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 |  Subject: Despite his own errors, Hugo Schmidt bitch slaps other NOL Objectivists  Fri Aug 24, 2012 6:40 am | |
| - Quote :
- Are you kidding me?
Submitted by Hugo Schmidt on Thu, 2012-08-23 15:09.
I cannot believe some of these responses.
"This is the country that followed a man in a nappy" - yes, I imagine that's what all of these people did. In fact, there is a considerable opposition amongst more secular Indians against the cult of gandhi, and never forget that this took form of the struggle against a very cruel and brutal imperialism. Go and read your Orwell on the subject, and look up the horrible famines that British imperial policy managed to manufacture.
Mandela behaved considerably better than he might have, considering what he was up against, and how the US right wing was pretty much on the side of the racist thugs running that country, and many of them - certain wretched WND writers for example - seem to pine for still. Yeah, he was a member of the Communist party because it was the only party that had, as official policy, the fact that it didn't care what skin colour you were. Given the nature of Apartheid SA, that's a pretty damn good reason to join; simply having been an affiliate of such a party does not automatically make you the equivalent of Lenin, Trotsky or Stalin (incidentally, in Long Walk To Freedom, Mandela quite specifically argues for capitalism and against communism). I'd also say that it is a standing disgrace that the US behaved in that way, and think what might have been achieved if there had been a capitalist international already in place, that was willing to reach out and help in the fight against Apartheid.
As regards the long list by Marcus of India's problems, well then, if we're going to be like that, what could we say about the good ol' US of A then?
This is a country that still venerates slavers, and not just people who inherited a system of slavery, but chose consciously to continue it when they had the chance to abolish it.
This is a country that until very recently maintained a most oppressive class system against the descendants of their former property, and still maintains a huge population of helots whom it denies the protection of the law.
This is a country that prides itself as being "the land of the brave" when all it had to fight against to establish itself were the starving, diseased remnants of the native inhabitants (emphasis on 'disease'; kill-rates from small-pox were typically 90%+ amongst the native americans), whom it took pleasure in exterminating.
This is a country which cannot seem to have an elected President who will not smarm up to superstitious hucksters and charlatans (Reagan, both Bushes, Clinton, Obama, Carter - name me one who hasn't had a toe-curling religious nutcase on hand, and usually more than one.
...and so on. Get it? I'd also add that the repetition of "this is a country", making everyone in it all the same, reeks of collectivism at its very worst.
Yes, there's a lot of superstition alive and well in India. It is also the world's largest parliamentary democracy, whose people, both there and especially in the diaspora, are a biword for achievement in science, technology, industry and medicine. I have had many dealings with the Indian diaspora, and I can say that I find them far more sober and rational than, say, a great deal of US college students or many of those here in the UK.
Lindsay,
It all has to start somewhere. It is precisely because so many Indians know the full nastiness of collectivism and oppression that they are so fed up with it, and I might add, it may allow them to fight far harder than many Americans would. Remember, few countries on earth have had a worse regime than that of my fatherland, and on top of that, it was reduced to rubble from one end to the other. Germans still rebuilt into something far newer and far better .
I don't know about 'lugging your carcass' anywhere, though the way things are going in the US, I'm glad I'm not there. It's more of a matter of reaching out to the likeminded everywhere they are to be found and helping them. Are there any attempts to spread Objectivism to China? If not, why not? Or the Middle East? Iraq has underground death metal bands who lash out against Islam. Why not an underground Objectivist scene?
All the great enemies of civilisation are internationalist nowadays. It's a disgrace that there isn't an internationalist movement devoted to the one system that is naturally internationalist, namely Capitalism. And think what we might have had if this was there already; if instead of, say, backing the Taliban in Afghanistan, the US had openly declared for Capitalism and freedom and advanced the principles of the Enlightenment and the free society there. Or if the nations rising from colonialism had been able to turn to the works of Ludwig von Mises, Ayn Rand etc., instead of those of Marx and Feuerbach? Remember, they didn't turn to those because they were wicked or stupid, but because these were the only one movements using the language of reason to defend themselves. The leaders of the newly free nations were looking to the most up-to-date ideas around, and were presented with evil disguised as good (one of the most evil things that first world intellectuals have done in my view). I suggest you reread Ayn Rand on the disastrous effects of defending capitalism with superstitious nonsense.
I do not see why we should not reclaim the ideas of internationalism and solidarity. Solidarity is sticking by those that share your values; remember what Dagny says to Cheryl. Internationalism is just applying that across the globe and understanding that someone who shares your values who is from another country is closer to you than a scoundrel from your own.
http://www.solopassion.com/node/9319
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