A libertarian e-pen pal warns me that Randians are plotting to use Cato to convince people that the human race is more important than other concerns:
I’m surprised that you don’t appear to believe that Cato is Objectivist.
Ever since Ed Crane bit the hand that fed Cato Institute, Cato has been becoming more and more aligned with Randian idealism. It’s no secret that the Koch brothers are Objectivists, and John Allison has even been quoted as saying he has every intention of making Cato more Objectivist. David Boaz inadvertently pointed out why this was fundamentally such a bad idea in his essay Objectivists vs Libertarianism. A political philosophy shouldn’t be attached to a way of life. Look at the clusterfuck the Republican party has become since it allowed the Christian extremists to take over. A philosophy that weighs classist hierarchy over personal freedom has no business judging who is permitted to have the right to personal liberty or freedom.
Instead of skirting these ideals with political reasoning, Cato has turned full force into linking some sort of pseudo-scientific rationality as to why something isn’t factual. Objectivism is about intellectual conquest, of which they believe savages lack an inherent right. Hence their unflagging devotion to war, conquest or even how we should be free to destroy the environment on the basis that we’re sentient over trees or plants. Based on Objectivism, how can Man possibly be at fault since it is fundamentally within our Darwinian right to survive as the fittest entity in the first place?
I don’t believe that Objectivists are any more Libertarian than Christian Tea Partiers. Liberty isn’t convenience, it’s inherent. The Cato Institute is now a zombie voice for the Koch Brothers, and frankly it does a disservice to the Libertarian party and obscure’s the publics understanding of it.
The Insomniac Libertarian 