Adam@Home by Rob Harrell for October 22, 2009

If you work hard, Adam, you might fit into them again. Building houses is good exercise.

I haven;t seen size-38 pants since I was 38!

It’s tearing me to read this pun.

Doc- I too was a 32 and got up to a 34, but now I am in that tough to fit size where a 34 is to large and a 32 is to small. So many companies only make pants or shorts in even sizes. Oh well, sometimes nudity is the only answer. LOL

Adam’s a typical obese American.

2010 is just around the corner. That’s going to be interesting, as will 2012. People will no doubt be sick of all this propaganda popping up everywhere – first the prime time TV shows, and now the funny pages. Now I’m starting to understand what it must have been like growing up in the Soviet Union. If PRAVDA says it, it must be true, right?

I come from the future and I’m sick of you and your propaganda popping up everywhere. Go away!

Adam’s overweight, but he’s not obese. He’s got a belly, but given his general proportions I think merely getting regular exercise would probably have him back in those 38’s pretty soon.

And pbrown, I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. Didn’t GHWBush coin the term “a thousand points of light” to describe precisely the sort of impulse that’s motivating these strips? I may have disagreed with much that he said while he was president, but I never argued with the idea that community volunteering is a valuable (and heretofore untapped) resource. If you think that any position other than “Every Man For Himself” might as well come straight out of PRAVDA, then “just get out the way and let the gentleman do his thing.”

Volunteerism doesn’t cost a penny in tax dollars. So what are you complaining about?

“A little Consideration, a little Thought for Others, makes all the difference.” Commie propaganda? It’s from “Winnie the Pooh.”

(I also agreed with the elder Bush’s stance on broccoli.)

Wow, Adam is holding a hammer and possibly about to start work and he still hasn’t asked about coffee!

The glorification of “volunteerism” is based on the ethical theory of altruism, the doctrine that it is your moral duty to serve others.

But if “volunteering” is moral, then not volunteering must be immoral, right? And there must be a way to MAKE people be moral, right?

That is the reasoning behind the growing “mandatory volunteering” now required to graduate from thousands of high schools and even many colleges.

So how much longer will it be before the general public gets “mandatorily volunteered”? Right now it seems ridiculous to think they could try it, but soon there will be an entire generation propagandized in school into believing it’s the right thing to do.

The idea that you owe others simply for existing is un-American. It’s what wanna-be dictators want you to believe. Don’t fall for it! It’s YOUR life, YOUR liberty, and the pursuit of YOUR happiness!

Go back to your cave and stop trying to save us all.

No, just trying to save the United States. It needs it.

pschearer: and the devil take the hindmost? if you don’t want to be a part of society, find somewhere to live where you can be totally disconnected from it (and see how far you get trying to subsist without society). the equation is never one sided. there has to be something on both sides of the equal sign. i don’t agree with mandatory volunteering either, but anyone who benefits in any way from “society” also has some kind of obligation to “society”

Anyone who benefits from society has obligations thereto. I discharge mine by paying taxes and obeying the law. And I read comics for fun, not to have somebody foist their political agenda on me.

YYY: I have heard arguments like yours many times. They all attempt to make pro-individualist views like mine sound foolish by implying that only by living in a cave and making your own shoes can one be independent or self-reliant. That is purely a straw man and is a comical misrepresentation of what individualism means.

As for obligations in society, the most fundamental obligation is to let others live their lives as they should let you and me live ours. That is what freedom is.

The best presentation I’ve ever seen of the nature of individualism and independence is in Ayn Rand’s novel “The Fountainhead”. If you don’t care to read the book, at least try to catch the old movie on Turner Classics next time it’s on. The book is much better, but the movie still presents ideas you’ve probably never encountered before.

pschearer: This is probably adding fuel to the fire, but after reading your remarks, I have to wonder: are you by any chance a Libertarian? And do you listen to (and agree with) Glenn Beck? The two of you seem to be in lockstep in your thinking.

The movie is claptrap, and since Rand wrote her own screenplay she has nobody to blame but herself.

“Roarke, I have devoted my life to destroying you, because I hate true genius.”

“Howard, don’t be a fool! You’ll never succeed while you hold on to your principles! For your own sake, sell out!”

“No worthwhile endeavor was ever accomplished by taking the wishes of the public into consideration, and nothing of value can ever be anything but the product of a single man pursuing his vision!”

There are no people represented in The Fountainhead, only those admirable men who spew slogans that Rand wants you to agrees with, and the contemptible buffoons who spew slogans that Rand wants you to disagree with.

I guess the failure of the movie is due to the fact that Rand didn’t produce, direct, design the scenery, and play all the roles by herself. Or by the fact that she’s a woman, because in Rand’s universe the only thing women are good for is to admire Great Men.

It’s a shame that Shakespeare devoted any energy to plays that pleased the groundlings and the Gods. Imagine! If he’d only given up the idea that Art can be True and have mass appeal, he might have been Great!

Rand is a hack. Every first year grad-student thinks they’ve stumbled on the secret to the universe when they discover her.

If you think YOU’RE one of the minority who are TRULY destined for GREATNESS…Yes, YOU, you pimply little guy, if you feel that the Mindless SHEEP who make up the MAJORITY of human beings are STANDING IN THE WAY OF YOUR GLORIOUS DESTINY…(yes, I’m talking about YOU, and you know in your heart of hearts that I am), and if you need only cast off the WEAKNESSES of compassion, empathy, and altruism in order to CLAIM YOUR RIGHTFUL PLACE among the ELITE who are a LAW UNTO THEMSELVES, then Ayn Rand’s got your back! She’s your gal!

Neitzsche referred to anti-Semitism as the worldview of those who believe they’ve been cheated. As anti-Semitism has now become unbearably unfashionable, we’ve got Objectivism to take its place!

Hurrah!

Sara: I am an Objectivist, not a Libertarian, who deny the need for philosophy. Glenn Beck is one of many who profess admiration for selected Ayn Rand principles but who then ignore primary principles like reliance solely on reason; I do not admire him.

The only answer for lagerX3 is for people to read Rand for themselves and judge who is right.

Fritz: So which of Rand’s principles do you disagree with? I have no idea who you think you’re addressing with your insults. Certainly no Objectivist I have met in 45 years. Certainly not me whom you know virtually nothing about.

Everyone: Note the non-intellectual tone of most people who attack Ayn Rand. This is typical. Again, you must judge for yourself. Then if you disagree, at least know what you’re talking about.

Susan001: I’ve seen a certain ecstatic look in the eyes of people who feel like you seem to. There is no denying that it feels like happiness to them. But how kind and caring a person can you be if you call a complete stranger a “selfish pig” in the open Internet? Hardly charitable of you.

Doctor Toon: Your experience with Ayn Rand is too common. Adolescence is a time when the child’s mind has reached a level of maturity when it is ready for an adult level of understanding of reality and principles for living. Young people cry out for guidance. They want ideals! It is part of what makes adolescence so thrilling. The lucky ones can keep that feeling their whole lives (even at the risk of being insulted by you).

BUT… for too many reasons (which I won’t go into here because I want to get on with today’s cartoons), they give up, and they give up early. They decide ideals are unattainable, they sink into cynicism which they then equate with maturity, and they end up sounding like what you’ve written here.

If you are like the many people I’ve encountered who say the kinds of things you said, they never expended the effort needed to resolve in their minds the serious contradictions between what they’d been taught all their lives versus a completely new ethical philosophy in history. Selfish? Absolutely! But not the superficial misunderstanding of selfishness that most people cling to.

For anyone sincerely interested in understanding what Ayn Rand thought about ethics, you should read the essay collection “The Virtue of Selfishness” which should be available in any large bookstore. Then you have a chance of seeing that happiness should come from ambition, achievement, purposefulness, and success and not from ladling soup to the less fortunate. (Does anyone really think Mother Teresa was happy after they read her letters to the Pope?)