Post election soul-searching—and the rise of censorship
:: Posted by Edward Cline at 9:16 AM
The midterm elections are passed us, and the Democrats have swept back with an unbecoming vengeance into Congress and power over the U.S. They give one the sense that they are barbarian hordes riding into Rome with every intention of sacking it. They remind us why drooling and gloating are unsightly and repulsive. Objectivists and non-Objectivists alike know they are up to no good.
Many of them voted Democratic chiefly as protest against the failure of Republicans to properly prosecute a war against a dedicated enemy, for having waged a kind of fruitless "phony war" that is costing incalculable blood and treasure. It is doubtful that the Republicans will learn anything from the rejection. In search of an answer to why they lost, they will agonize over polls, demographics, income and gender brackets, but will never address fundamental ideas or principles.
And many Objectivists and non-Objectivists voted Republican in protest of the obvious agenda of the Democrats to renew its sacking of the country, and also because they believe that President Bush had the right "war-fighting" principles but was not competent enough to apply them.
Not an issue with them was that the Bush Administration has done just as thorough a job of sacking the country, in terms of the national debt and the expansion of the federal welfare state, as any Democrat. By some estimates, Bush in his six years in office has outdone Bill Clinton in his eight, and many commentators are beginning to realize that, even though they pose as defenders of freedom and capitalism, the Republicans subscribe to every tenet of the Progressive Party manifesto of top-to-bottom socialism, with a twist of religion to give it a moral flavor.
The Democrats offer socialism straight up, no ice, no lemon. Examine the agenda of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, whose prime movers include Nancy Pelosi and Henry Waxman of the People's State of California. The only difference between it and the Republican reactive "platform" is the speed with which the Democrats wish to impose top-to-bottom socialism.
Well, not so much "top" as "bottom." The elective oligarchies of both parties usually ensure that they are insulated from the consequences of legislation intended for the rest of the country. The salaries, perks, medical and other fringe benefits, exemptions and privileges all together rival the best compensation packages and golden parachutes of CEOs in the private sector. There isn't a Senator or Representative who isn't a millionaire - at taxpayer expense - but who has produced nothing but law and paper.
One favorite accusation of the Democrats is that Bush and Company are incompetent. Parenthetically, I find the charge of incompetence by either Party absurdly disingenuous, considering that it is made by career politicians who have never in their adult lives held a job that required competence or a fig of measured productive skill. So, one must contest that charge. In terms of abiding by and applying his moral beliefs, Bush has been eminently successful.
As Dr. John Lewis remarked to me recently, "Words mean what they refer to in reality. What the 'defense of freedom' means to Bush is the slaughter of our soldiers for the toilet needs of foreigners throwing bombs." Jesus is Bush's favorite philosopher, and he is as committed to Jesus' morality as the jihadists are to Mohammad's. Sacrifice has been the operating principle of Bush's military philosophy, in order to protect the "innocent" as an aspect of "humanitarian" war-fighting.
Ellsworth Toohey put it brilliantly and succinctly in The Fountainhead: "Fight the doctrine which slaughters the individual with a doctrine which slaughters the individual." That has been the sum of the conflict between the Republicans and Democrats at home and abroad.
All else is deliberate obfuscation.
The "British disease" is insinuating itself into American politics. The "disease" is a blinkered estimate of the influence of Islam. Bush regularly invites Islamic leaders to the White House for dinner, most recently to celebrate the end of Ramadan.
Now it is the Democrats' turn to buddy up to Muslims. Minnesotans elected Congress's first Muslim representative, Keith Ellison, whose close ties to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and Louis Farrakhan's racist and anti-Semitic Nation of Islam were not closely scrutinized or questioned by the news media, most likely because no journalist wants to be accused of bigotry. What is forgotten is that when criticisms are leveled against Islam, it is leading Muslim spokesmen who play the race card. Ellison celebrated his victory Tuesday night before a crowd that chanted "Allahu Akbar" ("God is great"), which is what the 9/11 hijackers and killers yelled as they crashed their planes. Ellison will be a keynote speaker at CAIR's annual banquet on November 18th.
And, in Michigan, David Turfe, a supporter of Hezbollah and also a Muslim, was elected district court judge in Dearborn Heights' 20th district. (For details on his career, see debbieschlussel.com.) This is not the same as a Presbyterian or a Methodist donning robes to administer justice in a secular courtroom. If Turfe is a faithful, consistent Muslim, how can he reconcile Sharia law with infidel law? Fundamentally, he can't, but one supposes that his "spiritual" leaders will grant him dispensation (the colloquial term in Christendom would be "slack").
Turfe, founding chairman of a Muslim "cultural" center (surely an oxymoron), proclaimed to an enthusiastic crowd that "only a few thousand Jews will survive Armageddon." Armageddon is what Ahmadinejad of Iran is promising Israel and the West once he has an arsenal of nuclear weapons.
It is almost a certainty that both Ellison and Turfe will seek to expand the meaning of "hate crime" to include anything untoward said about Islam or Muslims. Which, of course, will sneak censorship into law under the cloak of "civility."
Yes, the "British disease." The British are trying to find an antidote to it and to counter decades of tolerance of harboring, under the cloak of multiculturalism, the growth of Islamic jihadism. MI5 chief Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller warned recently (the Daily Telegraph, November 11) that thousands of young Muslims are being recruited and trained by Al-Qada and other terrorist organizations in Britain's schools. But, even she doesn't get it. Terrorists are "extremists" who have little to do with "peaceful" Muslims. Never mind that the Koran advocates jihad. This fallacy has been discussed before.
In response to the recent acquittal of two British National Party members accused of stirring up racial hatred (the Daily Telegraph, November 12), Gordon Brown, Chancellor, stated that new race hatred legislation was needed. I do not know what else the BNP stands for, but all the two defendants were charged with was saying, in private party meetings (secretly filmed by the BBC and then broadcast), that Islam was a "wicked, vicious faith" - certainly not an exaggeration, but then, one could just as easily say that about Christianity - and that Muslims were turning Britain into a "multi-racial hell hole." The latter statement probably indicates an unsavory political premise, which I would not endorse.
Still, British speech law is nearing the state of outright censorship. The BNP episode reminded me of the trial of the Pippins in Book Two of Sparrowhawk, when a club of freethinkers in London is charged with and tried for "blasphemous libel," that is, over things the members said in a private meeting on private property about King George II, Parliament and religion.
There is no reason to think that British censorship by edict or by lawsuit won't infect American jurisprudence and further emasculate the First Amendment. The Saudis are particularly active in bringing suits against writers who dare expose their role in jihad. For example, American writer Rachel Ehrenfeld, author of an unpublished book, Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop It, faced a ruinous lawsuit in Britain by a Saudi because a chapter of her book appeared on the Internet and was downloaded by Britons.
"Writers are now subject to intimidation by libel tourists," reports Samuel A. Abady and Harvey Silverglate in The Boston Globe (November 7). "Little wonder that the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the Association of American Publishers, and 14 other media groups have filed a 'friend of the court' brief to support Ehrenfeld's quest to raise her First Amendment defense now. Until she is able to do so, she will have problems finding American publishers willing to risk publishing her research and writing."
A judge of the Southern District Court in Manhattan dismissed Ehrenfeld's case, claiming he had no jurisdiction over it. "Ehrenfeld is filing an appeal and faces a daunting challenge of raising enough money to support a case that she believes will help determine whether or not American writers will be able to continue to expose America's enemies."
One of my unpublished novels, We Three Kings, features an American entrepreneur whose Constitutional protection against the murderous depredations of a Saudi prince is stripped from him by the State Department. In the current multicultural climate, it is not likely it will ever be published here. In the land of the free and the home of the brave, neither the brave nor the free are much valued anymore, in fact or in fiction.
This has been an exceptionally good week for bloging at Noodlefood. Diana Hsieh posts an essay by Allen Farris chronicling his experiences growing up in a fundamentalist Christian household. To add to the discussion, I offer a different take, not of my childhood as a Catholic, but of one of my experiences as an adult Objectivist.
My ex-wife is an opera singer who grew up a fundamentalist Christian. Because churches are one of the few places where a classical singer at her level can make some money, she sang for several church choirs. I supported this choice as the extra income paid for continued voice lessons, which were the obvious priority.
At the same time, I detested having to play the role of the dutiful husband and listen to her solo in church, lending her voice to those whose goal is to make mysticism more palatable to the unthinking. In fact, I could do little to squelch my displeasure, even if I hardly spoke a word. I suppose if my ex-wife had been a lousy singer I wouldn't have minded so much, but as a good one, it was tough to endure.
Why? Because it was things like uplifting music, serene architecture and beautiful stained glass that kept me with that moldy faith far more than any doctrinal agreement. That's the vicious bait and switch with mysticism.
At least I had exposure to enough science as a young boy to eventually snap myself out of the trance (with a little help from the GW Objectivist Club). How many others fail—and rely on their "faith" to guide them when it counts? Are we not currently waging a faith-based, compassionate war for our very existence—and failing miserably?
When we were married, my ex-wife certainly could not see what all the hubbub was about. I have no idea what she thinks now, but at the time I knew her, she had rejected her religious upbringing for atheism. Nevertheless, she simply could not see how anyone could have an ax to grind with the church. Most of the religious people she knew were far from monsters; they worked hard, raised their families, showed concern for morality (even if their concern led them to do things like vote to outlaw abortion, or turn the other cheek to jihadists)—and they loved beautiful music. Who were we rude and overbearing Objectivists to damn their creed as immoral—after all, it clearly works for them? Which is easier for the intellectually uncurious—navigating though the pitfalls of pragmatism and a mixed premise, or simply accepting the Golden Rule? Live and let live, or wage an outspoken fight for your values because that's what's most important to you?
I obviously chose my path, and as far as I know, she still continues to propagandize for religious congregations. And in the end, I'm not surprised. Faith does promise certainly in uncertain times, and it offers magnificent alleluia choruses to help close the sale.
According to this report, Secretary of Veterans Affairs R. James Nicholson has asked veterans to wear their medals today in honor of Veterans Day. This is an excellent idea, and below are mine. I enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1988 and served until 1993, obtaining the rank of Corporal. I served at sea in the Mediterranean during Operations Desert Shield, Desert Storm and Provide Comfort, and I also served aboard the American embassy in Monrovia, Liberia during the Liberian civil war.
My medals, ribbons and badges are (left to right, top to bottom):
Joint Meritorious Unit Award (A unit award given to 26 MEU for its work in Liberia)
Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal (Awarded to me for not getting busted for 3 years)
Marine Corps Expeditionary Medal (Awarded to all who served with 26 MEU in Liberia)
National Defense Service Medal (Awarded to all who served in the armed forces during the first Gulf War)
Southwest Asia Service Medal with Star (Awarded to all who served in the area around Iraq, Kuwait, Turkey and Israel during the first Gulf War.)
Navy Sea Service Deployment (x2) (Awarded for 2 six months+ sea duty.)
Marine Corps Rifle Expert Badge (x2)
Marine Corps Pistol Expert Badge
I am proud of time with the Marines. I saw the world, learned a bit about how to be a leader from some of the best, and stood arm-in-arm with those who love their freedom and will not stand to see it sacrificed. And I have always loved Veterans Day, especially now that it is my day. To all my fellow veterans, may you also enjoy your day.
Many of my Sparrowhawk prospects at booksignings are military. I can usually tell if they're active military or vets. Today at Colonial Williamsburg, all vets, active or retired, are being given free passes to the whole historic area. I usually ask prospects which service they hail from, and shake their hands. Many of them are on their way to Iraq, Afghanitstan, or to carrier or destroyer duty. When I tell them about Sparrowhawk, their eyes light up and more often than not ask me to sign whole sets of the series. Most of these prospects are Marines, from grunts on up to officers. They don't mind that I'm ex-Air Force.
Blogger Paul Hsieh contemplates the ethics of torturing enemy prisoners at Noodlefood, sparked by a recent video in which Fox News reporter Steve Harrigan volunteered to undergo the controversial water-boarding interrogation procedure.
My view is that any form of coercion is not pretty, but is nevertheless often justified and necessary. I remember when I was in the Marines and had to play hostage in an abandoned jail cell for an exercise. Being locked up in a claustrophobic cage with nothing to do for several hours but count the seconds was seriously un-fun. I personally have spent untold hours in confined spaces without ever suffering any worrisome effect, but once that element of personal freedom is removed, even a short stint can be a trial.
In other Marine training, I had to endure several days of play as a captured prisoner of war where cold, damp, hunger and being commanded to sing a bizarre bar song were each used as a means of inflicting discomfort. At 3 AM when you are violently shivering from hypothermia and have to sing the same #$%% song that you've sang for the last 24 hours, life can feel pretty miserable. While I saw the exercise though to its end, I was shocked by the number of men in my unit who didn't. Even relatively mild discomfort can break down a man’s resistance.
Yet ultimately, if making the enemy feel scared, miserable, or even horrified for his life saves American lives and achieves victory, I say let the deed be done. There is only one thing that an enemy can do to save himself from our wrath, and that is surrender completely and totally. If he fails to yield in any way, he continues to wage war against us, and in my view, remains fair game for war to be waged back upon him.
Because I was airborne in the USAF I had to go through POW training. It's funny -- I went through it without a problem at the age of 19. It was just another thing I had to do, like filling out paperwork.
But now I look back at what I went through and I shiver. I could not do it now.
Not that this is any way to spend one's lunch break, but what Mr. Harrigan went through looks to me like playtime.
Let's see, as soon as he cried uncle, his friends in the L.L. Bean ski masks stopped. Now we all know what waterboarding looks like, right?
This stunt illustrates nothing.
It is in no way immoral to torture terrorists. The point is that it is crazy to allow your own government to include torture techniques in its arsenal, and to train men in torture, give them a tour of duty to warp their minds with it, and then release these men back into society. And these objections do not even begin to touch on the issue of how such a policy erodes the high-minded image the U.S. should be cultivating to "win the hearts and minds" of the world.
By contrast, outright killing is entirely clean and defensible. Torture will come back to bite us.
Mario brings up two points worthy of consideration:
>The point is that it is crazy to allow your own government to include torture techniques in its arsenal, and to train men in torture, give them a tour of duty to warp their minds with it, and then release these men back into society.
I would agree, being an instrument of torture in war is not for everyone; but neither is being an instrument of death. Torture against the enemy in time of war and for the sole purpose of saving American lives would have to be explicitly deliberate, precisely focused and appropriately restrained. It would have to be part of a deliberate program to win victory against a ruthless enemy, and be limited only to captured enemy of important intelligence value who refuse complete and total surrender. At root, this is a choice between the comfort of an enemy, or the lives of our own. For clear moral reason, I choose the lives of our own.
Unfortunately, that is not how it has always been. My revulsion over the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal was not so much that the enemy was mistreated, but that his mistreatment was wanton and purposeless, save for aggrandizing the whims of a few low-ranking sadists.
>And these objections do not even begin to touch on the issue of how such a policy erodes the high-minded image the U.S. should be cultivating to "win the hearts and minds" of the world.
I respectfully disagree; we would signal to the world that we are willing to do what is necessary to win, and that we will not tolerate an enemy who acts against us in any way, even as a prisoner. War is hell, and the torture of high value prisoners until they reveal all their knowledge to us lets the world know that we intend to make our enemy’s lives hell until they choose to yield and take a path of peace.
It's official: the Democrats now control the Congress. And If ever there was an idiot in politics, it would now have to be George Allen.
Why? First, some back-story. When I was a student at George Washington in the mid-'90s, I worked for a man who would interview political figures for TV with a method of using syllogistic reasoning to more or less corner his subject into accepting his premise. (Unfortunately, it did not help that the host was simply one of the least telegenic people I have ever known, even for public access TV, where most of his shows ended up).
Nevertheless, since most politicians are utterly unfamiliar with their rational faculty, the results of the these interviews were usually quite amusing. (In fact, the host got one congressman to physically assault him and the camera crew, and got an utterly exasperated Nancy Pelosi to continuously repeat "Yes can mean no-and so what?!" over the many contradictions inherent in the minimum wage).
Perhaps one of the sole exceptions to the normal outcome of these episodes was when the show interviewed George Allen, then serving as governor of Virginia. Allen totally understood what was going on—and he totally embraced it. Here was a man who was unafraid to go were reason, logical and principled consistency led him. In the end of the interview, Allen evoked Jefferson, clearly denoting the proper aims of government, and it was simply one of the most fantastic moments I have ever seen in modern politics.
So years later, when I heard Allen was running for Senate, I thought excellent-we will finally have our voice. Somewhere along the way however, Allen allowed himself to get intellectually waylaid by the conservatives. Reason soon proved an alien friend, and Allen spend more time electioneering for a concrete-bound, myopic party that developing a legacy of thoughtful legislative achievement. Instead being a man of rational moral principles, Allen became a power-luster.
Add the fact that Allen at least appeared to harbor racial animus (who keeps a noose in his office and waves the confederate flag as a young man and calls a person "macaca" on the campaign trail and still expects to have the credibility to govern a people), and his whole advocacy of the gay-bashing "marriage amendment," and Allen become the A1 master-grade idiot of the election cycle.
I read tonight that Allen is just shocked that he lost his election, but I must say, I'm not. I think it's tragic given the hope he offered earlier in his career, but in the end, Allen got exactly what he deserved. I have no love for his successor, but as far as Allen is concerned, I'm not the least bit sad to see him go.
Amit Ghate offers a probing examination a recent article by Andrew Sullivan in Time Magazine. Amit notes:
[A]ll I see is the same worn-out subjectivism and skepticism that has driven people towards religion, indeed in some ways it's worse than the standard fare because by operating under the mealy-mouthed guise of a moderate, Sullivan actually manages to combine the worst elements of the subjectivist and the (religious) intrinsicist.
This is dead-on analysis of the mind of a typical 'moderate'--be sure to read the whole thing.
Gus Van Horn offers ROR readers his guest analysis on the election:
In the first two elections since 2001, when thousands of my countrymen were murdered in the name of Islam, the war was the central issue. This year, thanks to an insufficiently aggressive, morally uncertain approach to this war, the Republicans, incredibly, succeeded in taking it off the table. This election marked the first time since those unholy atrocities I have felt almost indifferent to the outcome.
This last sentence speaks volumes coming from me. I am still outraged by these atrocities and would like to see relentless devastation visited upon the Islamic world until its inhabitants either give up on the notion of spreading their religion by the sword or they are exterminated.
Another fellow blogger, Noumenal Self, recently put into words what my gut was telling me today: "The war should be the essential issue in this election. It should be, but it isn't, because the choice between Democrats and Republicans will make little difference for the outcome...." Even granting the increasingly improbable premise that Bush has another move up his sleeve, he failed to campaign on the war other than to remind us that the Democrats stood for surrender. One party promised to bark loudly, the other to whimper; but we knew that neither would bite.
With Iran about to arm itself with nuclear weapons, there was no talk of toppling its fanatical regime or destroying its nuclear facilities. There was just talk -- the tyrant-enabling talk of European style diplomacy. And the precedent of North Korea. We were in Iraq, in a position to denazify that nation and to use it as a launching pad to knock out Syria and Iran, and thus Lebanon's Party of God in the process. Instead, we encouraged the formation of a regime there that had no separation of state and religion. And we had no discernible plans whatsoever to move against Iran or Syria, either.
As I write, the handful of projections I have checked generally show the Democrats gaining control of the House with the GOP possibly retaining the Senate. This is in the middle of a war which the Republicans failed to declare, failed to prosecute vigorously, and hoped would save them from having to differentiate themselves by their actions from the "Party of Defeat." They have only themselves to blame for this election loss.
And the war is only their most obvious sin. Recall that we are fighting a foe whose essential characteristic is that he takes religion more seriously than the requirements for man's life on this earth. This is why the Jihadits piloted planes into buildings. They were more concerned with what an allegedly holy text said than with the pursuit of happiness here on this earth.
And what did the Republicans do during this war against these religious fanatics?
They introduced "faith-based" initiatives, injecting religion into welfare instead of abolishing welfare. (I believe in 1992 they'd spoken of dismantling the welfare state "brick by brick." Converting it into a cheesy store-front church is not the same thing.)
The fanatics, all the way from the time of Salman Rushdie, to the Mohammed Cartoon Riots, to now, wanted to curtail our freedom of speech. The Republicans cooperated with the Democrats to pass McCain-Feingold, a huge step towards regulating American freedom of speech.
When Michael Schiavo attempted to allow his wife's body to die -- after medical evidence showed that she was brain-dead, in accordance to her wishes, and in accordance with the law -- the Republicans tried their best to trample over that evidence, her wishes, and worst of all, the law they swore to uphold. All in the name of imposing their religious dictates onto fellow Americans by misusing government force.
In short, the Republicans acted like a wimpy version of our enemies during a time in which they (ambiguity intended) waged war upon the American people. We wanted the Republicans to fight these bastards off, not growl at them for awhile and then turn on us.
One of the lingering doubts I had before going to the polls today was that an electoral defeat today might teach the Republicans the wrong lesson on the war. But the more I think about it, the more unfounded this fear is. The Republicans were already wrong. How else is Iran still playing with uranium enrichment? Why have we relented in cutting off aid to the "Palestinians," who elected terrorists as leaders? Why are we fighting in the name of "democracy" -- the alleged right of barbarians in the Middle East to impose unlimited majority rule -- rather than protecting our own freedom? If the GOP walks away from this defeat sounding more like the Democrats, well, at least they've become more honest. The Republicans began acting like them long before.
We, the American people want to win this war and get on with our lives. We want government-imposed religion out of our lives -- as the defeat of an anti-abortion measure in conservative South Dakota attests. We are not interested in being forced to improve the lot of willfully ignorant savages abroad or the lazy at home. The Republicans thought they could get away with mouthing empty homage to national security, personal freedom, and capitalism -- while acting like Democrats. They did not get away with it. That is what this election means to me, an American man with no fondness for either major party.
What it means to the Republicans is their business. I am no fan of the Democrats and dread the next two years. I still think that many of my fellow Objectivists are way too optimistic about what the Democrats will be like in power. But if, as a result of this defeat, the Republicans get serious about what they claim to defend and abandon the contradiction of injecting faith into politics, this will ultimately prove to be a good thing.
This according to the AP. My first thought is that Donald Rumsfeld is now the new Robert McNamara of our era; intelligent, bold, willing to demand sweeping practical reforms of the services, but philosophically incapable of waging war in a way that secured an American victory. I doubt that history will judge him less harshly.
"philosophically incapable of waging war in a way that secured an American victory"
Was it his job to provide the guiding philosophy of the war? Wasn't that the President's responsibility. I have a feeling that Rumsfeld is taking the fall for Bush. I hold Bush more responsible.
I mourn the lost of Rumsfeld; it is one more loss in Bush's Orgy of Self-sacrifice.
Rumsfeld was an excellent manager charged with implimenting Bush's failed Iraq strategy.
The failure in Iraq are attributable to the State Department not Defense.
Rumsfeld fell on his sword for the sake of the Bush Administration, as he had offered to do before. I hope that he will be free to speak politically after and if the Senate confirms his replacement.
In his youth, Rumsfeld reportedly wanted to be President, but by rebuilding the military after the Clintonian cut backs, he has done the country a greater service.
In my opinion, Rumsfeld is the only hero in the Bush Administration and his replacement is reportly an advocate of appeasement of state sponsors of terrorism.
. . . to be replaced by our new national nightmare. Nevertheless, we are presented with a substantial opportunity to communicate our message given that the religious and pragmatic Republicans have been trumped, and the Democrats have no principled message, save for "not George Bush."
But before that can begin, we Objectivists need to examine our own house. The causes of our deep divisions must be addressed. This is not a debating game we are playing here; the choices we make and the public stands we take directly impact the health of our movement to change our culture and our ability to be persuasive beyond our own private voices.
Needless to say, I will have more to offer on this topic the coming days, but in the interim, it is time for some serious soul-searching among Objectivists.
Hey Nick: Am looking forward to your thoughts on our "deep divides." I saw this election (and 2004) as more of strategy or tactics. Or maybe even different levels of realization as to the strength or weaknesses of the religious right. Do you see *fundamental* deep differences - as in '68 or '89?
I don't see them, but again, looking forward to your thoughts.
I too look forward to your post on the deep differences of Objectivists. I have lost intellectual respect for Tracinski and TIA over the last two years or so. I think that their war posture is terrible. Its loaded with altruism IMO. Also their support for Bush and the Conservatives seems to me to be at odds with Objectivist principles. Plus, I didn't like Tracinski saying that Peikoff suffered from "Dominque Francon" syndrome. Trancinski may be smart but he is not in Peikoff's league.
I have a feeling that in time there is going to be another division.
I view the election as being a scenario in which no moral choice was available.
As Objectivists, we should not defend either party but oppose both as evading the real issues before the country, such as the immediate termination of nuclear programs in state sponsors of terrorism.
My polling place was practically deserted, which surprised me, given all the interest in this election. There was a light rain, and we all know how even a minor impediment can turn people away from the polls.
My jurisdiction gave voters the option of voting electronically or casting a paper ballot (an electronic scanner form). Despite the ease of electronic voting, I opted for the paper ballot after I saw a report on how easy it was to reprogram an electronic voting machine. I looked over my ballot once, twice and a third time to ensure I didn’t make any errant marks, and put it in the machine. In a technological age, there simply needs to be a better means of lodging one’s vote and confirming its proper execution.
So there you have it. I have exercised my franchise. We'll see how it all ends tonight . . .
Update: I went back to the polls to stand outside for a few hours with a "Yes to Equal Protection, No the Marriage Amendment" sign that I printed up with Illustrator. It was an illuminating experience, for it yet again underscored just how much the right is animated by mystical faith. While chatting with the other activists standing outside the polls who supported the amendment, I put the question to them: "Why do you take your stand?" I got a very quick answer: "The Bible."
"The Bible?," I asked. "Oh yes," they said, all of them nodding vociferously in agreement. "We believe in what the Bible says, and the Bible says homosexuality is immoral."
I simply replied in answer that as much as they had a right to their own private mystical beliefs, they had absolutely no right to negate the judgment of others who disagree with their faith and seek to avail themselves of the law's protection, and that I stood for "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" instead. Privately, I looked forward to the fact that their view would no longer control the majority in Congress.
Here in New York, I voted mostly for Democrats, including Hillary. I could not have imagined doing that just a few shorts years ago, not to mention throughout the second half of the 1990s. But such is the state of the Republicans, who are dreadful. Early indications are that the Dems will pick up some seats in the Senate, but not enough for a majority, and may take a majority in the House. So, looks like we’ll get exactly what I hoped for: gridlock, so that neither party can do anything drastic. In the meantime, we can continue to spread Objectivism for a better tomorrow.
I did vote for one Republican, the forgettable Fasso, who ran against Evil Spitzer. I simply could not cast my vote for so disgusting a candidate who, in all likelihood, will be this state’s next governor.
...aaaaand gridlock it is! Voting a mostly libertarian ticket made a difference here as well... the losing candidates in many parts of Arizona would have made up a great deal of ground with the third-party vote added to their own. Alas that the time has not yet come for the breaking of the binary lock on national politics.
Umm, call me crazy but who the hell cares about Gay Marriage when we are in a position to see great damage done now that we will be ruled over by the go-gooder moderates of both parties?
Gridlock is an illusion anyway. The moderate Republicans are just dying for an excuse to patronize their constituency (grannies) and embrace their do-gooder sides, too. Now the moderates can do it while riding on the wave of the other moderates' popularity.
We should be voting for relative wingnuts like Randy Graf and crazed Libertarian pot smokers. That is the only way to true gridlock -- throw in some actually opposing viewpoints. Alas, mixed premises rule the roost now. Its a gaint fuzy logic DIM system.
Its mob rule via the moderates. Its the patronizing moderates versus the other patronizing moderates. Compassionate Conservativism versus The Do-Gooders. Is there a difference?
Gridlock? Where? By what means? Not even any friction. Free flowing mob rule. Its a sad day for America.
Jack Crawford would be proud of the intellectual activism you exhibited at the polling place.
In Broadlands, anti-growth advocates were collecting demographic information at the polling place from voters after they cast their ballot. Interesting idea for building a local base around an idea, but in their case an evil idea advocating facsist regulation of property.
In an excellent post, Noumenalself examines the arguments of the pro-Bush Objectivists, and finds their definitions and logic wanting. At root is a concrete-bound definition of theocracy, which one pro-Republican Objectivist argued is a "a totalitarian government enforcing religious rules of conduct and not merely a government with some religion-inspired laws."
I think this and similar definitions lets the theocrats off too easy. By enshrining faith and sacrifice, theocrats weaken the moral foundation our leaders need in order to properly limit government and protect our freedoms, and that is outrage enough not to support any party that includes them in its coalition. After all, why is it that the ostensive pro-war president refuses to wage a ruthless and uncompromising war against jihad? Because Jesus is his favorite philosopher—and the culture backs him up on it.
The theocrats need not create a totalitarian government to attack gays, outlaw abortion, preach creationism in the classroom, remake welfare into a faith-based initiative, or sacrifice our armed force to the liberty-hating people of the world. They can do damage enough with the power they enjoy now.
I myself am not voting Republican for tactical reasons. I think the best thing that could happen in the short term, politically, is that the Republican party should get a big slap in the face at the polls today and have to reexamine the principles for which it stands before fielding a candidate for the 2008 presidential run.
The author of "Noumenal Self" is absolutely right to draw attention to the important distinction between evangelical religion and the milquetoast religion of only a few decades ago. But, the Democrats scare me because I don't see their economic policies as "enfeebled"; and ultimately I see them as being just as dangerous.
According to Ludwig von Mises, an interventionist economy will always lead to more economic dislocation and turmoil, and if more government intervention in the economy is believed to be the solution, a country will wind its way towards greater turmoil, eventually spiraling out of control into full-blown socialism.
Going by this theory, it doesn't matter how enfeebled the Democrats' principles seem -- they will still work to wreck our country.
Strategically, we have to get the Republican party closer to fiscally conservative policies and far, far away from the Bible thumpers. I still think there is a better chance of that than teaching the Democrats economics. But, as I said, the Republicans need to be taught a harsh lesson.
I myself think that it is a mistake to think of the political left as “enfeebled.” The fact is that feeble or not, the left has far more voice than we do in the very realms that we must take if we are to expand our reach—primarily the universities. Furthermore, even a dying creed can wrack great havoc in its death spasms. I revoked my support for the Republicans because they claim to support my values in the very act of betraying them, but I am under no illusion as to just how dangerous the left is and just how hard we will have to work to defeat both it and the right.
I wrote this article in 2004 after the presidential election. It applies today just as much as it did then.
There are two competing theories of morality that dominate America today. The moral code that dominates the left is one of subjectivism. According to the left, no lifestyle (and no country) is better or worse than any other; there is no absolute right or wrong, save for one-the American people must defer their interests to the considerations and interests of others.
Contrast the left's view with the religious code that dominates the right. Under this morality, the subjectivism of the left is repudiated and replaced with the certainty that comes from mysticism and adherence to God's revealed word. Under this view, the American people must defer their interests to the considerations and interests of the Judeo-Christian God.
Of the two moral codes, it is the religious one that is gaining ground in America. It's not hard to see why. Rather than treat morality like a free-for-all, religion purports to take morality seriously. One would be hard pressed to find a person willing to tell a recovering drug addict that he needs more subjectivism in his life, but one could easily find a host of people willing to tell the addict that he needs to get right with Jesus. In the absence of a rational code, religion provides its adherents with a moral confidence that subjectivism can not provide.
Yet religion is nonsense on stilts. Instead of relying on rational principles, religion turns morality into an article of faith. After all, gays seeking the right to codify their relationships under the law is not a coercive threat to anyone, let alone an institution as old as marriage. Yet if the success of the anti-gay initiatives in the states is any indication, the religious think otherwise.
Religious nonsense also infects other realms. How many times have we heard President Bush make the moral case for freedom in the Middle East on the grounds that freedom is a gift from the Almighty, rather than a necessary (and rationally provable) requirement of human survival and prosperity?
And how does the president reconcile his argument with a Muslim whose own faith leads him to believe in submission to Allah, adherence to the Shari`ah, and global Islamic jihad? Rather than offer a compelling alternative, the president calls the philosophy that animates the murder of our people a religion of peace. President Bush is leader who makes faith-based arguments against a faith-based enemy. Such a strategy cannot hope to win.
We are locked in a contest between ourselves and the proponents of a new dark age-both foreign and domestic. If the left's subjectivist morality is impotent and will lead to our downfall, the right's religious morality is not far behind it. Yet choosing between the two was our only option this election day.
We need better. The answer is not to say all things are equal or all things are in the hands of God. The answer is to reject the past and embrace a new, pro-reason philosophy. The founders did as much when they rejected the divine right of kings and proclaimed that they had a fundamental right to their life, liberty and property. You say you want a revolution? Study philosophy from those who say it is in your power to perceive reality objectively, act according to the evidence before you and form a rational moral code and you will have it.
Today, after two additional years of experience living under a conservative governing majority, there is no doubt that the right is not only "not far behind" the left as I had orginaly put it, it is in fact the worse force, for while the left can only offer fear and uncertainty, the right attempts a promise of hope and certainty—albeit of the mystical (and utterly worthless) kind.
In watching evangelical preacher Ted Haggard's life implode amid his admission that he popped methamphetamines and had repeated homosexual sex with a prostitute, it suddenly dawned on me how the twisted logic in his mind must have worked. Prior to his public humiliation, Haggard was a key advocate for a Colorado constitutional amendment that seeks to deny homosexual relationships equal protection under the law (we in Virginia are also considering a similar "pro-marriage" amendment). As Haggard is a self-loathing homosexual who kept is true sexual identity under wraps, I wager he thought that the more legal prohibitions against gays there were, the easier it would be for him to reject his is "repulsive" and "dark" nature and remain faithful to his fundamentalist Christian creed.
After all, evangelicals argue that protecting homosexual marriage under the law threatens non-gay marriage; the implication being that if homosexuals are free to marry, men and women will suddenly quit their heterosexual marriages and abandon their children. Given the depths of Haggard's dishonesty and hypocrisy, perhaps that would be true for him. Yet it still remains that Haggard has no moral right to control what other consenting adults do with any aspect of their lives, let alone their sexual natures. Furthermore, the anti-gay marriage bigots forget the true purpose of marriage law, which is not to protect married relationships (most people do that well enough on their own), but to provide a means for establishing order when one of the marriage partners is incapacitated, or the marriage dissolves, be it by death or divorce.
Yet as a Republican and a Christian evangelist, no moral principle checks a man like Haggard from entering in the bedrooms of his fellow Americans in order to regulate their private and consensual behavior. Haggard could hardly control his own life, yet he actively sought to control the lives of others (in fact, he has not made any statement whatsoever renouncing his Christian anti-gay political agenda). I almost feel for his wife and children, who now must face the shock of knowing that their husband and father practices a despicable evil according to their chosen creed—were it not for the fact that their creed is irrational and morally repugnant.
At root, protecting homosexual relationships under the law is the natural progression of the principle of individual rights first codified by the founders. There is no rational reason to oppose this progression, just as there was no rational reason to oppose freedom for blacks, or equality for women. Yet the religiously-inspired Republican party has become so enthralled with lording over people's lives that on a road trip yesterday to enjoy Virginia's fall countryside, I could hardly escape being reminded by the myriad of campaign signs that it is the Republicans who are pushing the anti-homosexual agenda with all the political power they can muster.
It is wicked; it is immoral, and it deserves to be defeated.
The problem many people have with what they should consider — at the worst — as victimless crimes is their own inability to live up to the moral code they’ve accepted without having it enforced on their own selves at gunpoint.
People are naturally attracted and enthralled by what is most vehemently proscribed. It is moot whether this pastor is a self-loathing gay person; we don't need to care or speculate. People should be able to experiment in their lives without being overwrought with guilt. Maybe if he had been more free as a young person, he would have "found himself" by his early 30s and then could choose to settle down to have a family. There is a strong push in religious circles to get married young, often too young.
There is much debate among Objectivists over Rand's position on the nature of homosexuality and whether or not this position falls within or outside her philosophy, or is outflanked by her dedication to the moral and epistemological basis for egoism.
In this instance, I simply decline to be Rand's spokesman or interpreter (not to claim that I ever have been) and stick with my own estimate of the morality of homosexual conduct.
One point worth considering is what if Ted Haggard, rather than being a dishonest fundamentalist hypocrite, had simply elected to be honest about his homosexual desires. I know of no one who wakes up suddenly gay, but I do know plenty of people who repress their sexual orientation for one reason or another, most centering around their deep guilt they feel over being something that so many detest (even if such hatred is totally irrational and utterly undeserved).
So how would this story have played out then if Ted Haggard’s moral code was “to thy self be true” instead of “God’s will be done on Earth.” Haggard would not have prostituted himself in the name of a constitutional amendment outlawing equality for homosexuals. He would have been honest with his wife and children (if he would have even married his wife and had children with her) rather than leave them shocked and publicly humiliated that their husband and father lived a lie before their very eyes. He also would have been honest with his flock, who looked upon him as a moral example.
Haggard would not have had the political power he enjoyed as a right-wing fundamentalist preacher, but his life would have been better for it; it would not have been predicated upon lies, self-loathing and a backwards moral creed that shuns people for their private sexual choices.
The Scientist and the Preacher: Disintegration v. Misintegration
:: Posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 12:16 PM
I think this short clip of evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and recently disgraced evangelical preacher Ted Haggard is quite revealing. It shows the conflict between a philosophically disintegrated advocate of science ("we live in a world of subtle shades and not sharp black and white") and a philosophically misintegrated advocate of mysticism ("we believe the Bible is the word of God") and in my mind, makes it clear which argument is the worse cultural force.
In the clip, Haggard claims that evangelicals embrace the scientific method as a means of explaining how God created the Earth. Dawkins confronts Haggard with the claim that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old. Haggard responds saying that Dawkins’ claim is just one view of many that people hold. Haggard then states that "intellectual arrogance" is the reason why those who dispute creationism have issues with people of faith.
In analyzing the material presented in the clip, I came to the conclusion that Dawkins is weak, but Haggard is vicious. Dawkins respects science (albeit with heavy dose of Humeian skepticism), but Haggard rejects science outright by reducing it to little more than the handmaiden of his faith. Haggard is the deeper philosophic threat, because he attacks the very means by which a person would crawl out of skepticism and irrationality—he attacks reason itself (and with some irony, even tries to employ skepticism to do it).
And lest we forget—it is Haggard and not Dawkins who has our President's ear.
I actually saw the whole program. Religion: The Root of Evil? Dawkins called it, I think. It had some interesting portrayals of the absurdities and dangers of faith but as you put it, in the end, it was an incredibly weak defense of reason. In its last part it attempts to argue that we don't need religion because can get morality out of the fact that we are born with innate empathy. Absurd! That's supposed to be a secular justification for morality? But then again, he believes, along with everybody else, that morality consists of altruism, so I suppose one shouldn't expect too much. I agree with you that the religious, in today's context, are a lot more dangerous
The Objectivist Election Controversy (and Its Causes)
:: Posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 2:43 PM
Dr. Leonard Peikoff's "The DIM Hypothesis" is now available free of charge to registered users at the Ayn Rand Institute website. I am grateful that this valuable resource has been offered to the public, but its sudden release and all the intense back and forth debate among Objectivists on the upcoming elections underscores the problem with Dr. Peikoff's initial statement advising how one should vote: Dr. Peikoff did not sufficiently flesh out his position--he simply asserted it. That said, I do not think that merely asserting a point is the act of wickedness some people have made it out to be. It simply assumes that if you know a person and his general philosophy, you yourself can fill in the blanks in the presentation of their argument.
Yet in this instance, some people clearly need more, and thankfully others have filled in the void (primarily Diana Hsieh, Dr. John Lewis and Craig Biddle). I agree with their analyses that the Republicans are philosophically far worse than the Democrats and must be condemned and opposed. Nevertheless, I am torn over whether actively supporting for the Democrats earns us much of anything.
For example, in my congressional district, the Democrat running for office is a professor and Dean of the Georgetown Public Policy Institute and the key architect of the Clinton plan to socialize medicine in the early 1990s. Voting for such a person is utterly repugnant to me. Because of its duplicity and moral failures, the Republican Party deserves to lose and I withdraw my support for it, but at the same time, I simply have a hard time actively helping the Democrats to win, even if only through my vote. (But then again, sometimes you just have to bite the bullet to serve your larger end, even if doing so is unpleasant).
This all said, I still maintain that the actual act of voting on election day has been overblown in its importance. Elections are one-time events that encompass a concrete, binary choice, and voting in them is hardly the only one thing a person can do to defend his values against irrationality. In fact, I think writing articles such as this one is far more valuable than even 10,000 votes cast one way or another. Our individual vote is only worth the chance that it can swing an election, but a well-reasoned essay has the power to impact the thinking of thousands of people for the better. Objectivist voters are not yet kingmakers, but we can be intellectual activists.
And thus, I come to the daily newsletter and sporadically-produced periodical The Intellectual Activist, the once-grand standard-bearer of the Objectivist movement. In my view, the only Objectivists who have been acting badly of late are the ones who actively support the conservatives (whatever their ostensive exceptions, caveats, or wishful thinking). These Objectivists would be primarily Robert W. Tracinski, editor of TIA and ex-chairman of the Center, and his cohort, Jack Wakeland.
Tracinski & Wakeland are the ones who have bombarded their readers with near-perceptual level reporting on the goings on in Iraq at the expense of Objectivist principles. They are the ones who have argued that Objectivists who fail to support George Bush are doing the enemies work, and that Objectivists who have criticized the "Just War Theory" that animates America's current war-fighting strategy are offering "bogus" arguments. And they are the ones who have argued that if we only "persist" with the conservatives' path in the war, we will have our victory; in fact, they have attempted to enshrine such misguided persistence as a virtue.
In my estimate, the pair's ideas and actions—their consistent unwillingness to understand the conservatives and offer principled opposition to them—have placed them far outside the good.
Like many on the right, I have been deeply unsatisfied with the Republican Congress. The Republicans, I thought, ought to lose enough seats in the November congressional elections that they feel they've been punished for runaway federal spending.
But as the election gets nearer and I think more about what is at stake, I have come to realize that the best outcome is for the Democrats to lose.
Notice that Tracinski's frames his emotional state as being "deeply unsatisfied." He is not outraged at the massive increase in government spending under the Republicans or their failure to abolish any significant government spending program, nor is he appalled at the abject failure of the Bush administration to wage a ruthless war against the Jihadists, nor is he even offended that the conservatives are working to inject their mystical creed into public life. Instead, Tracinski is simply "deeply unsatisfied." Tracinski's emotional state is not an argument, but it is revealing. It makes me wonder what it takes to actually ruffle his feathers.
And why does Tracinski claim that a Democratic defeat in November is the best outcome? He argues that if the Republicans are bad, the Democrats are worse, and thus they deserve to lose more. In the process, Tracinski utterly fails to appreciate the nature of the ideas that have come to dominate the Republican party. He fails to grasp the degree that they are associated with capitalism, business growth, and a strong defense, and yet how their core philosophy actively betrays these values. Rather than punish the Republicans for their pale-faced betrayal of capitalism, Tracinski calls upon his readers to reward them at the polls (unless these Republicans are super-religious, and then it's OK to withdraw one's support).
Why? Why would an Objectivist ever seek to reward any Republicans in the face of their repeated failures (including the secular ones who nevertheless tacitly support the religious types)? The way Tracinski explains it, it is because . . .
[t]he more the left fades from the scene, the more the national political debate will be a debate within the right. The American system is not friendly to monolithic one-party rule. The moment one party begins to dominate, it tends to split apart along its internal fault lines. The more the Republicans dominate American politics, therefore, the more intensely they will debate among themselves.
I'd like to know what historical facts Tracinski relies upon to justify his position, for he doesn't offer any. In fact, history tells us that incumbent parties tend to lose mid-term elections, so if the Republicans win a unprecedented victory this term despite a wildly unpopular president, what makes Tracinski think these victors are suddenly going to open themselves up to an era of introspection and self-criticism? Intra-party challenges are caused by bold minorities choosing to assert themselves, and not by a majority's unprecedented victory on a "stay the course" platform. Yet Tracinski & Wakeland are no bold minority. They refuse to ruthlessly attack the Republicans for their faults-and their advocacy suffers for it.
And even more importantly, as Craig Biddle noted, Tracinski has enshrined the promise of mere chattering at some future date while simultaneously ignoring the substantive evil that animates the Republicans now. There are grades and styles of evil, and understanding these divisions and what animates them is crucial if we are to win converts and effectively fight against the irrational. Which force represents the greater threat to our lives: our clearly marked enemies, or the people who claim to be our friends, but turn around and betray us at every turn because they share our enemy's root premise?
The answer to this question is the fundamental issue of this election, and thus far, the question that Tracinski and his allies have failed to properly answer. In fact, I have come to conclude it is fair to ask the above question of both the Republicans, and of Mr. Tracinski and his allies. Egoism demands constancy.
I know it will upset some that I have explicitly targeted not just ideas that I disagree with, but also those who hold them (as well as people that some may hold in high regard). I simply do not see that it pays to maintain the pretense that these ideas do not have a source, and that this source deserves to go unnamed and not be examined for its faults.
I really enjoy your commentary and agree with it 100%. I don't know if you have the time or the inclination, but if you do I would love to see you join in the discussion of this over at SoloPassion:
http://www.solopassion.com/node/1821
Some good arguments have been made to both support Peikoff's view and to oppose it.
Anyway, thanks for the great post. As of this point, I disagree with Peikoff's voting reccommendation (although I loved his DIM course), but I also disagree with Tracinski on just about everything. I also didn't appreciate him saying Dr. Peikoff is afflicted with "Dominque Francon" syndrome. Tracinski is not even close to being in the same league as Dr. Peikoff. He should remember that.
Great post by our host. It's one thing to misread a politician's intentions or misintrepret his statements; it's quite another to evade a politician's record or repress knowledge of it in an act of grasping for straws. With the Republicans, it's always been the short straw the electorate has picked, and paid the consequences. With the Democrats, it's always been the hand-buzzer at 1,000 volts. I gave up on Tracinski and Wakeland ages ago. They too much wanted it to be true that the Republicans were salvagable. But, wishing never made anything so.
I have yet to vote in an election in which a party, or a candidate closely represents my ideas and values. It has always been a choice of picking the one that seamed to pose the least threat to them.
In this election, I don't have that choice. Even with three candidates for Senate to choose from. (The outcome of the election is already a foregone conclusion but that is neither here nor there).
Thank you for keeping the heat down in the election debate. I couldn't agree more that the act of voting was overblown beyond reasonable proportions. Several thousand Objectivists cannot sway the election, but even a handful can make a difference as writers and teachers. This is where the battle is.
Let's not reify the act of voting on Nov 7. We already vote every day with our feet and our pocketbooks. We influence the world on a daily basis when we go to work and do our jobs supremely well. Just as one poster commented that a handful of us can influence many thousands through writing and teaching, so do we also make a profound statement by being gainfully employed and working diligently at our chosen professions. I remember seeing lots of protestors, often young, when I was a student (e.g. in front of the World Bank). I always wondered where they found the time to stand around when the rest of us were in the library or going to our jobs. I still believe that objectivists change the world every day just by putting beliefs into action behind a desk, on a construction site or wherever their careers have taken them.
It looks like my earlier angst was utterly for naught, for Founders College has outflanked its would-be regulators by moving its campus to a new location.
Founders College officials said Thursday they will pull out of their plans to purchase the Merritt Hutchinson estate in Lynch Station.
The college announced plans to purchase 660 acres from the Berry Hill Plantation Resort in South Boston. Founders officials cited the Campbell County Planning Commission’s recommendation to deny the school’s rezoning request last week as the reason behind the decision. [Sarah Watson and Aaron Lee, Lynchburg News & Advance]
I love how one of the county planners cries that Founders doesn't have a lot of "integrity" for refusing to tolerate time-wasting regulation later on in the story.
If I was angry and disappointed before, I'm just loving it now. Bravo! I only hope that someone at Founders writes a letter to the editor of the local paper saying that this is what regulators should expect when they attempt to squelch the plans of people building a better life for themselves.
Soaring? Floundering? I’m dizzy from the constant movement!
For me, I’m cautiously optimistic. I’m glad that Founders reversed itself from the "we exist to increase the tax base" flub (in fact, I’ll grant them a enthusiastic "nicely played") but Founders still has a long way to go, especially when it comes to explaining why they are different and why they are worth the investment of a young person's time and money.
This was great news! The new location is awesome. (It was in fact probably on FC's short-list from the very beginning.) Halifax County will indeed benefit from new revenue streams. And after all, isn't this the same type of calculation companies like Dell and FedEx employ when they are deciding where to establish new sites? FC is properly comporting itself as a business.
Dr. Leonard Peikoff's announced position on the fall Congressional elections this coming November 7th has inaugurated a debate on various discussion lists and blogs between Objectivists. Some individuals have sided with Dr. Peikoff and agree with him that, in terms of ensuring the country's survival, and taking into account the expenditure of the Left's Marxist credibility, voting the straight Democratic ticket will serve to repudiate the Republican establishment and help to block its more perilous theocratic agenda. There is some substance to justify this fear. Virtually ever news item over the past two weeks has focused on the role of the evangelical bloc of voters, and President Bush solicits that bloc's support.
Others discount the religious threat and counter that helping the Democrats regain their hegemony in Congress will only encourage them to accelerate the pursuit of their Marxist, nihilist ends, such as a total welfare state, environmentalism and multiculturalism.
In reality, the triumph of either party, now or in the 2008 presidential race, will move the country closer to undiluted statism or dictatorship.
Ayn Rand, delineating modern politics in terms of fundamentals governed by philosophy, would probably interpret the conflict in what she characterized as one between Attila and the witch doctor, between the mystics of muscle and the mystics of the spirit. Dr. Peikoff asserted, quite rightly, that we are faced with a decision on which gang will do us the least harm in the short run. And, there is another gang of murderous witch doctors he neglected to account for in his projection, which are Islam and its jihadists.
During all this discussion, someone had the foresight to point out that there is a crucial link between the spread of Islam and environmentalism, e.g., that the Democrats especially, when they oppose off-shore drilling, advocate the expropriation of oil company profits, or block the construction of nuclear power plants, simply render the U.S. more dependent on oil supplies coming from countries mostly hostile to the U.S., such as Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. The Saudis especially have as much a vested interest in the perpetuation and expansion of American environmental law as Prohibition Era gangsters had in the perpetuation of the Eighteenth Amendment.
Other blogs, such as Jihad Watch and Infidel Bloggers Alliance, have documented which persons in Congress, Republicans and Democrats, are in thrall to Saudi petro-dollars or susceptible to the lobbying of such Islamist organizations as CAIR and the Muslim Council of America.
But, this particular peril has been discussed before, and I do not believe any thinking Objectivist (or is that a redundancy in terms?) can question or dismiss the seriousness of the Islamist threat, especially when he is certain that President Bush will do nothing to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons or to stop North Korea from selling its nuclear weapons and delivery systems to Islamist terrorists. If the Republicans will not defend the country, how can we expect the Democrats to, when it is obvious that they hate it?
However, what I have not heard anyone mention yet is the prospect of censorship. Either party is capable of imposing it. In fact, both parties have held hands over the decades in passing legislation that violates the First Amendment, and the Supreme Court has done little or nothing to declare such stealthily incremental legislation unconstitutional.
"Censorship," wrote Rand in "Have Gun, Will Nudge" in The Objectivist Newsletter in 1962, "in its old-fashioned meaning, is a government edict that forbids the discussion of some specific subjects or ideas - such, for instance, as sex, religion or criticism of government officials - an edict enforced by the government's scrutiny of all forms of communication prior to their public release."
We are approaching that level of censorship; that is, some officials and bureaucrats have proposed that the government have the power to make such an edict. Neither party, however, has the brazenness yet to move in that direction; they know they would not yet get away with it. Rand could not have predicted it, of course, but the Internet, which did not exist in 1962, is certainly scrutinized by the CIA, NSA and other federal agencies, not exclusively on the track of Islamist terrorists residing in this country.
Certainly if one sent an email letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice calling her (justifiably) delusional, anti-Semitic, and an appeasing enabler of Islamic terrorism, one could expect a knock on one's door, or at least strange things begin to happen to one's bank account or employment status. One cannot count on the demonstrable incompetence of the "security" agencies charged with defending this country, and be certain that nothing would happen.
That being said, Rand did forecast the possibility of de facto censorship. In that same article, she wrote:
"But for stifling the freedom of men's minds the modern method is much more potent; it rests on the power of non-objective law; it neither forbids nor permits anything; it never defines or specifies; it merely delivers men's lives, fortunes, careers, ambitions into the arbitrary power of a bureaucrat who can reward or punish at whim...."
One can count the ways in which such de facto censorship has been implemented in the U.S.: the PAC law; the Federal Election Committee; the ban on tobacco advertising over the airwaves, not to mention the regulation of print advertising of tobacco and other products, such as food; the Telecommunications Act of 1996; and so on, all of which, with more certainly to come whichever party dominates Congress, prove the pernicious effect of non-objective law on the freedom of men's minds.
What we are witnessing in the U.S. today is the indivertible implosion of over a century of irrationality in domestic and foreign policies. The irrational cannot make reality work; reality will not tolerate unreason. Most people with a nominal fealty to reason know that doing the Hokey Pokey or praying to Wantonka the Automotive God in front of one's car will not start it or fill it with gas. Too many of them, however, believe that going "back to God" or "back to nature" (and Rand dramatized both false alternatives in Atlas Shrugged), which are much the same things, will make all things right. Dr. Peikoff himself stressed this point years ago in a course, that ours is an age of pre-reason.
The country is coasting on the vestiges of the commitment to reason which founded this country, but which vestiges both Republicans and Democrats are working diligently in their special ways to eradicate. Reason is lost in a masking deluge of inconsequential and irrelevant issues. No one in public life - not in government, not in the press or news media, not in academia - is advocating a return to reason, or even its rediscovery (or, as someone pointed out, its discovery). Advocates of reason can be likened to some of the survivors of the Titanic, struggling desperately to avoid being sucked into the swirling vortex of a sinking giant.
It is difficult for an advocate of reason not to succumb to pessimism and doom-saying in these times. But, I, for one, am confident that in the end, reason and truth will out, if only enough of us will invest the effort to promote them. I have been doing my "bit" for decades, culminating in the epic of Sparrowhawk, and that has been at cost to me and with very little reward, pecuniary or otherwise, except in the volume of my fan mail. That particular reward is to have been proven right, that readers are receptive to ideas presented in the series, and that it is helping to point them in the right direction.
I am a long time Objectivist living in Calgary, Alberta. Obviously I don't get to vote in the United States elections but do have a great interest in the coming election and the well being of America.
I have read Dr. Peikoff's position and many of the articles concerning his view. I wanted to understand his position.
In Canada we have a province (Saskatchewan) that is and has been run by dedicated socialists for decades. The company I work for has oil and gas properties in this province.
So - I asked myself this question: Would it be better to live in socialist Saskatchewan or under a Taliban Christian equivalent.
The answer is obvious. Live in socialist Saskatchewan.
I am glad you are considering the matter of censorship, but you are not the first. Both Myrhaf and myself have considered this problem, which I view as the most important issue in any election we will have for the forseeable future. You may or may not disagree with me, but I regard the left as far more dangerous in this respect, at least for this round of voting. (This City Journal article is worth reading on that score.)
This -- and perhaps my ignorance of the DIM hypothesis -- is the main reason I will not be voting for the Democrats in this election.
Well, I never said I had read everything, but in all that I have read in the discussion, I didn't notice anyone else raising the censorship issue. So, if you were first, more credit to you.
I'm not voting because I didn't request an absentee ballot on time, and I do not want to drive 4.5 hours home during a busy week. I voted in the last two elections previous, and voted straight democrat in 2004, and a mixture in 2002. In both cases, I decided on a candidate-by-candidate basis. In the Fall of 2004 is when I was first introduced to the ideas of Rand through Atlas Shrugged, which is why I think I voted only for democrats, since all the Republican candidates were openly Evangelical (I'm from rural TN). I'm sure the Democrats were as well, but at that point in time I thought it would be better to have a deadlocked Congress. This election, I simply wasn't motivated to "pick my poison." I'm not entirely convinced that the Republicans are the only party that is outwardly religious; Hillary Clinton, for instance, went to a Methodist college, and I think that that comes through strongly in her politics. I see less harm in voting for a Goldwater Republican than a Methodist Democrat; I therefore think that each candidate needs to be judged on their own, without reference to the party platform, which they may or may not agree with.
A lot of people are making hay about Sen. John Kerry’s recent imbecilic remarks against the members of our armed forces. Yet I ask you, which person is the most vile?
A political leader who reveals his contempt for the people who serve in the military by claiming that he was "joking" to college students by saying that they better do their homework or else they will get stuck in Iraq;
John Kerry may himself be a "botched joke," but he does not command a single American solider. Only the commander-in-chief has that power, and our current one has exercised his by sacrificing American lives in order to grant the people of a Middle-Eastern backwater the right to vote themselves into an Iranian-style theocracy.
I'm sorry ladies and gentleman, but it is the conservatives who have proven themselves to be the greater threat.
It sounds like you read Craig Biddle's wonderful post to the same effect over at the "Principles in Practice" weblog (i.e., an adjunct of "The Objective Standard")
"I'm sorry ladies and gentleman, but it is the conservatives who have proven themselves to be the greater threat."
Nick, don't apologize for your position. It's like those people who start off a sentence, "To be honest, ...," (Implication: I'm otherwise dishonest when I speak), or the person who says to his opponent, "I respect your opinion," after he spent the last half-hour debating him over the irrationality of his opinion (implication: I sanction your irrationality with my respect).
