checks and balances put in, not outright removal. Everything being done in Washington and Wall Street is favoring those that are wealthy right now. If you're poor, you're dog meat, even if your circumstances were not of your own making. Climbing the ladder out of the pit of poverty is getting almost impossible.
I'm still waiting for CUDA to respond to those Christian values meshing with Tea Party values. Give me a reason why many, if not all, right wingers claim to be Christians and yet seem to extol the virtues of egoism at the same time.
SilverFJ wrote:If I become crippled at 32 I'm going to turn one of my many, many, many firearms on myself. I have too much pride to exist in that fasion.
My very plan exactly. Since I refuse to be bled dry by a medical system I can no longer afford and which values profits above actual medical care, why bother using it? It's done almost squat to help me most of my life anyway and since they don't believe in assisted suicide as a option (yes, I know we have that in Oregon, but you need a
doctor to say you have only six months to live), my blessed handgun is my out when I eventually get some terminal illness.
. 
. It isn't that I couldn't handle it, it's that I wouldn't want to. What a cooler next step than to find out what it's all about and pass on (or die trying)? Also, there is no flippin' way on the planet that I could handle being a burden on family and friends, on the American taxpayer, on hardworking families trying to take care of their own. No thanks, I'll go out with dignity.