And I say this as someone who considers himself, in large part, a “libertarian”—and who has, therefore, embraced more or less everything that was serviceable in Rand’s politics.
Welcome to the club! We also boast of Bill Maher and Glenn Beck. They have “libertarian streaks” as well.
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/how-to-lose-readers-without-even-trying/
Read the link for an anti-capitalist/pro-slavery screed.
What world is he living in? In the world I live in, the social democratic party line is the only one permitted to exist on the Net outside of certain sections of the blogosphere. This applies as equally to economics (Dur hur you are a Faux News watching neocon Nazi if you don’t think government healthcare is the second coming of Christ) as it does to immigration (anybody who dissents from the holy writ of multiculturalism and egalitarian-universalism is sent to the same forbidden zone as Stormfronters and the yahoos who pick names like “azn_power_124124591”, or gay black transvestites in rural Alabama) as it does to international politics (I can’t count the number of times people have accused me of being a Neo-Nazi or Mossad agent for arguing Israel is morally superior to Hamas).
Go to any random chatroom, forum, message board or whatever kind of site Reddit and Digg are which has a politics section and is not specifically dedicated to right wing or alternative politics (like, say, FreeRepublic, which is just as bad but in the opposite direction, Gates of Vienna, RedState on the right wing side, this site, the Free State Project’s, Attack the System or Takimag on the alternative’s side). Post something which is critical of what would generally be considered a social democratic point of view (i.e. government healthcare, that “greed” caused the recession and the solution is more government bureaucracies to manage the economy, that homeschooling is a plot concocted by “right wing extremists” and “creationists”, that “fascism” is a resurgent and ever present danger in the US (kind of like the stereotypical version of McCarthyism, come to think) and Europe that must be vigorously combated with hysteria and social thought-control and that “white privilege” is the cause of the world’s problems).
Maybe I’m just soured from my own experiences, but I’ve noticed that pretty much any discussion site not specifically dedicated to the aforementioned right/alternative views tends to become a social democratic collective with all the ideological diversity of a Red Guard meeting, and on many sites that I’ve only browsed due to interest in the non-political sections. “Rationalists” like Mr Harris, the JREF and Dawkins fan site tend to be little better. Just take a look at RationalWiki if you want a perfect illustration, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Maybe there’s some Objectivist version of Anonymous out there, launching capitalista raids against collectivist boneheads, but I’ve certainly never heard of it. and I’ve heard of a lot of strange things.
In any instance, I’m not particularily eager to have a “New Atheist” leader on the libertarian roll, let alone Bill Maher (is there any actual evidence he’s a libertarian other than his say-so? I’m pretty sure he supported Obama and his healthcare plan) or borderline lunatics like Beck.
Basically Harris’ argument is:
“How much easier would it be to fund what we want if we just…I don’t know…took the damn money? It’s sitting right there for the taking!”
Also I think Harris violated three of the myths that Rothbard addressed 30 years ago about libertarians.