Monbiot at his best:
It has a fair claim to be the ugliest philosophy the post-war world has produced. Selfishness, it contends, is good, altruism evil, empathy and compassion are irrational and destructive. The poor deserve to die; the rich deserve unmediated power. It has already been tested, and has failed spectacularly and catastrophically. Yet the belief system constructed by Ayn Rand, who died 30 years ago today, has never been more popular or influential.
Rand was a Russian from a prosperous family who emigrated to the United States. Through her novels (such as Atlas Shrugged) and her non-fiction (such as The Virtue of Selfishness(1)) she explained a philosophy she called Objectivism. This holds that the only moral course is pure self-interest. We owe nothing, she insists, to anyone, even to members of our own families. She described the poor and weak as “refuse” and “parasites”, and excoriated anyone seeking to assist them. Apart from the police, the courts and the armed forces, there should be no role for government: no social security, no public health or education, no public infrastructure or transport, no fire service, no regulations, no income tax.
Atlas Shrugged, published in 1957, depicts a United States crippled by government intervention, in which heroic millionaires struggle against a nation of spongers. The millionaires, whom she portrays as Atlas holding the world aloft, withdraw their labour, with the result that the nation collapses. It is rescued, through unregulated greed and selfishness, by one of the heroic plutocrats, John Galt.
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Yes what a warm, fuzz, fun loving this B*&%$ was.
http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2012/02/not-every-millionaire-is-social.html
I prefer people that could think a thought though and write it down like
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niccol%C3%B2_Machiavelli
Little anne had no real train of thought. I do mean train and she was as her followers are cycle-0-paths going around and round on the same slow boat to nowhere.
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For Americans it seems easy to forget that libertarianism was initially a liberal-progressive (we really need to find a new label along with a new ideology) concept. Historically, libertarianism is mostly associated with anarchism – which, like socialism, has become an ugly word in the bare, shallow and meaningless garbage that passes for political discourse in the US of A.
REAL (as opposed to Rand’s and the neolibs’) libertarianism is the basis of our bill of rights. It outlines the rights of individuals – without overlooking the obligations of individuals towards society. 19th century anarchism was indeed a radical movement, but its basic ideas fit in quite well with a democracy (in the 19th century, hardly any country had universal suffrage, so democracy didn’t really enter into the ideological discourse).
Individual rights are of supreme importance – as long as they don’t interfere into the rights of others. Each individual is a member of a SOCIETY, and must weigh his or her rights against the needs of the many. The balance between individual rights and collective needs are the basis of social libertarianism, which I never tire of saying is the real belief system of the majority of progressives around the world… even if they are NOT represented AT ALL by any party.
Ayn Rand and her accolytes (eg. Greenspan and Friedman) are sociopaths, who found a belief system (aka ideology) that could be used to justify their selfishness. They took in one half of classical libertarianism and threw out the less comfortable half – that would have them actually belong to a collective society.
Fuck Ayn and the libtards – but don’t let them take over the concept of libertarian.
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