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SyndicateThe Fear of Thought
By Robert Ringer - Saturday, October 3, 2009
By Robert Ringer
Last week I received a heart-warming e-mail from a reader that said, in part: “You are among the most insane voices in this insane world. … You should be crushed like the bug that you are … along with your cohorts, Beck, Hannity and Limbaugh — all reptilian bugs who will soon become obsolete as their silly, screaming, obnoxious voices become a whimper and die out while the wise, compassionate, and coherent voices of the left finally own their power. [RR note: If you like run-on sentences, try topping that one.] Please keep your poison to yourself!”
Hmm … no one’s ever called me a “reptilian bug” before, but it does have a nice ring to it. I’ve become somewhat immune to those who extol the virtues of progressivism but want to “crush” dissenting voices — preferably through the barrel of a gun.
I was at the 9/12 rally in Washington, and I can tell you that, trite as it may sound, the men and women there really were everyday folks — people you see at the supermarket, at work, or at ball games. They were angry, to be sure, but polite and civil almost to a fault. And an awful lot of them had signs indicating that they watch or listen to the likes of Beck, Hannity, and Limbaugh — those “silly, screaming, obnoxious voices.”
By contrast, what never ceases to amaze me is the anger and violence that are the stock and trade of progressives. We saw it on display again at the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh. It was like the 1968 Democratic National Convention all over again. Wonder what happened to all those “wise, compassionate, and coherent voices” on the left?
You may have seen Sean Hannity’s interview with a couple of radical college girls who were protesting outside the G-20 Conference. They explained that they were with “Free the Planet,” a University of Pittsburgh organization that wants to “make environmental change to help the planet.” How do you even begin to have a rational discussion with young people who talk as though they have tapioca jammed between their ears?
At one point, Hannity asked, “Why are you against capitalism?” To which one of the girls replied, “Because it puts profit as the number-one goal and not people’s well-being.” Ah, yes, I remember how determined Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, and Ho Chi Minh were when it came to looking after people’s well-being. I’m sure everyone in those countries misses the good old days.
Alert the media: The sole objective of a business is to make a profit. Charity is a wonderful activity, and most human beings are charitable. But a business has nothing to with charity. It has to do with producing products and services that people buy for one reason, and one reason only: because they want them.
If a business is successful, then the owner is free to give as much of his earnings as he wants to others — others of his choosing. Bill Gates has already given $29 billion to his charitable foundation, and his pal Warren Buffet plans to donate most of his multibillion-dollar fortune to charity. Such philanthropy is, of course, devastating to the mind-set of the progressive, for it is he who is the self-anointed decider of what is and is not fair.
Finally, Hannity asked one of the girls, “Do you support government-run redistribution of wealth?” to which she answered, “I support people-run redistribution of wealth.” “How do you have people-run redistribution of wealth?” asked Hannity, pointing out that people will not give up their wealth unless government forces them to do so.
“You tax them,” answered his self-assured, youthful guest. She then went on to say that if you divide the wealth up equally, every person in the country could receive $44,000 per year. Hannity showed a lot of restraint by sparing her the embarrassment of asking where the $44,000 per person would come from if Atlas decided to shrug.
The capper, though, was when she said angrily, “Tell me why someone ever would need to make more than $500,000 a year.” Sounded like she was lobbying for the job of Wealth-Redistribution Czar.
All this sixties gibberish brought to mind something Rose Wilder Lane, the famous communist-turned-libertarian, once said in describing the precise moment when the incongruity of communism first struck her: “When the capitalist is gone, who will manage production? The state. And what is the state? The state will be the mass of toiling workers. It was at this point that the first doubt pierced my communist faith.”
The truth is all-powerful, and it bugs the progressive mind no end. I believe that much of the anger the far left harbors is a result of not having legitimate moral or rational arguments for their points of view. Whether the anger be guilt-based or envy-based, it’s always there … always advocating the use of force against individuals with dissenting views.
To actually give rational thought to an issue is frightful to progressives, because they are focused on their own utopian view of the world and can never explain why anyone has a right to take the fruits of someone’s labor and give it to others. Lacking factual arguments, they instead speak in abstract terms such as “the good of society,” “the common good,” and “shared prosperity.”
Bertrand Russell summed it up well when he said:
“Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth — more than ruin, more even than death. Thought … is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is … indifferent to authority, careless of the well tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid.”
Brace yourself. As the progressives in D.C. continue to evade thought and become ever more cornered by the facts, the name-calling, dismissals, and threats are sure to accelerate. After all, when the uncovering of lies and corruption make it impossible to debate with a straight face, what other choice does one have?
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Copyright © 2012 Robert Ringer
ROBERT RINGER is a New York Times #1 bestselling author and host of the highly acclaimed Liberty Education Interview Series, which features interviews with top political, economic, and social leaders. He has appeared on Fox News, Fox Business, The Tonight Show, Today, The Dennis Miller Show, Good Morning America, The Lars Larson Show, ABC Nightline, and The Charlie Rose Show, and has been the subject of feature articles in such major publications as Time, People, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Barron's, and The New York Times.
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11 Responses to “The Fear of Thought”
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Robert -
Why must you (and so many others) refer to demagogic, morally-bankrupt, anti-free market and anti individual freedom of choice Communists as “Progressives?” That is like refering to a sewer as a “health spa.”
Just call them Communists, please, Robert. Let O’Reily be their media lackey with the “Progressive” boot licking line. You, I think, have the integrity and the guts to call a spade a spade, and a Pinko a Pinko. Or am I wrong on this one?
I think that we need to encourage yoiung people to continue to publically display their feelings about whatever issues interest them. This is how one learns things in life. We need to help convert that tapioca to grey matter that has some substance, but that takes time. Whenver someone says they believe we should redistribute the wealth in this country I ask them if they could give me some of their money and let me use their car etc. The coversation usually stops right there.
I would like to remind Mr. Ringer that a corpration or business does not have any constutional rights nor any right to exist at all. A corpration is regestered and regulated because it has been known since captialism first started being used as an economic system that it is like fire controled it benfits everyone. Uncontroled it consumes everything it touchs.
We are now seeing the end of capitalism. Big corprations like G.M for instance has been consuming it self for twenty years and now there is nothing left. G.M. will disolve and be only a memory like the car companies it bought up and consumed.
Dear Robert,
KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK! I applaud your willingness to share that which you believe is important.
Thank you again for helping me clarify my thoughts and provide some words to state what I also think is right. I have 5 college students working for me. I carefully listen what they are getting from school and friends and then ask appropriate questions to make them think and make their own decisions. When I can get them to think about reality and rational thought there is a transformation. The transformation is simply from believing things by their perception and the way they want things to be to thinking what is real and right.
I just had a disturbing/depressing thought. I’ve read most of your books and realized tonight that all of the wisdom within them (and other self-help books for that matter) are completely useless under this administration.
The Obama administration throws a huge wrench into success “systems” that would otherwise work. Normal people work hard, follow all of the rules and are rewarded by their efforts. But now we have a new set of rules… now we are doing all of this with over a body of water full of Piranha.
Robert, I would love to see you come out with a new book to help people deal with this stuff.
I know you have covered some of nuisances in life, but I’m not sure we’ve ever encountered anything like this before. Anyway, just some random thoughts for you..
Progressives and their beloved promoted communist defined social “Utopia”, has and never can exist. It goes directly against hard wired and inherent human nature. Human beings will not strive and attempt to better themselves and their overall society if all the fruits of their individual labors are stolen and redistributed to the lazy and those having no incentive, all done with the immoral threats of incarceration and threats of government backed violence for not producing for the betterment of others. The insanity lies in the ignorance and naïveté of those still brainwashed and foolish enough to promote and advocate for such a repeatedly failed social and political system.
Youth can be forgiven for their lack of education and experience, however older people with the education of experience, who still advocate the failed idealism of communism, and in the face of the historical facts of millions upon millions of slaughtered individual human being who fell under the iron boot of ruthless and godless political sophists, have no excuse for their ignorance other than their own inability to perceive and acknowledge objective reality. Insanity, as Einstein pointed out, is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting to get different results.
The lost and truly insane people in modern society, are the ones who cannot see and understand the folly and irrationality of their false but beloved unworkable idealism, in the face of the incontrovertible evidence of the massive historical tragedy and misery of communist ideals where they were implemented, and failed abysmally.
Come on off of it RetroSeek. You couldn’t have been serious when you made the following comment: “I just had a disturbing/depressing thought. I’ve read most of your books and realized tonight that all of the wisdom within them (and other self-help books for that matter) are completely useless under this administration.”
Your statement is pure nonsense. The information contained in Mr. Ringer’s books is more valuable than ever. What is truly “disturbing/depressing” is that you could even draw that conclusion in the first place. Your statement supports my theory that attempting to educate the masses is a complete waste of time until they are in such pain, suffering, and dire straits from an economic collapse that they are forced to stop watching football, sitcoms, political speeches, the nightly news, talk shows, and 99.9% of all the other garbage that’s on T.V. If and when reality’s pain finally wakes the masses up and forces them to learn how to think, then there might be a chance to save them from themselves.
RetroSeek: Reread Mr. Ringer’s books after you hone your reading comprehension,critical thinking, inductive&deductive reasoning,
extrapolation&interpolation, and analytical skills.
Anybody can greatly benefit from studying Mr. Ringer’s books by simply employing a bit of logical reasoning and a small amount of application. It’s what professors who teach critical thinking skills refer to as “synthesis.” When your “cranial-computer” reaches “synthesis-level” critical thinking, then the benefits of Mr. Ringer’s books are greatly magnified. This is because you can actually take Mr.Ringer’s explanations of reality and human nature, and then apply them to your own personal and contemporaneous position in life.
After you’ve sharpened your mind and finished with Mr. Ringer’s books, then you’re ready to graduate to a higher level of reading comprehension. Try reading some books by Ludwig von Mises, Henry David Thoreau, Ayn Rand, and F.A. Hayek for some serious thought.
How about selling a t-shirt that capitalizes on the Reptilian Bug concept. I would love one- “Robert Ringer’s Reptilian Bug Brigade!!!” Saving America one brain at a time.
This was one of your better pieces. The best point you made is when you quoted Rose Wilder Lane – who manages production when the capitalists are gone? Maybe the question should be “How far can your push the capitalists before they leave?” That is the secret the socialist needs to learn. They just drive right up to that point and then back off on the gas a little for safety’s sake.
As a leader of the anti-Obama crowd consider the effect of democracy when we get to 10 plus percent unemployment. Democracy doesn’t sound so good when the population consists of two wolves and a lamb and they are voting on what to have for dinner. The lamb being the capitalist of course.
Wow! Where have the original, libertarian-leaning Democrats from Jefferson to Cleveland gone? All that seems to be left are Marxists who want to bring America back into the Old World fold, where poverty and tyranny are the custom, cited in THE CHANGING FACE OF DEMOCRATS (Amazon.com) and http://www.claysamerica.com.