by deadwhitemale » April 13th, 2009, 9:42 pm
I'm really not a follower of Ayn Rand -- not a Randian or big-O Objectivist or "randroid" or whatever. I just agree with some things she said. I disagree with others. I quote her when she says something I think is true (as far as it goes) and quotable. I agree with some things Aldous Huxley said. (I often quote from Chapter Seventeen of Brave New World.) I agree with some things Al Capone and Charles Manson said.
I don't think I am an especially nice guy. Certainly I am not warm or affectionate, or cheerful or outgoing or effervescent.
But am I miserly, etc.? I dunno. At the moment there is hardly enough of anything that I can actually call my own to be miserly or stingy about. I make sure my Dad's bills get paid. The nursing home or the pharmaceutical company or some doctor or some hospital sends me a bill, I send them a signed check. So far none of them bounced. A day may come when one will bounce.
I seem to resemble ArchenlandKnight to the extent that I too ask and expect almost nothing from the government, other than to be left alone. I would very much like to have a house with a roof that doesn't leak and nice hardwood floors instead of beer-soaked wall-to-wall carpet over rotting particle board, and my own clothes washer and dryer, and a toilet that works right. I'd like a lot of work done on my teeth, a pair of shoes that fit and aren't literally falling apart, etc..
I just don't think I have any right to ask the government to take away anything from anyone else in order to supply me with whatever I want or need. I don't see how I have any sort of exagerrated sense of entitlement. All I feel entitled to is to be left alone and not interfered with. I want to come and go as I please without particularly having to explain myself to anyone. I don't want what's anyone else's. I just want what's mine.
DWM
"It is when we try to grapple with another man's intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering, and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun." -- Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim(1899?)