RoR: Forum

Dr Hospers,

First of all may I say what a tremendous pleasure it is to see your work published here on SOLOHQ :-)

Secondly, I agree with the great majority of the points you make and certainly with the conclusion that Bush is the preferable presidential candidate, which may surprise certain people on this site as I opposed the invasion of Iraq (but because I thought containment to be a preferable option and not because I thought Bush should do nothing, a distinction which seems lost on those certain people).

That aside, I have only two or three relatively minor points I would like to raise regarding this article. Bush was certainly correct to "think first of national defence" and in addition to the the military campaigns also instigating certain domestic security measures aimed at preventing further attacks, such as airport checks and more strident visa regulations (as a British exchange student in the US in 2002 I experienced, and willingly accepted, milder forms of both of the above). It strikes me however that such measures do on occasion go much too far and lead to a blatant injustice with no apparent security benefit (indeed a couple of such situations were recently raised on SOLO). Should libertarians confronted with these cases speak up or simply accept them as inevitable?

The only section which I did completely disagree with is this:

Bush is demonized because he wears his convictions on his sleeve, although he seldom makes political decisions on the basis of them. (His views on stem-cell research are an exception, although he did grant money for such research, which no previous President had done.) I do not share his religious convictions, but I find them relatively harmless as determinants of national policy.

His "faith based" assistance policies are surely determined to some extent by his own religious convictions? In one sense I actually see this as a small step away from government welfare towards reliance on charitable groups, though in another way it is a huge threat to separation of church and state. Given the wider context of the Islamic terrorist threat however, this seems a relatively trivial issue and I agree libertarians shouldn't let Bush's religious belief get in the way of supporting him.

MH

Post 2

Friday, August 13, 2004 - 3:05am

I'm delighted to have Dr Hospers, a former Libertarian Party candidate, posting here a refreshing counter to the anarcho-capitalist Saddamism that now infects the U.S. Libertarian Party, & even some (pseudo-) Objectivists, who say they are going to vote for John Kerry. Dear God!

In any event, *thank you* John, & may we see you back here often!

Linz

Post 3

Friday, August 13, 2004 - 12:57pm

It seems to me that the religious issue isn't disposed of so easily.

The takeover of the Republican Party by Christian fundamentalists will be complete with a Bush victory now. I would expect that a second Bush term will result is a heavier dose of religious-based governance than we've seen to date. And, we will surely see at least two Supreme Court retirements in those four years. The impact of their theistic input alone will affect the course of our government for generations.

I hadn't heard the Rand quote before, but "if they try to stop you from speaking your mind, all bets are off" must also be given serious consideration. Fundamentalists are not known for their tolerance of the opinions of others.

I can't offer any better options in this situation. I just don't think its such an easy call.

Post 4

Friday, August 13, 2004 - 3:38pm

Is no one voting for the libertarian candidate, Michael Badnarik?

Post 5

Friday, August 13, 2004 - 4:13pm

Wow! The man who made me a libertarian, way back in my sophomore year of high school, has posted an article on SOLO! And his analysis of current politics is spot on, as usual. Please permit me a brief moment of hero worship. 8 )

I had thought the Left was unusually obsessed with Bush's religiosity, until the SOLO Forums became inundated with the same hysteria. Granted, faith-based initiatives, the gay marriage amendment, hostility to stem cell research are all causes for concern. But I just don't see Bush using another 4 years in office to erect an American theocracy or engage in the fascist quashing of secular or antireligious dissent. The American Left has already worked itself into enough of a persecution complex; we hardly need libertarians and SOLOists feeding that paranoia.

Post 6

Friday, August 13, 2004 - 4:28pm

Andrew - you do realise of course that the phobia about Bush's religious beliefs is not representative of SOLO, but of the individuals who have it? :-)

I saw Bush yesterday with Larry King on CNN. Several times he explicitly endorsed the separation of church & state. He said the great thing about America was that one was entitled to hold any faith or no faith at all. He endorsed the notion of a "civil union" for gays of precisely the type that is now before the New Zealand Parliament. He said he didn't have a problem with *privately-funded* stem-cell research. (He also said the most important aspect of the Iraq operation was creating a beacon of liberty in a region that has known only dictatorship.) Where was the avenging demon of the Christian fundamentalist movement that Dr DD & others here have portrayed? I didn't see him.

Yes, of course we'd prefer a President who was an Objectivist & an atheist, but hell .... *context* guys! Get real!

Badnarik is a Saddamite, so that would disqualify him from *my* vote!

Linz

Post 7

Friday, August 13, 2004 - 8:53pm

i don't understand why the president's theocratic ideas are being dismissed so readily. he proposed a goddamn ammendment to ban homosexual marraige! and what about faith based initiatives??

i don't require an athiest president. i'd prefer one who didn't propose religion based laws, though.

"Accept 80% taxation if you have to, in order to preserve a free society - but if they try to stop you from speaking your mind, all bets are off."

how about if they try to stop you from using your mind? as with bans on human cloning? or stem cell research?

in a choice between 2 evils, i would think bush was the lesser one, but that doesn't mean we should rally to support him.

and as for convictionless kerry, which is better, to have evil, theocratic convictions, or to have no convictions at all? (i still think kerry is the worse choice though...)

the muslim fanatics certainly have convictions.

well, other than that, i think the article was pretty good.

i am curious about lindsay's first post "deleted". what was deleted? who are you stopping from speaking their mind?

lol, j/k. i recognize the obvious difference between censorship, and not providing someone with use of your private medium.

:)
eli

Post 8

Saturday, August 14, 2004 - 5:19am

Eli,

I agree with much of what you say here. The first post was actually by Lindsay and said the same as what is now the third post. There was some sort of bug and my post below the deleted one initially wouldn't show up. Or something like that! :-)

MH

Post 9

Saturday, August 14, 2004 - 12:36pm

Dear Leninz,

I am pleased that my brilliant exposition of the truth in this forum has influenced you to see the sweet reason of Bush the Theocrat as nothing but a bogeyman of the Left and their useful idiots within the Objectivist movement.

Regards,
Bill

Post 10

Saturday, August 14, 2004 - 2:04pm

Ben:
"Is no one voting for the libertarian candidate, Michael Badnarik?"

Ed:
Only the principled Ben, only the principled ones.

Linz:
"Badnarik is a Saddamite, so that would disqualify him from *my* vote!"

Ed:
Linz, I challenge your apparently contradictory judgment: Bush is okay, in spite of some serious fundamental flaws - Badnarik is not, though less fundamentally flawed . You look like a damn pragmatist, from the point of view available to me. I think you should take a long, hard look at Peikoff's former wisdom on the matter (post 41 on the "How Bush Terminated Stem Cell Research" thread).
(Edited by Ed Thompson on 8/14, 2:08pm)

Post 11

Saturday, August 14, 2004 - 2:33pm

I have a somewhat off-beat view on this that agrees with the spirit but not the letter of Hospers's essay. I'm interested in what anyone thinks about it.

The fundamental issue confronting Americans is the war on Islamic terrorism, not Bush's supposed theocratic propensities. The fact is, no matter how theocratic Bush is, for him to do any real damage to our social system, he has to ram his policies through Congress. And it is simply not plausible to suggest that Congress is a theocratic institution, or that Bush will succeed in any fundamental way at theocratizing the United States. (Neither the "Wilsonian" aspects of the Iraq war nor the controversies about gay marriage are counter-examples to that, for reasons I can explain if anyone wants an explanation.)

By contrast, Islamic fundamentalists have enunciated the proximate goal of killing four million Americans when possible. Their remote goal, however crazy, is the re-establishment of the Islamic Caliphate, and they regard us as the basic obstacle to that.They may not reach that goal, but they can do plenty of damage en route to it.

So the real question confronting us is not, "How do we stave off Republican theocracy?" That question has to take a backseat to "How do we take the fight to the external enemy, deny them sanctuary, and achieve victory?" The urgency of the first issue is not remotely comparable to that of the second. Neither are the demands.

But as far as victory is concerned, it is not clear to me that Bush is superior to Kerry or that Kerry is superior to Bush. On the plus side, Bush is committed to victory. On the minus side, Bush is an idiot. No: I mean, he is really an idiot.The guy has no concept whatsoever of the need for a grand strategy, or how to implement one. He is basically letting his generals and advisors run the show, and they are as interested in fighting each other as they are in fighting the enemy. Pardon my Jersey dialect--not to be confused with Brooklyn dialectic--but you can't win a war by shit-eating slogans like "Bring 'em on!" "Dead or alive!" "No king but Jesus" and the rest of the BS that Bush has been peddling. History tells us that wars are won principally by leadership, and the fact is, Bush can't lead. Worse yet, he evokes such a powerful reaction that that gets in the way of his minimal ability to lead. That may not be his fault, but who cares? We have to win. If he's in the way, he's got to give way to someone who can win.

Kerry has his problems as a wartime candidate. The guy is so bloody confused about so many things, he deserves to be smacked. (Or, out of deference to Joe Rowlands, perhaps I should say: I know he deserves to be smacked.) But the fact is, once he becomes president, some of the things he's confused about are going to be decided for him, and I have some confidence he will shape up and face the music. He may be confused about Iraq, for instance (should we have gone?), but if he becomes president, that question will become a moot hypothetical issue, and he'll just have to face, squarely, what we have to do. Given his wartime experience, I think it is possible that he will have a better grasp of how to be an appropriate civilian leader of the military--he'll see that contrary to so many stupid claims, the military has to be led to victory; it won't go there automatically. He is also clearly more intelligent than Bush, which is a plus. Anyway, darn it, people like him, and that is a plus for a nation at war. It sounds stupid (it is stupid), but Kerry just might do what Bush was going to do anyway, and if so, the country might say, "Oh, well, I guess it's got to be done. I mean, President Kerry says so." If that's what it takes, I don't care. Put him in office.

None of this is enough to get me to vote for the guy, but it's enough for me to kinda hope he gets elected. I could easily go the other way, however. As far as I'm concerned, the best policy is whatever will help us win the war by inflicting the greatest harm on the enemy and courting the least for us. Bush, Kerry...whatever. Just win, baby.

Post 12

Saturday, August 14, 2004 - 7:35pm

Despite the prestige of the author of the article, the fact is that there is almost nothing of merit in this essay. Time and again the article misrepresents the views of the administration's critics.
The misrepresentations begin in the second paragraph when he says:

"He was convinced that there shoiuld be some response to terrorist threats, though most Americans appeared to think that if we ignored it it would just go away."

I don't know of many Americans who believed such things, and I doubt John Hospers does either. Such a view certainly does not respresent the ideas of the majority of Americans or of the Libertarian Party.

He then continues later on:

"Many say that the current war is one that Bush should never have embarked on. Perhaps. But if you were President after a major attack wouldn't you be derelict in your duty as Commander-in-Chief if you did not put national defense above all else? ..................... Yet these same people attacked Bush as a traitor for going into Afghanistan, and then Iraq. "

Again, the very idea is absurd. The war in Iraq had nothing at all to do with "national defense", and no reasonable people ever opposed the war in Afghanistan. Hospers is attacking a strawman.

--------------------Tom Blackstone

http://tomsphilosophy.tripod.com

Post 13

Sunday, August 15, 2004 - 2:46pm

"I saw Bush yesterday with Larry King on CNN. Several times he explicitly endorsed the separation of church & state. He said the great thing about America was that one was entitled to hold any faith or no faith at all. He endorsed the notion of a "civil union" for gays of precisely the type that is now before the New Zealand Parliament. He said he didn't have a problem with *privately-funded* stem-cell research. (He also said the most important aspect of the Iraq operation was creating a beacon of liberty in a region that has known only dictatorship.) Where was the avenging demon of the Christian fundamentalist movement that Dr DD & others here have portrayed? I didn't see him."

Linsay,

The one problem I have with this statement is that Bush and Kerry both are liars. They will say whatever they think you want to hear.

Post 14

Sunday, August 15, 2004 - 6:57pm

Tom makes some very good points in his post. John Hosper's philosophical skills seem to have slipped very badly recently. This piece and his recent comments in the magazine "Liberty" are extremely poorly argued and filled with so many straw men that I was starting to think of 'The Wizard of Oz."

Bush's insane religious beliefs ARE NOT some private matter to him. In fact, they impact just about everything he does, usually in a negative way. This is a man who literally thinks that God made him President. Reminds me of the "divine right of kings."

Hosper's worst howler is his assertion that the media is lying and misrepresenting Bush, without mentioning that this administration has a record of lying and misrepresentation that has to come close to some sort of a new modern record.

Leonard Peikoff , whose views on foreign policy have already put him in the dangerous fruitcake category, is nonetheless correct that Kerry represents the lesser of the two party evils.

Post 15

Monday, August 16, 2004 - 4:26am

Mark & Tom - you are talking complete crap. Bush did not lie. The best intelligence available, including from the agencies of governments who wanted Bush *not* to go to war, reiterated to Bush when he demanded "slam dunk" status for the evidence, showed that Saddam was a clear & present danger. And Bush's religious beliefs, for reasons that have been well canvassed here already, are not of decisive significance in his prosecution of the war against Saddam & the wider war against terror. His commitment to liberty *is*. That is what you Saddamites cannot forgive him for. You hold it against the only power on earth that is able to strike a blow for liberty when it actually does so. I suggest you go to Iraq, free Saddam from his jail, reinstate him, & glorify him. His reinstatement & glorification is the logical upshot of *your* premises.

Linz

Post 16

Monday, August 16, 2004 - 8:57am

Linz, you sound like a Radical for Pragmatism.

All the relevance (of your argument) regarding the question of whether or not Bush lied rests on the premise that invading brutal dictatorships requires moral validation. It does not.

Invasion of ANY brutal dictatorship comes "pre-validated" by the immutable moral standards of man's life on earth. As such, it is a retaliation against force. Rand said that the only thing worse than war is tyranny. Why don't we all (specifically YOU) take the logical implications of that wisdom to heart and drop the "character-defense" argument like a hot potato.

How anyone can still engage in character-defense with the contemporary, unprincipled, statist politicians - paraded before us in the pretense of giving voters a real choice - is beyond me.

Ed

Post 17

Monday, August 16, 2004 - 4:33pm

His commitment to liberty *is*. That is what you Saddamites cannot forgive him for. You hold it against the only power on earth that is able to strike a blow for liberty when it actually does so. I suggest you go to Iraq, free Saddam from his jail, reinstate him, & glorify him. His reinstatement & glorification is the logical upshot of *your* premises.

Bush's commitment to liberty? Oh, that's hysterical, Linz! Killing 10,000 people, destroying a country's infrastructure and establishing a neocon puppet "crony capitalist" regime is just the thing for liberty.

The logical upshot of *your* premises, Mr. Perigo, is perpetual war (why stop at Iraq? the whole goddamn world awaits liberation!), an expanding state, increased debt and taxes and more terrorist attacks here at home.

Linz, you are so full of crap it must be coming out of your ears by now.

Did you support taking out the Soviet communist government? If not, you must have been a Stalinist. That's Perigo "logic" for you.

Post 18

Monday, August 16, 2004 - 6:28pm

Mark & Tom - you are talking complete crap. Bush did not lie. The best intelligence available, including from the agencies of governments who wanted Bush *not* to go to war, reiterated to Bush when he demanded "slam dunk" status for the evidence, showed that Saddam was a clear & present danger. And Bush's religious beliefs, for reasons that have been well canvassed here already, are not of decisive significance in his prosecution of the war against Saddam & the wider war against terror.

I will grant that ~maybe~ Bush was not lying about Iraq, in the sense that he may have really believed what he was saying. I don't know for sure---I'm not a mind reader. However, the "best intelligence" he was getting turned out to be almost total crap. (We use the word crap a lot, don't we? LOL.) As it so happens, the "worst" intelligence turned out to be more accurate. And contrary to what Bush's amen corner has been saying, numerous good sources questioned the "clear and present danger" claim.

So we have a war started under false pretenses. Now, even if this was all an honest mistake (which I will concede for the sake of argument only), doesn't such a monumental blunder beg for Bush's resignation at the very minimum? Where does the buck stop? And it won't do to point out the many evils of Saddam after the fact--these were not the reasons given by Bush for his war. (And by the way, the whole war was unconstitutional as Congress is not authorized to cede its war making powers to the President.) Over 10,000 people are dead, thousands are maimed, there is billions in property damage, the tab to the U.S. taxpayers will probably exceed $200 billion, and Iraq is turning against the U.S. with a vengeance. Yes, they really love the blessings of liberty, including Bush's puppet regime and rampant crony capitalism.

Saddam was a rotten thug, but he actually ran a nicer regime than Bush's friends the Saudis. Saddam looted the country for his own use, as most politicians do, and killed his political opponents, but he also ran a secular regime where alcohol was not outlawed, women were not forced to wear the veil and Christians were not persecuted. Do I want him back in power? Hell no, but let's have a little political reality check here. Iraq was not the worst hellhole in the world.

It's not the job of the United States to liberate the world's hellholes. Surely the Founding Fathers were wise when they looked at the wars ravaging Europe and determined that the United States should not be involved in the affairs of other nations. This was not because they did not desire that other peoples should enjoy the blessings of liberty, but rather because they were quite aware of the negative pragmatic realities of foreign alliances and interventions.

And finally: 9/11 demonstrated that national defense is a bad joke and little has changed to make me believe otherwise since then. To embark on foreign crusades while our own borders are insecure is pure folly.

And Linz, my apologies for the tone of my last post. :-)

Post 19

Monday, August 16, 2004 - 7:38pm