Lest the hen stop baking for the world

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/allison-kilkenny/33959/lest-the-hen-stop-baking-for-the-world

Jonathan Chait wrote a piece about Ayn Rand and the American Right that reenforces a lot of what we already know (the Right sees the world as being divided into ‘producers’ and ‘leaches,’) but also offers some interesting anecdotes.

Pat Toomey, the former president of the Club for Growth and a Republican candidate for the Senate in Pennsylvania, has recently expressed an allegorical version of this idea, in the form of an altered version of the tale of the Little Red Hen. In Toomey’s rendering, the hen tries to persuade the other animals to help her plant some wheat seeds, and then reap the wheat, and then bake it into bread. The animals refuse each time. But when the bread is done, they demand a share. The government seizes the bread from the hen and distributes it to the “not productive” fellow animals. After that, the hen stops baking bread.

Got it? Stop asking me to pay for the roads I drive on, or the Sourdough gets it. Also, too, Socialism.

Chait stresses an important lesson for liberals. The elite Right aren’t interested in negotiating the area of acceptable pittance offered up by taxpayers as payment for living in a collectivist society. They truly, truly believe they should not be forced to pay taxes even though the state (i.e. taxpayers) largely subsidizes their production, and the actual manual labor of production is also done by taxpayers. Chait calls their certainty a “moral absolute.” Taking from the rich is always, always wrong, and that is not up for negotiation.

More at the link --

[handmade34]

1. good article

moral absolutes (fundamentalism) are destructive to society... true costs and/or benefis are seldom taken into account

[JoePhilly]

2. So the dog, who protects the hen, but who received no bread, let's the wolf eat the hen. The End.

[snappyturtle]

3. Love it!

:rofl:

Laughing aside, the article is a great read. It gave me some, I want to say, ammunition, even though that is not politically popular today. It gives me,let's say, a pov for right wingers to think about. There!

[BanzaiBonnie]

4. Nice one, JoePhilly

I was going to post that these people have a pretty damn narrow worldview. They've bought into all that "I did it myself" crap. What a crock.

Their minds are weakened by propaganda to the point of delusion.

[JoePhilly]

5. Aspects of libertarian models do at some times "sound reasonable" ...

until you attempt to apply them directly. And I think they fail for the exact reason you mention ... their argument always narrows the scope to such a narow degree, that critical variables are not considered.

Almost all arguments that they make would benefit by starting with the the phrase "All else being equal" ... because that's what they mean. If you disregard a great many things, their point makes sense. But as soon as you drop their argument into an actual world in which "all else" is NOT equal, they fail, and they fail big time.