GOP Candidate for WI Senate Ron Johnson on “Producers vs. Parasitic Non-Producers”

I’m sitting here listening to the the rain while catching up on some reading about the major GOP candidates for Congress from WI.  Somewhere along the way I missed this report from George Will on Ron Johnson, the GOP’s moneyed competitor to Russ Feingold.  There are some very scary comments being made in this article that bear some analysis as his candidacy heats up.  With Ron Johnson vowing to spend all of his money to win the campaign, Will had this to say about Johnson’s philosophy.

What Samuel Johnson said of Milton’s “Paradise Lost” — “None ever wished it longer than it is” — some readers have said of “Atlas Shrugged.” Not Johnson, who thinks it is “too short” at 1,088 pages. Noting that Massachusetts “is requiring insurance companies to write polices at a loss,” he says, “We’re living it,” referring to the novel’s dystopian world in which society’s producers are weighed down by parasitic non-producers.

This philosophy that producers weigh down non-producers is repugnant to me.

For what is it that leads some to be “producers” – birth right, class, education, race, location, health, etc. while others are “non-producers” – ill health, mental health disease, age, discrimination, location, resources, etc.?  With the unemployment rate still near 10%, and underemployment rate adding significantly to this, there are a lot of people who are inadvertently in the “non-producers” bucket, while their jobs are moved to China, the economy shuts them out, environmental disasters destroy their livelihoods, etc.   Is producer status only measurable in terms of income or can we say that someone that creates art, literature, music or other output is not a producer, but a parasite due to the lack of remuneration for the output of their production?

If you take his philosophy far enough you’d get to the point of saying that only “producers” should be part of our society and all others should be left to fend on their own in some outcast society of parasitic “non-producers”.

According to Will, Johnson’s philosophy has also been shaped by The Wall Street Journal editorial page and from Paul Ryan’s “Roadmap for America”.  As a long time subscriber to the Wall Street Journal, I can tell you that the editorial page is radically right and becoming even more so as Rupert Murdoch puts his indelible stamp on America’s business paper.  Paul Ryan’s “Roadmap for America”, is seen as so economically radical, that even mainstream Republicans have disavowed it as  a blueprint for their party.

You can see more about Ron Johnson’s philosophy in a statement about freedom in Zach’s earlier post on a quote from the George Will article.

Other Positions
In other news about his position on key issues of the day, Ron Johnson has endorsed drilling in Alaska, saying the following:

“ANWR may be environmentally sensitive but it may be easier to drill up there and with less environmental impact than trying to drill in very deep water,”at any spill would be immediately accessible to emergency crews.”

While this may be true, deciding to drill in an environmentally fragile area, should be the last action we take given the disaster we’re experiencing in the Gulf of Mexico.

Does he have a chance?
According to Rasmussen Polling he is only 2 points behind Russ Feingold, a result that Nate Silver of 538.com, soon to be part of the New York Times, deconstructs and tears down given his low statewide name recognition beyond the GOP & tea party base.

Want more information?
Want to find out more about Ron Johnson, you can do so at his website – a site that I might add is very difficult to find with a Google or Bing search, probably given his “generic name”.  The first thing you’ll notice is that he does not list his party affiliation, probably in an effort to distance himself from the GOP, but possibly in a mistake of a first time campaigner.

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9 thoughts on “GOP Candidate for WI Senate Ron Johnson on “Producers vs. Parasitic Non-Producers”

  1. Don’t worry – I guarantee you he will face a hell of a lot more tough questions over then next few months from the likes of the Journal Sentinel than Feingold has over the years he’s run for & held the seat. Which is half right – coming out of nowhere, vet him thoroughly. But I’ll be shocked if the coverage is anything close to balanced.

    And to the parasite stuff – while there are obviously extremists who take it that far, your slant does the same thing in the opposite direction. A reasonable person would read it and understand that people doing their best but either incapable or just “down on their luck” as they used to say are not the parasites. It’s those who are capable and choose slack off and take advantage of the hard work of others.

  2. Have you read Atlas Shrugged all the way through? Have you read Milton Friedman’s “Capitalism and Freedom?” The non-producers that Rand hates are not those who are disabled or unable to work due to old-age. The non-producers are those who are capable of working or contributing but would rather not or would rather take the work of others and use it for themselves in the name of “fairness.” The symbol of this in “Atlas Shrugged” is Reardon Steel. This miracle of modern technology was going to change manufacturing, but Reardon’s competitors couldn’t come close to replicating it and successfully got the government to take the formula from him and give it to his competitors who used it as a novelty item, not as the transformational material it was. They squandered what Reardon had produced because they didn’t appreciate or understand it’s importance – precisely because they did not create it themselves.

    That’s the type of parasite Rand highlighted. Or Dagny Taggart’s incompetent brother who didn’t care about making the railroad work, but just wanted to enjoy the money and fame of being the CEO. He craved the praise of government officials, but not of his customers or employees and ran the company into the ground. They are not sympathetic characters. Anyone who took pride in their work and were willing to work hard were lauded in Rand’s vision. Not everyone in Gault’s Gulch was a titan of industry. Many just wanted to work and be left alone by social engineers.

  3. I’ve worked hard for everything I have, barely graduated high school and have been through a hard school of knocks.

    I pay nearly $2000 to the feds each month. I have a moderate house built in the 60’s my wife and I could afford, we don’t have a lot of money leftover after the bills are paid.

    No offense to them but I have friends who have been out of work for over a year but unemployment pays the bills so why the hell would they bother looking for a job? Yes they are quite capable. No I don’t think they are ‘parasites’, they’ve been paying in all their life so why not take a break.

    Yep. When the benefits run out, they will look for a job.

    Tax withholding should be stopped in it’s tracks. Everyone should receive their pay in its entirety on Friday and then have to WRITE A CHECK every week to the government for all their genius programs to understand what’s at stake when America can’t balance it’s books.

    My father told me all my life. “Son, you’re a Delgado. You’re never going to win anything, no one is ever give you anything for free and you’re going to have to work hard for everything you get.”

    He was right. Forget about politics, if you spend more than you take in you will go bankrupt. It’s that simple. America is bankrupt.

    Hector

    1. Hector, you’re absolutely right about spending more than you take in, but spending more than the govt. takes in is a problem that’s not exclusive to either party. I absolutely believe the govt. can provide services and still balances its books, but it’s going to take a tremendous amount of political will to do so.

  4. I couldn’t agree more. Both parties have been doing this for a very long time and it has to stop. Stop when is the question. Also we depend on the government for some services I’m not willing to do without and I don’t mind paying my fair share. My main concern is with the reckless spending. When i’m $30000 in debt i’m not buying a BMW. The government pays billions in interest on their debt alone and they don’t get it? A third of every dime they spend is borrowed? Tell me how that works.

    Someday when everything collapses we will regret all this.

    Hector

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