Something Leonard Peikoff wrote about conservatives back in 1991 today applies equally as well to ARI-objectivists, including himself. Substituting “ARI-objectivist” and other phrases in place of Mr. Peikoff’s conservative references, the conclusion of chapter 10 of Objectivism (*) would read as follows (substitutions bolded and irrelevant text silently omitted):
About the ARI-objectivists, who pretend to be defenders of “free enterprise” or “the American way of life” while spreading all the opposite ideas and laws, something remains to be said.Well said. The trouble is, Mr. Peikoff doesn’t say it. Today one reads his book with dismay at the gap between what he wrote then and what he promotes now through ARI.
Precisely because of their pretense, the ARI-objectivists are morally lower than the liberals; they are farther removed from reality — and, therefore, they are more harmful in practice. Since they purport to be fighting “big government,” they are the main source of political confusion in Objectivist circles; they give the illusion of an alternative without the fact. Thus the statist drift proceeds unchecked and unchallenged.
The ARI-objectivist attempts to tie the politics of the Founding Fathers to unreason — such as the cult of Israel.
Freedom is the opposite of these creeds — and so is Objectivism their opposite.
Objectivists are not “ARI-objectivists.” We do not seek to preserve the present system, but to change it at the root. In the literal sense of the word, we are radicals — radicals for freedom, radicals for man’s rights, radicals for capitalism. ... radicals for reason.