Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2001 16:05:41 -0400
To: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com>
From: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com>
Subject: Randians for Mass Murder by Milton Batiste
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Randians for Mass Murder

by Milton Batiste <akbullen@yahoo.se>

David Kelley is the executive director of The Objectivist Center, 
celebrated in some libertarian circles as a forum for moderate 
randianism. This is what Kelley has to say about the response to the 
acts of terror on September 11:
<http://www.objectivistcenter.org/pubs/dk_assault_on_civilization.asp>

"Negotiation is an exercise of reason that civilized people use to 
resolve their differences. We are not dealing with civilized people. 
We must cease the policy of excusing their violence by their poverty 
and trying to buy them off with subsidies. We are not dealing with 
people who seek such gain. We must declare war on the terrorists and 
use whatever force it takes to render them incapable of posing any 
further threat."

Kelley is advocating war with "whatever force it takes" against 
enemies who are less than human (not "civilized people"). This is the 
voice of the reasonable Objectivist faction. What about the 
unreasonable faction?

Leonard Peikoff - the "intellectual heir" of Ayn Rand - is the 
founder of The Ayn Rand Institute, the fountainhead of orthodox 
Objectivism. His reaction 
<http://www.aynrand.org/medialink/blacktuesday.shtml> is - 
unsurprisingly - similiar to Kelley's, but even more indiscriminate. 
Americas enemies, it seems, are Arabs in general:

"The Arabs embodied in extreme form every idea-selfless duty, 
anti-materialism, faith or feeling above science, the supremacy of 
the group-which our universities and churches, and our own political 
Establishment, had long been preaching as the essence of virtue."

And what are Americans to do about the blatantly religious Arab 
altruists? Simple. Kill'em all - inflict "mass death" upon the 
citizens of Towelhead Nations:

"To those who oppose war, I ask: If not now, when? How many more 
corpses are necessary before this country should take action? The 
choice today is mass death in the United States or mass death in the 
terrorist nations."

Many libertarians are attracted to the remnants of Aristotelian 
philosophy within Objectivism. Those elements are conspicuously 
absent in the Objectivist proposals provoked by terrorism. The enemy 
is a faceless, barely human, collective entity. No references are 
made to the Just War doctrine.

They say that war brings out the best and the worst in people. That 
goes for Objectivists too, and it is not a pleasant revelation for 
libertarians.

September 19, 2001
Milton Batiste (send him mail) is a libertarian writer in Uppsala, Sweden.
Copyright © 2001 LewRockwell.com



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