Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Cato Shrugged Daily Podcast Attacks Ron Paul

In a Cato Shrugged podcast, Don Watkins, an Ayn Rand Institute fellow (of course), attacks Ron Paul, especially because of his foreign policy views, but Watkins also bizarrely claims that Dr. Paul did not have a strong response in a presidential debate about what to do about a woman on welfare.

Watkins then went on to bemoan the fact that the United States is not sterner with Iran.

(ht John Moore)

16 comments:

  1. The so-called objectivism of the Ayn Rand Institute is not libertarianism. Hence, the psychotic militancy and nastiness of this Watkins character.

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  2. The so-called Ayn Rand Institute has little to do with Ayn Rand's thinking, but it is a great way to minimize and dismiss Rand.

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    1. Excellent observation. This could be said for many faiths who believe in Jesus Christ. Build a church, it's a great way to minimize and dismiss the Word of God.

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  3. Both comments above are right on target. Check out ARI Watch which continually monitors and corrects disinformation put out by the Ayn Rand Institute. They are run by Israeli agents like Yaron Brook and Leonard Peikoff.

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  4. CATO institute must not be mistaken for being a true libertarian organization.

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  5. Further evidence that the Cato group continues its march and efforts to remain in lockstep with the neocon warmongers. Sad indeed, but hardly unexpected. Such people continue to maintain that there can be no peace in the world, except the peace that comes from militarily defeated and enslaved or otherwise compliant populations. It is a peace of the hopeless where every man, woman and child is presented with their own place in a yoke commanded by the neocon conquerors. But it is also a peace that rots from within and cannot and will not withstand the test of time.

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    1. Did you miss the fact that Watkins was expressing his own views, not Cato's? Please, do gather some links to blog posts, op-eds, and policy papers by Cato scholars demonstrating "its march and efforts to remain in lockstep with the neocon warmongers." Don't worry, I'll wait...

      It's called an interview. If ESPN interviews a baseball player who then says dinosaurs didn't exist (actually happened, btw) does that mean that ESPN therefore believes dinosaurs did not exist?

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  6. Send in the libertarians, not the marines.

    Looks like the new bunch is completely out of touch with Libs in the field working worldwide for democracy and markets. IMHO they're making government policies irrelevant except to stay out of the way of libertarians and groups like Sister Cities.

    The non-partisan Libertarian International Organization @ http://www.Libertarian-International.org has been networking a lot of these efforts. www.isil.org has been doing some great stuff on the conference angle.

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  7. Ayn Rand was a Zionist to the bone. The ARI is a perfect vessel for her memory.

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    1. This one-line ^comment^ is classic cold-blooded disinfo to the bone...little better than the the disinfo the so-called Ayn Rand Institute continually peddles. I wouldn't be surprised if this character is working for the same cynics who fund ARI.

      I've adored, and have been studying, Rand's thought for almost 50 years, and know her thought like the back of my hand. She made a handful of pro-Israel comments (if that) between the time of the Six Day War and the '72 Olympics, merely echoing what was already the consensus in the newspapers of the day, namely that Israel was hated for bringing a modicum of civilization and technology to a region heretofore dominated by primitive, backward Muslims.

      Inasmuch as we all swallowed this wretched Reuters/API pabulum at the time, because alternate information at the time was nil, it is neither a particularly indicative position of Rand's thought, nor all that weighty.

      "Zionist to the bone", my eye! Who is this hit-&-run troll?

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  8. Oh yes, the usg has been so weak on Islamo-fascists over the last 30 years. What planet is this guy on? And btw, Ron Paul dealt with the welfare mom and medical care very well, not weakly as he says.

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  9. It really is sad that the verbiage and work of lovers of liberty everywhere and in every time has been distorted in such a way via the temptation of State power. MLK, Jr, has been immortalized by way of an ugly, grandiose monument of which the man likely would have disapproved. Even the Objectivism of Ayn Rand is apparently not immune to the degrading touch of power. Murray Rothbard and the other scions of the Austrian School of Classical Liberalism seem to stand almost alone against the outstretched shadow of our New Idol. As dark as things appear on the surface, however, the demise of the State is apparent and inevitable. As A.E von Voght struggled to get across in his own work, psychoses and neuroses are self-defeating. In the end, what is right must and will overcome that which is wrong. As Hobbes said of Memory and Imagination, Evil and Incompetence are but one thing, which for diverse considerations has been given diverse names.

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  10. The problem with Rand's foreign policy writings was that she abandoned actual individualism in her moral analysis in favor of an ill-defined national equivalent, leaving some very vague and bizarre statements behind which her heirs have turned into a full blown military internationalist ideology/fantasy. She clearly didn't square properly and to the fullest extant the value of an individual in a worlds of states.

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  11. Cato is GOP-lite.

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  12. I am shocked by this podcast. Not only did the interviewee say that Ron Paul doesn't understand the "philosophy of capitalism" (seriously?), but he also said that the job of the military is to "crush any threats". Of course, whether or not someone feels threatened is subjective and doesn't justify the use of force.

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  13. Once again a Randroid reminds the world that Ayn Rand was a collectivist.

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