I am a perfectionist. When I inevitably fail at a goal I have set out for myself, I see only the failure and none of the success. I feel like a single mistake, or even a setback outside of my control, completely invalidates my entire effort.

I am a procrastinator. A seriously bad procrastinator. I undertake tons of projects that I hardly even start working on, let alone complete. Of the responsibilities that I do actually fulfill, I’d say it’s 1 in 50 that I don’t put off until the very last minute. I have a whole slew of automatized behaviours and emotional responses that I’ve trained to make productive work as hard as possible, no matter how much I like or dislike the work at hand. I have passion, I have plans, I have ability, I could be great but instead I stretch minor issues into major excuses and make up excuses when there are none. I delude myself with my optimism and so feel OK about putting things off until the very last minute, and I use my perfectionism as an excuse to waste a whole day when I mess up one hour. This is why I left Atlanta: I recognized myself slipping into some of my serial procrastination patterns. I told my employer that, in the past, I had failed to overcome those behaviors and that I couldn’t guarantee that I would succeed this time, so they let me go. Most of the time, I do manage to pull through in the end when someone else is relying on me, but at a cost of high stress, low sleep, and reduced quality. I can’t even try to estimate how many times I’ve failed to pull through when it’s just me relying on me.

I am a liar. I have this image of myself that is based on my principles and how strongly I believe in them, my abilities, and my ambitions. It’s really my image of who I want to be, and I truly believe I can be that person someday, but I’m not yet. And so, when the truth of what I have done or failed to do threatens that image, I lie to myself and others about what happened. Sometimes, the lie is pointless, and no one would think any differently of me had I told the truth, but the habit of lying is so ingrained that I just tell the lie. Sometimes, the lie is to protect my image of myself. Sometimes, the lie is to avoid admitting I need help, because I have this irrational fear that if I need to get help with my problems then I will be a failure.

These are my major character flaws and bad decisions that I have made. Not to say that I don’t have other problems, but these are the significant ones. Yesterday, I reached a breaking point and decided it was time to choose to either live my life right (because I DO know what’s right, one of my positive attributes is a really strong, clear grasp of morality) or not live it at all. I was miserable with halfways, trying to make myself better without fully admitting there was something to fix. I decided that I wanted to live right, and the first step was to admit, to myself and others, exactly where I had been failing. I told Alyssa about the lying and set straight all the lies I could remember, and I plan to do so with all of my friends that I have lied to.

Yesterday was a turning point. I still have all the bad habits automatized, I still have to make up for the damage I’ve caused, but I truly believe I am a different person. Hiding and lying about this stuff to myself and others is so obviously much worse than whatever feared consequences of owning up to it, and in truth most of the feared consequences aren’t even real. I knew all that intellectually before, but having come clean about it I really believe it to my core. It’s weird, I’ve simultaneously given other people every reason not to trust me or think well of me and given myself reason to believe I have changed. I don’t expect to immediately have rational projections about my future, stop being overly critical of myself when I fail, stop putting things off, or stop wanting to lie to cover my mistakes, but I do believe that when those things do happen, I will acknowledge them to myself and relevant others and take the steps necessary to make up for it. I also believe that I will finally take the actions I need to reduce the negative pull my past actions have on my psychology, both in terms of helping myself and accepting help from others. This is going to sound really cheesily Objectivist of me, but it’s a little bit like I’ve finally taken a real hard look at the primary choice, chosen life, and after how hard that was and how much better things are that I’ve chosen it the rest seems easy. Not that there won’t be struggles, not that I won’t make individual bad choices, but that I’ve switched to a firm commitment to the good ones so I won’t be holding those back any more.

So. Those are the words, now here are the actions. By the time this post is published, I’ll have talked to my parents and my employer about this. For the time being, I will be reducing my life to eating, sleeping, getting therapy, my relationship with Alyssa, and my job. I will be changing my passwords on reddit, Twitter, Facebook, and my Google account, and putting them in a place where I have to undertake serious conscious effort to get them (or possibly give them to Alyssa to keep). I will pull back from my relationships with my friends and family for the time being, though I will still be reading my email in case anyone wants to reach out to me or ask about something they think I may have lied to them about. I will shelve my personal long-term projects, except the one I’m working on with my brother that has a few days’ work left in it. I will cut myself off from all entertainment sources except when I’m doing something with Alyssa (watching TV, reading, whatever). I will spend today looking for a therapist, removing all the distractions, and sitting down with Alyssa to plan out what needs to be worked on for the next few days, and will revisit all this then. I will try to keep a log of all of the good and the bad so that I have a more objective measure to look at to evaluate myself. I will slowly add back in other values when I have reason to believe I can handle them again. I will try to explicitly identify as many bad habits and emotional responses that I have and work to counteract them. I will try to explicitly identify as many good habits and responses that I have or want to have and work to ingrain them. If some or all of this fails, I will keep trying different things until my image of who I am matches the image of who I want to be, and I can look back at this time in my life and say “that’s not me anymore”.

This won’t be easy. I know I will struggle and fall and be hurt and feel helpless at times, but I also believe I can succeed and be who I want to be. The middle ground I’ve been walking is not an option any more, so I’m choosing to commit to a good, happy life, and the struggle will all be worth it.

• I don’t think metaphysics on its own can tell us very much about cosmology or ontology, even to a greater extent than most Objectivists. For example, I don’t think we can say from philosophy alone whether the universe has finite spatial extent, whether the universe contains empty space or is completely filled with matter, whether instantaneous action at a distance is possible, or whether conscious awareness can play a special role in a fundamental physical theory. I do think all of these questions can be answered, and that many of them have been partially or totally answered by scientific study, but the answers cannot come from philosophy.
• I do not think all generalizations are fundamentally statements of causality. An important class of generalizations are, perhaps the most important class, but statements like “tables are furniture” and, even, “lightning is electrical discharge” are not statements of cause and effect (though they may have to be proven by identification of certain cause-effect relationships).
• I do not see that definitions are as important in the concept formation process as Rand did. I’m not convinced that they’re not as important as she thought, I just don’t see it (yet).
• I think Objectivists are libertarians.
• I disagree with the vast majority of the Objectivist sexual ethic. I think things like pornography (consumption and creation), casual sex, prostitution (selling and buying), non-monogamy both in terms of sexual partners and probably even in terms of life partners, and all sorts of kinks, fetishes, and orientations, even those that I might find extremely painful or disgusting, can all be moral in a wide variety of non-exceptional circumstances. This topic deserves its own blog post, and I just may write it some day.
• I think the gender roles that Rand’s theories of masculinity and femininity try to put people into (both in and out of bed) are rubbish. I think a women can rationally want to be president, that a man can be a primary caregiver, that transvestitism, transsexualism, and all sorts of gender-bending can be completely moral. In fact, I think most of the assumptions in our society about how a person’s genitals relate to their behaviour and preferences are largely fucked up and the fact that we need a concept for, for example, men who wear dresses is largely an indictment of our culture, not an indication about the nature of the behaviour itself. Also, while I do think that in cases of undetermined gender the singular masculine pronouns (e.g. “he”) are more grammatically appropriate than the third-person plural (e.g “they”), I think the word for person is “person” and not “man” and the word for people is “people” and not “men”.
• I think that the government must be the ultimate arbiter of retaliatory force, but not necessarily the only wielder of said force. For example, I think that a private individual who follows the proper procedures (e.g. obtaining warrants from a judge, following the proper limits on search and seizure, using only due force, announcing his presence, etc.) could be able to investigate crimes and even perform arrests. How such a system might work or whether the system would be preferable to the current one is not my point, my point is just that as long as there is a single entity ultimately responsible for determining the justice of the use of physical force the actual force-wielders need not be government agents. In particular this applies to military action: if there is a country where rights violations are occurring on a massive scale but there is no threat to your country or its citizens, I think there should be a path you can take to get together private volunteer forces, get your goals approved, and use force to stop the rights violations in the foreign country.
• I think that the “total war” view on warfare is completely mistaken. While I do think there are limits to the steps the military should take in preventing civilian casualties when attacking military targets, the idea that it’s moral to purposely target civilian centers is abhorrent. I think military actions like Sherman’s march to the sea are viciously unjust, and ideas like “the citizens are responsible for the actions of the government” and “the government couldn’t do what it’s doing without the support of its people” are extremely collectivist and completely ignorant of just how hard it is to change a government, especially a totalitarian one. I definitely don’t think things like building a mosque near ground zero or cheering in the streets after a terrorist attack are as such deserving of a forceful response.
• I don’t think an aesthetic view is fundamental in philosophy, and I don’t agree with Rand’s aesthetics. I don’t disagree with it either, I just don’t really have any views on the issue either way. I don’t get much out of painting, sculpture, architecture, or any other visual arts, and I’ve never understood how a philosophical understanding could deepen my appreciation of the arts I do care about (literature, television, film, theatre, and music).

• I do not think patents and copyrights, when awarded in a proper intellectual property framework (which I think we don’t have today), should have any limits on their duration.
• I think any clear term in a properly signed contract should be enforceable. This includes contracts in which one person makes himself a slave, a person promises to allow another to punch him, etc. How these terms should be enforced is a difficult matter: in the absence of an enforcement clause, I can see a fine or jail until the uncooperative participant allows the contract to be followed. I don’t think it’s reasonable for the courts to have to bear the burden of actually enforcing each term (e.g. holding a person still so the other can punch him), but I don’t in principle have an objection to a court issuing permission to the winner of a breach-of-contract case to use appropriate force himself to satisfy the terms of the contract. I think that if such a system were to be put in place, most contracts would (properly, IMO) include a clause specifying monetary damages in case of breach.

*: With some worries about the term, see this post.

Before I get to the email, a few notes:

• The account includes personal descriptions involving my genitalia. While there is nothing graphically sexual and no pictures or anything, this may make some uncomfortable.
• I’m well aware that my parents had a significant role to play in my circumcision as well. I do not mean this letter to be construed as faulting only Rabbi Henesch. I am still not sure how to discuss this topic with my parents, or even if I should considering that they will not be in the position to circumcise another boy in the future.
• In the email, I used some transliterated Hebrew phrases that I can be sure Rabbi Henesch knows and that some of my readership doesn’t. Such phrases will be explained in square brackets; these brackets were not included in the original email.

Dear Rabbi Henesch,

You wouldn’t remember me, but 21 years ago you changed my life. Like most of your clients, I was eight days old at the time, so I doubt I was able to articulate my thoughts on the procedure. But now I’ve had a fair amount of time living with the effects of your work, and I’d like to share with you my perspective on what you did to me.

If you haven’t guessed by my tone, I wish I hadn’t been circumcised. I could show you studies that I believe demonstrate the deleterious effects of the procedure on infants, the costs to the adults that had the procedure done earlier in life, and the falsity of the supposed health benefits of circumcision, but I won’t. There are dedicated organizations that can convey that information far better than I could. What I have to offer you is my personal experience, the costs I believe your action has lead me to bear, in the hope that you might understand on a personal level the potential for harm that comes with your profession, and perhaps even consider leaving it. This account will be both physically and spiritually personal, but as someone who has had a permanent impact on my genitals I think we’re past those types of boundaries.

Almost every single day, for as long as I can remember, I have at one point or another felt discomfort in the tip of my penis. It doesn’t matter what type of undergarments I wear, if I wear pants or shorts, or whether I’m sedentary at a desk all day or out playing a sport: eventually, my penis will brush against something in an unpleasant way. It’s not a major discomfort or pain, but it’s there and it’s noticeable, and it doesn’t feel natural. It makes me feel like something is wrong, like something is somewhere it doesn’t belong, and there’s nothing at all like it for any other parts of my body that are covered in clothing all day. I can’t verify this personally, but apparently this is a problem that only happens to some circumcised men, and not to any intact ones. In fact, it is my understanding that intact men experience significantly less genital chafing in any circumstances. Regardless of the cause, the fact remains that most days I get a physical reminder of a fact of my biology that I strongly wish wasn’t so.

The permanently uncovered portions of my glans are calloused. They aren’t big callouses like might form on your hands, but the skin is thicker, tougher, and less sensitive than the skin of the glans still partially covered.

I have a scar around my penis, a visual reminder of what used to be there that I never knew. It’s not nearly as bad as some of the extreme examples of circumcisions gone wrong that I’ve seen, but it’s there and noticeable. It certainly doesn’t make me look more attractive than I otherwise would.

The area underneath the folded shaft skin that remains regularly collects dust, lint, and other foreign particles. Though I wash daily, it is fairly sticky and catches occasionally on my pubic hair or the cloth of my underwear, resulting in an unpleasant sensation when it becomes uncaught.

Sex and masturbation are less enjoyable than they could have been. I have good reason to believe, given the callouses I can feel and the physical sensitivity studies that I’ve read, that I am not capable of the same level and variety of physical pleasure that would have been available to me had I been left intact. I lose out on the sensation of loose skin sliding up and down my penis during intercourse or masturbation. My penis has less natural lubrication than it should. Sexual activity causes more friction than it should. Sexual activity is more likely to leave my penis feeling raw and sensitive for some time after the fact than it should. I am more likely to require supplemental lubrication for intercourse than I should. In particular, masturbation is more abrasive, less pleasurable, and overall more difficult than it should be (which, not incidentally, was one of the leading arguments that led to the rise in circumcision rates among non-Jewish Americans).

These physical problems are not insignificant, and I think they alone would be enough for me to regret what happened to me, but they pale in comparison to the spiritual problems. You see, Rabbi Henesch, I do not consider myself a religious Jew. Culturally, I still maintain some of the familial values and some practices, especially those that bring me closer to my family, but I do not believe in God and do not find spiritual or moral guidance from the Tanach [The Old Testament, including the Torah] or the Rabbis. I grew up going to shul [synagogue], celebrating the holidays, going to Sunday School, having a Bar Mitzvah [the Jewish coming-of-age, at 13 for boys], and even going to a Jewish Day School, yet today I am in almost complete control over the extent to which Jewish culture and Jewish religion play a role in my daily life. The exception is circumcision: For the rest of my life, I will have to live with a penis that was cut in the name of a covenant I did not agree to with a being I do not believe exists. I expect you are a civilized man and that you would balk at the idea of adults being forced to express belief in a system they have not personally chosen, whether that expression comes in the form of a requirement to wear a cross around your neck or even a requirement that all who were born Jewish wear the tallit katan [a four-cornered garment with long fringes that is worn under everyday clothing]. Yet that is what the circumcision ritual does: it forces one participant, someone who has just barely opened his eyes to see the world, to bear a permanent, irreversible mark of the religion of the other participant. The Jewish cultural practices I’ve chosen to keep remind me of the goodness and greatness that comes from some aspects of Judaism. The physical modification I cannot change reminds me of all of the bad that helped lead me to reject it as a whole.

At one point, not too long ago, I hated you. I wanted to rage at you, to extract justice from you, to make you explain yourself. But I understand now. I understand how you could have chosen your profession, how you could have chosen to do this to me. Circumcision is viewed as a badge of honor in Judaism, is seen as fundamental to many aspects of the religion, and has a history of being a symbol for the autonomy that the Jews have held on to in the face of tyrannical governments and cultures that have conquered them in the past. I do not condone it, but I can understand why someone raised in that culture might view your job as holy and celebrated, and never even question the possible downsides. But now, you don’t have that luxury. You’ve seen the other side of the issue and now you have a choice to make.

Out of the hundreds or thousands of circumcisions you’ve done, it’s possible I’m the only one who regrets it. But next time you stand over a baby boy, ready to cut, ask yourself: Can I be sure that this boy won’t be the same? Can I be sure that I’m not dooming this child to a life of physical discomfort and inconvenience? Can I be sure that this child will embrace my faith and this symbol of it for the rest of his life? Can I be sure that I have the right to make this decision for him?

You might respond: what about the majority, those who never have any physical problems and remain religious Jews their whole life? Well, my question to you would be: What would they lose? Do Jewish daughters have a less joyous start to their life due to the simchat bat [the female celebration of birth ceremony, with no analogue to circumcision] not including any permanent physical modification? Do Jewish women who retain their faith into adulthood have any less of a role in God’s covenant with Abraham as a result of their lack of a bodily symbol of the contract? And could not a Jewish man who was left intact, upon reaching adulthood, decide that he would like to be circumcised? Given that half of the Jewish population manage to be celebrated members of the community without circumcision and that the other half could choose circumcision when they are more aware of what Judaism means to them, can you justify your next cut?

Regards,
Shea Levy

The vast majority of non-Apple personal computers boot using the BIOS system. Originally designed for computers in the 1980s, BIOS code is 16-bit, typically written in complex assembly, and can’t easily interface with pointer devices. The BIOS boot process relies on assumptions about disk and bootloader size that were true in 1980 but are laughable today, and as a result modern bootloaders rely on complex tricks (like storing the bootloader program in multiple stages) to boot up operating systems. For example, BIOS-readable disks can’t be any larger than 2 terabytes, and can’t have more than four real partitions. While there have been some extensions, the essence of the BIOS is still the same today as it was in 1980.

Standard web URLs begin with http://. Tim Berners-Lee, essentially the inventor of the world-wide web, has said that the two slashes are completely unnecessary, but we will be stuck with them forever, two extra characters taking up small amounts of bandwidth, storage space, and typing time for no gain.

The standard C library contains several functions (such as gets()) which are known to be security risks and should never be used. Nevertheless, because older code uses them, the POSIX standard still mandates that the functions be provided by the C library, and so every Unix-like system still has them.

I could go on and on with examples of how the decisions and limitations of the past still affect us today in the computer world, but I think I’ve made my point. Almost every new standard or library is plagued with the question: Will we be backwards compatible? New hardware is stuck with old interfaces, new programming paradigms are stuck with old syntax, etc. Every time I think about this issue, three questions come to mind:

1. If we were to start fresh today, destroying every old computer and piece of code and removing the need to be compatible with any thing or attitude that existed before May 13th, 2011, would we be able to design our standards, interfaces, etc. in such a way as to allow for gradual improvement without permanently saddling future improvements with current shortcomings?
2. If the answer to 1 is “yes”, how can we get to a similar point without a single cutting-off of the past?
3. Do other fields suffer from similar problems? Do architects have to deal with hold-overs from how castles were built, do industrial farmers have to deal with hold-overs from the hand-plow, etc.?

Thoughts?

So now starts the job hunt! My top choice right now is freelance programming work. I’ve had two major clients since dropping out, and the work has been pretty fun and I’m getting good at it. My experience ranges a bit, including general web programming (using Rails and the occasional PHP and Perl), some speech-to-text work in .Net, Android apps, and scientific programming (including modelling and data analysis). Most of my work so far has been through people I already knew personally, and my first preference would be to work for someone I already know or someone referred to me by someone I already know, but I’m also going to be looking at general job postings. Anyone have any tips for finding freelance projects online?

In case anyone reading this might be interested in hiring me, please feel free contact me at shea@shealevy.com so I can provide more details of my past work, my skills, my rates, etc.

A libertarian is a person who believes that the initiation of force has no proper role in human society.^*

The measurements omitted from my concept of libertarian include, among others, beliefs about:

• Who (if anyone) should be responsible for enacting retaliatory force?
• What lead the individual to accept his political beliefs?
• What path should we take in getting from our society to a libertarian one?
• Should the abortion of a fetus be considered initiating force against it, or should the prohibition of abortion be considered initiation of force against mothers?
• Should sexual activity between an adult and a young minor be considered initiating force against the minor, or should the prohibition of such activity be considered initiation of force against the would-be sexual partners?

That being said, there are many beliefs which aren’t omitted from my view, including:

• Is an employer who requires working 16 hour days as a condition of employment initiating force against his employers employees [Edit 5/10 14:37]? No, not according to libertarianism.
• Should there be a welfare system funded by coercion? No, not according to libertarianism.
• Should businesses be bailed out with money obtained by coercion? No, not according to libertarianism.
• Should any sexual activity between fully informed, mentally healthy, consenting adults be considered initiation of force? No, not according to libertarianism.
• Should the fully informed, consensual consumption of any substance obtained through consensual trade or other non-forceful means be considered initiation of force? No, not according to libertarianism.

I’m fully open to the idea that my definition here is lacking or erroneous. I’m completely certain that the concept I have in mind is a valid one, and I’m pretty sure that the concept I have in mind is indeed “libertarian”, but I’d love to hear if anyone has a word that better fits my concept here.

*: For those who aren’t familiar with Ayn Rand’s theory of definitions, a definition does not need to state all of the common characteristics of the unit of the concept, nor can a concept be simply replaced with its definition. So don’t take this to be a mathematical or computational type of definition.

• Kick my procrastination habit: This is the big one, the one I’m going to spend most of my attention on and the one that will most improve my life if achieved successfully. I know almost everyone procrastinates now and again, but I’m really bad. Nearly every project I undertake gets set back and put off time and time again (I’ve even been getting distracted from this blog post as I’ve been writing it), and the vast majority of my work gets done in the hours leading up to the deadline. The majority of every day is spent in between spurts of productivity. This has resulted in unmet obligations, extreme stress levels, lowered expectations on the part of those who are counting on my work, and a huge gap between the amazing things I could be achieving and what I actually output. Honestly, sometimes the only reason I get by as well as I do is that I’m really fucking good at most things I do. But I could and should be so much more, so this stops here. I’m going to pair some serious research into tricks, tools, and long-term solutions (don’t tell me I need to “just do it”, it doesn’t work like that and is honestly extremely condescending) with brutally honest regular introspection to identify times when I’ve procrastinated, the causes, and how I can avoid it or snap out of it earlier in the future. If I reach September 9 and don’t feel I’ve made significant progress, I will start seeing a therapist. My dad has issues like this on a similar scale, and he thinks this is just how I’ll be the rest of my life. I’m going to spend this year as a big fat NO² to that attitude.
• Live healthier: This one consists of two main subgoals: Have a better sleep schedule and start eating well. I get into really bad cycles of far too little sleep for too long then oversleeping for a few days and not being able to sleep the next night. My first approach is going to be to set my alarm for 5 AM every morning and get up without fail, no matter when I got to sleep the night before. My hope is that this will force my bedtime to stabilize a bit, but if this doesn’t work I’ll have to go back to the drawing board. As for eating, well, I’ve been eating a lot of shit and it shows around my stomach and bank account. I don’t think I’m going to go full-on Paleo or anything (though I may try that Whole 30 thing at some point), but I just want to be more conscientious about what I’m eating and about stopping eating when I’m no longer hungry. I get cravings, though, so I’m going to have a hard time with this one.
• Treat my belongings better: I’ll probably always be a klutz, but I have way too many things that I’ve broken, gotten dirty, scuffed, and generally mistreated. My electronics are all dented and messy, I drop things all the time, I crumple up really nice clothes, etc. This is largely a problem with conscientiousness, so I’m going to try to set up some sort of system to get me into better habits and then hope I can automatize a new approach to my stuff.
• Present myself better: I’m not unhygenic or anything, but I don’t regularly put too much thought into how I look or how I carry myself. I want to try to find a style that works for me and start really embracing it, and I also want to work on things like combing my hair, trimming my nails more frequently, and improving my posture.
• Figure out what path I want to start on: Right now, I’ve got two really good career paths I’m pursuing: biomedical device design and computer programming. I want to spend this year making progress with both and finding out whether I enjoy both the day-to-day and the long-term outlook for either field. I want to gauge my skill and enjoyment and decide where to focus. Exploring programming will come from my job (most of the money I make is now from programming gigs), and exploring device design will come from research and some basic design attempts on the side. I’m really excited about this one, and can’t wait to see what I find

So, that’s what I’m going to be doing this year. I’ve worked on all of these for a while now, but this year I’m really going to focus on them and hammer them down. If I don’t procrastinate too much, I’ll be sure to keep y’all informed of how it goes!

1: Celebrating on my birthday has been difficult since ninth grade, since it’s right in the middle of AP exam week and college finals week
2: I don’t mean any disrespect to my father here. He has a lot of different coping mechanisms that allow him to live a really productive, great life, and he’s told me he thinks I will be a lot happier when I stop fighting this and accept it as a permanent part of who I am. I just refuse to reach that point without trying everything I can think of to try, and if that means I have the potential to resolve this issue at the cost of potentially wasting a year of my life trying to fix a problem that can’t be fixed, I’m ok with that.

Consider John Stossel, Radley Balko, and Ayn Rand. The three of them are wildly different on so many levels from each other, from their personalities to their jobs to their philosophies and everything in between. Despite this, there is at least one axis along which they share a commonality that distinguishes them from many other people: political belief. All three would agree that the vast majority of activities between consenting adults should be legal and that the current US government acts far out of the bounds of the proper scope of a government. Did they all come to those views for the same reason? No. Would their common belief be enough reason for them to work together for some delimited common cause? Not necessarily. But there is something to be gained in recognizing this particular commonality and, in the right circumstances, treating all three as units of the same group. For example, I would definitely prefer to have any of the them be a legislator over almost anyone that doesn’t share this commonality. The commonalities these three share are begging for conceptualization, but most Objectivists wouldn’t apply the English word to the third: libertarian.

The question of whether Objectivists qua Objectivists are libertarians boils down to two other questions: Is there a valid concept that unities Objectivists and non-Objectivists with similar general political views, regardless of the origin of those views? And if so is that concept the same one referred to by the word ‘libertarian’? I think the answer to both questions is a definite yes. Objectivists and people like Neal Boortz, Milton Friedman, or my brother absolutely have a lot of important political views in common, especially when contrasted with the political views of the average person. That political similarity is fundamental enough to allow for valid generalizations encompassing those who share it to be formed, such as “people who share this set of political views are regularly unimpressed with the offerings of the major political parties”. Moreover, I contend that the group of people who share the political similarity is exactly the group meant when people use the word “libertarian”. This is definitely the case for all the non-Objectivist political blogs, newspaper articles, Wikipedia entries, etc. I read online and all of the real-life conversations I have with non-Objectivists. So why do Objectivists typically have such a big problem with describing themselves as libertarian?

I want to make it clear that I’m not claiming Objectivists should join libertarian organizations or that Objectivists and non-Objectivist libertarians should work together on political activism. I simply don’t know enough about activism or any particular libertarian organization to say either way. Nor do I think that an Objectivist and a non-Objectivist libertarian would agree on every political issue, or that a non-Objectivist libertarian can be expected to be as consistent in his politics or philosophy as an Objectivist. But those concerns do not invalidate the concept “libertarian”, nor do they exclude Objectivists from classification under it.

So, Objectivists who don’t consider yourselves libertarians: What gives?

1: This, by the way, is why “atheist” is a real concept and “agremlinist” or “aunicornist” are not: In a world where (effectively) everybody holds a certain view, there is no cognitive utility in grouping those with that view together.