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Fearless Philosophy For Free Minds: February 2008

Friday, February 22, 2008

More on Obama’s Doublespeak

Last week I wrote a post about how Barack Obama was trying to have it both ways on the Second Amendment. Ken Blackwell at Townhall.com, however, believes that Obama’s doublespeak about the Second Amendment (among some of Obama’s other statements) reveals a disturbing pattern in his attitudes about individual rights and a host of other issues:

Yet while Mr. Obama says he supports your Second Amendment rights, he also says he supports that gun ban. He went on to say that local governments should be able to enact any gun control laws they consider necessary to end gun violence, and that any such measures are constitutional.
What kind of gun rights does he supposedly support? What kind of “right” do you have, when the government can completely rob you of 100% of the exercise of that right, anytime they decide they have a good reason?

That’s like saying you have the right to worship as you choose, but the government has the power to ban attending church. Or that you have the right to free speech, but that government has the power to stop you from speaking about any subject it wants. Or that you have the right against unreasonable searches and seizures, but that anything the government wants to search at your house is automatically reasonable.

A right that the government can completely take away at any time is no right at all.

So to say that the Second Amendment means you can own guns, but that the city where you live can ban all gun ownership, then you have no Second Amendment rights at all.


I truly hope that someone will have an opportunity to ask Obama if he really believes that local governments can toss aside the Constitution whenever convenient (though I have a hard time believing that Obama would restrict federal agents to the Constitution while giving local law enforcement carte blanche to violate basic civil liberties of citizens). As if doublespeak on the Constitution wasn’t enough, we can expect doublespeak on many other issues which concern such issues as the economy, terrorism, and growing government.

The article continues:

This is what Americans could expect from a President Obama. He’ll wax eloquent about your rights, but then say government can take away whatever part of them—or all of them—that it wants.

It’s the disturbing pattern that’s starting to emerge of Mr. Obama announcing a principle or a goal, then endorsing policies that are the exact opposite of what would promote that principle or goal. It’s political-doublespeak. It’s Orwellian. In fact, it’s Clintonian.

Look for this pattern across the board. This is how he’ll empower private markets, by increasing government control. He’ll preserve our private-market healthcare system, by having government take it over. He’ll lower taxes, by raising them. He’ll cut government, by increasing government spending. He’ll create jobs, by raising taxes and fees on business […]


I’m sure there will be even more Obama doublespeak as the campaign wears on. I wouldn’t be too surprised if he proposed a new cabinet level position such as The Ministry Department of Truth.
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Friday, February 15, 2008

John Galt (Part IX - XII)

Part IX - The Men of the Mind


Part X - The Virtue of Selfishness


Part XI - The Destroyers


Part XII - Zero Worship


This John Galt series is the creation of Xcowboy2. He has indicated that he plans on making some additional episodes over the President's Day holiday weekend. Anyone who is interested in seeing any further episodes should go there.
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Thursday, February 07, 2008

John Galt (Part V - VIII)

Part V - The Morality of Reason


Part VI - The Standard of Morality


Part VII - Epistemology


Part VIII - Evasion


More to come…
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Friday, February 01, 2008

John Galt’s Words More Relevant than Ever

America seems to be faced yet again with the choice of the least of four evils in choosing the next president. All four of the frontrunners, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John McCain, and Mitt Romney believe in varying degrees of statism and do not recognize the rights of the smallest minority – the individual. Each one believes that it is our duty to sacrifice for the good of others at the expense of ourselves. Soon the choices will be narrowed down to two choices and we will once again have to choose the lesser of two evils. Which freedoms are we willing to sacrifice and which are we willing to preserve? Or do we refuse to choose between the two impossibly bad choices and “shrug.”

The videos below are dramatizations John Galt’s speech in Ayn Rand’s Atalas Shrugged. Galt is the protagonist character who embodies Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. As we wait for the next president to call on us all to sacrifice our life, liberty, and property, for the good of others, the words of this fictional character seem more relevant today than when they were published some 50 years ago.
Part I


Part II


Part III and IV
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