Yahoo! News Story - Dr. Laura, Sarah Palin, and the fight over free speech - Yahoo! News

Dear Marcy;

aside from Dr. Laura and Sarah Palin NOT getting the First Amendment and Free
Speech from what I also gather Dr. Laura's contract was also just about up as
well and part of her leaving is her non-renewal of the contract. As far as
advertisers go Savage and his radio broadcasts don't seem to suffer from lack of
advertisers. And he isn't exactly the darling of the left-wingers.

On an other note some Republicans have been re-discovering Ayn Rand's Atlas
Shrugged and have co-opted it to show how Republicans
are so Ayn Rand and so Atlas Shrugged to the point of trying to make Sarah Palin
a living embodiment of Dagny Taggart.

Hank Rearden would not have given Sarah Palin aka Dagny Taggart a bracelet of
Rearden metal in a thousand years even with a gun held to his
head.

Until the day Sarah Palin on a nationwide broadcast says she will go to
Washington to cut back government spending and cut government control over our
lives she just another politician wanting to get control over our lives and our
money from Washington.

If I can find the article again I'll post it.

Ron Getty

Dear Ron,

Oh, for sure I would bet there were other issues besides that one incident with that one caller with a non-PC word repeated 11 times with accusations of free speech infringement with big media telling her what for.

Sarah as Dagny? Why not if Sarah is crafty enough to paint herself in Dagny's image. It is of little consequence who first comes up with an idea (objectivism, Windows, Model T); it's who succeeds in propagating the idea that is ultimately of consequence (Republicans, Bill Gates, General Motors).

Marcy

Dear Marcy;

Sarah Palin as Dagny??? That's a sacrilege!!! Sarah Palin doesn't know her booty
from a caboose!!! LOL Grizzly Bear Moms - in a pigs eye!!!

Ron Getty

Lipstick! And the pig will look just like Dagny! : - )

Hi Everyone;
  I would like to point out that this dovetails into a post of mine from a couple of weeks ago. How many fake-libertarians are out there nodding their heads in agreement: 'Oh yeah, that Palin--she's the new Dagny Taggert'?
  Does anybody still doubt that the libertarian name has been so hopelessly hijacked by the whacko right-wing that it's really ceased to have any meaning? It shouldn't be surprising that people who see no difference between Wayne Root and Harry Browne can't see the difference between Sarah Palin and Dagny Taggart.

Again, Lipstick!! Those who apply it successfully win!! In the free market, if Palin can convince folks she is Dagny personified, she wins!

Marcy

Dear Marcy and Eric;

I finally found the original article where the RIGHT WING was trying through
some stretch to make Sarah Palin - painted with lipstick - to be a modern day
modern age Dagny Taggart.

With all due respect Marcy no amount of lipstick is going to make Sarah Palin be
a latter day Dagny Taggart. No amount of marketing trying to get people to
believe Sarah is a Dagny will work.

Until as such time as lip-sticked Sarah Palin says she is going to Washington to
cut back government and cut back government spending and cut back taxes and cut
back the control government has over our lives she is no better than any other
politician who wants to be in power in Washington. All the lipstick in the world
won't work no miracles on Sarah being just another wanna be insider Washington.

Eric it's not quasi-Libertarians LINO's trying to make Sarah Palin a Libertarian
it's the right wingers who need someone other than the faux- pseudo " Maverick
McCain" and any others of his ilk.

This is the url for the 10 ways right-wingers are trying to attach thermselves
to Atlas Shrugged and Dagny Taggart and it is disgusting.

http://snipurl.com/10rfz8 [ alternet ]

BTW: Eric for the record Libertarians who equate Wayne Allen Root with Harry
Browne need to be expelled from the Libertarian Party and their voter
registration cards torn up. Then they should be pointed in the direction of the
Republican Party where they can join Wayne Allen Root and Bob Barr in
celebrating the come back of Reaganism. The national budget when Reagan started
was $650 Billion when he left it was $1.1 trillion. You just gotta love "get the
government off the peoples back" by dumping an extra $360 billion on their
backs.

Ron Getty

Dear Ron,

Thank you for finding the article, which nicely lists Republican effort to cash in on Ron Paul and the Tea Party nascent popularity, as well as capture the youth market that has read Rand in high school. In my view, Libertarians should be doing the same.

The point I have been trying to make, obviously not successfully, is that it is totally irrelevant whether we Libertarians can clearly see that Palin is not Dagny. Republicans apparently feel it is worth the attempt to associate the two. Whether they succeed or not depends on how successful their marketing is.

Maybe we Libertarians would obtain more adherents by doing our own associations via good marketing, than by pointing negative fingers and coming off as sour graperish?

Yes, marketing, marketing, marketing, marketing, marketing, marketing -- repeating the forbidden a la Dr. Laura!!

Marcy

Ron,
Thank you for posting that link. Admittedly, I have a few philosophical problems with Objectivism, but it is nothing like what the Whacko Right is distorting it into. Just as they perverted Christianity into a political religion, they are perverting Rand into a fascist in their own image.
I have spoken with these fake libertarians and, just like they do with the Bible, they pull passages from Rand's writings out of context and project on them whatever suits their ideology. That's one reason why I consider the Far Right more dangerous than the Far Left. The Left are open revolutionists and never deny what their goals are. The Right wraps its revolutionary doctrines under the cloak of religion, law, and philosophy and pitches their message to ignoramuses who know nothing of any of these things.
I'm not quite as optimistic about the public seeing through the charade. Frankly, the average American is a dolt who never reads anything, let alone the Constitution, Atlas Shrugged, or the Bible. After the Citizens United decision, these fanatics have unlimited mass media power to smother any opposition. (For the record, Citizens United is headed by Bush Mafiosos Floyd Brown and David Bossie. The Supreme Court decision was handed down by Bush apparatchiks Anton 'the Fish' Scalia, Uncle Clark Thomas, Foamy Jack Roberts and Smilin' Sammy Alito---all alumni of the Landmark Legal Foundation, which has a criminal association with Citizens United).

Marcy,
  Speaking of doing the forbidden: I must confess, at the risk of political excommunication, that (choke) listened to Randi Rhodes yesterday...something on the level of listening to the BBC in Germany during WW2 or Radio Free America in the USSR...
  Anyway, even SHE was ridiculing the comparison between Dagny Taggart and Sarah Palin. But considering she has 3 radio hours to say it against the 72 radio and 48 television hours Palin's supporters have in this market, I don't know if it made much impact.

Hi Eric,

Funny! Your post reminded me of someone I know who used to trek to the library each week to read "The Peking Review," Radio Free America in the USSR in reverse. His point was that whatever "The Peking Review" was reporting social-program-wise, would prepare him for what we in the US would see next. Needless to say, in spite if all his intellectual awareness of the obvious, the social programs kept raining on our heads in buckets, with no one to stop them. When we libertarians find a way to energize ourselves to hold our Fireside Chats (in reverse) for more than 3 radio hours vs. 72/48, then Palin will need a L-O-T of lipstick to start looking like Dagny.

Marcy

Hi Marcy;
  Your friend was quite prescient! We're becoming more and more like China all the time. When people like Palin come back into power in 2012; we'll look a lot more like them.