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Wednesday, April 03, 2013

Anti-Government or Auntie Government?

The best words to describe your average Ayn Rand fan are "government beneficiary," although occasional splashy success stories among her fans do sometimes also manage to be government employees or government contractors.

More Dispatches from Libertopia here.

5 comments:

Black guy from the future past said...

I absolutely do not understand how it makes sense, to any intelligent and rational being, that the less intelligence you apply to a system (aka deregulating the market or getting rid of government altogether) the more intelligent it will run. (human society aka government) But hey, conservatives and libertarians were never that intelligent or rational to begin with.

*The first sentence sounds like a brickbat Dale. I give you permission to use it and adapt at your will. AHHAA!

jim said...

Hi Dale,

Do you read the Archdruid Report? (Better writing and more food for thought in a single post than a month of posts at IEET.)
In this week’s post, the Archdruid was talking about religion and the subject of Ayn Rand came up.

“Communism has its antireligion, which was founded by the Russian expatriate Ayn Rand and has become the central faith of much of America’s current pseudoconservative movement. There is of course nothing actually conservative about Rand’s Objectivism; it’s simply what you get when you accept the presuppositions of Marxism—atheism, materialism, class warfare, and the rest of it—but say “Evil, be thou my good” to all its value judgments. If you’ve ever wondered why so many American pseudoconservatives sound as though they’re trying to imitate the cackling capitalist villains of traditional Communist demonology, now you know.”

I thought that you might enjoy that critique.

Dale Carrico said...

Although this comment verged on spam I had to let it through because it began with the question, "Dale, do you read the archdruid report?"

jim said...

Thanks for posting my comment, Dale.

In rereading my comment I can see the structural similarity to comment spam. (my bad)

I know you have an interest in Futurists and their rhetoric. Although, I do not think that John Michael Greer (archdruid) thinks of himself as a futurist, he does write a lot about the future in a way that is very different from Robo cultist and Techno progressives. And I though you and some of your readers might find him a pleasant change of pace.

Dale Carrico said...

I was just joshing you -- I have read that blog on a few occasions in the past and found it edifying. Actually, I can non-ironically say that some of the nicest people I have ever known have described themselves as druids.