Bill Blake

I could write a long rebuttal, but this isn't really the topic for it. Perhaps we should relocate?

Little more than a decade after the signing of the Constitution, the American government enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts. These violated the Constitution and infringed on free speech, one of the rights essential to a free society. It's nice they were revoked--after they had served their evil purpose--but they would not have been enacted in an actually free society. The Supreme Court abrogated the principle of limited government in 1824 (see Gibbons v Ogden, 22 US 1), and has not examined its "error" since. The number of violations of rights--of exceeding constitutional powers--has grown dramatically over the years. Just count the number of pages in the Code of Federal Regulations--which regulations, in themselves, are a violation of the Constitution. The concept of rights has been shrunk to the notion of "enumerated" rights plus a few rights that the Supreme Court has divined by the equivalent of reading the entrails of chickens. And even the acknowledge enumerated rights have been watered down to the point of near uselessness in many cases. Our courts regard the government as sovereign, and routinely "balance" rights against government "need", meaning that we aren't really talking rights anyway, merely privileges which the government may revoke when it sees fit. I could go on for hours on this topic and not exhaust the ways that the government has rejected the Constitution and its underlying principles. The essentials of a free society are just courts, accountable government, and freedom of speech. We do not have the first two, and the third is under concerted attack from government and the citizenry--and there are signs that the courts might soon follow. What America has are the shibboleths of freedom and a government that is limited, not by principle, but by its understanding that there is only so much it an get away with before people will give it the finger or the bullet. And with today's citizenry, domesticated by our education system, what the government can get away with grows ever larger by the day. Constitutions are wonderful things; it would be great if we had one. Instead, what we have are a bunch of worship-words on paper, spoken with ceremony and reverence when needed to pacify the public or to justify the government's actions but largely ignored otherwise. To hold the idea that individual rights are respected, never mind protected, is to flatly ignore the routine abuses of our government. I do not claim a moral equivalence between America and Russia--that would be absurd. But to say that America is not Russia says nothing important about America's rationality and morality. One need only look at the facts--which are unequivocal--to see that America is not the country intended by the Founders and that it is nowhere near the Capitalism of Objectivism. There is nothing that claims a monopoly of force in the international arena and which has the power to even try to enforce such a monopoly. Moreover, we are seeing the hallmarks of anarchy in the Ukraine situation--the outcome of it will not derive from any principles, but from whoever happens to have the bigger stick and the stronger will. And, of course, Ukraine is nowhere near an isolated occurrence. There is simply no rule of law on the international level; "might makes right" is the operative "principle". The international order is an anarchy, held together--for now--by the fact that the gang of countries with the biggest stick don't want war on their territories.

Then you'll love the thing I'm working on. My basic point there is that the Objectivist ethics and politics are not complete; there are broad swathes of humanity and their circumstances that are simply not addressed by those two. The reason for that incompleteness is that they derive from facts that are not universals. And where those facts are not true, it is necessary to draw new conclusions--which may or may not coincide with those of canonical Objectivism. My takeoff point is Rand's "The Ethics of Emergencies", where she did exactly that. I'm about ready to post my draft intro for my little (hah!) project, and any discussion on that topic should probably go there. But I did want to say here that my reasoning in the post you replied to is informed by that perspective.

(I will stick to the ethical and political philosophy analysis, and otherwise ignore the noise, in order to limit my participation to what I have the time for.) America, Germany, Ukraine, Russia--and every nation in the world--are fundamentally irrational and immoral, living in an anarchy that is misleadingly called the international order. Yet, this does not change the fact that each nation has a moral obligation to defend its denizens from aggression. Ukraine's position is unequivocal: It was and remains invaded by Russia, and Russia's excuses--whether or not Putin actually believes them--do not change the fact that Russia is the aggressor. Nor does the fact that the Ukraine government is far from ideal make Russia less an aggressor. Ukraine's has an obligation to do pretty much whatever it must in order to defend itself from Russia. Russia is not an immediate danger to, e.g., Germany, never mind the United States. But its stated intention is to subvert the West, to bring it under autocracy or worse, and it has used violence and clearly intends to continue using violence against its neighbors and--without geographic limitation--individuals in order to effect that end. These make Russia a present-day aggressor, against which all threatened nations have an obligation to defend their denizens from. That, of course, does not entail making war on Russia. Just as there are many ways to aggress, there are many ways to defend. I won't be going into that further, as that would take me far afield from the ethical questions. The key point is that the obligation of a government to defend its citizens does not cease to exist because that government is corrupt or otherwise immoral. There is one other important difference between the positions of Ukraine as opposed to that of other nations. Ukraine is not and cannot be a liberal democracy, never mind an ideal state, while it is presently invaded by an aggressor power. To condemn it merely for failing to act as a liberal democracy is to condemn it for failing to be a contradiction. This is not to say that its political behavior is beyond condemnation; rather, it is a requirement that any condemnation take into account that it cannot be a liberal democracy. There obviously must be some limits, else it becomes a worse evil than its invader, but "That's not democratic" is not one of those limits. This simply does not apply to other countries; they aren't threatened by invasion (yet). Their obligation is to move themselves closer to the ideal--toward limited government and individual rights--and there is nothing in their situation that negates that obligation. So, even though Russia is an existential threats to other nations--if not currently to their territorial integrity, to the lives of its denizens--those nations remain subject to the requirements of a nation not under attack. It isn't proper for such a country to make corrupt military decisions. Not because they're military, but because they're corrupt. And by the same token, it is not proper to condemn a corrupt decision as a wrong military decision merely because it is a corrupt decision; the two characteristics must be judged separately. As it happens, you are simply wrong when it comes to Russia's threat to the US. Certainly, it is not an immediate and serious threat, but any analysis needs to take into account the long term. A Russia hobbled in its economy, devastated by a defeat in Ukraine, and beholden to another would-be world power (China) that regards Russia as a competitor would not be a meaningful threat for the foreseeable future. A Russia emboldened by success in Ukraine, with an economy geared toward war, surrounded by nations cowed by Russia's military and economic power, on which Russia might draw for aid, and aided (and maybe even goaded) by China is an actual threat, one that could go full-on nuclear. (No, there is no reasonable possibility that the present war will go full-on nuclear, so long as no one attempts to invade Russia and maybe not even then.) The purpose of any action in relation to the Ukraine war must be to prevent the latter scenario. And the most obvious way is to provide material aid to Ukraine and let them do the fighting. (Well actually, the most obvious way is to assassinate Putin. But the fools that run our governments don't like assassination as a tool, since they fear that it could turn on them. And even if they would go for it, it would be very difficult. Still, I could wish that the effort was being made.) As for your observations about Ukraine's history, I hope it is clear from my analysis that they don't really matter. Sure, Ukraine hasn't exactly been a bastion of law and order, but that's simply irrelevant to the present war or to the US's interest in Russia losing this war.

I'm trying to stay out of the Ukraine discussion, not because I don't have an opinion, but because I don't have the time. However, I do have a point of ethics to make here. It is evil to aid someone who acts to achieve an evil goal, if one intends that that someone achieve their evil goal. That makes you complicit in their evil, even if your actions do not specifically further their goal. There's no reason to think that the German government wants Putin to achieve his goal, so their refusal to stop using Russian exports is not necessarily evil. The question comes down to which will do Germany the more damage, cutting Russian imports now or dealing with the fallout from providing Putin the means of continuing his war. I don't think that there's sufficient evidence to say which. (Though, in Germany's shoes, I'd cut all Russian imports and be damned to the consequences. The idea of assisting he who wishes to destroy me fills me with a revulsion far stronger than any anticipated pain of belt-tightening.)

Oh, I recommended that people who are interested in ARI should look at ARI Watch. But that they should do so recognizing that the guy who writes it is not exactly an objective observer.

A person who one follows who is also one's follower. Twitter slang.

I've actually read this site on and off for many years, probably starting about 2012, so I know what to expect here. What moved me to sign up was that someone over on reddit mentioned ARI Watch in an unwarrantedly positive light. I knew the site had a discussion about it, so I hunted it up and posted a link. Then, since I had the page open and I had something I thought would fit here, I decided to create an account. I have an essay I'm working on, to the effect that the Objectivist ethics and politics are incomplete and are often not useful, and even counterproductive, in the real world. The draft introduction is complete; where would you suggest that I post it for criticism? As for scoundrels, oh yeah. I did my share of moderating back in the 90s.....

Yes, I do a lot of blocking, though 2b was a special case. He was a mutual, and I almost never block a mutual for anything other than outright incivility. But 2b had been posting a lot of nonsense for a long time, and his pro-Russian tweets were just the last straw. I expect to go back and revisit the block, since you've presented evidence that I was mistaken as to his intentions.

It's that Snyder, though I had no idea of his views when I adopted that quote--it simply seemed (and still seems) very apt. I think you'd call me a never-Trumper, though I suspect that Biden will prove worse than Trump. As for Ukraine, I presently think that we should not put our own military there, but we should be providing funding and material to Ukraine. However, I am rethinking that position and we'll see where I end up. I don't name call--at least in a conversation. However, when I block someone, I will say exactly what I think when I announce the block. Then unkind words might be used, if they are factual. Hopefully, that situation won't arise here. Other than that, I insist on civility myself--one of the unkind phrases I often use when blocking is, "Blocked for incivility". I'm a bit curious as to what you mean by "same profile". You mean, the same avatar? That would be odd; I haven't seen anyone else using it. Anyway, if you want to know who I am, find me as billblake2018 on twitter, reddit, liberdon, or clubhouse. I number among my mutuals Amy Peikoff and Jennifer Grossman, and you'll often find me running my mouth in Lee Pierson's "Cutting Edge" discussions on cliubhouse.

This is what I have in my twitter pinned tweet: "To abandon facts is to abandon freedom" -- Timothy Snyder We seem to be seeing the truth of this in real time.