Unforeseen Contingencies

Rand insisted on precise use of concepts and language.  Imprecise, careless, or sloppy use leads to confusion, and it is that confusion that enemies of reason and freedom exploit.  One reason libertarians and conservatives consistently lose to Marxists and other leftists is that they allow the left to dominate language.  As a result, libertarians and conservatives end up adopting the left's framing of things, and one cannot defend reason, freedom, and civilization using the enemy's conceptual framework.  

Here's a simple example.  Today conservatives talk about the supposed irony that the left has cancel culture and opposition to freedom of speech, while the Berkeley "Free Speech Movement" (FSM) of the mid-1960's fought for "free speech."  Rand would have none of this foolish nonsense.  Her 1965 essay "The Cashing-In: The Student 'Rebellion'" documents and exposes the anti-freedom-of-speech nature of the FSM.  The Berkeley FSM was one of the origins of leftist cancel culture in America, soon to be formalized by Herbert Marcuse's 1965 essay "Repressive Tolerance," which argues that true tolerance means silencing everyone except "marginalized voices;" only with censorship and repression can we have "true freedom."  The FSM was uninterested in freedom of speech; it shut down the campus and essentially deplatformed those with whom it disagreed.  At one time, conservatives and libertarians understood that the 1960s radicals were not pro-liberty.  But repeat a particular framing enough and those whose thinking is imprecise, careless, and sloppy will eventually adopt it.  I predict that before too long many libertarians and conservatives will be talking about "equity" and "doing something about systemic racism" and "giving voice to the marginalized."

Perhaps one might expect me next to say we need a Rand today to fight the expanding left.  I won't, because in fact we have her in the original Ayn Rand.  Her "The Cashing-In" essay, reprinted in Return of the Primitive, reads as if it had been written this year, save for the specific names, dates, and events she mentions.  The ideologies and doctrines she is battling are indistinguishable from today's new left dogmas.  They are identical, because it is the same "new" left, the cultural Marxists.  I highly recommend readers pick up a copy of Return of the Primitive.  It's intellectual ammunition and will more than repay repeated reading.

Happy Birthday, Ayn Rand!