THE LEPERS OF OBJECTIVISM


Barbara Branden

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Roger,

You wrote earlier:

I strongly suggest that OL'ers go to the Ayn Rand Bookstore website soon (TBA) and listen to Yaron Brooks' Sep. 12 2006 talk on America's failed foreign policy. He discusses this issue at length, both in the talk and in the QA session that follows.

I went there and for the life of me, I was not able to find the speech. Could you provide a link?

On another forum, a Brook-Epstein article was referenced from The Objective Standard, “Just War Theory” vs. American Self-Defense. I printed it out and will be making some comments later after I read it in depth.

I am trying to be fair, but on my preliminary skim, when I read things like the following, my dander gets up.

Whenever a nation initiates aggression against us, including by supporting anti-American terrorist groups and militant causes, it has forfeited its right to exist, and we have a right to do whatever is necessary to end the threat it poses.

Forfeited its right to exist?

Whether and under what conditions torture is practical is a specialized military question. The moral point is: If and to the extent torture is an effective technique to save American lives, and it is used on those who are initiating force against us, then it is morally obligatory.

Torture is morally obligatory?

Terrorists caught on the battlefield are not innocent until proven guilty; they are by that fact proven guilty of pursuing the deaths of Americans. Just as it is legitimate to kill them in the battlefield, so it is legitimate to use whatever force is necessary on them in an effort to achieve victory once they are caught.

Being a terrorist and being caught on a battlefield makes you automatically guilty with no further need for proof? What kind of battlefield does a terrorist fight on and how do you determine he is actually a terrorist?

I see some heavy-handed conceptual package dealing going on here. How this stuff translates initially to me is that, for this guy, morality is not a code for all of mankind based on objectivity. It is a code for protecting one tribe against other tribes. The collectivist nature of these pronouncements simply jumps out at me.

And I also see degree and context being thrown right out the window with these proclamations of general all-purpose rules of morality for causing undoable acts (like death) based on general categories of people.

This guy needs to read some Rand where she talks about cases where morality no longer applies. The use of torture, for example, is certainly such an instance. It is a military decision based on an extreme situation. Brook got that part right. But the context is that in normal life, torture is not only morally wrong. Torture is NEVER morally obligatory. Ever. Even in extreme situations. (A man would be immoral for not torturing another? Gimme a break!)

I admit, torture can be used in extreme situations where morality has been shot all to hell. But then it is no longer a moral question. In that context, it is a personal call based on whatever values the torturer holds. More than anything else, it is his call, it is highly personal, and it is restricted to case-by-case decisions. Admittedly, such a decision is based on values, but it has no moral import whatsoever since it cannot be codified.

This is subtle, it appears to be merely a question of semantics, but premise-wise, the two positions are as different as night and day. This kind of issue is extremely important to determining what kind of world you want to live in based on what kind of morality. One view leads to freedom for all men as a default in thinking, and the other leads to a thug mentality.

Can you imagine living in a world where it is morally correct to condemn and punish one man because he decided not to torture another? That is what "morally obligatory" means.

The other quotes have similar oversimplifications while slipping in and implanting the tribe in between the cracks. But I will have more to say later.

Michael

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I've been waiting to mention this until people had expressed enough of their respective says maybe the comment could be entertained in the spirit intended. I've flinched from the first time I saw the thread's title at the use of the word "lepers." Leprosy is a physical affliction, not a moral failing; and historically lepers were often the victims of injustice. "Lepers" -- actual lepers -- are very much to be pitied, and helped by medical means, not despised. I suggest finding a different word for the meaning. "Pariah" is a possibility, although that too has unfortunate historical implications, since it originated as a name for persons of low caste in India and Burma. But it's come in English usage predominantly to have the more neutral meaning simply of "outcast." Or...maybe someone else could suggest another alternative.

Ellen

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Roger,

You wrote earlier:

I strongly suggest that OL'ers go to the Ayn Rand Bookstore website soon (TBA) and listen to Yaron Brooks' Sep. 12 2006 talk on America's failed foreign policy. He discusses this issue at length, both in the talk and in the QA session that follows.

I went there and for the life of me, I was not able to find the speech. Could you provide a link?

Well, when I parenthetically wrote "TBA", I was assuming that people would understand that they should "soon" go to that website, at a time "to be announced," but that the material was not yet posted there, so far as I know. ARI has an ongoing policy of posting the audio of their lectures within a week or two of their being given. In this particular case, since Yaron is going to give the same talk next month at Ford Hall Forum, it's possible they will delay posting the audio until after he has given the talk the second time. So, if you're interested in hearing his talk, "stay tuned," as they say. :-)

In regard to the Brook-Epstein essay, I think that by a "nation" aggressing against us losing its right to exist, they were using the term in the sense of "nation-state," not "country." In other words, in regard to the government and its supporters, not the people in general. But I could be wrong.

As for torture being "morally obligatory" when its use would save American lives against those attacking or threatening them, I think again they were referring to government policy. It is the government's official duty or obligation to defend American lives against aggression. Thus, whatever the effective means is for doing so, it is morally obligatory for the government to use it. Wouldn't you agree?

If we're really interested in our government "taking out the bad guys," we should applaud the government's using the minimum amount of force necessary for doing so. This may involve torturing a captive who we have reason to suspect has the information that will help us to avert a terrorist attack, capture Bin Laden, etc. It may involve shooting through a human shield in order to get the bad guy. There are awful scenarios that arise from even a modest use of one's imagination, and they are realistic possibilities. Either we (i.e., U.S. government agents) flinch and morally and existentially disarm ourselves in such cases, or we do what is necessary in order to defeat the enemy.

I certainly agree with you that it would be an ethical nightmare to aim the same principle (and condemnation) at individuals, who are under no such obligation to defend the rights of others and who fail to use force in their defense, that we aim at government (which is under that obligation) when it fails to do so.

REB

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Roger

I just did a bit of investigating on the Saudi Oil fields and my hunches were absolutely spot on - and guess by whom of all people? Chris Sciabarra. Please read this article on the Saudi Arabia oil field thing written by Chris.

Here is how American companies have "peacefully" developed such "property" in foreign countries (and I have seen this from the inside). They bribe the hell out of whomever is in power. They get a monopoly. They set up business.

The root of the property rights you are defending is the right to obtain monopolies through bribery and maintain them through government protection (also paid for with bribery) - because that is exactly what happened in Saudi Arabia. (Guess what other monopoly/bribery monkey-business has been done with infrastructure construction and operation? The situation is really, really ugly on all sides. Objectivists need to do a reality check on this because making constant sweeping moral denunciatory statements based on that kind of history - and ignoring it - turns the philosophy into a laughingstock of double-standards.)

And, like Chris mentioned, the major US players are all still in the game over there and they are all still making oodles of cash. Do you know of any one that went bankrupt because of the expropriation? Gimme a break! Here is a paragraph from his article I linked above:

I’ve long argued that U.S. companies short-sighted enough to enter into contracts with foreign governments like those of the former Soviet Union or Saudi Arabia—which had/have a poor history of upholding private property rights—should not have the right to hold American taxpayers and lives hostage to their stupidity. “We” do not have an obligation to bail out Western oil companies whose property was “expropriated” by the House of Sa’ud. A cursory look at the history of oil development in Saudi Arabia would show us, in any event, that the Western oil industry has been in bed—“embedded” if you will—with their ‘expropriators’ from the beginning. Nothing much has actually changed since the Saudi government ‘took over’ the oil by successively increasing its share of the Arabian-American Oil Company (ARAMCO); U.S. administrators, technicians, and personnel are still firmly in place and U.S. oil companies like Exxon-Mobil remain at the forefront of all new oil exploration in the country.

Using the US military to recapture that kind of property is most definitely a war of territorial expansion.

I also think you are missing the main point of Rand's essay, "The Roots of War." You don't just stop supporting a statist government by bombing it. You stop doing business with it. Period. You certainly don't bribe dictators and their staff for monopolies.

Where are the ARI people saying, "Let us shut down our businesses immediately"? They are not saying that. And yes, they are interested in - and preaching - territorial expansion.

I am not against dismantling statist governments by military force. As Rand said, they attack their unarmed population. Now some are supporting attacks on the world and they have to be stopped. I have no doubt the days of this government of Iran are numbered.

But let us have a reality check. We don't nuke innocents to defend gross hypocrisy. ARI might preach that crap. I don't.

Michael

In regard to bribery and monopoly in Saudi Arabia -- if Chris's information is correct, then that might negate the ARI argument in favor of seizing their oil field and returning them to the rightful owners. But bribery in itself is not a sign that the oil companies did anything wrong. It may just be a cost of doing business in a hostile environment, like "protection money." Also, the monopolies may have just been a consequence of the bribes/protection money. "We pay you, and you allow us to do business." A de facto monopoly, yes -- but different from the oil companies actually asking the Saudis not to allow others to do business. Did they do this? I am open to persuasion by documented evidence. But that historical detail is important to nail down, before you tar the oil companies with the bribery/monopoly brush.

You seem to be hinting at a parallel between the oil companies and Cheney's company (Halliburton?) that builds and repairs infrastructures. Perhaps you could clarify. As I see it, so long as the U.S. government pursues an altruistic foreign policy, furnishing food and repairing infrastructure, etc., some company is going to get the (taxpayer-funded) job. It certainly smells when someone high in the government has past or present interests in such a company. But the basic problem is not government contracting, but the altruistic policies that support so much of it.

I still don't see the point about "looting" or "territorial expansion" in regard to Iran. And that is where the nuking of presumed innocents is being advocated and debated -- NOT for the purpose of seizing their land or the businesses operating on them, but for the purpose of annihilating their government and its ideological support structure. Still looks an awful lot like self-defense to me, though in need of some rethinking about the specific targets.

REB

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Ellen: "I've flinched from the first time I saw the thread's title at the use of the word "lepers." Leprosy is a physical affliction, not a moral failing; and historically lepers were often the victims of injustice."

That's why I was careful to say that "they should be shunned and avoided just as lepers once were shunned and avoided." I am using the term as meaning the social outcast, the undesirable, the unacceptable.

Barbara

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Roger,

Before I discuss a few points, let me be clear that I do think the USA should have declared war on Iran ages ago. If there is enough proper intelligence, as there was about Afghanistan to prove direct attacks against Americans, then war should be declared. The military capacity of that country should be dismantled destructively and the government abolished by force.

Just because our intelligence was faulty about Iraq (and that whole situation is a mess from the top to the bottom), that does not invalidate the principle that intelligence gathering must be used for validating a source of an attack before declaring war.

The very first point I want to make is about ARI's oversimplification of Islam being the sole cause of terrorism. It is one of the causes, not the sole cause. It pains me to watch Objectivists and other reasonable people twisting arguments into a pretzel to "prove" the "complicity" of one and a half billion people in the acts of a few thousand at most - and such moral complicity makes them proper moral targets for genocide because they are morally contaminated with Islam.

If you don't think that this is what is being preached, then where are the other arguments about the causes of terrorism? Where is the objectivity of looking at one person or group and saying, "he is guilty because of what he did," and looking at another person or group and saying, "he is not guilty because he did nothing or did the opposite"? You do not see such objectivity.

You are now seeing the abomination of Objectivism being used to justify lethal force against a people on a massive scale because they hold some of the same thoughts that terrorists hold, or for simply being born and raised in a place. As I said elsewhere, if that is not collectivism, Ayn Rand did not write Atlas Shrugged.

About Saudi Arabia, bribery, monopolies and so forth, I have been reading an enormous amount of oversimplified crap coming from ARI and online Objectivist forums about altruism being the cause of the World Bank, IMF, etc. I will admit that this is the banner they use. But here is how the game has been played for years. Loans on a scale that will be impossible to repay were offered all over the world in underdeveloped countries in exchange for infrastructure monopolies (power, water, sewage, roads, etc.). These loans are where the bribe money came from. Many of these loans were structured in such a manner that the bulk of the money never left the USA - it went directly into the coffers of the awarded company or companies (minus the bribes - and bribes also took the form of future profits and kickbacks). Several very creative mechanisms for transferring funds were used and there were a lot of smoke and mirrors, but the bottom line is that these loans were never intended to be repaid. They were meant to keep the country in debt, thus submissive and available for raw materials and cheap labor instead (and, incidentally, keep the money in the USA).

The idea that bankers are altruistic enough to give away billions of dollars is reasoning for the funny farm. There is a lot of proof of all this out there - starting with the fact that an enormous number of these infrastructure projects were never even started, abandoned halfway through, or built half-assed and are now in states of decay. Americans who sit here in the USA and have never been to another place to see with their own eyes simply find the existence of something like this too incredible to believe.

But even more incredible is that the biggest problem with Saudi Arabia was not nationalized oil fields (with almost zero impact on USA oil companies and personnel). It was the fact that it was able to repay the infrastructure loans, thus set its own policies without intimidation. A vast new dimension was added to the concept of bribing and money laundering to get around that.

You asked about whether Saudi protection of the monopolies of oil companies was on a formal basis of making it illegal for other companies to compete. I don't know the laws, but I have seen similar situations in Brazil. Sometimes exclusivity is written into law. Sometimes the paperwork for getting a license is impossible to obtain by others since the resources (like land) are no longer available through assignment of things like exclusive mineral rights, or some rather creative legal requirements too varied to list. In any event, I have no doubt that the Saudi rulers were and are in complete control of who does oil business in their country - and that their standard is not fundamentally based on free-market values. It is based on what they want, regardless of whether this is a rational desire or whim. Period. Everything else is secondary to that.

There is a whole lot more to this story - both good and bad - and objectivity demands that, like Chris Sciabarra, we examine the facts. We don't just holler, "Islamic terrorists attacked us - Islam is evil - nuke 'em all!"

In my own judgment of all this, Islam, which I consider to have very evil doctrines in it alongside very good ones, is added to a political mess that has several layers of complicity and wrongdoing. In short, there is nobody who is morally right or wrong on a historical level. They are all wrong on many levels. And they are all right on others. The USA government (including military, advisory and financial resources paid for by USA taxpayers, and USA companies who were well-connected) should not have been toadying up to dictators in the first place. To ask for more USA taxpayer support to bail them out is obscene.

Islam, just like Communism and Nazism, preaches world domination by force. That is also about as obscene an evil doctrine as you can get. And that being the case, what in hell were American people doing conducting business with these dictators? Every one of them in the Mideast was and is Islamic. Now these same Americans want the moral high-road from misguided Objectivist prophets preaching genocide? I, for one, will not give it to them.

There it is. We have a situation. It is an ugly situation. If ever objectivity were required, it would be now. Yet I see high-profile people in the philosophy I hold using this opportunity to preach tribal collectivism in the name of Objectivism and that disgusts me to no end.

Continuing - about Iran. If you are really interested in this story, all of the pertinent facts should be looked at, not just a one-sided litany from ARI based on its territorial expansion agenda. You should start way back when Kermit Roosevelt was dispatched to Iran to stir up unrest with bribes and threats to depose Mossadegh (for nationalizing British oil fields - other monopolies) and install Pahlavi.

The real ugly, ugly underside of this story is that it was a failure of intellectual warfare on a massive scale. Islam was not addressed intellectually to remove the poison in it, the call to violence. Instead, the poison itself in Islam was used as a tool to stir up crowd emotions to depose one dictator and replace him with another. That is the sorry-ass way the USA conducted its intellectual warfare - and once the people saw that the goodies were not going to them, but to a repressive regime that was killing them and their children instead (remember SAVAK?), they also looked at why that happened. They saw that they had been duped, not convinced.

There is a heavy price being paid for this today. Islam needs intellectual defeat in addition to force against its active members who try to carry out world domination by force. And it is a rule of mankind that no intellectual persuasion is permanent with force. Ideas matter and they can only be spread in peace, through the voluntary thinking of individuals, one by one. USA intellectuals (and now Objectivists) have not only defaulted on the proper task at hand, of offering these ideas to them in a form they can understand, they have made and are making matters worse by prostituting good ideas to justify thugs.

The idea of bombing people and showering survivors with papers giving intellectual arguments is so off the mark it takes my breath away. The only thing you can put on such a paper that will make any sense at all to survivors is "surrender or you will be next."

By all means, let us get rid of the Iranian threat. It is real and needs to be addressed. But let us understand that getting rid of this threat will impact USA oil companies and tighten our belts (especially at the gas pump). Back when Carter kept ridiculously appeasing the thugs holding the USA embassy hostage, he had a dose of altruism. But there was a HUGE dose of keeping business as usual going with the big USA companies doing business there (even under Khomeini). Oh, there are formal trade sanctions in place, but I have seen enough international banking monkey-shines to know just how easy it is to run business through a chain of entities to hide the true players. Also, there was a small issue of 12 billion dollars in frozen Iranian assets - and I wonder how all this played out behind the scenes with the major players.

With Iran, the intellectual and moral blade has to cut both ways. World domination by force is evil and it must be stopped. Bribing dictators, duping populations with their own Islamic poison, and government protected monopolies are evil and this has to be stopped. There is a mess to clean up in the world and identifying all this is crucial to getting it cleaned up properly. The bottom line is if you don't want to sanction a dictator, don't do business with him. Then go from there. The flip side of this is that when you are in a free country and you do business with a dictator, you grant him a moral sanction.

That is one of the strongest moral principles operating throughout all this. And where is ARI on all this? Nowhere or hiding in footnotes and buried references while they openly advocate tribal collectivism.

Now I want to address some of your comments.

In regard to the Brook-Epstein essay, I think that by a "nation" aggressing against us losing its right to exist, they were using the term in the sense of "nation-state," not "country." In other words, in regard to the government and its supporters, not the people in general.

What is so wrong with this thinking is the for a nation to lose its right to exist, it has to have such a right. Since when does Objectivism grant a right to statist governments to exist? When is that morally proper? Objectivism grants the reality that they exist and must be combated, not the moral right to exist.

This is a package deal concept and it is completely wrong. The root of this thinking is tribal collectivism - in portraying an "us against them" scenario, of prostituting the very word "morality" to serve as justification for gang warfare. It is so much easier to think "nation that lost its right to exist by attacking us" than "dictatorship, made up of thugs and unarmed repressed people." What is hidden with this is the massive amount of goodies the tribe on our side wants to loot from the other tribe.

That is not any type of Objectivism I ever read about in Rand's works.

I repeat, the government of a free country fostering trade between its citizens and those of a dictatorship is morally wrong. There may be political and military reasons that make it a good short-term option, but the act in itself is not morally proper - in any sense of the term - under Objectivism. That is the real issue involved in considering a nation's "right to exist" Brook and Epstein wrote about.

As for torture being "morally obligatory" when its use would save American lives against those attacking or threatening them, I think again they were referring to government policy. It is the government's official duty or obligation to defend American lives against aggression. Thus, whatever the effective means is for doing so, it is morally obligatory for the government to use it. Wouldn't you agree?

The answer to this question is in your next statement in that post.

I certainly agree with you that it would be an ethical nightmare to aim the same principle (and condemnation) at individuals, who are under no such obligation to defend the rights of others, that we aim at government (which is under that obligation), when it fails to do so.

Let us be clear about one thing. The government is not a collective entity separate from the individuals that make it up. When you make a moral demand on the government, you make it on the individuals working there.

The government does not have, and should never have, a moral obligation to torture anybody. Its moral obligation is to protect the people it represents. If torture is involved, as I said, that is a case-by-case situation. As the norm is that torturing people is morally wrong, then it must be clear that morality is out the window when it is used.

I would strongly be against the USA government if it ever even thought of court marshalling one of our soldiers because that soldier failed to torture an enemy prisoner.

Since when does "I was only doing my duty" become a moral imperative for the USA armed forces? Under the argument advanced by Brook and Epstein, it would be moral to set up concentration camps with extermination facilities for prisoners. Read them carefully and you will see it.

I will have more on this later. The more I study this, the more Barbara's characterization of "leper" seems appropriate to me: i.e., a "moral leprosy" that is able to contaminate others with ease.

(Like Ellen, I was shocked initially because I thought about actual lepers. But such shock value is a good thing to wake people up. I can see how rationalized tribal collectivism has all the characteristics of such a disease, especially contamination-wise, even if it is not one in the strictest sense of the word.)

Michael

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I related exactly with Barbara's characterization. I think Ellen was just trying to be humanitarian, she was thinking of the horrors of real leprosy. But the comparison fits.

And again, I don't have much in the way of beloved evidence to prove this, but I'd be shocked if I was wrong: most all of these "lepers" are talking slaughter without having ever experienced much if anything in the way of true human horror. See, when you see and smell burning baby flesh, or whatever else along that line, it changes your viewpoint on things a little bit. If it doesn't, you're probably a fucking sociopath, at minimum.

What do I smell? I smell chicken hawks, for one. It's all chess for these guys. Chess.

But that's just the Unitarian in me. We're the ones that go out and help clean up the messes. You know, give kids blankets and stuff.

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More Biddle-Piddle

(Gimmee an "s" any day of the week. ARI has a Biddle, but we have a Bissell, which is far superior - the difference is in the "s" for Smart, instead of "d" for Depraved. Also, there is "ell" for Ever Lucid and Logical instead of "le" for Leper. :) )

At the end of a blog entry (dated September 12, 2006) called Military 'Solutions' Don't Work; Try Suicide! criticizing an article by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times, Biddle makes his view extremely clear:

No, Mr. Kristof, we should not—as the neoconservatives would have it, and as President Bush will probably do—engage in "a few air raids" to "make the Iranian nuclear menace disappear." You're right; that won't work. Rather, we should engage in a massive and sustained air assault on Iran until all the Islamists there are dead. Yes, all of them. You see, dead Islamists can't make bombs. Or will you evade that too?

That is true. A dead enemy can't fight. And a dead innocent person can never become an enemy, either (or friend, for that matter—but who cares about details?).

(Tip of hat to LW Hall for noticing this quote on another forum. Incidentally, this is on a blog on The Objectivist Standard site, a publication ARI fully endorses.)

Let people learn from history. The Communists were very clear about what they wanted to do. Hitler was very clear, too.

People kept saying, "They couldn't possibly mean that."

Well they did.

Let us take Biddle at his word. He is preaching genocide.

Michael

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Ellen: "I've flinched from the first time I saw the thread's title at the use of the word "lepers." Leprosy is a physical affliction, not a moral failing; and historically lepers were often the victims of injustice."

That's why I was careful to say that "they should be shunned and avoided just as lepers once were shunned and avoided." I am using the term as meaning the social outcast, the undesirable, the unacceptable.

Barbara

Well...I'm afraid that the passage you quote did nothing to improve my dislike of the comparison. If the people to whom you refer indeed deserve shunning and avoidance (as to this, I can't say, since I haven't been following the accompanying debate), then, no, they shouldn't "be shunned and avoided just as lepers once were," since the social contempt with which the latter were ostracized only added to the woes of unfortunates. Thus you risk having your image backfire by arousing sympathy rather than disdain for the people you're labeling as "lepers" (the image had that immediate reverse effect on me). It's easy to understand why lepers were avoided in an era which lacked modern medical knowledge of infectious disease (including the knowledge that leprosy is not particularly contagious, if it even is contagious; I seem to recall reading somewhere in a medical publication that it's no longer thought to be contagious at all, but I'm not sure if I really did read that). However, the social stigmitzation of lepers is an historic blackmark, so IMO the image is a potentially boomerang choice of analogy.

Ellen

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(Tip of hat to LW Hall for noticing this quote on another forum. Incidentally, this is on a blog on The Objectivist Standard site, a publication ARI fully endorses.)

Thanks Michael, but I cannot take credit for noticing it first; that would go to Robert Campbell who made mention of it in post #4 of this thread.

L W

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With tongue somewhat planted in cheek, but head held leveled, expecting a serious answer--Can we say that Craig Biddle’s “ideas” [in regard to this controversy] are evil? I could say that he is merely “wrong.” But he is being morally frayed for advocating those ideas after all. :rolleyes:

Edited by Victor Pross
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Roger: "I would give the Iranian government 48 hours to surrender (and innocent civilians to move to safety), and then I would nuke Teheran and Qum. Heavy leafletting of the "liberal," "Westernized" population, to give them a chance to rise up against their leaders and take down the regime from within -- but if they don't take responsibility (or at least get out of Dodge before H-hour), they go down with the regime."

Roger, I think this is a totally unrealistic and wrong-headed idea. For one thing, it would be impossible for Teheran and Qum to be emptied in 48 hours -- which means that, as with Biddle's recommendations, innocent people by the thousands, perhaps millions, would be killed. How can that possibly be justified, much less as our first step? And remember, it would be our first step. We have done nothing so far to convince Iran -- or anyone else -- that we mean to stop them from developing an atom bomb.

And why in the world would we resort to atomic weapons when we have other means of taking out the government and /or convincing the Iranians who hate the regime that they would have our military and other support should they rebel? Once we had the bomb, we could have used it on Berlin and Tokyo, but what would we have accomplished except to create an undying hatred for us on the part of the Germans and Japanese, even among those who opposed their governments?

As for the idea that the citizens of a statist country in some sense implicitly support their government, I consider this preposterous. Do you support our anti-trust laws? -- or universal health insurance? -- or the mess that is our public education? Should you be held responsible for them? And note that in Soviet Russia, Rand did not join the underground. Did that mean she supported the Communist regime? Did her family, who also did not rebel and who did not attempt to leave Russia, support it? I've never understood how she could say that the citizens of a country are responsible for their government, and should be held responsible for it. This seems to me to fly in the face of the reality of a dictatorship.

There's much more to be said, but I'll leave it at this for now.

Ellen, I don't want to argue with you about the issue of calling the Biddle people "lepers." I don't see the problem, and I think my meaning is clear, but I'd have no objection to giving my post another title if people are troubled by it and if you or someone else can think of a better one.

Barbara

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I would advocate selecting for a thoroughly brutish ass kicking all military and government and terrorist training camps—and that is enough. And this would be only after sufficient notice, among ultimatums, to cease--or else. Failure to comply must be met with devastating retaliatory force. What is considered “sufficient” notice is a matter of military strategy—which none of us here are qualified to speak of. I am merely speaking of the morality of self-defense.

Again--ONLY military, government and training camps--for target.

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Victor,

On the evil idea thing, yes Biddle is promoting evil ideas. But in reference to where your tongue is in your cheek, they can only be judged as evil after they have been judged as true or false. Nuking an urban area will kill many civilians. That is true. Genocide kills both guilty and innocent alike. That is true. Now time to judge.

Furthermore, there is degree. The evil of Biddle's pronouncements (which is already an action, pronouncement, not just an idea - so the evil increases as the pronouncements do) is nowhere near the scale of evil of actually nuking an urban area in his manner or engaging in a genocidal campaign.

Michael

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Michael,

I’m beginning to think that there was no fundamental disagreement between us at all—in the first place--of our exchange regarding good/evil ideas and good/evil actions.

I believe that *I* have always maintained that there is, yes, a matter of degree to be considered--and that it is the pronouncement/advocacy of evil ideas that I centered my arguments around—and no, not the ‘idea’ in the head of an overweight ice cream eater breaking a diet. I was leaning towards the advocacy of Marxism. [And now Biddle can be included in MY examples]. So, you now grant that there are, after all, “EVIL IDEAS”—which was the center of our discussion, with you taking the opposite side. Ah, my head is spinning, I need to rest.

:)

Victor

Edited by Victor Pross
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I have been reading some defense of Biddle from the "other" side and the only thing I have seen of any substance is hairsplitting - explaing that Islamists and Muslims are different.

Keeeerist on a stick!

This guy Biddle wrote something for the general American public saying all Islamists should be obliterated from the face of the earth. The general American public doesn't know or even care about differences between Islamists and Muslims. Biddle knows full and well most people will take him to mean genocide.

This is called a trial balloon to see if the idea "takes" and it is despicable seeing it come from Objectivist quarters. I am starting to believe - seriously - that those defending him really do not have a good grasp on reality. This whole thing is way beyond partisan polemics.

I believe Biddle does, though. He knows full well what he is doing.

Michael

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Victor,

Go back and read our exchanges. I never denied that ideas could be judged. I denied that they were good/evil on the primary cognitive level (true/false level). They are to be judged only after the true/false call has been made - only then.

Peikloff & Co. claim that on that epistemological level they are good/evil. This is akin to saying you can judge what you do not know - because you judge it at the moment of knowing it.

Even then, you still cannot judge a person by the content of his expressed ideas. For instance, is Biddle a genocidal monster? Not yet, although he sure seems to be hell bent on becoming one. He should be careful when handling sharp objects during this phase of his life.

If he had been talking about nuking all Israelis, however, undoubtedly Peikloff & Co. would have called him a genocidal monster.

(I also don't think they would have been amused by someone claiming that Israelis are different than Jews, so he really wasn't preaching genocide.)

Michael

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Ellen,

Here is a definition of leper from a web dictionary:

lep·er

n.

1. A person affected by leprosy.

2. A person who is avoided by others; a pariah.

Barbara's use is correct and precise in second definition.

(This info doesn't really address the image thing, though. If she is comfortable with it for now, so am I. I like the shock value. I will be interested in observing the reactions of those not involved.)

Michael

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Michael: "On the evil idea thing, yes Biddle is promoting evil ideas. But. . . they can only be judged as evil after they have been judged as true or false."

.

Michael, you're missing the point here. The truth of falsity of an idea has nothing to do with whether or not an idea can be evil. The issue is that good and evil pertain to volitional beings, not to either physical reality or to concepts. You would not say that a table is evil, and for the same reason you cannot say that the concept of a table is evil. If I hit you with the table, however, then you are able to make a moral judgment, because I chose to do so. Similarly with higher level concepts, which are simply combinations of lower-level concepts. You can say that a Nazi is evil because of what he does, but the concept "Nazi" simply is, it does not act, it does not choose, it does not make decisions.

To say that concepts can be good or evil is to mix categories. It's the equivalent of saying that a concept can be pretty, or sensitive, or thoughtful. These are not categories that have any relevance to ideas.

Do I condemn the "Objectivist Lepers" because they hold in their heads the concept "mass destruction?" No. We, too, hold the concept in our heads, or we wouldn't know what they were talking about. I condemn them because they have acted in a manner that is anti-life; they have made the volitional choice to advocate putting such ideas into practice. We don't advocate it.

There's another issue I want to deal with in another article, that is much trickier. And that is the moral stature of motives. But it's a different issue.

Barbara

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Barbara,

I was using the broader sense of "idea" here and simply left out the results that it produces if implemented. I went into all this in long explanations on the thread that was deleted. The following quote from David Kelley, The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand, p. 39, will make it clear what I was saying:

Thus, for example, when Marxist ideas are implemented, they lead to widespread death and destruction through the actions of tyrants like Stalin. It's because the ideas are false that they produce these effects rather than universal brotherhood, peace and prosperity. That is, the truth or falsity of an idea is its essential trait, underlying and explaining its causal powers. Because the effects of Marxist ideas are bad, moreover, we evaluate the ideas as bad.

Notice that I have not condemned Biddle for simply for holding the idea of genocide in his head. I even stated clearly:

Even then, you still cannot judge a person by the content of his expressed ideas.

(One word. In that particular post, I was unclear when I said "even then." I meant by that, "supposing Peikoff's notion were true" [that ideas are inherently good or evil]. If you substitute that phrase for "even then," or better yet, add it before, this will give a more precise meaning of what I was trying to say - "Supposing Peikoff's notion were true, even then, you still cannot judge a person by the content of his expressed ideas.") And in an earlier post on this thread:

The evil of Biddle's pronouncements (which is already an action, pronouncement, not just an idea - so the evil increases as the pronouncements do) is nowhere near the scale of evil of actually nuking an urban area in his manner or engaging in a genocidal campaign.

This is one of those cases where language gets really sloppy because the same word is used for two different things. In the first case - the "evil idea" case - what is not being talked about is the mere concept, but instead, the concept together with results from a projected implementation by volitional beings - just like above with Kelley evaluating Marxist ideas as "bad" (and I believe the context makes it clear that "bad" meant "evil" there, not something like "poor quality").

This makes the two statements: "genocide is evil" and "the idea of genocide is evil," mean the same thing in that particular context. "Idea" and "concept" are not used in an identical sense. "Idea" as used here includes a lot more - it holds the result of the concept if implemented. I called this kind of judging an idea as good or evil "colloquial" in my previous explanations.

In the second sense, I was not even judging the idea at all, but the actions carried out in using them. Notice that I only condemned Biddle for his actions, his pronouncements - and I do believe that it is evil to preach genocide, or even massive slaughter of unarmed civilians for something like shock value. I even used the "E" word on a sliding scale - being more evil to actually slaughter unarmed civilians than to preach doing it.

I fully agree with you that on the cognitive level, concepts are neither good nor evil. Not even normative abstractions. They are simply correct identifications (or not) of what is beneficial or harmful to living beings. I called this the "epistemological level." The good/evil consideration only enters on the "ethical level."

I also fully agree with you that the motives and actions of a person are the actual things being evaluated as good or evil, using life as a standard, even when this is bundled in a popular use of the language. And I agree that we only judge people as good or evil based on what they actually do or what they intend to do.

To be even clearer (or more confusing, as the case may be depending on who is reading this), on an epistemological level, the concept of genocide is only a true or false identification of an act. On an ethical level, genocide is called evil since ethics is a code telling volitional beings what they should do based on a previous identification of what values actually exist for them.

That is how I understand this issue.

When talking about this, I get sort of irritated at Peikoff and his followers because they have made it constantly necessary - through a package deal concept, an incredible amount of nonstop hairsplitting, and an even more incredible amount of silly moralizing denunciations - to provide a long explanation about the difference between common colloquial use of an expression and the precise definition of a concept.

(Am I now no longer evil in your view? :) )

Michael

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Biddle, Innovative Idea Man:

Rather, we should engage in a massive and sustained air assault on Iran until all the Islamists there are dead.

Wow, where have we seen that before? I'd have to do an L. Ron Hubbard and build a giant, underground library to house all the documented cases where in the course of human history that kind of thing has been posited. Here's a little tricky-poo: pull out "Islamists" and put in any pigeonhole of your choice. You can change the country too. C'mon, it's a great party game! Here, I'll start...(I recommend using cut paste on the original, it saves typing). Sort of like sentence completion for a-holes:

1. Rather, we should engage in a massive and sustained air assault on Utah until all the Mormons there are dead.

2. Rather, we should engage in a massive and sustained air assault on Manhattan until all the African-Americans there are dead.

3. Rather, we should engage in a massive and sustained air assault on San Francisco until all the homosexuals there are dead.

It's fun! Try it at home, kids!

See, I just passed an Islamist on the way to work-- she was on her way to the grocery store. If she happened to be visiting Iran, our boy here would be unloading ordinance on her. Uh duh.

Probably nearly the last I have to say about this fellow:

1. To re-put myself: if you pinched him too hard, he'd cry like a little bitch; he knows nothing of what it really means to have a smackdown put on you.

2. (And most importantly) Generally speaking, there's some kind of built in auto-immune system in civilization that, while not perfect, generally makes it so that no one ever listens to little pischers like this guy. He can throw down all he wants, there's bigger humanity-haters out there than he, and even they don't do so well. Let the little man keep screaming- he is nothing.

Edited by Rich Engle
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Re: Biddle

What I find particularly audacious are those individuals on SLOP who are twisting their brains in pretzels of rationalizations in the attempt to excuse Biddle’s advocacy of the mass murder of innocents. Yes, that’s what I said—the mass murder of innocents.

Let me clarify what I mean. No, I am not a pacifist. I am fully aware that collateral damage is one of the sad and unfortunate offshoots of war, that it is largely unavoidable. It is horrible. And that’s what I want to address and stress.

Now, how does Biddle's stance differ from what I just expressed? He is advocating the direct murder of citizens—innocents—in the name of morality, with the cheering wink of approval by certain key SLOP players. I don’t care how SLOPPERS slice this fact with all their philosophical rhetoric—Biddle is advocating murder. Can you hear the smack of glee coming from his lips?

One does not get the vibe from Biddle that he acknowledeges the deaths of innocents as truly horrible. No, one gets a feeling of frustrated blood-lust from the man—not in the manner of the necessity for defense or of justice--but one of vengefulness and unbridled emotionalism. [And this is an Objectivist 'sin'.]

In a war of self-defense, one recognizes that the death of innocents is the inevitable by-product of war—and in some cases its necessary,yes—but one DOES NOT openly advocate the mass murder of innocents, as a specific course of action--military wise or in the name morality.

THAT’S the central issue that SLOP is trying to deflect. They are covering the ass of "one of their own". That sounds like tribalism to me. "My gang member, right or wrong".

Victor

Edited by Victor Pross
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