{"id":11608,"date":"2015-08-29T20:12:59","date_gmt":"2015-08-30T01:12:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=11608"},"modified":"2015-08-29T20:12:59","modified_gmt":"2015-08-30T01:12:59","slug":"ayn-rand-murray-rothbard-diverse-champions-of-liberty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=11608","title":{"rendered":"Ayn Rand & Murray Rothbard: Diverse Champions of Liberty"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ayn Rand & Murray Rothbard: Diverse Champions of Liberty<\/a><\/h3>\n

Differences and Similarities<\/strong><\/h3>\n

No one should attempt to treat Ayn Rand and Murray N. Rothbard as uncomplicated and rather similar defenders of the free society although they have more in common than many believe.\u00a0\u00a0As just one example, neither was a hawk when it comes to deploying military power abroad.*\u00a0\u00a0There is evidence, too, that both considered it imprudent for the US government to be entangled in international affairs, such as fighting dictators who were no threat to America.\u00a0\u00a0Even their lack of enthusiasm for entering WW II could be seen as quite similar.<\/p>\n

\"\"Ayn Rand, famed writer and founder of the Objectivist movement
\nPhoto credit:\u00a0Cornell Capa \/ Magnum<\/span><\/p>\n

And so far as their underlying philosophical positions are concerned, they both can be regarded as Aristotelians.\u00a0\u00a0In matters of economics they were unwavering supporters of the fully free market capitalist system, although while Rand didn\u2019t find corporations per se objectionable, arguably Rothbard had some problems with corporate commerce, especially as it manifest itself in the 20th century.\u00a0\u00a0One sphere in which they took very different positions, at least at first glance, is whether government is a\u00a0bona fide<\/em>\u00a0feature of a genuinely free country. Rand thought it is, Rothbard thought it wasn\u2019t.\u00a0\u00a0Yet the reason Rothbard opposed government was that it depended on taxation, something Rand also opposed, so even here where the difference between them appears to be quite stark, they were closer than one might think.<\/p>\n

\"RothbardChalkboard\"Murray Rothbard, introducing his students to French economist Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot (widely regarded as a \u201cproto-Austrian\u201d today)
\nPhoto credit:\u00a0Roberto Losada Maestre<\/a><\/p>\n

When intellectuals such as Rand and Rothbard have roughly the same political-economic position, it isn\u2019t that surprising that they and their followers would stress the difference between them instead of the similarities.\u00a0\u00a0Moreover, in this case both had a similar explosive personality, with powerful likes and dislikes not just in fundamentals but also in what may legitimately be considered incidentals\u2013music, poetry, novels, movies and so forth.<\/p>\n

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Ayn Rand & Murray Rothbard: Diverse Champions of Liberty Differences and Similarities No one should attempt to treat Ayn Rand and Murray N. Rothbard as uncomplicated and rather similar defenders of the free society although they have more in common than many believe.\u00a0\u00a0As just one example, neither was a hawk when it comes to deploying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5728,971,1471,8542,483,545,8543],"class_list":["post-11608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-acting-man","tag-ayn-rand","tag-corporatism","tag-international-geopolitics","tag-liberty-2","tag-murray-rothbard","tag-objectivist-movement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11608"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11609,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11608\/revisions\/11609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}