Ayn Rand Conservatism at Work -- Firefighters Let Family's House Burn Down Because Owner Didn't Pay $75 Fee

Yep, society don't need no social safety net. And by the way this is the type of conservatism that Stephen Harper and Jim Flaherty believe in. Kids dying of abscessed teeth within shouting distance of the White House. Kids starving all over America. Tent cities. Hobos. Health care? What that? And the goofballs voting these jerks into office are the same ones who will bear the brunt of Ann Rand conservatism. They'll call it freedom. Peacenik calls it stupidity.


Talk of limited government is appealing until you see what it actually means in practice: a society in which it's every man for himself.



Thanks to 30 years of right-wing demagoguery about the evils of “collectivism” and the perfidy of “big government” -- and a bruising recession that’s devastated state and local budgets -- we’re getting a peek at a dystopian nightmare that may be in our not-too-distant future. It’s a picture of a society in which “rugged individualism” run amok means every man for himself.

Call it Ayn Rand’s stark, anti-governmental dream come true, a vision that last week turned into a nightmare for Gene Cranick, a rurual homeowner in Obion County, Tennessee. Cranick hadn’t forked over $75 for the subscription fire protection service offered to the county’s rural residents, so when firefighters came out to the scene, they just stood there, with their equipment on the trucks, while Cranick’s house burned to the ground. According to the local NBC TV affiliate, Cranick “said he offered to pay whatever it would take for firefighters to put out the flames, but was told it was too late. They wouldn't do anything to stop his house from burning.”

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Is the Conservative Movement Losing Steam? Posner

I sense intellectual deterioration of the once-vital conservative movement in the United States. As I shall explain, this may be a testament to its success.

Until the late 1960s (when I was in my late twenties), I was barely conscious of the existence of a conservative movement. It was obscure and marginal, symbolized by figures like Barry Goldwater (slaughtered by Lyndon Johnson in the 1964 presidential election), Ayn Rand, Russell Kirk, and William Buckley--figures who had no appeal for me. More powerful conservative thinkers, such as Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, and other distinguished conservative economists, such as George Stigler, were on the scene, but were not well known outside the economics profession.

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Richard Posner provides an interesting overview of the conservative movement. The movement may be at its lowest ebb, but the consequences of 30 years of conservatism will dominate society for years to come. Peacenik is looking for the resurgence of conservatism. Will societal collapse fuel it? Who is going to get blamed for current depression? Common sense says the conservatives should be blamed. Peacenik has Peacenik's doubts.