[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]
Okay, readers of my blog know I have some serious disagreements with Ron Paul too. But, um, lordy. This is a bit psychotic.
And doesn’t this mean that the Randians are giving Paul the same treatment that Whittaker Chambers gave Rand? All this story needs is the line “to a gas chamber – go!” to complete the irony.
Does anybody know what it says? I’d be interested to know, although I’m not going to give them any money to find out.
Is it because Paul’s not a warmonger? Many Randian groups these days tend to think that’s a prerequist for “spreding the cause of liberty”
At the same token he’s the only one talking about the Gold Standard — one of their holy grails. Is war more important then Gold?
Tracy
They claim his monetary policy is deflationary, and that we know from the Great Depression that deflation is worse than inflation. (The days when Randians understood something about Austrian economics seem to be over.) Other criticisms include abortion, immigration, earmarks, and racist and/or conspiracy-theorist supporters. But as you’d guess, the biggest criticism concerns foreign policy.
Wow. I have to wonder why so many Objectivists are warmongering neoconservatives on foreign policy, which contradicts their own ethical philosophy in my opinion (of course, they tend to pass it off as “retaliation”, which is a ridiculous obfuscation). I have been a libertarian critic of Ron Paul for quite some time now, but here he is being attacked primarily for precisely what he is most correct about (namely, foreign policy).
It’s certainly over-the-top, but the reference to the wonderful Vincent Price movie The Abominable Dr. Phibes is amusing. Psychotic might be a bit hyperbolic. I also think Bidnotto makes a useful distinction about selecting on the basis of pragmatic or philosophical grounds between candidates. Nonetheless while I appreciate and may even agree with the approach, I think his actual selections are horrible. Ford over Carter, Nixon over McGovern, and Clinton or Benito Giuliani over Paul are all atrocious choices. To further undermine his credibility Bidnotto smears populism with little understanding of what it entails and incorrectly asserts that non-interventionism results from a divine origin theory of natural rights.
Cheers,
Bob
Bidnotto writes:
(Paul’s) priority has been to try to shift the Republican Party’s entire outlook on foreign policy toward his “noninterventionism” — in other words, toward the view already championed by the cut-and-run Democrats.
Is Bidnotto serious about cut-and-run Democrats? I could listen to Sean Hannity if I wanted to hear this type of tripe. As Bugs Bunny would say: What a maroon.
You know, when I see crap like that put out by today’s neo-Objectivists, it almost makes me want to reverse my own position not to support Paul and walk into the local Ron Paul campaign office here in Chicago and volunteer.
The neo-Objectivists are, obviously, far, far to the “Right” of Paul. Paul is to the “Left” of them in the best (original) sense of that term: anti-war and relatively more anti-authoritarian.
Much of Rand’s writing has had an enormously positive influence on me in recent years, but her self-proclaimed disciples today just scare the hell out of me. ARI’s pro-war propaganda is some of the most shameless apologia for mass murder–no, GENOCIDE–that I think I have ever read.
Heaven help us if they ever get one of their own into the White House. We could probably expect to see even more mass bombing of Arab countries and persecution of Muslims at home, all in the name of creating some “New Objectivist Man.” They’d just dress up the propaganda with an intellectual veneer and have the chutzpah to proclaim anyone who opposes them as being “anti-life/anti-mind.”
If anyone should be portrayed on a magazine cover in a scary skeletal graphic, it’s Bidinotto and his ilk.
Imagine that: someone is worried about a peace-and-free-market package deal! That’s an interesting turn of events.
I asked this over at Liberty & Power. I hope you don’t mind my asking this here, too. But it seems that one thing that unites the ARI crowd and the “more tolerant” Kelleyites (what are they calling IOS today?) is a fearful and bellicose foreign policy
Could someone who follows the Objectivist movement more closely than I explain this?
Yes, Rand was inconsistent. She made some bellicose statements and she believed to much in american exceptionalism for my taste.
But she was clearly a noninterventionist herself, who decried use of the word isolationist as a smear against those who advocated noninterventionism.
So why are her heirs united in smearing modern noninterventionists? How did the angry and militaristic part of Rand’s thought come to crowd out the rest?
What a bizarre world. Simultaneously, a magazine called The New Individualist depicts Ron Paul as Skeletor while a magazine called The American Conservative portrays Rudy Giuliani as a Nazi.
Rudy will be the ARI choice I can feel it. While disappointing to them in regards to immigration (though that can be spun) they can say that Rudy’s pro-infanticide, and pro-war, and has no anarchist ties, and definitely believes in the strong central state. He’s the new Randian Nixon.
Objectivists are the Scientologists of the Liberty Movement. snark.
Bob said,
“Psychotic might be a bit hyperbolic.”
Would sociopathic misanthrope be more suitable?
Well, it seemed to me that the endless war to “democratize” Iraq, Afghanistan, etc., etc., was exactly the kind of collectivist altruism that Ayn Rand detested. I’m terribly disappointed to see that none of her latter-day followers in the official movement think of it that way.
And I thought TOC/TAS was an alternative to ARI. I guess it’s a good thing I never joined the movement even in my most ardent Objectivist days in the ’90s.
“Objectivists are the Scientologists of the Liberty Movement.”
It looks suspiciously like LaRouchism to me…
An Objectivist supporting a state funded war of aggression makes about as much sense as Hillary supporting Laissez Faire capitalism. You morons need to re-read your Ayn Rand. Start with War- Who Needs It?.
Ironic how Objectivists are increasingly Messianic in the sense that they find critical fault even in a candidate as classically liberal as Ron Paul and seem to be waiting for some divine Uber-Politician that will lead them to the promised land. Wake up you psuedo-Randians!
I meant “The Roots of War”. Jeez.