From another thread:

Sigh.

To expect the welfare-warfare state–which taxes, regulates, murders, invades, bombs, hampers, conscripts, lies, imprisons, steals, and invades–which impoverishes us and hampers the economy, which penalizes innocent behavior and wastes trillions of dollars–which imposes antitrust, tort, FDA regulations and penalties on companies–to expect this agency to “create” legitimate property rights or to add “wealth” to the economy–and by setting up a state-run bureaucracy to grant monopolies to “applicants,” under the oversight of the bunch of federal “judges”–is naive and confused beyond belief. It is certainly not a libertarian view.

See also Regret: The Glory of State Law, where I wrote:

Now libertarian proponents of state legal systems are for some reason optimistic about the ability of state legislature and courts to promulgate just laws. Objectivist attorney Murray Franck , for example, wrote:

Just as the common law evolved to recognize “trespass by barbecue smoke,” it would have evolved to recognize property in the airwaves and in intellectual creations. But even if it could be established somehow that the common law would never have recognized intellectual property rights, this would not be an argument against such rights. The common law often requires legislation to correct it (for example, in recognizing the rights of women). Indeed it is a myth that the common law evolves to reflect, and that legislation always is in conflict with, the requirements of human nature. The same minds that employ induction and deduction to decide a particular case, making common law, can employ those methods to legislate universal laws.

Hayek also believed that case-law might need occasional “correction” by the legislature (see my Legislation and the Discovery of Law in a Free Society, p. 171). Both Franck and Hayek here express confidence that it is possible for the state–via its courts and legislatures–to issue “just” law. Well, I don’t know about that. Here we have a “bad” judicial interpretation of a “bad” legislated statute. Oh, well, I guess they can at least “regret” it.

• Kinsella, “Economic Calculation Under Socialism,” in Protecting Foreign Investment Under International Law: Legal Aspects of Political Risk (1997)

Regarding Paul Craig Roberts’s “I Resign from the Mont Pelerin Society“:

Interesting connected facts:

1. Formerly libertarian Mont Pelerin Society (which lists Hayek, Friedman, “Coase,” and others as “Notable Members”, but not Mises): its Treasurer is one “Edwin Feulner.”

2. Feulner is President of Heritage.

3. In “Saving Georgia,” Heritage Web Memo #2021, and The Russian-Georgian War: A Challenge for the U.S. and the World, on “Ariel Cohen, Ph.D.” buys into the Bush administration’s propaganda that uses “the Russian invasion of Georgia” as an excuse for further American hegemony.

No wonder Hans-Hermann Hoppe founded the Property and Freedom Society to take up the reins that MPS has dropped.

As Guido Hu?lsmann noted in “Ludwig von Mises and the Mt. Pelerin Society. Strategic Lessons” a speech delivered at the inaugural meeting of the PFS in 2006 (summary; program):

As classical liberal economists were usually not employed in institutions of higher learning (the teaching of economic science was not primarily organized within the universities), they built other institutions, from loose networks to political parties. By 1860 governments realized the danger to themselves that the classical economists posed. Their answer was to create their own economists and thus control the market of ideas. This strategy was first applied in Germany with the German Historical School or “Schmollerism” and soon spread to other countries, each with its own specific national feature. John Stuart Mill in Britain for example changed the meaning of liberalism into interventionism, while the Russian government thought that Schmoller was too tame and hired Marxist economists instead.

This trend continued into the 20th century, with Ludwig von Mises being one of the very few setting himself against it. After demolishing the case for socialism and putting the case for radical liberalism, he insisted that no “third way” was possible, as this would invariably lead to a loss of prosperity and in the end, socialism.

In the first half of the 20th century, a number of societies were founded by liberals to counter the trend towards socialism. By 1938, four schools of thought were represented:

Neoliberalism, i.e., practical and theoretical compromise with socialism; F.A. v. Hayek, for whom a small amount of intervention was permissible; Alexander Rüstow, who considered natural hierarchies as necessary for society; and Ludwig v. Mises, who stood for complete laissez faire.

Nine years and one World War later, these groups convened to form the Mont Pèlerin Society (MPS). At the same time, Leonard Read’s FEE in America was publishing leaflets explaining the ideas of Mises and organizing seminars and speeches for Mises and others. These activities were extremely important for spreading Mises’ thoughts, especially to young people. Ralph Raico, George Reisman and Murray N. Rothbard were among those influenced by the FEE papers. Without the FEE, the Chicago School would have totally dominated the field of free market ideology.

Mises was skeptical about the MPS right from the start; he was particularly concerned because of the participation of certain people. In 1947, he stormed out of a meeting, saying: “You’re all a bunch of socialists.”

Today, the MPS, a society of eminent scholars, mainly represents Neoliberalism. Therefore, the PFS could play the role that the MPS was originally designed to play: spreading the uncompromising intellectual radicalism of freedom.

(See also Hu?lsmann, Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism, pp. 871, 989-90, 1003-10, 1032, et pass.)

This helps place in context the principles for the PFS as announced by Hoppe at its founding in 2006:

The Property and Freedom Society stands for an uncompromising intellectual radicalism: for justly acquired private property, freedom of contract, freedom of association …. It condemns imperialism and militarism and their fomenters, and champions peace. It rejects positivism, relativism, and egalitarianism in any form …. As such it seeks to avoid any association with the policies and proponents of interventionism, which Ludwig von Mises had identified in 1946 as the fatal flaw in the plan of the many earlier and contemporary attempts by intellectuals alarmed by the rising tide of socialism and totalitarianism to found an anti-socialist ideological movement. Mises wrote: “What these frightened intellectuals did not comprehend was that all those measures of government interference with business which they advocated are abortive. … There is no middle way. Either the consumers are supreme or the government.“

***

See also:

Re: Capture of Mont Pelerin Society by Neocons

1. See also Jeremy Waldron, The Right to Private Property (Oxford 1988), p. 9 and n.17: “It is now accepted that a centralized command economy, in which all productive decisions were taken on the basis of the central allocation of scarce resources, would lead, in the conditions of modern industry, to radically inefficient and perhaps catastrophic results.17. 17. For socialist recognition of this point, see e.g. Nove, Economics of Feasible Socialism, and Anderson, On the Tracks of Historical Materialism. Also discussed in Stephan Kinsella, Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023), ch. 13, at n.69. [↩]

Update: For related posts:

• Libertarian Centralists
• The Libertarian Case Against the Fourteenth Amendment
• Healy on States’ Rights and Libertarian Centralists; Healy versus Bolick and the Institute for Justice
• Judicial Activism and the Presumption of Unconstitutionality (draft, 2005)
• Doherty on Slaughterhouse, Libertarian Centralism, and the Fourteenth Amendment
• The Heroic Gene Healy on the 14th Amendment: “If this be heresy—then make the most of it!”
• Incorporation and the Fourteenth Amendment: The 140 Year Old “Riddle”

From Mises Blog ; archived comments below:

See also:

• Libertarian Centralists
• End the Incorporation Doctrine – Ryan McMaken

Incorporation and the Fourteenth Amendment: The 140 Year Old “Riddle”

From 2008 Mises post; archived comments below.

Regret: The Glory of State Law

Techdirt notes in CAFC Judge Regrets Decisions That Resulted In Software Patents that one of the federal judges on the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit admits that he was “troubled by the unintended consequences” of the earlier decisions that resulted in the proliferation of software and business model patents. Well at least he regrets it!

Now libertarian proponents of state legal systems are for some reason optimistic about the ability of state legislature and courts to promulgate just laws. Objectivist attorney Murray Franck, for example, wrote:

Just as the common law evolved to recognize “trespass by barbecue smoke,” it would have evolved to recognize property in the airwaves and in intellectual creations. But even if it could be established somehow that the common law would never have recognized intellectual property rights, this would not be an argument against such rights. The common law often requires legislation to correct it (for example, in recognizing the rights of women). Indeed it is a myth that the common law evolves to reflect, and that legislation always is in conflict with, the requirements of human nature. The same minds that employ induction and deduction to decide a particular case, making common law, can employ those methods to legislate universal laws. ¹

Hayek also believed that case-law might need occasional “correction” by the legislature (see my Legislation and the Discovery of Law in a Free Society, p. 171). Both Franck and Hayek here express confidence that it is possible for the state–via its courts and legislatures–to issue “just” law. Well, I don’t know about that. Here we have a “bad” judicial interpretation of a “bad” legislated statute. Oh, well, I guess they can at least “regret” it.

Update: In the passage above, Franck cites in support Carl Menger’s Investigations into the Methods of the Social Sciences, 1883, pp. 223-224. Franck is correct that Menger’s reasoning here is similar to Franck’s, but Menger, like Franck, is wrong. Menger was brilliant on economics, but not so good here. In the passages latched onto by Franck, Menger goes on about the wonders of planned law–legislation, in “advanced” societies. What a central planning, rationalist mindset. All these Europeans seem to be legal positivists and utopian rationalistic central planner types. I guess they were in thrall to the then-burgeoning “rational” and legislated civil codes of Europe, which were enacted as statutes and which enshrined legislation as the prime source of law (legislative positivism): e.g. the Louisiana and French and other civil codes that started to be promulgated in the early 1800s. (See, on this, Herman, Shael, The Louisiana Civil Code: A European Legacy for the United States (1993), pp. 17–18.

archived comments:

Jonathan Bostwick July 31, 2008 at 10:29 pm

1. See Letter on Intellectual Property Rights, IOS Journal (June 1995) .[↩]

See also Van Dun on Argumentation Ethics and and Federal Judges Aren’t Real Judges, On “Unowned” State Property, Legal Positivism, Ownership vs. Possession,

From Mises blog, July 19 2008. archived comments below.

In Frank Van Dun‘s paper on argumentation ethics, [see “Argumentation Ethics and Liberty: A Concise Guide”] “Argumentation Ethics and the Philosophy of Freedom,” [see Van Dun on Argumentation Ethics; now “Argumentation Ethics and The Philosophy of Freedom”] there is a fascinating discussion about what law and courts and lawyers have become: not justice-seekers, but technical interpreters of artificial rules. Van Dun argues that equality before the law

was a great idea, but of course the powerful, the rulers and their clients, often enough intervened in court proceedings and made a mockery of the independence of the courts of law, replacing them with boards of officials whose main function was (and is) to see to it that their master’s voice is heeded by all. The judges were replaced with “magistrates.” The jurists, whose main concern is the knowledge and application of the principles of justice, were replaced with legists, whose main occupation is to know and apply their masters’ wishes as these are revealed in legal edicts and codes.[27]

Nevertheless, even in this day of rampant legal positivism, the ideals of justice still fashion the way in which those boards and magistrates present themselves to the public at large and to their masters. Unlike bureaucrats and diplomats, the magistrates posing as judges do not claim authority on account of their loyal subservience to their masters, but on account of their “independence” from them. Paying lip service to the ethics of dialogue and argumentation is vitally important for maintaining not only their position in society but also their status as possessors of a science of necessary things. While positivism rules the curriculum in the law schools, telling their students that only “the law” matters and that “the law” is nothing but the set of legal rules, edicts and decisions promulgated by the authorities that other rules in the same set designate as “legal,” the schools never tire of instilling in their students the sense that the implications of positivism do not apply to the magistrates and the advocates they are being trained to become. Like scientists, they should be aware that they are supposed to answer to a calling that transcends loyalty to any social or political regime. Like scientists, they should feel entitled to claim immunity from arbitrary interference, admittedly not as a general human right but as a professional privilege. And like scientists in the Age of Big Politicized Science, they should not have any qualms about serving and assisting the powers that be as long as the latter keep up the pretence of their “independence.”

Albeit in an increasingly emaciated and perverted form, the ethics of argumentation still has a hold on the imagination as the bulwark of civilized co-existence, no matter how obscure the distinction between a scientist and a government expert, or between a judge and a magistrate, has become in public discourse. However, its force is sapped when the point of argumentation in a court no longer is to reveal which actions are justifiable and which are not but merely to determine which party complied with some set of arbitrary politically imposed rules. Then argumentation gives way to a contest in which one “legal mind” tries to outwit his opponent in a game that turns primarily on one’s skills in combining officially recognized legal classifications of facts, legal rules, other legal data such as precedents, and currently fashionable notions into “a strong case.” Similarly, the ethics of argumentation and dialogue loses its grip on the intercourse of scientists if convincing the authorities of the social or political relevance of one’s research becomes a priority.

The argument from argumentation is not a mere academic artifact without any practical significance. It underlies the Western tradition of the philosophy of law and its impressive harvest of principles of substantive and procedural justice, which command respect even after more than a century of systematic “debunking” at the hands of scientistic positivists and others for whom man’s reason counts for nothing and his voice (“vote”) for everything.[28]

[27] For an etymological explication of the distinction between jurists (“ius”) and legists (“lex”), see “The Lawful and The Legal” referred to in note 18 [From note 18: For the argument that “freedom among likes” defines the condition of order (i.e. the law) of the human world, see FRB, and my “The Lawful and the Legal,” Journal des économistes et des études humaines, 1995, VI, 4, p.555–77].

[28] On the distinction between speech (logos, Latin ratio) and voice (phonè), see Aristotle, Politics, I, 2, 1253a9–15.

archived comments

Comments (6)

• Bruce Koerber
• This was the inevitable consequence of the moral relativity that emerged once the Protestant Reformation movement severed the link with Aristotelian thought and turned ‘justification’ on its head.Another way of understanding what moral relativity meant is to recognize that ‘justice’ became a man-made legislative act with no direct connection to the real source of justice which is God and His laws.

• Published: July 20, 2008 6:01 PM

• wuzacon
• As a lawyer, I agree. The current state of the law is a mockery of the law. No longer is the law knowable, even to lawyers practicing in the specialty or subspecialty. How can voluntary action take place when all transactions are observed ex-post under the minutiae of complex regulations or statutes?Not only that, but procedural rules block the common man from requesting assistance. Taking legal action is so overly expensive that it no longer serves most people. It is no wonder that people in the inner-cities live in a constant state of fear and violence.All in all, the law does not provide recourse because it has been separated from any concept of just principles. The law should be accessible, or at least not needlessly inaccessible, for all members of society; otherwise, it does more harm than good — all in the name of the public good.

• Published: July 20, 2008 7:49 PM

• Keith
• Quote from Bruce Koerber: “… the real source of justice which is God and His laws.”Well, there’s a scientifically defendable position.

• Published: July 21, 2008 6:45 AM

• Curt Howland
• Keith, “Well, there’s a scientifically defendable position.”Without getting into the “science” of the problem, the simple fact is that the “word of the gods” is variable. Which gods? When? What version of what book?This all comes down to yet another datapoint in favor of anarchy. The imposition by a coercive power of any one set of rules may start out OK, but it will always tend to favor the coercive agent.I’m very glad to see someone agree that “the law is unknowable”. It took a government to go from “demonstrate harm” to “a violation of title 15, chapter 1,100,382,118, paragraph 17, item 3.1415926535”.The question for me is not whether or not this empire will fall, but how many people will it take with it.

• Published: July 21, 2008 10:20 AM

• Bruce Koerber
• Dear Keith,I assume that since you read Austrian economics you are familiar with the methodology of subjectivism and so I propose to you that it is no longer possible for you to fall into the empiricist mantra of ‘unscientific.’I assume that you also are familiar with how relatively recent in human history subjectivism became recognized as a perfectly valid scientific methodology for the human sciences. Proof: Still most people in the world are completely ignorant of this fact.We must therefore regard subjectivism as being in its early stages of development. Surely you would agree that one of the characteristics of science is that it advances.Not to argue with you but I have found a way to
  scientifically defend the following position: “the real source of justice is God and His laws.” It falls within the scientific application of subjectivism.

  You are welcome to critique any of my books. The one that conclusively proves the above statement is “ETHICS of the Divine Economy” published in 2007.

   

• Published: July 21, 2008 2:23 PM

• newson
• bruce,
  i, for one, hope that mises.org gets around to reviewing your book. (not that i’ve read it, though).

• Published: July 22, 2008 10:31 AM

From the Mises Blog, July 14, 2008:

If Even Jefferson Was Bad…

Old Karen De Coster blog post:

McCosker on Kinsella on Palmer on Hoppe

Thursday, September 30, 2004

I am posting an what I think to be an interesting email from R.P. McCosker, on the Palmer-Mises/LRC People attacks:

I read with interest Stephan Kinsella’s excellent item on the LRC blog addressing immigration (”Palmer on Hoppe”), rebutting Cato’s Tom Palmer on Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s recent LRC commentary on immigration.

This is yet another instance of ad hominem attacks crisscrossing between Palmer and his paleolibertarian foes. I thought I’d discuss my own encounter with him. [continue reading…]

I’ve been discussing the issue of restitution versus retribution with some other libertarians. One of them maintains that force may be used against an aggressor only in self defense, or to compel restitution, but that it is unjust to ever purely punish an aggressor–that it is always disproportionate, and in fact violate’s the aggressor’s rights. I disagree. He also maintains that most libertarians are restitutionists not only in the sense that they prefer or predict a restitution-based justice system (as I do), but they also believe as he does that punishing an aggressor necessarily violates the aggressor’s rights. I do not think proportional punishment violates the aggressor’s rights, nor do I think most libertarians believe this. Participate in the poll below, so we can find out.

Libertarianism and Retribution

Does proportionally punishing an aggressor violate his rights? Yes No Maybe/not sure Current Results

Technorati Profile

From LRC Blog

update: Objectivism and War by Neil Parille

Centralist, Pro-War Objectvists on Paul

In Ron Paul’s “noninterventionism” fraud, my old friend, Objectivist Robert Bidinotto, concludes: “To paraphrase an old joke, then: Ron Paul is my second choice for President. … My first choice is anybody else.”

Ha ha. But I doubt that would include, say, Lew Rockwell.

Bidinotto’s latest attack on Paul is the cover story by Stephen Green in Bidinotto’s magazine The New Individualist: the “Abominable Dr. Paul,” portrayed as a B movie monster. Oh my. As Roderick Long points out, “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.”

Now we can’t tell exactly what Green’s article says about Paul, since it’s DRM’d (odd that the Objectivists would keep their expose of such a “menace” under wraps instead of trying to alert as many people as possible). But Bidinotto’s previous comments and those in his blog entry detail a few of their problems with Paul.

In his mini-essay appended to the blog, “HOW TO JUDGE POLITICAL CANDIDATES,” Bidinotto sets forth a seemingly ad hoc set of criteria that seem to be reverse engineered to demonize Paul. First, he seems to imply that non-intellectual, non-philosophical, unprincipled candidates for office–those who “mainly promote themselves and a haphazard set of only loosely related public policy prescriptions,” “pragmatic careerists like Hillary, Obama, Richardson, Romney, and Giuliani”–actually get a pass. They should be judged by a lower standard, precisely because they don’t have any principles to judge them by. (And remember, by Bidinotto’s “joking” comments above, he’s rather have any of these people–or Nixon or Ford–than Paul.)

But if you actually have principles, integrity, and character, even if you favor individual rights, limited government, and adherence to the Constitution, you are the worst of all–even worse than the execrable Huckabee:

“If consumed, Mike Huckabee’s social conservative porridge would put the GOP flat on its back for a generation. But Ron Paul’s deadly dish would put the Republican Party — and the nation — on life support.”

In other words, according to Bidinotto, you are penalized because you have principles. (Reminds me of Rand’s attack on Kantian idealism.)

What exactly is so bad about Paul, in Bidinotto’s eyes?

“But what of Ron Paul? He is arguably the most philosophical of all the candidates except Kucinich, and thus he must be judged not by his various specific positions and votes, taken in isolation, but by his overall guiding philosophy. That is what he has put at issue, front and center; so that is what I therefore believe we must assess.And that philosophy is a complete mess. In principle, it weds the following: the economics of laissez-faire capitalism (which I emphatically endorse); a religious-based conception of individual rights that leads him to appalling positions on the separation of Church and State, abortion, immigration, and certain other social issues; and, most dangerous of all, a platonic, utopian notion of “noninterventionism” in foreign policy: a view derived directly from his philosophical misunderstanding of the implications of individual rights, which would render America completely vulnerable to its enemies, destroy the security infrastructure at the foundation of international trade, and thus impoverish the nation.”

It is clear that the primary objection of Objectivists to Paul is his foreign policy views and non-interventionism. The other criticisms do not seem to be very coherent or really what bugs the Randians (indeed, Bidinotto admits as much: “If Paul had chosen to showcase and emphasize only domestic and economic issues, where his views and arguments are much better, I might be far less harsh toward his candidacy. But Paul has chosen to make foreign policy, where his views are completely irrational, the centerpiece of his campaign.”). What one wonders here is why an Objectivist–even one who is anti-noninterventionist–thinks someone other than Paul will be able to really “intervene” as the Objectivists think we should; clearly, this is not a reasonable expectation–so even those who are pro-interventionist ought to realize that there’s no Great Randian Intervener on the menu, and at least settle for lower taxes and increased individual liberty as as consolation prize.

And as noted, the other issues Bidinotto dashes off are not really what bugs Randians; it’s foreign policy. I haven’t heard Paul drone on about some “religious-based conception of individual rights”, any more than, say that of the Founders whom the Randians admire. Paul speaks of individual rights and individual liberty; he speaks of the right of people to engage in behaviors he does not personally condone or engage in, such as prostitution or drugs. What supporter of individual rights could find fault in that?

What are his “appalling positions on the separation of Church and State, abortion, immigration”? On the first two, I assume Bidinotto is referring to Paul’s federalism–his view that the Constitution does not authorize the federal government to regulate these matters. On this he is right. Bidinotto speaks of Paul’s “utopian” notion of noninterventionism. But it is Objectivism that has long held a utopian view of the federal government: that is is (or at least, can be–remember Judge Narraganssett?)–a benign protector of individual rights, and that it ought to have central control and “final say” of all legal disputes. The idea of decentralism and federalism, of having fifty state policies, strikes Objectivists as too untidy; not neat. It’s my impression that many Objectivists have such an obsession with order that they would rather have the Supreme Court give the wrong answer, as long as it was final; better than than the chaos fifty states’ approaches (no wonder they abhor anarchy). The belief that a central state can get it right, and should be given the authority to at least try, is what is utopian, if not obsessive-compulsive, it seems to me.

On abortion, Paul seeks to prevent the federal government from interfering in state laws regarding abortion, effectively overturning Roe v. Wade. Does Bidinotto defend the abomination which is Roe v. Wade? It is a clearly unconstitutional decision and policy. The federal Constitution does not empower the federal government to outlaw state laws that regulate abortion. If Bidinotto wants to oppose Louisiana’s laws on abortion, he is free to do so. But as I recall, even Rand implied that late-term abortion is a type of crime.

And does Paul even want to outlaw abortion? Not that I’m aware of. On his site, he notes that he has never performed an abortion; he has “authored legislation that seeks to define life as beginning at conception, HR 1094?; he has sponsored legislation “which would negate the effect of Roe v Wade by removing the ability of federal courts to interfere with state legislation to protect life”; and he has “authored HR 1095, which prevents federal funds to be used for so-called “population control.”” None of these policies would cause the federal government to outlaw abortion. At most, it would prevent the federal government from illegally exceeding its constitutionally authorized powers by dictating abortion policy to the states.

As for foreign policy: give me Paul’s “non-interventionism” anyday over Randian “nuke ‘em all” warmongering: on this, see the Ayn Rand Institute editorial War, Nuclear Weapons and “Innocents” (9/28/01) (see also Justin Raimondo on this: “Of course, Schwartz and his crowd, notably Rand’s “intellectual heir” Leonard Peikoff, have called for a nuclear first strike against the entire Arab world”); also Lynne Cheney’s Circles Call for Mass Murder (”Dr. Yaron Brook, the executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute … warned that “Islamic totalitarian states pose a severe threat to the security of the United States,” adding that a way to defeat these regimes “is to kill up to hundreds of thousands of their supporters.” This, he said, would “shrink popular support for extremist ideas to a small minority of the population,” instead of the 40% which he claims supports such regimes now”); Peikoff on nukes; Barbara Branden’s The Lepers of Objectivism; Yaron Brook and the ARI; Objectivism Online topic “Can You List Five Reasons We Should NOT nuke Tehran?“; ARI Attacks ‘Just War’ Theory, Advocates Nuclear Option.

***

Feedback:

From an anonymous correspondent:

Great post! I’m an Objectivist who supports Ron Paul. A good point to bring up may be that the Constitution is a contract with our politicians, and for them to go against the terms of that contract is an initiation of force against the American people. Objectivism detests the initiation of force.Ron Paul is personally wrong on abortion, but is wise enough to recognize that if he wants to be President he has no contracted power to mandate it.

Also, Ayn Rand supported Barry Goldwater in 1964. Although his premises (religion) were wrong, she said that was his problem. However, Goldwater was more hawkish than Paul (not so much as Bush though; he thought we should only fight wars we could win immediately), and was pro-abortion.

Update:

See also

***

see also

Ayn Rand and War: Natural Bedfellows?

Jonathan Bean  •  Thursday, March 6, 2008

182Shares

In recent years, many young followers of Ayn Rand track me down and engage in discussions, which I enjoy, even if I find her philosophy abhorrent and illiberal. These young people have read Rand’s novels, but none of her nonfiction, and nothing of her movement. This makes for “interesting” debates on the relationship between liberty and religion and the basis of “morality.” (Like postmodern Leftists, Rand’s followers frequently put many words in “quotation marks.”)

The Iraq war has revealed the sad ignorance of young objectivists. They are often anti-war AND crazy about Rand, even as they write essays for an Ayn Rand Institute (www.aynrand.org) that urges total war and dismisses “just war” as suicidal milquetoast morality. More generally, it has shown the uglier side of the movement and its objective “truths.” The following citations are indicative:

“Objectivist Goose-Stepping”

“While Objectivism’s ethical branch extols a moral code based on rational self-interest, individualism, and happiness according to objective values and virtues, its political branch harbors the ideas of collectivism and statism. Thus, we witness attempts by ARI’s fellows and their supporters to justify actions of people in government by appealing to absurd abstractions such as national “self-interest.” Instead of noticing their essential conflict in these matters, they continue to sanction and promote the coercive behavior of those working for the State—and thereby drop the context of self-interest, individualism, and happiness, in addition to reason and objective reality.

“Instead of strictly denouncing taxation and the welfare/warfare State, and by extension its ridiculous military structure, based on Objectivism’s principles of reason and individualism—and individualism’s historical and societal roots in America—the fellows at ARI utilize the currently hegemonic, neoconned political climate and the psychological aftermath of 9/11….”

“Directly targeting civilians is perfectly legitimate,” Brook said. “If it’s possible to isolate the truly innocent—such as children and freedom fighters—at no military cost, then do so. But insofar as the innocent cannot be isolated … they should be killed without any moral hesitation.”

Brook said that if the use of nuclear and chemical weapons was necessary to stop the insurgency, “then it is morally necessary to do so.”

He argued that ego-rationalism is a better way of fighting the war on terrorism. “This means we go to war whenever, wherever if the rights of our citizens are threatened,” he said.

Tsunami victims? Helping them is disgusting “charity.” Valentine’s Day? Romantic humbug. (Earth to ARI: College campuses celebrate Vagina Day in lieu of Valentine’s Day? WWAD? What Would Ayn Do about delivering a “vagina monologue?” Do we even want to know?

Of course, don’t believe these writers, read it straight from the Objectivists. Or watch UberObjectivist Peikoff on video (WGBH)