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I'm probably going overboard by responding to both the Rand fanboy quotes, but here goes. There's no way to rule innocent men. Yes, there is, to the extent that that rule is legitimate. Usually, just powers arise from the consent of the governed. For example, sane people pay taxes because they understand that they have need of the canonical services of roads, fire service, police, the military, and the like. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. This typical Rand drivel sounds good on the surface, but either doesn't actually mean anything or is outright wrong. If it just means that "enforcement only comes in to play when an infraction is suspected," then it's a tautology. If it means that the government doesn't also do things like establish air traffic control, a consistent system of laws for the roads, and establish bright lines like ages of consent and whatnot, then it's clearly just wrong. On a factual level. A lie or an omission. Unworthy of a "philosopher." One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. In very few systems, and especially in the instant case of the American legal system, does "[o]ne" declare anything to be a crime. I often wonder where Randians actually live, or what their connection to political reality is. Have they not taken even a grade-school level class in civics? Oh, I'm just a bill on Capitol Hill, anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted and you create a nation of law-breakers. And the whole thing collapses on itself, ironically, in a fit of internal logical inconsistency coming from the Prophetess of Logic herself, Ayn Rand. Laws "pass" in a democratic system. Again, "[o]ne" cannot even do it. One can only decree. "Passing" is a democratic concept pertaining to the outcome of a vote. It seems like a nitpick, I know, but remember who was cited. This is Ayn "A is A" Rand, who thinks that all of human nature can be derived from the laws of logic, one of which she exclusively calls out, the Law of Non-Contradiction. Finally, this it's "impossible for men to live without breaking laws" thing is really really weird when compared against reality. There are tons of laws on the books that just go unenforced because law enforcement and the judicial system possess the very reasoning powers that Rand so often wants to remove from them. Remember when Taggart shot the guard near the end of Atlas Shrugged? Rand justified that for the reader by dehumanizing the guard as an unthinking automaton. Well, why aren't these unthinking automatons enforcing laws about the size of switch with which you can beat your wife? Why aren't they enforcing the laws in Washington state that make it literally impossible to get a motorcycle endorsement? (You have to take the class to get the endorsement, but you need the endorsement to take the class.) Because they're not unthinking automatons. And the very fact that they aren't allows the other glaring contradiction to this impossible-to-live-legally trope: precisely those impossible-to-follow laws exist, and they don't get enforced for pragmatic reasons. Perhaps this is the real reason for Rand's oft-stated hatred for pragmatism; It's actual effects wholly invalidate her stupid little "philosophy". |
It is Randians who think that civilization is the only free lunch.