When my oldest son was in 4th grade, he had a teacher who spoke to the class exclusively in Words to Live By. I don’t know that she really did this. He said she did and we developed a sort of running joke about it, so he may have been exaggerating to amuse his mother. One of the things she said to her students (allegedly) when they were upset about one thing or another was “we don’t play the blame game here.”
In my experience, kids have a real basic sense of fairness and rough justice, in other words, they’re all about apportioning blame. They’re blamers. She effectively shut down 90% of what they natter on about with her ban on blaming. He’d complain: “They did do it (whatever “it” was). Why can’t we blame them?” Why indeed! Good question. Now of course I’d tell him “both sides do it, that’s why” but this was before that.
I read Angry Black Lady’s post on fear of losing health insurance and some of the comments and the whole thing made me really mad, so I’m ready to play the blame game.
Because I think libertarians aren’t hearing nearly enough condemnation for their central role in the radical turn Right at the Supreme Court, I think it’s time to point fingers in that direction:
When Congress passed legislation requiring nearly all Americans to obtain health insurance, Randy E. Barnett, a passionate libertarian who teaches law at Georgetown, argued that the bill was unconstitutional. Many of his colleagues, on both the left and the right, dismissed the idea as ridiculous — and still do.
Professor Barnett, who watched Monday from the spectator seats, was not the first to raise the constitutional critique of the health law, but more than any other legal academic, he is associated with it.
“He’s gotten an amazing amount of attention for an argument that he created out of whole cloth,” said one of his many critics, Douglas Laycock, a professor at the University of Virginia Law School. “Under existing case law this is a very easy case; this is obviously constitutional. I think he’s going to lose eight to one.”
If we’re apportioning blame (and we are! we will!) and 50 million people end up being denied the access to health insurance or Medicaid that was promised when this law passed Congress, I think libertarians and conservatives should share in responsibility for that situation.
I’m not that fond of slippery slope arguments, but libertarians live by them. Really, libertarianism is basically one big slippery slope argument, as far as I can tell. Slippery slopes can run both ways, so
I’d like to call particular attention to this rather alarming facet of Professor Bartlett’s “intellectual project”:
Professor Barnett’s work on the health care law fits into a much broader intellectual project, his defense of economic freedom. He has long argued that the Supreme Court went too far in upholding New Deal economic laws — a position that concerns his liberal critics.
Even a close friend and fellow Georgetown law professor, Lawrence B. Solum, says that Professor Barnett is aware of the “big divide between his views and the views of lots of other people,” and that his political philosophy is “much more radical” than his legal argument in the health care case. Professor Barnett, for his part, insists that if the health law is struck down, it will not “threaten the foundation of the New Deal.” But, he allowed, it would be “a huge symbolic victory for limited government.”
Yeah, well, Professor Barnett, you’re a big slippery-sloper, what with the broccoli and all, so I’m sure you’ll sympathize with “liberal concerns” on the Commerce Clause. No one predicted we’d be hearing an argument you created out of “whole cloth” coming out of the mouths of one of the justices, either, and we did. Your “fringe” idea out of “academia” may have just gone mainstream, so I wouldn’t be running around making broad assurances about the “foundation of the New Deal” if I were you.
BGinCHI
You know why they live in a slippery slope world?
Two things:
Privilege and the fear that privilege will be taken away.
Cassidy
Libertarians are conservatives. Outside of the few fringe anarchists and potheads, they are no different than any other conservative, except for the religious aspect of social conservatism. They just call themselves libertarians because they are aware enough to know they should feel shame for identifying as a Republican/conservative.
Bruce S
Yes. If the best these geeks who fancy themselves “Atlas” can do is Shrug in the face of real pain in the real world, what’s really on their shoulders is their own fucking sociopathy.
Mnemosyne
The thing you have to understand about libertarianism is that it’s a religion, not a political stance. Everything revolves around an ideal world that doesn’t actually exist. Anything that doesn’t fit into that ideal world must be discarded, even if it’s completely irrational to discard it.
Yutsano
@BGinCHI: Libertarianism is impossible in anything but a wealthy society. And it is precipitated on the wealth of that society being both infinite and flowing in one direction. Otherwise libertarians would be celebrating the government (or lack thereof) in Somalia. Even with all the blah people.
Mnemosyne
@Cassidy:
Exactly. Libertarianism is the “no government” stance from the right. The “no government” stance from the left is anarchism.
The main difference I’ve seen between libertarians and anarchists is that anarchists are usually honest enough to admit that their asses would be kicked and their stuff stolen in their “ideal” world. Libertarians all seem to think they’re Randian ubermen who would totally rule their little sector of the post-apocalyptic wasteland.
Bill
“libertarianism is basically one big slippery slope argument”
I would add “filled with people who don’t have kids or never been laid off. “
Bill
“libertarianism is basically one big slippery slope argument”
I would add “filled with people who don’t have kids or never been laid off. “
El Cid
People often ignore the extent to which the modern US nation depends upon a consensus to uphold fragile moves throughout its history.
The ‘Commerce Clause’ is a pretty weak and vulnerable foundation upon which to build a modern, federally integrated nation-state. It was the need by capital and state for a modern, coherent nation-state which allowed its growth and strengthening.
Such an elite consensus-dependent structure can be undone when elites split and enough of them reject it.
In the smash-and-grab approach of modern reactionary revanchist “conservatism”, the stability of the system and the future health of the nation-state is, frankly, not their concern. What is, is to grab all the riches they and their peers can, and destroy anything in law or society which might at any point in the future get in their way.
whiskey
@Cassidy: Barnett, would probably fall closer to the “pothead” label, given that he brout Raich to the Supremes.
Martin
Nobody hands kids a rulebook. They’re trying to figure it out on the fly. We take blame personally because it’s a loaded term, but responsibility is a big word for 9 year-olds. Kids are always trying to work out “How did I end up in this spot and what do I need to do differently to avoid it next time?” If you know the rules, that question is easy to answer. If you don’t, you need to figure out who and/or what acts are responsible for where you are, and get them properly weighted. Did I get in trouble for asking the question, or was it how I asked it, or did I ask at the wrong time, or did I ask the wrong person, or is Ms Wordstoliveby just an asshole?
But here’s a theoretical question: Does the fact that everyone treats Thomas as an outlier on every SCOTUS decision (noting your 8-1 reference) tell us anything about whether he is viewed broadly as qualified to serve on that court? Should it? And if it does, should there be some kind of remedy against a clearly unqualified appointment or do we really believe that the confirmation process is sufficiently infallible?
kay
@Mnemosyne:
What sort of pisses me off about it is the dishonesty of the “debate”. There is nothing in economic libertarianism that conflicts with a Paul Ryan or a Scott Walker, yet there’s this careful distinction made between libertarians and conservatives.
It’s a purely intellectual exercise, but people seem to cling to it. As a practical matter, who gives a shit? Am I supposed to care about the specific intellectual underpinning? Why?
Satanicpanic
@Mnemosyne: Anarchism also puts forth the idea that citizens would do most of the functions of what our government does. Libertarianism would have the private sector do all that. It’s not any more realistic, but anarchism is at least based on the idea that democracy is a good thing.
Gus diZerega
A great many ‘libertarians’ on the right are people who are personally very authoritarian. Their view is “If I can’t be king, no one can.” This is why they are so dead set against even acknowledging there is a power difference between workers and employees. They fantasize being little John Galts. This is also why I have heard slavery defended three time in my life by libertarians – once in Nozick’s “Anarchy State and Utopia,” the other times to my face. This is also why when push comes to shove, “libertarians” support conservatives after mewling a little bit against the state.
Some are different, and worth discussing with. But a great many are sociopaths and bullies at heart, taking their moral compass from Ayn Rand.
kay
@Martin:
Oh, I like that about kids. I do. I love that big elaborate negotiation they do where they’re figuring out who is worse or the most to blame :)
kindness
The most disappointing thing about the whole Health Care issue is the disingenuousnous of the right. It was the right that pushed Democratic majorities to user THEIR vehicle to pay for a new health care approach. We wanted Single Payer. The right wanted it run by separate private insurance. We agreed to try the right’s way and then the right turns around, says the mandate (the right’s original answer to funding a national program through private insurance)is unconstitutional but a tax on all and Single Payer would be constitutional.
Lies and bullshit are the way of politics but at some point people should realize that integrity comes into play. The MSM hasn’t caught on the the right has no integrity but they will….after the fact. Once Obama kicks Romney’s ass come November the Serious Village Elders will start asking ‘what went wrong with Romney?’
PeakVT
I’m not that fond of slippery slope arguments, but libertarians live by them.
Libertarians live by fallacious arguments? Go figure.
Stooleo
I hate to say it, but I think ACA is going down. Activist hack judges are going to behave like activist hack judges. Who coulda known.
Matthew
I think it’s important to point out that libertarianism is nothing more than a self-centered and incredibly juvenile political philosophy that states that wealthy white men can do as they please without having to pay for it while everyone else needs to become indentured servants in order to pay for it.
Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
I too get sick to death of people–most often Republicans–whining about how unfair the “blame game” is. What the hell? What is our whole system of justice but a “blame game”? But how many conservatives are ready to do away with the courts and empty all the jails? How many of these clowns who love the death penalty are ready to say about muderers, “Oh, well, maybe so-and-so did kill that guy, but let’s not play the blame game. We should just let him go.”? How well would it go over in court if the only defense an accused killer’s lawyer gave was, “Well, yes, it’s tragedy that so-and-so is dead, and my client did it, but I ask you, why must we play the blame game? Just let my client go.”?
The “blame game” is the first game society has to play if it’s to have anything like justice. When people kill somebody or steal somebody else’s life savings or drag us into a meaningless, crippling war or try to do away with Medicare or Social Security, we need to call them out. We need to blame them. There have to be some consequences, even if it’s only that Americans call them mean names and lose all respect for them. I know that makes Richard Cohen sad, but that’s justice.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
A libertarian is just a neo-con who worships a twisted idea of the Free Market instead of a twisted idea of God and Jesus.
barath
I posted a quote from Greer the other day on libertarians that I think is just great:
What now passes under the name of libertarianism is a philosophy of privilege that could only look reasonable to people who are deliberately not paying attention to the benefits they get from the system they claim to despise.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@El Cid:
It is my impression that this was a major contributing factor during the French Revolution. It is also the stuff that civil wars are made of.
WaterGirl
@barath:
Wow. That is good.
WereBear
This was one of the reasons President Obama and company actually pushed the private companies/mandate thing; it is what the Right wanted.
Not that they have any problem pretzeling themselves, but as Romney is finding out, it makes for awkward questions people will notice.
The Other Chuck
I’m going to play devil’s advocate here for a moment: Slippery Slope is a fallacy of relevance, aka a “red herring” in which the argument fails to address the matter actually at issue, and consists solely of speculation on what is to come.
Sometimes, however, the slope really _is_ slippery, and it’s neither a fallacy to point it out (rhetorically, not logically) , nor to stand in opposition to an agenda that aims to push us all down said slope. I have been saying for 20 years now, that the pro-lifers would come after contraception next. Let me now add, for those I spoke to about this before: I fucking told you so.
Now in terms of the mandate, I personally don’t see the slippery slope, and even if there was, I already saw most of the nation sliding down a well-greased chute of medical bankruptcy, so I really don’t even _care_ about a fee that amounts to something like a fiftieth of what individual insurance can actually cost.
Mike Goetz
I’m wondering if Barnett, et. al., high-stepping into the end zone, talking about “huge symbolic victories” for limited government, will do more to push Kennedy and Roberts in favor of the ACA. The key to stealth conservatism is, you know, stealth.
BGinCHI
@Bill:
Fixed for erotic accuracy.
pseudonymous in nc
@Martin:
That reminds me of the one Michael Lewis piece that I really like: his essay for Portfolio on renting a New Orleans mansion:
kay
@The Other Chuck:
Yeah, I see it. It’s just pretty amazing to me that everyone sees the libertarian slippery slope with the commerce clause (broccoli!) but no one sees the slippery slope for liberals with an attempt to limit the commerce clause.
That works both ways.
BGinCHI
@barath: I like this.
barath
@WaterGirl:
It’s from Greer, who I think has the highest ratio of overall wisdom/intelligence to weirdness-of-blog-name there is on the Internet. (Right now he’s in the middle of a great series of posts on the origins of American imperialism.)
danimal
I still mostly believe that ACA will be upheld. My main concern about it going down is that the court will “go BIG” and hand down a decision unwinding the 1930’s consensus on the use of the Commerce Clause to expand federal action on a wide variety of economic issues that were previously left to the states.
We have 5 conservatives, protected by lifetime tenure, with the ability to unravel Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare and a whole host of existing federal programs (including Civil Rights protections). The political earthquake would be enormous, but they may feel like this is their chance at a kill shot on liberalism. It’s not likely, but it certainly isn’t out of the realm of possibility.
I don’t really think anyone but the most doctrinaire conservatives really want anything like this to occur, but at this point, it really only matters what the 5 conservatives on the SCOTUS want.
kay
@El Cid:
It’s a great point, thank you. It wasn’t all hearts and flowers and humanitarians. They needed the infrastructure for commerce, and they still do, although for some reason it’s fashionable for them to deny that, now, and insist it was all private investment.
Davis X. Machina
@barath: Is the blog name a hat-tip to John McPhee or David Brower?
barath
@Davis X. Machina:
It might be, I’m not sure. But I think it’s that he practices nature spirituality, hence the name…
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@danimal:
Unfortunately, in addition to those 5, it feels like it’s the most doctrinaire of conservatives who run the show these days, in almost all aspects. Sure, we own the Presidency and the Senate, but they own the NARRATIVE and the states.
EDIT: Clarifying language.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@Matthew:
I seem to recall a certain Peculiar Institution that actually codified this policy into law a few years back. I think there was even a genteel little war fought to settle the issue, too.
__
The name escapes me…
pseudonymous in nc
@El Cid:
This is a hugely important point. One area where we don’t need to channel the dead is our knowledge that the drafters of the US Constitution expected much more radical revisions over time. Since that didn’t happen, you end up with fragile kludges like commerce-clause jurisprudence, and you also get revanchist dickwads like Barnett who fap themselves silly on the idea that the US can function when run on the same basis as a proto-industrial state.
It’s a malevolent form of historical dress-up.
Chris
@Cassidy:
Not even a difference in terms of social conservatism, IMO. I know several religious fundamentalists who identify themselves as libertarians, because small government = less interference with religious groups’ abilities to be dicks to those around them.
“Libertarians are what Republicans call themselves when they’re trying to get laid,” also too.
Chris
@Mnemosyne:
This.
Libertarianism => flip side of Marxism.
Tokyokie
@Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.): The only time Republicans don’t want to play the blame game is when they are to blame. Or, to put it another way, the same people who don’t want to play the blame game now are those who contend that society has gone to hell since mandatory prayer was abolished from classrooms (or popular entertainment began featuring nekkid people or cuss words or blacks started acting all uppity or women were allowed to vote or whatever).
barath
@Chris:
So I should add that there is such as thing as libertarian s0cialism / left-libertarianism, which is in some ways aligned with the sort of social democracies you see in some European states. Basically it’s s0cialism on the small-scale rather than in the big USSR top-down way.
Chris
@El Cid:
Was there a reason why FDR and the rest didn’t push through actual constitutional amendments to protect at least some of the modern welfare state? I mean, they had the votes, didn’t they, at least in the first few years?
danimal
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik: I guess I’m getting old, but I keep going back to Reagan-era discussions about the New Deal and the Courts. I really believe there is a radical conservative agenda that conservative pols keep well-hidden because the welfare state is popular, dammit.
I believe ACA is clearly constitutional according to existing precedent, but 5 Federalist Society conservatives may wish to roll back precedent. I’m just not sure that Justices Roberts and Kennedy are trustworthy in valuing precedent over ideology (I’m quite sure Thomas, Scalia and Alito are untrustworthy on these grounds).
Librarian
Gee, I wonder if Professor Barnett ever received any kind of financial aid from the government at any point in his education, or has gotten any government money at all ever, or for that matter has ever benefitted from anything the government has ever done. If so, he’s a hypocrite of the highest order and should be exposed as such.
Steve
The scope of the Commerce Clause has been up for debate since day one. Alexander Hamilton, when he was Washington’s Treasury Secretary, compiled an amazingly comprehensive survey of American manufacturing with an eye towards implementing what we’d call today a national industrial policy. It was a brilliant tour de force, but it was considered too radical even for the Federalists in Congress, so they put it on a shelf. The debate over centralized control of the economy (which is a dirty word now, of course, thanks to communism) has always been with us. We thought it was settled in our favor by the New Deal, but really, it shouldn’t shock anyone that the anti-federalists are still fighting. It’s like asking the anti-abortion folks to give up and just admit that Roe v. Wade is settled law.
Martin
@Matthew:
Uh, no. It is a serious philosophical construct. We know that because it doesn’t involve orcs.
Martin
@Chris:
No. In order to pass amendments you need the states to ratify, and he didn’t have those. Remember, any amendment to protect the modern welfare state would de facto have had included protections for blacks as part of that state.
It was one of the ways in which the Commerce Clause was able to be used to do an end run around regressive civil rights policies held in the states. Had they passed amendments in the 30s, civil rights would have necessarily come three decades earlier. Now, that’s purely a good thing, but given how hard the battle was in the 60s I think it illustrates how much harder it would have been to pass in the 30s – if it was being done indirectly.
Don
Let’s not play that game. It’s the same one as when these clowns say that if Buffet wants higher taxes he should feel free to write a big check. It’s reductive and empty. We all live in the world we live in now and – if we’re not criminals – we operate within the laws as they stand. That doesn’t preclude us from wanting it to be different and working to that end.
I have little respect for libertarians. I agree with Chris that they’re the coin-flip of Marxists and Communists – people who willfully deny the reality of the world and human nature. But demanding they not avail themselves of the opportunities of the economy as it stands isn’t reasonable or productive.
Talk about how completely they gloss over externalities and ignore every evidence of human behavior. Point out how they always ignore the fact that Smith’s belief in the market presumed perfect awareness and transparency, things that unregulated private trading prevents and which SEC disclosure requirements help create.
Saying they took loans or opportunities that would continue to be available to other people is an empty attack and the sort of reality-ignoring standard they love.
liberal
@barath:
There’s a real problem with that quote.
To wit, almost everyone underplays the benefits the rich get. Usually, those of “our ilk” ultimately make vague recourse to phrases like “the social contract.”
Yet we don’t need any such vague, feel-good, bleeding heart conception. The fact is that a very large fraction of income in this country, and the bulk of that accruing to the very rich, is economic rent, aka legalized theft.
PeakVT
@The Other Chuck: That’s not really a slippery slope argument, though. An example of a slippery slope is: approving gay marriage would lead to condoning sex with box turtles. To anyone with half a brain, they are quite different, and there’s no reason to think that authorizing a certain type of contract between adults of the same sentient species would lead to authorizing bestiality. Unless, of course, you’re pretty damn confused about sex, which most wingers are. Arguing that giving in to conservatives on one issue will make them happy is wrong for several reasons, but not a fallacy.
kay
@Steve:
It doesn’t surprise me. I’ve been watching it for a while. It was really the core issue in Rand Paul’s Senate race, and that’s why I thought that race was really important.
Paul’s opponent kept circling back to it, partly because he’s a state AG, probably, but he was right to do so. Rand Paul dismissed it (he seems to have real contempt for lawyers, Dr. Paul) but Paul’s opponent was absolutely right. Rand Paul’s plan for the country is really pretty radically libertarian.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Chris:
My guess would be that circa 1933-6 there wasn’t enough time to go the slow Con. Amendment route, what with it being a national emergency and all that, and after 1936 FDR didn’t have the votes, specifically at the state level, to get something like that passed. Despite his landslide victory in 1936 FDR was on shaky ground in getting his pet projects passed thru the US Senate because of blowback from his SCOTUS court packing scheme, blowback from one particular 1936 Senate race in which he backed a more progressive candidate to replace the stodgy conservative incumbent Dem during the Dem primary and got his ass handed to him, and because the Dem party as a whole was still quite conservative, especially in the South. If FDR struggled with controlling his own party in the US Senate, getting something controversial passed in enough states to amend the US Constitution would have been a nightmare.
liberal
@Don:
Completely agree, but you (like most others) leave out economic rent.
Land rent alone is 10-20% of GDP, and as has been known by (some) economists ever since Ricardo is entirely unearned. And that’s only the biggest piece; there’s the usual monopoly rents, “intellectual property”, etc.
Chris
@Martin:
Ah, of course. Mea culpa.
And now that you mention it, the Southern Democratic elites (the old school ones, those not on the Huey Long bandwagon) weren’t huge fans of the New Deal either, so even without civil rights, there’s that.
The popular narrative is “the two parties switched sides in the sixties because civil rights.” People forget (like I just did) that the economic-royalist/white-supremacist alliance (in the South and elsewhere) goes back much farther than that.
liberal
Anyone interested in right-wing use of slippery slope arguments ought to read or at least be acquainted with the thesis put forth in Hirshman’s The Rhetoric of Reaction.
RSA
The first time I paid attention to the phrase “the blame game” was when G. W. Bush defended the government’s response to Katrina. And every time I’ve heard the phrase in a serious context, I think, “It’s not a fucking game.”
On libertarianism, I expect that the average libertarian would say that he (they’re all male, to a first approximation) is acting as an individual in dealing with an issue like ACA, or maybe in voluntary cooperation with some gorup of like-minded individuals. If that’s the case, I think it’s not reasonable to hold them personally responsible for the bad effects of their arguments.
Citizen Alan
All these pronouncements on what libertarianism “is” miss the point. “Libertarianism” is a meaningless term. If one views the movement holistically tries to discern what libertarianism’s guiding principles are, the only thing that can be conclusively said is that libertarians are people who believe that a constitutional right they consider very important is being infringed in some way by the government. If you believe you are being taxed unfairly, you’re a libertarian. If you believe that cops have too little oversight, you’re a libertarian. If you believe that women have an absolute right to bodily integrity that guarantees abortion rights, you’re a libertarian. If you believe that fetuses have an absolute right to life that governments should not deny by making abortion legal, you’re a libertarian. Libertarianism is a tent so big that it encompasses people who couldn’t possibly agree with one another if they understood each other’s positions.
LanceThruster
This is a great place to view libertarianism in a thoughtful as well as historical context. Lots of fantastic reading —
http://world.std.com/~mhuben/libindex.html
Gus diZerega
@LanceThruster:
Good stuff there. Thanks.
Ruckus
@Martin:
This is one of the main reasons I prefer term limits of congress and the supreme court. Of course we have term limits of pres and vp so I’m all set there. I do think these limits have to be reasonably long but not for ever. I like, reps get 10 terms, senate get 3 and supremes get 20 years. All of these people have major influence over people who can not vote for most of them, so can not throw them out. Yes the good get thrown out along with the bad. But we also get a chance to not be held up with incompetence that we can not vote for.
Sly
@Chris:
“The modern welfare state” was an evolution, not a revolution. Much of what we consider to be the American welfare state emerged slowly over a century and change following the Civil War. There is no clear line of demarcation where it can be said that the welfare state exists on one side and doesn’t exist on the other. It’s mostly an ad hoc patchwork of regulations and programs.
In this sense, no one ever really pictured the American welfare state, at least until the latter half of the 20th century, as some overarching project that needed to be sustained and protected. FDR was mostly fixated on his own agenda, unique to the circumstances out of which that agenda had emerged, and the actions he needed to take to protect it. He thought it would be easier to fix the Court problem through the court packing bill. He was (quite disastrously) wrong about that avenue in terms of its political consequences, but the Court actually became much friendlier toward the New Deal after court packing went down in flames.
Chris
@LanceThruster:
I agree, good stuff. Just got done reading “Marxism of the Right.”
The thing is, I’ve met a lot of conservatives who believe that libertarianism per se would indeed cause society to go completely off the rails – but that’s why we have Christianity, to provide the regulating influence that the feds can’t. (And since Christianity => Teh Jesus, it’s naturally a better and more reliable source of regulation than any government).
Which is where the otherwise weird blend of libertarianism and Christian fundamentalism comes from. So… yes, like many people have pointed out, it’s essentially Ancien Regime stuff. Kill the government and replace it with infallible (and completely non-accountable) authorities.
LanceThruster
@Chris:
Good observation. I’ve seen people with the cognitive dissonance that says this utopian theory of freedom will work in practice with implementation of a worthy benign dictator.
The other glaring dichotomy for me is the fact that those who would judge any ideology by those connected with it, however tenuously, are “Charlie churches” that choose to completely ignore the godless aspects of Rand.
I’m glad those that checked it out found something worthwhile there. I always find something new every time I go back. I read and liked the piece you mentioned.
I am quite fond of the quotations link myself (like eating peanuts). It often adds some missing context to those so often quoted as “gospel.”