RoR: Forum

Funny. Ayn Rand knew that the brave dissidents of whom she wrote so movingly in "The Inexplicable Personal Alchemy" were likely socialists or idealistic communists. Didn't stop her saluting them. And the ARI itself made a poster out of CNN coverage of the lone Chinese democracy protester standing in front of the advancing tanks in Tiananmen Square, notwithstanding that the Chinese democracy movement was scarcely at the forefront of Objectivism. Seems the ARI has lost any notion of context, demanding immediate perfection or nothing. Had they been around at the time of the Founding Fathers, they would have dismissed the American revolution as the work of hopeless Deists & altruists. They really are clueless. Can't see the forest for the trees. Worst-case scenario doom-sayers. I'll pit Barbara's magnificent salute against their irrational party-pooping any day.

Linz

Post 1

Tuesday, February 1, 2005 - 10:57pm

Jesus another kill-joy! And arrogant to boot!

"A good first step toward teaching this lesson would be not granting them the pretense of elections."
Or in other words "You won't get your pudding unless you eat your vegetables..."

Unfortunately "junior" just ignored a bunch of murdering psychos and voted. So I doubt that anybody in Iraq will be quivering in their boots at the thought of being tut-tutted by a junior fellow from the ARI.

I would hazard a guess that after 30 years of Saddam (and prior to that the British and Ottoman Empires) that the average Iraqi (whatever their tribal affiliation) is fed to the back teeth with being told what to do or what not to do - especially by foreigners. So this strategy is about as likely to succeed as a lead-filled balloon.

To expect that the Iraqis would consent to waiting until their system of government was perfect before being able to govern themselves is a little too much to expect. Like any normal adult who has been locked in a cage their entire life, the Iraqis want to push on with their lives! They aren't going to stand for a Nanny (benevolent though they may be) telling them when and where they can go out and enjoy the sunshine! Especially when that Nanny promised to unlock the cage in 1991 and then went back on her word!!!

The author is right that there strong tribal/collectivist elements in the country and they will probably manifest themselves in the politics.

But I think it is a little premature two days after the polls close and before the votes have been counted to start declaring a victory to the pro-theocratic parties! The Iraqis have shown the ability to surprise the pundits in the past. Why should this stop?

Lastly, Yes, the new Iraqi constitution isn't going to be perfect first time at bat. How could it be? You couldn't even say the word liberty in Saddam's Iraq without risking your neck. Has the ARI forgotten that Ayn Rand developed her philosophy AFTER escaping the USSR??!??!?

Despite all the years of proselytizing by the likes of Samuel Adams even the US constitution wasn't perfect to start with! If it had been you'd have thought they would have granted universal suffrage and ended slavery!

Post 2

Tuesday, February 1, 2005 - 11:52pm

If anyone needed proof that ARI is no longer ideologically monolithic, here it is. There is hardly anything in this op-ed that could not have been written by Chris Sciabarra - or that bears resemblance to the positions of Robert Tracinski or Yaron Brook.

The fact is that the conditions for an emergence of (real, individual) freedom in Iraq have been consistently sabotaged under W's occupation. The government maintains Soviet-style monopolies on oil, electricity, food, insurance and other key industries. Saddam's odious debt to the Saudis remains unrepudiated. The pre-election interim government has even re-joined OPEC as a Saudi-Iranian puppet.

We won't know for sure until the votes have been counted, but W has kept Saddam's structure of economic control - the main monstrous engine of totalitarian oppression - pretty much intact, an irresistible prize for theocratic warlords in electoral gang warfare. The most likely result will be an Iraq that's a safe neighbor for the Saudi and Iranian theocracies - and another link in forging a global chain of Christianist-Islamist theocracy. I really hope that I'm wrong.
(Edited by Adam Reed on 2/01, 11:56pm)

Post 3

Tuesday, February 1, 2005 - 11:52pm

The ARI people seem to know only how to look down their noses at the world and announce the revealed truth. Do they never get sick of preaching from on high? Someone save us from apostles who can't get the message straight!

Barbara

Post 4

Wednesday, February 2, 2005 - 4:14am

Coming from a layman here, I can understand the principles behind why they would produce such a statement, but I sometimes wonder if the ramifications are even considered.

I believe it was Monday evening I was watching Fox News (what, how do you get your sensational headlines?), and the fair-and-balanced uncle Bill O'Rielly was in a segment called Iraq election reaction & dissent. Listing off several politicians and media sources from the left, he added "On the right, the Ayn Rand Institute called the election "a travesty" and said it is suicidal for Bush to treat Iraqi Freedom as the centerpiece of self-defense."

Now maybe ARI did not volunteer that release to Fox, but if they did I am left wondering as to their motivations for doing so, as they clearly were not looking to garner any support. It reminds me of their essay regarding the tsunami and why we should not help the victims. That was corrected, but the ensuing turn-off that occured among some was the logical result. Near the end of my short stay with the ARI following, I remember thinking "Sheesh, these guys could sure use a good PR rep..."

In reference to Adam, this is a hopeful thing, isn't it? That ARI is no longer ideologically monolithic? Chaos encouraging change and growth and all that...

Post 5

Wednesday, February 2, 2005 - 8:24am

Adam writes:

The fact is that the conditions for an emergence of (real, individual) freedom in Iraq have been consistently sabotaged under W's occupation. The government maintains Soviet-style monopolies on oil, electricity, food, insurance and other key industries. Saddam's odious debt to the Saudis remains unrepudiated. The pre-election interim government has even re-joined OPEC as a Saudi-Iranian puppet.

We won't know for sure until the votes have been counted, but W has kept Saddam's structure of economic control - the main monstrous engine of totalitarian oppression - pretty much intact, an irresistible prize for theocratic warlords in electoral gang warfare. The most likely result will be an Iraq that's a safe neighbor for the Saudi and Iranian theocracies - and another link in forging a global chain of Christianist-Islamist theocracy.

These are really important points which virtually no-one in the L/O movement seems to realize. The stunning incompetence and almost limitless cluelessness of the West in it's Afghanistani and Iraqi "nation building" and "teaching democracy" is truly frustrating and infuriating. The great hope here has to be that the next time the US invades someone it will somehow raise its foreign policy IQ from 25 to 50. This really shouldn't be so hard. Maybe someone just needs to write a book outlining the top 100 or so mistakes and grossly anti-democratic anti-libertarian stratagems employed by the US and Britain.

Lindsay writes:

Seems the ARI has lost any notion of context, demanding immediate perfection or nothing. Had they been around at the time of the Founding Fathers, they would have dismissed the American revolution as the work of hopeless Deists & altruists. They really are clueless. Can't see the forest for the trees. Worst-case scenario doom-sayers.

While ARI cyborg Elan Journo is right that democracy and freedom aren't the same, and that "freedom" is far and away the most important concept and ideal, human history vastly indicates that people who participate in free, open, honest, fair elections overwhelmingly tend to choose freedom. Germany in 1933 and Algeria in 1993 are the major recent exceptions. But these were special cases and continue to be rare. The ignorance and depravity of Elan Journo and the other "thinkers" at ARI continues to amaze.

Post 6

Wednesday, February 2, 2005 - 9:04am

Freshman studentette of Objectivism, "junior fellow," second class, android plebe (probationary) Elan Journo writes:

Iraqis regard themselves as defined by their membership in some larger group, not by their own ideas and goals. Most Iraqis owe their loyalties--and derive their honor from belonging--to their familial clan, tribe or religious sect, to which the individual is subservient.

So too Journo and the members of ARI.

This deep-seated tribalism is reflected in...secular collectivist ideologies...

Like Journo's.

Freedom rests on the idea of individualism: the principle that every man is an independent, sovereign being, that he is not an interchangeable fragment of the tribe...

Like Journo.

In the long run, if Iraqis or other peoples...are to become free...they must first recognize that their current ideas and practices are incompatible with freedom. They must recognize that they need to adopt a philosophy of individualism.

So too Journo and the hateful verminous losers of ARI.

Post 7

Wednesday, February 2, 2005 - 10:58am

I agree with ARI on their assessment of democracy in this essay of theirs, but I also think that a step in the right direction is perhaps better than nothing.

They might very well vote for their usual prehistoric lunacy, but at least they got to exercise choice, which is always a function of some degree of the rational mind, no matter how bullet-riddled and warped the logic is behind their choices.

I also think that the only alternative to democracy -- the rule of the majority, no matter how flawed -- is what Rand has always seemed to implicitly argue for, and which I think that ARI is ultimately arguing for, without actually putting words forth: a will of the enlightened/wise, which I would call "sapien-ocracy" or something.

Among the problem with a "sapienocracy", as delicious as it sounds, is that even the best minds cannot anticipate everything, and may even make predictive errors. However, could this be any worse than society being steered by the forces of populism and consensus?

And so, if I'm correct about ARI's true stance (which I think I am), I call on them to step forth and propose some plan of implementing this form of government.

(If it doesn't exist already, beneath a veneer of democracy.)

Post 8

Wednesday, February 2, 2005 - 10:58am

Wednesday, February 2, 2005 - 1:23pm

I agree completely with the ARI on this, and it is excellent public relations to tell the brutal truth in this day and age. Moreover, I think this editorial is fully compatible with the ideas of Robert Tracinski or Yaron Brook as I understand them.

The only reservation I would have concerns the wording of the final sentence, �A good first step toward teaching this lesson would be not granting them the pretense of elections.� This presumes a moral status that the US can no longer claim, since it has so thoroughly abandoned its founding principles at home. But I agree that the elections will accomplish nothing and that they are a distraction from the proper objective: to physically attack the nerve centers of the Axis of Evil.

(Edited by Rodney Rawlings on 2/02, 2:00pm)

Post 10

Wednesday, February 2, 2005 - 3:54pm

Andre--
How can Journo be ignorant and depraved if he is a cyborg?

You seem to agree with the points made in ARI's op-ed: "Like Journo's"X3 and "So too Journo and the hateful verminous losers of ARI.
So does that mean your a hateful verminous loser?

Post 11

Wednesday, February 2, 2005 - 3:23pm

On O'Reilly I have only one thing to say: Never ever trust him.
Someone who says things like this:

Bill O�Reilly recently announced that �there are a lot of very brilliant scholars who believe the reason we have incomplete science on evolution is that there is a higher power involved in this.� O�Reilly then proceeded to call the American Civil Liberties Union �the Taliban� for opposing the teaching of anti-evolutionist perspectives in public-school science classes.

Can't be taken seriously as a spokesman.

@Knoll: You said that you saw this on FOX news. Did you choose your facts from a variety of media (f.e. internet, TV (different) stations and radio) so that you get a clear picture by calculating all facts into the equation, or is it just FOX News?
If it is the latter, I'd advise you on reconsidering your idea of objective argumentation.

Post 12

Wednesday, February 2, 2005 - 10:08pm

This is a horrific article by what is becoming a more and more horrific organization. Mr. Journo is another in a long line of lightweight hacks (Bernstein, Brook, Schwartz....) at the Ayn Rand Institute that tend to resemble radical Islamic clerics in the way they present their ideology and their proposed policy.

If the Ayn Rand Institute wants to promote the philosophy of Ayn Rand they might consider abandoning this strange fundamentalist Objectivist-Peikoffian-Likud hybrid they have created as their foreign policy platform. The U.S., by not slaughtering Iraqis (and other Arabs) by the thousands is not committing an act of altruism. There are ethical questions involving the individual rights of human beings in this equation. What makes their desired policy wrong in the current context can be summed up in this quote by Ayn Rand. I quoted this in a similar discussion a few weeks ago. This is in the Virtue of Selfishness page 122. This applies DIRECTLY to the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

"Dictatorship nations are outlaws. Any free country had the right to invade Nazi Germany and, today has the right to invade Soviet Russia, Cuba or any other slave pen�.. It is not a free nation�s duty to liberate other nations at the price of self sacrifice, but the free nation has the right to do it when and if it chooses.

This right however is conditional. Just as the suppression of crimes does not give a policeman the right to engage in criminal activities, so the invasion and destruction of a dictatorship does not give the invader the right to establish another variant of a slave society in a conquered country."

We all know and understand the pitfalls of democracy, collectivism and theocratic government. What Mr. Journo fails to grasp is the context of the situation in Iraq at the moment. The country has been taken over and occupied. The war against the dictatorship (which was entirely rational and ethical) has been won. The Americans are now a police force controlling the country. It would be massively IRRATIONAL and UNETHICAL for the Americans to run the country themselves for any further length of time. I don't think I need to go through a list of reasons as to why this is true -- including the fact that the Americans would be establishing another variant of a slave society by continuing with the status quo. The Iraqis must therefore create their own government. The government must have credibility with the people in order to function at all within the current chaos. More importantly, if a free society (or anything resembling it) is to be created the citizens of Iraq must establish their rights as individuals. An important step in this process is their right to vote. I have no doubt that the government they are about to create will be imperfect by Objectivist standards but it is a general step in the right direction and viewed within the current context of the situation in Iraq it is the only rational move at this time and we can only hope that out of these elections the seeds of individualism and freedom have been planted in Iraq. Time will tell.

- Jason

Post 13

Thursday, February 3, 2005 - 8:46am

Danny Silvera wrote:

Among the problem with a "sapienocracy", as delicious as it sounds, is that even the best minds cannot anticipate everything, and may even make predictive errors. However, could this be any worse than society being steered by the forces of populism and consensus?

The U.S. Constitution arose from such a system. Well educated property owners who created that document studied the past failures of democracies and republics and forged a government structure to serve the people without enslaving it to the unbridled passions of the masses. When the convention finished the final draft of the document, a bystander outside asked Benjamin Franklin what kind of government to expect. "A republic, if you can keep it," he replied.

I cannot imagine the Iraqi people creating such a document from within their own culture unaided by the West. However, assuming their constitution manages to separate powers and so forth successfully, it would certainly serve as a sound framework for a free democratic republic.

The "sapienocracy" of the early United States led to the democratic republic we have today, however flawed it may be.

Luke Setzer

Post 14

Thursday, February 3, 2005 - 11:19am

Luther,

Thanks for replying.

I believe strongly in a government led by the most logical and objective people in society... However, what we have created in this country is a government based on the lie that the craving for God is objectivity... that is, the addiction to the bondage of religion is a form of "enlightenment", and not only that, but the supreme form of enlightenment that entitles one to govern others.

The God-addicts settled in America first... in Jamestown, and they quickly established their al-Qaeda-like lunacy with such things as the Salem witch trials, and their basic mentality hasn't changed a bit in about 400 years.

Despite the fact that America was formalized with the Founding Fathers -- because the God-addicts were certainly incompetent to do so, eschewing logic and reality as they do -- the God-addicts have always maintained a certain base level of God-addiction in this culture, and have never given up on trying to establish a strangle-hold on the nation and the world, of course.

In America, the battle has always been between those who the country truly could not survive without: the Atlases of reason such as the Founding Fathers and the rational businessmen; and those who the country would DEFINITELY be better off without: the good-for-nothing parasites who knowingly promote the fraudulent commerce of religion as "enlightenment".

The most recent issue of TIME Magazine has the supremacy of "evangelicals" as its cover story. Well, the bastards finally schemed and tricked their way into total control of America, and we have a president in office whose true agenda the entire time, was to firmly establish his personal bondage addiction (God) throughout our entire nation, with him as Lord Oliver Cromwell, seeing over the entire land with an iron hand and a pathetically-concealed, perverse grin.

Worship of religion is the opposite of enlightenment, and its practitioners have no business in government or anywhere else. Only those who revere logic, reason, and proof have any business holding any reigns of power.

If only the damn fools in this country would see that... But if they saw that, they wouldn't be damn fools in the first place.

Post 15

Sunday, February 6, 2005 - 5:47am

So, what you're saying is that the only religion that should be allowed
in the United States is Atheism, and if anyone should happen to be
part of another religion they shouldn't have any rights or be allowed
to hold public office??

Now that sounds rather Al-Qaeda-like.

Isn't that basically what the Taliban did??

Post 16

Sunday, February 6, 2005 - 7:28pm

Although I can't claim to speak for Danny, I think what he is getting at is that politicians today use religion as a justification for a lot of the bullshit policies that are put over on the American people and that this has been going on since the founding of this country.

Adam

Post 17

Sunday, February 6, 2005 - 9:31pm

So, what you're saying is that the only religion that should be allowed
in the United States is Atheism, and if anyone should happen to be
part of another religion they shouldn't have any rights or be allowed
to hold public office??

Michael,

Is this a question, or an attempt at a summary of my stance?

Because if it's a question, I would say: No, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that it's Islam (and southern Baptist Christianity and its cousins) that doesn't want freedom of religion, anywhere. What I'm saying is that ANY religion should be practiceable in these United States, so long as it doesn't call for the destruction of ALL OTHER religions, as does Islam (and its ilk).

What I'm saying is that you can have a pot-luck of all sorts of religions... open up the market, and let them all compete for market share, and see what evolves in the way of a superior religion. Who knows what that superior religion will be, and what it will entail? Painting your face blue? Sticking carrots up your nose and barking at the moon?

I don't know; I don't care. Religion is obviously inherently stupid to me, period. But there IS one thing that I DO care about: no religion should attempt to sabotage the field of open competition, against other religions. THAT is where I draw the line.

And so, if your statement is a summary of my stance, for the record, and for the reasons I've just stated, it's an incorrect summary. What I have just stated, is the correct interpretation of what I said... And who would know what I meant, better than me? (Unless you are Charles Xavier or something, and can read my mind.)

Post 18

Wednesday, February 9, 2005 - 12:37am