A is Not A, Claim Unobjective “Objectivists”

Always a hoot when the Confucian collectivists at Taiwan's China Post invoke individualism (!) to rationalize Taiwan's annexation by the Chinese Empire.  On Wednesday, the paper even tried to get away with the dishonest suggestion that Ayn Rand would have been cool with that.

From the editorial, A thought experiment on 'right to self-determination':

The "right to self-determination" is routinely defined as the collective right of the people of a given geographical region to determine their own political status.

[…]

But this conventional definition, considered utterly non-controversial by mainstream political scientists, is in fact conceptually defective at its very core, and gets us into all sorts of trouble.  One might say that the politically-correct "national right to self-determination" is one of those things that we know for sure that "just ain't so".

Really?  Try telling that to the freed peoples of the Austro-Hungarian, British, Turkish and Soviet Empires.  "Hey — ya'll have no national right to self-determination.  Howdya like them apples?"

Human beings do indeed have the inalienable right to determine their own political status.  But only individual human beings have this right, not "the people of a given geographical region."  As novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand explained, the term "individual rights" is a redundancy.  There is no other kind of rights and no one else to possess them.

OK, now that Rand has been injected into the whole Taiwan independence debate, let's see what her actual thoughts on secession were:

Some people ask whether local groups or provinces have the right to secede from the country of which they are a part. The answer is: on [purely] ethnic grounds, no. Ethnicity is not a valid consideration, morally or politically, and does not endow anyone with any special rights. As to other than ethnic grounds, remember that rights belong only to individuals and that there is no such thing as “group rights.”

Sounds like the lady was dead-set against it.  But there's a catch . . .

If a province wants to secede from a dictatorship [We're looking at you, China !], or even from a mixed economy, in order to establish a free country—it has the right to do so.  [emphasis added]

Now, that part about the "mixed economy" is actually a huge caveat.  After all, even the most capitalist countries in the world possess at least SOME elements of socialism. . .

But if a local gang, ethnic or otherwise, wants to secede in order to establish its own government controls, it does not have that right. No group has the right to violate the rights of the individuals who happen to live in the same locality. A wish—individual or collective—is not a right.

We can clearly see that Rand whole-heartedly approved of the right to national self-determination — for free peoples.

UPDATE:  Consistent with that secession quote, I just found some pretty strong support for Taiwanese independence over at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights.

Eat your heart out, Bevin Chu.  A is still A.  Eh?

UPDATE #2:  More from Rand herself —

[A free nation] has a right to its sovereignty (derived from the rights of its citizens) and a right to demand that its sovereignty be respected by all other nations.

2 thoughts on “A is Not A, Claim Unobjective “Objectivists””

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    Of course I fully agree that this has nothing to do with secession. But I’m not a super-big Rand acolyte, so it would have been hard for me to look through all of her quotes to find something 100% suitable for Taiwan’s unique situation.
    I’ve been behind in following the blogs lately, to be honest. But I’m glad you wrote that post, because it says many of the things that I wanted to say myself.
    Chinese nationalism is defensive. Heh. Defensive that is, until it sends the PLA into territory the leadership claims IS, WAS, AND ALWAYS WILL BE part of China.
    As for Japanese hegemony in Taiwan, the only example of that I can see are raunchy music videos on Asian MTV of Ayumi Hamasaki gyrating around in red latex catsuits.
    Japanese hegemony? Please ma’am, can I have some more?

    Reply

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