Rand Paul did more back flips than Greg Louganis on Rachel Maddow, but his bottom line was clear. According to his libertarian philosophy, private businesses have the right to discriminate based on race, gender, or any reason they see fit.
I'm going to avoid smacking my lips at what this means for Rand Paul's Senate campaign. Suffice to say I'm praying that there are enough people in Kentucky who have made it sufficiently far along since 1964 to find his stance retrogressive and appalling.
I at least appreciate Dr. Paul's willingness to come out of the closet on this kind of conservative thinking, which is basically a fundamental belief in the primacy of the individual over the group. A society which prizes the accomplishments of the individual should therefore accord him a greater share of the wealth. For them, private property has moral agency, its accumulation represents deservedness. "Because I am better, I have more."
I understand Ayn Rand. She arrived at her philosophy as a reaction to the nightmare of Stalinist Russia in which she believed the will of the individual was always subverted to the will of the state. Fair objection, but it had nothing to do with the Soviet Union, in which the will of all individuals was completely subverted to will of one individual -- Josef Stalin. In a democracy such as we have, the power is diffused among millions of people. You may call that collectivist, but it's hardly monolithic or dictatorial (unlike, for example,a corporation in which all power flows downward from a politburo-like regime made up of the CEO, CFO and Board of Directors.)
The Rand (Paul or Ayn) philosophy, by putting private property rights at the same level of human rights, equates the status of things with the status of human beings. If property is considered equal to human beings, then it's not a very big leap to considering human beings as property. I believe this country is already familiar with this philosophy, manifested 150 years ago as slavery.
Similarly, we have Rush Limbaugh considering a toxic but profitable natural resource like oil as having the same level of importance as the Gulf of Mexico and the eco-systems it supports. He even blames the Sierra Club for the oil spill, which would be pretty funny if millions weren't taking his word as the gospel truth.
People are more important than things; oceans are more important than oil. And when a juvenile commits robbery, even armed, (but not murder) there is no conceivable justification for him to be sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole. He stole money, but it is money. He is a human being.
People who put property rights on the level of human rights need to spend some time picking cotton or weaving carpets 12 hours a day, in a dark-skinned body, being paid subsistence wages by a warlord or factory owner who screams that he has a right to run his business as he sees fit. A few years should do it.
MCO 2010
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King led a social movement that sought sweeping structural change in the US. He analyzed racism as something built into the American capitalism system. The struggle he led was going strong before he got involved. He made it stronger and gave his life after accomplishing great things and leaving a legacy as perhaps the greatest of American citizens.
I have read enough of Rand's propaganda to know she stood for everything King opposed--selfishness, greed, arrogance, elitism. And I know enough of King to know that Rand and her herd animals would have nothing but contempt for the African American civil rights movement. King was a collectivist and an altruist. He believed in God and in combining religion and activism to fight for social justice. And in the poisonous world of Rand's personality cult, that made King a loser, a chump, and worse.
King was none of those things. We need a lot more of the thought and action of MLK and the African American civil rights movement. We don't need anything from Rand Paul, Ayn Rand, and their herd. They're impressed enough with themselves and they can go on congratulating each other for thinking they understand the way the world works or the way they think it should work.
God punished Egypt severely for enslaving and abusing the Israelites for hundreds of years, and destroyed their country with a series of plagues.
Why is it the modern day right wing Christian has no fear of God's judgement on America for enslaving and abusing African Americans? African Americans who followed MLK rooted heavily in the gospel and social justice of Jesus, who resisted with a non-violent movement?
Apparently they have no respect or fear of the God of the bible, but follow their own idols of gold, and the love of money.
"It is this smugness that is their Achilles heel - it renders them unable to detect the discontinuity between the theoretical and the practical - and it has for decades and will continue to hobble their success in retail politics."
In other words, The truth finally comes out:
"Retail politics" = The Republican/Democrat Kabuki-Dance known also as the "Mainstream Political Process", or better yet, "How To Be A Stooge For Statism". Yes, Mr. Olmstead, we know very well that the Libertarian/Independent parties/philosophies cannot (or WILL not???) "compete" with such "retail politics".
What a flaming idiot. Why is running to be part of a government who he doesn't even accept might have a role in saving thousands of lives? What's next? No FDA? No CDC? No cancer research? No cigarette taxes? McDonald's and Coke for school breakfasts? Go run for President of Somalia, Rand. No "nanny state" there.
Detroit was a model for unions and redistributionists. How did that work out for the poor? They got poorer.
And people don't need government to tell them to wear seatbelts. They are perfectly capable of making that decision on their own. Stop supporting a culture of compulsion and dependency.
Your post is uneducated hyperbole.
"The fact that [the Indians] lived in harmony with the land and nature, producing food clothing and shelter for their needs, was dismissed by [Ayn] Rand. She considered property materiel, exploited, transformed resources; great buildings, bridges, whatever showed off mans dominon over raw materials and produced 'wealth.' " [comment 5/21/10, 6:52pm]
Thankfully, Mr. Olmsted offers with crystal clarity the fundamental alternatives: life without property rights - the literally dirt-poor, slave-oriented, fear-filled mystical existence of the American Indians living a perpetually primitive, stone-age existence - and a property-rights-respecting society of technological industrialization where the poorest live lives of luxury compared to our “noble/humble” savage ancestors.
The Indians had an innocent excuse. They had not yet discovered the knowledge of what could lead to the kind of prosperous and quality life free market capitalism makes possible: individual reason and free will, and the unalienable rights and rights-protecting government that man’s nature as a rational being requires - which makes a proper, thriving human existence possible.
Mr. Olmsted considers the mind-denying Rousseauian/Leakeyian vision superior to Ayn Rand’s Objectivist vision of man as a heroic moral being capable of great spiritually germinated material achievements. His view holds as an ideal a society of parasites with each depending on the next guy for his barest sustenance, and none permitted to thrive economically. The last thing any socialist can claim is a benevolent concern for the well-being of his fellow man.
Well, if that’s the case, would you please explain to me FDR’s attitude toward German Je.ws during the 1930s? Would you please explain to me why he refused to permit them to come to America when Hitler was willing to let them go? Weren’t they poor? And while you’re at it, can you please explain to me why he refused to let those poor Je.ws traveling on the SS St. Louis to disembark at Miami Harbor in the infamous “voyage of the damned”?
You see, I’m having a difficult time understanding why a man who purports to love the poor would do that to poor Je.ws. And I’m also having a difficult time understanding why you liberals would extol a man who did that sort of thing to poor Je.ws.
The only solution to the woes that you statists, both liberals and conservatives, have foisted onto our nation lies with libertarianism. Our American ancestors discovered the truth, and lots of Americans are now re-discovering it, which is precisely why you statists are so terrified.
Would you explain to me something about FDR’s protégé, the liberal icon Lyndon Johnson, who brought Medicare and Medicaid into existence because of his purported love for the poor, needy, and disadvantaged? LBJ, as I hope you know, killed several million Vietnamese people, most of whom were poor, in an illegal war that was based on nothing but lies. He also sent some 58,000 of my generation to their deaths in Vietnam, many of whom were poor because that’s who they were drafting to fight in that war.
Would you be so kind as to reconcile that one for me, because I’m getting real tempted to conclude that LBJ’s Medicare and Medicaid plans were nothing more than a political power grab designed to put more Americans under the yoke of federal power and dependency?
Oh, I also have a question about liberal icon Bill Clinton, another purported lover of the poor, needy, and disadvantaged. While he was in office, he killed hundred of thousands of Iraqi children with the brutal sanctions that he enforced against that country. His U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Madeleine Albright, another liberal icon, said that those deaths were worth the attempt to oust Saddam Hussein from power.
That’s always been difficult for me to swallow. How can the deaths of poor, innocent children ever be worth a political goal such as regime change, especially since Saddam had once been the partner of the U.S. government?
My arguers and I have a fundmentally differences in how we believe the world should work. You think property ownership is sacred, I think everybody should have the right to eat, have clean water to drink and decent shelter before ANYONE has the right to amass einordinate wealth. I think the common good should trump the desires of the few; you believe individual rights should reign supreme; and I think worship of the free market diminshes the truth that none of what makes life most beautiful comes from a desire for profit--not love, not kindness, not art, not children.
I don't go trolling around right wing blogs trying to get the writers to alter their views because I respect that they have come at their beliefs sincerely and are not going to be swayed by any remark I make. Your incessant arguing implies my views are so anemically arrived at that your enliightned thinking will allow me to see things your way. It won't. But it shows disrespect for my intellect, to think I hold such notions so loosely.
I've been known to visit blogs where the views differ from mine, I even sometimes express my views there, but I can't remember ever having any profound need to persuade them that I'm "right," especially because my hubris, while probably considerably greater than it has any legitimate right to be, has not risen to a level requiring evangelistic fervor and tenacity.
I, for one, have enjoyed this exploration with you, but, if you're suggesting what I think you're suggesting, then I agree that it can safely be put to bed, even though there may be some who pick over the bones for a time, at least until they're attracted to fresh meat.
Perhaps our paths will cross another day. Keep up the good work, you've clearly gone beyond being a survivor of your rather eclectic past (and I suspect there's a remarkable story there) to become what some of us term a "thriver," one who takes their historical experience and uses it to become better than they ever could have without it. I commend you for the personal courage and the resilience that exemplifies.
Thanks again,
Dave
I thought the teaparty pols were supposed to be different than other politicians. Rand want to advocate legislation that would allow racist behavior, but he wants credit for abhorring that behavior. No, Rand. Own the consequences of your position. Answer questions clearly. Do no prevaricate.
As far as Maddow goes, Rand answered her question by saying that an owner of an establishment would therefore not be able to discriminate against someone carrying a firearm. Her response by linking it to a 2nd Amendment issue was absolutely absurd considering she is a Rhodes Scholar. It is a private exclusion issue, which that provision in the CRA destroyed.