Good argument. I guess the issue is really what is "long term" vs "short term". Democrats want to take my stuff NOW and make me pay for their obviously collectivist programs, like open borders. At least the Shapiros dont want to take my freedoms NOW. I do accept that they arent standing on principle, and will lose the arguments at some point. One could argue also that the maintenance of our constitution will make it harder for the democrats to enact laws allowing them to take my stuff and my liberties.

OK, but Shapiro et al are ALSO leftists, but ones who don't even realize it, so why single out the "Democrat" flavor of leftie for particular hate? At least you know what you're getting with them.

I am inclined to think that in the long run, you are doing more harm than good. In the short term, however, they are doing more good than the schumer/pelosi/O'rourke/Sanders group for sure.

The more money the leftists get, the more they take away our freedoms.

I know I'm a bit late to this, but this is a great post ewv, thanks for writing it.

Yea I've been thinking about this a lot of late and I'm not so sure that they are better anymore.
Think about it, what Shapiro et al advocate is religious/traditionalist collectivism and that's not an alternative to the secular versions of collectivism from the Schumer and Pelosi's of the world.
But at least Schumer and Pelosi aren't claiming to be an alternative to the left.
More and more I think the conservatives are actually doing more harm than good.

Yea it was pretty appalling.
That segment is one of the reasons that I refer to conservatives today as the religious and politically illiterate arm of the left wing. Shapiro simply has no idea.
Deep philosophy!

And with no way for him to defend rights, the collectivists can just claim that they just "aren't", which is what they do.

At least he picked some good “rights”, and does indicate we are at least born with them. I was expecting a claim that they were delivered by some god.

But he sets himself up for defeat by collectivists who could just claim that other rights just “are”, like universal health care etc

Levin is a practicing religious Jew, but openly allies himself with all forms of Christianity.

He uses reasoned argument in many aspects of politics, but as an advocate of faith he is no defender of reason philosophically and is incapable of defending the rights of the individual. In 2015 he said:

"Where do these unalienable rights come from? These inviolable rights, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? They don't come from man, they don't come from the collection of men we call government. These are rights, you're born with these rights. They don't come from reason. They don't come from logic. They are. Period."

That is pure "intrinsicist" mysticism.

This is true. The philosophy of Shapiro and levin is very flawed and based on mythical Jewish gods. Handed down for their believers to accept.

Better than Schumer and Pelosi and the bunch of millennial socialists whose philosophy is based on emotion and no reason at all

Objectivist Venture Fund https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/...

You can ignore the annoyance personally, but the philosophical ideas they promote are destructive and preventing reform.

I never heard Shapiro bring up ayn rand, but I could imagine what he would say. He has his “natural laws” come from some ethereal god creature. Talk about garbage

I will watch levin some more. They are both good on current events but the philosophy stuff I will ignore

You can listen to the podcasts of the Levin radio broadcasts at https://omny.fm/shows/mark-levin-audi... The three hour shows are about an hour and 50 mins without most of the ads, and if you download the mp3 files you can listen to them at almost double speed once you get used to it.

Shapiro attempts to reduce Ayn Rand's significance to politics, denounces the philosophy as "garbage". Early this year he said there are "very few expositors of capitalism who I think are better than Ayn Rand” but “as far as her life philosophy, and her relationship philosophy, I think that’s pretty garbage. I don’t think Objectivism applies in personal relationships.”

Substituting on the Mark Levin Show of August 10, 2017, in a segment Shapiro called "talking deep philosophy", he calls faith the "foundation of science" and claims that "if you lose faith, science becomes nothingness, becomes solipsism, becomes examination of your own belly button". I have that podcast and the transcript of Shapiro "talking deep philosophy", but it doesn't seem to be online anymore.

I like Mark Levin, and I am not surprissed he is a bit collectivist, being jewish. I am not surprised Ben Shapiro doesnt like Ayn Rand. He thinks philosophy comes from his orthodox jewish religion, and thinks the basis for philosophy cant come from anything but his "god". He would never accept Ayn Rand, but interestingly enough he isnt that far away from her philosophy (except for the religion thing. I like his respect for facts until he gets to his religion nonsense

ARI has good speakers but there is only so much they can do. They have been doing good work on freedom of speech at university campuses. But there isn't anyone anywhere with the intellectual acuteness, understanding, and articulation of Ayn Rand.

Lawyer and talk radio show host Mark Levin (formerly of the Justice Dept under Reagan and Meese) seems to be the leading conservative intellectual spokesman now. He can be very good on daily political analysis but mixes freedom with religion and welfare statism, and has a bad tendency to yell and belittle people. He occasionally mentions Ayn Rand but not in any fundamental way in contrast to the way he lauds Bill Buckley, etc. He has recommended and quotes from Ayn Rand's Return of the Primitive several times (and he's getting closer to pronouncing her name correctly.)

Bill O'Reilly has never impressed me as anything other than everyone's pompous Victorian grandfather, with no philosophical value at all. Ben Shapiro is a bright but snarky young conservative belligerent who vastly overrates his own philosophical understanding, is antagonistic towards Ayn Rand's philosophy that he does not understand, and frequently gets things dead wrong while he basks in imagined intellectual silver bullets.

Someone recently recommended One America's News Network https://www.oann.com/ as an independent news source, but its cable availability is limited and I haven't seen it.

The best source of 'inside' political news and information (though not particularly philosophical) is to ally with grass roots activists with a record for being a major influence in some specific area (like property rights) and who know what they are doing and talking about, even though most people have never heard of them. They tend to be from the better conservatives.

Its a very dismal situation here I fear. Over half the people are ready to accept socialism from what I can see. Even the so called "conservatives" arent intellectually consistent enough to adequately resist. I have given up on MSM, and now watch the alternative channels on youtube, like Ben Shapiso, Bill O Reilly, etc. But although they are much better than the liberals, their intellectual consistency is quite apparent. Shapiro has taken the kool aid of orthodox jewish religion, and OReilly is ok on some things but strays on others. Tucker Carlson on fox pretends to be for free markets, but is ok with outlawing self driving trucks because it would result in unemployment of truck drivers. Candace Owens so far is pretty good about objecting to the "victim" mentality (and she is black..) Trump I think has been infected with "re election" syndrome and is not moving forward as much as I hoped (But to be honest I really expected him to only slow down the march to collectivism, not reverse it). I am encouraged by the YAF college campus talks with Dinesh D-Souza, and would like it if there was a good speaker to promote the works of Ayn Rand

The feudalist system in England had already begun to crumble by the Industrial Revolution there. Remember that John Locke and the Enlightenment started there. But the form of government was entrenched in Britain and could not evolve as quickly as the freedom in America.

American colonists were accustomed to much more freedom despite the nominal British rule -- they already had a "fire of independent thinking" as a common attitude. At the beginning of the break in response to British ratcheting up the controls and taxes, they still intended to remain as part of Britain with the "rights of Englishmen". England cracked down and that was the beginning of the end for British rule. It lit a fire, but they already had the intellectual fuel and were not about to give it up.

As for us now, it takes the same kind of sweep of ideas of reason and individualism as the Enlightenment, but better formulated and developed (Ayn Rand) in response to the centuries of the intellectual counter Enlightenment. Appeal to what is left of the American sense of life to stop the worst of the socialists and otherwise spread the right ideas for the longer term and to buttress the current resistance.

Britain is far worse off, already succumbing to socialism long ago under the intellectual pounding of the Fabians. Their economy is in bad shape and people are suffering under the British socialized medicine and more. But there is little resistance because most of them are too frightened to break with the collectivism they now take for granted. And that is already happening here.

I think it took a combination subjugation under the English colonial rule, plus the potential taste of freedom here in a distant new land that lit the fires of independent thinking. Maybe the English class system that was so out of place in a rugged new land that helped too.

Not sure how one brings that back now. Maybe a revolution to escape the shackles of collectivism will be the spark. Interesting thought how we can rekindle the spirit that started this country when so many people are beholden to the idea government control. The world is so different now.

They had some variations on the form of control, but they were all collectivist in the crudest way: tribalism. You have to really strain to "find" a "resemblance" let alone credit them as a source. It's not as if the source were a mystery and we didn't have all the documentation on the nature of the Enlightenment and how it influenced the founders.

But in the multicultural world of ethnicity over logic anything goes, and the "anything" does nothing to help understand the ideas that made this country possible and what it will take to restore it. That won't come from its opposite in the "return of the primitive". https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post... You would have thought that this could be discussed seriously on an Ayn Rand forum without the outbursts of emotional hostility and personal denunciations.

It never would have occurred to me to think the origin of our constitution had much to do with Indian culture, which seemed to me to be mostly a dictatorship of the tribal chief

No, you're not demented! It was a simple typo, easily understood by all the emphasis today attacking the 2nd amendment. But neither of them makes restrictions on speech (or having a gun) using others' private property unconstitutional.

I thought you might, or had read some of it when she published the articles before the anthology was published. The expanded version edited by Peter Schwartz is worth getting for the additional articles not in the original. Schwartz wrote some of them himself. The Bowden book, which isn't very well known, is excellent for its history and philosophical explanation, and the Clifton collection is very interesting for factual descriptions and debunking of myths being spread by "scholars".

Yes, there have been and still are racist thugs committing deplorable crimes, as well as the non-racist thugs. None of it has any implications for approving or disproving of anyone based on his race, which includes evaluating what people did in social organizations hundreds or thousands of years ago and which we are now suppose to romanticize and idolize for the sake of multiculturalist ethnicity. That someone was the victim of a deplorable crime does not mean that the nature of his ancestors' social organization cannot be evaluated for what it was -- and was not.

Thanks for the list. I happen to have Rand's "The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution", which the "Return" is an expanded version of.