"Playboy" at the Atlas Society Booth at Freedom Fest
This "Playboy" story on FreedomFest, libertarianism, and Objectivism is great fun. In the end, I think, it will be very helpful to us. The one thing it accomplishes is to move "libertarianism" in the popular mind from a set of scare terms and smears to a group of individuals with real ideas, different ideas... and something new to say.
I am very proud that when the "Playboy" writer reached the Atlas Society booth, he encountered the radiant, eloquent, uniquely poised Chick of The Free Mind, Laurie Rice, and she had the presence of mind to say something perfect about what scares so many people about Objectivism: Yes, you really are responsible for your own life. We aren't urging Congress to mandate that; reality and human nature require it. Laurie said it so much better. Great fun; read it. I think she will get hundreds of marriage proposals... The "Playboy" Bunny is SO yesterday...
I am very proud that when the "Playboy" writer reached the Atlas Society booth, he encountered the radiant, eloquent, uniquely poised Chick of The Free Mind, Laurie Rice, and she had the presence of mind to say something perfect about what scares so many people about Objectivism: Yes, you really are responsible for your own life. We aren't urging Congress to mandate that; reality and human nature require it. Laurie said it so much better. Great fun; read it. I think she will get hundreds of marriage proposals... The "Playboy" Bunny is SO yesterday...
But I think the Playboy ideology had a good deal of Objective, or at least individual freedom, within it from it's beginning.
Very personable and interesting to chat with.
We met Laurie at the Atlas Summit and you describe her perfectly :-)
1971. I understand that "Playboy" treated Ayn Rand with more decent respect and less misrep-
rentation than some other periodicals. But I still
consider "Playboy"an obscene, pornographic magazine which publishes photographs of naked
people, displaying private sexual parts and mak-
ing public and common that which should be
held private and sacred, and have long been
puzzled as to why she would deign to give them
an interview in the first place.
Links like this between groups that are small government and focused on the individual need to be made, we need to work with one and other and become more organized in that process where we agree with one and other to get the word out. Without it we wont get the traction we need.
It does seem to me that there is a lot of overlap. I don't require exact conformance to my ideas because, as Treebeard said in Lord of the Rings, I'm not entirely on anyone's side because no one is entirely on my side.
Objectivism is based on the idea that causality exists and therefore the world is knowable. The logical result in political ethics is Natural Rights. Objectivism proper is based on Rand, but it is part of the Enlightenment movement of which, John Locke, Isaac Newton, Voltaire, Francis Bacon, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin are representatives. Now these people were not always consistent, but they all were committed to reason and objective reality.
Note that many people who call themselves libertarians (I did) believe that their ideas are based in Locke and Natural Rights. However, they do not realize that many of their intellectual heroes, such as Hayek, explicitly reject Natural Rights and Locke.
BTW: FEE (Foundation for Economic Education), an Austrian/libertarian think tank, has an excellent set of videos on the Scottish Enlightenment, which they consider to be their intellectual heirs.
From a pragmatic position, what policy differences do you see between libertarians and objectivists?
While I do not consider myself any political party, preferring to look at people as individuals and evaluating there philosophy and ethics as individuals. I have long considered myself closest to the libertarians. Part of the reason for this is that they talk reality and natural rights today.
Thanks for sharing.
But if AR had anything new to say about love and/or sex, I haven't heard it.
The problem I see with Objectivism in this regard is not its conclusions, but its use of circular arguments such as "The Ominous Parallels".
Since you do not think causation exists. I am curious how you can define circular reasoning?
Libertarian ethics and objectivist ethics are pretty much the same. The noticeable difference between them is that when confronted with the fact that all codes of ethics are arbitrary, the objectivist (those I've argued with at least) just repeatedly asserts that his code is objective fact and therefore anyone who doesn't swallow it whole is "irrational". (Or he doesn't reveal his thinking at all, but merely recites the meaningless mantra "A is A" until his opponent goes away.) That's a circular argument (or as George Carlin characterized it, "My God has a bigger dick than your God!")
The libertarian, instead, admits his code is arbitrary but goes on to explain why it's fair and makes sense; he points out that entities like "society" are nothing but sock-puppets with somebody behind them, and points to consequences of not accepting other people as sovereign, and thus makes a pragmatic case for accepting the ethics of liberty.
There is probably no such thing as libertarian ethics, but if there were is would admit that it is not based on reason and is based on the non-aggression principle NAP The NAP is not the foundation of ethics, it is a derived principle and libertarians confuse cause with effect in the NAP.
There is no such thing as fair and arbitrary - that is just emotional BS. And your argument requires that reason applies in ethics, which is inconsistent with Hume and company and therefore most libertarians. .