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As someone who's only familiar in passing with both Rand and Libtertarianism... could someone explain briefly whether/how Libtertarians co-opt her ideas as repe

As someone who's only familiar in passing with both Rand and Libtertarianism... could someone explain briefly whether/how Libtertarians co-opt her ideas as repeatedly suggested? I'm aware that she has some fairly well-distributed literature to her name, but to claim any "idea" as your own is pretty bold, particularly in an area that's been puzzled and argued over for much of human history. It seems to me either she's vastly overstating her own body of work or Libtertarians are/were doing some truly, painfully obvious plagiarizing to merit such a claim.

vitno 14y ago
not at all. Libertarianism can be directly traced back to the theory of Austrian economics and the political theory of Locke. There are many similarities, but Rand approaches her ideas from a very different angle.
maxharris 14y ago
Murray Rothbard wrote this to Ayn Rand in a letter dated October 3, 1957: "I now come to the painful part of this letter. For standing as I do in awe and wonder at the glory and magnitude of your achievement, knowing from early in the novel that I would have to write you and express in full how much I and the world owe to you... When I first met you, many years ago, I was a follower of Mises, but unhappy about his antipathy to natural rights, which I “felt” was true but could not demonstrate. You introduced me to the whole field of natural rights and natural law philosophy, which I did not know existed, and month by month, working on my own as I preferred, I learned and studied the glorious natural rights tradition. I also learned from you about the existence of Aristotelian epistemology, and then I studied that, and came to adopt it wholeheartedly. So that I owe you a great intellectual debt for many years, the least of which is introducing me to a tradition of which four years of college and three years of graduate school, to say nothing of other reading, had kept me in ignorance."

vitno 14y ago

not at all. Libertarianism can be directly traced back to the theory of Austrian economics and the political theory of Locke. There are many similarities, but Rand approaches her ideas from a very different angle.

maxharris 14y ago

Murray Rothbard wrote this to Ayn Rand in a letter dated October 3, 1957: "I now come to the painful part of this letter. For standing as I do in awe and wonder at the glory and magnitude of your achievement, knowing from early in the novel that I would have to write you and express in full how much I and the world owe to you... When I first met you, many years ago, I was a follower of Mises, but unhappy about his antipathy to natural rights, which I “felt” was true but could not demonstrate. You introduced me to the whole field of natural rights and natural law philosophy, which I did not know existed, and month by month, working on my own as I preferred, I learned and studied the glorious natural rights tradition. I also learned from you about the existence of Aristotelian epistemology, and then I studied that, and came to adopt it wholeheartedly. So that I owe you a great intellectual debt for many years, the least of which is introducing me to a tradition of which four years of college and three years of graduate school, to say nothing of other reading, had kept me in ignorance."