humanities.philosophy.objectivism

On Mar 26, 7:35 am, Agent Cooper wrote:
> On Mar 26, 3:51 am, Charles Bell wrote:
>
> > pastor he did not hear all that stuff. He is a fool, liar or racist.
> > The sum total of the principle I need to know is not to support a man
> > like that. Hillary is a liar. McCain is slippery with his political
> > ideology. Why an Objectivist ought to vote "slippery" over "lying" is
> > a subject too big to go into here, but suffice it to say that it has
> > to do with the difference between a Libertarian and an Objectivist.
>
> I have problems with voting Libertarian, but I don't think they're the
> same problems as yours.

Probably not. The thrust of Libertarianism (more "L" than "l" but
sometimes for the latter as well) is change through politics. For
O'ists politics would reflect a change *after* minds were changed by
philosophy, and that politics per diem is simply a rational way for
people to come to agreement over preferences. In other words, for
example, a Libertarian would politically abolish zoning laws, and an
Objectivist would not, but argue for reasons why people might
rationally choose to do without zoning laws. Ditto for vice "crimes".
Ditto for animal cruelty. [This is a particular weakness of mine, and
I look at the issue this way: I know animals are not the same as
people, BUT I would never want to live among people who see dogs and
cats as merely property disposable at will.]

> I don't quite "get" this issue as it plays out
> hereabouts (I mean, I understand the govt=/=economy thing, and agree
> with that, but see the foreign policy stuff as a reasonable people can
> differ thing). I should take a moment to remind people that I'm not an
> Objectivist, just an interested and sympathetic fellow-traveler.
>
> > Do you suppose Dewey, Goldwater and Ford were Objectivists?
>
> See, this is what I'm perplexed by, honestly. If Ford and Obama both
> are not committed to achieving Objectivist goals,

Ford = not thoroughly competent but had good freedom-loving,
individualist instincts.

Obama = holds to evil ideas, a complete collectivist and
intellectually irredeemable

There is a difference.

Rand, herself made a big error in holding Reagan in such low esteem,
and it was for the one issue alone, abortion or, perhaps, the APPARENT
mixing of religion with politics which seems to bug Peikoff so much
about GW Bush.



> then what else can
> you do except look at who they are and try to predict the probable
> consequences of their probable actions in context?
>
> Anyway, just to reiterate: I'm ranking three figures who are quite
> different from what I would want, ideally. (I imagine there might be
> some suspicion there, but on the domestic front, I want exactly what
> you want, as far as I can tell; even on the foreign policy front I
> probably do too, ultimately, in terms of goals, but we may disagree
> about means--I am concerned about Western unity in the face of common
> problems, which may be my old Cold Warrior coming out again). Also, I
> think you may have confused my attempt to figure out which candidate
> of three I almost entirely disagree with, that is, where *my*
> principles hardly enter into it, with not having any. But maybe I'm
> missing something here.
>


I do not understand how anyone who is not a leftist collectivist could
give a second thought to Obama, except if he is so intent that the
troops be pulled immediately out of Iraq. However, before Obama ran
for President, shortly after becoming a Senator, he was clear that he
did not want the troops out until there was some measure of success.
He was against the war, before he was for it, before he was against
it. As far as anyone can tell he has never presented a measured
response for OR against the war (unlike, say, Ron Paul), but is
clearly trying to ride the tide of the popularity or unpopularity of
the war.

> I do think that we have sized up the "who they are as people" thing
> very very differently, by attending to different facts. I paid close
> attention to, but was not surprised by, the Hillary/Obama debates over
> health care, and the whole focus was on whether people should be
> forced to participate or not, and Obama says no and Hillary says yes.
> To me, that's more telling than the kinds of things we've been talking
> about here: ideologically, I read Obama as the kind of old progressive
> who doesn't get the negative freedom/positive 'freedom' distinction,
> and thinks that he's in some sense promoting freedom by "empowering"
> people to make choices with extra goodies.

That debate is over the choice of method of execution. The debate
should be over WHY health care is so incredibly expensive: government
and lawyers. Short of going to the heart of the matter, we would have
to offer the squeezed middle-class the option of tax-deferred medical
saving accounts just like IRAs, except I would do one better and make
the accounts forever tax-free. For the poor folk: get a job! Eliminate
immigration, except where a job has already been procured. Find some
better way to deal with and fund ER's



> That may be the original
> sin of liberalism,

The sin of liberalism is the transition from "rights" to "a right to".
Liberals and libertarians do not understand that Rand started over
with natural-rights theory but in such a way as to make it impossible
to transition from "natural rights" to "everyone has a right to . . .
food, housing, health-care, etc."


> but it explains why we still use the same words, or
> at least can, why some people of Objectivist and libertarian bent like
> to call themselves "classical liberals" and even find themselves
> agreeing with Democrats on a range of personal freedom issues.
> Hillary, by contrast, is committed to a plan that is rooted in the
> idea of resentment, er, "fairness"


You have the situation completely backwards. By understanding that
Obama probably buys in to the Black Liberation Theology, he is
certainly tied to black resentment over the fact of having "equal
rights" without "equal results". This is not to say that this is not
standard liberal dogma these days (insistence on what might be called
positive rights rather than neutral rights). For example, the ACLU is
taking the state of Florida, or Palm Beach County in particular, to
court over the fact that black high-school graduation rates are far
lower than white graduation rates. I have no doubt that Mrs. Clinton
equally shares with Obama and the ACLU over the merit of the suit, but
for Obama, there is bound to be an added measure of getting even with
Whitey for 400 years of oppression because of the church that he
belongs to.


> --if all can't have it, no one can
> have it. All must be forced to participate because all have an
> intrinsic, mysterious debt to society. Judged by *your* standards, she
> just seems more "evil" to me. If this election were TF, maybe Obama
> would be Peter Keating, and Hillary would be Ellsworth Toohey.


No, the other way around. I view Obama as the evil one and Hillary
the pure opportunist.


> Maybe
> you're right that Obama is worse along certain dimensions, though I
> don't see it personally. But I was really thrown by the way you had
> given Hillary something of a pass, because from where I sit she looks
> so incredibly awful.


It may be a matter of coping with the devil we know rather than the
devil who we cannot know. If we had discovered that Hillary belonged
to a group of man-hating Amazon lesbians, well . . . but she is just a
bitch with a dream. I have known several of those, and they have many
moments of rationality. However, dealing with a man with severe
identity problems and daddy issues who also belongs to a church that
could only reinforce the negative of these issues . . . at the very
least, we would need another term as Senator for him (or preferably
something else) to see what kind of psychological fit he can really
make into national politics. He has written a book and won an
important lawsuit. That is it. We know that Mrs. Clinton and,
certainly by far, McCain have gone through much more of life
experiences.