Why libertarianism is closer to Stalinism than you think
Posted by livefree-NH 9 years, 5 months ago to Politics
Or the subtitle, "Rand Paul and the sordid purity of libertarianism". I don't know where to begin, that is, trying to find one thing correct in this rant.
Mudslinging claptrap. He has Rand wrong. He has libertarianism wrong. Libertarianism certainly did not grow from Objectivism. Rand in her time, relating to the libertarians of her time, had no interest in their ism. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/libert...
Of course he must slime that which he fears and denounce its practicality. Of course, since neither have truly been implemented before, he has no actual evidence.
I think HIS ideology and intolerance is showing.
I had to stop laughing before quoting a question he asks--
"But how, exactly, does one get government "interference" out of business when business wants it there most of the time?"
Three cheers for all the businesses who want to waste time and money on government intrusion most of the time.
Old dino has never been a businessman but he knows laughable crap when he reads it.
They are there but I think they amount to a minority.
He's attacking a straw man.
especially using such terms as "authoritarian". As
a matter of fact, she repudiated the Libertarian Part-
y, calling them "hippies-of-the-right [hyphens or not,
I don't remember] who want to play at politics
without philosophy..."
Now I am being reminded of both of those occurrences again. It does not matter how specious the argument is, just whether or not some telling phrase 'sticks'.
Jan
see Palin as "crazy"? No surprise there....
One can write a book on what Wolfe got wrong in this article.
Move along, nothing to see here.
Sad thing is that so many voters don't realize just how irrational this is.
That was as jaw-droppingly as off-the-mark as this current piece of trash, including its claim that her ideas "inevitably lead to dictatorship".
It was interesting that to verify my recollection of the quote, I Googled and found it in yet another anti-Rand piece (of crap) from 2014, on a Catholic web site whose tag line is: "Hosting the Conversation on Faith". How surprising. The author was not very original, as the piece was mostly lengthy quotes from Chambers' article, with his own approving filler around it.
It has always puzzled me how seemingly intelligent people can get things so very, very wrong. Well, maybe not really.
My "favorite" from personal experience was when I found my older brother (a doctoral candidate in psychology at the time) wrapping a Christmas present for his best friend, apparently to impart some enlightenment upon him. They were two books: Atlas and BF Skinner's "Beyond Freedom and Dignity". He had read Atlas on my recommendation, but apparently not Rand's scathing review of Skinner's book in her newsletter.
Extreme jaw-drop and speechless moment for me. My brother explained he considered them as making similar points about "elitism", his own worldview. Huh?
Yes, folks, fear and irrationality are in the air, be prepared. But then again, that's an unnecessary reminder to Gulchers.
I would add Wolfe is right that libertarianism has trouble as a practical view in today's politics.
But two things are needed to make liberty more popular:
1) Gradualism.We need more liberty now, and pure liberty can come along down the road.
2) Ideals. We need to teach people that capitalism is ideal.
Nevertheless, I don't see this control over her own creation in the slightest as even hinting of Stalinism.
As far as all of the "inner circle" and "personal" stuff, I was a few steps removed from it when I moved to NYC in 1976, but I saw a little. Some of it bothered a lot of people I knew, but compared to her work and eternal legacy, that didn't amount to anything to me, either.
After all, everyone thinks (incorrectly) that the market was completely to blame for the financial crisis, right? See my review of a (non-libertarian) book that surveys the causes, yet comes to the wrong conclusions: http://reasonpapers.com/wp-content/uploa...
That is a good example of libertarianism being right and society being wrong...but it is libertarianism that is discarded. I conclude that society is delusional.
Just shutting down the Fed would cause a financial panic. And very few people understand why that would even be a good thing in the long run. Typical histories of the economy favorably compare the Fed era to the panics and instability of the 19th Century. I don't think that interpretation is fair, but it's standard and the rebuttal is not obvious.
For what it's worth, I don't think government was wholly to blame for the financial crisis. There was private irrationality, too: http://atlassociety.org/commentary/comme...
If we agree that the Fed is a key source of economic trouble and that, ideally, it would be disbanded, then we can talk about technique and timing. If, however, you believe the Fed is good for the economy, then I can understand you would be horrified by the thought of getting rid of it.
First we must agree on the goal, then we can work on the incremental steps to reach that goal. Libertarianism is not all-or-nothing. Anything that moves the ball toward the freedom goal is a positive and will generate benefits for society. So while I'd like to see the IRS and the Income Tax repealed in its' entirety, I'll take a 10% reduction as a good first step. While I believe the Fed is a cancer on our economy and should be abolished as quickly as possible, I'll take revoking legal tender laws as a big step forward.
http://reason.com/blog/2015/06/17/why-li...
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