Objectivism Research CD-ROM: Spiro Agnew

[Mark]

To anyone who has the Objectivism Research CD-ROM:

Would you search for
    Agnew
as in Spiro Agnew, President Nixon’s first vice president, and copy-paste here what you find, if anything?

Agnew gave a famous speech November 1969 excoriating newspapers and political commentators.  Rand might have praised him for it at the time.  (If it was only during a Q&A though it won’t be on the CD.)

 

[merjet]

I still own the CD-ROM, but haven't been able to use it since getting a new computer with Windows 10.

Google Books search result.

[Mark]

MerJet,

About the Q&A, I’d forgotten about Google Books (I own Ayn Rand Answers but it’s in storage).  Thanks for the link.

About the CD not working in Windows 10 – that is, the search program on the CD not working – it might be  possible to get it to work with a little trouble:  run XP inside a “virtual machine” and then run the program in XP.  You’ll need a licensed copy of the XP operating system.  Every edition of Windows 10 besides “Home” comes with the virtual machine “Hyper-V” already installed.

To change the subject, you have a very interesting blog: Correspondence and Coherence.
 

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Mark,

I have the CDROM and it works--in Windows 10 at that. Although it's a pain in the patootie because I have to use an external low-quality USB DVD and have to re-input the long-ass password every time I clean my computer, which is often.

I couldn't get the CDROM to work at all back when I had a version of Windows prior to Windows 10. I even spoke to Phil Oliver about it back then, but he couldn't figure out the problem. So whatever the issue is, I think the results vary from system to system.

(btw - I used to use CCleaner, the paid version, to clean my computer, but this got sold to a commercial company hellbent on spam, so I decided on the open source BleachBit. What a great little program! Finally I can take an endorsement of something from Hillary Clinton and report that my life was improved by it.  )

Agnew is not mentioned in the CDROM, at least he does not come up in the search. Neither does Spiro. Nixon, however, is all over it.

But here is the passage from Ayn Rand Answers, pp 59-60: 

Quote

What’s your opinion of the Nixon administration in general, and Spiro Agnew in particular?
 
I didn’t expect much from Nixon; I was still disappointed. I could criticize Agnew, but with reservations, because he’s the victim of the most vicious smear campaign I’ve ever witnessed. My criticism of him is the opposite of the liberals’. I was in the same predicament in the case of Joseph McCarthy, who is still being smeared. McCarthy was not philosophical enough to undertake the battle he attempted. The same is true of Agnew. What he’s doing is fine, up to a point, on the concrete level; only he has no philosophical base. Therefore, he is tragically sticking his neck out. He won’t accomplish much. But for the moment, it’s wonderful to hear somebody saying something that is not mealymouthed, apologetic, and middle-of-the-road. [FHF 70]

"FHF 70" means Ayn Rand's 1970 Ford Hall Forum Lecture, "The Anti-Industrial Revolution."

I am unaware of anywhere else in print where Rand spoke of Agnew.

Oops... I just went to Merlin's Google Books link. It has the same passage, although the pagination seems to be different than my copy.

Michael

[Mark]

Michael,

Thanks for taking the trouble to run your CD.  About the operating system business, an acquaintance recently got a computer with Windows 10 -- don't know which edition -- and like MerJet's her CD no longer works.  what's going on is a puzzle.  Could be hardware, could be the edition.

[merjet]

10 hours ago, Mark said:

About the Q&A, I’d forgotten about Google Books (I own Ayn Rand Answers but it’s in storage).  Thanks for the link.

About the CD not working in Windows 10 – that is, the search program on the CD not working – it might be  possible to get it to work with a little trouble:  run XP inside a “virtual machine” and then run the program in XP.  You’ll need a licensed copy of the XP operating system.  Every edition of Windows 10 besides “Home” comes with the virtual machine “Hyper-V” already installed.

To change the subject, you have a very interesting blog: Correspondence and Coherence.

Thank you twice. I have Windows 10 Home, but found how to enable Windows Hypervision Platform. The CD-ROM still didn't work. So I  removed it and reinstalled it. Then it worked!

[Peter]

“Nattering nabobs of negativism.” Spiro was quite a character. Peter

From Wikipeida: Beginning in early 1973, Agnew was investigated by the United States Attorney for the District of Maryland on suspicion of criminal conspiracy, bribery, extortion and tax fraud. Agnew took kickbacks from contractors during his time as Baltimore County Executive and Governor of Maryland. The payments had continued into his time as vice president. On October 10, 1973, after months of maintaining his innocence, Agnew pleaded no contest to a single felony charge of tax evasion and resigned from office. Nixon replaced him with House Republican leader Gerald Ford. Agnew spent the remainder of his life quietly, rarely making public appearances. He wrote a novel and a memoir that both defended his actions.

Quotes from Spiro T. Agnew. In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism. They have formed their own 4-H Club - the 'hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.'

The student now goes to college to proclaim rather than to learn. A spirit of national masochism prevails, encouraged by an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals.

This is the criminal left that belongs not in a dormitory, but in a penitentiary. The criminal left is not a problem to be solved by the Department of Philosophy or the Department of English - it is a problem for the Department of Justice. Black or white, the criminal left is interested in power. It is not interested in promoting the renewal and reforms that make democracy work; it is interested in promoting those collisions and conflict that tear democracy apart.

As for those deserters, malcontents, radicals, incendiaries, the civil and uncivil disobedients among the young, SDS, PLP, Weathermen I and Weathermen II, the revolutionary action movement, the Black United Front, Yippies, Hippies, Yahoos, Black Panthers, Lions and Tigers alike - I would swap the whole damn zoo for a single platoon of the kind of young Americans I saw in Vietnam.

I am not asking for government censorship or any other kind of censorship. I am asking whether a kind of censorship already exists when the news that forty million Americans receive each night is determined by a handful of men responsible only to their corporate employers and filtered through a handful of commentators who admit to their own set of biases.

Some newspapers are fit only to line the bottom of bird cages.

Three things have been difficult to tame: the oceans, fools and women. We may soon be able to tame the oceans; fools and women will take a little longer.

One modest suggestion for my friends in the academic community: the next time a mob of students, waving their non-negotiable demands, starts pitching bricks and rocks at the student union- just imagine they are wearing brown shirts or white sheets- and act accordingly.

I apologize for lying to you. I promise I won't deceive you except in matters of this sort.

Confronted with a choice, the American people would choose the policeman's truncheon over the anarchist's bomb.

[Peter]

Sorry. I couldn't get rid of the underlines and now my computer is acting up.

I ran CClean and nothing was wrong but I was slowed down for some reason. Some of those quotes sound like the "elites" who inhabit this portion of the internet. Well said Spiro, and to the intellects of Atlantis (OL)! 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

2 hours ago, Peter said:

I ran CClean and nothing was wrong but I was slowed down for some reason.

Peter,

CCleaner got sold to a company that likes to flood your computer with ads. So I no longer use it.

Instead, I use BleachBit. It's open source (meaning free) and endorsed by Hillary Clinton. That's a quip, but it's still a hell of an endorsement. I mean, the lady did use it to do illegal monkeyshines and she got away with it.

 

(I really do use it. And, so far, it's way better than CCleaner.)

Michael