RoR: Forum

Post 80

Thursday, May 8 - 10:31am

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That also seems specious to me. Ideally an Objectivist government would be funded voluntarily, and the military be comprised only of volunteers (which it is today but not historically). So there would be no such thing as rank and file altruism if the military was used to help foreigners fight wars that served Americans' interests. So instead she thought sending boat loads of weapons was not rank and file altruism, even though in our form of governance forcible taxation funds those weapons. It still seems inconsistent to me why sending weapons as opposed to sending troops are philosophically different. Strategically different I would definitely agree, morally different I don't think so.
(Edited by John Armaos on 5/08, 10:32am)

Post 81

Thursday, May 8 - 8:07pm

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Context? We Don't Need no Stinking Context

Was our action in Vietnam altruistic? Would an Objectivist government fight the Vietnamese War? Vietnam was not about which regime, a corrupt pro-Western or a Dictatorial Chinese puppet ran a faraway exotic South East Asian nation. It was part of the overall context of the Cold War, a true World War III fought by proxy with the stakes no less than a world of (semi-)free states or a world Communist dictatorship. The Berlin Blockade, Vietnam, Afghanistan (part I), The Moon Race, the Arms Race, all part of a five decade struggle to contain communism without igniting a nuclear conflagration.

Who won that contest?

Was Vietnam run just about as tragically ineptly as possible? Did the draft make possible an obscene number of American casualties? Can that war be refought on paper for the next century? Yes, yes, and yes. Was Vietnam, until lost post-facto by the US Congress irrelevant? No.

As for what an Objectivist government would do? In a world where Objectivism was a majority force in American politics, maybe war would be as passe as chattel slavery is outside greater Araby. It's amazing what intellectual backwaters an argument can wander into when one jumps in mid-way, without referring to first principles.

(Edited by Ted Keer on 5/09, 4:32pm)

Post 82

Friday, May 9 - 1:39pm

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Ted I was only trying to make the point that whatever foreign policy actions one advocates they should at least be internally consistent with their logic. If supporting Taiwan and Israel was moral to stop the spread of Soviet tyranny than so should it have been moral to support South Vietnam for the same reason. And I don't see the moral difference between sending troops and sending supplies. As I said strategically different but philosophically not different.

As for what an Objectivist government would do?

I don't think anyone ever asked that question. I brought up the fact that we don't have one, so we can't pick and choose why sending supplies is ok while sending troops is not.

Post 83

Sunday, May 11 - 12:19am

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When I make the time for it, I will retrieve the exact Rand quotes so that we can all see what it was that she was talking about when she said that we should send guns but not men -- in order to "fight" certain wars.

Ed

Post 84

Monday, May 12 - 7:49am

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She probably meant that it wasn't worth the sacrifice of American lives -- that sending weapons was preferable.

- Bill

Post 85

Monday, May 12 - 10:48am

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Bill I don't understand that either. So it was worth the sacrifice of weapons but not the sacrifice of lives? Why would one be considered a sacrifice and not the other? To me this sounds like a matter of strategy. If the outcome of a foreign conflict will have ramifications on our lives, then it would serve our rational self-interests to intervene, and how to intervene is a matter of strategy, not philosophy.

Although the Democrats certainly sought to it that the South Vietnamese got no weapons after they made it illegal for them to receive it after 1975. With no weapons they were quickly overcome with the heavily supplied Soviet proxy of North Vietnam.