Friday, February 02, 2007















Lindsey senses the need for more than just political pragmatism:




UPDATE: Slight revision.


Dismuke said...

myrhaf wrote:


If you want an illustration of this - along with a good laugh to go with it - check out this website.

When I stumbled across it several years back, I laughed so hard as my first thought was that it was some sort of parody that perhaps an Objectivist had put up poking fun of the various constituencies of the discontented that comprise the Libertarian "umbrella." But no - this is actually a serious, real-life organization. And it is actually a pretty accurate illustration of exactly what the result would be of any genuine compromise between the hard Left and the hard Right would look like. There IS common ground between both camps - and it ain't pretty and doesn't have anything at all to do with individual rights or liberty.

Myrhaf said...

That website is hard to believe. That is just creepy.

Dismuke said...

Well....I think they are a bit behind the times with the various constituencies they have under their umbrella. They need to expand their horizons and seek common ground with a very significant percentage of the world's population. They could modify their platform a bit and change their name to the Libertarian National Socialist Green Party Under Allah!

madmax said...

There are some Objectivists who argue that the libertarian movement is not inherently corrupt, that it is possible to infuse libertarianism with a rational philosophical system by reaching out to the Lockean, natural-rights based libertarians. Those who argue this are usually Objectivists from New Zealand or Australia where, from what I here, the libertarian party is far more "normal".

I wonder if this is true or if intellectual corruption and thus some version of altruism is mandated because of the philosophical subjectivism at the core of the entire libertarian framework. My guess is that libertarians here or anywhere will out of necessity descend into some version of the "Libertarian National Socialist Green Party Under Allah". The libertarian movement has done incalculable damage to individual rights and capitalism. Dr. Peikoff in his DIM course labeled libertarians as D2s, ie the most toxic of disintegrators, and an intellectual movement that was the equivalent of political nihilism. I cant help but agree with him.

Dismuke said...

madmax -

I suppose it is possible that in Australia and New Zealand the term might be applied to a different lot of people than it is here in the USA. There is really nothing wrong with the word itself - except for its deep association with the movement that uses it.

Take the following with a grain of salt unless you have heard it yourself from a decent source (I heard it a few years back and, unfortunately, cannot remember where and from whom - thus I say take it with a grain of salt) but I recall hearing somewhere that when Ayn Rand needed to come up with a name for her philosophy, one term that she though would be appropriate was "existentialism" because the primacy of existence as opposed to the primacy of consciousness is so central to her philosophy. But, of course, that term had already been taken by a movement very much at odds with hers and for her to use it as well would only create confusion.

A similar problem exists with the term "Libertarian" - it has been way too corrupted for it to be used by a better, more rational movement that may come along in the future. One does come across people, however, who do use it to describe themselves who I think are much better than the movement. Walter Williams is one who, I suspect, would fall into that category.

As for whether it is possible to "infuse libertarianism with a rational philosophical system by reaching out to the Lockean, natural-rights based libertarians." My thought is no, it is not even remotely possible.

What I very much do think is possible, however, is reaching out to rational, Lockean, natural-rights based libertarians and convincing at least some of them to give very serious consideration to Ayn Rand and Objectivism. But I agree with Peter Schwartz in that such "reaching out" should take the form of strongly emphasizing what is wrong with Libertarianism rather than drawing a confusing and distracting focus on those areas where there might be superficial "common ground" on narrow, out of context political issues and suggesting that any such agreement is somehow significant.

Like Myrhaf I, too, came to Objectivism after a period of considering myself to be a Libertarian. When I was in high school, I came across the works of Libertarian author Robert J. Ringer. Everything he said was so logical and made so much sense - and for the first time ever, I became interested in and passionate about ideas and started to take them seriously. No matter what his flaws or what he might write in the future, I will forever be grateful to him for sparking that "intellectual awakening" in me. As far as Libertarians go, Ringer, at least during that era (I have no idea what he has been up to in recent years), was very much one of the more reality oriented and sane ones.

During the period I considered myself a Libertarian, I never actually met any politically active Libertarians in person and I immediately dismissed and never finished reading the one book I picked up by an author from the movement's anarchist wing.

I look back and regard it as a very good thing that circumstances made it impossible for me to meet up with and become active with the movement - something that I very much wanted to do at the time. I think my discovery that a very large percentage of the movement's hard core, grass roots activist types (the sort that I would have ended up meeting) tend to be pot-smoking hippie types - well, I think that would have been profoundly disappointing to me.

Ever since childhood I have had a thorough and intense sense-of-life revulsion against anything that is in any way associated with the 1960s counterculture. Discovering that the Libertarian movement is dominated by people who are very much children of the counterculture - well, I have no doubt I would have become very quickly disillusioned with the movement and, very possibly, have never even bothered to check out Ayn Rand who was one of many people often quoted in Libertarian writings that I had not yet read. Since I already regarded the Left as Enemy Number One in that they were a bunch of power lusting statist thugs who were the ones who were trying to shove the counterculture down everyone's throats, it is very possible that I might have become so disillusioned that I might have turned my back on ideas in general and ended up being some sort of anti-intellectual type who votes Republican by rote on grounds that nothing better is possible or practical. This was all back in the days before there was widespread Internet access and finding alternative points of view, especially about movements which were already small and obscure to begin with, was quite difficult. (I remember when I discovered Ayn Rand I had to make a trip to the local public library to find out whether or not I would be able to subscribe to her magazine The Objectivist which had closed decades earlier and learned that she was no longer alive.)

Happily, I eventually discovered Ayn Rand who was able to help me make sense of why hippies behaved the way that they do and what it was that made it possible for the counterculture to take root in the first place. When I discovered Ayn Rand, I still considered myself to be a Libertarian and I recall being puzzled by some of the very negative things that the first real-life Ayn Rand fans I knew had to say against the Libertarian movement.

Had things been different and I ended up joining up with my local Libertarian Party chapter - well, the last thing I would have needed to hear is how I ought to read some author named Ayn Rand who I had not yet bothered to read but who is supposed to be a "fellow traveler." Maybe I would have checked it out - and maybe I wouldn't have. What I would have desperately needed is something like Peter Schwartz's pamphlet explaining in stark terms what was wrong with the movement I had become involved with based on what were, in fact, very decent, honorable and rational motives.

Oddly enough, because I never did become active in the movement and had little first hand experience with it, for several years, I actually thought Peter Shwartz's piece, while definitely full of valid points, was overstated to the point of coming very close to being an unjust hatchet job against a movement that I still considered to be mixed and which I thought had an active wing which was decent and well-intentioned, albeit misinformed and misguided. It wasn't until I started interacting with Libertarian types on Internet discussion groups and reading Libertarian websites that I began to realize that Peter Shwartz was 100% correct about the movement. The movement is corrupt to the core - but since it does, if taken totally out of context, make valid enough points on particular issues from time to time, it is always possible for decent people who don't know any better to become caught up in it.

So my view is the best approach towards the rational, Lockean types who have found themselves in the Libertarian movement is to recognize that such people do exist and to let them know in no uncertain terms exactly why that movement is not worthy of their support and sanction.

madmax said...


I really appreciate that you describe your experiences with Objectivism in such detail. It helps me place my experiences into a wider context. I have had similar encounters with libertarians on various message boards. But the clincher for me on the validity of Schwartz's essay was after I spent some time at Lew Rockwell's site. After that I completely understood every negative thing an Objectivist has ever said about libertarianism. The word "libertarian" is indeed beyond redemption.

面具 said...

