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Obama: The Virtue of Selfishness

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I came across an interesting news story regarding Obama and taxes.

Barack Obama says if you don't want to hike your taxes, you're selfish.

Speaking in Sarasota, Fla., Thursday, Obama said he wanted to change the tax code to help the middle class and charged that in opposing his tax raising programs, Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin were making a "virtue out of selfishness."

And:

"John McCain and Sarah Palin, they call this socialistic," Obama said. "You know, I don't know when, when they decided they wanted to make a virtue out of selfishness."

I don't know either, but maybe they all ought to read Atlas Shrugged and The Virtue of Selfishness ;)

Now all we need, after this Ayn Rand flack in the news, is to have a politician saying, yes, he is for the virtue of selfishness and individual rights.

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You beat me to this. I saw it just a few minutes ago. I was happy to see some Fox pundits recognize (at the very least) that it isn't generally consider selfish to want to hold on to your own EARNED money, to own your own home and to be able to pay for your own kids to go to college.

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If Obama gets elected I hope he hammers away at this slogan for the next 4 years. I hope that every time he raises taxes or institutes another big brother government program he claims that it is selfish to not willingly give. I want him to build his socialist nightmare state as a treatise against the self, against all reason and against real morality...

He may be the antithesis of Objectivism, but that may prove to be his greatest value to us.

Oh, it'd be helpful if he started claiming it was gods will close to the end of his term... ;)

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At least Obama is making the issue explicit, but I don't think we can count on the Conservatives to come out for selfishness as a virtue. I was talking to my parents last night and they had heard of this on Fox News and their spin is that it is not selfish to want to keep your own money. Fox News tends to lean Conservative, but the only Conservative I know of who is explicitly for selfishness -- as rational self interest -- is Rush Limbaugh back when I was listening to him. Unfortunately, he is very mixed and has a religious base to his personal philosophy. That is, only Objectivists will come out in full support for the virtue of selfishness; and on secular grounds. Nonetheless, the ideological battle lines are being drawn, and generally, when the Liberals are more explicitly for socialism, they lose in the elections. We will have to see what happens this time around.

It's not quite explicitly socialism versus theocracy, but it is getting there, and I think when it becomes that explicit many years from now, a third party may arise, though it may be still too early for a fully individual rights party. Most American's don't want either socialism or theocracy, and while they see Obama as being a socialist, they don't see Palin as a theocrat because she hasn't come right out and said that she wants to impose the Bible on Americans. Huckabee did, and he was rejected.

One can look at what Obama said as advertising for the book, The Virtue of Selfishness, but it is going to be years and maybe even decades before Americans explicitly embrace that rational stance.

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  • 2 weeks later...
If Obama gets elected I hope he hammers away at this slogan for the next 4 years. I hope that every time he raises taxes or institutes another big brother government program he claims that it is selfish to not willingly give. I want him to build his socialist nightmare state as a treatise against the self, against all reason and against real morality...

He may be the antithesis of Objectivism, but that may prove to be his greatest value to us.

Oh, it'd be helpful if he started claiming it was gods will close to the end of his term... ;)

And with the new Ayn Rand Center in Washington, there will be champions of individual rights to oppose him :confused:

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