Philosophy
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Government is force. What Really Limits Government? Force limits government. First, government is limited by the force it has at its disposal. A government whose agents are armed only with truncheons is far more limited than a government whose agents are armed with machine guns, tear gas, and the hydrogen bomb. Second, government is limited…
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This is the fifth entry in my Antistatism Series. The more I study the Enlightenment, the more astounded I am at the depth and breadth of its contours, and at boldness of its heroes as they sought to shape the West to their new vision. One contour that I think Objectivists admire too distantly was…
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This is the fourth entry in my Antistatism Series. Here my argument begins in earnest. We shall see that Ayn Rand tacitly admits that an account of the practicability of government is a necessary component of any political philosophy — and then proceeds to not provide one. Objectivism has disturbingly little to say about what…
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This is the third entry in my Antistatism Series. Before I can make my own case for antistatism, I must pause to redress a famously misaddressed letter on a related subject. In 1969 Roy Childs began an Open Letter to Ayn Rand with these words: The purpose of this letter is to convert you to…
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The Internet hosts many critiques of Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand, most of which are useless or worse. Michael Huemer’s Why I Am Not an Objectivist (WIANO hereafter) is an exception. It has the great virtue that any Objectivist who engages its arguments can either realize a better understanding of philosophy by overcoming them,…
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Some time ago I promised a series of posts that would outline my argument “against limited government.” The first of these posts was “More Eggs,” which should be considered to be a kind of extended epigraph. The present post shall serve as a general introduction. When I said I would provide a series of posts…
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I will never forget this. One morning, when I was about seven years old, I sat down with my younger brother and sister to a breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast. I dug in immediately, preferring my eggs as warm as possible. “Look!”, came a cry from across the dining room table. It was my…
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One of the things I find most striking about Objectivism is its subtlety. I’m in the minority. The lucidity of Ayn Rand’s writing, I think, tends to fool her admirers nearly as often as it fools her critics. She reduces complex issues to essentials, casts fine lines of distinction in sharp relief, illuminates the obscure,…
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[T]he great majority of people lack an intellectual conscience. —Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. —Henry David Thoreau I think not.
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[Note: this post has been superseded. — Ed.] While wandering the Web back in 1997, I came across Michael Huemer’s Why I Am Not an Objectivist (WIANO hereafter). I was impressed by what I then called “[T]he first reasoned (and reasonable) critique of Objectivism I [had] ever read.” At the time, I considered myself an…