Doug Rasmussen has a piece on Ayn Rand up today on Cato Unbound as part of their online symposium on Rand. Over the next few days, Neera Badhwar, Mike Huemer, and I will be posting responses.
About Roderick T. Long
The Empirical Me
I’m Roderick T. Long, Professor of Philosophy at Auburn University. I’m an Aristotelean/Wittgensteinian in philosophy and a left-libertarian market anarchist in social theory. (More about me here.) This blog, Austro-Athenian Empire, is a continuation of my earlier blog, archived here.
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I sure hope that “what’s dead in Rand’s thought” in the symposium isn’t … this:
http://www.stephankinsella.com/wp-content/uploads/texts/rockwell_tucker_rand.pdf
And this might not be important to anyone else, but it so happens that Michael Huemer is related to animator Dick Huemer, who worked for Fleischer and Disney and was a major force in developing one of animation’s earliest stars, Ko-Ko the Clown; there’s a website that covers the entire Huemer family:
http://huemer.com/index.htm
I sure hope that “what’s dead in Rand’s thought” in the symposium isn’t … this
I suspect … not exactly.
Michael Huemer is related to animator Dick Huemer
I did not know dat.
Who came first, Ko-Ko the Clown or Gertie the Dinosaur?
Joel Schlosberg-
Thank you for sharing this appalling, yet fascinating and informative, document. It’s like discovering a murder weapon.
What the Rothbard-Rockwell alliance did was to sever libertarianism from freedom of spirit and a firm relation to Enlightenment and individualism. The rebirth of the old libertarianism can never be possible without the recreation of a libertarian culture which structurally reverses that commitment. The original decapitation of libertarianism to reactionary antifederalism was made possible by libertarianism’s shallow founding in operational relativism in reaction to Ayn Rand’s impossible demands for philosophical conformity.
The mainstream of the libertarian movement is currently heading off an anti-intellectual cliff. If no one stands and refounds libertarianism- in words which can still speak to the best within us- then the ideal is likely to perish from history when the American Republic’s individualist legacy fades from living memory. Left-libertarianism can only do this if a commitment to broadly Enlightenment and liberal values becomes incorporated into its written or unwritten constitution. This has not occurred.
Rockwell and Tucker write:
As Pius IX wrote in his Syllabus of Errors, “the civil authority” must not interfere “in matters relating to religion, morality, and spiritual government.”
I think this is a misinterpretation. Here is the original passage from the Syllabus:
44. The civil authority may interfere in matters relating to religion, morality and spiritual government: hence, it can pass judgment on the instructions issued for the guidance of consciences, conformably with their mission, by the pastors of the Church. Further, it has the right to make enactments regarding the administration of the divine sacraments, and the dispositions necessary for receiving them.
Pius IX rejected state interference “in matters relating to religion, morality and spiritual government” only if it was directed against the Catholic Church. Here are some other alleged “errors” condemned in the Syllabus:
15. Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true. [...]
55. The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church. [...]
62. The principle of non-intervention, as it is called, ought to be proclaimed and observed. [...]
77. In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship. [...]
78. Hence it has been wisely decided by law, in some Catholic countries, that persons coming to reside therein shall enjoy the public exercise of their own peculiar worship. [...]
79. Moreover, it is false that the civil liberty of every form of worship, and the full power, given to all, of overtly and publicly manifesting any opinions whatsoever and thoughts, conduce more easily to corrupt the morals and minds of the people, and to propagate the pest of indifferentism.
Then there’s this.