Mr A vs Mr A is non-A
Leftist Alan Moore apparently cannot tell the difference between a libertarian and a fascist, an objectivist and a nazi. Are all leftists unable to distinguish between opposites?
Alan Moore of Watchman fame tells the interviewer (http://www.blather.net/articles/amoore/v1.html) that Rorschach, the rambling and half-psycho vigilante of Watchman was actually his take on Steve Dikto’ Mr. A.
His words:
“… Steve Ditko’s far more right-wing character, Mister A, that was too right-wing to put in mainstream comics but which Ditko had published some strips about in independent comics at the time. Mister A was an absolute insane fascist but done absolutely straight.”
Now, for those of you unfamiliar with this rather obscure character, Dikto was a fan of Ayn Rand, and Mr. A (whose only superpower was that he was utterly rational, and believed that A was not Not-A) was Dikto’s cartoon version of Rand’s hero, John Galt, who sees everything in terms of moral absolutes. One absolute in which he believes is the cause of human liberty: Mr. A holds it to be immortal to initiate force against the innocent for whatever reason. Like all objectivists, he believes in limited government, rule of law, and the non-regulated legalization of all peaceful activity, including all non-coercive free market activity.
So, Alan Moore is unable to distinguish between a libertarian objectivist, who believe in the classical liberal of limited government, and a fascist. A fascist is an proponent of Italian socialism, totalitarian rule by the state, with society regimented along Spartan lines; the word is also used of German socialist totalitarians (but never, for some reason, used of Russian nor Cuban nor Chinese socialist totalitarians).
So what is the deal? This is not the first time I have heard Ayn Rand, or a character based on her ideas, dismissed as a fascist. It may be that the leftist merely use the word to refer to anyone they dislike. It may be that leftists are unable to tell profound differences from surface similarities: fascists and capitalists do not claim to be helping the poor and oppressed (even thought Germany had and maintained an extensive welfare state, and even thought the engine of capitalism is the only cure for poverty). They do not use the rhetoric of helping the proles to excuse their enormities. The fascists use the rhetoric of anticommunism, or social unity, or racial purity to excuse their enormities. Capitalists, despite the best efforts of lefty historians to say otherwise, are not guilty of mass murders and deceptions, gulags and concentration camps, of the kind totalitarians indulge.
It is a psychological malfunction? Are leftists simply unable to see that proponents of near-anarchic liberty and proponents of the absolute state are not the same? When a leftist argues about economics, they display that they do not understand the law of cause and effect, or the difference between the surface appearances and the underlying reality. I thought this was just due to illiteracy in the field of economics; it is part of thier whole mind set?
The leftists are not stupid. They do not fail IQ tests. They are able to make and to understand subtle distinctions in other areas.
So what is it?
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
