Mark Potok of The Southern Poverty Law Center Implicates Reading Ayn Rand for the Jared Loughner Shooting of Gabrielle Giffords
"There is a thread through the material that really seems pretty clear, and that thread has to do with seeing the government as an enemy. The books you mentioned, there's a theme that runs through all of them, particularly the Ayn Rand book: the idea of the individual against the State..." - Mark Potok, The Southern Poverty Law Center
So, what say you all?
Do you like Mark Potok and The Southern Poverty Law Center implying this?
Is it their view that any one who has read Rand might as well be walking around with a copy of "A Catcher in The Rye"?
Your comments are welcome.
Two Strike Policy in Effect
http://www.galtsgulchonline.com/posts/6d...
So, what say you all?
Do you like Mark Potok and The Southern Poverty Law Center implying this?
Is it their view that any one who has read Rand might as well be walking around with a copy of "A Catcher in The Rye"?
Your comments are welcome.
Two Strike Policy in Effect
http://www.galtsgulchonline.com/posts/6d...
SOURCE URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxRbaKqeOaI
The Southern Poverty Law Center: http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/print...
http://www.galtsgulchonline.com/posts/6d...
Demonstrably false.
"Anarchy, as a political concept, is a naive floating abstraction: . . . a society without an organized government would be at the mercy of the first criminal who came along and who would precipitate it into the chaos of gang warfare. But the possibility of human immorality is not the only objection to anarchy: even a society whose every member were fully rational and faultlessly moral, could not function in a state of anarchy; it is the need of objective laws and of an arbiter for honest disagreements among men that necessitates the establishment of a government." - Ayn Rand
Excerpt from the book "Without a Prayer - Any Rand and the Close of Her System" by John W. Robbins:
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Objectivism leads logically to anarchy, because no sovereign individual – and we are all sovereign, aren't we? – may be forced to delegate his rights to government. The sovereign individual has every right to refuse to pay taxes, ignore subpoenas, ignore courts of law, resist arrest, and take all measures necessary to the preservation of his rights, including one supposes, since government is entirely derivative, issuing subpoenas, forming his own army, and establishing his own courts and judicial procedures, and punishing people.
Rand, however, vociferously maintained that she did not advocate an anarchic society:
'I disapprove of, disagree with and have no connection with, the latest aberration of some conservatives, the so-called "hippies of the right," who attempt to snare the younger or more careless ones of my readers by claiming simultaneously to be followers of my philosophy and advocates of anarchism. Anyone offering such a combination confesses his inability to understand either. Anarchism is the most irrational, anti-intellectual notion ever spun by the concrete-bound, context-dropping, whim-worshiping fringe of the collectivist movement, where it properly belongs.'
~ Ayn Rand, "The Objectivist," September 1971, 2.
What is obviously missing in her attack on anarchism was any intellectual argument concerning the distinction(s) between her version of a free society and anarchy. Rather than explanation, Rand supplied only denunciation.
As we have already shown, such a distinction between a free society and anarchy would be difficult for her to maintain. Take, for example, her description of Atlantis (Galt's Gulch), the society which the most rational and most moral men on Earth create as a refuge from the "moral cannibalism" of the rest of the world:
We have no laws in this valley, no rules, no formal organization of any kind.
~ Atlas Shrugged, page 714
We have no rules of any kind.
~ Atlas Shrugged, page 747
We are not a state here, not a society of any kind – we're just a voluntary association of men held together by nothing but every man's self-interest. I own the valley and I sell the land to the others, when they want it. Judge Narragansett is to act as our arbiter, in case of disagreements. He hasn't had to be called upon, as yet.
~ Atlas Shrugged, pages 747–748
If these words are not descriptions of anarchy, a description of anarchy does not exist. It is most interesting to note that in the last quotation Rand contrasted her ideal association with a state or a society by saying that the perfect association is "voluntary" and "held together by nothing but every man's self-interest." The unmistakable implication of these statements is that states, societies, and governments are incompatible with her idea of a free society – that, in fact, her idea of the perfect association is anarchy.
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"Without a Prayer - Any Rand and the Close of Her System" by John W. Robbins, Chapter 6, Imagining Justice, Peace, and Freedom: Objectivist Politics, pages 198–199
http://www.trinitylectures.org/without-p...
http://www.amazon.com/Without-Prayer-Ran...
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"John Robbins is as stalwart a defender of a free society as I have known. His love of freedom – religious, political, and economic – motivated him to write 'Without a Prayer,' a brilliantly insightful analysis of Ayn Rand's influential philosophy. 'Without a Prayer' deserves to be read by everyone who loves freedom – everyone who wants to advocate freedom with arguments that cannot be refuted. Robbins furnishes the indispensable ideas – the intellectual ammunition – required to defend freedom successfully."
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~ Ron Paul (Republican-Texas), 2012 U.S. Presidential Candidate
Libertarian-Anarchist and political-activist Roy Childs recognized the fundamental contradiction of Objectivism as well in 1969 when he wrote an essay titled "Objectivism and the State An Open Letter to Ayn Rand," in which he points out that the Non-Aggression Principle, if not abandoned by the government which attempted to adhere to it, would inevitable leads to anarchy, stating, "It is my contention that limited government is a floating abstraction which has never been concretized by anyone; that a limited government must either initiate force or cease being a government."
"Objectivism and the State An Open Letter to Ayn Rand," by Roy Childs:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/1970/01/roy-...