Considering that one of Rand's most "vociferous" critics was the anti-Communist Whittaker Chambers, who reviewed Atlas Shrugged for National Review (also very anti-Communist) and famously said, 'From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: "To a gas chamber — go!"' I am skeptical of the comic's assumption that non-libertarian Rand critics must be pro-totalitarianism themselves.
Also, when you have to label the Che Guevara shirt and Little Red Book as "mass murderer fashion accessories," when you're writing for REASON, I think subtlety is officially dead.
It always makes me chuckle how hard-core libertarians and hard-core lefties have become mirror images of one another.
Not just in doctrinaire attitudes towards folks outside their respective camps, but even within their camps.
Rand disparaged members of the Libertarian Party for not following her line of thought. Then her "intellectual heir" Leonard Peikoff disparaged fellow Objectivist David Kelly for daring to disagree with him and forming his own group. Then splits and factional fighting within the LP itself, all reminiscent of the schisms and purges among the Marxian left.
And then they wonder why they can't get anything done...
"Also, when you have to label the Che Guevara shirt and Little Red Book as "mass murderer fashion accessories," when you're writing for REASON, I think subtlety is officially dead."
Well you don't *have* to. . . but I do on occasion like to point out to people wearing Che T-shirts that they are in fact displaying the image of an alleged and, most probably, actual mass murderer on the shirt. I don't see a huge difference between Che T-shirts and those displaying the leering face of Jack Nicholson from the movie 'The Shining'. But maybe that's just me.
Meh. To me the wonderful irony was seeing today's leading exponent of "the market is always right" thinking begging for money in a splash page ad before I got to what you were linking to. If they really believed in their own philosophy they'd have charged me to read the damn thing.
So far as I know, Reason itself is devoted to spreading its ideas, not to turning a profit. It therefore runs on premises similar to those of a charitable organization, and libertarianism broadly speaking does not oppose charity (though Rand was suspicious of the concept).
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Considering that one of Rand's most "vociferous" critics was the anti-Communist Whittaker Chambers, who reviewed Atlas Shrugged for National Review (also very anti-Communist) and famously said, 'From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: "To a gas chamber — go!"' I am skeptical of the comic's assumption that non-libertarian Rand critics must be pro-totalitarianism themselves.
Also, when you have to label the Che Guevara shirt and Little Red Book as "mass murderer fashion accessories," when you're writing for REASON, I think subtlety is officially dead.
For the sake of anyone outside the usual readership of "Reason," I appreciate it.
Little children in Che shirts is unusual but far from unheard of among my liberal friends.
Honestly, I only got halfway through Whittaker Chambers' crazy rant about how Atlas Shrugged was a crazy rant.
I do see your point, though for a libertarian to see everybody who disagrees as being pro-totalitarian is nothing new.
It always makes me chuckle how hard-core libertarians and hard-core lefties have become mirror images of one another.
Not just in doctrinaire attitudes towards folks outside their respective camps, but even within their camps.
Rand disparaged members of the Libertarian Party for not following her line of thought. Then her "intellectual heir" Leonard Peikoff disparaged fellow Objectivist David Kelly for daring to disagree with him and forming his own group. Then splits and factional fighting within the LP itself, all reminiscent of the schisms and purges among the Marxian left.
And then they wonder why they can't get anything done...
"Also, when you have to label the Che Guevara shirt and Little Red Book as "mass murderer fashion accessories," when you're writing for REASON, I think subtlety is officially dead."
Well you don't *have* to. . . but I do on occasion like to point out to people wearing Che T-shirts that they are in fact displaying the image of an alleged and, most probably, actual mass murderer on the shirt. I don't see a huge difference between Che T-shirts and those displaying the leering face of Jack Nicholson from the movie 'The Shining'. But maybe that's just me.
Meh. To me the wonderful irony was seeing today's leading exponent of "the market is always right" thinking begging for money in a splash page ad before I got to what you were linking to. If they really believed in their own philosophy they'd have charged me to read the damn thing.
DairyStateDad,
So far as I know, Reason itself is devoted to spreading its ideas, not to turning a profit. It therefore runs on premises similar to those of a charitable organization, and libertarianism broadly speaking does not oppose charity (though Rand was suspicious of the concept).
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