Comments on: Janice R. Brown Speaks

By: Matt Curtis

Matt Curtis — Wed, 12 Nov 2003 16:28:19 +0000

Ms. Benson: The reason to take Rand’s ideas seriously is not because she was a novelist or screenwriter. Just as it is not appropriate to take Justice Brandeis’ or Justice Souter’s ideas seriously just because they were or are Supreme Court Justices. We should take Rand’s ideas seriously because they have merit – they stand to reason. Whether you think she was a poor writer, is a poor reason to simply ignore the ideas she expressed.

By: Andrew Case

Andrew Case — Wed, 05 Nov 2003 14:41:49 +0000

Gregg – you’re on to something. I read Rand and Marx back to back in high school (gave me something to keep me busy while everyone else was out getting laid). The similarities are striking. I wouldn’t call the difference “the progressive bits” – they’re equally distant from reality, with only minor differences. Marxist utopia comes from cooperation, Objectivist utopia comes from competition, and both require human beings to be both completely rational and dedicated followers of the respective philosophies. Utopia is easy if you assume everyone will think and act the same way.

By: Gregg

Gregg — Wed, 05 Nov 2003 02:44:58 +0000

Is it my imagination, or is “Objectivism” basically Marxism with all of the progressive bits taken out?

By: W. Kiernan

W. Kiernan — Wed, 05 Nov 2003 00:21:18 +0000

Aw come on, I’m gonna write my Democratic representatives and ask them to drop their filibuster. I want to be tried for a major felony before her. I mean if I’m guilty. What real American wouldn’t find delight in the thought of a federal judge who’s totally nuts? Speaking of moving the keys by force of will, I graduated from Van Vogt to Rand when I was a young teen. Rand was a slan, you know! What saved me from the worst effects of that sort of book abuse was prior exposure to Lolita.

By: Ophelia Benson

Ophelia Benson — Wed, 05 Nov 2003 00:07:53 +0000

Oh, thank you, missed me; how kind. I wrote that definition for the dictionary… (Too bad the link doesn’t work. I wonder if this will.) Well it does in preview, but I gather that doesn’t always mean it will once it’s posted. Ah well.

By: rea

rea — Tue, 04 Nov 2003 23:49:38 +0000

“but with bernstien, muller . . . defending her” ??? No, the post shows Bernstein CRITICIZING her, and the mention of Muller was just in passing.

By: John Strom

John Strom — Tue, 04 Nov 2003 22:26:41 +0000

Well, y’all clearly don’t like her, but with bernstien, muller, bainbridge, solum, and others defending her, it’s getting kinda tough for you to argue that she’s outside the mainstream.

By: Missed Me

Missed Me — Tue, 04 Nov 2003 21:33:59 +0000

I encountered Ayn Rand at seventeen; too late. I like the capsule summary here: http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/dictionary.php#r

By: rea

rea — Tue, 04 Nov 2003 18:41:47 +0000

“Thucydides lamented the great changes in language and life that succeeded the Pelopennesian War” I’m glad you pointed to that one, too, Harry. Now, I’m no great authority on Thucydides, but I don’t recall him particularly lamenting that. Really, he doesn’t talk much about post-war events at all—his history was left unfinished at a point 7 years or so before the war’s end.

By: Harry Tuttle

Harry Tuttle — Tue, 04 Nov 2003 16:42:10 +0000

Nope, nutty as a shithouse rat. When you ignore history and start making it up to fit your presumptions you are either a lieing sack of crap or you are insane. I'll give this loon the benefit of the doubt. It seems to be an inevitable artifact of cultural disintegration. Thucydides lamented the great changes in language and life that succeeded the Pelopennesian War... A century after Thucydides wrote that, Alexander spread Greek culture to the four corners of the world. For a thousand years you could find a greek speaker anywhere from the Straits of Gibralter to the Indus river. The philosophies of the Hellenistic world formed the very foundation of western civilization. That is cultural disintegration!? Objectivism: Taking the Enlightenment out of enlightened self interest.

By: scylla

scylla — Tue, 04 Nov 2003 16:12:48 +0000

Nobody’s pointed this out yet, but she actually calls the New Deal the equivalent of slavery. I suspect some of her ancestors could have explained the difference to her. I doubt she was interested in what her ancestors had to say. Sadly for her, Ayn Rand wasted her entire life avoiding the unpleasant lesson of the Russian Revolution. When she was an immpressionable teenager, her comfortable middle-class family got screwed during the chaos and had to start over in Ameri-kay. AND SHE NEVER GOT OVER IT. On a practical level, her entire philosophy can be reduced to a single underlying theme: “Stay the hell away from my stuff.” Sadly for us, modern corollaries emerged to be elucidated by the Chicago school of economics: “What’s yours is mine too, once I manage to take it” and “The only role of government is to prevent you from getting it back”—popularly known as “Gimme and Getback.” On these two commandments depend all the laws and the prophets.

By: C.J.Colucci

C.J.Colucci — Tue, 04 Nov 2003 16:12:07 +0000

I wonder if the Bush administration is following a deliberate strategy here. Most of the nominees, of whatever ethnicity, are ordinary mainstream conservatives. Not the sort of folk I or Senate Democrats would choose, but people as entitled to confirmation as the ordinary mainstream liberals we would prefer. They do, and should, get confirmed with little trouble, indeed, far less trouble than ordinary mainstream liberals faced in ther Clinton/Republican Senate years. The real wack-jobs tend to have some ethnic or geographic marker attached: Pickering/Southerner; Pryor/Catholic (and Southerner, a two-fer); Brown/African American Woman (a classic two-fer). I exclude Estrada/Hispanic because the principal objection to him was that no one, except those who appointed him, had a clue what he stood for or a way to find out. I suspect that the administration is deliberately packaging its high-profile wack-job nominees in ethnic/geographic/gender wrappers to make the opposition to them seem like something other than ordinary opposition to wack-jobs. (The Democrats could do the same thing, too, if they chose. The legal academy—though not the bench—is liberally sprinkled with left-wing wack-jobs of politically interesting ethnicity, geography, or gender. But they don’t get nominated. Democratic presidents appoint boring mainstream liberals and moderates, and the Republicans squabble even over them.)

By: rea

rea — Tue, 04 Nov 2003 15:19:24 +0000

Nobody’s pointed this out yet, but she actually calls the New Deal the equivalent of slavery. I suspect some of her ancestors could have explained the difference to her. “Unhinged” is putting it mildly.

By: Andrew Case

Andrew Case — Tue, 04 Nov 2003 15:03:18 +0000

I don’t read CT for the humor, but this made me laugh out loud: “Oh god. Ayn Rand. Fourteen year olds of the world unite! The car keys shall be yours by sheer force of will! Objectivism requires it!” Beautiful.

By: wcw

wcw — Tue, 04 Nov 2003 06:06:22 +0000

funny. I’m a real, serious, principled, radical believer in freedom of thought and action and yet I would support Brown if and only if her appointment came with Scalia’s resignation attached. see, nothing I have read of Brown’s opinions suggests that she is any particularly exceptional friend of freedom’s in general, except perhaps of the quite peculiar freedom of prison wardens to make up the rules as they go along. did I miss a juicy dissent somewhere? oh, wait… I forgot that in North America “libertarian” is a loaded code word. silly me, thinking a principled libertarian would believe in freedom of thought and action.