MCViewPoint

Opinion from a Libertarian ViewPoint

Posts Tagged ‘Ayn Rand’

Stop Me!

Posted by M. C. on September 12, 2025

“The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” – Ayn Rand

Libertarian Party

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Alissa Zinovievna

Posted by M. C. on April 29, 2025

“She famously said, “When you realize that to produce, you must obtain permission from those who produce nothing;…”

History pictures

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On February 2, 1905, in St. Petersburg, the philosopher and writer Alissa Zinovievna, better known to the world of letters as Ayn Rand, was born.

She famously said, “When you realize that to produce, you must obtain permission from those who produce nothing; when you see that money flows to those who deal not in goods but in favors; when you notice that many become rich through bribery and influence rather than by their work, and that the laws do not protect you from them but, instead, they are protected from you; when you discover that corruption is rewarded and honesty becomes a form of self-sacrifice, then you can confidently say, without fear of being wrong, that your society is doomed.”

Her words, which touch on themes of power, corruption, and inequality, continue to resonate as a chilling prediction about the potential decline of society under certain conditions.

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Spend some time listening to her or read her book…find her on YouTube! WE ARE HERE!

Posted by M. C. on September 25, 2024

OFF GRID with DOUG & STACY

OFF GRID with DOUG & STACY

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Ayn Rand ‘The Humanist Perspective”

Posted by M. C. on December 13, 2023

By Walter E. Block

Interesting comments on public education.

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Name 2 Things – LewRockwell LewRockwell.com

Posted by M. C. on November 9, 2021

After hundreds of challenges in dozens of markets from NY to LA to DFW, ATL, DC, and even Toledo (!), only once, a caller in North Carolina got the correct answer: “Nothing”. Zip. Zero. None. No “2 things” or even 1 we “come in contact with on a daily basis” is not taxed, regulated, embargoed, licensed, restricted or prohibited by the Government.”

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/11/brian-wilson/name-2-things/

By Brian Wilson

Here’s a little game I used to play with listeners on my talk show. The goal was to compel them to think about the Government, its size, the pervasiveness of its laws, and smothering regulations.

The challenge: Name the 2 things you come in contact with every day that are not taxed, regulated, embargoed, licensed, restricted, or prohibited by the Government

Invariably, the phone lines exploded! Unfortunately, the majority of callers usually misunderstood the most important part of the challenge: “…you come in contact with…”. As a result, ‘contestants’ would name “ love”, “sunrise and sunset” and similar misses. (In a tactile sense, you don’t come in contact with ‘love’ and there is Daylight Saving Time). Others would try “children”, “air”, “water” – as if kids aren’t subject to taxes, compulsory education, and a boatload of age-specific rules; air and water have their own mountain of pollution laws, water and ‘wetlands’ regulations. Invariably, there would come “sex”, “economics”, “Government” – some never having heard of sodomy laws, intangible “economics” and untouchable Government. A few creative folks tried “prayer”. While it is problematic whether one “…comes in contact…” with prayer, just try kneeling with some fellow believers at the Lincoln Memorial in DC. It’s a blessed opportunity to get educated by members of the Park Police.

After hundreds of challenges in dozens of markets from NY to LA to DFW, ATL, DC, and even Toledo (!), only once, a caller in North Carolina got the correct answer: “Nothing”. Zip. Zero. None. No “2 things” or even 1 we “come in contact with on a daily basis” is not taxed, regulated, embargoed, licensed, restricted or prohibited by the Government.”

While it’s been 10 years since the last game, we could play it today with just one small change:

“Name the 2 issues impacting your life on a daily basis that have not originated from Government?”

Consider:

Presidential ‘mandates’, lockdowns, ‘social distancing’, family association, church attendance, school attendance, and school board meetings, now with FBI agents monitoring rightfully outraged parent-terrorists, employment security, unemployment income, taxation, inflation, savings, investments, groceries, gas, dining out, football games, birthday parties, weddings, even funerals continue to be subject to capricious Government intrusion. If you or a loved one serve in the Armed Forces, a separate set of COVID-related Government regulations can cost you your rank, job, and earned benefits. The impact of legally dubious State and Federal government intervention continues unabated as politicians ‘green mail’ corporate entities in place of enabling legislation even to the point of ignoring SCOTUS verdicts.

The answer is still the same: None. The issues roiling our lives today come from Government laws, unconstitutional regulations, illegal restrictions, and policies intruding into every aspect of our daily life.

How does this happen in America, “Land of the Free”?

As a prescient Ayn Rand wrote:

“The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for me to live without breaking laws.”

Tragically,  Reality is not a radio game; there’s no way to tune out. Think ‘Hotel California’. It’s all happening before our eyes right now, every day: specific, intentional parts of a much bigger plan previously discussed here; Mike Nichols reviews the plan and progress in enlightening detail here.

Since there are no prizes for the correct answer, what to do? Play the game anyway with folks you know. Or don’t know. Their reaction will be telling; a new ‘woke-ness’ may come over them and you just may find some valuable comrades for the days ahead.

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Defining Liberty – Doug Casey’s International Man

Posted by M. C. on August 4, 2021

How many laws exist in the US today? The answer is that no one knows. It’s too complex to define. There are roughly 20,000 laws regarding gun control alone – and that’s just the federal laws. State, county and city laws also exist in abundance.

At that time, the Russian Ayn Rand, living in the US, stated,

“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.”

https://internationalman.com/articles/defining-liberty/

by Jeff Thomas

Here we have a most interesting collection of signage. Some low-level civil servant who’s in charge of deciding what the motorist may do at this particular junction has become quite thorough in creating restrictions.

The motorist may not proceed, may not turn left or right, and, most interestingly, in the second sign from the bottom, may not reverse out. In essence, “You’re stuck here and whatever you do to get out, you’re in violation of the rules we’ve placed upon you.”

Of course, if we were to encounter this particular intersection, we might say, “That’s absurd – they can’t possibly hold me to this.”

But, interestingly, under the traffic laws, a policeman can cite us for violating the signage. If we’re lucky, he might agree that it’s absurd and give us a break, but his job is to enforce it, regardless of its absurdity. And if he enjoys his position of authority, as many in his position do, he just may choose to demonstrate his power.

And, if we defy him, we’re in real trouble.

How many laws exist in the US today? The answer is that no one knows. It’s too complex to define. There are roughly 20,000 laws regarding gun control alone – and that’s just the federal laws. State, county and city laws also exist in abundance.

The level of governmental dominance now exists to such a degree that literally everyone is a criminal, whether they know it or not. It’s been estimated that the average American commits about three felonies per day, in addition to many lesser crimes. If, for any reason, the authorities wished to victimize you, they’d find their task quite simple.

Yet, there’s a general assumption amongst those who simply accept the laws that are heaped upon their shoulders, that they were somehow “necessary,” that legislators only pass laws if they have no other choice.

In my estimation, this view is diametrically opposite to what is true. One of my own principles regarding governance is,

“It is the primary business of any government to grow its own power and wealth at the expense of its people.”

This is an important principle to understand, as it opens the mind to recognize that governments always move in a direction of increased control. Given enough time, governments will always create a state of despotism. And, historically, no government has ever reversed its level of control and introduced greater liberty.

It then follows that each country is in the process of becoming increasingly tyrannical. The only difference between them is the degree of tyranny that’s been achieved so far.

Liberty and governmental control are polar opposites. Yet, most people have a rather vague perception of the term “liberty” and might even find it difficult to define. This is unfortunate, as it means that, when liberty is lost, those same people will be unlikely to recognize the fact.

Here are two good working definitions of liberty, courtesy of the dictionary:

“The power or scope to act as one pleases.”

“The state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one’s way of life, behavior, or political views.”

The first is interesting, as it suggests that liberty means each person doing exactly as he pleases. Doug Casey often offers a similarly simple, but more refined rule of life:

“Do as thou wilt, but be prepared to accept the consequences.”

The latter dictionary definition is probably in keeping with the perception of most Americans around 1800, but today’s American would caution that, “Ideally, that would be true, but without our current laws and regulations, there’d be chaos.

Libertarians would disagree and offer only two principles that they believe would largely negate the need for laws:

“Do all that you say that you’ll do and don’t initiate aggression against another person or his property.”

And, again, non-libertarian thinkers would shake their heads and assert that this would result in chaos. Americans have become indoctrinated to believe this through slow measures. As Thomas Jefferson said,

“Even under the best forms of Government, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.”

The key to governmental domination is that we tend to tolerate the loss of liberty if it’s taken away slowly.

In the US, liberty has been in decline, by my reckoning, for about one hundred years, but has been in rapid decline since 2001.

Of course, in all countries, at some point, the governmental domination becomes so intolerable that the people rise up. Revolution follows – a period of great upheaval and hardship. Eventually, a recovery begins and the entire process starts over.

It stands to reason that the best place to be is a country that has already recovered and is in the reconstruction stage – a time when liberty is at its greatest.

The US was in this stage in the nineteenth century – a period of great expansion and development.

However, by the mid-twentieth century, the rot had set in. America was past its peak and was ready to begin the final, and most rapid, period of decline.

At that time, the Russian Ayn Rand, living in the US, stated,

“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.”

At the time Ms. Rand made this statement, she was largely dismissed. After all, Americans had never seen riot squads, dressed in black and heavily-armed, barging into homes without a warrant.

Authorities did not yet have the legal right to confiscate all of the possessions of an individual, based upon suspicion alone.

Yet, this is exactly what Ms. Rand warned against when she said, “the stage of total dominance is fast approaching.”

In reflection, we can have a laugh at the signage above, as it was clearly created by a low-level civil servant who was careless with his own puffed-up authority to the point of creating an absurdity.

But, in the larger picture, the signs are equally in place. Liberty in the US, at this point, is all but extinguished. And greater restrictions are being written every day.

The reader is left with a choice. He can either accept the signs that tell him he’s not allowed to go left, right, forward or back and wait until his government instructs him as to what he’s allowed to do, or he may say, “That’s it – I’m reversing out of here and finding a location where liberty is still in abundance.”

Editor’s Note: For too long, careless governments have used shortsighted strategies to prop up major world economies and prolong their time in power. This can only go on for so long…

In this urgent special report, Doug Casey and his team reveal why an unprecedented global financial disaster is now inevitable—and what you can do to protect yourself. Click here to download the PDF now.

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How the Elite use Attila and the Witch Doctor to keep Power

Posted by M. C. on October 22, 2020

“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”

So you can try to reason in your mind that something is off. But you have been taught that War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength. And so you don’t think about it, because you know finding any flaws in Big Brother’s reasoning is a thought crime.

By Joe Jarvis – October 22, 2020

It is not enough to control people’s bodies, their actions. The people in power must also control their minds.

And that is why strong men have always needed mystics.

Ayn Rand called this the partnership between Attila and the Witch Doctor.

And I think she offers a useful way of thinking about this particular power dynamic. You can see this paradigm being used by all the most powerful people, governments, and religions throughout history.

Attila controls the people physically, and the Witch Doctor controls them mentally, even spiritually.

In her book For the New Intellectual, Ayn Rand wrote:

Attila rules by means of fear, by keeping men under a constant threat of destruction—the Witch Doctor rules by means of guilt, by keeping men convinced of their innate depravity, impotence and insignificance. Attila turns men’s life on earth into a living hell—the Witch Doctor tells them that it could not be otherwise.

Let’s discuss a few examples to better understand what Rand was talking about.

Feudal Lords and the Catholic Church: Feudal Lords extracted labor from the serfs which created all the food and material possessions needed to live– Attila. Catholicism made the serfs believe that their suffering was retribution for their sins, but that if they behaved they would be rewarded in the afterlife– the Witch Doctor.

The peasants don’t rebel against the Lord, afraid of his sword. They don’t rebel against the Church, afraid of eternal damnation. They are controlled in both body and mind. They see no physical or intellectual way out of their predicament without breaking one or the other’s rules.

New England Puritans: As a theocratic society, Attila and Witch Doctor were wrapped up in the same powerful people and institutions. People could be physically punished for any number of transgressions, but it was God making the rules. Man was simply delivering on God’s demands for a pure society.

During the Salem Witch Trials, people truly believed that the Devil was possessing their fellow villagers. So it was entirely justified to use physical punishment, even hanging, to keep people in line. Otherwise not only was the village at risk of becoming completely disordered, but they were all at risk of God’s punishment.

Big Brother and Newspeak: In George Orwell’s 1984, Big Brother is always watching. You behave because you don’t want to be punished for stepping out of line. But because of Newspeak, a language that has been so butchered as to render any critical thought fruitless, the people do not even have the means to intellectually disagree.

For example, Oceania is at war with East Asia. Oceania has always been at war with East Asia.

In reality, the previous week Oceania has been at war with Eurasia. However, Newspeak has rendered words like truth and deception meaningless. What big brother says is the truth, it becomes reality.

“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”

So you can try to reason in your mind that something is off. But you have been taught that War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength. And so you don’t think about it, because you know finding any flaws in Big Brother’s reasoning is a thought crime.

Republicans and Democrats: Here’s one big way this applies to most of our lives today.

You could say the Republicans broadly represent the military and police state, and the Democrats are in line with the woke mob.

In other words, the Republicans are the Attilas who will physically punish you for victimless crimes like drugs, and illegal immigration. And the Democrats are the Witch Doctors who control the media, the Twitter mobs, and the Facebook/ Google/ Youtube censorship.

And as many commenters have pointed out, the politicians are not truly in charge.

So you could say politics in general is akin to the Witch Doctor, keeping people believing they need to submit to this government for safety and prosperity. Meanwhile the monetary system controls our physical reality.

Of course there is some mix and match here because the government’s police are Attila’s agents who you have physical contact with to keep you in line.

But, the neat black and white paradigm is just useful to extract and understand how the powerful operate, as opposed to everything being able to fit neatly into the two categories.

And you can even see this with a lot of powerful corporations. In real life, Nike uses sweatshops to make huge profits. But their branding has to take a stand– or I guess a knee– against injustice in America. It’s Attila doing whatever it takes in the real world to make a profit, and the Witch Doctor making sure there is a proper myth so customers believe in the company.

And throughout these examples, you see sometimes Attila has more power, and sometimes the witch doctor has more power. Sometimes one is leading the charge, and sometimes the other is dominant.

That is because they too are struggling for power, and suspicious of the other power faction. You see this often in current day rulers and elites behind the scene. As I’ve said before, the power game is largely elite versus elite, and the use the people they view as lesser as pawns.

Rand wrote:

But the alliance of the two rulers is precarious: it is based on mutual fear and mutual contempt. Attila is an extrovert, resentful of any concern with consciousness—the Witch Doctor is an introvert, resentful of any concern with physical existence. Attila professes scorn for values, ideals, principles, theories, abstractions—the Witch Doctor professes scorn for material property, for wealth, for man’s body, for this earth. Attila considers the Witch Doctor impractical—the Witch Doctor considers Attila immoral.

And of course these are not strict, rigid archetypes. Rand only describes the two factions of power in this way in order to demonstrate how they operate. Like everything, these traits fall along a continuum.

But whether it’s Attila or the Witch Doctor that is any given elite’s dominant trait:

…secretly, each of them believes that the other possesses a mysterious faculty he lacks, that the other is the true master of reality, the true exponent of the power to deal with Existence. In terms, not of thought, but of chronic anxiety, it is the Witch Doctor who believes that brute force rules the world—and it is Attila who believes in the supernatural; his name for it is “fate” or “luck.”

And the reason Attila and the Witch Doctor are able to keep this power dynamic going is largely because most people fall along the continuum into their various camps, some assuming that the biggest muscles and armies are truly in control, and some believing in a higher power.

That higher power, again, is not always religion or spirituality. It could be the ideology of Communism, or the belief in the social contract, where people assign inherent obligations to everyone without their agreement.

But this power dynamic relies on a  third class: the people who actually produce the necessities of life– the food, shelter, innovation, technology, and advancement.

Against whom is this alliance [between Attila and the Witch Doctor] formed? Against those men whose existence and character both Attila and the Witch Doctor refuse to admit into their view of the universe: the men who produce. In any age or society, there are men who think and work, who discover how to deal with existence, how to produce the intellectual and the material values it requires.

These are the men whose effort is the only means of survival for the parasites of all varieties: the Attilas, the Witch Doctors and the human ballast. The ballast consists of those who go through life in a state of unfocused stupor, merely repeating the words and the motions they learned from others.

Or, in other words, the ballast are the useful idiots who lend the Attilas and the Witch Doctors their power.

And I’m assuming anyone that made it this far is one of those producers who the parasitic classes mooch off of.

You’re actually producing something, doing some piece of the work that the Attilas, Witch Doctors, Ballasts, and mooching classes of all varieties depend on.

And the question is, how to respond to this power dynamic. You can’t simply stop producing. That was the idea behind Rands “Atlas Shrugged.” A boycott from the actual producers of the world, who say they won’t produce any more for the cabal.

But that doesn’t really work if you don’t have a Galt’s Gulch to escape to.

The good news is, we each have the ability to create our own little Galt’s Gulch– a little piece of paradise where were keep the products of our labor, and throw off the yolk of the Attilas and the Witch Doctors.

For me, that meant moving to Puerto Rico to take advantage of great tax incentives.

But in my next video, we’ll get into the “traps” that keep most people supporting the Attila/ Witch Doctor system, when they could be striking it out on their own, and throwing off this control of the elite.

Never let a good crisis go to waste is the mantra of the elites.

In tumultuous times, their tactics have extra potency. They reach for more power.

But this is also when the elite are most vulnerable.

By studying their tactics, you will be more prepared to guard against, and counter-attack the enemy.

The current crisis is being used to exploit the masses. But it also presents tremendous opportunity to take the power back, and reshape this world.

Society is entering a new period of transition, a struggle that will reveal the elites of the next generation.

Now is the time to seize your power if you intend to be among their ranks.

Subscribe and immediately receive TWO FREE TACTICAL REPORTS:

1. Four Ways The Elite Control You

2. How to Infiltrate the Elite and Steal Their Power for Yourself

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Donald Trump, Anarchism Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Means | The Libertarian Institute

Posted by M. C. on September 27, 2020

an·ar·chism
/ˈanərˌkizəm/
noun
“Belief in the abolition of all government and the organization of society on a voluntary, cooperative basis without recourse to force or compulsion.” (Google Online Dictionary)
“ANARCHISM is a political philosophy and movement that rejects all involuntary, coercive forms of hierarchy. It calls for the abolition of the state which it holds to be undesirable, unnecessary and harmful.”  (Wikipedia)

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/donald-trump-anarchism-doesnt-mean-what-you-think-it-means/

by

 

Inigo

Donald Trump seems to think we’re all stupid, or he really is stupid. Then again, maybe we can just chalk this all up to neo-McCarthysim. What, you may ask, am I talking about?

The ‘Dear Fuhrer’ keeps using a word as a fear-inducing pejorative, and I don’t think that it means what he thinks that it means. It’s even more ridiculous than something from ‘The Princess Bride.’

There are a lot of people in the world who identify as an ‘anarchist’ of some sort or another. From some of the world’s most respected intellectuals and political minds, to the factory floors, as well as the culture in music, and even among those who practice law or fight wars; you can find a rich history of anarchists in America. If Bubba from Forrest Gump were here, he might say: “There’s market anarchists, christian anarchists, political anarchists, classical anarchists, individualist anarchists, mutualist anarchists, social anarchists, crypto anarchists,” etc, ad nauseam.

If you’re talking about people who may not always self-identify as ‘anarchists,’ but technically are living a given lifestyle consistent with some traditional vein within anarchism, then even pacifists such as the Amish communities can count as a type of ‘anarchist.’ And, in fact, anarchists are typically not bomb-throwers, but garden-growers. Anarchists may sometimes just include people who tend to have an aversion to being organized in authoritarian and violent hierarchies, and choose rather to surround themselves among people who problem-solve with a countenance towards peaceful resolutions which respect everyone’s natural rights and freedoms.

I’ve been happy to self-identify as an ‘anarchist’ of a stripe for many years now because I find the concept of consent and voluntaryism to be the highest of all the ideals in both morality and law.

For the record:
an·ar·chism
/ˈanərˌkizəm/
noun
“Belief in the abolition of all government and the organization of society on a voluntary, cooperative basis without recourse to force or compulsion.” (Google Online Dictionary)
“ANARCHISM is a political philosophy and movement that rejects all involuntary, coercive forms of hierarchy. It calls for the abolition of the state which it holds to be undesirable, unnecessary and harmful.”  (Wikipedia)

(In)famous atheist activist Madalyn Murray O’Hair was a self-identified anarchist, and philosopher Ayn Rand has certainly been a historical favorite among those who enjoy reading in the ‘individualist anarchist’ vein of thought (although I don’t know of her ever technically self-identifying as an anarchist). Emma Goldman is probably one of the most well-known historical anarchist names in American labor movements. Leo Tolstoy left an undeniable legacy of anarchism within America’s most widely practiced faith tradition. There are ‘Austrian economists’ who openly call themselves anarchists currently, and who have even testified before the U.S. Congress on economic matters. Noam Chomsky seems to be a celebrity favorite of many anarchists today, and even a President of the United States can sound much like an anarchist when they say things like, “Government isn’t the solution to our problems, government is the problem,” as Ronald Reagan did.

Words actually have definitions. One might think the president would know the definitions of the terms he speaks publicly and would want to use those words correctly.

Or, maybe there’s another agenda afoot.

If someone has awoken the spirit of Eugene McCarthy, I’ve got a few questions for them.

Kru Adam G. “Brick” House is an Afghanistan war veteran and former licensed minister (UPCI), who has become an outspoken skeptic, peace advocate, and libertarian activist. He currently resides in Leander, Texas, where he is a licensed Muay Thai Kru and owner of Peaceful Warrior Muay Thai Academy.

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You Aren’t Free If You Don’t Own Yourself

Posted by M. C. on August 3, 2020

“The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.”
Ayn Rand
Remember that when you are told the only way to get rid of your mask or out of lockdown is taking a vaccine.
You can’t be free if you are a slave to government.
You aren’t free if you don’t own yourself.
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The Anti-Industrial Revolution

Posted by M. C. on May 31, 2020

We haven’t had any Ayn Rand in a while.

A new piece to me. Click the link.

https://courses.aynrand.org/works/the-anti-industrial-revolution/

by Ayn Rand, From Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution

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