(not)
I got this response on a forum with a bunch of fools on it, and thought some here may get a kick out of it. Unfortunately I can't respond as the "forum/thread" (or whatever it is) activity will come to an end soon, but it would be interesting to watch some readers here tear this rubbish up. Once I read "natural laws" I knew this would be interesting...
It appears to me that you are a Libertarian (or a Ferengi, a la Star Trek), and chances are you believe that all goods should be privately held and all services privately provided; you believe that it destroys the 'moral fiber' and 'industriousness' of humans to have anything held, owned, protected, or provided by the state.
It doesn't matter to most Libertarians that this kind of hyper individualized economics is objectively at odds with the natural laws that underlie the biosphere and sponsor human life on earth. It only matters that the Randian Doctrine remain 'pure,' internally consistent, and be followed in all cases without exception.
Like its hyper collectivist, zero private property counterpoint on the extreme Left, such absolutist thinking is a form of clinical hysteria -- a mental illness.
yeah, the "natural law" bit was hilarious... also the knee jerk reaction about Randian Doctrine somehow being the only voice in a libertarian perspective is unknown to me. They correlate libertarian with "pure" Randian Doctrine yet I've never read any Rand. So either I would be assumed by this person to be not a libertarian or I am a pure Randian and I personally don't realize that yet. But they are all assumptions, of course, by that person, but he or she did say something that adheres to property rights might be a Ferengi so blessed be he/she provided options as to who adheres to property rights - so maybe I'm a Ferengi and don't realize that yet either...
"I used to see a mountain as a mountain.. Thereafter.. when I saw a mountain; lo! it was not a mountain.. yet now of final tranquillity: I see a mountain just as a mountain as I used to.." - Master Yuan; molon labe
http://www.amazon.com/Liberal-Mind-Psychological-Political-Madness/dp/097795630X
Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid
Fools! not to see that what they madly desire would be a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring
I like this in the description "a massive transference neurosis acted out in the world's political arenas, with devastating effects on the institutions of liberty".
But most "liberals" (if we want to call them that) will just turn their content filters on at the sight of a book that sounds partisan...
And why does Rand seem to get virtually all the credit and attention for Libertarian ideas from non Libertarians? It's not like she invented the concept or anything...
Something I found particularly funny is that the quote basically called every Libertarian alive now and who ever existed "mentally ill". So if you're part of any mainstream political ideology that's not seen as "extreme", you're mentally healthy. But once you start questioning whether the government is doing more harm than good....whoa there, I think you're coming down with something...
It's like the loons thinking the sane person in the sanitarium is the one who is a kook.
As for Rand, non-libertarians love to hate her and think we're all her evil spawn. It makes their simplistic world-view easier to wrap their little heads around.
To darkness I condemn you...
Rand despised libertarianism and it's followers anyway, so it's a rather weird attack. It's like accusing Mormons of being Jewish fundamentalists.
surely she did it as a marketing (product differentiation) or cultish ploy more than anything....
I'd say Rand probably honestly believed what she said, so it's more likely she took her crazy inventor-as-ubermensch ideology and attacked a group of folks she saw as stealing her ideas and rebranding them.
Mmmh... please note the scary part about "clinical hysteria". if I remember correctly many of the XX century favorite tyrants had a penchant for sending political/economic dissenters to mental institutions. Dissenting with them was obviously a sign of "mental illness".
Yes, it's time for the Dr Goebbels show!
You know, that is a good point that is rather sobering. If a major libertarian movement was to start picking up steam and it was causing the government serious problems, I wouldn't put it past them to start arresting the "extremist" leaders of the movement for the sake of national security and peace...
Question about a comment above-- why do you think Rand dispised Libertarians? (Not saying that's wrong, just asking what the reasoning is as I'm not very familiar with Rand..)
Somehow, I managed to go from liberal democrat, to paleo-conservative, to libertarian, to an-cap without reading a single sentence composed by Rand.
Read my Nolan Chart column "Me & My Big Mouth"
And yet you'll still be accused of being a heartless objectivist.
Ansury: You know, that is a good point that is rather sobering. If a major libertarian movement was to start picking up steam and it was causing the government serious problems, I wouldn't put it past them to start arresting the "extremist" leaders of the movement for the sake of national security and peace... Question about a comment above-- why do you think Rand dispised Libertarians? (Not saying that's wrong, just asking what the reasoning is as I'm not very familiar with Rand..)
From Wiki's page on libertarians and Objectivists.
Ayn Rand:They are not defenders of capitalism. They’re a group of publicity seekers... most of them are my enemies... I’ve read nothing by a Libertarian (when I read them, in the early years) that wasn’t my ideas badly mishandled—i.e., had the teeth pulled out of them—with no credit given.
Rand was a fairly rabid advocate of "intellectual" property and effectively raised inventors to the level of ubermenschen. As such, she viewed the fact some in the emerging American libertarian movement used some of her ideas in a different context as a grave insult.
Absolutely, Rand practically ostracized herself from libertarianism accussing it of "stealing" her ideas (how`s that for intellectual property rights). Granted, she did advance individualism in the general populace, but, quite frankly I don`t think she was particularly that important or original as a thinker. So much for "purity" of Randian doctrine, whatever that means. In my case in particular, I got started with Rothbard, as I know many others have. As for the use of "absolutist" and "extremist" , I`d much prefer to be called "radical" which obviously poses a problem for these people since it deals with perspectives that are not their own. "Mentally ill"? I`d much rather be "mentally ill", than "brain dead".
Ayn Rand:Q: Do you think Libertarians communicate the ideas of freedom and capitalism effectively? [Q&A following LP’s “Objective Communication,” Lecture 1, 1980]AR: I don’t think plagiarists are effective. I’ve read nothing by a Libertarian (when I read them, in the early years) that wasn’t my ideas badly mishandled—i.e., had the teeth pulled out of them—with no credit given. I didn’t know whether I should be glad that no credit was given, or disgusted. I felt both. They are perhaps the worst political group today, because they can do the most harm to capitalism, by making it disreputable. Q: Why don’t you approve of the Libertarians, thousands of whom are loyal readers of your works? [FHF: “The Age of Mediocrity,” 1981]AR: Because Libertarians are a monstrous, disgusting bunch of people: they plagiarize my ideas when that fits their purpose, and they denounce me in a more vicious manner than any communist publication, when that fits their purpose. They are lower than any pragmatists, and what they hold against Objectivism is morality. They’d like to have an amoral political program.
I try to avoid wiki itself, but that's from the original source. I was particularly struck by the arrogance and especially the vitriol here. Maybe it was just a matter of the state of the party at the time since the comments were made long ago, but based on the text here it doesn't sound like it at all.
http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=education_campus_libertarians
A rather humorous playwright by Murray Rothbard on the subject in question. Just google "Mozart was a red" for the written version.
A side question: Is that Jeffrey Tucker there?
Edit: Hahah that IS Jeffrey Tucker!
'It is difficult to imagine any normal person wishing to meet Marx for a third time.' - Alexander Gray, The Socialist Tradition
Don't let it put you off reading her, though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMTDaVpBPR0&feature=related
This is why she is considered a Libertarian. Most things she says here are great. I think if you interpert her correctly and ignore the girly "omg strong ambitious energetic men tee hee" you get a lot of nice ideas coming from her
It doesn't matter to most Libertarians that this kind of hyper individualized economics is objectively at odds with the natural laws that underlie the biosphere and sponsor human life on earth.
like most of the criticisms ive heard of libertarianism this suffers from two fundamental flaws, a strawman version of libertarianism and a total unawareness of the methodological arguments of the austrian school.
"The first Accounts we have of Mankind are but so many Accounts of their Butcheries.All Empires have been cemented in Blood..."
- Edmund Burke, A Vindication of Natural Society
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