{"id":18509,"date":"2013-01-26T00:01:14","date_gmt":"2013-01-26T05:01:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=18509"},"modified":"2013-01-25T14:52:38","modified_gmt":"2013-01-25T19:52:38","slug":"qotd-libertarianism-versus-objectivism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/01\/26\/qotd-libertarianism-versus-objectivism\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Libertarianism versus Objectivism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Libertarians are often derided for being unapologetically selfish. I don’t think that’s a fair criticism of libertarian thinking. It is a fair criticism of Randianism\/Objectivism. But the two aren’t the same. (I will concede that too many libertarians don’t make enough of an effort to distinguish the two.)<\/p>\n

Libertarianism is a philosophy of governing, and only of governing. Ayn Rand’s politics were also her personal creed and ethos. Her political beliefs dictated her taste in art, friends, music, food, and men. I find all of that rather horrifying. One of the main reasons I’m a libertarian is that I loathe politics, and I want politics to play as diminished a role in my day-to-day life as possible. Letting politics dictate my friends, loves, and interests to me sounds like a pretty miserable existence.<\/p>\n

When it comes to “the virtue of selfishness” I think the difference between Randianism and libertarianism is best explained this way: Randianism is a celebration of self-interest. Libertarianism is merely the recognition of it. <\/p>\n

Radley Balko, “James Buchanan, RIP”, Huffington Post<\/em><\/a>, 2013-01-09<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Libertarians are often derided for being unapologetically selfish. I don’t think that’s a fair criticism of libertarian thinking. It is a fair criticism of Randianism\/Objectivism. But the two aren’t the same. (I will concede that too many libertarians don’t make enough of an effort to distinguish the two.) Libertarianism is a philosophy of governing, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,53,41],"tags":[67,550,68],"class_list":["post-18509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","category-politics","category-quotations","tag-aynrand","tag-libertarianism","tag-objectivism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-4Ox","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18509"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18761,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18509\/revisions\/18761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}