Ayn Rand Expert Speaks Out About The Election

[AngeloMichael]

I thought this would be of interest to Amicus, since he is always so kind in sharing with us insightful tidbits he has dug up on the internet.

Link

How you cast your vote in the coming election is important, even if the two parties are both rotten. In essence, the Democrats stand for socialism, or at least some ambling steps in its direction; the Republicans stand for religion, particularly evangelical Christianity, and are taking ambitious strides to give it political power.

Socialism—a fad of the last few centuries—has had its day; it has been almost universally rejected for decades. Leftists are no longer the passionate collectivists of the 30s, but usually avowed anti-ideologists, who bewail the futility of all systems. Religion, by contrast—the destroyer of man since time immemorial—is not fading; on the contrary, it is now the only philosophic movement rapidly and righteously rising to take over the government.

Given the choice between a rotten, enfeebled, despairing killer, and a rotten, ever stronger, and ambitious killer, it is immoral to vote for the latter, and equally immoral to refrain from voting at all because “both are bad.”

The survival of this country will not be determined by the degree to which the government, simply by inertia, imposes taxes, entitlements, controls, etc., although such impositions will be harmful (and all of them and worse will be embraced or pioneered by conservatives, as Bush has shown). What does determine the survival of this country is not political concretes, but fundamental philosophy. And in this area the only real threat to the country now, the only political evil comparable to or even greater than the threat once posed by Soviet Communism, is religion and the Party which is its home and sponsor.

The most urgent political task now is to topple the Republicans from power, if possible in the House and the Senate. This entails voting consistently Democratic, even if the opponent is a “good” Republican.

In my judgment, anyone who votes Republican or abstains from voting in this election has no understanding of the practical role of philosophy in man’s actual life—which means that he does not understand the philosophy of Objectivism, except perhaps as a rationalistic system detached from the world.

If you hate the Left so much that you feel more comfortable with the Right, you are unwittingly helping to push the U.S. toward disaster, i.e., theocracy, not in 50 years, but, frighteningly, much sooner.

*Emphaisis mine

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Another doomsayer heard from, vote Democrat to prevent a theocracy.

Ok, I'll bite. Other than that why should I vote for a Democrat?

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Looks like there's gonna hafta be some expulsions in the O'ist movement, because here one with a diametric view:

Crush the Left

The Democratic Party Adds Nothing to the National Debate

by Robert Tracinski
(originally published September 25)

For some time, I have been promising to offer my recommendation for how to vote in November's congressional election. Now that the vote is getting closer, I'm ready to offer it—and it is considerably different from what I originally expected to say.

My recommendation, I should make clear, is for the overall choice between Republicans and Democrats. But of course, in the American system—unlike some of the crazy parliamentary systems in Europe—we don't vote for parties, we vote for candidates. So if your local congressional candidate has championed a particularly evil political agenda, is under indictment, or is named "Katherine Harris," then by all means vote for the other guy. But if your local House and Senate candidates are unexceptional—and too many of them are—then in a narrowly contested election like this one, your vote is really a vote for which party is best qualified to control Congress. It's about which party should have the power to appoint committee chairmen, hold hearings, issue subpoenas, and generally steer the agenda of the legislature.

I have indicated before that my idea of the best outcome was that the Republicans lose and the Democrats don't win. The Republicans, I thought, ought to lose enough seats that they feel they've been punished for tolerating runaway federal spending, while the Democrats ought to fail to regain control of Congress, so they're not able to control congressional committees that would allow them to de-fund the war in Iraq or otherwise undermine the War on Terrorism.

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. The Democrats' failure to regain control of either house of Congress would be a good start. But an unambiguous and humiliating defeat—even a loss of Democratic seats in the House and Senate—would be much better.

I have realized that the best thing we can do in this election is to crush the left—because the Democratic Party adds nothing of value to the American political debate.

American politics isn't just a scramble for power. It is a giant national debate, with every newspaper article, think tank report, political ad, and presidential speech adding new facts, ideas, explanations, and proposals for the public to evaluate.

When evaluating a particular candidate, we can ask where he stands on each particular topic in this debate, and whether or not we agree with his stance and trust him to make good decisions. But when looking at a whole political party, we can ask a wider question: what role does the party serve in the national debate? What does it add to that debate?

It is possible that a political party which stands for wrong ideas on many issues will still stand for the right ideas on a few issues and thus add something unique and necessary to American politics. This is how Objectivists have usually regarded the split between Republicans and Democrats. Each party offers some idea—lower taxes and regulation from the Republicans, and free speech from the Democrats—that allows it to serve as a valuable counterbalance to the other party.

But this approach, I think, is outdated. The Democratic Party no longer offers anything of value to the American political debate.

Let's take a look at every major issue that might be a concern to a pro-national-defense, pro-liberty voter.

Are you concerned about big government? You should be. For the past eight years, a Republican-controlled House and (for half of that time) a Republican-controlled Senate has ballooned the federal budget. The problem is not "earmarks" or "pork-barrel" spending, which account for only one percent of the federal budget. Nor is it welfare for the poor. Thanks to welfare reform and a relatively strong economy, the welfare rolls are down. The real driver of runaway government spending is welfare for us—the automatic growth of Social Security and Medicare, the "middle-class entitlements."

Which party offers a solution to this problem? The Republicans certainly are guilty of egregious failures. In 2005, congressional Republicans abandoned President Bush's very modest Social Security privatization plan. Two years earlier, Bush himself rammed through, over the objections of congressional Republicans, the biggest new middle-class entitlement, the Medicare prescription drug benefit. But each of these proposals was controversial on the right, which is already engaged in soul-searching on this subject, even before the election.

Meanwhile, what have the Democrats offered on this issue? They bravely backed the unreformed status quo on Social Security, while complaining that the prescription drug entitlement was too small. They have campaigned, not to reduce government spending, but to increase tax rates to keep up with the increased spending.

If you want to have a debate on big government versus small government, you'll have to have it within the right. The left contributes nothing of value.

Are you concerned about immigration? There are some on the right who believe in legalizing immigration to allow a freer flow of labor and to welcome hard-working immigrants who want to share the "American dream." There are also many on the right who have gone "berserk with fury," as one Republican congressman put it, and launched a populist campaign to keep Mexican immigrants from "stealing our jobs." In my view, this is unworthy of a party that says it stands for free markets and American ideals. But the right is vigorously debating the issue, with some prominent right-leaning publications (National Review and the Washington Times, for example) crusading against immigration, while others (The Weekly Standard and the Wall Street Journal, for example) defend immigration.

And what does the left contribute to this debate? It contributes rallies sponsored by Marxist anti-war groups at which Hispanic immigrants wave the Mexican flag and academic radicals vow to "reconquer" the American Southwest for Mexico.

If you want to have a pro-immigration versus anti-immigration debate, you'll have to have it within the right. The left contributes nothing of value.

Are you concerned that religion is exerting too great a role in politics? A lot of the right is guilty on that count, advocating things as modest as government funding for "faith-based" charities and as garish as Katherine Harris's declarations that God "chooses our rulers" and that we shouldn't be a nation of secular laws. But you'll also find a small contingent that argues against the intrusion of religion into politics and advocates a secular foundation for the right—a debate brought out into the open, most recently, in a brave defense of the secular right by the Manhattan Institute's Heather Mac Donald.

What has the left, which is associated with militant secularism, contributed to this debate? Today's Democratic politicians are falling all over themselves trying to demonstrate how religious they are. In a speech last week, former Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry lamented that he was too "reticent" in 2004 in discussing how his Catholic faith shaped his political views and called for a "faith-based debate on the issues of war and peace." Meanwhile, favorite leftist strongman Hugo Chavez calls President Bush "the Devil" and claims that Jesus Christ was "the first socialist."

So much for the left's attitude toward Christianity. What about Islam? If you proclaim that faith should never be imposed by force, and you are unwise enough to use Islam as an example—well, then the left-leaning New York Times will be the first to scold you. Sam Harris—author of The End of Faith and a card-carrying member of the secular left—has bitterly complained about his fellow leftists' willingness, in the name of an allegedly secular cultural subjectivism, to make excuses for Islam.

If you want to have a debate over the meaning of religious freedom and the separation of church and state, I think you'll find that the most interesting debates on that subject are going to happen within the right. The left is contributing less and less of any value.

And that brings us to the War on Terrorism. When there is an actual battle raging between secular Western societies and fanatical religious zealots who want to impose their religion by the sword, there is only one political party that is asking you to fight back.

There is a lot of debate on the right over the best way to fight back. Should we commit more troops to Iraq? Should we change the kinds of troops we're deploying, dispersing special forces more widely among Iraqi troops as trainers and advisors? Should we try to undermine the Iranian regime by supporting dissidents, or will we have to use force to prevent the Iranian theocracy from getting the bomb?

What does the left contribute to this debate? Virginia Democratic Senate Candidate Jim Webb complains that we're losing in Iraq and thinks that the answer is to engage in more diplomacy to lure Syria and Iran—our enemies—to "stabilize" Iraq (which they will be happy to do, by making it into an Iranian client state). As Pakistan gives up the fight against al-Qaeda and surrenders its northwestern province to Taliban rule, John Kerry complains that we're losing the war in Afghanistan—and proposes that we increase our aid money to Pakistan. Meanwhile, Bill Clinton returns to wag his finger at us again and insist that his utter failure to strike back at Bin Laden was really the best defense against al-Qaeda that we could have expected.

And I'm not even counting the barking moonbats of the far left who think that al-Qaeda terrorists are "freedom fighters."

So if you want to have a vitally needed debate over how to fight and win the War on Terrorism, you'll have to have it within the right. The left contributes nothing but proposals for surrender, appeasement, and passivity.

As far as the war is concerned, that "D" next to a candidate's name on the ballot stands for "defeat."

A defeat for the Democratic Party in November's election would be a crushing blow. If they lose when every short-term political trend was in their favor, everyone will see it as a public repudiation of the Democratic Party. I advocate this outcome, not because I think it will cause soul-searching and a change of policies within the left—though that may well be the short-term result—but simply because it will add to the disarray and decline of the left. The decay of the left, and of the Democratic Party in particular, is the long-term trend of the past three decades, and we should do everything we can to hasten it, because the 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—precisely the kinds of debates I have described above.

I can't guarantee that such a debate would produce the best result—I would like to see the emergence of a small-government, pro-immigration, pro-war, secular right—but I can guarantee that such a debate would be much more interesting and much more productive than the debate we're having with the left right now.

So this November, let's crush the left. Once the left is safely out of the way, we'll be free to begin the much more serious and important business of splintering the right.

[end of item from TIADaily.com]

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

And further opportunities for mutual expulsion proceedings from an Objectivist listserv. My goodness - is this movement become pluralist?

Tracinski writes that the Democratic Party adds nothing to the national debate. He then invites us to “take a look at every major issue that might be a concern to a pro-national-defense, pro-liberty voter.” Right, then, here are a few:

National Defense: Surely Democrats have contrasting things to add concerning the squandering of our military by making the unnecessary war in Iraq. As far as mitigating the mess GW has made over there, surely they are in a good position to stop GW’s imposing “a unified Iraq” on those people. And surely Democrats have ideas on how to poise our military for future occasions of really defending our own country.

Liberty in America: Surely Democrats have contrasting things to add concerning appointments to the federal courts and protections of individual rights, such as the right of women to procure an elective abortion and the right of the suffering terminally ill (you or your loved ones some day) to procure assistance in terminating their lives. Libertarian Democrats (such as I) have contrasting things to add concerning the liberty right to smoke pot (which doesn’t affect Bob and me, but it affects millions of our fellow citizens).

Equal Protection under the Law: This principle of our constitution rightly applies not only to laws that prohibit or enjoin, but to laws that confer legal powers. Democrats have contrasting things to add concerning laws forbidding courts to extend the power to form marriages to same-sex couples. Democrats have contrasting things to add to the debate over the equality of gays in the military, so that openly gay citizens are legally accepted in the Service just like openly straight citizens.

 

[Pure]

Thanks for posting that, angelo. IT's good to see that some Rand followers haven't become shills for the Republicans, like our Amicus.

Trancinski is interesting to a point, but I suspect bias where he says that those opposed to religious dominance of gov should stick with the Republicans. Horsefeathers! His reasoning is also defective if he thinks firmly trouncing the left leads to a splintering of the right.
On the contrary, Democratic gains just short of majority in Congress are what will do the splintering (if it's to be done).

It would be interesting to know the *general pattern* in Objectivists' voting. Somehow i think few have the balls of Ayn Rand who had the courage, at election time, to state the Reagan wasn't much of a representative of conservatism.

 

[Pure]

"Iran is today's equivalent to Nazi Germany"

If you're wondering why Tracinski is eager for a smashing Republican win, consider this recent column, and an earlier one. Quite a military bent, this fellow:

Five Minutes to Midnight
War with Iran Is Coming, No Matter How Hard We Try to Evade It

by Robert Tracinski

The war in Lebanon pits an Iranian proxy, Hezbollah, against an American proxy, Israel. The meaning is clear: Iran is on the attack, and we have to fight back. The American right is finally ready to embrace this truth?while the left spins deeper into evasion.
Excerpt:

"What these commentators are picking up on is not an exact parallel to any one event of the 1930s?hence their scattershot of historical analogies. Instead, what they are picking up on is a sense of the overall direction of world events: we are clearly headed toward a much larger, bloodier conflict in the Middle East, but no one wants to acknowledge it, prepare for it, or begin to fight it?.

"Whatever their other faults, commentators on the right?have demonstrated two important virtues: they are capable of learning from events?and they are eager to be on the forefront of opposition to dictatorship. They are starting to see that Iran is today?s equivalent to Nazi Germany?and they all want to be Churchill.
"The left also senses the impending war, but they have a very different reaction. Their favorite analogy is not the prelude to World War II, but the beginning of World War I.

"It is widely acknowledged that World War II was made far more horrible by the years in which free nations appeased Hitler, allowing him to strengthen his armies before he took over Europe. That analogy lends itself to one conclusion: the sooner we attack Iran, the better.

"World War I, by contrast, is widely regarded as the result of a giant, tragic mistake, a failure of diplomacy in which the great powers of Europe, seeking a network of alliances that would guarantee a 'balance of power,' instead trapped themselves into a senseless war?."





The War on Terrorism and the War on Reality

by Robert W. Tracinski
Feb 15, 2002

Here is the painful dilemma America faces. If we don't attack Iraq, we could risk a nuclear attack on New York or Washington by Iraqi-backed terrorists. But if we do attack Iraq, we could risk "alienating" our Arab and European allies and earning the disapproval of the "world community."
Who would regard this as a choice worth agonizing over? Why, the American press, of course.

Last Wednesday, the Philadelphia Inquirer was the first to report that President Bush had made a definite decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. But the way the Inquirer presented that news is revealing.

The top of the story reports that "Bush has concluded that Hussein and his nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs are such a threat to US security that the Iraqi dictator must be removed." This, believe it or not, is the story's only mention of the threat from Iraq. There is no description of Hussein's weapons programs and no discussion of the consequences if those programs were to succeed: the apocalyptic threat to Israel, the threat to American bases and allies abroad, and the threat that a nuclear weapon could be smuggled into the US and used in a terrorist attack that would far exceed the destruction of September 11.

In short, there is no discussion of the facts that justify Bush's decision.

Instead, the report dredges up every conceivable problem with Bush's policy, every reason that makes an attack on Iraq seem impractical. Such a war, we are told, "would not be as swift or virtually free of American casualties as Afghanistan." There is no reference, however, to our swift and virtually casualty-free victory over Iraq in the Gulf War. We are also warned of the danger to our allies, such as Jordan, which imports most of its oil from Iraq, and Israel, which could suffer if Iraq "lashes out" with scud missile attacks.

But there is no mention of the enormous benefit to these countries of having a new, non-hostile regime in Iraq.
These military issues, however, are sandwiched between the warnings the reporters seem to regard as most worthy of mention. Near the top of the report, we are told that "Russia and most of America's European allies have expressed alarm about the administration's escalating rhetoric on Iraq." The article ends by fretting that we could lose Arab allies whose populations are "already angered by nearly 17 months of Israeli-Palestinian violence." (Which "violence" is that? The violence unleashed by Palestinian suicide bombers?)

The authors of the Inquirer story are not alone in their approach. Their not-so-subtle bias reflects the outlook and priorities of most critics of the administration's policy. The objective threat posed by Iraq and the "axis of evil" is overshadowed, in their minds, by a more important consideration: the feelings and opinions of Europe, the Arabs, and the "world community." To these critics, the possibility that tens of thousands of Americans could die in a new terrorist attack seems less real or urgent than the possibility that other nations might disapprove of us.

This distorted outlook was the essence of the Clinton administration approach that made us so vulnerable to terrorists in the first place. Clinton loved to settle almost everything through negotiation, compromise, and peace processes. To a president who thought that everything "depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is," there was no danger so real, no fact so absolute, that it could not be talked out of existence.

This war on reality continues in another new diplomatic initiative. Shimon Peres just unveiled a new peace proposal he negotiated with the speaker of the Palestinian parliament. The plan would begin with the immediate recognition of Palestinian statehood—then leave "details," including the location of that state's borders, to be figured out later. Meanwhile, terrorists were launching Qassam-2 rockets from Palestinian territory in random attacks on Israeli civilians.

The basic principle all of these proposals seek to evade is not a political or even a moral principle. It is the basic philosophic principle that facts are absolute. They can't be wished away, talked away, or ignored in the hope that an unpleasant reality won't exist if we don't name it.

This means that weapons of mass destruction in the hands of terrorist regimes are a real threat—and the contrary view of "world opinion" has no power to change that fact. President Bush seems to grasp this reality. His critics are doing their best to evade it.

 

[rgraham666]

After reading that second article, it appears that 'Objectivist' is a synonym for 'barking mad'.

 

[AngeloMichael]

After reading that second article, it appears that 'Objectivist' is a synonym for 'barking mad'.

You're lucky. I read 8 novels by Terry Goodkind before I came to that conclusion.

 

[rgraham666]

You're lucky. I read 8 novels by Terry Goodkind before I came to that conclusion.

One of the few advantages to being mentally is that it makes the condition easy to spot in others.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

After reading that second article, it appears that 'Objectivist' is a synonym for 'barking mad'.

The article reviews some clear examples of media stories that failed to advise viewers that there was more than one side to the topic, much less describe the other side's views. It then states the following:

"It is the basic philosophic principle that facts are absolute. They can't be wished away, talked away, or ignored in the hope that an unpleasant reality won't exist if we don't name it. This means that weapons of mass destruction in the hands of terrorist regimes are a real threat—and the contrary view of 'world opinion' has no power to change that fact."

These appear to be very legitimate observations, and anything but "mad." One can disagree with the policy recommendations that the author derives from these observations, even contend that they are misguided, and that too is legitimate. The refusal of all sides in current political discourse to acknowledge the legitimacy of the other side's views, instead characterizing political adversaries as evil or "mad," is the source of the poisonous political atmosphere that currently prevails in the U.S. (and I assume elsewhere.) It is not healthy for democracy.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I look at it another way. As Will Rogers used to say, "I don't belong to an organized political party. I'm a democrat."

The Democratic agenda is open to debate because the Democrats are not idealogues. There's no one in the party wielding a doctrinaire whip or telling everyone what to think or else they can get the hell out. Policies aren't cast in stone. You can join the democratic party and have your opinions heard, maybe even help decide policy. What a frightening idea! A party run by the people!

I remember in the last couple of presidential debates how people were horrified when Kerry or Gore would actually stop to think before answering a question. The audacity! As if thinking is a sign of weakness or some kind of mental disorder. Don't they already have someone's hand up their ass to supply them with the proper slogan? So now is not having a carved-in-stone position on every issue likewise a sin?

I always thought democracy was supposed to be about debate and discussion and trying to find the best way to do things. We've had 6 years of a party that's allowed about as much free debate in its ranks as Nazi Germany. I don't think goose-stepping is so damned breathtaking and it certainly isn't the most efficient way of getting from one place to another.

 

[rgraham666]

I don't think goose-stepping is so damned breathtaking and it certainly isn't the most efficient way of getting from one place to another.

It's hard on the knees too.

 

[Oblimo]

Ok, I'll bite. Other than that why should I vote for a Democrat?

Barak Obama looks good in a suit.

Other than that, I got nothin'.

 

[JamesSD]

Another doomsayer heard from, vote Democrat to prevent a theocracy.

Ok, I'll bite. Other than that why should I vote for a Democrat?

If it isn't obvious to you yet, you're probably never going to get it.

 

[JamesSD]

I remember in the last couple of presidential debates how people were horrified when Kerry or Gore would actually stop to think before answering a question. The audacity! As if thinking is a sign of weakness or some kind of mental disorder. Don't they already have someone's hand up their ass to supply them with the proper slogan? So now is not having a carved-in-stone position on every issue likewise a sin?

Somehow with Kerry actually caring about the will of the American people was viewed as being indecisive and a flip-flopper. People who re-elected George W. Bush are getting exactly what they voted for, a man who will stick with his opinions regardless of the reality of the situation.

 

[Pure]

Holy Cow---another objective Objectivist

I found this rather good, if lengthy analysis, though it doesn't quite say how to vote. I abridged it somewhat.

The New Individualist,
Robert Bidinotto
http://www.objectivistcenter.org/ct-1802-ed_desk.aspx

As another election approaches, it’s time to ask: What has six years of a Republican-run federal government brought us? For those of us committed to individualism and free markets, the one-word answer is: betrayal. Thanks to the rise of social conservatives and neocons within the GOP during the Bush years, not a splinter remains of the old Goldwater-Reagan party platforms of low taxes and limited government.

Ed Hudgins chronicles this devolution in “The Battle for the Soul of the Republican Party.” No doubt this essay, which throws down a philosophical gauntlet to conservatives and libertarians alike, will be widely discussed. For our nation’s sake, I hope it will be widely heeded, as well.
----

http://www.objectivistcenter.org/cth--1794-GOP_battle.aspx

The Battle for the Soul of the Republican Party

by Edward L. Hudgins

Whether they win or lose a particular seat or chamber in Congress, we all still might be losers with the Republicans.

How can I say this? Surely we know the Republican response: “Think of the grim alternative! Congressional committees dominated or chaired by radicals like John Conyers and Charles Rangel, by regulatory control freaks like John Dingell—who said he can’t tell the difference between Hezbollah and Israel—and by enemies of free enterprise like Henry Waxman. Imagine Maxine Waters’s anger and nutty conspiracy theories further unleashed in the halls of the Judiciary Committee. Imagine the King of Pork, Sen. Robert Byrd—whose goal is to empty the federal treasury into West Virginia—lording over appropriations; leftist totem Teddy Kennedy overseeing the welfare state; and elitist par excellence John Kerry legislating about small businesses. Imagine the national political agenda set by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. And consider one word to frighten all: Hillary.”

Yes, indeed, it’s a scary prospect.

But could we be getting something similar under the Republicans, only at a more leisurely pace?

Many traditional conservative Republicans have rightly beaten up on the Bush administration for profligate spending and for instituting huge new welfare programs. Meanwhile, the public has lost patience with the White House’s seemingly incoherent foreign policy. Facing the coming election, many Republicans are panicking.
We expect shifting political fortunes whenever a party has been in power for a while.

Yet the problems for the GOP are more than just temporary eddies in the political stream. That’s because its decades-old Cold War coalition of libertarians and traditional conservatives has broken down, and is being supplanted by a seemingly odd alliance of neoconservatives and social conservatives who explicitly reject the Goldwater-Reagan, pro-individualist, limited-government vision of America.


If the Republican Party continues to move in this direction, what’s left of its intellectual foundations will collapse, along with its political fortunes. What it needs urgently is a firm philosophical foundation based explicitly on the moral right of individuals to live for their own sakes—the principle that is the implicit ethical bedrock of the United States.

The Right Stuff

Political success depends on promoting the right ideas at the right time in the right environment. Sometimes, the right ideas are ahead of their time. But true leaders will articulate them even in the face of ridicule or short-term political failure, for if they remain silent, those ideas will never take root in the cultural soil and be ready to spring forth when the climate is right.

For the modern political right, it always begins with Barry Goldwater.
His 1960 book, The Conscience of a Conservative, served as the manifesto that propelled Goldwater to the 1964 Republican nomination for president. Yes, he lost that election, big time. But his ideas gave rise to the activists and think tanks that paved the way for his successor, Ronald Reagan.

Goldwater wrote that “the first thing…[a conservative] has learned about man is that each member of the species is a unique creature. Man’s most sacred possession is his individual soul.” Secondly, “the economic and spiritual aspects of man’s nature are inextricably intertwined. He cannot be economically free...if he is enslaved politically; conversely, man’s political freedom is illusory if he is dependent for his economic needs on the state.”

And finally, “man’s development, in both its material and spiritual aspects, is not something that can be directed by outside forces. Every man, for his individual good and for the good of society, is responsible for his own development. The choices that govern his life are choices that he must make; they cannot be made by any other human being, or by a collectivity of human beings.”

These ideas found their way straight into the 1964 Republican Party platform:

1. Every person has the right to govern himself, to fix his own goals, and to make his own way with a minimum of governmental interference.

2. It is for government to foster and maintain an environment of freedom encouraging every individual to develop to the fullest his God-given powers of mind, heart and body; and, beyond this, government should undertake only needful things, rightly of public concern, which the citizen cannot himself accomplish. …

3. Within our Republic the Federal Government should act only in areas where it has Constitutional authority to act, and then only in respect to proven needs where individuals and local or state governments will not or cannot adequately perform.
Despite philosophical imprecision and some implicit contradictions (which were to have dire long-term consequences for his brand of conservatism), Goldwater presented not just a concrete guide for public policy, but a different political vision of a good society. At its center: the individual.

To Goldwater Republicans, individual liberty was the end of political society, and the core purpose of government was to protect the freedom of the individual. This was in keeping with the philosophy of America’s Founders. The Declaration of Independence speaks of individuals, not of collectives or communities, “endowed with certain unalienable rights.”

Goldwater was both behind the times and ahead of them. Most Americans living during that period would no doubt give a nod to those general sentiments. But during the 1960s and early ’70s, many also believed that problems in society—poverty, crime, racism—were caused by alleged free market failures. If governments could just intervene here and there, they could correct those problems and still leave us relatively free and prosperous.

The Johnson-Nixon era of “big government” programs, however, proved to be a practical disaster: they slowed the economy, tied up businesses in regulatory red tape, over-taxed the middle class, and created social problems even worse than those they sought to cure. The time was right for new ideas.

Americans didn’t turn to more of the same, as did so many Europeans, because Ronald Reagan articulated a bold vision consistent with that of Goldwater and America’s Founders: “Government,” he said, “is the problem, not the solution.” Rather than promise more government programs for a public too addicted to them, Reagan spoke of rolling back the state—for example, shutting down the Departments of Education and Energy.

After its preamble outlining the failures of the Democrats, the 1980 Republican Party platform offered a ringing Reaganesque affirmation of the party’s individualist foundations:

Free Individuals in a Free Society

It has long been a fundamental conviction of the Republican Party that government should foster in our society a climate of maximum individual liberty and freedom of choice. Properly informed, our people as individuals or acting through instruments of popular consultation can make the right decisions affecting personal or general welfare, free of pervasive and heavy-handed intrusion by the central government into the decision-making process. This tenet is the genius of representative democracy.

In 1980, the threat to freedom did not come only from the federal government, however, but from Soviet Communism as well. The weakness of the Democratic Party in countering that threat only encouraged it. For Reagan and the Republicans, Soviet Communism was both evil and aggressive. Like the overly intrusive federal government, it too had to be opposed and rolled back. This principled vision, articulated with the exceptional skills of the Great Communicator, brought Reagan a rousing victory.

The Winning Coalition

How was that victory achieved? Political philosophy is one thing. Translating it into a winning political coalition is quite another. Yet that’s just what happened, starting with Goldwater and culminating with Reagan. During those years, three factions competed for supremacy within the ideological coalition that made up the Republican Party.


The first element could be loosely described as libertarians. These were optimistic children of the Enlightenment who, with Jefferson, saw the potential of free minds and free markets. They regarded the protection of individual liberty as the goal of government, especially in the economic realm, though most strongly favored personal liberty as well. Their thinking drew upon great economists such as Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, and Milton Friedman, philosopher Ayn Rand, and the Natural Law tradition of America’s Founders. This libertarian element saw the rule of law, and constitutional governments limited by individual rights and by checks and balances, as the best means to secure individual liberty.


The second element, the more traditional conservatives, tended to acknowledge the importance of the individual, but were motivated primarily by fear of power and the unrestrained individual ego, and by what they saw as the limits of human reason. They regarded the abuses of a Hitler or Stalin as manifestations of the same evil: unbridled human arrogance. Traditionalists found inspiration in Edmund Burke, who envisioned religion, customs, traditions, and non-governmental institutions (e.g., families, fraternal organizations, private property, and churches) as ways to restrain the ego, and to provide a nurturing environment in which individuals could develop their virtues and live productive lives.

Most libertarians also acknowledged the importance of such private institutions, though with an emphasis on the adjective “private.” Traditionalists and libertarians thus could agree upon the rule of law and constitutionally limited government as institutional barriers to the abuse of power. These shared premises provided the basis for a winning—if at times uneasy—political coalition.

But a third element within the Party consisted of social conservatives, who believed that governments should actively promote private virtue and morality. In truth, the boundary lines between social conservatives and traditionalists were murky. Often, the same conservatives who favored limits on government in economic affairs also harbored social conservative attitudes regarding personal moral issues, as well. They wanted government to limit free speech, censor books, and ban certain sexual practices and other personal behavior—especially abortion—that they believed to be morally wrong.

But most mainstream Republicans—even some who shared such views—were more pragmatic and “moderate.” They regularly paid lip service to the narrow policy concerns of social conservatives, but rarely tried to implement their moral agenda into law. The most militant social conservatives, who opposed individual liberty outright, remained on the margins of the Republican Party.
Such was the broad “conservative” coalition that, in 1980, spearheaded the electoral victory of Ronald Reagan.

Clouding “the Vision Thing”

Reagan’s presidency was a success—certainly when gauged against the disastrous Carter years. Under his administration, taxes were cut, spurring nearly a decade of economic expansion. Employment jumped from 99.5 million in 1982 to nearly 119 million by 1990, with GDP growth averaging nearly 4.5 percent annually in real terms. Inflation, out of control under Carter, plunged and was held in check. Furthermore, beginning in 1989, communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions, with a strong push from Reagan’s rearmament program and moral leadership.

But sadly, the rollback of communism abroad was not accompanied by a rollback of the size and scope of the federal government at home. Overall federal spending and deficits soared during the Reagan years.

Many Republicans thought initially that the next president, George H.W. Bush, would simply be a less articulate version of the Gipper. After all, while campaigning, Reagan’s vice president had learned enough from the master to announce, in no uncertain terms, “Read my lips: No new taxes.”

But, in retrospect, Bush’s admission that he never really understood “the vision thing” helps to explain the unprincipled pragmatism that was to follow. Bush broke his no-tax pledge. He unleashed a torrent of new government programs and restrictions: the Clean Air Act amendments, the American with Disabilities Act, and a “wetlands” protection policy that put the welfare of swamps, mud, and mosquitoes before the property rights of individuals.
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During the 2000 election campaign, it looked for a while as if George W. Bush had learned from his father’s political mistakes. He courted traditional conservatives; indeed, he considered himself one of them. Appealing to libertarians, he didn’t merely promise not to raise taxes; he promised to cut them.

Appealing to social conservatives, Bush emphasized the importance of religion in his personal life: Asked in a debate about his favorite philosopher, he cited Jesus.

Still, concerns remained for libertarians and traditional Goldwater-Reagan conservatives. Chief among them, candidate Bush had called himself a “compassionate conservative.” Was this simply a clever way to sell education vouchers and tax credits, or was this an altruistic echo of his “kinder, gentler,” big-government dad?


Unlike his father, George W. Bush kept his word and cut taxes, which kept the economy humming along. He even adopted, as a major policy goal, the creation of tax-exempt private retirement accounts, into which individuals would be allowed to divert about one-sixth of their tax dollars that normally would go into Social Security. Had this been enacted into law, it would have been an important step towards true Social Security privatization; it certainly would have been the most important domestic achievement of his administration.


But the terrorist attacks of September 11 changed the national priorities and focus, and gave the Bush presidency a new, all-consuming moral mission comparable to Reagan’s assault on communism: fighting the evil of Islamo-fascism. Bush’s strength in the face of attacks and his willingness to bring the war to the enemy initially won him strong public support. However, his administration’s subsequent intelligence errors in judging the WMD threat from Iraq, and blunders in managing Iraq after Saddam’s downfall, have brought about his plunge in the polls.

Now, on the eve of the 2006 elections, pollsters and pundits say that things look grim for the GOP, largely because of what’s been happening in Iraq. But more important for the future of the Republican Party, and for the last party remnants upholding the more individualist aspects of the Goldwater-Reagan legacy, is what’s happening on the domestic front.

“Big Government” is Back

Traditional conservatives as well as libertarians have increasingly criticized President Bush for his “big government” programs. (Their target actually should be unlimited government: it is not the size of a program, but its scope—i.e., its infringement of individual rights—that poses the real threat to liberty.)

In contrast to Reagan, who wanted to abolish the federal Department of Education, Bush foisted on the country the “No Child Left Behind” program, giving the federal government even greater power over local educational matters. Bush also created the largest new welfare-state entitlement in decades: the prescription drug benefit.

That program’s initial estimated cost was $400 billion, spread over its first decade; but within a month of its enactment, the estimate promptly soared to $650 billion. Domestic spending—excluding defense-related items—grew faster during George W. Bush’s first term than has spending by any president since Lyndon Johnson.


Some might argue in Bush’s defense that elected officials often must hold their noses and support things they don’t like. After all, Reagan inveighed against government spending, but let many spending increases go through. Still, Reagan didn’t initiate a lot of new government programs, and—this is crucial—he did still inveigh against them.


By contrast, President Bush has given no evidence of holding his nose while approving massive government growth. He has not voiced anything resembling Reagan’s battle cry against unlimited government. He has not exercised his veto power against a single governmental spending program—except for stem cell research. Instead, he has served up a hash of contradictory policies and expansive programs meant to sate the appetites of diverse interest groups—none of them part of the “leave us alone coalition.”
Bush’s wholesale abandonment of individualism and limited government signals the disintegration of the old Goldwater-Reagan coalition of libertarians and traditional conservatives, and, in its place, the rise of a neoconservative/social conservative alliance hostile to individualism.

The Rise of the Neocons

Neoconservatives have lurked in Republican circles for several decades. While some of their specific public policies may overlap with those of the two historic pillars of the Republican coalition, the traditional conservatives and libertarians, they differ with them on fundamental principles.

Irving Kristol, the godfather of the movement, says of neocons: “They are impatient with the Hayekian notion that we are on ‘the road to serfdom.’ Neocons do not feel that kind of alarm or anxiety about the growth of the state in the past century, seeing it as natural, indeed, inevitable.... People have always preferred strong government to weak.... Neocons feel at home in today’s America to a degree that more traditional conservatives do not.” That is why in the neocon pantheon of political heroes, men like “Barry Goldwater are politely overlooked.”
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But the neocon outlook is not based on gradualist accommodations to political realities: it is a pro-interventionist worldview. We see that most obviously in the neocon approach to foreign policy. It’s not just the idea of opposing Islamo-fascism—or of striking first if there is strong evidence that America is about to be attacked—or of declaring that it’s morally appropriate for individuals to live under governments that do not torture and kill their own people—or of maintaining that it would be better to have friendly, pro-Western governments in the Middle East.

Rather, the neocon approach is based on the arrogance of assuming that the American military (led by neocon planners) can simply impose “democracy” in countries and cultures thoroughly lacking the values, institutions, and attitudes that are the prerequisites to stable, free societies.


Holding democratic elections in a society whose populace does not respect reason and individual aspirations, but which is dominated by religious fanaticism, tribalism, and envy, will not produce individual liberty, the rule of law, and free markets; rather, it will produce the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah.

That arrogant outlook is the hallmark of the social engineer. And, given the neoconservative premises as outlined by Kristol and others, they aim to bring that same attitude of engineering society to American politics.

The Rise of Social Conservatives

This brings us to the other emerging element in the Republican Party.


Rather than focus on restrictions or threats to their own liberty from an intrusive government, social conservatives generally advocate restrictions on the freedom of other individuals. Understandably frustrated by the moral decline in civil society and its institutions, they seek to impose their beliefs and values on others by force.


Consider their preoccupation with the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. Now, many Americans view the Pledge as a salute to the country and its greatness, and they hear the words “under God” not as government-endorsed religion, but simply as stirring, patriotic language. For many parents who feel frustrated and helpless over the lousy public schools their kids are forced to attend, and over the relativistic values shoved down their throats there, the Pledge also has become a symbolic issue—a way to assert their desire for more parental control of schools.

But social conservatives insist on keeping the words “under God” in the Pledge, and to compel children to recite it in school, for a more specific reason. Because they believe that religion is a bulwark supporting society against social decay, they often favor government-backed religious indoctrination rather than individual liberty.


This, despite the fact that there is no evidence that forcing students to recite or hear the magic words “under God” each day will help restore the Republic or improve our schools.[...]

Teaching children the basic tenets of the Declaration and Constitution in those schools would go much farther toward ensuring the future of individual liberty, limited constitutional government, and the rule of law. But these are not high on the social conservatives’ list of priorities.


Similarly, consider the controversy generated by Alabama State Judge Ray Moore, who set up a display of the Ten Commandments in the rotunda of the judicial building in Montgomery. A federal court eventually ordered Moore to remove it, and he was fired when he refused.


Since the rotunda was not Moore’s private property, it was no surprise that limited government supporters thought that he should stick to his courtroom. Social conservatives, though, were outraged by the removal of the Ten Commandments. Some cited “states’s rights” arguments, and voiced frustrations over general abandonment of federalism and Constitutional divisions of powers among the various levels of government.

But it is hardly realistic to hope that a religious display in a government building in Alabama will begin the restoration of the Ninth and Tenth amendments.
Again, militant social conservatives have another agenda: not to return us to the rule of law that protects individual liberty, but to impose on all of us their own particular religious doctrines.

Another hot-button issue for social conservatives is same-sex marriages. They cite a litany of supposedly practical worries:[...]

Once more, social conservatives seem to be placing symbolism over substance. But again, they do so for a reason. The real issue for them is to define “marriage” by law in a way consonant with the Bible—and, as a corollary, to withhold legal recognition and protection from any form of contractual cohabitation incompatible with the biblical definition of marriage. In short, this is just another effort by social conservatives to write their own religious views and values into statutes, thus imposing them on non-believers by force of law.

Like all Americans, social conservatives have the right to their moral beliefs. But to be consistent, they cannot demand legal protection for their own private beliefs, and yet demand the right to impose their beliefs on others. They cannot consistently claim, for example, that the government must not interfere with the private decision by the Boy Scouts to bar gays from membership, but then simultaneously demand that the government interfere with the private sexual practices of individuals. Either the right to privacy exists for all, or it exists for none.

Yet such contradictions don’t appear to bother social conservatives. On many key issues, they don’t want to protect individual liberty or to limit government, but just the opposite—the opposite of the individualist inclinations of the Goldwater-Reagan coalition.

Santorum the Sanctimonious

Recently, social conservative sentiments have found their most unapologetic voice in Pennsylvania Republican Senator Rick Santorum.

Santorum has gained justified notoriety for rejecting any notion of a constitutional right of privacy, and for comparing gays to child molesters. His version of conservatism draws from the most toxic elements in the philosophical stew served up by the GOP: it’s an ideology that, at its ethical base (though certainly not in policy details) unites Santorum more with Karl Marx than with Adam Smith.

Santorum’s book It Takes a Family is meant to be an answer to Hillary Clinton’s It Takes a Village. But his goal is not to move us away from government or community interference with families. Rather, it is to move us away from government protection of individual liberty.

According to Santorum, “This whole idea of personal autonomy—I don’t think that most conservatives hold that point of view.” Specifically, “One of the criticisms I make is to what I refer to as more of a libertarianish right. The left has gone so far left and the right in some respects has gone so far right that they come around in a circle.” Confusing liberals with libertarians, he goes on: “They have this idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do. Government should keep our taxes down and keep our regulation low and that we shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom, we shouldn’t get involved in cultural issues, you know, people should do whatever they want.”
Santorum will have none of it:

They say “it takes a village” but really what their ideology is based around is the individual. We understand that the basic unit of society is the family, that the individual needs to be nurtured and supported and molded and shaped through this family structure, through the real village, which is the church, the community organizations….
He tops it off by substituting for the “freedom to be left alone” an Orwellian notion of “the freedom to attend to one’s duties—duties to God, to family, and to neighbors.” (In the same vein, Rousseau said we should be “forced to be free.”)


Santorum is a collectivist, only his collective (the family) is different from those of Marx and Hillary. Traditional conservatives and most libertarians acknowledge the importance of families in a free, stable society. But they don’t reject the centrality of the individual.


Santorum’s notion of individualism is, of course, a preposterous straw man. True individualists are committed to independent judgment and self-responsibility. They have such a profound love and respect for their lives and their capacities that they want only the best for themselves. Thus they realize the need for rational thought, self-discipline, integrity, and independence. They do not irrationally screw up their lives and then expect other individuals to take care of them and clean up their messes.

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Worse still, Santorum sees the pursuit of self-interest as morally inexcusable, and holds that the only morally acceptable goal in life is to live for others, for something “higher” than one’s self. What an utterly anti-human—and, in fact, anti-American—doctrine. The United States was founded on the rights of individuals to their own lives, liberty, and pursuit of happiness; but according to Santorum, if they actually do exercise those rights and pursue their self-interest, they are to be condemned as morally reprehensible.

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The Statist Alliance

There are signs that, despite their various differences, neocons and social conservatives are banding together informally, forming a statist alliance within the GOP.

For example, consider conservative attacks on Darwinian evolution, and efforts to politicize the matter by pushing the teaching of “creation science” and “intelligent design” in schools. (See my “What Are Creationists Afraid Of?” in the Fall 2005 issue of TNI.) Ron Bailey, Reason magazine’s science correspondent, points out that, in the past, only extreme Bible literalists denied—in the face of all evidence—that human beings evolved from lower animals. But in recent decades, neoconservatives, who tend to be a very secular group, have made attacks on Darwin a priority.

Why this obsession to promote a silly superstition? Bailey offers Irving Kristol’s cynical pronouncement from nearly five decades ago:
If God does not exist, and if religion is an illusion that the majority of men cannot live without...let men believe in the lies of religion since they cannot do without them, and let then a handful of sages, who know the truth and can live with it, keep it among themselves.
Bailey suggests that neocons attack Darwin in order to preserve what Marx called the “opiate” of religion. Theirs is the mentality that would sacrifice truth to political expediency.

But this goal allies neocons—however cynically—with social conservatives, who sincerely believe that no morality is possible if human beings evolved as part of nature, rather than being created by a god.


So, regardless of motive, secular neocons and religious social conservatives stand united in a common goal: to impose their own values on the rest of the nation through the power of government.

Which Way Republicans?

The Republican Party stands at a crossroads—not political, but philosophical. Its flagging, remnant army of Goldwater-Reagan traditionalists and libertarians is under attack from insurgent forces of neoconservative and social conservative statists. In beating back that challenge, however, traditionalists and libertarians face a dire problem: their stockpiles of moral-philosophical ammunition are bare.

Decades ago, in her essay “Conservatism: An Obituary,” Ayn Rand outlined the futility of traditional conservatism. She repudiated those who would defend liberty on the basis of blind faith, or stale traditions—or the view that human nature is too inherently depraved to trust any man with power (an argument that, in logic, could be turned against allowing any man freedom, too). Rand dismissed, as well, those whose libertarianism was rooted in a vacuous subjectivism or in pragmatic appeals to capitalism’s “efficiency.”

None of these arguments stand up to scrutiny. None of America’s cultural and political institutions can be rationally, consistently defended by appeals to the conventional ethos of faith, tradition, and self-sacrifice for the sake of something “higher” than the individual.

What Republicans need—what the world needs—is a case for individual liberty grounded in the rational nature and objective requirements of individual human life.

America is a nation based on the ethical premise of the self-actualization of the individual. That means the moral right of individuals to live for their own sakes. That ethical principle is the foundation of our political system of individual rights and limited government, and of our capitalist economic system and its underlying profit motive.

And that’s the moral principle that the better Republicans must grasp, accept, and articulate, clearly and confidently, if the Republican Party is to have a future.

Those “better Republicans” still can be found within the waning Goldwater-Reagan coalition that, in general, favors individual liberty and limited government. But they need to learn that their battles with the emerging neoconservative/social conservative coalition is not a series of mere political skirmishes. It is a moral war for the heart and soul of a political party that was founded to guarantee the rights of all Americans.

If the latter coalition prevails, then our political landscape and future will be dominated by nothing but statists, right and left: by those who wish to restrict individual freedom and run other people’s lives in accordance with their own grandiose notions of a “good society.”
Will the remaining individualists within the once-“Grand Old Party” allow that to happen? Time—and their own philosophical soul-searching—will tell.

 

[ddeborahscribe]

Objectivism isn't insane...it's just unworkable. Ayn Rand makes some great points about the weaknesses in communism and collectivist ideology...while completely ignoring the weak points of her own ideology.

Starting with the fact that human beings are inherently social animals. The rugged inidividualist eschewing contact with others, seeking no bonds with the rest of the world, is decidedly an exception rather than a rule in the history of the human race.

As for the election, I think the American political system is beyond redemption. There's going to be a helluva crash in the not-so-distant future...that's the only thing that will wake America up and shock the electorate into ditching the Demopublican Duopoly. I'm talking 15% unemployment, $5 a gallon gas, and food no longer magically appearing on grocery store shelves.