Leonard Peikoff wants the U.S. government to bomb the Cordoba House, an Islamic cultural center planned for lower Manhattan -- two blocks from the site of the World Trade Center -- once it is built. (Howard Roark, call your office.)
But it's private property, isn't it? "Property rights are limited and they are contextual," he says. ".... In any situation where metaphysical survival is at stake all property rights are out."
If you haven't heard, our metaphysical survival has been declared at stake by Dr. Peikoff. It looks more to me as though the metaphysical survival of Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis, Yemenis, Somalians, and Iranians is what's at stake these days. American society doesn't appear to be in any great danger (except from U.S. occupation forces).
Peikoff is clearly calling for terrorism -- what else would you call it? (Oh, sure he'd evacuate the center before bombing it.) Have any Objectivists denounced him? I think a few have.
Thursday, August 05, 2010
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Peaceful Objectivists: refudiate that!
Don't forget the similar comments of Ed Cline, an Objctivist: http://fvdb.wordpress.com/2010/06/28/dr-peikoff-on-the-nyc-mosque-bomb-it-out-of-existence/
http://fvdb.wordpress.com/2010/06/28/dr-peikoff-on-the-nyc-mosque-bomb-it-out-of-existence/
I read some of his mysteries in the 90s or 80s--in fact he mailed them to me in manuscript form for a fee-that's how it worked pre-Internet, with slim-pickings so you had to read unpublihsed stuff from people who later turn out to be warmongers and pretend libertarians.
Roderick long mentioned it too, and as I commented there :
Not just Peikoff, but Ed Cline also endorses Peikoff’s insane call to bomb a private mosque built near the 9/11 memorial: http://fvdb.wordpress.com/2010/06/28/dr-peikoff-on-the-nyc-mosque-bomb-it-out-of-existence/
I read some of his mysteries in the 90s or 80s–in fact he mailed them to me in manuscript form for a fee-that’s how it worked pre-Internet, with slim-pickings so you had to read unpublished stuff from people who later turn out to be warmongers and pretend libertarians.
In Peikoff’s podcast, http://www.peikoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/2010-6-28.118_A_01.L.mp3
he says he normally votes democrat b/c he thinks Republicans are the bigger enemy in the long term (b/c of religion) but now he will vote Republican to stop Obama — he analogizes it to the Republicans being like terrorists building a bio weapon, the greater long term danger, but that Obama is like a mugger at your house with a gun to your head–you have to deal w/ him first.
In this podcast he says that the mosque should not be built at 9/11 site even if it’s on private property–because the nation’s right to survive trumps property rights. He says if they build it the government should bomb it with no compensation paid to the owners. He then analogizes this to Howard roarks bombing of Cortlandt Homes in the Fountainhead (illustrating my view that that novel is centered around a horrible act of IP terrorism). And to make matters even worse–at the end he has his podcast minion append a message making it clear that Peikoff does not condone or suggest private action to bomb the mosque–*only governments* have the right to do this. So… basically he takes Bastiat’s idea–that that which one person can’t do, a group has no right to do–and turns it on its head. I mean, if he’s right that the mosque should be bombed, why is it wrong for private people to do it?
Roderick, if you want to claim Rand’s “legacy” for left-libertarianism–you are welcome to it. Jesus.
I'm a bit curious about the use of the qualifier 'metaphysical.' Why metaphysical? If we are talking about life or death, survival, then surely that is very physical. It sounds like he's aware of the enormity of what he's staying and he's buying himself a way out with some cultural war bulls**t.
Mordecai, good point. He must think it gives gravitas to nonsense.
Wasn't Peikoff pretty much just the last dude standing after Rand drove away virtually everyone else in her circle? Considering that she drove away so many people due to their insistence on thinking for themselves and arriving at their own views independently of Rand's judgement, one can only surmise that Peikoff was a totally sycophantic yes-man.
In fact, I seem to recall reading somewhere that he first met Rand when he was just 17. I'll bet she got a hold of that fresh young mind and twisted that raw intellectual flesh good and hard.
The guy's like Peter Keating with fangs.
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