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I’ve seen this before, but never at such a high-profile level. Journalists, including Bari Weiss, were squeezed out at the New York Times and targeted by campaigns coordinated by their colleagues with outside radical leftist outlets like Huffington Post, Vox, and The New Republic, but this time it went bigger than ever before.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos decided that his pet paper, The Washington Post, needed a change of management and brought in vets from the UK’s Telegraph. The Post’s wokes and some around the media decided that wouldn’t fly and began running hit pieces on the two men. The specific allegations matter less than the fact that the only real issue here was political fidelity. The sense was that Will Lewis and Rob Winnett while not actual conservatives were not proper leftists and might have a different agenda than wokeness.
So hit piece followed hit piece. And after paying $250 million, Bezos finds he doesn’t really own his paper. It’s the property of a leftist media cartel that gets to veto staffing decisions. Will Bezos wake up? I doubt it. While he never struck me as all that ideological, he also strikes me as one of those bland billionaires who move with the culture and never really question whatever woke insanity comes down the pipeline.
And there are lots of other businessmen and companies in the same position.
“…bland billionaires who move with the culture and never really question….”
What a sticky wicket! In what culture do they really move? Of course they have the inescapable problems of all mortals, but even those can be borne with greater comfort. They feel no impulse to improve the lives of their communities to live with hope and dignity. Their culture is curated to reinforce only selfish vanity.
When our nation had a Christian heart and culture, the wealthy felt a kind of Christian noblesse oblige to build beautiful public buildings, hospitals, schools, orphanages and the like. Now we all live in Frank Capra’s Pottersville, and technology has made it more insidious and inescapable. The return to something like a modern Bedford Falls is something for which we hoi polloi yearn.
But the Bedford Falls people and their aspirations are hated and despised, even while their labors increasingly benefit others more than themselves.
“The roots of America’s welfare state lie in the Populist-Progressive Era of the late 19th century and early 20th century, especially with the Protestant social gospel movement, which held that Christian ethics and “social justice” should drive public policy, including wealth redistribution, trust-busting, graduated tax rates to punish the rich, cradle-to-grave handouts, and missionary-style imperialistic ventures abroad to spread the faith and make the world “safe for democracy.” The concept of social justice, which jettisoned the idea that we actually earn and deserve what we get in life, was first adopted by the Jesuit Luigi Taparelli in the 1840s, as drawn from the work of St. Thomas Aquinas.” – Richard M. Salsman, “Holy Scripture and the Welfare State.
“America’s inner contradiction was the altruist-collectivist ethics. Altruism is incompatible with freedom, with capitalism and with individual rights. One cannot combine the pursuit of happiness with the moral status of a sacrificial animal….
The moral justification of capitalism does not lie in the altruist claim that it represents the best way to achieve “the common good.” It is true that capitalism does—if that catch-phrase has any meaning—but this is merely a secondary consequence. The moral justification of capitalism lies in the fact that it is the only system consonant with man’s rational nature, that it protects man’s survival qua man, and that its ruling principle is: justice.” – Ayn Rand
THX, I think you are a collectivist more than an individualist.
Whenever you see a word that triggers your collective Randian identity (like “Christian” or “selfishness” or a host of others) you quote Randian dogmas often bearing no relationship to the comment. Such is the case here. Not a single word or thought is your own. I am confounded how Rand’s quote relates to my comment?
When you are triggered, subject those feelings to rational evaluation. Reply with your own thoughts and words. That would make you an individual rather than a Randian comrade spouting slogans cooked up by the collective.
What would YOU do if you were Mr. Potter? Would you rather live in Bedford Falls where everyone sings hymns and rejoices at Christmas? Where the community knows and loves one another and helps each other? Or Pottersville? Pottersville would dispense with Christian culture. And if Potter were Ayn Rand, telling you what to think and do, perhaps you would be a happy slave in that collective? So long as she continued to flatter you that your total agreement with and obedience to her makes you a rational individual, perhaps allowing you a night or two in the Big House, would you be happy?
I actually cannot even imagine you happy, THX.
Perhaps you would be interested in this friendly review of “It’s A Wonderful Life” by someone on the editorial staff of the “Atlas Society”, “The Atlas Society promotes open Objectivism: the philosophy of reason, achievement, individualism, and freedom.”
I happen to agree with it, other Objectivists disagree with it. Ayn Rand never commented on this particular movie.
https://www.atlassociety.org/post/film-review-it-was-a-wonderful-life
For Objectivism morality is contextual. Objectivism can only offer you general moral principles to be aware of, but you have to use your own mind to apply those principles to the hierarchy of your rational values.
No one can judge for you or choose for you, but you, what is the hierarchy of your rational values. Objectivism can only show you what is a rational value and what is not, but it cannot decide for you the hierarchy of your rational values given your specific circumstances.
I think you might really enjoy this video, Kynarion.
“Ayn Rand Fan Club Ep 20: Objectivist strife over It’s a Wonderful Life”
I’m not sure of your point but i like your prose – perhaps you can wax on – you’re off to a good start! Keep this intro….
In order to fight unwaveringly and consistently for freedom, liberty, your life, and your private property, you have to have an explicit philosophical understanding and conviction of why and what you’re fighting for. You have to be absolutely convinced that your fight for Laissez-Faire Capitalism is right, moral, and a life-or-death battle. Nothing less will do.
“The men who are not interested in philosophy need it most urgently: they are most helplessly in its power.
The men who are not interested in philosophy absorb its principles from the cultural atmosphere around them—from schools, colleges, books, magazines, newspapers, movies, television, etc. Who sets the tone of a culture? A small handful of men: the philosophers. Others follow their lead, either by conviction or by default….
As a group, businessmen have been withdrawing for decades from the ideological battlefield, disarmed by the deadly combination of altruism and Pragmatism. Their public policy has consisted in appeasing, compromising and apologizing: appeasing their crudest, loudest antagonists; compromising with any attack, any lie, any insult; apologizing for their own existence. Abandoning the field of ideas to their enemies, they have been relying on lobbying, i.e., on private manipulations, on pull, on seeking momentary favors from government officials. Today, the last group one can expect to fight for capitalism is the capitalists.” – Ayn Rand
to compliment your statement, there are not enough humans that are willing to confess openly YHVH/YESHUA or GOD and JESUS CHRIST and live that platform against the followers of lozrfr-zatan and mere Laissez-Faire philosophy.
President Trump and legitimately governor elected Kari Lake are the closest I’ve seen – Mike Pence uses the Bible as a bully pulpit but he turned out to be a Judas-Brutus! Not just to Trump but to the entire process and citizens of USA and we are suffering Mike Pence’s 30 pieces of silver sell out!
Granted, about 1/3 the world’s population has called on God and Jesus – and this is also Bible prophesy.
I see your Ann Ryan and raise you GOD”S TRUTH and the Power within and without. I know because I came about this through my experience and education through the Tough Cookies School of Hard Knocks of which I am still a student – but not so hard learning as in my youth – Thank God!! ;P)
As D.C. radio station WMAL’s great show host Chris Plants says, “The Washington Post – it looks like a newspaper but it’s not.”
We already know that most all of our News is Leftists Propaganda and the New York Pravda(Times)leads the way followed by the Washington Compost
I thought Warren Buffet owned the Washington Post? Or did Buffet make another good investment decision to sell it to the nouveau riche Jeff Bezos who I thought was a flagrant liberal? If he is a shrewd businessman, he can show up for demonc-Rat events but vote for Trump!
Buffet saw the demise of print media and sold it fast.
I thank Bezos for Amazon music that I can stream without interruption like SIrrus/XM when I am working out or some form of physical labor like brushing my teeth and showering. (Tee hee – I do gardening and other low level maintenance, but by allowing myself to be mentored by entrepreneurs like President Trump and others personal to me, I can now in my 70’s pay young men or young women to do the heavy labor. But I did done that and I earned my comfortable lifestyle which is why we need President Trump back in the White House so current and future generations will have the chance of opportunity, After all, taking action is not luck!)
The Huffington Pox? I didn’t think it was still around. Isn’t there a former BBC head apparatchik at the New York Slimes? You can bet the Bi Dung regime will be working with the next UK Liebour gov. to interfere in the US election again. I wonder If wishy washy globalist Sunak chose the date for our UK election to give the uniparty time to act, usually our elections are in the autumn or spring, not midsummer.