Why Ayn Rand hated Libertarians

She admired one quality of Hickman's. In some ways this is actually a mature way of viewing the world. People aren't black and white-even supposed heroes like Gandhi had incredible flaws.

That's not to say her philosophy was right or wrong. Rand experienced significant powerlessness and oppression during her childhood, and a lot of her ideas seem to be a reaction to what she saw and felt in Communist Russia. After having the ideals of altruism and collectivism forced on her for several years, it's hardly surprising that she would admire one someone who completely ignored societal rules.

In fact, ordinary people do this all the time. Villains in movies are considered cool. Many Australian icons were basically criminals. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was enormously successful. And so on.

So, it's not really fair to take a few lines out of context and conclude Rand supported sociopathy. Yes, her philosophy was centered around selfishness-but she consistently supported helping others and argued that long term self-interest and long-term societal interest end up in the same place.

Defining a lifetime by a single extreme is a game two can play, so let's play it. Ayn Rand was also capable of great caring and benevolence, as when she loaned money to two struggling friends (who never paid her back). See! See! That's who she really was, all else must be ignored! And since Clarence Thomas and Paul Ryan were fans of hers they too are great humanitarians! It's your ad hominem and guilt by association in reverse. Dang, this is fun!

More seriously, do you really think that someone going thru the intimate details of your life couldn't find one thing to damn you with?

>> Ayn Rand was an eloquent proponent of sociopathy.

No, she wasn't. She was an advocate (hardly a perfect one) of human freedom and prosperity. And speaking of sociopathy , that makes her an eternal enemy of every advocate of one form of socialism or another: Adolf Hitler's National Socialist German Workers Party, Slobodan Milosovic's Serbian Socialist Party, Stalin's Bolshevik Socialism, Saddam Hussein's Arabic Ba'ath Socialist Party, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge flavored socialism, Mao Tse Tung's socialism, or New York Times-endorsed Robert Mugabe's socialism ("I am still the Hitler of the time. This Hitler has only one objective, justice for his own people, sovereignty for his people, recognition of the independence of his people, and their right to their resources. If that is Hitler, then let me be a Hitler tenfold.") Etc., etc., bloody etc.

Mao said "Serve The People". Socialists, like the leaders mentioned above, are the people who truly care. Those who oppose them need to get a good dosing of Zyclon B, or at least a Struggle Session or three.

I think the broader purpose of the post, though, is to point out the irony in folks who think of themselves as Rand acolytes and Libertarians. This is a common position, and I hear it a lot in Silicon Valley/startup circles.

Personally I don't think much of her ideas, I find them simplistic and in some places naive and immature, other places disingenuous. I think many Libertarians suffer similar failings and propose positions that are vastly simplistic in the context of the real world. I know that many smart people I respect disagree with my position, and that's fine, I'm not looking for argument on those points.

So, as a critic of both groups it doesn't bother me to see them lumped together. But it's amusing that Rand wanted nothing to do with that.

Well, let's see, from the first paragraph:

- She called Libertarianism "a mockery of philosophy and ideology"

- She accused Libertarians of "slinging slogans and trying to ride on two bandwagons"

Later, she accuses them of entertaining "amateur political notions" and "rushing into politics in order to get publicity".

She says that Libertarians

- are based on "half-baked ideas, and in part on borrowed ideas".

- "spend their time denouncing me, while plagiarizing my ideas".

- "are perhaps the worst political group today, because they can do the most harm to capitalism, by making it disreputable."

- would "like to have an amoral political program"

I could go on quoting her, but maybe if you actually read the article yourself you'll see what her "arguments" are.

She saw libertarians as anarchists, and anarchy as a form of collectivism.

IMO, Ayn Rand is like Richard Stallman in a way. A lot of her points are valid, and her intentions were good, but she was so over the top that it turned a lot of people off.

"I now come to the painful part of this letter. For standing as I do in awe and wonder at the glory and magnitude of your achievement, knowing from early in the novel that I would have to write you and express in full how much I and the world owe to you...

When I first met you, many years ago, I was a follower of Mises, but unhappy about his antipathy to natural rights, which I “felt” was true but could not demonstrate. You introduced me to the whole field of natural rights and natural law philosophy, which I did not know existed, and month by month, working on my own as I preferred, I learned and studied the glorious natural rights tradition. I also learned from you about the existence of Aristotelian epistemology, and then I studied that, and came to adopt it wholeheartedly. So that I owe you a great intellectual debt for many years, the least of which is introducing me to a tradition of which four years of college and three years of graduate school, to say nothing of other reading, had kept me in ignorance."

There are many similarities, but Rand approaches her ideas from a very different angle.