My Tea Party Videos

If anyone is going to the July 4 Tea Parties, be sure to read the material or view the videos at http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=media_topic_tea_party to get a sense of what is really important, the deeper principles we need to convey in order to make a significant impact.

I took my old camcorder to New York City’s Tax Day Tea Party back on April 15 to do some interviews and generally videotape the event. I intended to do this as a volunteer reporter for www.PJTV.com (Pajamas TV).

Unfortunately, I discovered that my old camcorder recorded in a format that YouTube and other sites would not accept. Eventually, I downloaded format-conversion software, but the urgency (newsworthiness) seemed to pass, and I became busy with other activities. More problematic was that my computer memory modules were not working properly, causing the computer to keep freezing up. Then the video was too long for YouTube so I had to figure out how to break it into smaller chunks.

So, to summarize, the internet debut of my videos were delayed due to technical difficulties.

Now, I have replaced the memory modules in my computer. Also, I have a new camcorder for future ease of uploading.

The good news is, I finally uploaded the Tax Day Tea Party video in time for the renewed interest created by the Independence Day Tea Parties! And the message of the Tax Day Tea Party is even more relevant now. The administration’s reckless spending and regulations have only compounded since April. Taxation and hyperinflation fears are even more well-founded.

And since the Tax Day Tea Parties, some on the left have claimed that the Tea Party Protesters are racists, or are a bunch of rich white guys, or are organized and paid to show up by large corporations.

These allegations have made my videos perhaps more valuable. I interview an Asian woman, a lesbian mother, and a young ordinary middle class couple. I videotaped an anti-tax sign proudly displayed by an African American woman, and a sign protesting the banks’ mishandling of money that clearly wasn’t being held by a wealthy Wall Street banker. It’s plain to see that there are people of all ages and all walks of life in the crowd.

Some of the signs refer to Ayn Rand and “Atlas Shrugged” and “John Galt.” I brought my own copy of Atlas Shrugged to hold up in lieu of a sign (My hands were full enough with the camcorder). Several people commented as they walked by, “Good book!”

The spirit was one of benevolence, and a deep desire to stop the destruction of America’s future, stop the violations of the Constitution (especially the Tenth Amendment), and of our rights. More than one member of the crowd told me they had recently been laid off, as I had just been laid off myself, after working for 23 years at the same firm.

I did see a few “VIPs” in the crowd although they are not in my video. I said hello to radio host and Fox News contributor Monica Crowley, and I met Kevin Williamson, an editor and writer at National Review. My video does include a few moments of a speech by KT McFarland, a New York politician.

Here are my videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVLnBm1odvQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Av4lhjCrb7w

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPdseI4p_ok

Are You Angry Yet?

To his credit, Rush Limbaugh yesterday said, “Tax-paying people who make it all work will not put up long rewarding failure, being forced to reward failure. Beware this huge backlash. It’ll turn. It’ll turn slowly, and like the tide coming in, it is unstoppable. It has already started, in fact. The pulse of the backlash has begun. The pulse of revolution is out there, and at some point the anger that you know is there will surface and you will see it and you will hear it. People will overcome their fear of opposition to this because at the end of the day they will not sit there and let everything they’ve worked for be destroyed, particularly on the basis that they deserve to be destroyed because it’s been unfair in the first place that they succeeded.”

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_022009/content/01125109.guest.html

I woke up planning to write a post about this very subject. Leftists, the hippie protesters and their intellectual leaders, tend to be angry. They are always protesting something. There is always someone who has less and someone else who has more, and they think this cannot stand.

Rush Limbaugh said, “We are all competitive, and it is in our genes to want to improve our lives for our families. It is called working in our own self-interests.”

Success is the result of this work. It is not unfair for some to succeed because of work and thought. The phony anger of the leftists against those who succeed, those who are productive, is nothing. It looks phony, it sounds phony. It will pale in comparison to the real anger of the productive against those who would steal the fruits of their labor.

Here is an early sign of anger, but couched in sarcastic humor, to make it bearable:

http://michellemalkin.com/2009/02/18/more-scenes-from-mesa-i-need-a-beachfront-condo-mr-president/

Look at this video about your nest egg:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bSGgBtqyKY

Whether through inflation due to deficit spending, or through direct taxation, or through endless regulations strangling productivity, or through the vanishing value of stocks and your 401(K), your nest egg will be taken from you.

Speaking of the deficit, here are the facts:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first100days/2009/02/20/americas-deficit-spending-spree-raises-alarms/

And you probably have seen this already:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=1039849853

I say, are you angry yet? Maybe you’re too angry. You’re jumping up and down. But you don’t know what to do about it. Let’s calm down. Have a seat. Let’s look at this more deliberately, from a rational, thoughtful stance.

Read this by Walter Williams:

http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/wew/articles/09/EconomicMiracle.htm

Does this considered analysis somehow make you even more angry?

Well, then fight. Fight with all your intellectual might against Washington’s power-mad parasites of the productive.

Why not organize a march on Washington? The leftists do this all the time. It costs money to publicize and organize it. I don’t know if it does any good besides getting TV coverage, but it’s a thought. The theme? “I am not your serf.” “I did not vote for a fascist/socialist state.” “I work for my own sake.” “My property is not yours to steal and redistribute.”

Why not write a letter to the editor?

Why not write a blog or a comment to someone else’s blog?

How about filing a lawsuit against the U.S. Congress for passing a bill that violates Constitutional rights?

Call up and write to people in Congress and in the White House with your opposition.

Send money to organizations that really, truly defend your rights and your freedoms, in an uncompromising way.

How about the Institute for Justice? www.ij.org

David Horowitz Freedom Center? www.horowitzfreedomcenter.org

The Ayn Rand Institute and the Ayn Rand Center? www.aynrand.org

Send money in support of, and volunteer for, real pro-Capitalism, anti-statism political candidates, those who are for limited government and the rights of the individual. Are there any candidates like that? They may not be perfect but there are some candidates who are going to fight the current encroachments on our liberty. Support them.

And be sure to fight the Fairness Doctrine, local content regulations, public interest content regulations, and any other proposed limitations on free speech. I’m going to send you to Rush Limbaugh one more time. Here is his excellent letter to President Obama, published in the Wall Street Journal on February 20, 2009, in defense of freedom of speech:

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_022009/content/01125111.guest.html

If freedom of speech goes, it’s time to pack.

Jerry Lewis Honored

Jerry Lewis will receive the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the Oscars on Sunday. Unfortunately, he has never received an Oscar for his filmmaking or performances. I think "The Bellboy" and "The Nutty Professor," as well as parts of other Lewis-directed films including "The Errand Boy" and "The Disorderly Orderly," deserve recognition.

Ayn Rand said in a radio interview, regarding her personal taste in comedians, "I cannot stand Jerry Lewis and Phyllis Diller." As I recall, she didn't like their image of Man or Woman as a non-heroic, under-achieving, juvenile (Lewis) or miserable (Diller) type. I'm not sure when the interview took place, possibly the early 60s, but I suspect she was referring to Jerry's work with Dean Martin. In my opinion, Jerry Lewis's characters were less whiny, unintelligent and irritating, and more funny and whimsical,in his 1960s solo movies. I do think the live TV shows with Dean Martin had spontaneous moments of unrepeatable hilarity, mainly when they ad-libbed, because of the dynamic of the team, the exhilerating timing and the relationship of the two performers, as described beautifully in Jerry Lewis's book "Dean and Me".

Jerry Lewis has steered clear of politics most of the time, but I understand he has usually supported Democrats, notably JFK. His few political comments tend to be common sense, and I usually find myself agreeing with his stated opinions.

In his book, "The Total Filmmaker," which helped to inspire me as a teenager to want to make films or otherwise be involved in creative expression (I'm still working on that), Lewis refers to the bureaucratic way film studios are run and describes it as exactly like the scene in Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead" where a committee alters Howard Roark's building design.

Here's a clip of Jerry from "The Errand Boy":

Rush Limbaugh

In Thursday’s Wall Street Journal, Rush Limbaugh contributes an editorial that proposes a “bipartisan stimulus” that allows for infrastructure spending but also includes major tax cuts for corporations and on capital gains. I think that’s still allowing Obama too much spending, but by setting it up as bipartisan, it’s a strategic effort to prove what actually stimulates the economy. I don’t know that it would prove anything and it doesn’t address draconian regulations and federal control of banks and so many other horrors now in process. But it’s an honorable effort in the right direction.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123318906638926749.html

What I do oppose in the writings and broadcasts of Rush Limbaugh include his beliefs in religion as the foundation of America, and his derivation of morality from religion rather than from reality, leading to his belief that a fetus has rights over that of the mother, or that assisted suicide is immoral and should be illegal. I disagree with those and other religion-influenced viewpoints he expresses, especially those that support theocratic laws, and I also disagree with him on limiting immigration. He is a Conservative and not an Objectivist, so I would not try to defend him on his Conservatism.

Having expressed my caveats, when it comes to issues of economics and political power (outside of the issue of separation of church and state) his daily radio broadcast can be an indispensible guide to understanding the news and what important facts most mainstream journalists regularly fail to investigate.

Once he is on a topic that isn’t directly connected with religious conservative views, in my opinion he resorts to a common-sense type of self-interest and reason as his apparent, implied philosophy. Outside of sacrificing one’s life for the sake of a fetus, or sacrificing the right of a terminal patient to avoid pain via assisted suicide, he is not particularly altruistic or pro-sacrifice.

His whole persona is of one that enjoys the good life, the wealth he has achieved on his own initiative, rather than a persona of humility and guilt and slavish service to the downtrodden. He is opposed to a victim mentality and he applauds individual accomplishment and self-responsibility.

He does, however, ascribe his talent as on loan from God. He is wrong to suggest his talent is from a supernatural source, but on the other hand it doesn’t sound like he’s kneeling and bowing his head in atonement and guilt for his success.

In fact, he has often recommended “Atlas Shrugged” by atheist Ayn Rand, to explain capitalism to people. Not only that, but he is on the front lines of daring to question environmentalism and for the right reasons. He sees the scam of it, that it’s just a ploy to impose socialism and big government regulations. And I will always be grateful to him for being the only voice against feminism in the 1980s. At that time and in the later 1970s, everywhere men and boys were being unjustly criticized for their natural masculinity. Any differences they had from women were considered flaws, and flirtation in office settings was on the verge of becoming illegal. Since then, that type of feminism has lost most mainstream support thanks in large part to Limbaugh.

He also usually expresses a reasonable, self-defense based foreign policy.

So as we enter the Obama years, I consider Limbaugh’s radio program useful. It’s telling that Obama has said, “Stop listening to Rush Limbaugh”.

As long as Rush sticks to economics and political power issues, his clarity of thought and expression, mixed with satirical humor, is excellent. His points about how Obama/Congress’s stimulus packages are a new “New Deal” and that such programs cannot correct a recession, and only extends it or turns it into a full blown Depression, are on target. I would recommend that people listen to his broadcast, especially now.

For some transcripts of his recent programs, see www.rushlimbaugh.com.

Once the economic crisis is over and he returns to more religious-right issues, I don’t expect to find as much value in his program. And he is no substitute for the secular pro-capitalistic and rational philosophy expressed in Op-Eds and essays and speeches by Objectivists found at The Ayn Rand Center, the Ayn Rand Bookstore and The Objective Standard. But he covers more of the intricacies from day to day than they are able to cover, so he is a fine supplement, if you discard all his religionist inclinations.

The only philosophy that will protect individual rights is Objectivism, not Conservatism. Rush is a Conservative, and Conservatism needs to be rejected in the long run. If you can separate out his rational views from his irrational views, he is a valuable supplement to Objectivist sources like The Objective Standard and The Ayn Rand Center.

It’s because the TV networks and news magazines and newspapers are so reluctant–to an unprecedented extreme–to criticize, investigate and analyze the Obama administration’s and the Democratic Congress’s actions and motivations, that I recommend Limbaugh. But I repeat that I am not a Conservative and the only philosophy that can save America in the long run is Objectivism.

See www.aynrand.org and
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/author/robert_tracinski/for Objectivist perspectives.

P.S. Another interesting radio program, which covers in depth various newsworthy topics that you won’t hear much about in most of the media, is The John Batchelor Show. This world-news oriented program heightens dramatic emphasis by means of musical intros, the host’s striking references to parallel events in history, and his use of dramatic language, metaphors and images. Batchelor recently spoke with Stephen Moore about his Wall Street Journal article suggesting that “Atlas Shrugged” is coming true. Here are the links:
http://johnbatchelorshow.com/mp3/jbs_090118a_abc.mp3
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123146363567166677.html
http://johnbatchelorshow.com

United States of Tara? Cuckoo!

Although The United States of Tara hasn't premiered yet on Showtime, it is getting a lot of publicity. As Diablo Cody -- who wrote the fine film Juno -- is writing several of the episodes, and an expert (Dr. Richard P. Kluft) and a D.I.D. patient are consultants, I expect it to be done with some realism and seriousness. However, creating an entertainment program out of such a tragic situation is always difficult. When is humor in such a program proper or tasteful?

This review is encouraging:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/01/15/DDR915A82V.DTL

If you take a look at the series and become interested in more material about D.I.D. (Dissociative Identity Disorder, also known as Multiple Personalities), I have read a book that I think successfully merges humor and entertainment values with telling a story of D.I.D.-- in this case, a true story. It's an autobiography in the form of a graphic novel ("comic book"), by Madison Clell, entitled Cuckoo.

It tells of her slowly discovering memories of the traumatic events that caused her to have the disorder, and then attempting to cure herself. It is harrowing but it is also told with enough humor that it does not overwhelm you. In fact I found it impossible to put down. Some of the drawings are rough, and some of the lettering takes a minute to decipher, but they reflect the mental state being conveyed. Obviously the content is not for the squeamish and not for children.

Cuckoo is more genuine and straightforward than United States of Tara is likely to be, in that there is no barrier between the author's own experiences and the reader. She speaks directly to you. Whereas, the cable series Tara is a fictional show created by professional dramatists primarily to entertain.

Get the Trade Paperback of Cuckoo at:

http://www.cuckoocomic.com/cuckoo_comics/purchase_comics.html

Also, in an unplanned juxtaposition, Cuckoo has been turned into a play, with more material and Madison Clell in a small role, which will be performed on stage during the month of February at the Phoenix Theatre in San Francisco, just as United States of Tara premieres on Showtime.

See: http://www.cuckoocomic.com/cuckoo_comics/the_play.html

Incidentally, Madison Clell, through therapy and her own heroic determination, has managed to cure herself of the disorder. The play of Cuckoo carries the story beyond the book, all the way to her final integration.

News from Florida’s Disney World and Florida’s Kip Liles

My family visited Walt Disney World again over the Thanksgiving holiday. I was very impressed this year. While in recent years I found that the formerly unmatched high level of customer service started to descend to the level of average or worse, this year we had nothing but outstanding customer service. Everyone was super friendly and helpful and in good humor. It may have helped that because the crowds were not so heavy between Thanksgiving and Christmas, their stress level was lower. I particularly appreciated the cast members who seemed to be over retirement age. They had the magic in them, as if they had known Walt Disney, and had somehow fully embodied his warm, benevolent, humorous spirit. Like Leon Trager whom I mention in my previous post, and like the recently deceased original Disney animators Ollie Johnston and his friend Frank Thomas whom I met at an animation art gallery years ago, the delighted-by-his-job senior citizen cast member who greeted me and answered my questions at the Pop Century Resort was an example of the kind of person I want to be like when I grow older.

I worked at Disney World in 1989 and I found it easy to be friendly and to enjoy my work and I think my customer service was Disney-worthy (I did well on my evaluation). But in recent years I’ve seen a cast member at the Boardwalk roll her eyes when informed of a slippery floor that needed to be cleaned, and I’ve seen two Disney housekeepers at the elevator bank of the All Star Movies Resort, having a loud argument that culminated in one punching the other in the face. This year I saw nothing of the kind.

I also want to especially recommend one particular attraction. Epcot’s Spaceship Earth, which is the giant “golf ball” near the entrance, has been updated in the last year. The new version keeps all of the best qualities of the original, but is actually superior to the old one. It has many new, elaborate scenes and includes a wonderful interactive finale, where each passenger selects aspects of the future he’d like to see, and then sees himself in it. But most important is the overall theme. The new Spaceship Earth, which is sponsored by the excellent technology company Siemens, suggests that we are in the midst of a second Renaissance initiated by the vast opportunities that computers have made possible. The optimism and excitement about the future was a great contrast to the gloomy pessimism of CNN, MSNBC and the major networks and newsmagazines (except for their rose-colored reports on socialist Barack Obama, which cause me to expect soon the headline ”The Sun Shines Out of His Behind,” apologies to The Smiths ).

There were many more highlights. The Pixar attractions “Toy Story Mania” and “Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor” (not to mention the amazing “Turtle Talk with Crush” which we skipped this year) are as much fun as, or more fun than, you have already heard.

And this is the first year I have seen the Osborne Family’s Christmas (plus Chanukah) Lights. Talk about exceeding expectations: it is one more example of Disney and their partners at their best. Words cannot adequately convey the experience of seeing the city streets of the backlot lit up in such imaginative ways.

Also, we took side trips to the Wilderness Lodge to see part of Walt’s own model railroad train exhibited, and to the Grand Floridian Resort to see and smell the gingerbread house they have every Christmas season. And everyone, especially my daughter who loves to dance and sing, enjoyed the Hoop De Doo Revue.

We also were able to briefly meet up with Kip Liles and her husband. They are, once again, the kind of people I hope to be like, and the kind of people I want to surround myself with, people who are role models for all Earthlings. If you don’t know who Kip Liles is, she is the Super Foster Parent whom I interviewed on The Zigory Show. That podcast is available at http://zigory.solidvox.com/?p=3.

Update regarding the Kip Liles interview and the Michelle Malkin article called “The Death of Bradley McGee”: Kip has learned from a source that Billy, the brother of Braddie, is alive, still living with his (murderer) mother Sheryl Hardy, and outwardly appears to be okay. However, appearances cannot be trusted and I hope Billy’s community in Illinois keeps its eyes open. As should we all, for justice’s sake and our own.

Leon Trager

I learned from Nicholas Provenzo's blog Rule of Reason that Leon Trager has passed away.

I met Leon and his son Noah, who was still in high school, at the Objectivism '92 Conference in Williamsburg, VA. Leon was full of positive energy and joy and was exactly the way I hoped I would be in my later years. He was encouraging to me. I said I was working on a writing project for a long time, perhaps too long, but I still thought it needed more work before submitting it to the marketplace. He said, "If you're not ready, you're not ready. When you're ready you will do it."

I had videotaped his son singing, with another attendee, comedic songs by Monty Python. Leon beamed at his son singing in public, as Leon said Noah was normally on the reserved or shy side. Leon asked me for a copy of the videotape but, alas, I didn't have a working second VCR so I regret that I did not dub it for him. (My mother was fighting cancer that year and the next which put the video on the back burner).

Another fact about him: Leon Trager decided that the US Holocaust Memorial Museum ought to carry Leonard Peikoff's book "The Ominous Parallels" so he single-handedly convinced them to carry it.