IrezumiKiss
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Let's just repeat that for those who slept..
How Socialists Built America
- Thread starter KingOrfeo
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Let's just repeat that for those who slept..
JenAltArmy
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IrezumiKiss
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yah HOOOOOOOOOO
Frisco_Slug_Esq
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Every person who has adopted the "middle way" (von Mises) never sees themselves as a Socialist, just someone who sees the benefits that can come from government while at once ignoring the laws of unintended consequences. The problem being that a mixed (Socialism and Capitalism) economy over the course of time turns Socialist for numerous reasons, but mostly because groups begin competing for favors and business begins buying indulgences from the Secular State. It is easy for someone to want to appear educated, erudite, and enlightened to look back and point to the positive interferences (von Humboldt) that they think benefited the nation and the people. One of my favorites is the Interstate that got people off and away from the rails only to produce a mode of transportation that then became the scourge of the earth due to "CO2" emissions. But because government is what it is, once you give it the green light to do good, there is never a terminal condition which says, this is where doing good stops. Witness, we now, in the US enjoy the largest, most helpful government ever, employing more people than the private sector, and yet, for some strange reason, we also enjoy dire economic times in which the light on the horizon is a carrot we just cannot seem to catch up to. But sooner, or later, if we just pick the best "thinkers" to lead us, then we will enjoy an Egalitarian Utopia.
__________________
They become apt to take because they wish to spend and cannot do this easily; for their possessions soon run short. Thus they are forced to provide means from some other source. At the same time, because they care nothing for honor, they take recklessly and from any source.
Aristotle
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that justifies it."
Frederic Bastiat
"The more communal enterprise extends, the more attention is drawn to the bad business results of nationalized and municipalized undertakings. It is impossible to miss the cause of the difficulty: a child could see where something was lacking. So that it cannot be said that this problem has not been tackled. But the way in which it has been tackled has been deplorably inadequate. Its organic connection with the essential nature of socialist enterprise has been regarded as merely a question of better selection of persons. It has not been realized that even exceptionally gifted men of high character cannot solve the problems created by socialist control of industry."
Ludwig Heinrich Elder von Mises
Political Realists see the world as it is: ... In this world laws are written for the lofty aim of "the common good" and then acted out in life on the basis of common greed...; a world where we are always moral and our enemies always immoral; a world where "reconciliation" means that when one side gets the power and the other side gets reconciled to it, then we have reconciliation.... In the world as it is, the solution of each problem inevitably creates a new one.
Saul David Alinsky
Rules for Radicals
There is black and white, and if you refuse to believe that, then you will accept grey and let me tell you gray tends to black for when you say ∃ of anything is a good function of government then ∃ is everything ¬∀ and while you may be able to advocate for ∃ you won't be allowed to define it and in this manner its limit will be ∀ for ∑f(∪∃)i [i=from you to the total population] will never tend to ∅ by definition so it is easy to see that it is, indeed, an ∀ or ∅ when it comes to government. (Now, the ∑f(∩∃)i [i=from you to the total population] will tend to ∅ but that is politically unattainable for the obvious reason that the more ∃ is defined, the smaller the ∩∃ becomes.)
A_J, the Stupid
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JAMESBJOHNSON
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Every socialist empire that ever existed came to its end as an oligarchy that suppressed competition and evicted its slave-citizens into the street.
IrezumiKiss
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Movie Review: Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 - From Tome to Train Wreck
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Author: Grant Muller — Published: Apr 18, 2011 at 5:13 pm 1 comment
Ever try to read The Lord of The Rings trilogy out loud? If you have, you probably noticed that you sound like a big damn dork. When Ian McKellan renders a line like "A wizard arrives precisely when he means to", you believe he’s a wizard; you on the other hand sound like thirteen-year-old at a wicked awesome D&D game. Imagine filming, editing, and adding special effects to your wimpy voice and turning it into box office magic. Sound daunting? For you perhaps, but sometimes the planets of talent, technical virtuosity and, ahem, money align and an epic book survives the translation from tome to theater.
It is unfortunate that these conditions were not present on the set of Atlas Shrugged: Part 1. The film makes the mistake of flashing a calendar day across the screen in its opening moments, instantly voiding any sense of the timelessness Rand's novel suggests and giving the viewer an excuse to discard the film as soured milk in a scant five years. What follows is a montage as trite as tearing off calendar sheets to show the passage of time. Fake newsreel, snapshots of headlines, talking heads, and political commentators create the atmosphere of a failing nation. Despite the overused mechanism to convey the exposition, one does get a sense that this is happening now. This is at least as Rand had intended, but the use of a fixed date and the "modernization" of the story is not only unnecessary, it detracts from the work as a piece of political-philosophical symbolism.
The rest of the film reads like a 12-part made for TV mini-series squeezed in a vice to fit the film format without any of the polish necessary to justify the $11 dollar ticket expense. Hints of amateurism, like the black-and-white "missing" freeze frames, would be easier to stomach if they were sandwiched between commercial breaks. When more than a ten spot is on the line I expect better than the stiff delivery of even the most throwaway lines, and I certainly expect to experience the message of the original work without the heavy-handed exposition getting in the way.
Okay, I’ll be fair, even the book is heavy-handed. A book can get away with a lot more than a film, but if the producers were trying to avoid the beat-you-over-the-head-with-it approach entirely why rely on the least important pieces of dialogue, adding over the top verbal exposition when Rand supplied the hammer right in the book? Missing are monologues like the "Money Speech" that D'Anconia delivers at Reardon’s anniversary, perhaps one of the most important in the book. The characters in the book are archetypes; strip away their names and you're still left with symbols, different aspects of political and economic philosophy embodied in a voice. The various monologues can read like essays at times, but their absence makes the actors in the film feel less like archetypes and more like shallow characters. These monologues carry the message of the novel in a unique way, and even though the actors selected to play the parts may lack the talent to give them real weight it's unfair to the original work to leave them out entirely.
There were a few redeeming characters. Patrick Fischler’s portrayal of snake-in-the-grass Paul Larkin is believable, and Ellis Wyatt played by Graham Beckel was a likeable by-his-bootstraps CEO. Unfortunately the leads couldn't make up the same ground with their characterizations. Reardon feels weak. James Taggart feels less like the big fake softy he is in the book and more like a a child with a toy. D'Anconia has yet to blossom into the character he is supposed to be, but even his false act as a playboy reads like Benicio Del Toro on a bender with Johnny Depp. Even in playboy mode D'Anconia still had class in the novel; that dapper demeanor is gone in the film.
All in all I'm left severely disappointed with the film rendition of Atlas Shrugged, even if there are still two parts left. Paul Johansson might have been able to make this work as a mini-series, and indeed the budget may have leant itself better to that medium. As a film it feels rushed. The attempt to use stiff exposition in place of the essay-like monologues feels limp. The cinematography is unmemorable save for the various poor decisions made by the men behind the camera (like the "micro-zoom" moment at Reardon's Anniversary party). There are casting errors; I hear that Charlize Theron or Angelina Jolie were considered for the roles of Dagny Taggart. Brad Pitt could easily have swaggered his way into the character of Reardon had the budget allowed for it. But the budget didn't allow for it.
In the face of low funding my suggestion to Johansson would have been to cut his losses and give a TV audience a well-paced rendition of Rand's treatise, rather than make a film that does neither book nor audience justice.
Read more: http://blogcritics.org/video/article/movie-review-atlas-shrugged-part-11/page-2/#ixzz1JyDYmTco
http://blogcritics.org/video/article/movie-review-atlas-shrugged-part-11/
Share
Author: Grant Muller — Published: Apr 18, 2011 at 5:13 pm 1 comment
Ever try to read The Lord of The Rings trilogy out loud? If you have, you probably noticed that you sound like a big damn dork. When Ian McKellan renders a line like "A wizard arrives precisely when he means to", you believe he’s a wizard; you on the other hand sound like thirteen-year-old at a wicked awesome D&D game. Imagine filming, editing, and adding special effects to your wimpy voice and turning it into box office magic. Sound daunting? For you perhaps, but sometimes the planets of talent, technical virtuosity and, ahem, money align and an epic book survives the translation from tome to theater.
It is unfortunate that these conditions were not present on the set of Atlas Shrugged: Part 1. The film makes the mistake of flashing a calendar day across the screen in its opening moments, instantly voiding any sense of the timelessness Rand's novel suggests and giving the viewer an excuse to discard the film as soured milk in a scant five years. What follows is a montage as trite as tearing off calendar sheets to show the passage of time. Fake newsreel, snapshots of headlines, talking heads, and political commentators create the atmosphere of a failing nation. Despite the overused mechanism to convey the exposition, one does get a sense that this is happening now. This is at least as Rand had intended, but the use of a fixed date and the "modernization" of the story is not only unnecessary, it detracts from the work as a piece of political-philosophical symbolism.
The rest of the film reads like a 12-part made for TV mini-series squeezed in a vice to fit the film format without any of the polish necessary to justify the $11 dollar ticket expense. Hints of amateurism, like the black-and-white "missing" freeze frames, would be easier to stomach if they were sandwiched between commercial breaks. When more than a ten spot is on the line I expect better than the stiff delivery of even the most throwaway lines, and I certainly expect to experience the message of the original work without the heavy-handed exposition getting in the way.
Okay, I’ll be fair, even the book is heavy-handed. A book can get away with a lot more than a film, but if the producers were trying to avoid the beat-you-over-the-head-with-it approach entirely why rely on the least important pieces of dialogue, adding over the top verbal exposition when Rand supplied the hammer right in the book? Missing are monologues like the "Money Speech" that D'Anconia delivers at Reardon’s anniversary, perhaps one of the most important in the book. The characters in the book are archetypes; strip away their names and you're still left with symbols, different aspects of political and economic philosophy embodied in a voice. The various monologues can read like essays at times, but their absence makes the actors in the film feel less like archetypes and more like shallow characters. These monologues carry the message of the novel in a unique way, and even though the actors selected to play the parts may lack the talent to give them real weight it's unfair to the original work to leave them out entirely.
There were a few redeeming characters. Patrick Fischler’s portrayal of snake-in-the-grass Paul Larkin is believable, and Ellis Wyatt played by Graham Beckel was a likeable by-his-bootstraps CEO. Unfortunately the leads couldn't make up the same ground with their characterizations. Reardon feels weak. James Taggart feels less like the big fake softy he is in the book and more like a a child with a toy. D'Anconia has yet to blossom into the character he is supposed to be, but even his false act as a playboy reads like Benicio Del Toro on a bender with Johnny Depp. Even in playboy mode D'Anconia still had class in the novel; that dapper demeanor is gone in the film.
All in all I'm left severely disappointed with the film rendition of Atlas Shrugged, even if there are still two parts left. Paul Johansson might have been able to make this work as a mini-series, and indeed the budget may have leant itself better to that medium. As a film it feels rushed. The attempt to use stiff exposition in place of the essay-like monologues feels limp. The cinematography is unmemorable save for the various poor decisions made by the men behind the camera (like the "micro-zoom" moment at Reardon's Anniversary party). There are casting errors; I hear that Charlize Theron or Angelina Jolie were considered for the roles of Dagny Taggart. Brad Pitt could easily have swaggered his way into the character of Reardon had the budget allowed for it. But the budget didn't allow for it.
In the face of low funding my suggestion to Johansson would have been to cut his losses and give a TV audience a well-paced rendition of Rand's treatise, rather than make a film that does neither book nor audience justice.
Read more: http://blogcritics.org/video/article/movie-review-atlas-shrugged-part-11/page-2/#ixzz1JyDYmTco
http://blogcritics.org/video/article/movie-review-atlas-shrugged-part-11/
Frisco_Slug_Esq
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Don't waste your breath, we're being ignored as if we were history.
The one you're describing wasn't.
Frisco_Slug_Esq
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NATO is struggling to keep planes in the air because the Socialist EU countries who demanded the Libyan war have pared their military to the bone in order to prop up social spending.
I posted that in the Momar Prevails thread if you want a link.
I posted that in the Momar Prevails thread if you want a link.
JenAltArmy
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The government always makes a tidy profit from the good it does. No way in Hell would any Congress agree to sell cheap land to the Roobs if a profit was possible.
off2bed
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*chuckle*
In the example of building codes, they are enforced by local or state governments. When there's a Federal building code that all 57 states are required to follow, administered by a draconian "Code Czar" in DC, then we'll talk.
off2bed
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What's that got to do with this? The American empire/oligarchy is not socialist and never was.
No, that is actually extremely rare. Seems to contradict your previous statement.Not one of the Homesteading Acts in American history was enacted to make a profit for the Treasury. Their purposes were entirely different.
JenAltArmy
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why do you hate America? being a "socialist" is like being a flesh eating zombie - must be shot in the head
enjoy
enjoy
"Indeed, the only people who seem to think Obama displays even the slightest social democratic tendency are those who imagine that the very mention of the word “socialism” should inspire a reaction like that of a vampire confronted with the Host."
You'd think he believes that it's the purpose of Government to lose money.
It is certainly not the purpose of government to make money. (Well, except in the sense of minting/printing it.)
[shrug] I doubt it would be possible to make a good movie out of AS or any of Rand's books -- or out of Das Kapital -- but so what? That has nothing to do with the validity or invalidity of the ideas the book preaches.
Quite the reverse, many such nowadays call themselves "socialists." Almost every self-identified "socialist" party now active in Europe is really a social-democratic or, as you would put it, "middle way" party. (The Democrats, BTW, are not a middle-way party in that sense, let alone a socialist party.) Practically all of them have given up on what has been called "the theology of the final goal," the idea that socialism is something that is to come after capitalism.
But, this process you describe of a social-democratic state turning socialist is not happening in Europe today -- where one would look for it first, all the specified factors being in place -- and it does not appear likely to happen there . . . and, in fact, it has never happened anywhere.You sound rather like Marx, when he describes the causes and events of the Revolution -- in the present tense, as if, instead of posing a hypothetical future scenario, he were merely fleshing out the details of a process that has happened many times already in the real world and is well-known to all in its general outlines.
No doubt. Still, based on what was known in the 1950s -- and based on what is known today -- it was money well-spent. A country that has a national freeway system is better off than one that has not. Look around you. A country that has a well-developed rail network -- better still, a high-speed rail network -- is better-off still; but, you will note, in the world today, in all countries that have either, the railways are to some degree publicly owned. The problem here is that American government has done the wrong (in the sense of suboptimal) things about transportation, not that it has done things. A sad transportation system we would have on this continent, if it had been left entirely to the private sector to develop it. All the great American railways of the past got their start on government subsidies and land-grants.
It is more useful here to compare America to other countries in the present than to America in the past.
Really?
Reasons having far, far less to do with public-sector hubris than with private-sector venality.
Not likely . . . But, if you want to find your way out of a mess, you're usually better off going to the best "thinkers" than to the best "doers." Most times -- as now -- it's the "doers" who got us into this mess.
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off2bed
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You libs love to bash Communist China for having slave labor and bash us for buying their Socialist/Communist-produced goods.
Make up your friggin' minds, will ya? ChiComs good? Bad? Should we emulate them? Are they doing Communism wrong? (hint -- there is no right way to do Communism.)
Oh, and if you ever settle on an identifying label for whatever fairy tale it is you believe in, please let us in on it, 'k?
Make up your friggin' minds, will ya? ChiComs good? Bad? Should we emulate them? Are they doing Communism wrong? (hint -- there is no right way to do Communism.)
Oh, and if you ever settle on an identifying label for whatever fairy tale it is you believe in, please let us in on it, 'k?
Sean Renaud
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ChiCom's bad.
Capitalism is the fairy tale we believe in. We happen to think it needs certain tweaks cus other wise ChiComs win by raping the game.
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JenAltArmy
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capitalism is the best system! you just don't want to play the game, or are unable to. no one to blame but yourself.
Sean Renaud
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No. I just want the best results, and the best results require tweaking the game. That is rather the point of virtually every competitive thing ever. That sure you can just have at it but it's better with rules.
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