It’s always nice when a comrade remembers you on your birthday.

To be sure, when the socialists at Jacobin magazine published Akil Vicks on “the hardened individualism of Ayn Rand” the day the author of Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal would have turned 118 (“There’s No Such Thing as a ‘Self-Made Man,’” February 2), they probably didn’t have in mind NYU Marxist professor Bertell Ollman’s description of Rand as “a comrade of Marx, methodologically speaking.”

Despite the obvious differences between Karl Marx’s The Communist Manifesto and Rand’s capitalist manifestos, Ollman highlights the common attention to social context. The writer Vicks sees as epitomizing “isolating notions of individual ‘grit’” was not, as Vicks implies, unaware of the notion of “finding intellectual and emotional fulfillment as part of a community.”

Although the community of Galt’s Gulch in Atlas Shrugged would not appeal to many socialists, Rand’s The Fountainhead was among the inspirations for socialist psychologist Abraham Maslow. He cited that novel as a source for the insight that “the most stable and therefore most healthy self-esteem is based on deserved respect from others rather than on external fame or celebrity and unwarranted adulation.” The “self-actualization” atop Maslow’s pyramid of needs was not self-isolation.

Vicks doesn’t directly mention Rand’s fiction as examples of “bootstrap narratives.” (A term also presumably not a nod to Robert Heinlein’s “By His Boostraps,” whose protagonist is indeed a “self-made man” via encounters with his own time-traveling future self.) Instead, it refers to supposed Rand influences like what fellow Jacobin contributor David Sirota calls the “tale of [Michael] Jordan as Rand’s Atlas, who easily lifts the weight of the entire sport of basketball on his shoulders” — and that anyone sufficiently determined could step into Jordan’s Air Jordans. (Other Jacobin contributors have pointed out that millionaire athletes are paid a minuscule fraction of the billions their skills generate — much of which further enriches billionaires.)

Yet Rand’s nonfiction showed a clear understanding that real individuals weren’t omnipotent. In the 1972 essay “What Can One Do?,” Rand observed that it was just as much “an impossible goal” to “perform instantaneous miracles” in “the realm of ideas” as “to stop an epidemic overnight, or to build a skyscraper single-handed.” Even the most talented physician could only “treat as many people” as possible, and might do so in “an organized medical campaign.”

Emma Goldman, currently juxtaposed with the denunciation of Rand through the banner ads on Jacobin‘s website, found “the greatest social possibilities” in forerunners of Rand’s individualist philosophy like Friedrich Nietzsche and Max Stirner, concluding that “only when the [individual] becomes free to choose … associates for a common purpose, can we hope for order and harmony out of this world of chaos and inequality.”

New Yorker Joel Schlosberg is a senior news analyst at The William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

As Congress rolls out its latest theatrical production concerning the “debt ceiling,” the same old lines from the same old script are enjoying new life.

New York Magazine‘s Jonathan Chait calls Republican noises about perhaps not just automatically supporting increased government borrowing “extortion”  and a “blatant violation of democratic legitimacy” (because, as you no doubt learned in junior high civics class, even entertaining the idea of not voting in favor of Jonathan Chait’s priorities is forbidden by the US Constitution).

US Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) accuses the Republicans of “hostage-taking.”

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says linking spending cuts in the future to increased borrowing now is “a very irresponsible thing to do.”

I’m neither a Republican nor a Democrat. Among my many reasons for being neither a Republican nor a Democrat is that the only time either party even pretends to care about “fiscal responsibility” is when the other party holds the White House. Had Donald Trump been re-elected in 2020, Republicans would be saying what Democrats are saying now and vice versa.

The current Democratic criticisms of Republicans’ debt ceiling theatrics are, on the whole, correct … if they’re levied at both major parties and the whole of the federal government.

The whole matter of the “national debt” is a classic case of extortion, hostage-taking, and irresponsibility.

The US government, both parties, has run up $31 trillion in debt, routinely spending far more than it takes in and putting the deficit on its bar tab.

At any suggestion that it pay down its debts and live within its means, the extortion and hostage-taking commences.

Whatever your favorite federal program — “defense” spending, Social Security, farm subsidies, whatever —  you’re told it’s on the chopping block if politicians are required to take any responsibility for any decision other than just borrowing more money to pay for anything and everything they might happen to want.

Oh, someone will take responsibility LATER, of course. Future generations will deal with it, right? For now, just swipe that credit card and enjoy bone-in ribeye and premium IPA seven days a week instead of throwing in even the occasional Meatless Monday or ramen feast.

Which is exactly what will happen this time, possibly with a little fake “shutdown” drama first.

Government is comprised entirely of irresponsible hostage-taking extortionists who are betting they’ll win … and that when they stop winning, it’s YOU who will lose.

Unfortunately, they’re probably right.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On January 30, several Florida legislators introduced HB 543, “Concealed Carry of Weapons and Firearms Without a License.” If passed, it would “allow” anyone — Floridian or not — who “meets specified requirements” to carry concealed firearms in the state.

Many gun rights supporters laud HB 543 as not just a good step, but something called “constitutional carry,” even though among other defects, it doesn’t seem to legalize “open” (that is, unconcealed) carry. Let’s review what restrictions the US Constitution empowers government at any level to impose on the possession or carry of firearms:

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It’s difficult to get more clear or prescriptive than “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” See that period at the end there?

The Florida bill ever so slightly lightens one specific unconstitutional burden on one specific right, while imposing at least one patently unconstitutional burden on those exercising that right: They “[m]ust carry valid identification at all times when he or she is in actual possession of a concealed weapon or concealed firearm and must display such identification upon demand by a law enforcement officer.”

Suppose that one does not meet the law’s unconstitutional “specified requirements” — for example, having never been convicted of offenses related to “controlled substances” — but decides to carry  concealed (as is his or her right) anyway.

Requiring that person to provide “valid identification” (“valid” seems to be undefined in the bill) is a requirement that the person incriminate himself or herself, a requirement forbidden by the Fifth Amendment.

Unless a police officer has probable cause to believe that you’re committing or have committed a crime, who you are is none of that police officer’s business. And if  he or she DOES have such probable cause, it’s his or her job to identify you, not your duty to identify yourself.

HB 543 isn’t “constitutional carry.” It’s a partial relaxation of unconstitutional restrictions, combined with new unconstitutional restrictions.

Real “constitutional carry” would look something like this:

“All Florida statutes, regulations, orders, and ordinances relating to the manufacture, sale or other transfer, ownership, or carriage of arms are hereby repealed. All persons charged or held prisoner by the  state of Florida or any subdivision thereof pursuant to such statutes, regulations, orders, and ordinances shall be immediately freed. All convictions of violating such statutes, regulations, orders, and ordinances shall be expunged. A truth and reconciliation commission shall be established to determine the amounts, qualifications, and processes for paying restitution to those damaged or injured by said statutes, regulations, orders, and ordinances.”

The politicians behind HB 543 aren’t on your side, or on the Constitution’s. They’re just making a simple matter complex while sacrificing none of their illegitimate power over you.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY