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West Coast Publishing 1Objectivism K and Answers

Objectivism Critique and Answers

Objectivism K – 1NC Shell 1/2..................................................................................................................................2Objectivism K – 1NC Shell 2/2..................................................................................................................................3Objectivism K – Link – Government Charity.............................................................................................................4Objectivism K – Link – Welfare State........................................................................................................................5Objectivism K – Link – Moral Obligations.................................................................................................................6Objectivism K – Link – Helping Others......................................................................................................................7Objectivism K – Link – Flawed Epistemology............................................................................................................8Objectivism K – Impact – Genocidal Violence..........................................................................................................9Objectivism K – Impact – Socialism........................................................................................................................10Objectivism K – Impact – Tyranny..........................................................................................................................11Objectivism K – Impact – Individual Rights are Paramount....................................................................................12Objectivism K – Impact – Turns Aff Ethics..............................................................................................................13Objectivism K – Alternative – Individual Charity Solves.........................................................................................14Objectivism K – A2: Selfishness Bad.......................................................................................................................15

A2: Objectivism K – No Link....................................................................................................................................16A2: Objectivism K – Nuclear War Outweighs.........................................................................................................17A2: Objectivism K – Utilitarianism Good................................................................................................................18A2: Objectivism K – Objectivism Bad......................................................................................................................19A2: Objectivism K – Alternative is Worse...............................................................................................................20A2: Objectivism K – Alternative Replicates Violation of Rights...............................................................................21A2: Objectivism K – Objectivism is a Cult...............................................................................................................22A2: Objectivism K – Alternative is Logically Incoherent..........................................................................................23A2: Objectivism K – They Get Ethics Wrong...........................................................................................................24


Objectivism K – 1NC Shell 1/2

The imperative toward social service leads to Nazism and the death of freedom. William Thomas, Philosopher and Columnist, December 2004, The Atlas Society, Accessed 4/29/09, http://www.objectivistcenter.org/cth--1584-Freedom____Achievement____Individualism____ReasonObjectivism.aspx

Objectivism rejects the sacrifice of the individual to the demands of others. It rejects the moral standard that defines a person's worth by his social service. As Ayn Rand brilliantly illustrated in Atlas Shrugged, when men truly attempt to live as "their brothers' keepers" the result is the kind of cannibal society achieved by Stalinist Russia, Nazi Germany, and today's "Democratic Republic" of North Korea. Because of its principled commitment to individualism, Objectivism rejects any social theory that places the group over the person. It rejects all attempts to define people fundamentally by their race, their tribe, their sexual identities, their nation, or their class. It doesn't claim that there are no racial characteristics; of course there are: northern Europeans tend to sunburn easily; Africans tend to have curly hair. It doesn't claim that there are no sexual characteristics: romantic love would not be possible without sexuality. But under these generalizations, what each normal human being has in common is the possession of an independent, reasoning mind. Thus, Objectivism's commitment to freedom, its more fundamental commitment to achievement, and its yet more fundamental commitment to individualism all come down to the bedrock of its commitment to reason.

The aff grants the government a moral blank check which results in slavery and atrocity.Richard Sloman, Leading Libertarian Activist, 1993, Libertarian Alliance, Accessed 4/29/09, http://www.libertarian.co.uk/lapubs/philn/philn028.pdf

One does not have to look to the totalitarian regimes of the communist bloc or the more traditional despotisms of underdeveloped nations to find real tyranny, repression and unsupportable coercion. The modern social democracies perpetuate the mythology of “self-rule” by majoritarian electoral process and representative government. They perpetuate the erroneous notion that their actions represent the rule of “law” when in fact, they are nothing more than a process of legitimized and institutionalized theft and countertheft. The modern social democratic state assumes a moral blank check on the lives and products of its citizens. “Majority rule” is nothing more than a constantly fluctuating coalition of interest groups pillaging a given minority. There are no welldefined objective principles restraining the legitimate purpose and functions of the State, obviously because there can be none which would stand the test of reason; only the vague notion that anything can be done to the individual if it appears even momentarily to serve an ostensible collective good. Democracy is a more softspoken reiteration, in political form, that the end justifies the means. On more specifically, the majoritarian ends can always justify, through their clout, the sacrifice of minority rights as a valid means. The instruments of democracy are those employed by tyrannies throughout the ages. Conscription of individuals into military and civil service in defense of freedom is analogous to raping for chastity. Since when is slavery necessary for the defense of liberty? It can never be. Taxation cannot be justified by a majority. If one person opposes the taking of his property that is theft. It makes no difference in principle if he is robbed by one or by 50 million. The taking by initiatory force of an individual’s property is theft. No amount of flowery language, legal tradition, implied Social Contracts, altruistic claims or collectivist rationales can change the fact of theft, slavery and murder which are currently accepted as “moral” in the contemporary world.


Objectivism K – 1NC Shell 2/2

Alternative: Reject the affirmative and resist calls to selfishness by embracing a radically individualist approach to life.

Our alternative represents a revolutionary approach to life that must be totally embraced.Richard Sloman, Leading Libertarian Activist, 1993, Libertarian Alliance, Accessed 4/29/09, http://www.libertarian.co.uk/lapubs/philn/philn028.pdf

Libertarianism, thus, is more than a political doctrine in opposition to the “cult of omnipotent state”, as announced by the poetic, but rather evasive opening line, of the “Statement of Principles” of the Libertarian Party (U.S.A.). It is an entire way of life which by its basic premises stands philosophically, and ideologically, in total antagonistic opposition to the dominant psychology, culture and politics of out time. Libertarianism is nothing less than the most radical and revolutionary doctrine known to the world. It is a rigorously rational and individualistically anti-authoritarian way of life, which must, by the nature of what it entails, threaten every existing center and institution of coercive and arbitrary power on this planet. Libertarianism is the implacable foe of Church and State. It is the ultimate eroder of all unearned privileges, coercively imposed status, arbitrary authority and unjust use of force.

This ethic of individualism is the most life-affirming stance possibleWilliam Thomas, Philosopher and Columnist, December 2004, The Atlas Society, http://www.objectivistcenter.org/cth--1584-Freedom____Achievement____Individualism____ReasonObjectivism.aspx

This thorough-going commitment to reason informs every aspect of the Objectivist ethics. Ayn Rand preached "the virtue of selfishness," but her distinctive concept is not the short-sighted, narrow, destructive selfishness of a bully or a dictator. Virtuous selfishness is rational: it is a commitment to living in a manner that will really allow one to flourish, using all one's talents and faculties—and reason is the foremost among them. A commitment to reason underlies the Objectivist commitment to moral integrity: a rational person makes choices for the long term, taking account of the full context, and acts consistently on the basis of objectively proven principles. And rational selfishness is gregarious: it recognizes that other people are worth knowing, respecting, and dealing with because of the astounding range of benefits they offer. Reason is essential to the Objectivist politics, too. It is our reason that makes it possible for us to plan long-term and to envision alternatives to what exists. Reason makes possible production and all forms of truly human work. It makes industrial and agricultural advances possible. It makes possible the knowledge economy, powered by the mind. It is because of reason that we can resolve disputes in a court of law and not, as the animals do, by fang and claw. It makes a society based on contract and trade possible: it makes capitalism possible. To achieve our values in society, we need the freedom to act by the judgment of our individual, rational minds. That is why we have individual rights and why we need them protected by government. We need freedom in order to live. Given freedom, our reason lets us thrive. This is why the enemies of freedom are so often enemies of reason, as Ayn Rand pointed out in Atlas Shrugged and her cultural commentary. It is why the enemies of reason are also, whether they know it or not, in fact enemies of life.

Our criticism operates on an epistemological level – starting from a position of selfishness is paramount. Richard Sloman, Activist, 1993, Libertarian Alliance, http://www.libertarian.co.uk/lapubs/philn/philn028.pdf

The relationship between an objectively-derived epistemology, and the ethic of rational egoism, is fundamental to a libertarian political doctrine. The argument for the absolute right of the individual to his own life and property is necessarily an intellectual one. It requires a consistent and rigorous identification of premises which can account for an entire range of problems which occur in life. Other competitive doctrines such as the complex of religio-philosophical and ideological notions which can be summarized under the multiple heading of mysticism-altruism-collectivism- statism do not require consistency in a referential sense for their “success”.6 Every variant of the latter category propose metaphysical, epistemological,


ethical and political-economi theories which provide important loopholes from reality, and with them, the sacrifice of individual rights. Libertarianism is not merely a defense of rights, it is of necessity rational selfishness, and the absolute primacy of reason in value choices. Any attempt to avoid an integrated and uncompromising defense of these principles is intellectually and in ultimate political terms, catastrophic.


Objectivism K – Link – Government Charity

1. The plan violates objectivist ideals by having the government take over the realm of individuals.William Thomas, Philosopher and Columnist, December 2004, The Atlas Society, Accessed 4/29/09, http://www.objectivistcenter.org/cth--1584-Freedom____Achievement____Individualism____ReasonObjectivism.aspx

Ayn Rand described herself as a "radical for capitalism." Objectivists see capitalism not simply as a system of money exchange but as the political system based on the principle that each person has the right to his own life—i.e., the right to live free from force. Objectivists are for laissez-faire capitalism, in which the state is separated from business activity just as today in America it is separated from any church. Under laissez-faire, no one may force you to work in any manner other than what you choose; no one may take your property by force; no one may interfere by force with what you say or do on private property. No corporation is insulated from competition, and no one has greater rights under law than you as an individual. You are robustly free, unless and until you yourself initiate the use of force. Laissez-faire is the system of individual responsibility and of justice for each individual. Objectivism envisions a radical reduction in the size of government. It envisions a country in which customers—not the government—regulate product quality by their choices to buy or not buy. It envisions a country in which doctors—not the government—decide what services to offer, to what patients, and at what prices. It envisions a country in which individuals are responsible for saving for retirement—their own lives are at stake, after all; it's not the government's business. It envisions a society in which people have the right to choose whatever consensual sexual relationships they like and in which people have the responsibility to live with the consequences of their choices—your sex life is definitely not the government's business.

2. The aff’s type of government action is a blow to individual liberty.Richard Sloman, Leading Libertarian Activist, 1993, Libertarian Alliance, Accessed 4/29/09, http://www.libertarian.co.uk/lapubs/philn/philn028.pdf

Aside from the fact that central planning, and thus government intervention in the market place cannot replace the pricing mechanism of mass-level transactional choicemaking, the attempt to institute this form of coervice statist intervention is always unjust and detrimental to the economic and psychological well-functioning of the people involved. Libertarianism recognizes the psychological axiom that no conscious individual can long maintain a sense of self esteem and incentive to create value when he is compelled to be responsible for the actions and failings of others.

3. Government-sponsored charity is an enslavement of the individual.Daniel Shapiro, Freelance Writer, August-September 1999, BNET, Accessed 4/29/09, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1568/is_4_31/ai_55343572/

Kelley then turns to justifications of the welfare state by appeals to benevolence and charity. He argues that charity, benevolence, and compassion cannot be primary virtues in the realm of material well-being because they depend upon the creation of wealth. Creation comes before distribution, achievement before aid. But even if charity and benevolence are not primary virtues, they are indeed virtues, and so why not view the welfare state, as the philosopher Jeremy Waldron proposes, as government-instituted charity? Kelley answers: Because charity as a value is fundamentally different from welfare as a right. In one sense this is obvious, since the latter prevents the donor from choosing his recipients, the amount of aid, and the conditions under which aid should be given. Kelley, though, has a more important point in mind. When charity is compulsory, persons are no longer treated as ends in themselves. Instead, recipients own a piece of the donor.


Objectivism K – Link – Welfare State

1. The Aff makes an even bigger, more bloated welfare state.William Thomas, Philosopher, December 2004, The Atlas Society, http://www.objectivistcenter.org/cth--1584-Freedom____Achievement____Individualism____ReasonObjectivism.aspx

Today's bloated, unrestrained regimes—from brutal dictatorships to ever-expanding welfare/regulatory states—fulfill their proper functions poorly or not at all, and they restrict our liberty unnecessarily. As they continue to metastasize, these cancerous governments pose a profound threat to free choice, social diversity, technological progress, and economic prosperity. Objectivism, by contrast, advocates a small but potent government, one that promotes freedom abroad and does everything necessary to enable freedom at home—and strays not an inch from its appointed role. In the West today, governments universally receive their popular legitimacy from the fact that their leadership is selected by vote. This mistakes the real basis of governmental legitimacy. Democratic elections are an effective means of choosing a government. But elections do not give leaders carte blanche. Government's fundamental purpose is not defined by the whims of the majority on any given issue, but by the objective requirements of individual freedom. The root of a free government, then, is its respect for individual rights. The measure of whether a government is legitimate or not boils down fundamentally to the degree to which it respects the rights of its citizens to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness.

2. Forced alleviation of poverty is antithetical to objectivist principles of individualism.William Thomas, Philosopher and Columnist, 2009, The Atlas Society, Accessed 4/29/09, http://www.objectivistcenter.org/cth--1245-Poverty_and_Disabilities.aspx

Need I point out that despite all the rhetoric, the government social programs of today have not resolved our social problems and indeed often exacerbate them? The effects of the recent welfare reform show how much this country had created a culture of poverty and a class of people habitually dependent on government aid. The morality of government social programs is that of a thug: when a politician takes credit for a new program, remember that the money for it was taken at the point of a gun from people who never approved of the program and who will never see any benefit from it. I mean, the taxpayers. You can read David Kelley's book "A Life of One's Own" for the moral argument against the welfare state. And see our suggested readings on social assistance for economic and historical information about the ill-effects of government social programs and the alternative arrangements possible in a free market. There are numerous proven ways that interested individuals can create institutions that reduce the effects of poverty, ignorance, and disabilities. These include endowed schools, clinics, and hospitals; mutual aid societies and targeted insurance; and creative business thinking that sees a resource where others see a shortcoming. But if you think that the elimination of poverty is the standard by which a social system should be judged, you are mistaken. People have free will and life is risky: there is no system that can preserve human freedom and insure that no one will be foolish or evil, that no one will have bad luck they did not insure against, and that everyone will have perfect health. Objectivism defends the right of the individual to seek his own happiness in life. The preservation of individual freedom in the free market gives everyone every reason to live productively and prudently. It sets everyone free to create the best institutions for human happiness. It requires that all dealings with others be freely chosen, so that each person can engage only in dealings from which he sees a benefit. It recognizes that each person is responsible for his own life, and does not mortgage your right to exist to the failings of others. There is every reason to think that such a society will have little poverty or social vice, but the standard by which we judge it is that there is every reason to think it will make possible a happy life for a rational human being.

3. Welfare rights increasingly marginalize the individual.David Kelley, Executive Director The Objectivist Center, November 10, 1998, The CATO Institute, Accessed 4/29/09, http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=5788

That is not an expression of benevolence. By its very nature, a right is not a gift or favor for which gratitude is required. It is an entitlement, an enforceable claim to something someone else owns. But people in a free and civilized society do not own each other. The concept of welfare rights reflects a much more expansive conception of the role of government than anything envisioned by the Founding Fathers. "For Jefferson," observes legal scholar Louis Henkin, "the poor had no right to be free from want. The framers saw the purposes of government as being to police and safeguard, not to feed and clothe and house." To this day the Supreme Court has not recognized a constitutional right to welfare goods.


Objectivism K – Link – Moral Obligations

1. Demands to help others result in the erosion of individual sovereignty. Richard Sloman, Leading Libertarian Activist, 1993, Libertarian Alliance, Accessed 4/29/09, http://www.libertarian.co.uk/lapubs/philn/philn028.pdf

The concept of property is the political-legal aspect of the ethic of rational egoism. An individual’s sole rational purpose in life is to attain his own self interest. There is no reasonable and objective basis in nature to argue an “a priori” obligation on the part of an individual to others. There are only two ways in which an individual may be ethically required to accept an obligation: (1) if he has given voluntary and explicit consent to provide a value or (2) if he has caused an objectively definable damage to someone else for which he owes restitution. Self ownership is the basis for all property ownership and is the correlary of personal sovereignty or self dominion in the political sphere.

2. The moral obligation to alleviate poverty through the government kills more effective, un-intrusive methods.Daniel Shapiro, Freelance Writer, August-September 1999, BNET, Accessed 4/29/09, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1568/is_4_31/ai_55343572/

Furthermore, since about the mid-1970s, the prevalent view among liberal political philosophers has been that there is a moral obligation to help those whose disadvantages arise through no fault or choice of one's own. There is a big difference between arguing that mere need, regardless of whether or not one is responsible for being needy, generates a moral obligation, and that unchosen or undeserved bad fortune so obligates. The latter certainly does not imply that self-sacrifice is the highest virtue. Although liberals believe that the obligation to help the involuntarily disadvantaged supports state welfare, one could argue the opposite, since distinguishing between those who are deserving and undeserving of aid is not exactly government's strong suit. Indeed, in the last half of his chapter on welfare and benevolence, Kelley does an excellent job of explaining why government is far worse than private institutions in distinguishing between the needy who should and should not be aided. He points out that when welfare is a right, personal virtues or vices become irrelevant in making aid decisions, yet it is precisely a person's character traits that play a large role in determining whether he will get off welfare permanently. Private agencies tend, for that reason, to focus upon persons' characters as much as giving them skills, and have the discretion, which a government bureaucracy operating by fixed rules does not, to tailor different kinds of aid to different recipients. (When government agencies do have that discretion, it is dangerous, since as an agency of coercion they should not intervene in clients' personal lives.)

3. Their reliance on hyper-moralizing poverty guarantees our link.Ayn Rand, Founder of Objectivism, June 1966, The Objectivist, Accessed 4/29/09, http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/charity.html

The fact that a man has no claim on others (i.e., that it is not their moral duty to help him and that he cannot demand their help as his right) does not preclude or prohibit good will among men and does not make it immoral to offer or to accept voluntary, non-sacrificial assistance. It is altruism that has corrupted and perverted human benevolence by regarding the giver as an object of immolation, and the receiver as a helplessly miserable object of pity who holds a mortgage on the lives of others—a doctrine which is extremely offensive to both parties, leaving men no choice but the roles of sacrificial victim or moral cannibal . . . . To view the question in its proper perspective, one must begin by rejecting altruism’s terms and all of its ugly emotional aftertaste—then take a fresh look at human relationships. It is morally proper to accept help, when it is offered, not as a moral duty, but as an act of good will and generosity, when the giver can afford it (i.e., when it does not involve self-sacrifice on his part), and when it is offered in response to the receiver’s virtues, not in response to his flaws, weaknesses or moral failures, and not on the ground of his need as such.


Objectivism K – Link – Helping Others

1. Their ethic of compassion forces the individual to sacrifice themselves for the sake of others.Richard Sloman, Leading Libertarian Activist, 1993, Libertarian Alliance, Accessed 4/29/09, http://www.libertarian.co.uk/lapubs/philn/philn028.pdf

The refutation of implied contracts becomes particularly crucial for the libertarian position on abortion and parent-child relationships. 11 Here again, the question of the libertarian position must transcend the political level to the ethical requirement of rational egoism which solidly confronts the authoritarian doctrine of altruist- collectivism. The altruist ethic requires an individual to live for the sake of others. Under this ethic, the objective character and consequence of an action is subsidiary to who is the recipient of the action. Achieving value for oneself, for instance, is considered ethically inferior to providing the same value for someone else. This requires one to sacrifice his own value for the same of others i.e. to surrender a higher value for a lower value.12 Although adherence to the altruist doctrine does not necessitate enforcement of self-sacrifice and bondage to the welfare of others, it creates a moral ambiance which promotes violatory interventions, and the coercive redistribution of individual product by the State. Altruism is the ethical spine of all major collectivist social doctrines and, thus, of statism.

2. The aff embraces an ethic of welfare rights which place the population above the individual.David Kelley, Executive Director The Objectivist Center, November 10, 1998, The CATO Institute, Accessed 4/29/09, http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=5788

In many industrialized countries economic growth has made those goods widely available and people have come to expect them. But an expectation is not a right. And "welfare rights" are radically different in kind from the classical rights enshrined in our Constitution. The latter are rights to be free from interference by the state -- or anyone else -- in the pursuit of our goals, as long as we respect the equal rights of others. Thus my right to freedom of speech is the right to be free from censorship or punishment for speaking my mind. It does not guarantee that I will have anything important to say, or that anyone will listen or agree or that an editor will choose to publish my words. Welfare rights, by contrast, are rights to goods, not to "mere" freedom of action. They are rights to be provided with certain goods, whether or not one is able to earn them. And that means someone else is obligated to provide them. When the U.N. declaration asserts that I have a right to medical care, for example, it does not merely mean that I should be free to contract with doctors, hospitals and insurers on terms that are acceptable to all parties. It means that my medical care should be paid for by the state, which means that taxpayers are obliged to support me, and health care providers are obliged to go along with the arrangement. Five years ago the Clintons wanted to impose controls on the entire health care industry -- in effect to nationalize the industry -- in the name of a "right" to health care. The concept of welfare rights reflects a much more expansive conception of the role of government than anything envisioned by the Founding Fathers. The classical rights express the idea of self-ownership. They reflect the Enlightenment ideas that individuals are ends in themselves and that relationships among people should be voluntary. Welfare rights, by contrast, express the idea that clients of the welfare state own the people who produce the wealth on which welfare clients depend.

3. The aff provides the justification for constant government triumph over the people.Harry Browne, Executive Director of Public Policy American Liberty Foundation, 2003, Why Government Doesn’t Work, Accessed 4/29/09, http://www.jrbooksonline.com/PDF_Books/why_govt_doesnt_work.pdf

We no longer are proud, self-reliant Americans. Government has turned too many of us into whiners, dependents, people clamoring for favors from the state. Fortunately, it isn’t too late to change this. But the changes have to come soon. We are fast reaching the point where government will be so insolvent from over-promising that we can no longer unravel the mess without shortchanging and hurting millions of people. The changes have to be quick and decisive. Government doesn’t keep its promises. So we can’t depend on it for 5-year plans to phase out wasteful and destructive agencies — or 7-year plans to balance the budget. Like the famous Soviet 5-year plans, Congressional multi-year promises are never fulfilled. And


each reduction in government has to be complete. Reducing an agency to a small fraction of its current size leaves intact the mechanism by which it can grow again. Like a weed it has to be pulled out by the roots — not cut back.


Objectivism K – Link – Flawed Epistemology

1. Their imperative to action rests on a pathologically flawed epistemology. Richard Sloman, Leading Libertarian Activist, 1993, Libertarian Alliance, Accessed 4/29/09, http://www.libertarian.co.uk/lapubs/philn/philn028.pdf

Collectivist doctrine attempts to circumvent the reality of individual production by postulating the existence of some reified entity creating all wealth. Reification is the attribution of substance, or substantial characteristics, to a concept which has no objectively substantial counterpart in reality. Marxism, for instance, posits the independent existence of a reified process called “dialectial materialism” or at times “historical materialism”.15 It is seen as a force which works independently of human beings and other specifiable phenomena. Socialists and collectivist are quick to refer to “Society” as an entity autonomous of individuals. They argue that the specialization which permits the more efficient performance of tasks in the production of complex goods is evidence of the existence of an entity called “Society” or of “social relationships”. 16 Thus, individual decisions and wills are predetermined by the interworkings of “society”. This assumption is the basis for the Marxian class theory which considers individuals to be psychologically preprogrammed by the economic status of their families. A collectivist doctrine assumes which has been called “social realism”. This tendency to view “society” as a real entity which must be obeyed and supported is widespread. It results in part from a prevalent psycholpathology of individuals who have a neurotic insecurity and dependence on others. It is motivated by the personally insecure need to believe in some all-embracing “great together” and reinforced by complicated intellectual misconceptions. Much of the latter results from an outright misrepresentation of reality currently being propagated in state-run educational systems.

2. The reinforce a system of thinking that justifies un-ending government intervention. Tibor Machan, Hoover Fellow, 2002, The Hoover Institution, Accessed 4/29/09, http://www.hoover.org/publications/books/3001886.html

Certainly, it is unrealistic to expect that either flexible case-bycase assessment alone, or rigid and unreflective application of principles alone, could be sufficient to formulate sound public policy. The dogmatic approach is largely eschewed by prominent contemporary political intellectuals. However, many do regard every problem as unique, thus fostering public policies and legal decisions that do not in practice conform to any basic principles (except perhaps the principle of pragmatism itself ). As a result, those who administer public policy and law more and more have become the ultimate arbiters of what will be acceptable public policy. And that, in turn, defeats the ideal of the rule of law, the only reasonable alternative to the rule of arbitrary human will, whether of a majority, a king, or a single ruling party. The rule of law allows everyone to participate in the assessment of public policy and legal decision making; we can all evaluate whether our policy and lawmakers are doing the right thing by reference to a knowable, objective standard. If no principles apply, then anything goes. Usually, the most emotionally appealing choice of the moment is accepted, which means that those who are most adept at expressing and manipulating emotions—the demagogues— are the ones who tend to carry the day. In emergencies, especially massive emergencies that have a wide impact on a society, the opportunities for such demagoguery abound.

3. The aff relies on a flawed epistemological approach.Adam Knott, Libertarian Author, November 2006, Praxeology.org, Accessed 4/29/09, http://www.praxeology.org/Documents/A%20Praxeology%20of%20Coercion,%20First%20Edition.pdf

The problem with this approach is that a wide range of social phenomena lay outside the realm of what can currently be expressed in terms of increase and decrease. A wide range of social phenomena lay outside the realm of what is considered “objective” according to contemporary scientific conceptual schemes. Thus in so far as social law to date, seems to require expression in such terms, in order to be “law-formulable”, then it follows that there may be no laws of social action formulable, aside from economic laws addressing goods and their money prices. This seems to follow, if a pre-condition for the scientific treatment of social phenomena, is the conceptual objectification of these phenomena, as described.


Objectivism K – Impact – Genocidal Violence

1. Their ethic of self-sacrifice is the same logic that lead to the Holocaust. Robert Tracinski, Senior Writer, April 23, 2000, Ayn Rand Institute, Accessed 4/29/09, http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5264

Under such a philosophy, no one can complain when the Nazis freeze workers' wages--the nation needs less costly tanks. No one can speak out when Hitler arrests his political opponents--the nation needs greater unity. And no one can resist when the Jews are tortured and murdered--the nation needs Aryan purity. As Leonard Peikoff writes in The Ominous Parallels--a study of the philosophic similarities between America today and pre-Nazi Germany: "The opponents of Nazism were disarmed; since they equated selflessness with virtue, they could not avoid conceding that Nazism, however misguided, was a form of moral idealism." Most people avoid these stark implications by retreating to a compromise between self-sacrifice and self-interest. Calls for sacrifice are proper, they say, but should not be taken "too far." The Fascists condemned this approach as hypocrisy. They took the morality of sacrifice to its logical conclusion. They insisted, in the words of Italian Fascist Alfredo Rocco, on "the necessity, for which the older doctrines make little allowance, of sacrifice, even up to the total immolation of individuals." And the Nazis certainly practiced what Rocco preached. A central goal of the concentration camps, wrote survivor Bruno Bettelheim, was "to break the prisoners as individuals, and to change them into a docile mass." "There are to be no more private Germans," one Nazi writer declared; "each is to attain significance only by his service to the state." The goal of National Socialism was the relentless sacrifice of the individual: the sacrifice of his mind, his independence, and ultimately his person. A free country is based on precisely the opposite principle. To protect against what they called the "tyranny of the majority," America's Founding Fathers upheld the individual's right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The implicit basis of American government was an ethics of individualism--the view that the individual is not subordinate to the collective, that he has a moral right to his own interests, and that all rational people benefit under such a system. Today, however, self-sacrifice is regarded as self-evidently good. True, most people do not want a pure, consistent system of sacrifice, as practiced by the Nazis. But once the principle is accepted, no amount of this "virtue" can ever be condemned as "too much." We will not have learned the lessons of the Holocaust until we completely reject this sacrifice-worship and rediscover the morality of individualism.

2. The end result of their collectivist ethic is Nazism. Robert Tracinski, Senior Writer, April 23, 2000, Ayn Rand Institute, http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5264

The actual cause of Nazism was ideological--but exactly the opposite ideology. Nazism flourished because of its ethics of self-abnegation and self-sacrifice. Hitler himself stated the moral foundations of Nazism: "It is thus necessary that the individual should finally come to realize that his own ego is of no importance. . . . This state of mind, which subordinates the interests of the ego to the conservation of the community, is really the first premise for every truly human culture. . . . The basic attitude from which such activity arises, we call--to distinguish it from egoism and selfishness--idealism. By this we understand only the individual's capacity to make sacrifices for the community, for his fellow men." Historians usually dismiss such statements. The idea that self-sacrifice is synonymous with virtue is too uncontroversial for them to connect to Nazism. Thus, such pronouncements are usually regarded as mere window dressing to disguise the Nazis' true agenda. But what if this view is wrong? What if it was precisely the Nazis' most virtuous-sounding slogans that unleashed their evil on the world? Consider the full, logical meaning of altruistic self-sacrifice. It means, not benevolence toward others, but servitude. If sacrifice to others is the essence of virtue, how can anyone be allowed to pursue his own goals and happiness?

3. The underside of this system is the gulags of Russia and the camps of Nazi Germany.Ayn Rand, Founder of Objectivism, December 1963, Ayn Rand Institute, Accessed 4/29/09, http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ari_ayn_rand_the_nature_of_government

A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort, or enslaves him, or attempts to limit the freedom of his mind, or compels him to act against his own rational judgment-a society that sets up a conflict between its edicts and the requirements of man’s nature—is not, strictly speaking, a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang-rule. Such a society destroys all the values of human coexistence, has no possible justification and represents, not a source of benefits, but the deadliest threat


to man’s survival. Life on a desert island is safer than and incomparably preferable to existence in Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany.


Objectivism K – Impact – Socialism

1. The collectivism they promote is ideologically aligned with socialism which will collapse civilization.Llewellyn Rockwell, Jr., Chairman of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, May 17, 2008, Ludwig von Mises Institute, Accessed 4/29/09, http://www.mises.org/story/2982

Whatever the specifics of the case in question, socialism always means overriding the free decisions of individuals and replacing that capacity for decision making with an overarching plan by the state. Taken far enough, this mode of thought won't just spell an end to opulent lunches. It will mean the end of what we all know as civilization itself. It would plunge us back to a primitive state of existence, living off hunting and gathering in a world with little art, music, leisure, or charity. Nor is any form of socialism capable of providing for the needs of the world's six billion people, so the population would shrink dramatically and quickly and in a manner that would make every human horror ever known seem mild by comparison. Nor is it possible to divorce socialism from totalitarianism, because if you are serious about ending private ownership of the means of production, you have to be serious about ending freedom and creativity too. You will have to make the whole of society, or what is left of it, into a prison.

2. A super-governmental society will lead to mass atrocity – Cambodia and Nazi Germany prove.Harry Browne, Executive Director of Public Policy American Liberty Foundation, 2003, Why Government Doesn’t Work, Accessed 4/29/09, http://www.jrbooksonline.com/PDF_Books/why_govt_doesnt_work.pdf

The reformers of the Cambodian revolution claimed to be building a better world. They forced people into reeducation programs to make them better citizens. Then they used force to regulate every aspect of commercial life. Then they forced office workers and intellectuals to give up their jobs and harvest rice, to round out their education. When people resisted having their lives turned upside down, the reformers had to use more and more force. By the time they were done, they had killed a third of the country’s population, destroyed the lives of almost everyone still alive, and devastated a nation. It all began with using force for the best of intentions — to create a better world. The Soviet leaders used coercion to provide economic security and to build a “New Man” — a human being who would put his fellow man ahead of himself. At least 10 million people died to help build the New Man and the Workers’ Paradise.37 But human nature never changed — and the workers’ lives were always Hell, not Paradise. In the 1930s many Germans gladly traded civil liberties for the economic revival and national pride Adolf Hitler promised them. But like every other grand dream to improve society by force, it ended in a nightmare of devastation and death. Professor R. J. Rummel has calculated that 119 million people have been killed by their own governments in this century.38 Were these people criminals? No, they were people who simply didn’t fit into the New Order — people who preferred their own dreams to those of the reformers. Every time you allow government to use force to make society better, you move another step closer to the nightmares of Cambodia, the Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany. We’ve already moved so far that our own government can perform with impunity the outrages described in the preceding chapters.

3. The ever-expanding government they create leads to socialism and mass militarism. Llewellyn Rockwell, Jr., Chairman of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, May 17, 2008, Ludwig von Mises Institute, Accessed 4/29/09, http://www.mises.org/story/2982

Now, if the proper lessons of the collapse had been conveyed, we would have seen the error of all forms of government planning. We would have seen that a voluntary society will outperform a coerced one anytime. We might see how ultimately artificial and fragile are all systems of statism compared to the robust permanence of a society built on free exchange and capitalist ownership. And there is another point: the militarism of the Cold War had only ended up prolonging the period of socialism by providing these evil governments the chance to stimulate unfortunate nationalist impulses that distracted their domestic populations from the real problem. It was not the Cold War that killed socialism; rather, once the Cold War had exhausted itself, these governments collapsed of their own weight from internal rather than external pressure.


Objectivism K – Impact – Tyranny

1. Government action without respect to individual rights is the worst form of tyranny and slavery.Ayn Rand, Founder of Objectivism, December 1963, Ayn Rand Institute, Accessed 4/29/09, http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ari_ayn_rand_the_nature_of_government

Now consider the extent of the moral and political inversion in today’s prevalent view of government. Instead of being a protector of man’s rights, the government is becoming their most dangerous violator; instead of guarding freedom, the government is establishing slavery; instead of protecting men from the initiators of physical force, the government is initiating physical force and coercion in any manner and issue it pleases; instead of serving as the instrument of objectivity in human relationships, the government is creating a deadly, subterranean reign of uncertainty and fear, by means of nonobjective laws whose interpretation is left to the arbitrary decisions of random bureaucrats; instead of protecting men from injury by whim, the government is arrogating to itself the power of unlimited whim—so that we are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.

2. Our first priority should be to prevent tyranny and despotism. Sylvester Petro, Professor of Law Wake Forest University, Toledo Law Review, Lexis-Nexis.

However, one may still insist, echoing Ernest Hemingway - "I believe in only one thing: liberty." And it is always well to bear in mind David Hume's observation: "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." Thus, it is unacceptable to say that the invasion of one aspect of freedom is of no import because there have been invasions of so many other aspects. That road leads to chaos, tyranny, despotism, and the end of all human aspiration. Ask Solzhenitsyn. Ask Milovan Dijas. In sum, if one believed in freedom as a supreme value and the proper ordering principle for any society aiming to maximize spiritual and material welfare, then every invasion of freedom must be emphatically identified and resisted with undying spirit.

3. Preventing tyranny outweighs extinction.Henry Shue, Professor of Ethics and Public Life Princeton University, 1989, Nuclear Deterrence and Moral Restraint, P. 64-5.

The issue raises interesting problems about obligations among generations. What obligations do we owe to future generations whose very existence will be affected by our risks? A crude utilitarian calculation would suggest that since the pleasures of future generations may last infinitely (or until the sun burns out), no risk that we take to assure certain values for our generation can compare with almost infinite value in the future. Thus we have no right to take such risks. In effect, such an approach would establish a dictatorship of future generations over the present one. The only permissible role for our generation would be biological procreation. If we care about other values in addition to survival, this crude utilitarian approach produces intolerable consequences for the current generation. Moreover, utility is too crude a concept to support such a calculation. We have little idea of what utility will mean to generations very distant from ours. We think we know something about our children, and perhaps our grandchildren, but what will people value 8,000 years from now? If we do not know, then there is the ironic prospect that something we deny ourselves now for the sake of a future generation may be of little value to them. A more defensible approach to the issue of justice among generations is the principle of equal access. Each generation should have roughly equal access to important values. We must admit that we shall not be certain of the detailed preferences of increasingly distant generations, but we can assume that they will wish equal chances of survival. On the other hand, there is no reason to assume that they would want survival as a sole value any more than the current generation does. On the contrary, if they would wish equal access to other values that give meaning to life, we could infer that they might wish us to take some risks of species extinction in order to provide them equal access to those values. If we have benefited from "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," why should we assume that the next generation would want only life?


Objectivism K – Impact – Individual Rights are Paramount

1. Individual rights are the cornerstone of a healthy society.Ayn Rand, Founder of Objectivism, December 1963, Ayn Rand Institute, Accessed 4/29/09, http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ari_ayn_rand_the_nature_of_government

The nature of the laws proper to a free society and the source of its government’s authority are both to be derived from the nature and purpose of a proper government. The basic principle of both is indicated in the Declaration of Independence: “to secure these [individual] rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . . .” Since the protection of individual rights is the only proper purpose of a government, it is the only proper subject of legislation: all laws must be based on individual rights and aimed at their protection. All laws must be objective (and objectively justifiable): men must know clearly, and in advance of taking an action, what the law forbids them to do (and why), what constitutes a crime and what penalty they will incur if they commit it. The source of the government’s authority is “the consent of the governed.” This means that the government is not the ruler, but the servant or agent of the citizens; it means that the government as such has no rights except the rights delegated to it by the citizens for a specific purpose.

2. The only ethical approach is one that strictly adheres to individual rights.Richard Sloman, Leading Libertarian Activist, 1993, Libertarian Alliance, Accessed 4/29/09, http://www.libertarian.co.uk/lapubs/philn/philn028.pdf

Libertarianism, as a political doctrine, rests on a series of more basic assumptions and premises on human nature and its psychoepistemological4 and ethical requirements. The concept of “rights” which is the prime concern of Libertarianism qua political doctrine is a relatively superficial and secondary application of the basic ethical premise of the rational egoism into law.5 A “right” denotes a potential relationship between persons which refers to a specific ethical condition of their individual nature, and is codified as a principle in judging what may, or may not, comprise their actions towards each other. The absolute right to one’s own life and property is a logical inference from the ethical premise that a conscious being, to live qua conscious being, must be fully sovereign over the choices in its own life. This is based on the self-evidently true observation that a conscious organism should live to serve its own self-interest; that being conscious is both the means and ends of defining and attaining one’s own uniques happiness, success and satisfaction. The essential characteristic of consciousness is that it is selfdirecting as in contrast to an externally-determined mechanism. A conscious entity with its own identity requires freedom from external, coercive interventions to apply its will. The mutual recognition of that ethical requirement between individuals forms the political-legal concept of “right”.

3. Individual rights are necessary for a healthy society.Ayn Rand, Founder of Objectivism, December 1963, Ayn Rand Institute, Accessed 4/29/09, http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ari_ayn_rand_the_nature_of_government

If men are to live together in a peaceful, productive, rational society and deal with one another to mutual benefit, they must accept the basic social principle without which no moral or civilized society is possible: the principle of individual rights. To recognize individual rights means to recognize and accept the conditions required by man’s nature for his proper survival. Man’s rights can be violated only by the use of physical force. It is only by means of physical force that one man can deprive another of his life, or enslave him, or rob him, or prevent him from pursuing his own goals, or compel him to act against his own rational judgment. The precondition of a civilized society is the barring of physical force from social relationships—thus establishing the principle that if men wish to deal with one another, they may do so only by means of reason: by discussion, persuasion and voluntary, uncoerced agreement.


Objectivism K – Impact – Turns Aff Ethics

1. The aff’s welfare mentality only means more suffering for the impoverished.Harry Browne, Executive Director of Public Policy American Liberty Foundation, 2003, Why Government Doesn’t Work, Accessed 4/29/09, http://www.jrbooksonline.com/PDF_Books/why_govt_doesnt_work.pdf

Welfare costs us plenty. But it also destroys lives. It perverts the natural incentives of everyone who is touched by it. Here are some examples: • AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) pays money to Mom only if there’s no Dad at home, so — surprise! — Dad goes away. • A teenage girl can become independent of her parents by getting pregnant and receiving welfare; otherwise, she must live off her parents and obey their rules. Which life is more attractive to most teenagers? Federal job-training for welfare recipients circumvents the need for a teenager to stay in school and learn how to make a living. • The income test for welfare makes a low-paying job seem pointless. This eliminates the incentive for a young person to get the all-important first job, and so he never gains the experience needed to get a job that would pay more than welfare. • Medicaid reduces the incentive, especially among the young, to avoid injury and disease. • The availability of welfare reduces the incentive to save for emergencies. And once people don’t have savings, what else can they do but go on welfare when trouble strikes? The people who have been seduced by welfare have become wards of the state, unable to fend for themselves, with no self-respect and no self-confidence. Is this compassion?

2. Making individuals subservient to groups is unethical. Richard Sloman, Leading Libertarian Activist, 1993, Libertarian Alliance, Accessed 4/29/09, http://www.libertarian.co.uk/lapubs/philn/philn028.pdf

The system of coercive redistribution of individual product is not only a profoundly unethical and criminal violation of individual rights, it is also unexpeditious in attaining the ostensive end of redresssing proverty and misery. All value, that is any modification of an energo-material condition which contributes to one’s well being, must result from some prior investment of intelligence, effort and/or other capital input. Nothing comes “free” in nature. Even fantasy needs energy to power one’s brain, and past experiences. Enjoyment of a scenic beauty requires the focusing of one’s eyes, the conceptual capacity to interpret what is perceived, and evaluate its significance. In any conceivable case, the investment is made by an individual. All values for the sustainment and enjoyment of life are produced by individuals.

3. Their worldview is premised on a misplaced notice of compassion – our alternative solves better.Harry Browne, Executive Director of Public Policy American Liberty Foundation, 2003, Why Government Doesn’t Work, Accessed 4/29/09, http://www.jrbooksonline.com/PDF_Books/why_govt_doesnt_work.pdf

Would it be hard-hearted to do away with welfare entirely? Perhaps the question should be: Is it compassionate to teach people they can’t survive without government help? Was it compassionate to run up bills of $232,750 per American family over a 26-year period? Is it compassionate to leave no one responsible for himself, and make everyone responsible for everyone else? It isn’t compassionate to force people to pay for projects someone happens to think are good. Those who truly can’t help themselves will get better care from people who help voluntarily. The genuine compassion of volunteers has the best chance of leading the needy out of dependency — rather than deeper into it. And for those who can help themselves, but who may have lost the habit, the best we can do is to set them free. For their sake, we should get the government out of the economy, to open more opportunities for the unskilled and inexperienced.


Objectivism K – Alternative – Individual Charity Solves

1. An ethic of individualism would solve the case – people will be charitable on their own.Richard Sloman, Leading Libertarian Activist, 1993, Libertarian Alliance, Accessed 4/29/09, http://www.libertarian.co.uk/lapubs/philn/philn028.pdf

There is no basis to assume other than the individual’s untalterable right to all the value acquired without the initiation of foce or the breach of agreement. All forms of aid in a libertarian society would be privately owned and operated. Real poverty and misery would become rare in a purely laissez faire economy. The abolition of all artificial statist constraints on employment which presently protect the labor union monopolies from competition would simultaneously provide full employment, and lower prices for goods and services. The abolition of tariffs subsidization of industry, and all national trade barriers, would permit the accelerated development of world-wide division of labor and industrial specialization.

2. Individual charity solves poverty.Daniel Shapiro, Freelance Writer, August-September 1999, BNET, Accessed 4/29/09, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1568/is_4_31/ai_55343572/

How did such a claim become widely accepted? Welfare state proponents often claim that poverty and the economic risks inherent in a market economy require an activist state. Kelley rejects this argument. Poverty in the midst of rising living standards and economic risks were indeed problems, although far less than the pre-industrial problems of universal poverty and natural cycles of famine and disease. As important, people had begun addressing and solving such issues through voluntary actions - charities, insurance systems, and the like. Kelley argues that the reason for the adoption of the welfare state from the late 19th- to the mid-20th century was mainly intellectual, not economic, change.

3. Coerced giving is doomed to fail – only voluntary action can be effective.Harry Browne, Executive Director of Public Policy American Liberty Foundation, 2003, Why Government Doesn’t Work, Accessed 4/29/09, http://www.jrbooksonline.com/PDF_Books/why_govt_doesnt_work.pdf

Coercion can’t produce a better world. But you might help produce a better one — if you’re free to act on your dreams, free to use your talents, and free to invite others to enjoy what you learn and build. Coercion doesn’t work. Government doesn’t work. But you do, I do, and so do millions of people who manage to get what they want without threatening to draw a gun. The only reliable and productive endeavors are what people undertake voluntarily — and to which they willingly give or trade their time and other resources. Only when we turn to free individuals and voluntary endeavors — and away from government and force — will we recover the American dream.

4. Individual charity is permissible under objectivism. Neil Parille, Objectivism Blogger, September 4, 2008, Objectiblog: Libertarianism, Politics and Objectivism, Accessed 4/29/09, http://objectiblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/ayn-rand-and-charity-part-i.html

Here Rand appears to believe that there is a moral obligation to help people in emergency situations if one can do it without much risk. "It is only in emergency situations that one should volunteer to help strangers, if it is in one’s power. For example, a man who values human life and is caught in a shipwreck should help those to save his fellow passengers (though not at the expense of his own life)." [VOS, pp. 54-55.] By “should,” I take Rand to mean morally obligated. If so, then it would appear that the ban on altruism is lifted. Of course, one could read it as something not quite as strong – “it is a very nice thing to do.”


Objectivism K – A2: Selfishness Bad

1. A selfish life is the best path to progress and a better society.Onkar Ghate, Senior Fellow Ayn Rand Institute, September 17, 2007, New Statesman, Accessed 4/27/09, http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-faith-column/2007/09/rand-life-selfishness-virtue

Among her central conclusions is that an individual’s prosperity demands a life of production and thought. Other animals live by snatching what is around them—plucking fruit from a tree or gulping water from a stream. We don’t. We turn barren land into orchards. We build irrigation canals. We create what has never existed before: computers, airplanes, polio vaccines. What enables us to do this? Reason: systematic and deliberate logical thought. So the image her morality holds up to us to emulate, on whatever scale of ability we can achieve, is the thinker, the creator, the producer—the Aristotle, the Hugo, and the Carnegie. To have their kind of devotion, rational and passionate, to your own mind and self — to your life and the incredible happiness that is possible within it — is for Rand the hallmark of morality. This is what she means by the virtue of selfishness. Many of us recoil at the term “selfish” because it conjures up the image of a person who lies, cheats, steals and even kills to get whatever he happens to want today. Rand too condemns such a person, but not as selfish. She condemns him as self-less. Such a person, she argues, far from being honestly mistaken about what is life-promoting, has never bothered to think about what values to pursue or why; he functions emotionally and in fact puts himself on a self-destructive path. He has abandoned his mind and his self. So what does it mean to accept Rand’s new moral code? It means you embrace your own happiness as an end in itself. It means you choose to think rationally about and to seek unwaveringly all the values, of body and of mind, that your own life requires. It means you come to actually deserve the title “selfish”—and that you wear it openly and proudly.

2. Selfishness when it comes to social problems is an inevitable outgrowth of capitalism.Adam Knott, Libertarian Author, November 2006, Praxeology.org, Accessed 4/29/09, http://www.praxeology.org/Documents/A%20Praxeology%20of%20Coercion,%20First%20Edition.pdf

The large majority of social problems could be solved, or at least ameliorated, were the government to print the extra money needed to give all those who have urgent needs, enough to pay for their procurement. Many social problems could be solved or ameliorated by increasing the minimum wage to a high enough level, that wage earners could afford to purchase all urgently wanted goods and services. What prevents these good deeds from being done is not the unwillingness to do good, and not the failure to recognize that people have urgent needs that extra money could help them procure. What prevents these good deeds from being done is the knowledge of the necessary effects of doing them, which those who could do them, are eager to avoid. What prevents these good deeds from being done, is the knowledge of the social law that social science has discovered. The social law states that if one wants to avoid causing inflation, one should not increase the money supply. And the social law states that if one wants to avoid causing unemployment, one should not increase the minimum wage rate above the market wage rate. The fact that money is not printed in large enough quantities to solve the urgent problems of most in society, and the fact that the minimum wage rate is not increased enough to achieve the same end, is implicit proof that society generally does acknowledge these laws. Society acknowledges the massive inflation and unemployment that would result, were the (at least partially) good ideas of increasing the money supply and minimum wage rates to be implemented.

3. The aff is worse – they rely on violence in the place of selfishness.Adam Knott, Libertarian Author, November 2006, Praxeology.org, Accessed 4/29/09, http://www.praxeology.org/Documents/A%20Praxeology%20of%20Coercion,%20First%20Edition.pdf

A provisional definition of social coercion according to libertarianism, is coercion directed by society or society’s representatives (i.e., “government”) toward an individual or individuals who have done nothing wrong in the plain sense. Social coercion is when some in society choose to pursue their ends by compelling (coercing, forcing, etc.) others to cooperate in or pay for the pursuit of those ends, not as punishment for any crime committed, but rather because the coercing of individuals in service of those ends is viewed as acceptable social behavior. If someone has done nothing wrong, has harmed no one, common sense justice conceives that one should not be subject to a penalty. But what is wrong with society according to libertarians, is that society, influenced by faulty social theories, has devised a complicated system of “criminalizing” essentially non-criminal behavior. Contemporary society is not interested in punishing “crime” per se. Rather it is interested in punishing disobedience to its laws, and “crime” is only a part of


what contemporary laws address. In contemporary society, crime is only one of the things one may receive punishment for.


A2: Objectivism K – No Link

1. We aren’t the kind of altruism Rand is talking about.John Ku, Philosophy Writer, 2001, Objections to Objectivism, Accessed 4/29/09, http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jsku/TOC.html

The key premise, of course, is the claim that sacrifice is the surrender of a greater value for the sake of a lesser one, but as one might anticipate from the mention of the distinction between agent-relative and agent-neutral value at the end of the last section, this rests on a gross distortion of the ordinary concept of sacrifice. A sacrifice is not "the rejection of the good for the sake of the evil," it is the surrender of some of one's own agent-relative values for the sake of one that is of greater (agent-neutral) value despite its being a lesser agent-relative value for you or perhaps none at all. In other words, sacrifice is the giving up of some of one's own personal interests for the sake of other, greater, impersonal (at least with respect to one's own person) values. (I have benefited from comments made in Michael Huemer's essay, "Why I am not an Objectivist," regarding this point.) Thus, sacrifice is indeed "the surrender of a greater value for the sake of a lesser one or of a nonvalue" but only in the narrow context of one's own agent-relative values. Only if one is an egoist will one equate this notion of sacrifice with the one Rand describes because one thinks that the only things of value are one's own agent-relative values, that is, that there is no greater context of values outside of one's own agent-relative values, but then this is ipso facto not a valid argument for it presupposes egoism! The view of the nature of sacrifice that this argument must rely on, is a consequence, or perhaps even a restatement, of the denial that there can be anything of value beyond one's own interests. For that very reason, it cannot be used as independent evidence to support it.

2. Their selfishness arguments misconstrue Rand.John Ku, Philosophy Writer, 2001, Objections to Objectivism, Accessed 4/29/09, http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jsku/TOC.html

This argument, however, fails to distinguish between a value having been nullified and it being outweighed. Surely, the reasons stemming from the values are still taken into account, it is merely that there were counterbalancing reasons. The continuing presence of them is shown by the fact that in some such cases, were the magnitude or quantity of such interests multiplied, the reasons would correspondingly do so as well often to the point that the decision of which interests to act on is reversed. They are no more incompatible than holding any other two objects to be of value – say, writing philosophy and eating – being able to choose only one at a given time in some circumstances surely does not prove that the other is never a value nor even that it would have no value in that instance. I still have some reason to do one of them even when I have more reason to do the other. This confusion undoubtedly originates from Rand's definition of value as "that which one acts to gain and/or keep," whereas a more accurate definition might be something more like, "that which one does or would act to gain and/or keep given appropriate circumstances." If we were to be even more meticulous, we'd probably substitute more neutral terms such as "promote" or "endorse" in the place of the excessively egocentric phrase, "act to gain and/or keep."

3. The aff solves the K – preservation of individual rights is the highest ideal of objectivism. William Thomas, Philosopher and Columnist, December 2004, The Atlas Society, Accessed 4/29/09, http://www.objectivistcenter.org/cth--1584-Freedom____Achievement____Individualism____ReasonObjectivism.aspx

The work and virtue that Objectivism admires is not the product of any group. It is not the product of nations, as such, nor of tribes, nor of races, nor of sexes. It is the product of individuals. As Ayn Rand said, "There is no such thing as a collective brain." Human beings are individual organisms, each with his own mind to guide his actions, his own senses with which to know the world, his own body to sustain and enjoy, and his own values to achieve. We live in social networks: families, companies, countries. But those are networks of individuals: What is a family without members? A company without staff? A country without citizens? Objectivism is therefore an individualist philosophy, root and branch. In politics, it holds that there is no political principle higher than individual rights. In morality, there is no standard that trumps the value


of an individual's own precious life and happiness. Indeed, no other thinker has stood up for individualism with the consistency of Ayn Rand.


A2: Objectivism K – Nuclear War Outweighs

1. The consequences of a nuclear war outweigh.Sissela Bok, Professor of Philosophy Brandeis University, 1988, Applied Ethics and Ethical Theory, Ed. David Rosenthal and Fudlou Shehadi.

The same argument can be made for Kant’s other formulations of the Categorical Imperative: “So act as to use humanity, both in your own person and in the person of every other, always at the same time as an end, never simply as a means”; and “So act as if you were always through actions a law-making member in a universal Kingdom of Ends.” No one with a concern for humanity could consistently will to risk eliminating humanity in the person of himself and every other or to risk the death of all members in a universal Kingdom of Ends for the sake of justice. To risk their collective death for the sake of following one’s conscience would be, as Rawls said, “irrational, crazy.” And to say that one did not intend such a catastrophe, but that one merely failed to stop other persons from bringing it about would be beside the point when the end of the world was at stake. For although it is true that we cannot be held responsible for most of the wrongs that others commit, the Latin maxim presents a case where we would have to take such a responsibility seriously—perhaps to the point of deceiving, bribing, even killing an innocent person, in order that the world not perish.

2. Nuclear war outweighs libertyMurray Rothbard, Dean of Austrian School, head of Mises Institute, 1973, FOR A NEW LIBERTY: THE LIBERTARIAN MANIFESTO

Many libertarians are uncomfortable with foreign policy matters and prefer to spend their energies either on fundamental questions of libertarian theory or on such "domestic" concerns as the free market or privatizing postal service or garbage disposal. Yet an attack on war or a warlike foreign policy is of crucial importance to libertarians. There are two important reasons. One has become a cliche, but is all too true nevertheless: the overriding importance of preventing a nuclear [war] holocaust. To all the long-standing reasons, moral and economic, against an interventionist foreign policy has now been added the imminent, ever-present threat of world destruction. If the world should be destroyed, all the other problems and all the other isms—socialism, capitalism, liberalism, or libertarianism—would be of no importance whatsoever.

3. Nuclear war is worse than oppression.Diana Russell, Professor Emeritia of Sociology Mills College, 1989, Exposing Nuclear Fallacies, p. 74

In conclusion, the threat of nuclear war is a threat to the survival of all human beings on this planet. The oppression of women, people of color, poor or lower-class people, lesbians and gay men, young and old, disabled people—all become secondary in the face of the possibility (or probability) of the total annihilation of large portions of the human race in a nuclear holocaust.

4. Our impacts outweigh.Charles Fried, Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, 1993, Absolutism and Its Consequentialist Critics, ed. Joram Graf Haber, P. 76.

Even within such boundaries we can imagine extreme cases where killing an innocent person may save a whole nation. In such cases it seems fanatical to maintain the absoluteness of the judgment, to do right even if the heavens will in fact fall. And so the catastrophic may cause the absoluteness of right and wrong to yield, but even then it would be a non sequitur to argue (as consequentialists are fond of doing) that this proves that judgments of right and wrong are always a matter of degree, depending on the relative goods to be attained and harms to be avoided. I believe, on the contrary, that the concept of the catastrophic is a distinct concept just because it identifies the extreme situations in which the usual categories of judgment (including the category of right and wrong) no longer apply. At the other end of the spectrum, there is the concept of the trivial, the de minimis where the absolute categories do not yet apply. And the trivial also does not prove that right and wrong are really only a matter of degree. It is because of these complexities and because the term absolute is really only suggestive of a more complex structure, that I also refer to the norms of right and wrong not as absolute but as categorical.


A2: Objectivism K – Utilitarianism Good

1. The state has to act in a utilitarian framework – that’s their job.Larry Alexander, University of San Diego School of Law, May 1987, Journal of Philosophy, P. 282 JSTOR

An equally important reason why Scheffler cannot plausibly posit conflicting moral permissions across the board, rather than as limited to discrete spheres such as athletic and business competition and (more problematically) self-defense, is that, without agent-centered restrictions, there is one important actor that is always obligated to procure an optimal set of consequences. That actor is the government. The government is not the kind of moral agent which can possess an agent-centered prerogative with respect to its own acts. It must always act as a thoroughgoing consequentialist, giving only impartial consideration to individuals’ weightings of their own projects.

2. When the consequences are great enough we have to suspend morality.G.E.M. Anscombe, Professor of Philosophy Cambridge University, 1993, Absolutism and Its Consequentialist Critics, ed. Joram Graf Haber, P. 58-59.

Whenever a defender of traditional morality protests that there are moral rules which, whatever the consequences, must not be broken, such as the rule prohibiting murder- the killing of the materially innocent a natural reaction is to confront him with imaginary horror upon imaginary horror, and to inquire whether it would not be permissible, nay right, to commit murder if these horrors would be the consequences of his not committing it. And so it has come to seem natural to accept as much of utilitarianism as this: that no moral system can be philosophically acceptable unless it is supplemented by an escape clause, to the effect that, in all cases of a choice of evils, if one of those evils is so great that incurring it rather than any of the others would be calamitous, and if it can only be avoided by taking a certain action, then that action is to be taken even if it is in breach of a precept of the system.

3. We only need to prioritize dignity up until the point that nuclear war is involved.Larry Alexander, Warren Distinguished Professor of Law, Fall 2000, San Diego Law Review.

In his 1989 law review article, Torture and the Balance of Evils, n1 later republished as Chapter Seventeen in Placing Blame, n2 Michael Moore declares himself to be a "threshold deontologist. " n3 What he means is this: There are some acts that are morally wrong despite producing a net positive balance of consequences; but if the positive balance of consequences becomes sufficiently great - especially if it does so by averting horrible consequences as opposed to merely making people quite well off - then one is morally permitted, and perhaps required, to engage in those acts that are otherwise morally prohibited. Thus, one may not kill or torture an innocent person in order to save two or three other innocent people from death or torture - even though purely consequentialist considerations might dictate otherwise. However, if the number of innocent people who can be saved from death or torture gets sufficiently large, then what was morally proscribed - the killing or torture of an innocent person - becomes morally permissible or mandatory. At a certain number of lives at risk - the Threshold - consequentialist moral principles override deontological ones. Says Moore: It just is not true that one should allow a nuclear war rather than killing or torturing an innocent person. It is not even true that one should allow the destruction of a sizable city by a terrorist nuclear device rather than kill torture an innocent person. To prevent such extraordinary harms extreme actions seem to me to be justified.


A2: Objectivism K – Objectivism Bad

1. The system they uphold only helps the few and steals liberty from everyone else.Alan Haworth, Senior Lecturer on Philosophy University of North London, 1994, Anti-Libertarianism: Markets, Philosophy, and Myth, P. 20-21.

Second, there is the fact that a developed market economy — and a ‘pure’ market economy in particular — will contain inequalities of wealth. As we have seen, the quasi-Lockean scenario portrays these as developing from differences between individuals in skill and luck. The existence of such natural differences is so clearly inescapable that it has to be taken into account, and it is certainly difficult to see how inheritance could not reinforce the inequalities, as they develop, pretty rapidly. To pre-empt a possible misunderstanding, let me stress here that inequality itself is not the central issue so far as this part of my argument is concerned. Reasonable people of moral sensitivity (and much windy rhetoric on ‘the politics of envy’, etc., notwithstanding) will find more than a certain degree of inequality objectionable, and only libertarians will demur. But the point at issue is not that.6 It is, rather, that inequalities of wealth tend to bring inequalities of power in their wake and, as a consequence, to compromise freedom.7 Again, it seems fairly obvious. If you are the private owner of the factory in which I must work if I am to have any hope of a decent life, then you have power over me; to employ me or not, to determine my working conditions, my rate of pay, and so on. Again, if we both want to buy the same house or flat, but you are richer than me — rich enough, maybe, to price me out of the housing market altogether — then you exert power over me when you make your higher bid. In these cases, your power gives you the potential to act in a way which causes me to suffer, and I am thus, in a fairly obvious sense of the phrase, ‘subject to your will’. So if freedom is, as Hayek thinks, the absence of subjection to the will of another then it is a false assertion that the market, unlike other systems, respects freedom in Hayek’s sense, just as it is in Berlin’s.

2. Their approach justifies slavery.John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy University of Guelph, 1998, Unequal Freedoms: The Global Market as an Ethical System, P. 92-93.

Even the most dogmatic of current marketeers no longer defend one form of private property, though they have made no theoretical adjustment to their doctrine on this account. This form of private property and market exchange—property in other human beings, in slaves—is perhaps the most historically dominant ever: the centre-piece of market transactions for over two thousand years, from classical Athens to the antebellum United States. Innumerable invasions and wars were fought to secure and to protect the right to enslave. Commentators from Plato and Aristotle through to Locke, and long after, have made various justifications of the right to own slaves.3 The right to private property necessarily entails the right to exclude others from what is owned. If I own you as a slave I therefore have the right to exclude you from the use of yourself and your body, From its beginnings the capitalist market system thrived and grew based on free and profitable buying and selling of human slaves in the market. Indeed, this free global market in slaves was the principal basis of the success and spread of market capitalism across the world. Slaves were the primary commodity of world trade, the domi¬nant means of production across the Americas and Asia, and the ba¬sic producers of surplus wealth. The capitalist market owes its historical success to human slavery. But if we accept a principle to limit the free market that prohibits slaves as a form of private property, we thereby reject the historical foundations and genesis of the free market system itself. A consequence that throws the doctrine into contradiction with its own foundations is not one that its adherents will admit to. Free market doctrine continues to draw no line in principle against the right to private property in slaves. Like other unpleasant realities, it is removed from view.

3. They legitimize domination by elites.Fourth World Review, 2002, No 113, p.3.

A local market with many merchants will of course establish its own price levels through the element of competition. Enlarge the market to giant state, to interstate or federal levels on a global scale, and we move from a world of competition to one of manipulation, manipulation of prices, of contract supplies, of consumer preferences and of government regulations at the behest of cartels, monopolies, ‘trusts’, consortia and the like. The ‘free market’ has become merely the freedom of a powerful minority to manipulate. This of course is where we are today. The hallowed concept of the sovereignty of the consumer has been consumed by the sovereignty of the economic conspirators and it is the factor of scale, with things


becoming so huge as to be beyond the reach, far less the control, of the citizen in either economic or political terms which has enabled them to do it.


A2: Objectivism K – Alternative is Worse

1. Coercion saves lives – the alternative is worse.Robert Locke, writer for the American Conservative, March 14, 2005, Marxism of the Right

And is society really wrong to protect people against the negative consequences of some of their free choices? While it is obviously fair to let people enjoy the benefits of their wise choices and suffer the costs of their stupid ones, decent societies set limits on both these outcomes. People are allowed to become millionaires, but they are taxed. They are allowed to go broke, but they are not then forced to starve. They are deprived of the most extreme benefits of freedom in order to spare us the most extreme costs. The libertopian alternative would be perhaps a more glittering society, but also a crueler one.

2. The alternative leads to worse forms of tyranny and violence.Robert Locke, writer for the American Conservative, March 14, 2005, Marxism of the Right

Empirically, most people don’t actually want absolute freedom, which is why democracies don’t elect libertarian governments. Irony of ironies, people don’t choose absolute freedom. But this refutes libertarianism by its own premise, as libertarianism defines the good as the freely chosen, yet people do not choose it. Paradoxically, people exercise their freedom not to be libertarians. The political corollary of this is that since no electorate will support libertarianism, a libertarian government could never be achieved democratically but would have to be imposed by some kind of authoritarian state, which rather puts the lie to libertarians’ claim that under any other philosophy, busybodies who claim to know what’s best for other people impose their values on the rest of us. Libertarianism itself is based on the conviction that it is the one true political philosophy and all others are false. It entails imposing a certain kind of society, with all its attendant pluses and minuses, which the inhabitants thereof will not be free to opt out of except by leaving.

3. Their approach legitimates the violation of rights.Murray N. Rothbard, PhD, Dean- Austrian School of Economics, 1998, The Ethics of Liberty, Pg.260-261

Gradua1ism in theory, in fact, totally undercuts the overriding goal of liberty itself; its import, therefore, is not simply strategic but an opposition to the end itself and hence impermissible as any part of a strategy toward liberty. The reason is that once immediate abolitionism is abandoned, then the goal is conceded to take second or third place to other, anti-libertarian considerations, for these considerations are now placed higher than liberty. Thus, suppose that the abolitionist of slavery had said: “I advocate an end to slavery—but only after five years’ time.” But this would imply that abolition in four or three years’ time, or afortiori immediately, would be wrong, and that therefore it is better for slavery to be continued a while longer. But this would mean that considerations of justice have been abandoned, and that the goal itself is no longer highest on the abolitionist’s (or libertarian’s) political value-scale. In fact, it would mean that the libertarian advocated the prolongation of crime and injustice.

4. Their alternative gets corrupted before it can solve.Murray N. Rothbard, PhD, Dean- Austrian School of Economics, 1998, The Ethics of Liberty, Pg.262

An even greater danger of a similar sort is posed by the idea of many libertarians of setting forth a comprehensive and planned program of transition to total liberty, e.g., that in Year 1 law A should be repealed, law B modified, tax C be cut by 20 percent, etc.; in Year 2 law D be repealed, tax C cut by a further 10 percent, etc. The comprehensive plan is far more misleading than the simple budget cut, because it strongly implies that, for example, law D should not be repealed until the second year of this planned program. Hence, the trap of philosophic gradualism, of gradualism-in-theory, would be fallen into on a massive scale. The would-be libertarian planners would be virtually falling into a position, or seeming to, of opposing a faster pace toward liberty.


A2: Objectivism K – Alternative Replicates Violation of Rights

1. They aren’t on the side of liberty – they only protect domineering corporations.John Hasnas, J.D., Ph.D., LL.M. Assistant Professor of Business Ethics, Georgetown University and Senior Research Fellow, Kennedy Institute of Ethics, 1995, Northwestern University Law Review, “From Cannibalism to Caesareans: Two Conceptions of Fundamental Rights”, 89 Nw. U.L. Rev. 900.

The fourth feature of the classical conception of fundamental rights is that such rights can be possessed only by individual human beings. This is because such rights are regarded as merely an expression of the underlying Kantian principle of respect for persons. Since fundamental rights are merely particular applications of the general principle that all human beings must be treated as ends in themselves, obviously, only human beings can possess such rights. n86 [*923] This, of course, implies that under the classical conception neither groups nor animals can possess fundamental rights. A group is a collection of persons, not a person itself. n87 Although each of its members is an autonomous moral agent and thereby entitled to respectful treatment, the group is not. A group has no independent existence separate from that of its members. It has no independently existing desires, will, or reasoning ability and is neither autonomous nor an agent. Since under the classical conception the purpose of fundamental rights is to protect the autonomy of moral agents, groups are simply not the type of entities that can possess such rights. The same is, of course, true of animals. Animals function instinctually. Without the ability to form concepts, they cannot achieve self-awareness. Hence, they cannot set goals, engage in deliberation or reasoning, or exercise free will. Animals simply do not have the level of mental functioning that would allow us to regard them as autonomous agents. With no autonomy to need protecting, animals are not the type of beings who can benefit from rights designed to protect autonomy. Hence, under the classical conception, they cannot be the bearers of fundamental rights. n88

2. Their advocacy is contradictory – they are all for government oppression when it protects property.Alan Haworth, Senior Lecturer on Philosophy University of North London, 1994, Anti-Libertarianism: Markets, Philosophy, and Myth, P. 21.

Third, as for coercion, the anti-libertarian case seems, if anything, still more clear. Any conceivable legal system requires coercion to hold it in place. A law is a sort of threat: ‘Do this, don’t do that, or you will be punished’. It is a commonplace of legal theory that this is so, as it is also a commonplace that coercion is essentially a question of the use of threats and force to manipulate others. Since a legal system designed to define and protect private property will, like any other, require the usual array of police, courts, prisons, and soon, it has to be false that a pure free market is uniquely characterised by the absence of coercion.

3. Their notion of rights makes violation of liberty inevitable.Craig Sloss, PhD candidate at University of Waterloo, 2003, Debunking Objectivism.

My second objection to the objectivists is practical, rather than philosophical. Specifically, the focus on using the concept of "rights" to secure freedom is ultimately ineffective and may even be counterproductive to that goal. Rights, as they are currently conceived in political discourse, are seen as limits only on the actions of the state: the state must never infringe on rights (Ridpath's favourites are life, liberty and property) and must act to ensure that they are generally secure. The problem with this conception of rights is that its scope is too limited. It supposes that the only source of unfreedom in our society is the state, while ignoring the effects other institutions have in terms of reducing freedom. Out of the entire apparatus of social domination, the state-based conception of rights addresses only one of many mechanisms, while ignoring others. Consider the following example. The state may recognize an individual's liberty to speak freely and express opinions. However, suppose that individual is employed by a corporation that supports views contrary to those of the employee. As the corporation is not bound to respect the employee's right of liberty, the employee may be afraid to speak publicly for fear of economic retribution. Moreover, in such a case, the state would be unable to interfere to protect the employee's free speech rights, for to do so would violate the corporation's property rights. As this example demonstrates, apart from relations between the individual and state, there are other power relations in society that are damaging to human freedom. A state-based conception of rights is counterproductive in two ways. First, as the previous example shows, the rights extended to institutions such as corporations may prevent the state from ensuring the rights of individuals. Second, a rights-based political system may cause complacency among the general population and discourage critical examination of abuses of freedom


perpetuated by non-state institutions. What I mean by this is that if people believe they have rights, and constantly hear about how they have rights, they will be less likely to notice that in almost all situations involving power relations (i.e. all power relations not involving the state), they in fact have no rights.


A2: Objectivism K – Objectivism is a Cult

1. Objectivist politics represent a total cult and the death of original thought.Murray Rothbard, Dean Austrian School of Economics, 1972, The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult, Accessed 4/29/09, http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard23.html

Frank Meyer writes, in his The Moulding of Communists,2 of the series of crises that Communists repeatedly go through in their career in the Party. From his account, it is clear that the rank-and-file member joins the party from being attracted to the official or exoteric creed; but, as he continues in the Party and rises through its hierarchical structures, he is confronted with a series of crises that test his mettle, that either drive him out of the party or convert him increasingly into a steel-hardened cadre man. The crises might be ideological, say, justifying slave labor camps or the Stalin-Hitler pact, or it might be personal, to demonstrate that one’s loyalty to the party is higher than to friends, family, or loved ones. The continuing pressure of such crises leads, unsurprisingly, to a very high turnover in Communist ranks, creating a sea of ex-Communists far larger than the party itself at any given time. A similar but far more intensive process remained at work throughout the years of the Randian movement The Randian neophyte typically joined the movement emotionally caught by Atlas and impressed by the concepts of reason, liberty, individuality, and independence. A series of crises and growing inner contradictions was then necessary to gain power over the minds and lives of the membership, and to inculcate absolute loyalty to Rand, both in ideological matters and in personal lives. But what mechanisms did the cult leaders use to develop such blind loyalty? One method, as we have seen, was to keep the members in ignorance. Another was to insure that every spoken and written word of the Randian member was not only correct in content but also in form, for any slight nuance or difference in wording could and would be attacked for deviating from the Randian position. Thus, just as the Marxist movements developed jargon and slogans which were clung to for fear of uttering incorrect deviations, the same was true in the Randian movement. In the name of "precision of language," in short, nuance and even synonyms were in effect prohibited.

2. Objectivists are mentally ill as a consequence of terror inflicted by the Rand cult.Murray Rothbard, Dean Austrian School of Economics, 1972, The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult, Accessed 4/29/09, http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard23.html

But the most important sanction for the enforcement of loyalty and obedience, the most important instrument for psychological control of the members, was the development and practice of Objectivist Psychotherapy. In effect, this psychological theory held that since emotion always stems from incorrect ideas, that therefore all neurosis did so as well; and hence, the cure for that neurosis is to discover and purge oneself of those incorrect ideas and values. And since Randian ideas were all correct and all deviation therefore incorrect, Objectivist Psychotherapy consisted of (a) inculcating everyone with Randian theory – except now in a supposedly psycho-therapeutic setting; and (b) searching for the hidden deviation from Randian theory responsible for the neurosis and purging it by correcting the deviation.

3. These dangerous cult-like leanings end in massive violence – history provesMurray Rothbard, Dean Austrian School of Economics, 1972, The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult, Accessed 4/29/09, http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard23.html

The goals of the cult leadership are money and power. Power is achieved over the minds of the disciples through inducing them to accept without question the guru and his creed. This devotion is enforced through psychological sanctions. For once the acolyte is imbued with the view that approval of, and communication with, the guru are essential to his life, then the implicit and explicit threat of excommunication – of removal from the direct or indirect presence of the guru – creates a powerful psychological sanction for the "enforcement" of loyalty and obedience. Money flows upward from the members through the hierarchy, either in the form of volunteer labor service contributed by the members, or through cash payments. It should be clear at this point in history that an ideological cult can adopt the same features as the more overtly religious cult, even when the ideology is explicitly atheistic and anti-religious. That the cults of Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Trotsky, and Mao are religious in nature, despite the explicit atheism of the latter, is by now common knowledge. The adoration of the cult founder and leader,


the hierarchical structure, the unswerving loyalty, the psychological (and when in command of State power, the physical) sanctions are all too evident.


A2: Objectivism K – Alternative is Logically Incoherent

1. They can’t preserve rights and liberty under their own standard.James Hammerton, Philosophy Writer, 2001, A Critique of Libertarianism, Accessed 4/29/09, http://web.archive.org/web/20010407063531/http://www.tardis.ed.ac.uk/~james/politics/libcrit.txt

It seems to me that the above view ignores an important fact. The people involved in a free market must accept the rules of its operation, namely the rules that forbid attacks on others, using another's property without their consent, trespass, and fraud. This means that the free market has to include the mechanisms for deterring crimes, and mechanisms for compensation and punishment should such crimes be committed. The amount of coercion required to prevent such crimes, depends on the level of acquiescence of the population to the free market rules. In other words, the market is in fact the exchanges that go on as mentioned above, plus the policing, arbitration and legislating mechanisms required to ensure its operation. Hence, like the state, the market is a social institution, and the distributions of goods that result from its operation are therefore the distributions sanctioned by a libertarian society.

2. Their embrace of individuals in the free market is antithetical to reason.James Hammerton, Philosophy Writer, 2001, A Critique of Libertarianism, Accessed 4/29/09, http://web.archive.org/web/20010407063531/http://www.tardis.ed.ac.uk/~james/politics/libcrit.txt

I have argued that if we take liberty to be the freedom from coercion, then this implies that the amount of property determines the amount of freedom you have, something which libertarians would explicitly deny. It is therefore questionable that the free market respects and promotes this form of liberty. The freedom to act within your property rights is respected, but then the property rights determine what freedom is, and there seems to be little reason to accept the libertarian's account of what valid rights are. The reasons sometimes given - respect for the individual as an end in themselves, and avoidance of redistribution - can in the first case be used to justify a different set of rights and redistribution, or in the second case does not hold for libertarian rights and assumes that forcible redistribution is worse than ensuring people do not starve. The entitlement theory of justice overlooks the effects of voluntary transfers on third parties, and as yet has no principle for the just acquisition of unowned property. Hayek's theories do not logically entail libertarianism, though they do accommodate it. The claim that libertarianism does not force a set of beliefs upon people is simply incorrect, and the weaker claim that it is more tolerant than other ideologies is questionable. Tolerance of other beliefs depends more on the attitudes of the society in question than on its system of government.

3. Their approach is steeped in illogical double-standards and inconsistencies. James Hammerton, Philosophy Writer, 2001, A Critique of Libertarianism, Accessed 4/29/09, http://web.archive.org/web/20010407063531/http://www.tardis.ed.ac.uk/~james/politics/libcrit.txt

Libertarians, even if they accept the above, might retort that the free market is a self regulating mechanism, and that Adam Smith's "invisible hand" will work to ensure that no-one does starve, and no-one will suffer extreme poverty, and that therefore a welfare state is unnecessary, the free market does the job anyway, and does it better. This is a claim which is difficult to support or refute conclusively, it would require a free market to be instituted in a fully libertarian manner, something which hasn't yet been done(even Smith, and Hayek, have argued that some sort of state intervention may be justifiable). History doesn't seem to give the idea much support, Victorian Britain was much closer to the free market model than modern Britain, yet it still had problems with poverty, lack of hygiene and ill health. This was amidst material plenty, and at a time when private charities were well supported. Also in the 20th century two attempts to impose, first classical, and then neo-classical economic theory lead to high unemployment and recession. I am referring to the abandonment of the gold standard in the 1920s, and the monetarist experiment of the Thatcher government in the early 1980s(for a detailed and revealing critique of the latter see [Gilmour-92]). Of course the libertarian can respond that even if these were steps in the right direction, they did not fully move to a libertarian society. However I think they give good cause to be sceptical of the claims they make for the self regulation of free markets. Furthermore, since the libertarian rights rule out state intervention to end a recession, the libertarians are saying in effect that even if they are wrong about the


self regulating nature of the market, they still rule out action to deal with its failures. The Hayekian variant of libertarianism does not rule out such failures however, or the use of state intervention to alleviate them, and it is to this that I now turn.


A2: Objectivism K – They Get Ethics Wrong

1. Their ethical approach is misguided and incoherent.John Ku, Philosophy Writer, 2001, Objections to Objectivism, Accessed 4/29/09, http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jsku/TOC.html

Finally, there are some who seem to call themselves Objectivists but who do not accept Rand's ethical egoism. In fact, there is a certain tendency among Objectivists to resist classification of Ayn Rand into any of the academic schools of philosophy especially once it has been shown that her philosophy diverges from classical egoism. Roughly in the words of one Objectivist philosophy major I spoke to, "She's not an egoist; she's not a Kantian; she's not a utilitarian; she's not a virtue ethicist; she's just completely original and breaks down all the traditional philosophical distinctions." In case I have not already made this clear, I think we ought to be careful not to mistake her confusion for originality. Although she may get some things right by borrowing from various altruist moralities, I think it is misleading to rely on Rand's writings regarding important ethical issues. Nor is it purely a matter of integrity of theory, for in practice, there will be many subtle (and some not so subtle) differences in one's actions and values based upon which of various competing methodologies of ethics one adopts. Given that Rand confounds these often conflicting theories of morality as all aspects of one theory, egoism, it is likely merely to increase confusion on any sufficiently complex moral dilemma.

2. They don’t achieve their ethic – their politics are all about power, not liberty.Murray Rothbard, Dean Austrian School of Economics, 1972, The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult, Accessed 4/29/09, http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard23.html

There seems to be only one way to resolve the contradiction in the Randian strategic outlook of extreme sectarianism within the libertarian movement, coupled with extreme opportunism, and willingness to coalesce with slightly more conservative heads of State, in the outside world. That resolution, confirmed by the remainder of our analysis of the cult, holds that the guiding spirit of the Randian movement was not individual liberty – as it seemed to many young members – but rather personal power for Ayn Rand and her leading disciples. For power within the movement could be secured by totalitarian isolation and control of the minds and lives of every member; but such tactics could scarcely work outside the movement, where power could only hopefully be achieved by cozying up the President and his inner circles of dominion. Thus, power not liberty or reason, was the central thrust of the Randian movement. The major lesson of the history of the movement to libertarians is that It Can Happen Here, that libertarians, despite explicit devotion to reason and individuality, are not exempt from the mystical and totalitarian cultism that pervades other ideological as well as religious movements. Hopefully, libertarians, once bitten by the virus, may now prove immune.

3. Their alternative fails – community-based thinking and living is inevitable and good.Amitai Etzioni, Professor George Washington University, May 1995, The Communitarian Network, Accessed 4/29/09, http://www.gwu.edu/~ccps/etzioni/A237.html

For decades now communitarians have been pointing out to libertarians that individuals are not free standing agents but members of communities. While people survive without communities, the thinner their community bonds, the more alienated and unreasoning they tend to be. Moreover, because for communities to flourish they require that their members not be completely self-oriented, the common good has a normative standing in the same sense that life and health do: they all are essential for our physical and spiritual well-being. Libertarians in turn have either simply ignored these arguments, spinning ever more tales about the choices individual consumers, voters, or others make on their own, or come to depict communities as social contracts, something free standing individuals construct because it suits their individual purposes. Libertarians seem to fear that the recognition of the common good as a value that is co-equal with personal freedom will endanger the standing of that liberty. Last, But Not Least Value systems can maximize one dimension or theme, societies -- which must attend to a variety of conflicting requirements -- are inevitably organized by several principles. They must concern themselves both with order and with the freedom needed to search for new adaptive patterns of social order; concern


themselves with the justice of allocations and with productivity, and so on. In short, ideologies and ideologues can afford to be, in fact even benefit from being, one dimensional; students of society should know better.