which is better, when speaking of Libertarians?
Libertarianism doesn't work. It's law of the jungle
for the poor,butt police & army protection , with
medical care, for the rich. Just ask Ron Paul.
Pretty soon, the poor will be eating rich, fat
livers with Chianti and farvar beans, in my estimation.
Libs are all now watching their stations
for anyone claiming to be of their ilk
who is not.
When erstwhile greedy neo-liberals want
to add some sizzle to their image,
they call themselves
Rand-y Libertarians before they go and
ruin the world's biggest economy, like
Greenspan just did.
the question is:
WHOSE the BIGGER PHILOSOPHICAL SCUM BAG?
Rand or the Libertarians
Checkitout: zerohedge
Ayn
Rand Was NOT a Libertarian
Submitted
by George Washington on 11/29/2012 01:07 -0500
Many
people assume that Ayn Rand was a champion of libertarian thought.
But Rand herself pilloried libertarians,
condemning libertarianism as being a greater threat to freedom and capitalism
than both modern liberalism and conservativism.
For example, Rand said:
All kinds of people today call themselves
“libertarians,” especially something calling itself the New Right, which
consists of hippies, except that they’re
anarchists instead of collectivists. But of course, anarchists are
collectivists. Capitalism is the one system that requires absolute objective
law, yet they want to combine capitalism and anarchism. That is worse than
anything the New Left has proposed. It’s a mockery of philosophy and ideology.
They sling slogans and try to ride on two bandwagons. They want to be hippies,
but don’t want to preach collectivism, because those jobs are already taken.
But anarchism is a logical outgrowth of the anti-intellectual side of
collectivism. I could deal with a Marxist with a greater chance of reaching
some kind of understanding, and with much greater respect. The anarchist is the
scum of the intellectual world of the left, which has given them up. So the
right picks up another leftist discard. That’s the Libertarian movement.
I’d rather vote for Bob Hope, the Marx
Brothers, or Jerry Lewis [than a candidate from the Libertarian Party].
[The Libertarian Party is] a cheap attempt
at publicity, which Libertarians won’t get. Today’s events, particularly
Watergate, should teach anyone with amateur political notions that they cannot
rush into politics in order to get publicity. The issue is so serious today,
that to form a new party based in part on half-baked ideas, and in part on
borrowed ideas—I won’t say from whom—is irresponsible, and in today’s context,
nearly immoral.
[Libertarians] are not defenders of
capitalism. They’re a group of publicity seekers who rush into politics
prematurely, because they allegedly want to educate people through a political
campaign, which can’t be done. Further, their leadership consists of men of
every of persuasion, from religious conservatives to anarchists. Moreover, most
of them are my enemies: they spend their time denouncing me, while plagiarizing
my ideas. Now, I think it’s a bad beginning for an allegedly pro-capitalist
party to start by stealing ideas.
Now here is a party that plagiarizes some of my ideas, mixes it with the exact
opposite—with religionists, anarchists, and just about every intellectual
misfit and scum they can find—and they call themselves Libertarians, and run
for office. I dislike Reagan and Carter; I’m not too enthusiastic about the
other candidates. But the worst of them are giants compared to anybody who
would attempt something as un-philosophical, low, and pragmatic as the
Libertarian Party. It is the last insult to ideas and philosophical
consistency.
[Question] Why don’t you approve of the
Libertarians, thousands of whom are loyal readers of your works?
[Rand] Because Libertarians are a monstrous,
disgusting bunch of people: they plagiarize my ideas when that fits their
purpose, and they denounce me in a more vicious manner than any communist
publication, when that fits their purpose. They are lower than any pragmatists,
and what they hold against Objectivism is morality. They’d like to have an
amoral political program.
The Libertarians aren’t worthy of being the
means to any end, let alone the end of spreading Objectivism.
Rand
also disagreed with libertarians on foreign policy. For example, most libertarians - including
Ron Paul - oppose military intervention against Iran, while the Ayn Rand
Institute has supported forceful intervention in Iran.
... Murray
Rothbard - founder of modern libertarianism, chief academic officer of leading
libertarian think tank the Mises Institute, and one of the most important
thinkers in the Austrian School of Economics - argued in 1972 that Rand was a
champion for her own aggrandizement, not for liberty or reason.
Rothbard
accused Rand -in a long but must-read essay - of being acting like a typical
cult leader:
The Ayn Rand cult ... flourished for just
ten years in the 1960s.... It also promoted slavish dependence on the guru in
the name of independence; adoration and obedience to the leader in the name of
every person’s individuality; and blind emotion and faith in the guru in the
name of Reason.
Since every cult is grounded on a faith in
the infallibility of the guru, it becomes necessary to keep its disciples in
ignorance of contradictory infidel writings which may wean cult members away
from the fold.
Just as Communists are often instructed not
to read anti-Communist literature, the Rand cult went further to disseminate what
was virtually an Index of Permitted Books.
The philosophical rationale for keeping
Rand cultists in blissful ignorance was the Randian theory of "not giving
your sanction to the Enemy."
In a development eerily reminiscent of the
organized hatred directed against the arch-heretic Emanuel Goldstein in
Orwell’s 1984, Rand cultists were required to sign a loyalty oath to Rand;
essential to the loyalty oath was a declaration that the signer would
henceforth never read any future works of the apostate and arch-heretic Branden
[Rand's number 2]. After the split, any Rand cultist seen carrying a book or
writing by Branden was promptly excommunicated.
