Reblogged:One Cheer for the ... Autonomophobes?

[Gus Van Horn blog]

Is there a word for someone who fears other people weighing evidence and coming to their own conclusions? Sometimes, I think there should be, and if there were, it would apply to the angry leftist who recently threw up a post titled, "For The Ayn Rand Person In Your Life Ask This Question."

"EisenBolan, SJW" asks a snide version of the very question Rand actually pretty ably answers in a video clip. But he does this before posting the clip. The real question is really a two-parter, which I'd put this way: "Should the government force people to pay for other people's education and, given that it currently does, how best would that money be spent?"

Let's set aside the fact that, while he was writing, this admitted "social" "justice" "warrior" was (by his professed standards) failing to seek out and save random drowning strangers. The fact that he isn't content to let the alleged horrors of this video stand on their own is pretty typical of the smallness of the opposition to Rand and her ideas I have witnessed during my life: He feels the need to bias or turn away potential viewers by equating (his caricature) of selfishness to "letting people drown" and claiming that Rand "rails against money used to educate" handicapped children. In doing the latter, he omits the fact that Rand is against the twin injustices of money being taken by force (as it is to finance government schools) and then squandering that money in a way that harms everyone. In case this "warrior" doesn't realize it, "everyone" includes, yes, those who don't need help, but also those who need help the most. And in even greater context, Rand fought her whole life for capitalism, the economic system best suited to giving everyone the opportunity to live the most fulfilling life possible.

The only question that really needs raising here is this one, and it isn't I who needs to answer it: Why? Why is someone else's misfortune supposedly the proper focus of my life and my effort? That's what petulant people like this are trying to hide with "questions" that are really their own underhanded way of putting words into our mouths.

But such behavior is self-limiting: If anything, that kind of question will serve to motivate people to learn more about Ayn Rand. I do, after all, have a similar rant to thank for doing exactly this, decades ago. Whether they rate a special term or not, it makes me smile to know that such people sometimes serve as the unwitting Johnny Appleseeds of the Objectivist movement.

-- CAV

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