I’m curious as to what others think about Ayn Rand and Objectivism.
When I first started reading about as well as works from Ayn Rand, I was really impressed.
I really enjoy her short essay The Monument Builders
But then I hear her speech from Philosophy Who Needs It and wonder why is she speaking at West Point? Does she not know that West Point is directly affiliated with ‘The Monument Builders’. Was Ayn Rand pressured into supporting the militant right? I don’t get it… I feel like shes a whole different person in this speech.
She can be a different person than you think she is; but bluntly put: you can find better cult personalities than Rand.
I watched a video of her talking on a talk show I believe in the 80’s. They asked about her views on the Middle East and Israel, and she said we (we?) should support Israel because they are more technologically advanced. Seemed like a pretty shallow reason to support Israel and their aggression.
Ayn Rand’s “Philosophy” collection is what got me started in reading philosophy. I have since come to regard her with some level of contempt. Rothbard is a better personality and he does her justice here.
I think that Rand has fallen 1 place back in the USA as the most known and respected minarchist and that place was take by none other than Ron Paul. But they both are still minarchists and therefore do not believe completely in these principals:
I don’t like Ayn Rand for several reasons. Some of the reasons I don’t like her are as follows:
Her defense of intellectual property.
Her opposition to confederalism.
Her foreign policy (partially because she endorsed total war and partially because she thinks the U.S. gov should support Israel as Bert mentioned).
She did not realize that user fees for government revenue were not the same thing as taxes.
Her emphasis on selfishness as a virtue. I don’t think it’s universally a vice, but it’s not universally a virtue either.
@Bogart: Dr. Ron Paul is an anarchist as the state is incompatible with what he advocates… at least I can only make the conclusion that he’s an anarchist.
This, especially. Self-interest (the individual’s natural aversion to pain and natural affinity for pleasure) should not be confused with selfishness which is just bad manners or social ineptitude. Gordon Gekko is essentially echoing the Randian position when he states, “Greed - for lack of a better word - is good.” No, greed is not good and this strawman of pro-free-market, pro-liberty philosophy is used to great advantage by the very enemies of this philosophy.
What Rand’s exaggerated version of liberal philosophy distorts is the true principle that morality can only be judged by each individual on the basis of his own calculation - what is better or worse for himself. Altruism is not the result of some kind of perverse self-hatred, it is the result of brain wiring and social memes that make the internal rewards from helping another person pay off more - psychologically - than the very real material costs incurred in helping them.
And the point that the economists have been trying to make for at least two centuries now is that it wouldn’t matter even if people were completely *un-*altruistic - the social order does not rely on heroic acts of self-exhaustion on the behalf of strangers. Hoppe says it well:
So, even if humans were as bad as Hobbes paints them out, social order is still possible, in fact, inevitable. But the good news is that - not only is man capable of social order without Leviathan even if he were as bad as Hobbes makes out - but man is, in fact, much more decent and cooperative than modern scholarship gives him credit for.
“Dr. Ron Paul is an anarchist as the state is incompatible with what he advocates… at least I can only make the conclusion that he’s an anarchist.”
He is…not…an…anarchist. Honestly, how many times does this topic need to be brought up? He believes in a constitutionally limited government. He is for a constitutional republic. He is not an anarchist.
Well it wouldn’t be paid for with taxation since Dr. Paul said point blank on CNN that taxation is theft. Therefore it would only be supported with voluntary donations if it were to exist. And he supports secession so put those two points together and you have anarchy. I’m for a small, constitutionally limited government along with Ron Paul when compared with the behemoth we have today. We would go much further when we got there, but Ron Paul and I will cross that bridge when we get to it:
You stole the essay from a pirate website and are linking it to encourage others to steal?
If you are asking why Ayn Rand supports our military and any other government agencies properly policing individual rights, including intellectual property rights, the answer is:
@John_Donohue isn’t this another place where she contridicts herself. She is very much against piracy, yet Ragnar Danneskjöld is potrayed as some what of a good guy he is befriended by John Galt.
Also Ayn Rand herslef once said “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” And in this case it certainly won’t be the deseased Rand who will stop this pirate.
@Anarcho-libertarian Ron Paul may in theory be an Anarchist but if his actions do not line up with his words then how much does that really matter.
Would John Galt seek to change the nation through playing the games set up by parasites of society?
Even if Ayn Rand isn’t a complete Anarcho-Capitalist her character John Galt’s plan is certainly more Anarcho-Capitalist then Ron Paul’s. Ron Paul’s solution is collectivist by nature and uses a collectivist system to implement it. Individuals have much higher chances of finding and creating freedom in their own lives then achieving some golden age of freedom created by over taking the voting system.
For example the small town where a cop sees people breaking an arbituary law but looks away in order to maintain freedom in the city. Two people who engage in barter or under the table exchanges of good and services. These examples create small bubbles of freedom for individuals and things like this are happening all the time around the world.
When you put effort into an election you don’t create these small bubbles, rather you put all your eggs into one basket of having someone get elected.
“It’s not the people who vote that count. It’s the people who count the votes.” (Josef Stalin)
“Well it wouldn’t be paid for with taxation since Dr. Paul said point blank on CNN that taxation is theft. Therefore it would only be supported with voluntary donations if it were to exist. And he supports secession so put those two points together and you have anarchy. I’m for a small, constitutionally limited government along with Ron Paul when compared with the behemoth we have today. We would go much further when we got there, but Ron Paul and I will cross that bridge when we get to it”
Yes he does say personal income taxation is theft but he is fine with slapping excise and user taxes on corporations for funding the government. And supporting seccession does not make you an anarchist. You can be a secessionist and not a anarchist. Just because you support the joining or leaving of a state from a group of states does not infer that you are against the state. I have seen all the videos saying Ron Paul is a voluntarist or an anarchist. They take sentence quotes from his works and try to infer more meaning out of them then is truly there. He is for a republic, he is for a constitutionally limited government that respects the rights of people but he will never go further then that. He will not call for the end of the state, just an limiting. So stop the nonsense.
His actions line up perfectly with his words. As an anarchist I want no state. And if I had to choose between a big state or a small state, I would choose a small state. Anything I do to work toward a small state is perfectly in line with those principles. “But you’re advocating for a small state then!!!” No, ultimately I’m not. Nor is Ron Paul.
So you disagree with the tactic that Ron Paul is taking to abolish the State. Fine. Maybe your tactic is a better one to use on the battlefield in the arena of ideas. But just because Ron Paul uses a worthless tactic in your eyes doesn’t mean he is on the other team.
a) the Danneskjöld sequence is not a contradiction; proper government had already failed in the secenario of that book, Danneskjöld confiscated the gold of predators. And Rand put that sequence, a reverse Robing Hood, in for ironic effect. Rand is completely consistent on the scope. natuire and need for one, objective ultimate arbiter for the rectification of violations of rights.
b) no, pirates such as the OP and piratebay won’t be stopped by literally the hand of Ayn Rand. Her ideas, and those of thinkers that share them about government, are the ones who can. These do not include anarchists.
She works in the same sense as the Marquis de Sade , ghetto rap, or reality TV works…
Showing how “second rate” and popular literature / art subverts, is more marketable, and social than what left wing / intellectual class flakes tend to like no matter how much they try to take over media outlets be it the internet, tv, the printing press, or the alphabet. Screw esotericism, give me dime store pulp novels and second rate, but entrtaining philosophizing…it is still more correct and literaly more valuble than the subsidized esoteric nonsense of bohemian academia.
Actually it would be kind of funny, and perhaps in a sense an unassailably strong position if we held up; Ayn Rand, de Sade, Jersey Shore, and Lil John as the high water artistic “symbols” for the market mentality.
If the bohemians/artists/intellectuals, a subset of our class (the bourgoise class), wants to get cutesy with nonsense fashionable language and play épater le bourgeois, let’s have a bit of our own fun at our class brethren’s expens and play épaterlabohème**.** If nothing else it’s fun to fuck around with their very own Platonic / conservative values.
As Ron Paul stated in an interview with Glenn Beck when asked what kinds of taxation he thought was OK, “ANYTHING is better than the income tax.” So just like a smaller government is more just than a larger government, so are user and excise taxes more just than an income tax (within reason). For example, Ron Paul has explained that he supports user fees on visiting the national parks out west because if only 5% of the population visits the parks, why should 95% of the population be forced to pay for the 5%? Sound logic. And a good step in the anarchist direction.
If you support secession at a state level, then there is no logical barrier to allowing for a county to secede from a state, a neighborhood to secede from a county, and finally an individual from a neighborhood. Ron Paul starts the logic train in people’s minds and leaves the writing on the wall unspoken. He leaves it unspoken so that he isn’t considered too extreme and unelectable, which would take away the bully pulpit he has as a politician which enables him to push back the frontiers of ignorance. This is exactly what I would do if I were in his position.
Judge Andrew Napolitano does the same thing. He is also an anarchist but on “Freedom Watch” he, like Ron Paul, constantly touted following the non-anarchist Constitution because it is a step in the right direction. A participant at the 2010 Mises University said, “I think you’re an anarchist and you don’t know it yet” and he reponded, “Do you hear me denying anything?”:
