Say Anything Blog

Now is this just because I guessed her in this post?

I love reading Ayn Rand’s works.  She accurately describes the Left and their collectivist allies in her essays.

I think it’s a pretty cool feature. I enjoy it.

No, I was just re-reading parts of Buckley’s Getting It Right (a work of historical fiction that features Rand prominently) and was doing some Googling of Rand and ran across it.

Most of these “bite sized wisdom” things are just interesting quotes I run across in my reading.  I’ve always wanted to do something with them here on the blog but couldn’t figure out how to fit them in.  When I first started I put related quotes at the top of every post, but that became too labor intensive.  Then I had rotating quotes at the top of the page, but that had size limitations and the javascript that was loading it started causing problems as traffic here increased.

So the other day the “bite sized wisdom” idea came to me.  So far, I’m enjoying it.  I especially like looking for the pictures of the people.  I’ve found that I have no idea what some of the people I read and admire look like.

The war against illegal plunder has been fought since the beginning of the world. But how is… legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish this law without delay … If such a law is not abolished immediately it will spread, multiply and develop into a system.

Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

Rob’s recently listened-to songs:

Ehhh… I gotta tell ya Rob, she wouldn’t have been my first choice for babe of the week.

She is pretty tough looking.  She was a heavy smoker though, so I guess that’s what happens.

She looked a little better when she was younger though.

Still, she had a beautiful mind.  That’s the point.

The war against illegal plunder has been fought since the beginning of the world. But how is… legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish this law without delay … If such a law is not abolished immediately it will spread, multiply and develop into a system.

Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

Rob’s recently listened-to songs:

Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

-Thomas Hobbes

The only Ayn Rand I ever read was her first novel, We the Living.

I’ve always agreed with most of Rand’s ideas, but her books are a bit...overwrought.  I almost didn’t make it through the last couple of hundred pages of Atlast Shrugged.  Its one, long speech.

Her points are well taken, but in novel form she’s got a roundabout way of making them.

The war against illegal plunder has been fought since the beginning of the world. But how is… legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish this law without delay … If such a law is not abolished immediately it will spread, multiply and develop into a system.

Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

Rob’s recently listened-to songs: