Curtis's Critique of Ayn Rand

User offline. Last seen 11 years 21 weeks ago.
Sophia
Number 741
Conspirator for: 13 years 24 weeks
Posted on: May 27, 2011 - 11:25pm

Over the past 20 years Adam Curtis has made some interesting documentary series, such as Century of Self & the Power of Nightmares.  

 

His current documentary series entitled All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace kicked off last week & it began with a critique of Ayn Rand.

 

Actually libertarians could learn from the warning in Curtis's last documentary series The Trap


User offline. Last seen 12 years 1 week ago.
Nich
Number 632
Conspirator for: 14 years 26 weeks
Posted on: May 30, 2011 - 12:30pm #1

Watched The Trap and Episode one of All Watched Over by Machines.. they are absolutely false.  Throughout All Watched he tries to discredit Ayn Rand and the idea of selfishness.  He uses the fact Greenspan was a part of Rand's inner circle in his early days to tie Rand's philosophies to the Greenspan's decisions as head of the Fed and how they failed.  He completely ignored the fact that Rand was against Central banking and that Greenspan broke away from Rand.  He basicly tries to show all these cases of how the Free Market is unstable.  However in every case there was government intervention or regulation (which for some reason he failed to mention) which led to economic turmoil.  He also said 9-11 was the result of Islamic Attacks on the US because of their "Radicial Individualism".

The Trap doesn't really apply to Libertarianism, and the bastard sneaks in a line at the very end that just pisses me off.  He basicly says we need to force people into freedom at the end of the doc, but throughout the doc he shows how it doesnt work.  The Trap is mostly about how US foreign policy that there is no one absolute right way to govern a country.

I don't like this guy.

My English is also a bit off. Going on 30 hours up and its getting rough.


User offline. Last seen 11 years 21 weeks ago.
Sophia
Number 741
Conspirator for: 13 years 24 weeks
Posted on: June 1, 2011 - 5:57am #2

The Trap does actually apply to libertarianism because libertarianism is purely negative liberty & Curtis brings up the warning from Isaiah Berlin about the use of negative or positive liberty at the exclusion of the other.


User offline. Last seen 12 years 1 week ago.
Nich
Number 632
Conspirator for: 14 years 26 weeks
Posted on: June 2, 2011 - 4:08am #3

The way Curtis described Berlin's idea of positivism and negativism seemed different from what I've heard Gard talk about.  When Gard talks about positive rights, he talks about the right to something (right to healthcare, right to an education, etc).  When Curtis describes Berlin's Positivism, he says the idea that you can force people to be free, an idea that always ends in tyranny.