Mike Wallace Interview of Ayn Rand

[Kat Kanning]

http://stage6.divx.com/user/4liberty/video/1826733/Ayn-Rand-Mike-Wallace-Interview

I don't see how you can take what she said and not end up at anarchy - she said men must not use force against one another, and government is force.

I never realized she had such an accent

[Lloyd Danforth]

There should be an interview she did with Donahue out there ,also.

[Kat Kanning]

Yeah, Russell was just mentioning that.

Here's the interview


I think I've watched this one before.  It was right before she died, no?  Wasn't very rational to smoke.

[Lloyd Danforth]

About 3 years before she died.

[picaro]

I don't see how you can take what she said and not end up at anarchy - she said men must not use force against one another, and government is force.

I spoke with Jaqeboy Tuesday.  I asked how national objectivist organizations can support invading other countries and killing people.  He mentioned that despite the lip-service objectivism pays to individual rights,  productivity is respected more.  So, it is moral to steal from --and even kill-- people who aren't as productive as you.

[Kat Kanning]

That's some strange twist of 'logic' I don't get.  I wonder if Rand thought that way, or it's something the current objectivists came up with.

[dalebert]

I spoke with Jaqeboy Tuesday.  I asked how national objectivist organizations can support invading other countries and killing people.  He mentioned that despite the lip-service objectivism pays to individual rights,  productivity is respected more.  So, it is moral to steal from --and even kill-- people who aren't as productive as you.

Rand herself wasn't much of an objectivist and neither is the objectivist organization that she sponsored. There is a better one that is sort of "unauthorized" and they're not war hawks. I don't know if they're actually anarchist as they should be. *shrug*

[Kat Kanning]

The Kelley faction?

[error]

Since when do true anarchists form organizations?

[KBCraig]

It's funny; The Pug and I were just talking about this yesterday evening, and Rand's position on war.

That's one of the true divisions between O'ism and libertarianism. If someone determines that attacking an individual, group, or country is in their "rational self-interest", O'ists consider it justified; they're not bound by ZAP. Especially the ARIans, although I'm not familiar with lesser known, "small o-ist" groups.

[Kat Kanning]

Since when do true anarchists form organizations?

What's wrong with voluntary organizations?

[David]

Since when do true anarchists form organizations?

All the time.  We are just anti-authority.   

[TackleTheWorld]

I studied objectivism for about 20 years, reading everything, listening to numerous lecture series, attending conventions of the main stream Objectivist speakers and hanging out with groups of local devotees. 

Kat is right, Ayn Rand defined a anarchic morality, yet advocated minarchism in politics.  But she taught that there is a hierarchy of knowledge, some concepts are more fundamental than others, and in her philosophy logic is the most fundamental concept.  (A is A.)  A couple steps away is individualism.  Ethics depends on logic and individualism.  Politics depends on ethics.  People who read Rand, accept logic, individualism and ZAP (or as she called it the non-initiation of force) and turn out to be anarchists instead of minarchists are still 99% objectivists.

I'd say Jaqeboy is wrong though, on the same grounds.  Productivity very highly regarded, it is one of only 7 virtues. But Randian virtues are not forced on others, they are guides for your own behavior.  Really, if you don't notice that objectivists embrace egoism and selfishness, you aren't looking very hard.  We don't much care what others do, and we certainly don't go out of our way to destroy less-productive people.  Also, hierarchically, virtue comes in ethics, which comes after individualism and logic.  You can't logically ignore an individual's right to live and conduct their own life in the name of productivity because logic and individual rights are more fundamental than productivity.

[Caveman]

I kind of liked Objectivism up until I saw this interview and she says that (paraphrasing here) "Objectivism is not for everyone". wtf a philosophy is supposed to be something that can be universally applied. If it is not universally applicable then how can it rise higher than mere opinion?

[Lloyd Danforth]

I think she meant it was not everyone's cup of tea.