We’ve gone a long time without a wingnut internet manifesto. Remedy:
I have had it up to my eyeballs with the ever-growing government, the nanny-state, the collectivism, the whole world demanding more and more from the producers. I am done with the corrupt politicians, the slackers, the deadbeats, and all the looters and moochers.
I am sick of a government which has drifted from its early Constitutional foundation of limited central goverment and great individual freedom, and become a bloated behemoth consuming 40 percent of our economy and hungry for more. I am finished with out-of-control political correctness and its attendant thought police outlawing truth in order to cater to those who would destroy us.
HERE I STAND. I AM JOHN GALT.
Whether the world around me likes it or not, I will put my foot down and insist on personal responsibility and accountability. I will tell my government to take its hands off my rights, my freedom, and my wallet. If the people of other nations are content to allow their countries to devolve into Hell, that’s their business. I’m sick of financing their destruction. They can plunge into chaos on their own dime.
As for my own, I will be a call for my government to return to doing those things which are right for a legitimate government to do – to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity. Not to regulate the price of milk, meddle with the mortgage market, bail out failing companies, or tell me how to raise my children.
HERE I STAND. I AM JOHN GALT.
And I have a pulpit. I may not be able to stop the motor of the world, but I will stomp on the brake, and I will fight for control of the steering wheel before the motor seizes up on its own – and believe me, that motor is on its way to seizing up.
I will give Caesar his due, but I will not bow to him.
I am John Galt. Come and join me, or come and get me. Here I stand.
Why is it always fiction with these guys?
September 28, 2008 at 4:50 am
John Galt? You are John Galt? Hahahahaha!!!!!
I am Quirinus. I don’t give Caesar his due; in fact, Caesar worships me.
– bi, International Journal of Inactivism
September 28, 2008 at 6:18 am
I am John Galt. I am Sarah Palin. I am John Doe. How many people am they?
September 28, 2008 at 6:26 am
Image #3 is one for the time capsule, by the way. I’m still laughing.
September 28, 2008 at 7:32 am
Had I gone my entire life without seeing any of those pictures I would have a 76% greater chance of dying in peace.
September 28, 2008 at 8:00 am
Dear The Editors -
Each week, I rush to the mailbox to get my latest issue of “The Poor Man Institute” magazine. I enjoy reading the inciteful articles and commentary on politics, sports, cooking, Beanie Babies, and life in general.
This week, my son SFAW Jr. got to the mailbox before I got home from a hard day’s work at the Acme Products, Inc. factory. (Manufacturer of all manner of cutting-edge products, all endorsed by legendary movie actor Herr Professor Doktor Wile E. Coyote). Unfortunately, I had forgotten that this week was when you normally run your “Bathing Suit” issue. So you can imagine my surprise and disgust when, before I could stop him, little “S Jr” opened your mag to the picture of the fat, half-naked Klingon (reproduced above). [The picture, that is. G-d forbid if the creature shown in the picture ever reproduced!]
Because I can no longer risk S Jr. seeing such obscenity, I must therefore cancel my subscription.
May the Lord have mercy on your soul (if you have one, that is).
Sincerely,
SFAW
Seriously: you need to post a warning at the top of the post when you put in photos like that.
Or at least put out a new Keyboard Kommandos.
September 28, 2008 at 8:01 am
It’s not an official wingnut manifesto unlesss it uses the word “athwart”.
September 28, 2008 at 8:06 am
That last picture was definitely above and beyond. In fact I think it violates the Geneva Conventions and the Constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
September 28, 2008 at 8:18 am
Okay, fine, you’re John Galt.
But I’m Spartacus.
September 28, 2008 at 8:40 am
But, I thought we were all Spartans now? (BTW when does the big gay orgy at the gymnasium start?)
September 28, 2008 at 8:50 am
Omigod, f*** you forever for that last photo. My god.
——————
But all you tough guy libertarians?
Get the fuck out of my country. Take your fucking bullshit whining fetish about your god-damn taxes, shove it back up your ass, and get the hell out of our country. Get your stupid, reprobate, cowardly, boring asses out of this god-damn country and fuck off to some 3rd World hell-hole where you can watch all the shit crumble around you, and you can pray to your heart’s content from your favela, but you can watch the low-taxed super-elites helicopter over your heads. You’re a bunch of worthless cowards, not fit to lick clean the soles of the shoes of the people who saved this country from utter collapse in the New Deal and who dragged that awfullest region of the country, the American South, out of its 3rd World, primary-product exporting, hookworm suffering, worker malnutrition, mud-road, complete Jim Crow, starving sharecropper hell. I hate all you cowardly, punk-ass government-haters and tax-whiners with a passion, you’re miserable, useless excuses for a citizen, and you ought be banished to the ungovernable zones of the Democratic Republic of Congo until you’re ready to live in a developed society. You get the society & economy you pay for, and if it were up to you shitbags, you’d be standing by every decaying hovel boring us all with your libertarian fantasies. Fuck off and die, the whole lot of you miserable cowardly shits.
September 28, 2008 at 10:00 am
Huzzah to those brave souls who will “come as they are” in the good fight against techno industrial fascism!
September 28, 2008 at 10:16 am
Holy fucking shit, the third picture is classic. Sure, my breakfast almost came right back up but that was after four and half minutes of laughter.
Nice one The Editors.
September 28, 2008 at 10:20 am
“OK! People! First of all I’d like to welcome you all here, to New Randland — formerly known as some canyon in Arizona. It took longer than the Great One thought, but we finally realized her dream: everyone who has personal responsibility and enough money and a big car has escaped from the nanny state to here, our new society, where history begins and ends. Now I know you don’t like anyone telling you what to do (applause, boos) or being part of a group (applause, boos), but I’d like to suggest that our first priority should be getting the magic energy machine up and running, and hooking it up to the border defenses to keep out the starving desperate commie hordes. Then–”
“Excuse me Mr. Arnold, I mean Mr. Galt–”
“What is it, boy? Are you volunteering? Never do that.”
“No, sir. It’s just… I thought you knew. We don’t have a magic energy machine. That was just a made-up thing in The Book. We couldn’t figure out how it’s supposed to work.”
“What do you mean, ‘how it’s supposed to work’? Haven’t you heard of static electricity? Never mind, I guess I have to do everything myself around here… although that’s just as it should be. Well, what about the border defenses?”
“Well sir, we’ve been looking out for commie raiders but it’s been pretty quiet. They may not be that desperate yet. In fact they don’t really seem to be missing us at all.”
“Ha ha, yes it seems that way, it’s sad how they don’t realize they’re dying and going mad in their deluded hellhole. Well now back to business, people. I’d like to open the floor to bids on the latest crop of giant golden radium bananafruit. Tastes like sand, makes you live forever, wouldn’t have been allowed by the FDA…”
September 28, 2008 at 11:41 am
One melamine frappe coming up, sir.
September 28, 2008 at 12:19 pm
In fact I think it violates the Geneva Conventions and the Constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
How long have you been laboring under the delusion that such a “ban” exists? How quaint and Schiavoesque.
September 28, 2008 at 5:02 pm
@ #9, apparently it starts as soon as this election is over, and it’s going to be at the White House… Here is a taste:
I thank you, my friends…
September 28, 2008 at 5:07 pm
I used to see the nearly nude hirsute man at the plasma center. He liked to wear thongs with no socks but they made him put socks on. I saw him at the front door once, sitting on the planter ledge, putting on socks.
September 28, 2008 at 5:40 pm
I need to see that Giant Seal with the fish again, the picture of Logan Mankins will suffice for now.
September 28, 2008 at 8:08 pm
Is that a “wingnut” guard on Galtolf’s broadsword (pic #1), my friends?
September 28, 2008 at 8:11 pm
Dear Mr. El Cid: Bravo! And ditto. Fekken Libertarians.
September 28, 2008 at 9:42 pm
Meekly:
El Cid, if you haven’t studied the history of the Civil War or the New Deal, it might not be wise to use them as examples of government at its finest. I say that not because I’m a close-minded jerk who refuses to give an inch to government (the Clean Air Act or the space program’s facilitation of satellite technology would have probably been better examples?), but rather because the policies characterizing those periods weren’t particularly good, and I think that if you knew what they were, you would likely agree.
I’d also point out that if he’s John Galt, shouldn’t he be heading for the trees right about now? I think we can all agree not to go looking for him, even if he doesn’t have a hologram projector to hide his location, right?
September 29, 2008 at 4:21 am
Surprised. I thought for sure an elf who is John Galt had to be Megan McArdle.
September 29, 2008 at 6:00 am
Danny Shahar: I do know what the New Deal policies were, and they were examples of policies at their finest, because the standard isn’t that they were paradisically correct, but far better than actually existing alternatives.
Contrasting the overall conservative moves of the New Deal with what I might prefer proves no political lessons, just policy goals; the fact is that the actually competing policies from the farther right would have destroyed the country.
Everything is contextual. Given a choice between free-wheeling Reaganite nation-destroyers and a New Deal recovery program, I’m a New Deal zealot. Given the choice between what I might sensibly recommend and the cautious, ticking time-bomb approach of conservative capitalism-savers like New Dealers? Then I’d throw the bums out.
September 29, 2008 at 7:28 am
…El Cid, I’m not sure about that. Perhaps the New Deal policies helped the people who were directly given money by the government, who would have ostensibly have been able to benefit from being the first recipients of money in an inflationary environment (though the more than doubling of the national debt during the 30′s from 16 to over 40 billion dollars is troubling). But even if you like all the spending, large-scale price-fixing and extensive policy aimed at holding up commodity and food prices don’t strike me as particularly great ideas if you’re facing economic hardship. Even if you accept the underconsumption thesis (which I don’t, but whatever), it’s unclear how those policies would be helpful. Putting up barriers to entry in almost every industry, stifling competition, hamstringing international trade, and artificially increasing the cost of living for ordinary citizens seems like an odd way to respond to an economic crisis. But perhaps you know something I don’t?
September 29, 2008 at 10:03 am
I think the best touch is the pair tube socks on the floor by the computer.
September 29, 2008 at 12:01 pm
Just WOW.
September 29, 2008 at 6:21 pm
El Cid: my hero! I’m planning to memorize your screed there — take it to heart.
September 29, 2008 at 7:58 pm
Hob-
… and? We’re all waiting to hear what happens next.
September 29, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Danny Shahar:
But the fact is, the US did get out of the Depression, and the “cost of living for ordinary citizens” was not “artificially increased” in the end.
Though I’m sure you have a totally falsifiable, non-ad-hoc explanation of that.
– bi, International Journal of Inactivism
September 29, 2008 at 10:34 pm
Well hold on, I don’t think I’ve said anything about the free market being infallible, or government being so inept that it can’t accomplish anything no matter what. All I said was that the Great Depression and Civil War were times where government action very likely made things worse, not better, by almost any plausible standard.
I don’t think it’s a particularly libertarian position to note that the free market does function, though perhaps not always the way we might hope, and when drastic changes hit, the price system functions as a mechanism for the equilibration of competing desires over time. So of course the Great Depression eventually ended. It’s not like people were going to go back to living in caves rather than try to cooperate with each other for mutual gain.
And I concede that there are a number of reasons why government distortion of the price system or redistribution of resources might have the capacity to produce desirable outcomes which would make it preferable for achieving certain ends. Being a libertarian doesn’t commit me to denying basic economic fact. But as people like Hayek, Buchanan, Tullock, and Coase (all Nobel laureates) have pointed out, there are systemic reasons why we might expect government action to fail to produce the results that would justify the action in question. I think that the Civil War and Great Depression potentially provide examples of this sort of thing.
All I was trying to convey is that whatever the market’s faults, it’s not fair to compare it to an omniscient and benevolent government. Nor is it fair to attribute everything bad that comes out of market interactions in a heavily regulated interventionist atmosphere to the failure of the market system. Government-led credit expansion, regulation of the housing and debt-rating markets, and moral hazard all likely contributed to our present situation, and perhaps would not characterize a free market system (or at least not in the same way). But game theory can provide us with a number of completely rational behavioral explanations for a lot of what we’ve seen in the lending markets, and the NINJA loan is likely an artifact of economic scholarship regarding discriminatory lending, and can’t be blamed on the government. So the free market is partly to blame, and the government is likely partly to blame as well.
And just like in the Great Depression, it’s possible that government intervention here will produce desirable consequences overall, or at least smooth out some of the more offensive bumps in the economy’s adjustment. On the other hand, it’s possible that intervention will slow our recovery and make us generally worse off. The government is just a tool that can be used if we want to, and as with any other tool it has its drawbacks, costs, and imprecisions.
That, I take it, is the basis for libertarian concern regarding recent events. At least, for those libertarians who like nuance and sophistication, rather than “BLARG THE GOVERNMENT IS FORCE!” types of arguments. I’m not defending this pseudo-John Galt fellow; it’s just that this all-out attack on libertarianism seemed to be a response to a response to our current economic conditions, and I don’t think there’s anything about what’s going on that serves as an indictment of my position.
I’d also point out that Popperian falsificationism is sooooooo pre-Kuhn.
September 29, 2008 at 11:44 pm
What does this have to do with ratty, folding chairs?
September 29, 2008 at 11:44 pm
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Surely that’s nuance and sophistication we can trust… my friends.
– bi, International Journal of Inactivism
September 30, 2008 at 7:40 am
“At least, for those libertarians who like nuance and sophistication, [...]”
Lemme see, now, what is it called when you address an argument to a non-existent group or situation…hmmm….
September 30, 2008 at 9:47 am
Danny,
Don’t do that. Don’t get in the way of a righteous screed. It just kills the mood man. You’re killing the mood. But since you’ve gone there I think you’re giving self professed libertarians way way too much credit. At best they are naif enablers of plutocracy. On average they are just sociopaths who use libertarian thinking to justify their sociopathy.
Also, no mention of the Civil War in Cids rant, no? And the point about the New Deal saving the South and representing the best in America is not that the policies were the bestest everest forever. It was that FDR and his party were willing to try things, to break the mold, to take chances, to test a policy and keep it if it worked and discard it if it failed. It was democracy and leadership in the very best sense.
If only the current batch had a 10th of that spirit you could say that America was in good hands. Instead you have ‘the party that ruined America’ (h/t Kunstler) slavishly devoted to a policy, laissez faire, as if it was a revelation from God himself and the incontrovertable path to human salvation; and on the other side ‘the party that forget who it was’ just doesn’t seem comfortable taking on the buizlam free market fanatics and advocating for common projects.
So really, don’t go there, it’s a dead end.
September 30, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Perhaps the all time classic take on Objectivism…
September 30, 2008 at 4:30 pm
bi, since Kuhn’s objections to Popper were nuanced and sophisticated themselves, I feel safe in saying EAT KUHN, and letting Lakatos try to pick up the pieces.
les and Observer, there are a few of us libertarians out there who aren’t raving anti-social lunatics, believe it or not, and it’s sort of grating being labeled a wingnut for holding a position that, if advanced properly, is completely reasonable. It’s like if I condemned democrats for being economically ignorant socialists who think that the government only lets people not have whatever they want because people just don’t believe hard enough. There are crazies on both side of the fence, and when you’re in a minority group, they tend to be the loudest ones; please reserve judgment for the rest of us.
On the Civil War point, you’re absolutely right; I read the post too quickly and thought he was advancing the typical “Libertarians are idiots! Government is great because it saved us in the Great Depression/Civil War/World War II/whatever” line. My apologies to Cid.
Regarding the spirit of the government officials being a desirable thing, I’d refer you to the work of Hazlitt, Mises, and Hayek on the systemic hurdles to successful government action, even in the face of perfect benevolence. I don’t think it’s true that spirit and desire always makes for good politicians. If that were true, Obama would be a good leader; he seems like a truly motivated and caring person. But he simply doesn’t understand economics, and that’s a serious problem, just like it was in the Great Depression.
As for ruining a good slandering, I’d only say that since the slandering was directed at a group of which I consider myself a part, I guess I have less of a problem with ruining the fun than normal. But don’t worry, if you need a source of entertainment, the debate Thursday night should get you right back in the mood.
September 30, 2008 at 4:32 pm
On Objectivism, I think a better take was: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5404826610265339909
September 30, 2008 at 8:36 pm
Here’s the thing, Dannyboy. If you reject the very notion of falsifiability itself, then it simply means your theories have no relation either way to reality, i.e. they’re intellectual masturbation.
You can apply nuance and sophistication to masturbation, but it’s still masturbation.
– bi, International Journal of Inactivism
September 30, 2008 at 10:44 pm
That’s what the Logical Positivists said. Good thing they were right. And if you’re going to use “falsifiability” as the demarcating criterion between legitimate statements and nonsense, you’ve moved away from Popper, and simply replaced the “verifiability” term in Logical Positivism. Good luck with that.
September 30, 2008 at 10:49 pm
Hmm…that “And” at the beginning of the third sentence has no business existing…
December 23, 2008 at 9:34 pm
[...] Keith Arnold, “I am John Galt!“ [...]