Recent content by abolitionist

Actually, I think the example of somalia helps the pro-anarchism side. If only in the fact that those who use somalia as a counter example must do so by repeating falsehoods. Somalia is better off today than it was under government: http://www.peterleeson.com/better_off_stateless.pdf The...

I want to know how those pesky "al queda" guys were able to break into the CIA and steal the code word for the database of mujahadeen fighters from the 1980s in order to have a name for their organization?

Forgive me for not reading thru 70 pages of comments. I read the first page, saw a reference to somalia and ... so I'll just leave this here: http://www.peterleeson.com/better_off_stateless.pdf Apologies if someone else already posted it. But every time anyone mentiones anything pro-liberty...

The project is at the planning stage, so it doesn't really require that much money. The big money will need to come when things move to the construction stage. Their idea is not to create a utopia, but to create a situation where forms of government can compete. (With self government being a...

Ayn Rand's personal political positions are irrelevant. You might as well be quoting Lincoln talking about sending all the blacks back to africa (something he advocated) and attempting to use that as a contemporary argument. Ayn Rand's only relevance is that she laid out the objectivist...

Libertarianism is the belief that the initiation of force is immoral. Full Stop. That's it. Everything else follows from that, including liberty, etc. It is important to keep a very clear definition of what libertarianism is so that we have a common basis for discussion. The definition I...

There's a joke in there somewhere about long objectivist dicks... but the difficulty quotient in pulling it off exceeds my intelligence. As to your point, I don't really have a problem with people having the courage of their convictions, and such people will be called dicks, probably...

I really don't think liberty is "quaint". The election of Ron Paul would do a great deal to further the cause of liberty, and even if it doesn't succeed, the campaign spreads awareness of it. Thus, you might benefit from understanding how liberty is difficult, if not impossible in statist...

You're absolutely right that the left does this. And they do it to such a great degree I could never have imagined it when I was a liberal, years ago. I think this is one of the techniques they use, and Saul Alinsky's "rules for radicals" lays out a bunch more. Another example of this is how...

Just started reading the sequel. The first is an interesting book because it really isn't clear whether the author is a libertarian or not, who ultimately is the good guys, etc. (or maybe it is clear and I'm dense.) The Soviet Union called itself a "dictatorship of the proletariat". You saw...

Ayn Rand demolished collectivism as a workable ideology in Atlas Shrugged and was a proponent of the libertarian philosophy of Objectivism. Thus, the american left hates her beyond all reason. They will use any excuse they can make up to beat up on her, and to attempt to hang her around...

(consolidated responses when I realized I responded multiple times in the same thread, then discovered I can't delete posts.)

(consolidated responses when I realized I responded multiple times in the same thread, then discovered I can't delete posts.)

(consolidated responses when I realized I responded multiple times in the same thread, then discovered I can't delete posts.)

From the OP: There you have it. When Ayn Rand distanced herself from libertarians, she was talking about collectivists, and the collectivists who pretend to be anarchists (we have those still to this day.) Thus Ayn Rand didn't oppose libertarianism. Thus the whole point of this thread is...