Reply #71: Even if he is not, his ideology is

[Prism]

And I'm not talking about the classical liberal forms of libertarianism or the utilitarianism of John Stuart Mill.

We're talking about how states rights became folded into the framework of modern, popular Libertarianism - the kind often embraced by college students before their political thinking becomes more complex. Rand seems possessed of this simplistic form, and it's within this form that the rollback of racial protections became popularized under the rubric of less government.

This kind of rhetoric is a racist poison pill buried in libertarian vernacular.

Does Rand know this? Maybe, maybe not. He doesn't seem alarmingly bright to me, and his libertarianism does seem of the simplistic variety. I could buy that he's clueless of the ideological heritage of his current beliefs. But that doesn't excuse his ignorance of the genesis of these ideas, which are firmly rooted in Jim Crow South put on the retreat starting in the 1960s and looking for escape routes well into our modern political system. Libertarianism is just one of the many host ideologies the old segregationist states' rights advocates use to fly under the radar.

Does that characterize all Libertarianism? No, not at all. And I'm sympathetic to the kind that seeks to halt the increasing nanny-statism of our government. But this whole "No racial protections ever!" is not, and should not be, tolerated or allowed the pretense that it isn't the heir of some seriously racist thinking.