An Objectivist Retrospective

[Dennis Hardin]

An Objectivist Retrospective

In 1968, I was 20 years old. I had already been an Objectivist for several years, having discovered Atlas Shrugged when I was 16. I grew up in East Tennessee, a little corner of the Bible Belt that represented just about everything I despised about the South—conventionality, the worship of tradition, fear of anything new and different, life-negating values, et. al. Objectivism gave me hope and a vision of the future that I clung to like a lifeline. While I was earning a bachelor’s degree at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, I often attended taped NBI lectures. One evening a week, I would pick up my girlfriend and drive to the home of a prominent photographer where the lectures were held. We would take time before and after the lectures to speak of the excitement the future held and how different the world was going to be once Objectivism spread like a wildfire through the culture. It was only a matter of time before others would see what we saw—that Ayn Rand had discovered a bold new vision of the possibilities of life and her young protégé, Nathaniel Branden, could show how to go about achieving such a life, here and now.

If someone had told me that, almost 40 years later, Objectivism’s influence would be as limited as it often seems today, I would have scoffed. To think that a half century after the publication of Atlas Shrugged, we are living under a President who names Jesus Christ as his favorite philosopher, in a culture where talk radio abounds with self-righteous zealots denouncing abortion as murder, where our national leaders resemble weasels who fall over one another to see who can debase himself the most while apologizing for America’s greatness, and where the alleged tough proponents of national defense think moral courage amounts to prosecuting a ‘war on terror’ in which we sacrifice the precious lives of our soldiers in order to spare brain-dead, cave-dwelling thugs.

What happened? Something prevented that wildfire from spreading. What was it?

I clearly recall reading Nathaniel Branden’s sobering words in Who is Ayn Rand? to the effect that patience will be required before genuine cultural changes will occur. “Don’t delude yourself,” he warned a young member of the collective. “Things don’t happen that fast—when you consider the enormity of what we’re challenging and the scale of what we want to achieve.” Very well. I’m a patient guy. I can see waiting a half century or so to see the beginnings of cultural upheaval. But it often seems that we have made almost no progress toward changing the culture. I keep wondering if, somewhere along the line, Objectivism was derailed.

It often seems that, in the present day world, Objectivism is barely a blip on a very crowded radar screen. It has undoubtedly had some indirect influence. News sources reported that, during the anti-business backlash that accompanied the aftermath of the Enron scandal, many prominent businessmen turned to the pages of Atlas Shrugged for moral support. When an optimistic mood strikes me, I’m even willing to suggest that Objectivism may have been obliquely responsible for the “me-decade” of the Reagan era and some of the quasi-secular aspects of today’s procapitalist conservatives. Given the reality of the clash between their religious premises and the profit motive, it could be argued that Ayn Rand supplies the tacit moral foundation for their outspoken love of America, even though they would explicitly deny that any such clash exists. Rush Limbaugh and Michael Medved are examples of conservative voices with many positive things to say about the ideas of Ayn Rand in general and Atlas Shrugged in particular.

Rumor has it that Barbara Branden is presently working on a much needed book which will purportedly document the extent of Objectivism’s impact on today’s world, and I look forward to reading it. I hope to be pleasantly surprised. Even so, I remain convinced that Objectivism has not had anything close to the success that a fully rational philosophy should have achieved in the five decades since it was offered to the world in finished form.

In his recent book, Intellectual Morons, author Daniel J. Flynn provides an interesting outsider’s perspective on what, as he puts it, “doomed” Objectivism. To a very great extent, he ascribes Objectivism’s decline directly to Ayn Rand herself. More specifically, he blames the immature, irrational behavior of Ayn Rand following her break with Nathaniel Branden in 1968. Here was the spectacle of a woman who had declared her absolute dedication to the guidance of reason—asking her followers to take her on faith. Her article, “To Whom It May Concern,” provided almost no rational support for her unqualified condemnation of the man who many had come to see as the living embodiment of John Galt. But suddenly her readers were being asked to believe that Galt had somehow morphed into James Taggart.

Flynn describes the residual impact on Objectivism in this way:

“The result of the loyalty oaths, trials, excommunications and purges was somewhat predictable.  Objectivists maintaining independence and self-respect refused to go along with the hysteria.  Rand tossed them out of the movement, and along with them went all of Objectivism’s free minds.  Weak-minded followers remained.  This guaranteed that the official movement would be composed of easily led danglers unable to think outside of the narrow constraints Rand put into place.”

Flynn’s own outlook is obviously that of a conventional conservative, but his perceptiveness on this issue seems discerning. To characterize Rand as an intellectual moron may be flagrant hyperbole, but her behavior was in equally flagrant contrast with the theme of her writings. The net effect was to destroy her standing as a paragon of intransigent rationality. One does not endear oneself to rational minds by announcing to your legions of followers, in effect: “I want your undying loyalty, not your independent judgment.” From that day on, those who discovered Objectivism had to look past the conduct of the author to appreciate the truth of her genius. Understandably, many more who might otherwise have been persuaded by her arguments wrote her off in advance of listening carefully to what she had to say. As Flynn states:

“Like Stalin airbrushing Trotsky out of revolution era photographs, Randians have erased from their official history the Brandens and other personae non gratae….Social movements that embrace the cult of personality become writ-large reflections of the object of their veneration.  This doomed Objectivism.”

Another piece of the puzzle recently crystallized for me as I listened to a conservative radio commentator discussing the dangers of radical Islam. One of the key reasons he cited as a cause of Islam’s degeneration into mindless violence and venomous death-worship has been the tendency of its spokesmen toward isolationism. He suggested that the Bible had valuable advice for anyone who would spread his influence in the world: ‘Love the stranger.’ If you live in a bubble, and you lose contact with the real world, you destroy your ability to influence the world outside that bubble in a positive way. You must be willing to embrace perspectives foreign to your own, or you will not succeed in effecting long term change. You will be perceived as lacking the courage or capacity to deal with challenges to your point of view, and that fact alone may be enough to prompt others to discount the validity of what you have to say. As the gap widens between your beliefs and those of the culture at large, you will be left with nothing but bitterness and anger and an overwhelming urge to strike out at the incorrigible forces of evil.

Preaching to the choir not only wastes your time and energy, it intensifies your feelings of alienation from the world around you and reinforces your anger while increasing the distance between you and that world. Many have often characterized the Peikoffian approach to Objectivism as being religionist in tone. Beyond that, one could cite a number of similarities with the tunnel vision exhibited in the current practice of Islam. Fortunately for all of us, Peikoff has never launched a literal jihad against Objectivism’s ideological enemies. Unlike the Koran, there is nothing in Atlas Shrugged he could likely interpret as giving him justification for such action.

When Peikoff tossed David Kelley out of the “official” Objectivist movement many years ago, he launched an extensive diatribe against those recalcitrant unwashed masses who refuse to accept Ayn Rand as the light and the way. In his essay, “Fact and Value,” he explicitly denounced most people who disagree with Objectivism as dishonest (paraphrasing him: “the prevalence of innocent errors is much less than what most people think”). Around the same time, Peikoff proclaimed that he had no ‘respect’ for differing points of view. Small wonder that the world has largely returned the favor.

No one was more optimistic about the future than I was in the 1960’s. On one of my several trips to the Nathaniel Branden Institute, in the summer of 1968, I walked into the new offices in the basement of the Empire State Building and saw a notice on the front desk. “There has been an irreconcilable break between Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden,” the notice read. I will never forget the emotions that swept over me as I walked out of the Empire State Building that morning and roamed the streets of Manhattan. My world had been turned upside down. Objectivism continued to be the philosophy I lived by. But on some level, I may have known that the chances that I would live to see an Objectivist world had been decimated. Neither Ayn Rand, nor the person she subsequently chose as her new “intellectual heir,” would prove capable of demonstrating the glory and greatness of those ideas or fomenting the intellectual revolution they entailed.

Several years ago, I asked Nathaniel Branden if he thought Objectivism would be a stronger force in the world today if he, rather than Peikoff, had spearheaded the movement in the years following Rand’s death. He declined to answer, saying that it was impossible to say because “too many things would be different.” Perhaps he was motivated by a wish to avoid appearing self-serving in his response. To me, there is no question that the stifling, dreadful, cloistered approach fostered by Peikoff has been an unmitigated disaster. It is precisely because so many things would have been radically different with Branden at the helm that the answer to my question seems to me so transparently obvious.

If the world is somehow able to survive the malevolent forces that have flourished in the intellectual and moral vacuum left by religion’s inevitable decline, I am convinced that Objectivism will eventually prevail. One day, it will find spokesmen who are worthy of its ideas—spokesmen who define an authentic Objectivist in terms of his passionate devotion to reason and reality rather than blind loyalty to a founder or ringleader. Until then, if our experience to date is any guide, whatever limited success Objectivism enjoys will be in spite of, not because of, the official movement that bears its name.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Dennis,

I added the title to the main body (I hope you don't mind).

What a strikingly perceptive essay. I can't find anything in it for disagreement. I would only add that one fundamental mistake in the whole approach of official Objectivism is that it promises a world of glory, produced values, happiness, etc., and delivers that promise predominantly in a tone of contempt, hatred and mockery - or neutrality.

There are blissful pronouncements, but they are very much in the minority. I recently read somewhere that David Kelley stated that over two-thirds of Galt's radio speech is devoted to denouncing bad ideas and only about one-third to positive ones. Thus the tone actually has been set in Atlas Shrugged.

I agree that the cause of most of the bitterness is probably the increasing alienation of Objectivism cultists, but this also is hypocrisy. If you preach happiness, you're supposed to be happy.

I'm going to check out that book mentioned, Intellectual Morons by Daniel J. Flynn.

I thoroughly enjoyed your thoughts. I hope a lot of people read this article.

Michael

[Charles R. Anderson]

Dennis,

I knew a number of Objectivists in the 1960s who thought that America would be taken over by Objectivism in their lifetime. I always thought that was unlikely.

I thought that Objectivism is at least as different from the common philosophy of hybrid Christianity, pragmatism, Enlightenment ideas, and socialism in America as Christianity was from the other religions at the time of its origin. Christianity took 500 years even to settle on its dogma and about that long to become the dominant religion in Southern Europe.

We have the advantage of more rapid and widespread communication, especially now with the Internet connection. Still, this process of changing a society takes time. It also required time for religion and for socialism to self-destruct and pass from history or at least to wilt to the point that many people would actively look for an alternative. When people are satisfied by their present worldview, they do not shop for a change!

Both religion and socialism are losing ground, and they are losing it rapidly in historical terms. Unfortunately, historical terms can be long compared to one mans lifetime.

Is it inevitable that Objectivism will one day triumph? No. But a good idea can have a lot of staying power. Take Aristotle as an example. He was all but forgotten and yet made a comeback when the Christian church was much more dominant than it is now. The Enlightenment followed.

The setbacks of socialism in Russia and China offer hope. The Environmentalist movement is likely to be temporary before everyone figures out that man is less likely to destroy the world than is now predicted. More and more, science is revealing that people are not equal in capability, which is a blow to egalitarianism. The Muslims are so over the top that they are generally giving religion a bad name. The large, all-welcoming super churches of today, the only ones growing, have essentially no Christian doctrine that they have retained. They are virtually secular. Catholics rarely actually live by church dogma. They practice birth control and have abortions in large numbers. The Christian church is more and more an ideological shadow. It mostly functions as a social club.

People need and want values, but they cannot find them. Objectivism has them and I expect they will eventually be found. Objectivists do need to stop being so determined to alienate non-Objectivists before they can be effective in selling their ideas, however. Certainly the schisms and the excommunications have hurt, but the Christians had both of those also. There is plenty of hope left. It just was not realistic to expect that such a change of philosophy was going to occur in 50 years.

I do not think David Kelley thought that Objectivism would be dominant in 50 years either. He surely hoped it would do more than it has, but his orientation was always toward training future professors of philosophy These professors would teach two generations of college students and then one might have an Objectivist society. Maybe.

I always thought that 100 years was optimistic. I now think that another 100 years is optimistic. People will have to get beyond thinking of Objectivism as a closed system. This will require the passing of Peikoff and Schwartz and others of Ayn Rand's legacy group at ARI. Then, Objectivists will have to establish a track record of further development of the philosophy and also one of people living happier lives while practicing it. Objectivists will have to prove benevolent and tolerant. They will have to actually engage others in the discussion of ideas. They will have to do what Ed Hudgins is trying to do with his much maligned op eds and more. It would also help if Objectivists would write more good novels.

[Robert Campbell]

Dennis,

I really appreciate your essay.

I am somewhat more optimistic than you are, in that I see more positive effects of Rand's ideas in our general culture than you do.

A reason for this may be that I first encountered organized Objectivism in the 1970s, when sourness and siege mentality prevailed over hope for the future, and I went through my own Randroid phase.

But your points about the self-isolating, self-limiting Objectivist movement are well taken.

Robert

[Kat]

Thanks for the Article, Dennis. I do hope things will change for the better. Charles made some wonderful observations and comments as well.

I know that most people think differently than Objectivists and selling our ideas is certainly an uphill battle. I have only discovered Objectivism in the last few years and reading Atlas for the first time gave me such a sense of satisfaction knowing that at least their was one other person in this world, Ayn Rand, who sees things as I do. We see things quite differently than most.

It is hard enough to find other atheists around us and it is extremely rare to find one who is neither an altruist or politically left wing. I just hope that the good people will spread the good ideas of our philosophy. You would think that most people would think of productiveness, reason, pride, rational self-interest and capitalism as good things, not bad and O'ism would spread like wildfire. Unfortunately, it hasn't really caught on yet.

There is also the element of Objectivists killing Objectivism with their cult-like behavior, the extremist viewpoints and nutty people going around saying bone-headed crap like Mother Theresa is more evil than Hitler. It's no wonder people shut their minds off Objectivist ideas for good. You can't just take what most people think is right and good and tell them it is wrong and evil and then expect them to agree with you. Why shouldn't they walk away?

Do something productive with your life and demonstrate how the philosphy works for you and your family. I think Phil put it wonderfully when he said something like, "to promote reason, you much be reasonable."

Show, don't tell.

Kat

[Dennis Hardin]

Michael, Charles, Robert, Kat—Thank you for your thoughtful feedback. I appreciate having the opportunity to express and clarify my thinking in a forum like this. It goes without saying that any rational person would take those actions needed to achieve the life he or she wants despite the insanity that surrounds us. It would be the height of immorality, stupidity and self-sacrifice to let the persistently sheeplike conformity of the human race drain your energy to the extent that you neglect your own needs and personal values.

Beyond that, no doubt many of you recall Ayn Rand’s statement that “anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today.” I am profoundly angry that ARI has not provided a worthy platform for working for that future. The fact is that anyone who represents ARI as a speaker or contributor is lending their sanction to the corruption of Objectivism, and I will not be a part of that. (I would very much like to say that TOC has stepped up to offer a viable alternative. I know that many people feel that it has. However, I have found it to be profoundly lacking in philosophical consistency, even to the point of implicitly sanctioning altruism in its official statements. Because of this, it is damaging to Objectivism in exactly the opposite way. The rational alternative to religiosity and idolatry is not intellectual flippancy.)

All we can really do is create the best life we can for ourselves, while spreading rational ideas by whatever nonsacrificial means are available. The future will have to take care of itself.

[SaulOhio]

(I would very much like to say that TOC has stepped up to offer a viable alternative.  I know that many people feel that it has.  However, I have found it to be profoundly lacking in philosophical consistency, even to the point of implicitly sanctioning altruism in its official statements. Because of this, it is damaging to Objectivism in exactly the opposite way.  The rational alternative to religiosity and idolatry is not intellectual flippancy.)

I have been following the work of the TOC, including that of David Kelley and especially Robert Bidinotto. I have not noticed them implicitly sanctioning altruism. Can you clarify on that? Which official statements?

[Dennis Hardin]

Saul:

Here is a quote from TOC's "Position Statement" on the War on Terror posted to their website in October of 2001:

4. While it is legitimate in war to risk civilian casualties, the military campaign should make every reasonable effort to avoid them. This is a matter of justice to those people in the affected countries who are not complicit in terror and who may themselves have been victims of terrorists and of the tyrants who harbor them. In addition, we have no real hope of eliminating terrorism unless such people agree that our cause is just and that our intentions toward them are benevolent.

This is a clear statement that we should risk the lives of our soldiers and limit our use of military technology to minimize civilian casualties. Other policy statements by TOC at the time further stated that it was somehow “heroic” for our soldiers to risk their lives to save innocent civilians. This, in essence, accurately describes the “Christian” approach to prosecuting the war that the Bush administration has adopted, and I regard it as appalling.

[Roger Bissell]

I'm not so sure that oru armed forces being directed to take risks and minimize harm to civilians is as bad (i.e, altruistic) a thing as Dennis thinks it is.

First of all, since we don't have a military draft, everyone is in the military voluntarily. If they didn't want to take on the risks involved in carrying out the Bush Administration's policies in Iraq, they could quit, right?

Secondly, this suggests a thought experiment. Consider the parallel of our own local police. They assume risks and act so as to minimize civilian harm, do they not? Is THAT a bad (altruistic) thing? If it's part of the job (as risk-taking and life-saving is for firemen, also), what is the problem?

Suppose you were being held hostage or as a human shield by a criminal. The policeman could definitely lower the risk to himself by drilling a bullet hole right through you AND the criminal. But would you be so willing to pay taxes to support a police force that would sacrifice your life in order to kill the criminal hiding behind you? If not, then what is so different about the respect we are showing for civilians' rights in Iraq? Do you belive that Iraqi civilians do not have the same rights we do?

REB

[Charles R. Anderson]

Dennis,

I understand that we should place a very high value on the lives of American soldiers, but we have to remember why their lives were put at risk in the first place. We are in a war with terrorists, who are frequently supported by a variety of Middle Eastern dictatorships or the political moral equivalent. The governments of these countries often terribly abuse their own people and they feed them misinformation constantly about the Western World and The United States. While such downtrodden and misinformed people cannot be protected very completely by us from the consequences of their ignorance and complicity in the actions of their governments, we can recognize that if the Middle East is to achieve a more rational manner of living, to become civilized, then we will want these downtrodden people to be receptive of the truth when it becomes more available to them. We will want them to demand more rational governments and then to contribute to the advance of their societies. If this cannot be achieved, then there was no reason to enter either Afganistan or Iraq. Given that this is the long-range purpose of the War on Terror, we can only lose by killing civilians unnecessarily. If some of our troops die to save the innocent or at least the simple-minded and uninformed, it is for the main reason we are there. The TOC quote you gave is entirely rational, given the purpose of the war.

The most complete way to save the lives of American troops is to leave those areas where they are most in danger. We cannot do that in a way consistent with our need to take the war to the terrorists. The alternative is simply to wrack our own society with heinous security measures and still see the Sears Tower fall, bombs in NY subways, and the Golden Gate Bridge in ruins. We have to be aggressive, but we have to be aggressive with a view to our goals.

[Dennis Hardin]

Roger,

Any member of the armed forces who quit would be guilty of desertion and subject to court martial as well as the stigma that would follow him the rest of his life. Soldiers have the right to expect that the government that employs them will conduct a war in a way that will not subject them to unnecessary risk. If putting them in the primary role of “protecting” civilians of an enemy country is not altruistic, nothing is.

The role of police is to protect citizens in a given jurisdiction from violence. The role of the army is to protect the citizens of the nation that employs them. Our army can legitimately focus on protecting our citizens (for instance, if the battle was on American soil). It is not their job to protect foreign citizens.

Charles,

You are merely rephrasing the arguments of Kelley and TOC. There is no fundamental difference between the “war on terror” and any other military action. You could have said the exact same things about the “downtrodden people” of Nazi Germany or Hirohito’s Japan. A war is not a public relations campaign. And you cannot look at our soldiers coming back in body bags or hideously maimed and seriously defend this claptrap. I'm sorry, but I am unwilling to debate this further when the issues are so obvious and the price in innocent American lives so high. You can call anything “reasonable” and “rational,” but that does not make it morally defensible or any less altruistic (or, in my opinion, obscene).

[SaulOhio]

I think its time to concretize this subject. The question is: How many American soldiers actually died because of our policy of avoiding civilian casualties?

As I remember, defeating the Iraqi army was a piece of cake. Very few Americans died to defeat Saddam's forces. I remember only one standoff where Iraqi soldiers used human shields, but that only caused a delay while sharpshooters arrived to take out the Iraqi forces without any American casualties.

Of course my memory is three years old, and I am no expert. Can Dennis show that our policies actually caused more American casualties than just mowing through civilians to get to the enemy military?

Another question is: What is "reasonable effort"? The quote from TOC doesn't specifically say. Might it be that the limit of reasonable here is risk to American soldiers? It doesn't sound like Kelley is necessarily advocating that Americans take any additional risks. I'll have to go back to the entire position statement to find out what effort they mean.

[Charles R. Anderson]

Dennis,

You need not debate me of course, but you stated that I was merely re-stating TOC and David Kelley's position. While my position may be very similar to David's, since we talked about similar issues often in the late 60s and early 70s, I did not actually read any more of the TOC piece than you quoted. My viewpoints were formed during the Vietnam War, while I was there, and upon returning to Case Western Reserve University to finish my Ph.D. in physics, where many called me a baby-killer because I had reported for induction and gone to Vietnam. Of course, they did not bother to find out if I ever actually killed any babies or not.

Generally, killing civilians during a war probably does more to strengthen the resolve of a people to support their government, good, bad, or indifferent, than anything else you can do. This is not good war-making policy. Whenever reasonable, it is best to avoid it. This is done not to be altruistic, but to effectively achieve the purpose of a war. In the case of Germany and Japan, we had long post-war occupations, with many deaths also, but we finished the war purposes off by reforming the countries and successfully making them less belligerent. During the war, we almost certainly did kill more civilians than was useful in prosecuting the purposes of the war. Some of that was the result of the relatively crude weapons available, some of it was anger in response to attacks on civiians by the Germans and the Japanese.

War costs lives. It always has. In the Civil War we had battles in which there were 50,000 dead in a day. In WWI there were days when the casualties numbered 500,000! In Iraq the dead are about 2,300 last I noticed. In NY and Washington and PA, they were nearly 3,000. These are historically not large numbers. They are not pleasant numbers at all, but the way to avoid them seems to fall into one of 2 categories:

1) Nuke um all!

2) Peace at all costs!

Well, if we Nuke um all, most Americans will be too disgusted to support their own government and the rest of the world will be terrified and identify us as the Great Satan. If we opt for peace at all costs, many a petty dictator or totalitarian government will step forward to intimidate us and take our freedoms. Some may hope our slavery is full of peace and love, but historically we know it will be a nightmare of whippings and parents afraid of what their children might tell the authorities about them.

It always seems so clean and neat to take one of the simple positions 1 or 2, but real life does not allow that. The decisions are always much harder, but one that has to be made by every generation is that they are willing to put their lives on the line for their freedom and to insure that free people are respected as capable of maintaining those freedoms. You must face down the bullies. There is no option. On the other hand, it is always more effective to do it firmly, but while showing as much respect for human lives as possible. After all, we value freedom because we value human life. It is a means to the end of living a happy life. Most people respond to that respect with respect on their own. In Iraq, this is seen in the increasing number of instances in which the Iraqis themselves are providing information on the insurgents.

Another thing: In Vietnam I knew a few Vietnamese and I generally liked them. I had no desire to kill Vietnamese people, unless they were themselves trying to subject others to communism. Our troops in Iraq do not themselves seem to want to follow the kind of vicious killing tactics you seem to be advocating. They tell stories of wanting themselves to see the Iraqi people live better and freer lives. They hope they are contributing to this purpose. Some of this may be altuism on their part, but some is also that they meet people they like and some is simply because most Americans are rather benevolent. Still further, they are warriors and most of them understand why they are fighting and what they want to accomplish.

I would not push to convince them that they must become malevolent. Standing armies of malevolent soldiers are very dangerous to those who hire them.

Of course, when you can kill an actual terrorist, or an actual thug who gassed Kurds and slaughtered Shiites simply because they were not Sunnis and therefore did not deserve to live, or the planter of an IED on a roadway, do so.

So, you will not respond to this, but you cannot expect that I was going to let you call me an altuist and not respond. After all, I have made it a lifetime practice to face down the bullies.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

The war in Iraq is complicated because it was for a good purpose, yet it was sold to the public with lies. Also, the reconstruction of Iraq has turned into a mess for a variety of reasons.

I certainly understand the frustration of any citizen who sees body-bags coming home and listens to lies from the government. That completely rubs me the wrong way, too. I don't see altruism in the administration, however. I see a bunch of economic interests in oil plunder all mixed up with actual noble motives. It's such a mess, I don't know the solution.

The only thing I will state categorically is that our soldiers deserve to be told the truth by the USA leaders since they are laying their lives on the line. At least that.

There is a very charming story from a Turkish Objectivist site dealing with the initial decision to enter the war. (The owner - I think it was the owner - just posted a link to the Turkish site here on OL in "Links.") You can't understand anything there, but a few things are in English. The following story is something very special from this site:

A father telling his son why the USA was in the Iraq war

Michael

[Charles R. Anderson]

Michael,

Our government claims to protect the weak while giving special interests subsidies and many advantages over less organized or weaker groups, but I do not see evidence that President Bush lied to us about Iraq. The CIA may have overestimated the weapons of mass destruction capability, but some of these weapons did exist. Saddam spirited them away to Syria with the help of the Russians and Syrians. He really was a threat to us. He was at war with us and he really did intend to renew and enhance his weapons programs when the economic embargo was lifted. He said he was at war with us and he acted on that by firing upon our planes. This has always been an act of war. It is also now clear that Saddam really was trying to collect uranium in African nations. It is also clear that he had relationships with a number of terrorists, offering some safe haven and some training as well. Saddam was a monster as well and the widespread rule of the Middle East by monsters was and is a major problem, causing very irrational religious views to have a fertile soil for acceptance by desperate people. The story you pointed to makes the valid point that the world's bullies must be stood up to. The socialists' cry that we were lied to is their wishful thinking, more than reality.

The concern about oil was apparently more a general one for the stability of the Middle East than a desire to milk Iraq of its oil. There is no more oil coming out of Iraq now than there was under the economic embargo. If we are in Iraq to steal their oil, we are doing a terrible job. In fact, we should be removing more oil than we are, so there will be more jobs for Iraqis and more support for their government.

The fact that the media is united in its claim that President Bush lied does not make it so. We need to look beyond the viewpoint and the agenda of this very untrustworthy group. Remember what they tell us about social security and universal government health care and judge who is likely to be more trustworthy, President Bush on defense issues or our media on most issues.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Charles,

Without going into a thing about Bush (his Presidency is very uneven, from my own judgments of different aspects, ranging from the brilliant to the dishonest - and I HATE the Patriot Act because I fear the government will not give back the liberties it takes), I lived with something you might be interested to know.

I had friends in Brazil who worked for Avibras, which is a weapons manufacturing company. São José dos Campos, where the company is located, is just a couple of hours outside of São Paulo.

At that time, one of their biggest clients was Iraq and Avibras most certainly was arming Saddam to the teeth for a ton-load of money. I can attest to that from the accounts I heard from employees. This was back after the first Iraq invasion. I lost contact with these people over time, but I don't imagine that the company stopped doing business as usual because it suddenly started respecting an embargo headed by the USA. (I think the USA turned a blind eye because it felt Brazilian weapons were poor quality, but I can assure you that they kill just as well as American ones do.)

An amusing story about this is that a rocket scientist who retired from there was the brother of a film director I worked with. A very crazy Brazilian President (Fernando Collor) was elected at that time and he froze everybody's money in the banks, even in their savings accounts. So in order to survive for the duration of the freeze, this rocket scientist became a dubbing assistant for me.

The films I was dubbing into English at the time were lightly erotic comedies called pornochanchadas. This is a form that is typically Brazilian. An American film that would be similar is Striptease with Demi Moore. (Basically, very beautiful women doing highly erotic things, men with their tongues hanging out, lots of comedy, but also a drama with danger and family overtones to tie it all together. No explicit sex.)

So in Brazil, I had a rocket scientist as a dubbing assistant for erotic films. Only in Brazil is that possible...

Anyway, back to the subject, yes it was a very good thing we took Saddam out. From what I see about the reconstruction, though, the USA is making the same mistake as it did in the past in other places of trying to finish the job and appease public opinion in the USA at the same time - thus without enough resources.

Michael

[Reidy]

Years ago they could have sent Carmen Miranda to get all the Jihadists to put down their weapons and start dancing the rhumba.

Peter

[Charles R. Anderson]

Michael,

I agree that President Bush has made some serious errors. He has not vetoed Congresses excess and unconstitutional spending. He has created some bad new government entitlement programs. He has not been very effective in explaining how his tax cuts have improved the economy and given us more freedom. He has not been as effective in explaining that Iraq declared and prosecuted war against us. He has not been effective in getting the oil pumping and shipped again from Iraq, which is badly needed by both Iraq and the rest of the economically expanding world, especially the US, eastern Europe, India, and China. I also have concerns about the Patriot Act and I oppose any move to amend the Constitution to define marriage as being only between two members of the opposite sex.

But, I do not think he is making a practice of lying to us. He, not surprisingly since he was elected, is not an Objectivist or a thorough-going libertarian. He also is not a thorough-going socialist, post-modernist, anti-business biased, anti-success biased, or environmentalist President. The major alternatives in the last two elections were. On balance, I think he is a better than average President. To be sure, the standard is nowhere near as high as it should be.

[Dennis Hardin]

Several years ago, I gave a speech at Toastmasters following a trip to New York City. I had forgotten about that speech when I wrote my recent ‘retrospective,’ but I want to say something about that now.

During that trip, I spent quite a long time outside Ayn Rand’s former residence, looking up at the windows of the apartment where she once lived. I told the group about the all night discussions by the collective, and how strongly I believed that the ideas brought forth in those discussions would have a major impact on America’s future. I said that, forty years ago, when I attended NBI lectures at the Roosevelt Hotel, I was convinced that I was witnessing the birth of a new renaissance.

At the end of that brief talk, with tears in my eyes (yes, some of us bullies do cry occasionally), I explained that, once upon a time, I knew that Ayn Rand was going to save the world... “And perhaps she will, one day. But now—all these years later—all I can say for sure is that she rescued me from the deadly, suffocating, tradition-bound quagmire of the deep South. She gave me the fuel to take charge of my future, the conviction that I could achieve whatever I set my mind to. And all that really matters is that she saved my life."

[Dennis Hardin]

I recently found an excellent article in the Spring, 2006 issue of The Objective Standard (www.theobjectivestandard.com) by Yaron Brook and Alex Epstein which deals directly with the issue of altruism in America’s foreign policy. You can read the full article on-line. Please note the similarity between the quotation below and the language of TOC’s 2001 “Position Statement” on the war, quoted in my prior post above:

“Just War Theory regards all noncombatants as “innocents” with “rights” to be respected. We must, according to Elshtain, “make every effort to avoid killing noncombatants . . . women, children, the aged and infirm, all unarmed persons going about daily lives, and prisoners of war. . . .”10 To those who would reject such imperatives in order to defend one’s own people, Elshtain replies: “The demands of proportionality and discrimination are strenuous and cannot be alternatively satisfied or ignored, depending on whether they serve one’s war aims…”

“Just War Theory, to summarize, is the application of the morality of altruism to war. It holds that the citizens of an innocent nation are not ends in themselves, but means to some “higher” end. In today’s version, it claims that the citizens of an innocent nation can “defend” themselves—as a means to realizing the goal of sacrificing themselves to the needs of others (including those who are in fact their enemies). This is not a right to self-defense, but a “duty” to practice altruism.”

[Charles R. Anderson]

Dennis,

I respect and share many of your sentiments about the importance of Ayn Rand to our lives. I share a sense of disappointment that her impact on our society was not greater than it has been. Your earlier post today was very moving.

As for being an intellectual bully, I have seen you act like one on occasion, but you usually write rationally and with a respect for reason. I am not fool enough to think that you should be characterized broadly as an intellectual bully. There are some people in Objectivist circles who can be so characterized and you are not one of them.

Historically, no one person, even Ayn Rand, is going to transform the culture of the world. Her work is a great start in that process, but the contributions of many more people will be needed before her general viewpoint will be broadly accepted throughout America, let alone the rest of the world. Historically, such changes always take more than 50 years.

War is awful, but sometimes the consequences of not fighting a war are more awful. It is very immoral to fight a war without a rational purpose or set of purposes. When the war is fought, it must be fought in a manner consistent with the rational purposes to be achieved by fighting it. Often in war, the rational purposes dictate that one should act in a manner to minimize, in varying degrees, the deaths of enemy non-combatants. How much to minimize their deaths is a complex decision to be made based on one's purpose and on the cost in additional deaths to one's own people. The purpose has to be worth achieving at the cost of some deaths to one's own people, or one would not rationally have gone to war in the first place or one would not continue it.

It also bears repeating that few American soldiers want to kill women and children. If our government established a policy that our soldiers are to kill every woman and child who might pose any degree of threat to them or who may simply be inconveniently in the wrong place at the wrong time, then our military would quickly become completely demoralized and cease functioning as an effective fighting force. Historically, there have been armies that have been able to function with such a degree of ruthlessness, but no American army has ever done so (though some small units have and John Kerry seems to have) and none ever could without a radical change in American character. In the Iraq occupation, one hears of many cases in which American soldiers seem to be individually motivated to help, even at some risk to themselves, Iraqi men, women, and children.

I would say that an American Objectivist government and armed forces could not be completely ruthless in this way either. Respecting life generally, and human life in particular, is a very Objectivist ethical principle. Given that my life is my ultimate value, it is natural to respect the lives of others as well.

This respect for the lives of others is not altruism. Indeed, I would argue that altruism respects the life of no one, since it never respects the life of the individual. An ethics that does respect the life of the individual must then respect the life of every individual. Of course, we might respect the life of a given individual more than that person does himself and we might be forced into doing battle with them. War is a sad business, but sometimes a necessary one.

[Dennis Hardin]

...[Y]ou cannot look at our soldiers coming back in body bags or hideously maimed and seriously defend this claptrap. I'm sorry, but I am unwilling to debate this further when the issues are so obvious and the price in innocent American lives so high. You can call anything “reasonable” and “rational,” but that does not make it morally defensible or any less altruistic (or, in my opinion, obscene).

If statements like this make me an "intellectual bully." then I will wear the title proudly.

[Charles R. Anderson]

Dennis,

There have always been Americans who opposed every American war. Some are pacificists and some simply disagreed with the particulars of a given war. Certainly seeing men die and seeing them maimed is an awful experience.

America came into being in a war against the greatest military power of its day. Some thought self-governance and the rights of man were worth fighting for. Some either thought they were not or that the United Kingdom was as close to freedom as they would get.

New England threatened to secede in the War of 1812. Many opposed the war with Mexico, many the Civil War, many the Spanish-American War, World War I, and some even WWII. The Korean War and the Vietnam War had widespread opposition.

It is an American tradition to oppose wars. I thought that the Vietnam War was the wrong war to fight because of the location, the use of the draft, and the minimal extent of our national interest, but that the cause was just with respect to the South Vietnamese. After a point we had expended so much American blood and put our South Vietnamese allies at such risk, that we had to complete the job. Our ignoble exit, our betrayal of the South Vietnamese, was the most disgusting experience of my life. When you enter a dark and dangerous alley with a decent man to cover your back and then you abandon him there when the going gets tough, you are no man. This was made worse by the fact that the Tet Offensive doomed the North Vietnamese if only we had blocked off the Ho Chi Minh Trail and otherwise not unwisely tied our soldier's hands behind their backs.

I think Iraq is a war much more in our interest than was Vietnam. Unfortunately, many people are so jaded after the Vietnam War that they cannot understand why. Many Americans no longer think that it is worth fighting the bullies if an American soldier will die. The world is full of bullies and the certain recipe for retreat and finally defeat at their hands is the lack of will to fight them. Showing such a lack of will, will result in more deaths in the end, as the bullies gang up on us after subjugating many of the weaker countries of the world.

Clearly my perspective is very different than yours. When the schoolyard bully tried to intimidate me, I found that if you showed them you were willing to fight if they forced the issue and you were doing it as a matter of conviction, they hardly ever did. In fact, they did not bother you later. I even had cases where the bully so respected me that when other bullies threatened they would say, "Hey, Charles is OK, leave him alone." Sure this is a microcosm of the world at the nation level, but in my extensive reading of history, the same effects are found in that realm as well. Bullies are pretty much the same, whether on the playground or as heads of nations. This is not really surprising, given that the bully operates at a childish level. Brats and bullies need some discipline and only America provides that in this world.

Perhaps you know an alternative. Spell it out, if you do. The whole world wants to know.

[Barbara Branden]

TOC: "While it is legitimate in war to risk civilian casualties, the military campaign should make every reasonable effort to avoid them." "

I'm sorry to see hard feelings arising over this issue, and I think they result from assumptions on both sides of the disagreement that are not warranted. The discussion is taking the following form: Either we needlessly sacrifice American soldiers in an altruistic decision to spare enemy civilians, or we needlessly slaughter civilians so as to spare Americans. Surely there is another alternative. I take "reasonable" -- the key and unexamined word in the quote from TOC -- to mean that we don't want to kill innocent people, our own or others, and that, short of requiring the sacrifice of our soldiers, we take precautions not to do so; and should we err in some cases, it will be in the attempt to protect Americans. What could passibly be wrong or altruistic about such a policy? And I have no doubt that the vast majority of our soldiers are driven neither by a blood-lust to kill civilians nor by the desire to sacrifice their own lives. It isn't either-or!

Barbara

[Barbara Branden]

Dennis and Charles, I want to take up some of the issues you raise in your intitial and very important posts on this thread, but I haven't the time to do so immediately. I'll get to them as soon as I can.

Barbara