ARIan Paranoia?

[Roger Bissell]

I'm sure that some if not all of us get the news releases from the Ayn Rand Institute that deal with current issues. On Tuesday of this week, ARI sent out a statement by senior writer David Holcberg taking President Bush to task for his proposal for dealing with the current upward spiking of oil and gasoline prices. My friend Jeanie Starr wrote a very good reply which I reproduce here with her permission, following the text of the ARI statement which is included for context.

REB

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From: Ayn Rand Institute OP-ED <Media@aynrand.org>

Reply-To: Ayn Rand Institute OP-ED <Media@aynrand.org>

Subject: Freedom vs. Unlimited Majority Rule

Date: Tue, 2 May 2006 13:01:50 -0500 (CDT)

It is highly disingenuous for President Bush to call on oil companies to expand refining capacity, when environmental regulations enforced by his administration continue to make it extremely costly to open new refineries.

And it is totally inappropriate for the President to call on oil companies to invest in research of "alternative" energy--he doesn't own these companies and should not use his position to pressure them. What if oil companies judge that investing in the discovery of new oil deposits makes more sense than improving wind turbines?

In a free economy the government has an obligation to protect the right of businessmen to make their own decisions and to run their companies as they see fit. How energy companies want to use their profits is their own business--not the government's.

David Holcberg

Copyright © 2006 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

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Dear ARI,

Although the title of your op ed is correct, I think you hold impossibly high standards for President Bush. Don't forget, he is ~not~ particularly an environmentalist. His administration did not enact current environmental laws, and god knows what it would take to have them overturned. Yes, it would be nice to rescind the legal barriers to drilling for oil, but I think it is ugly of you to call him disingenuous. He has always been in favor of drilling in Alaska. And his encouraging oil companies to research alternative energy is simply that. As for asking them to expand refining capacity, that will happen anyway when the Gulf Coast refineries start operation again in a few months, having recovered from Hurricane Katrina.

Bush is a business-oriented executive with an MBA, and he is not trying to wnn the oil companies. He is a trustworthy President whose IQ is 125, and who, I believe, does the best he can from his vantage point. It is not helpful or constructive to have pie-in-the-sky agendas for him.

Meanwhile, we face a triple socialist threat from three oil-rich countries south of our border: Cuba, Venezuela and now Bolivia. Would you care to comment about ~that~ situation? If I owned an oil company in Bolivia, I would not sign anything that made me give away 80% of the profits to the goverment. Then I would either walk away, and chalk up the whole thing to an error in judgment, or better, importune the U.S. military to protect my business.

I have been extremely disappointed that ARI has seen fit to twice recommend voting for Bill Clinton, a liar who is married to Satan (Don Imus' description) and who, aside from his many other sins, sold our defense secrets to the Chinese for donations to his campaign, and allowed land grabs in the name of the state park system. Then ARI recommended voting for his pal Al Gore, a lying, nutty environmentalist.

Finally, I think your op-eds smack of irrational paranoia about religious conservatism. And in the context of ARI's voting recommendations, exactly how is Mr. Bush's Christianity significantly more evil than any other past President's?

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Jeanie Merrifield Starr

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[Charles R. Anderson]

ARI fairly consistently opts for the dramatic, rather than the rational policy. They like being the outside critic. They enjoy taking every opportunity to kick someone in the groin.

Jeanie Merrifield Starr is just too rational. She recognizes that of course President Bush is not an Objectivist. If he were, he would not have been elected President. Of course he is not a genius. Geniuses have too many ideas that are not shared by the majority of voters. They tend also to produce explanations that are too long for a respectable soundbite. Bush is at least reasonably sensible and he has had some experience in business, which is largely the business of America. One cannot say that either of his two opponents had or has any common sense or any reasonable business experience. There is every reason to believe that they are less intelligent.

On the oil cost issue, she might have added that Iran and Russia are both frightening the market with signs of being unstable oil and gas sources. She could point to the failure to produce and ship sufficient oil out of Iraq, which admittedly is something Pres. Bush should push harder on. Then on the demand side, China, India, Russia, Eastern Europe, and Brazil are all using substantially more oil now than just a few years ago. Clearly, some combination of oil conservation, price increases, refinery expansion, new oil sources, and alternative energy sources is needed. Most of us, though not the environmentalists, hope industry will find the means to limit the price increases. Increased oil taxes will be clearly counterproductive.

I think it is absurd that we are not drilling for oil off the coasts of Florida and California, as well as ANWR. Off shore oil spills from drilling platforms are now more rare than those from ships bringing in oil from afar. The caribou herds have grown greatly since the Alaska oil pipeline was built. If they had shrunk, this would have been blamed on the pipeline. Since they have grown greatly, has any environmentalist stepped forward to say that we should build more pipelines because they are good for the caribou? While I expect there is little causal connection between the growth of the herds and the pipeline, there is a connection between other pipelines and triving animal populations. I worked on pipelines in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas in the summers when I was in college. Prairie dogs and rattlesnakes love living near the pipelines. They provide some warmth in the winter! Copperheads and scorpions love the pump houses in the oil fields and any other shelter that provides shade. Offshore platforms support thriving life systems around them. If environmentalists loved animals and plants, they would be all for pipelines and offshore platforms. What they really love is primitivism.

ARI forgets that the Democrat presidential candidates have to play to the strongly socialist wing of their party and the Republican has to play to the more evangelical Christians in their party. Neither is good, but the breadth of the control program the socialists want is much greater than is that of the radical Christians. We have a pretty thorough acceptance of the idea of separation of Church and State now, especially in the courts. On the other hand, where is our protection from socialism? It should be the limits on government clearly spelled out in the Constitution, but we have long since interpreted those protections into uselessness.

Christianity is an old problem, but church attendance is ever decreasing. Many of the faster growing churches are those that retain rather little Christian dogma. Christianity hangs on mostly because many women embrace it and because a rational ethics has not been sold to the public to replace it. Religion has become awkwardly feminized. It is hardly the wave of the future. I have been explicitly told by many people that they teach their children the ethics of Christianity because they know of no alternative. Many a parent is not enthusiastic about this, especially many fathers. Socialism, more as an unnamed fascism, is still on the rise or at least a greater challenge. Communism is less favored than it was 20 years ago, but that has not turned the tide very substantiallly against the fascist variant or the onward march of Progressivism. Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson, Hoover, FDR, Truman, LBJ, Carter, Bush I, and Clinton carry a strong tradition yet that government can and should address every perceived problem. Clearly Bush II and the Republican House and Senate are largely guilty also.

ARI would have more influence if they were more constructive in their manner of offering advice. However, since they have chosen to cut themselves off from the libertarians in the political sphere, there is no political group they can even try to influence. After the Christian right, the strongest group among Republicans is one that is largely libertarian. It would make much more sense if ARI were to try to help this group to grow. But, as we know, they are the constant contrarians.

It would be interesting to try to actually study the party affiliation of most of the people who have read Ayn Rand's books and have been influenced by them, but who do not call themselves Objectivists. Most of those I know of are Republicans. Where does ARI think they are? But, of course, ARI probably views them much as Muslims view someone who left the Muslim religion. Off with their heads! Behead the heretics!

[Aggrad02]

ARI forgets that the Democrat presidential candidates have to play to the strongly socialist wing of their party and the Republican has to play to the more evangelical Christians in their party. Neither is good, but the breadth of the control program the socialists want is much greater than is that of the radical Christians. We have a pretty thorough acceptance of the idea of separation of Church and State now, especially in the courts. On the other hand, where is our protection from socialism? It should be the limits on government clearly spelled out in the Constitution, but we have long since interpreted those protections into uselessness.

This is the main reason that I usually vote Republican. The evangelicalist are not trying to steal my production and redistribute it. They try to pass morality laws (such as the bans on gay marriage), but these laws will eventually be battled in the courts and overturned as the public grows less religous and more tolerant. And like Charles said, we have a long tradition of seperation of Church and State. On the other hand, the socialistic laws that have been passed are very hard to repeal, once the Government starts giving out money they can never seem to cut it off from fear of public backlash (social security, medicare, welfare). Also the Republican party is supposed to be the party of fiscal responsibility. Even though that has not been the case for several years, at least they claim to want to be, while the Democrats openly state they will spend more. I have to agree with Charles that there is no protection from the socialist if the Democrats have power.

On a side note to the last part of Charles post, this past February I volunteered to help a local lawyer from my hometown run for Congress in the 17th district in Texas. He was the former legal aid to Pete Sessions (a Republican Congressman from Dallas). While talking to him and his wife I found that they were huge fans of Ayn Rand (epecially his wife). I wouldn't call them objectivist, they were both very religous, but his wife had read alot of Ayn's nonfiction as well as Atlas and TFH and you could see her eyes light up everytime she talked about Ayn. This made me very comfortable supporting them, unfortunately he lost the primary to a very well funded opponent and the only Iraq veteran running on the Republican ticket. As I have met people who have admired Ayn's work they have almost all have been Republican/Libertarian voters.

[Charles R. Anderson]

Dustan,

Thanks for jumping on board. It has become so popular to bash President Bush without regard to the alternatives and without respect for the political process that it takes a brave man to offer him any support.

The Republican Party does have some severe ideological problems and it is important that we identify them and suggest a more rational policy to them. But, there is little point in simply doing this in a mood of "If you are not willing to be perfect, you are my worst enemy." After the religious right block of Republicans, the next biggest group is fairly libertarian in orientation. Even among the religious right, not all members of the group want to legislate Christian morality and many are relatively free market in their orientation. Of course, the Republicans are a diverse and ideological impure coalition of many groups. We will face this until and unless many more people become Objectivists or neo-objectivists.