Opinion of Walter Block

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

Annoying HP with a long history of meddling in the libertarian movement. From his obsessive attempt to crash an Ayn Rand event at Brooklyn College, to his subsequent immersion and break from the Objectivist movement, to his bizarre (and collectivist) beliefs that women and blacks aren't productive, to his abortion of a speech at Paulstock where he claimed that libertarians can be pro-life and support abortion because the fetus is simply "a squatter being evicted."

Oh, and while he opposes involuntary slavery and only defends "voluntary" slavery (which is impossible but I'll spare Atlas my philosophical diatribe because I think everyone else agrees with me on this fairly obvious one), he described the slavery in the deep south as being the following:

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Ron Paul is apparently close to him and I'm sure it is a lot of fun theorizing and taking concepts to their logical extremes, but I never once heard Ron Paul, or for that matter, even Ayn Rand advocate literally anything close to the absurdity that Block does. HP. Big time.

Edit: Ironically, he was on the track team with Bernie Sanders in High School. Pretty sure Ron Paul was also a track star in his youth. I thought track/cross country was only a recent athletic arrival in high schools.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

Annoying HP with a long history of meddling in the libertarian movement. From his obsessive attempt to crash an Ayn Rand event at Brooklyn College, to his subsequent immersion and break from the Objectivist movement, to his bizarre (and collectivist) beliefs that women and blacks aren't productive, to his abortion of a speech at Paulstock where he claimed that libertarians can be pro-life and support abortion because the fetus is simply "a squatter being evicted."

Oh, and while he opposes involuntary slavery and only defends "voluntary" slavery (which is impossible but I'll spare Atlas my philosophical diatribe because I think everyone else agrees with me on this fairly obvious one), he described the slavery in the deep south as being the following:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Ron Paul is apparently close to him and I'm sure it is a lot of fun theorizing and taking concepts to their logical extremes, but I never once heard Ron Paul, or for that matter, even Ayn Rand advocate literally anything close to the absurdity that Block does. HP. Big time.

Edit: Ironically, he was on the track team with Bernie Sanders in High School. Pretty sure Ron Paul was also a track star in his youth. I thought track/cross country was only a recent athletic arrival in high schools.

Yeah he always sounded like a crank, though an oddly charming one. It's oddly the Bernie Sanders connection that made me think of this because I read an article about their friendship recently and then watched a video from the primary season where he called for Bernie to be in jail while oddly saying he was also his choice for the democratic nomination.

The sad thing about people like Block is that they are brilliant, and yet they get lost in these wormholes where they just theorize for theories sake. Why are we seriously in 2016 discussing the philosophical merits of voluntary slavery (which will never, ever, ever happen regardless if right or wrong) when there are serious cultural realignments underway on issues like whether or not limitations on speech should exist that to me are far, far, far more important to the long term future of American individualism.