What is your view of Libertarianism and Ayn Rand?

[JonBonham]

New to these boards and I notice Liberterianism comes up quite often. Now I know I can read up on it from several different sources and what not, but it seems there are a good few of you here who hold some sort of viewpoint that can be classed along the lines of libertarianism, and I would like to hear your personal take on it and also your personal take on Ayn Rand and how much weight her views fit into your viewpoint on the matter. As for those with opposing viewpoints of negative views on the matter, please no ridicule, I am seriously curious and would like to hear reasonable discourse on the matter, thanks.

 

[Crezth]

Ayn Rand read a little bit of Nietzsche, a little bit of Aristotle, and a little bit of Kant and rolled it up into a philosophy with the consistency of air.

Link in my sig pretty much sums up how I feel about her "magnum opus" and entire worldview.

 

[civver_764]

I'd call myself a libertarian but Ayn Rand was anything but.

 

[Leoreth]

I've always been fuzzy on the relation between Rand's Objectivism and Libertarianism anyway. They are not synonymous, so I'd really like to know what the self-proclaimed libertarians here think about Rand.

If you want to know about Atlas Shrugged and how Rand tries to justify her philosophy there, I strongly suggest to read the link in Crezth's signature, where it's beautifully dissected. Thanks for providing it, by the way!

 

[Silurian]

Crezth excellent link

I can easily see why Rand's main fan base is teenagers, who are notoriously prone to feelings of alienation from family and peers; tend to cast their romantic relationships in overly melodramatic terms; are oblivious to the responsibilities of marriage and parenthood; and have over-inflated views of their own importance to the universe. In Rand, they have a prophet who tells them what they want to hear and satisfies their need for an all-encompassing worldview that fills in every gap of their understanding. Among adults who outgrow such things, this book is simply 1,084 pages worth of ethical blank check for any self-absorbed jerk who likes nobody, who is liked by nobody, and who desperately wants to believe that the only activities he values – the accumulation and possession of money and material goods – are the greatest form of human existence. It is, according to the mind that I choose to think with, complete garbage and I have no use for it.

https://sites.google.com/site/atlassucked/part-1

Welcome to CFC OT

 

[Smellincoffee]

My viewpoint is rather conflicted. On the one hand, I'd like to live in a social democracy, which means I partially support big government -- I advocate for universal healthcare, for expansive funding of education, museums, libraries, public radio, that sort of thing -- but on the other hand our American government is so dominated by profiteering that I want to disassociate with it. I hold myself to high standards, and anyone that would govern me must answer to even HIGHER standards -- and ours is nowhere close.

Also, I have nothing but contempt and loathing for Randian-style right-wing politics, which would lead to capitalism becoming even MORE oppressive because then no system of government would constrain it abuses. I reject, indeed piss upon, the notion that people's value should be defined in monetary terms. On the day that the last vestige of public government has been destroyed by private greed, I'll happily take up arms as did people in the Spanish Civil War. No one shall crucify humanity upon a cross of gold...

(I suppose my big beef with right-wing libertarianism is contained in my sig quotation...)

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Complete and utter dissociation with reality.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I consider myself a libertarian. I have enough of a Geoist influence to be considered well to the left of the Libertarian Party, but still well to the right of the original libertarians and modern libertarian socialists like Chomsky. I am rather annoyed by how too many libertarians oversimplify and dumb down the political philosophy, but the same can be said of the proponents of any political ideology.

I am no fan of Ayn Rand and would prefer that everyone just forget about her. (Go back to John Locke instead, and don't overlook the Lockean Proviso.) Too many libertarians today are fans of Ayn Rand, even though Rand hated libertarians. She claimed that they stole political parts of her ideology but rejected the coherent whole. The whole was not actually coherent though, and what they "stole" was around long before her. Objectivism contains some ideas that are good and some that are original, but none that are both.

 

[Leoreth]

I consider myself a libertarian. I have enough of a Geoist influence to be considered well to the left of the Libertarian Party, but still well to the right of the original libertarians and modern libertarian socialists like Chomsky. I am rather annoyed by how too many libertarians oversimplify and dumb down the political philosophy, but the same can be said of the proponents of any political ideology.

True. Unfortunately I fear that the "brand" libertarianism is corrupted by these people already.

 

[mangxema]

I'm libertarian-ish, but mostly in the social sense. That is the only word that I can think of to convey how little I care about other people's affairs. On economics, I'm pretty centrist though.

 

[wilycoyote]

Rand was crazy. Pure libertarianism can't work. However, slightly regulated and its the best government type out there.

 

[Cutlass]

I'm all for the basic concept of liberty. However, I think the minarchist approach to government is a hopelessly naive and utopian way to go about trying to have liberty. That view, that only government is a threat to liberty, is nonsensical. There is at least as much threat to liberty from private actors as there are from government. Always has been, always will be.

The only real liberty that exists for the average person is in the balancing of the powers that can take that liberty. And that requires an activist government that works for an equal liberty for all people.

 

[Antilogic]

Well, I'm no Randian, I can tell you that much. I have made an effort to try and understand her works, but it has been a challenge. I have attempted to sit down and read Atlas Shrugged a few times, and Fountainhead once. As literary works, I consider them terrible. TVTropes has a good breakdown of the literary elements that are present in the work.

Part of my criticism of Objectivism stems from the books, and my criticism of mainstream American Libertarianism largely stems from my criticism of Objectivism. I don't fully understand all the foreign versions of libertarianism, and I've heard that libertarianism was more associated with socialism in some countries, which sounds like the complete inversion of the philosophy.

The short story: I find the supermen amongst sheeple motif, the whiter-than-white superperfect good guys against the sniveling, evil cartoonish villains off-putting. It's over-done, the characters are monochromatic, and virtually interchangeable. Objectivism seems to be an utter misnomer to me--it's entirely based on the self-interest of great men, which seems to be by definition subjective. Beyond the traditional moral concerns of open endorsing greed and exploitation, it does not seem to be entirely consistent with the plot of the book or even with the free-market capitalism Objectivists pursue--after all, violating basic property rights, theft, or violence itself could be the easiest way to achieve your 'rational' self-interest to horde wealth.

Modern Am-Libertarianism is just dominated by these types. This has already been a long post so I'll avoid writing too much more here. It seems to have shifted to a political philosophy obsessed with the protection of wealth and the ability to make it at any cost to the rest of society, because after all 'Objectivists' don't care what happens to the rest of us. It's not in their self-interest.

 

[Zelig]

I don't take them seriously, they're either crackpots or teenagers on the internet.

Moderator Action: If you are going to make statements like this, could you please at least explain why you feel this way?
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[JollyRoger]

Moving towards a more libertarian stance on some things would probably be a good thing, but moving to pure libertarianism would be a disaster.

As for Rand:

There are two novels that can transform a bookish 14-year-old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish daydream that can lead to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood in which large chunks of the day are spent inventing ways to make real life more like a fantasy novel. The other is a book about orcs.

http://distributism.blogspot.com/2010/06/what-would-frodo-do.html

 

[RedRalph]

Rand had a very dim view of libertarians, did she not? That's at least one thing me and her have in common, though I have to say amadeus' consistency is admirable, I consider him more of a real libertarian than anyone else I've seen online who claims to be one. However, that doesn't affect my view of the ideology itself.

 

[Leoreth]

Part of my criticism of Objectivism stems from the books, and my criticism of mainstream American Libertarianism largely stems from my criticism of Objectivism. I don't fully understand all the foreign versions of libertarianism, and I've heard that libertarianism was more associated with socialism in some countries, which sounds like the complete inversion of the philosophy.

I don't know about the UK but afaik in all of continental Europe (though I can only say this for certainty in the case of Germany), Libertarianism is practically non-existent as a political ideology. Many of its positions have been absorbed with the European branch of liberty-stressing ideology, Liberalism (not to be confused with the American use of "liberal") which is similar in many aspects but has a very different history.

Rand herself is completely unknown here and as unknown as she deserves to be, imo. My first contact with her were political discussions on American-frequented international boards.

 

[Lord of Elves]

In the context that it is used most often, a particularly detestable world-view that idolizes selfishness, and considers any type of contribution to the greater good of society weakness or stupidity.

Brought to its furthest logical conclusion, it's feudalism. Why would we ever want to go back to that?

 

[Crezth]

I don't know about the UK but afaik in all of continental Europe (though I can only say this for certainty in the case of Germany), Libertarianism is practically non-existent as a political ideology. Many of its positions have been absorbed with the European branch of liberty-stressing ideology, Liberalism (not to be confused with the American use of "liberal") which is similar in many aspects but has a very different history.

Rand herself is completely unknown here and as unknown as she deserves to be, imo. My first contact with her were political discussions on American-frequented international boards.

Yeah, I heard that foreigners (well, non-Americans) everywhere except for the UK are largely unaware of Ayn Rand, even in academia and political circles.

The fact that it's a philosophy only maintained by your garden-variety survival-fetishist psychopathic Amer'kans should be telling.

As a personal anecdote, I love how 99% of all Objectivists I talk to seem to be the "get rich quick" thinkers, not really doers by any stretch of the imagination but always masturbating to their own brilliance (they're Captains of Industry, you know, only held back by the evil government and its legion of parasites).

 

[cybrxkhan]

When I was an angsty self-pitying teenager, I didn't find Ayn Rand's ideas really that attractive. Thankfully.

There are two novels that can transform a bookish 14-year-old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish daydream that can lead to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood in which large chunks of the day are spent inventing ways to make real life more like a fantasy novel. The other is a book about orcs.

This is my newest favorite quote.