Rallying 'round the fountainhead for MS news.com
Once again, SI and this forum is just way ahead of the news on this one. I got to look it up, but I think Alan Buckley first raised the Randian defense of Bill on the antitrust front a year ago or more.
The Justice Department has "special master" Lawrence Lessig on its side in its antitrust case against Microsoft, but who can Bill Gates call? How about Ayn Rand?
A Web site devoted to the ber-capitalist philosophy of Rand--the writer famous for the novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged--has launched a campaign to fight what it calls the "persecution" of Bill Gates and Microsoft.
I imagine this is where the recent refs to capitalism.org originated from, one way or the other. I missed this little gem in the holiday season, of course. Somehow old Ayn just doesn't seem to be someone you associate with the holiday spirit.
The petition's cowriter, Robert W. Tracinski, plans to hand-deliver the petition to Judge Thomas Jackson's office and to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee next year. The petition has been posted less than a month, with approximately 500 signatures coming in the first week, Tracinski said.
Oh my, sounds like a real grass-roots groundswell there. At that rate, in a couple hundred years they'll have enough signatures to march on Washington demanding a constitutional rewrite, never mind statutory immunity for Bill. There's also the usual blather about coercion. Not to get into politics again, but as Forest Gump might have said, coercion is as coercion does. I wonder what the Compaq guys think about Microsoft and coercion, in the context of the spirited defense of the sacred icon. "We are not your supplier". Courteous, ethical, humorous as always.
Cheers, Dan. |
