Here is the source of much of the Republican idiocy

Ayn Rand.



Ayn Rand teaches that the only valid morality is selfishness. All Randian morality is based on the free market, and property rights are the only rights which are valid. Ownership of property is absolute and gives one the unfettered right to use or dispose of that property in whatever way the owner desires. No one may interfere with this absolute right, including the government or the community.

Ayn Rand explicitly stated that altruism and religious ethics were meaningless and wrong. They are not based on property rights and the free unfettered market and in fact can be used to justify interference with the free market and property rights.

The Fountainhead was published in 1943 and was quickly adopted by conservative American businessmen who were fighting Roosevelt and the New Deal. Rand's philosophy was also very strongly embedded in the Robert Welch's John Birch Society. Interestingly it horrified William F. Buckley.

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Here is the full 27 minute Mike Wallace interview with the Rand woman.

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OK. Here is Christopher Hitchens demolishing Ayn Rand's alleged "Objectivism."



There is really very little to add to what Christopher Hitchens said, but Ayn Rand's idiocy philosophy has been adopted by a number of American individuals who either inherited great wealth they did not earn themselves or were able to claw themselves to the highest regions of monopolistic or oligopolistic big businesses. A very few exceptions were people like Bill Gates who created new markets and had the good fortune to be able to remain at the top of the organizations they created to exploit those markets as Gates was able to do with Microsoft Corporation.

None of these individuals inherently deserve the power they have been given. A few, like Bill Gates, have comported themselves in ways that justify the social and economic power they have obtained. The problem is that when such individuals achieve such power they frequently assume they deserve it and that they should be worshiped for their combination of (mostly)good luck and (to some extent) ability to exploit their position.

Ayn Rand's Objectivism is based on the assumption that they deserve what society gave them and that the privileges they receive because of their social success are beneficial to society in general. Neither assumption is true.

Libertarianism and property rights

I discovered an interesting article entitled What's wrong with libertarianism which does a good job of debunking Libertarianism. Go read it.

The author points out that Libertarianism was essentially designed by the escapee from the Soviet Union, Ayn Rand, as the Uncommunism. This was quite interesting to me:

Communism	Libertarianism
Property is theft	Property is sacred
Totalitarianism	Any government is bad
Capitalists are baby-eating villains	Capitalists are noble Nietzchean heroes
Workers should rule	Worker activism is evil
The poor are oppressed	The poor are pampered good-for-nothings

That's a pretty good summary.

Let me comment on just one small part of the post I referred to. Note the contradiction between the two parts of Libertarianism I placed in Italics. Those are Property is sacred and Any government is bad.

Libertarians make property rights into an unquestionable area of faith. That reminds me of a recent speculation regarding where the idea of property rights may have come from. Property rights may have been a side effect of the taming of wolves in north east Asia when they first became because dogs. But the idea of property was not that of the dog owner. It was the idea of the dog.

Dogs are hierarchical animals, and they adopt leaders. It is thought by some that when the the dogs first adopted their own people as leaders or Alpha dogs, then other people recognized that certain dogs belonged to certain people. As a result, the concept of property rights was born.

But the concept came from the dogs first. The dogs adopted leaders, people recognized that certain dogs belonged to specific people, and the concept of "Property rights" was born. Dogs first acted as property, people then recognized the dogs behavior as property, and people later adopted the idea.

It is clear, though that there is nothing natural or religious about property rights. Property rights are a social concept which do not exist unless society enforces them. Natural law is garbage until its supporters can demonstrate (scientifically) a mechanism by which it can be shown to be enforced in society. They've had a long time, and failed totally.

A person does not own land unless that ownership is recorded by the government and enforced in the courts. The same is true of a person's car, their wristwatch, or anything else. Not only must the ownership be recognized by others and recorded, there must also be socially accepted rules that determine how such ownership can be transferred from one person to another.

That makes Libertarianism quite contradictory. It makes an article of faith of property rights but also declares any government as bad. The two cannot coexist. It is really that simple. No government means no property beyond that which can be personally enforced using force. [Note - this is another basic belief of Libertarianism - no one can use force on any other person.]

Is property ownership an innate characteristic of human society? No. It is a good idea, enforced by society through government. Ask the dog who owns you. Or the cat who owns both of you. They know that they only own you while they have you in sight and under their paw.