"A Time for Choosing"

[Mark Rippetoe]

The way you can tell is the almost scripted response. The talking points are formalized.

And the careful way they avoid answering simple questions.

[Jovan Dragisic]

Government is a broad term. However, even when Government is not delimited to the specific role of defence of individual rights, it’s still superior to having no Government at all-excluding dictatorships which effectively have no form of individual rights. In the same sense that some degree of capitalism is superior to having complete collectivism. Some freedom then, being better than no freedom.

In an anarchic society can individual rights exist and be protected ? Can people be said to be free - in this sense ‘free’ means from freedom from the initiation of force by who ever takes control ? Therefore can property rights - the basis for capitalism exist under such conditions ?

In contrast, we know exactly what a Government is and it’s effectiveness in even the most corrupted version of rights protection. Today’s Western Government is trending towards authoritarianism, but it has a long way to go as yet. Do we blame ‘Government’ for that corruption and in a knee jerk reaction revert to centuries of chaos as the solution ? That appears to me to be something we shouldn’t risk.

We are broadening the scope of the discussion for no reason. You said anarchy is rule by force. I had some misgivings about that, you posited the government or the state as the protector of rights and capitalism (no idea why capitalism came into play), noting failed states as the reason for your assertion. We are basing enormous sets of assumptions on the historical development of society on historical data spanning maybe two hundred years. I don't really see why any society cannot start as anarchic, it would seem as the obvious choice. It usually doesn't have a whole lot to do with violence until it is invaded by another society structured in terms of "state" or "government" or "standing army". History is quite full of these examples.

[Nockian]

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, I also know that I owe you an explanation: an explanation of why I have avoided
LETTERS TO AYN RAND — 13

14 — JOURNAL OF LIBERTARIAN STUDIES 21, NO. 4 (WINTER 2007)
seeing you in person for the many years of our acquaintance. I want you to know that the fault is mine, that the reason is a defect in my own psyche and not a defect that I attribute to you. The fact is that most times when I saw you in person, particularly when we engaged in lengthy discussion or argument, that I found afterwards that I was greatly depressed for days thereafter. Why I should be so depressed I do not know. All my adult life I have been plagued with a “phobic state” (of which my travel phobia is only the most overt manifesta- tion), i.e. with frightening emotions which I could neither control nor rationally explain. I have found that unfortunately the only way I could successfully combat this painful emotion is by sidestepping the situations which seemed to evoke it—knowing that this is an eva- sion, but also knowing no better way. So in this situation. I have never felt depressed in such a way after seeing anyone else, so I con- cluded that the best I could do is avoid the reaction by not going to see you. I had naturally been too ashamed to say anything about this to you. Strangely, I don’t feel ashamed now; it is as if when writing to the author of Atlas Shrugged, that book which conveys with such immediate impact the pride and joy in being a man, that it is impos- sible to feel shame for telling the truth.
In trying my best to figure out why I should have been so depressed, I can only think of one or both of the following explana- tions: (1) that my brain became completely exhausted under the intense strain of keeping up with a mind that I unhesitatingly say is the most brilliant of the twentieth century; or (2) that I felt that if I continued to see you, my personality and independence would become overwhelmed by the tremendous power of your own. If the latter, then the defect is, of course, again mine and not yours. At any rate, I have come to regard you as like the sun, a being of enormous power giving off great light, but that someone coming too close would be likely to get burned.
At any rate, I want you to know that, even without seeing you, you have had an enormous influence upon me—even before the novel came out. When I first became interested in ideas, my first principle that I had from the start was a burning love of human free- dom, and a hatred for aggressive violence of man upon man. I always liked economics, and was inclined to theory, but found in my graduate economics courses that I felt all the theories offered were dead wrong, but I could not say why. Mises’s Human Action was the next great influence upon me, because I found in it a great rational system of economics, each interconnected logically, each following, as in Aristotelian philosophy, from a basic and certain axiom: the existence of human beings. 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 intro- duced me to the whole field of natural rights and natural law philos- ophy, 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.
And now I find, and marvel at in wonder and awe and joy, that I have become a better person just in reading Atlas Shrugged. It is still incredible to me that a person’s character can improve from reading a work of art, but there it is. I have checked and found many friends who have read it have felt the same way. I think that reading it will bring to the attentive reader, as it has brought me, at least a little more of the conviction of pride in being a man, of joy in unlimited roads of achievement open before him, of the feeling that pain does not matter, of the happiness of being alive on earth, and even of the feeling that reason and justice will ultimately prevail. He will walk a little straighter, hold his head a little higher, and be far more honest (one of the greatest accomplishments of the book is its rational and emotional demonstration that honesty is a profoundly selfish and necessary virtue—and not just a luxury for suckers. Magnificent!).

Murray Rothbard

[Mark Le Comte]

Even after that, Rothbard was not convinced enough to convert to objectivism.

[Nockian]

Even after that, Rothbard was not convinced enough to convert to objectivism.

That’s kind of the point.

We are broadening the scope of the discussion for no reason. You said anarchy is rule by force. I had some misgivings about that, you posited the government or the state as the protector of rights and capitalism (no idea why capitalism came into play), noting failed states as the reason for your assertion. We are basing enormous sets of assumptions on the historical development of society on historical data spanning maybe two hundred years. I don't really see why any society cannot start as anarchic, it would seem as the obvious choice. It usually doesn't have a whole lot to do with violence until it is invaded by another society structured in terms of "state" or "government" or "standing army". History is quite full of these examples.

“Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.”

“When individual rights are abrogated, there is no way to determine who is entitled to what; there is no way to determine the justice of anyone’s claims, desires, or interests. The criterion, therefore, reverts to the tribal concept of: one’s wishes are limited only by the power of one’s gang. In order to survive under such a system, men have no choice but to fear, hate, and destroy one another; it is a system of underground plotting, of secret conspiracies, of deals, favors, betrayals, and sudden, bloody coups.”

It depends what you mean by an anarchic society ? What does it look like in reality from Libya, to Sierra Leon, to the latest attempt in Seattle ? We can look at tribal Europe, tribal America and tribal Africa today.

What Rothbard imagined was that we were so advanced as a rational society that we wouldn’t fall back into chaos. Reality proved him wrong. We can and indeed do fall into violent chaos. To me it’s like the false promise of a socialist utopia, it simply doesn’t account for mans nature. Man can no more sink himself into a collective as an unthinking drone in communism, as he can halt in stasis at some point of social achievement in anarchy. Eventually force must be used to hold the entire mess together.

[Dr. Manhattan]

The standard recommendations are Our Enemy The State and The Road to Serfdom. But anything by Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams, and many others, will teach you what you want to know.

For the Thomas Sowell fans, below is a biographical program on Sowell hosted by a journalist who is writing a biography on him. If the link is busted, look up "Common Sense in a Senseless World."

Thomas Sowell: Common Sense in a Senseless World - Full Video - YouTube

[Jovan Dragisic]

We can look at tribal Europe, tribal America and tribal Africa today.

Sure, do you mean to say that tribal life is rule by force?

[Mark Rippetoe]

Where is Tribal Europe? Is that Italy?

[Mark Le Comte]

That’s kind of the point.

What is your point? That someone can like parts of Rand's work but not convert to objectivism?

[Nockian]

Sure, do you mean to say that tribal life is rule by force?

Correct.

Where is Tribal Europe? Is that Italy?

Europe.

What is your point? That someone can like parts of Rand's work but not convert to objectivism?

Hardly. In effect it’s a clumsy love letter to Rand. It wasn’t returned. Rand became famous. Do you imagine Rothbards books sold anywhere close to those of Rothbard. That’s not counting her plays and of course a Hollywood film from the Fountainhead. Who got invited on to all the talk shows ? Not Rothbard.