Ayn Rands SS checks

[daveman]

She practiced what she preached in this context. She didn't think it was a good idea but since she was forced to live under the rules defined by someone else she did.

I didn't want to pay for the new road in front of my house. The time to object was at the planning meeting. Once overruled I still sent the extra tax assessment in and I still drive on it every time I enter or leave my driveway.

i'm sorry, i wasn't aware that not cashing SS checks was illegal.

fail

Money she didn't want to give was taken from her. Some of that money was then returned to her in the form of checks that she was then legally allowed to cash. The premise was the government shouldn't have taken so much in the first place, but there's nothing hypocritical with accepting what was given back to her.

Here are the rules:

1. Money is taken away from people who object to the amount, means, scope and reason.
2. The entity taking it away sometimes gives some back, clearly marked as theirs.
3. The premise is that it was theirs to start with.

It's #3 that's giving them fits.

 

[Toro]

She was a Human Being, like the rest of us.

She WAS odd.

Her inner circle worshiped her, and she returned the admiration with what today would probably be described as abuse. Her social circle was very hierarchical. She very much let it be known who was on the in and who was on the out. Dinners were stratified, with those whom she favoured at the moment sitting close to her and those who she did not sitting away from her. You were considered weird if you didn't smoke. She thought warnings about cancer from smoking were a government plot against corporations. She had affairs out in the open, including one with Nathaniel Branden, 25 years her junior, whom she designated her intellectual heir until one day when he dumped her and she came to the realization as a woman scorned that he would never succeed her, with him being ostracized by her and her followers. It just goes on.

But people of genius are often quirky, and the people around her fawned over her brilliance anyways.

 

[daveman]

Hooray! False Equivalences!

Though back in reality, that's not what I said at all. Gandhi and MLK Jr. advocated their entire lives for non-violence and civil disobedience. That umbrella doesn't involve killing those who stand in the way of gaining civil liberties. If MLK Jr. started to be like Charles Bronson in Death Wish, he would be a hypocrite for advocating non-violence while not practicing what he preaches.

Though I guess such concepts are either too complex for you to understand you wish to purposefully misconstrue my arguments because you have none of your own.

Ummm, actually, you said, "A similar example would be finding out that later in their lives, MLK Jr. and Gandhi started to mow down people who got the way of civil liberties."

So you're saying it's okay to preach non-violence, but kill those who oppose your goal?

The false equivalence is yours. You might want to spend a little more time thinking before you post something dumb. Or you could just post dumb things and then blame other people for it like you have been.

Dave, you have to understand something.

You're a retired enlisted man because you just didn't have what it took to be a Sophomore in college like Mr. Modbert. You see, some people are just better than others. Sorry you didn't make the cut. Please don't try to dissect his brilliant analysis that he came up with after reading someone else's analysis and please don't think you can parse his words to find what he's really trying to say. Sit back, collect your checks that Modbert isn't writing but remember that he has every intention of getting someone else to write those checks you cash so just thank him.

Accept your sorry lot in life and let Modbert go on and be such the awesome-o amazing great thinker that he is. The world needs him and will treat him in the manner to which he deserves.

 

[Toro]

Another little known factoid is that Ayn Rand was an illegal immigrant. Her vist expired and she stayed on

lol

I don't know or remember what she said about immigration but my guess is that she would argue that any boundaries towards the free movement of individuals would be immoral, and thus any laws which restrict the free movement of individuals such as immigration laws are by definition immoral.

Rand was a libertarian, not a conservative. There's a big difference. Conservatives have no problem using Big Government when they feel it is appropriate.

 

[Toro]

Can you post the quote that says she is against Social Security?

You're being facetious, right?

Not in the slightest. You are saying that she said it. I'm wondering if she did.

Dude, you're skating on thin ice here.

SS in its very existence violates her philosophy. She doesn't have to say "I'm against SS," though I'm sure sometime during her life she probably did.

 

[code1211]

I loved Atlas Shrugged. I also really enjoyed her nonfiction books such as Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

I read "Atlas Shrugged" on a bet...Rand's dreary purple prose took an extremely interesting plot premise and strangled it in excessively florid and irrelevant verbosity....Ditto "The Fountainhead".

Give me the short stories and nonfiction any day of the week.

I read Atlas Shrugged in high school during the summer. After my job, I'd race home and read 100 pages. I have never done that with any book before.

I grew up in a Union household in the People's Republic of Minnesota. Reading Atlas Shrugged was a revelation for me. All of the attributes that my parents had taught me were good and should be embraced are what Rand built in to her heroes.

The logic was tight even if the prose were somewhat labored.

It is one of a couple books that redefined my self image and my world view.

 

[Intense]

I read "Atlas Shrugged" on a bet...Rand's dreary purple prose took an extremely interesting plot premise and strangled it in excessively florid and irrelevant verbosity....Ditto "The Fountainhead".

Give me the short stories and nonfiction any day of the week.

I read Atlas Shrugged in high school during the summer. After my job, I'd race home and read 100 pages. I have never done that with any book before.

You have to read 100 pages just to get to any kind of a point to anything.

She could've easily lopped 300-500 pages off of that doorstop in excessive setting descriptions alone.

How much time do you spend around women?

 

[Intense]

I read "Atlas Shrugged" on a bet...Rand's dreary purple prose took an extremely interesting plot premise and strangled it in excessively florid and irrelevant verbosity....Ditto "The Fountainhead".

Give me the short stories and nonfiction any day of the week.

I read Atlas Shrugged in high school during the summer. After my job, I'd race home and read 100 pages. I have never done that with any book before.

I grew up in a Union household in the People's Republic of Minnesota. Reading Atlas Shrugged was a revelation for me. All of the attributes that my parents had taught me were good and should be embraced are what Rand built in to her heroes.

The logic was tight even if the prose were somewhat labored.

It is one of a couple books that redefined my self image and my world view.

I've read most of her stuff. Some twice. She has effected many of our lives in a very positive way. The value of Individual Liberty, Individual Perspective, Individual Conscience, has few better protectors. It is the voice of Individual Conscience that the Collective has always been afraid of, and has tried to beat down, enslave, and silence. Ayn has been a defender of that voice her whole life. That was her life.

 

[code1211]

You're being facetious, right?

Not in the slightest. You are saying that she said it. I'm wondering if she did.

Dude, you're skating on thin ice here.

SS in its very existence violates her philosophy. She doesn't have to say "I'm against SS," though I'm sure sometime during her life she probably did.

I'm playing this game in the spirit that it was proposed. One of the bases of her chachters is that they wish to do what they do of their own free will. There is not, therefore, an automatic condmnation of charity which she is often accused of or of cooperative effort which this thread is implying.

The person of whom I'm asking this compares Social Security with the Public dole. I see a difference in the two. I'm not saying that Rand did not see a differennce or did see a difference.

She is accused of being a hypocrite due to her acceptance of Social Security. To be a hypocrite in this action, one might expect that she had condemned the institution or Social Security recipients at some point. All I ask is that those who proclaim her to be a hypocrite due to this action justify the accusation.

 

[daveman]

For those who haven't read The Fountainhead:

 

[daveman]

You cannot be serious. I'm going to recommend you go look up Objectivism, Ayn Rand, and her belief system. Then, I want you to come back here and tell me with a straight face that she was in favor of Social Security and Medicare.

While you're at it, go to the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights and read the article that is entitled, "Social Security is Immoral"

Here's a link:

The Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights: Social Security is Immoral

So even though the ******* government confiscated 15% of her income she is just supposed to let the ******* government keep it?

Yes, she is, according to the people who think taxes should be raised but refuse to send extra money to the government.

Boy, is THIS post getting ignored.

 

[Oddball]

I read Atlas Shrugged in high school during the summer. After my job, I'd race home and read 100 pages. I have never done that with any book before.

You have to read 100 pages just to get to any kind of a point to anything.

She could've easily lopped 300-500 pages off of that doorstop in excessive setting descriptions alone.

How much time do you spend around women?

I know women who got bored with Rand's excessive scene setting.

It's like...OK, I GET IT!...It was a nice sunny day.

 

[Ravi]

I heard her last meal was government cheese.

 

[uscitizen]

Social Security is a contract in which the payer pays until it's time to recieve. It's like an annuity in that respect except that the reality is that it's a Ponzi Scheme. Being on the "dole" implies that there was no previous consideration.

Since there was a previous consideration, an offer by the government and an acceptance by the taxpayer, all of the components of a contract are fulfilled. If any other contractual arrangement can be called the "dole", then this one can also.

Is owning a home considered to be on the "dole"?

Wrongo, SS is like paying on an insurance policy not an annuity.

Really it's like neither. It's much more like a Ponzi Scheme. The money that I spent into it was used to pay for my parents and the money paid in by our children will pay for us.

This is exactly what Bernie Maddoff was jailed for doing.

Yes it is a Ponzi scheme, but legal becuase the govt does it.
But it is certainly not like an annuity.

 

[Mr.Fitnah]

So she tried to recover funds appropriated from by the government ?

 

[Mr.Fitnah]

Ayn Rand Railed Against Government Benefits, But Grabbed Social Security and Medicare When She Needed Them | | AlterNet


Rand herself received Social Security payments and Medicare benefits under the name of Ann O'Connor (her husband was Frank O'Connor).

Are you calling her out because she was forced to support the system through taxation and did so or because she accepted the benefits from the system that she paid into when it was her turn to recieve them?

It seems like if you're forced to play the game, you should be allowed to win.

No.

A true die hard would have refused the checks.

Or at least gave them to charity.

Well the actual piece was a little thin on the actual facts but was replete with innuendo and slurs .
so Im sure you got out off it what you wanted , But we dont know she didnt.

 

[Ravi]

I wonder why she needed a social worker.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Ayn Rand Railed Against Government Benefits, But Grabbed Social Security and Medicare When She Needed Them | | AlterNet


Rand herself received Social Security payments and Medicare benefits under the name of Ann O'Connor (her husband was Frank O'Connor).

Once again for the slow and amazingly stupid.... One can be against something like SS and still take the checks because WE PAID INTO THE FUND AS WELL. It is our money.

 

[AllieBaba]

She was a Human Being, like the rest of us. Stop kicking the Messenger. An Athist that believed in Unalienable Right, Conscience, and the Establishment of Justice. OMG, she collected SS like Everybody else, hold the Presses!!!!! She's dead and gone.

Wrong. This would be akin to an Anti-Gay Preacher being caught with a male escort or Richard Dawkins getting last rites on his death bed. She wanted to hold others to standards she did not hold herself, that is the definition of a hypocrite.

If your problem with this thread is the fact it's a dead person, tough luck. Dead people on both sides of the aisle are routinely criticized on USMB.

Personally, I could care less about Rand, she was a hack writer and a person who receives far more praise then she deserves for those books. Though you can feel free to write a 70 page monologue of your own telling me why I'm wrong.

Bullshit. If returning a social security check would in any way increase the chances that social security would cease to function, I would say it's hypocritical to take the check.

But it won't, and she paid into it; why wouldn't she take the check?

More silliness from the leftards.

 

[CoolBreeze]

You said it all gunny, not only did we pay into it, we were forced to pay into it. It's our money and the government instead of make sure the money was secure, used it for their own political gains.