I was going to com­ment on a recent edi­to­r­ial (Kay S. Hymowitz, Free­dom Fetishists, Com­ment. Sept. 2007, at 50, avail­able at http://​www​.com​men​tary​magazine​.com/​c​m​/​m​a​i​n​/​v​i​e​w​A​r​t​i​c​l​e​.​h​tml ?id=10925) that paints Ayn Rand and her phi­los­o­phy of Objec­tivism in an unpleas­ant color and with a crude brush. I spent sev­eral hours mulling over what I wanted to say about it. But in the end, I decided I really had very lit­tle to say that hadn’t already been said. That lit­tle boils down to this:

Intel­lec­tual slop­pi­ness begets intel­lec­tual slop­pi­ness. Hymowitz should have done some real research, instead of rely­ing on a few promi­nent Lib­er­tar­i­ans’ warped inter­pre­ta­tions of Rand’s phi­los­o­phy, before pur­port­ing to speak with any accu­racy about it.

Whereas I ini­tially wanted to with­hold an accu­sa­tion of mal­ice, I now find I can­not do so. The tone of the edi­to­r­ial is never so snarky as when Rand or her influ­ence is men­tioned. Hymowitz may (rightly) have a dim view of Lib­er­tar­ian “ethics” (inas­much as such a thing can be said to exist), but she saves some of her most pun­gent vit­riol for Rand.

Notice that Hymowitz sup­ports some of her claims about Lib­er­tar­i­ans with actual quotes from real life Lib­er­tar­i­ans, but does not bother to sup­port either her claim that Rand belongs in the same philo­soph­i­cal cat­e­gory or her out­landish claim about Rand’s view of fam­ily with ref­er­ence to Rand’s actual ideas. She refers instead to Lib­er­tar­ian rep­re­sen­ta­tions of Rand. Rep­re­sen­ta­tions that are fab­ri­cated from whole cloth.

Hymowitz com­mits many of the same errors that are de rigeur for the Lib­er­tar­i­ans she finds so amoral. Inte­gra­tion by nonessen­tials. Argu­men­tum ad pop­u­lum. Affirm­ing the con­se­quent. Sub­sti­tut­ing a def­i­n­i­tion of a con­cept for the con­cept itself. And of course, my old favorite, fail­ure to rec­og­nize the ought in an is.

That Hymowitz was able to come to such an insane con­clu­sion as “Ayn Rand . . . saw the fam­ily as a soul-​​killing prison” demon­strates that Lib­er­tar­i­ans (Hymowitz’ only appar­ent source for infor­ma­tion on Rand and Objec­tivism) are spread­ing around some very nasty ideas.

There is no way a ratio­nal per­son could, given even a cur­sory inves­ti­ga­tion of Objec­tivism, arrive at Hymowitz’ con­clu­sions about the phi­los­o­phy. It is for this rea­son that I decided not to post my refu­ta­tion of Hymowitz’ fac­tual and inter­pre­tive errors, and instead decided only to point out that she had made them. Any­thing else that needs say­ing, either about Lib­er­tar­i­an­ism in gen­eral, or this edi­to­r­ial in spe­cific, has already been said else­where in the Objec­tivist Web-​​o-​​Sphere. See Gus Van Horn, Ratio­nal Jenn, and the com­ments over at Noodle­Food.