[cross-posted on Liberty & Power]
Charles has an excellent post today on patriarchy, rape, and the distinction between voluntary and spontaneous orders – extending some of the themes of our libertarian feminism piece from 2004.
Tag Archives | Left-Libertarian
Feith-Based Initiative
I just now saw Douglas Feith on The Daily Show saying: “The war has been longer and bloodier and costlier than anybody hoped.” At first I wondered: that sounds odd – why “hoped” rather than “predicted”? But then I realised the question answers itself: if he’d said “predicted” the counterexamples would be too easy to come by.
Turn That Frown Upside Down!
A panel of Federal apparatchiks is complaining that this proposed Martin Luther King statue is “too confrontational”:
Ah yes. After spending decades carefully blurring King’s image to make him seem safe and non-threatening to the political establishment, the last thing our rulers want is a statue that might suggest an intractable King.
The Shroud of Aristotle
Whilst surfing for something else I happened across this description of Ayn Rand’s philosophy as “really nothing other than a Solipsistic ethical system thinly shrouded with Aristotle,” popular only because “a lot of college age kids want to hear … a philosophical rationalization for greed and selfishness.”
I think one of the chief explainers of the divide between those who take Rand seriously as a philosopher and those who don’t may well be the interpretive divide between those who see her philosophy as a solipsistic ethical system thinly shrouded with Aristotle and those who see it as an Aristotelean system thinly shrouded with ethical solipsism. Obviously I’m in the latter camp.
So here’s a question for those in the former camp: if Rand’s ethics is just a rationalisation for greed and selfishness (in the conventional sense) and the Aristoteleanism is just a thin shroud, then what exactly is the contrast in The Fountainhead between Roark on the one hand and Wynand and Keating on the other supposed to be about? What is supposed to be wrong with Wynand’s and/or Keating’s modus operandi, from Rand’s point of view? If anyone can give a plausible answer that’s consistent with the view of Rand cited above, I’ll eat my conical hat. If not, then I’ll stick to my view that such readings of Rand are the product of a tin ear.
But Probably Not the One Who Supported the Registration Act
Rothbard is Iron Man! So we learn at the end of this piece by Jeff Tucker.
Now there’s an image that sticks in the mind ….
Grailward!
I just saw Hillary Clinton’s concession/victory speech, and all I could think of was:
