Guest Columns
Internet insecurity
How did we get along before the Internet?
Before the Internet
Young people today cannot imagine living in a world without electronic devices – a time before fast-paced computers, laptops, and smart phones provided instant connectivity. Their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents cannot imagine living in a world without automobiles, airplanes, and television – a time of slow-paced letter writing, waiting, and sailing boats. People live in the cultural, physical, and political historical context of their lives.
Ayn Rand, American by choice
Russian-American philosopher and writer Ayn Rand (1905-1982) sailed the month-long journey that brought her from Russia to the United States in 1926.
Ayn Rand rejected the tyranny of collectivist Communist Russia that she was born into and spent a lifetime warning the free world about collectivism and its deceitful motto “for the public good.” Her works of fiction and non-fiction argued passionately for the rights of individuals over the collective. Her philosophy of life championed reason, democracy, and laissez-faire capitalism.
Architect Howard Roark in The Fountainhead (1943) and industrialist Hank Rearden in Atlas Shrugged (1957) are brilliant men whose characters are developed in defense of personal liberty, individual freedom, and ownership of one’s intellectual work and personal property.
The principles of Objectivism
Ayn Rand’s novels illustrate her philosophy of Objectivism which asserts:
- Reality exists as an objective absolute – facts are facts, independent of man’s feelings, wishes, hopes or fears.
- Reason (the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses) is man’s only means of perceiving reality, his only source of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of survival.
- Man – every man – is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life.
- The ideal political-economic system is laissez-faire capitalism. It is a system where men deal with one another, not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves, but as traders, by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit. It is a system where no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force, and no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. The government acts only as policeman that protects man’s rights; it uses physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use, such as criminals or foreign invaders. In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically has not yet been) a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of church and state.
Ike warns of rational minds colluding with government
Ayn Rand’s 20th century heroes are strong, rational, independent men of courage whose creativity provide the engines that run society. Roark and Rearden stand in sharp contrast to the corrupt looting government officials and politicians who want to steal their individual creative work “for the public good.” In Ayn Rand’s world view it is the individual against the grasping collective. Ayn Rand never imagined a strong, rational, independent, brilliant, creative mind colluding with the government – Eisenhower did.
Eisenhower warned the nation about the dangers of the military/industrial complex in his 1961 presidential exit speech. Eisenhower was a military man living in the historical context of WWII who understood the military complex and the arms industry that supported it. Lobbying was in its infancy – it wasn’t until 1953 that non-military special interests became part of the military/industrial complex “for the public good” of course.
At the time of Eisenhower’s exit speech Eric Schmidt, Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs were 6 years old, Tim Cook was an infant, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg had not been born, and the Internet did not exist. What happened?
International collectivism
At the end of WWII America’s military enemies did not go quietly into the night. They reconstituted themselves as Culture Warriors intent on destroying America from within. Twenty-first century America is not threatened by conventional war and weapons of Eisenhower’s yesterday. The Culture War against America is an information war launched in the 1960s in classrooms, the mainstream media, and now on the Internet. The Culture War is determined to destroy the pillars of American life that support individualism, the meritocracy, laissez-faire capitalism, and democracy. Why?
The Culture War is the battle of American Nationalism vs International Collectivism.
Schmidt, Gates, Bezos, Cook and Zuckerberg are leftist tech giants who came of age during the age of collectivist indoctrination in public/private education. Their collectivist curricula fortified the fiction of collectivism as humanitarian “for the public good” and vindicates their “altruistic progressive” political participation in an expanded military/industrial complex.
The 21st century military/industrial complex includes a weaponized/politicized Internet unimagined during the lives of Ayn Rand or Eisenhower. Censorship and manipulation of data is a lethal weapon of war for leftist Culture Warriors like Schmidt, Gates, Bezos, Cook and Zuckerberg. The Big-5 have unprecedented influence and under their leftist leadership the Internet is no longer the free, secure, public square for open debate of ideas. Internet Insecurity is a threat to American sovereignty. This is how it works.
Control of the Internet
Whoever controls the Internet controls the information. Whoever controls the information controls public opinion. Whoever controls public opinion controls the world through mass social engineering. Eisenhower did not imagine the Internet. Ayn Rand did not imagine the Internet. Neither could imagine the power of the Internet to wage a Culture War against America. It was simply unthinkable that Americans would sacrifice American sovereignty to internationalize America under one-world government for power and profit “for the public good” of course.
The Big-5 may believe in the ethos of the collectivism that they were educated with but the reality of collectivism is never the same as its promise. None of these men were raised in collectivist countries like Ayn Rand. None of them suffered the tyrannical reality of collectivist societies – all five were raised with the privilege of freedom in America. The altruistic “for the public good” self-representations of Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Google ignore the dangers of the collectivism they promote. Why?
Collectivism promises but never delivers
The answer is that the promise of collectivism is never the reality of collectivism. History teaches us that the revolutionaries promising collectivism become the the despots they overthrow. Students wearing Che Guevara t-shirts seem to have forgotten the outcome. There Big-5 lead the Culture War against America because they intend to rule an internationalized America under one-world government.
Collectivism is the greatest bait-and-switch the world has ever known. “Altruistic” revolutionaries dupe a dissatisfied public to surrender their freedoms with promises of progressive social justice and economic equality – what the revolution delivers is regressive childlike dependence and enslavement. The public becomes the indentured servants of the elite rulers who own all the property, make all the rules, and dole out all the country’s resources while they live in splendor.
Does anyone actually think the Big-5 will live a life of social justice and economic equality? One look at faux socialist Bernie Sanders and his three houses should make any struggling student protester suspicious.
Toward a free Internet
The Big-5 control the flow of information. These men simply cannot be allowed to destroy American freedom and laissez-faire capitalism and impose their collectivist agenda on the free world by censoring the Internet, silencing the opposition, and eliminating their competition. People live in the historical context of their lives.
The historical context of our time is cyberspace. The Culture War is a war of information that America must win. Internet Insecurity threatens American security. The Big-5 are leading the Culture War against a free democratic America for their own power and profit – no different from the radical revolutionaries of their time Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Vladimir Lenin, and Joseph Stalin. Then and now all disingenuously offering collectivism in the name of social justice and income equality.
An America of the people, by the people, and for the people is a free America that is diametrically opposed to collectivism. A free America demands an open Internet, a secure Internet, an Internet free of political censorship.
Linda Goudsmit is the devoted wife of Rob and they are the parents of four children and the grandparents of four. She and Rob owned and operated a girls’ clothing store in Michigan for forty years before retiring to the sunny beaches of Florida. A graduate of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Linda has a lifelong commitment to learning and is an avid reader and observer of life. She is the author of the philosophy book Dear America: Who’s Driving the Bus? and its political sequel, The Book of Humanitarian Hoaxes: Killing America with ‘Kindness’, along with numerous current affairs articles featured on her websites lindagoudsmit.com and goudsmit.pundicity.com. The Collapsing American Family: From Bonding to Bondage and her new release, Space Is No Longer the Final Frontier––Reality Is, complete Linda’s quadrangle of insightful books that connect the philosophical, ideological, political, and psychological dots of globalism's War on America and individual sovereignty.
Linda believes the future of our nation requires reviving individualism, restoring meritocracy, and teaching critical-thinking skills to children again. Her illustrated children’s book series, Mimi’s Strategy, offers youngsters new and exciting ways of solving their problems and having their needs met. Mrs. Goudsmit believes that learning to think strategically rather than reacting emotionally is a valuable skill that will empower any child throughout his or her life. Plus, in Linda’s words, “I have yet to meet the child who would prefer a reprimand to a kiss.”
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