Question about an Ayn Rand quote

[George H. Smith]

I recently purchased a 2009 reprint (by the Independent Institute) of The Decline of American Liberalism, by Arthur Ekirch, Jr. This was originally published in 1955.

I had read the book several times many years ago -- I also got to know Ekirch a bit when we worked together at summer conferences during the 1980s -- but I needed to read the book again for a project, and I no longer had a copy.

The reprint, unlike earlier editions, contains several pages of favorable blurbs, including this one by Ayn Rand:

I disagree with the author's viewpoint, and I believe that he would probably disagree with mine. But the book is a remarkable, scholarly, well-documented record of the history of America's intellectual life. One may disagree with a writer's interpretation of the facts, but first one must know the facts -- and in this respect, the book is of enormous value. This book is The Decline of American Liberalism by Professor Arthur A. Ekirch, Jr.

-- Ayn Rand, author

Does anyone know the source of this passage? I did a global search of "Ekirch" on my Objectivism Research CD-ROM and got only three hits -- all of them to Rand's article "The Roots of War," where she quotes the book a couple times. But the passage in question is not located there.

Robert Hessen (who is also quoted in the blurbs) wrote a largely favorable review of Decline in The Objectivist Newsletter (July, 1962), but it doesn't mention Rand's endorsment.

So what is the source of Rand's comment? (She might have made it during a lecture or Q&A.) Any ideas?

Ghs

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

George,

I did a Google search (see here for the Google book passage) and came up with Rand's first Ford Hall Forum talk, "The Intellectual Bankruptcy of Our Age," It's in The Voice of Reason (which is the Google book in the link).

Michael

[George H. Smith]

George, I did a Google search (see here for the Google book passage) and came up with Rand's first Ford Hall Forum talk, "The Intellectual Bankruptcy of Our Age," It's in The Voice of Reason (which is the Google book in the link). Michael

A Google search? I guess I will need to learn that technical computer stuff if I want to keep up.

Seriously, so why did it not occur to me to do a Google search, since I typically do many searches in the course of a workday? It will take me a while to concoct a credible excuse.

Thanks, Michael.

Ghs

[Peter]

I found this but it is not want you want.

Peter

From: Chris Matthew Sciabarra <chris.sciabarra@nyu.edu>

To: Philosophy of Objectivism List* <objectivism@wetheliving.com>

Subject: OWL: More on "Intervention" and "Interventionism"

Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2003 10:40:40 -0400

. . . . Speaking of "intervention" abroad, however, one can find Rand quoting approvingly from Arthur Ekirch on the coercive nature of a certain ~kind~ of foreign intervention:

>>In regard to Woodrow Wilson, Professor Ekirch writes: "Wilson no doubt would have preferred the growth of United States foreign trade to come about as a result of free international competition, but he found it easy with his ideas of moralism and duty to rationalize direct American intervention as a means of safeguarding the national interest." (p. 199.)<< ("The Roots of War")

This is why I focused, in my previous post, on the nature of intervention as a ~politico-economic~ phenomenon (especially with regard to how the "mixed economy" globalizes its "pull-peddling"). And it is also instructive that Rand agreed with Ekirch specifically on the folly of the Wilsonian project; this Wilsonian project [making the world safe for democracy by "direct American intervention"] is of ~central~ importance to the current neoconservative architects of U.S. foreign policy.

Of course, Rand's most typical use of "intervention" can be found throughout her writings. See, for example, "The Intellectual Bankruptcy of Our Age":

>>The fundamental principle of capitalism is ~the separation of State and Economics~—that is: the liberation of men's economic activities, of production and trade, from any form of intervention, coercion, compulsion, regulation, or control by the government. . . . A full, perfect system of capitalism has never yet existed in history. Various degrees of government ~intervention~ and control remained in all the mixed, semi-free economies of the nineteenth century, undercutting, hampering, distorting, and ultimately destroying the operations of a free market.<< (emphasis added)

I also did a CD-Rom search for "interventionism." In "The Chickens' Homecoming," for example, Rand clearly takes the "isolationist" side, and repudiates the notion of "interventionism" because it undermines a proper U.S. foreign policy. She writes of the Vietnam war:

>>But a philosophical approach [examining the Vietnam war] would consist of tracing the ideological history of how we got into that war, what influences or interests pushed us in, what errors of our foreign policy were responsible, what basic premises created that policy and how they should be corrected. If such a study were made, it would remind the country that the war in Vietnam was started by President Kennedy, who is the idol of all the anti-war protesters; that the basic premises of our foreign policy were set by another idol, President Roosevelt, and reinforced by the United Nations and by every peace and One-World group ever since: the premises that we owe a duty to the rest of the world, that we are responsible for the welfare of any nation anywhere on earth, that isolationism is selfish, immoral and impractical in a "shrinking" modern world, etc. Such a study would demonstrate the evil of altruistic "interventionism" or "internationalism," and would define the proper principles (the premises of national self-interest) that should guide America's foreign policy.<< (The Chickens' Homecoming)

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

George,

You might be interested in the following from Lifehacker:

The Get More Out of Google Infographic Summarizes Online Research Tricks for Students

Here's the direct link to the HackCollege infographic: Get More Out of Google

I find the infographic format highly irritating for online reading, but the information in this one is extremely useful.

This is the best explanation I have seen on search operators. I liked it so much I downloaded the image, chopped it up and printed it out over several pages.

Michael

[Peter]

There may be other references to him so I am printing the whole, short thread. I saw references to CD rom searches. Whew! I went to delete extra line spaces, and the thread is not short.

Peter

From: "William Dwyer" <wswdwyer@attbi.com>

Reply-To: wswdwyer@attbi.com

To: <objectivism@wetheliving.com>

Subject: RE: OWL: British Imperialism was bad?

Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2003 01:32:18 -0700

On 4/17, Allen Costell wrote, "The essence of all forms of imperialism is unjust domination, and that's evil."

Not true. _Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary_ (1963) defines "imperialism" as: "The policy, practice or advocacy of extending the power or dominion of a nation esp. by direct territorial acquisitions or by gaining indirect control over the political or economic life of other areas."

There is nothing in this definition about the dominion's being unjust.

_The American Heritage Dictionary_ (1991) defines "imperialism" as:

"The policy of extending a nation's authority by territorial acquisition or by the establishment of economic and political hegemony over other nations."

There is nothing in _this_ definition about the hegemony's being unjust. "Hegemony" is defined by the same dictionary as "the predominant influence of one state over others."

Accordingly, there is nothing unjust about U.S. imperialism when it is used to defeat tyranny and defend the rights of the oppressed.

It is important to remember that the right of self-determination is an _individual_, not a collective right. A nation, like Iraq, that violates the rights of its citizens has no right of self-determination - despite what hoards of clueless protestors around the world are claiming.

-- Bill

From: "merjet" <merjet@attbi.com>

To: <objectivism@wetheliving.com>

Subject: Re: OWL: British Imperialism was bad?

Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2003 08:26:11 -0500

Allen Costell wrote:

>First, British imperialism was not motivated by benevolence. The British controlled India because of the possible economic and political benefits, not out of a desire to help Indians. Any beneficial consequences of British rule are secondary to their main goal of profit and power at the expense of dignity and human rights.

In short, Costell complains because the British were not altruists.

> Second, and a point that ought not need be mentioned, the enslavement and control of another human being is evil.

The British did not "enslave" the Indians. British colonialism wasn't all good -- what broad movement is? But British colonialism introduced railroads to the rest of the world, largely by building and manning them themselves. The British role in shipping by sea was no less dramatic. As late as 1912 Britain carried more than half of the goods ships by sea. Plenty more was done by the British Empire for industry and commerce.

On the political front, freedom and common law, wherever it exists in the world today, owes much to developments in Britain. Another great British-led development was the destruction of international slave trading, and then slavery itself. This was when slavery was entrenched throughout the world and had been for centuries. (Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures) Does Costell wish us to believe the Indians would be a free people w/o British "oppression"? Think again, and recognize the caste system, especially the untouchables, and the treatment of women and children.

> So to point out that there were ways in which imperialism had some good results is, at best, misguided. The essence of all forms of imperialism is unjust domination, and that's evil. Those who seek defend imperialism, even indirectly, ought to rethink their position.

So pointing out facts you don't like is "misguided". So we should ignore any facts you wish to ignore because they don't fit your agenda? Also, those who carelessly fling labels ought to rethink their position. Calling the British Empire "imperialism" to taint it with other instances of imperialism, such as by military conquest, is simply name calling. By 1912 the British Empire had about 400,000,000 British living abroad with a military of about 120,000! (Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures).

Best regards,

Merlin Jetton

From: Chris Matthew Sciabarra <chris.sciabarra@nyu.edu>

To: Philosophy of Objectivism List* <objectivism@wetheliving.com>

Subject: OWL: Re: Democracy, Interventionism, Dominance, Imperialism

Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2003 11:47:21 -0400

I very much enjoyed Philip Coates' two posts, one on "Democracy, Interventionism, Dominance, Imperialism," the other on "The Objectivist Center vs. The Ayn Rand Institute." I will have a lot more to say on the themes of his posts in my forthcoming article, "Understanding the Global Crisis: Reclaiming Rand's Radical Legacy," which will appear in the May/June 2003 issue of THE FREE RADICAL, and will be published online in due course on http://www.solohq.com .

Here, I'd like to make one or two brief points. There is no doubt that (as Phil puts it) "Intervention can be good if it is defensive or involving retaliatory force (or alliances whose purposes are to defend lives and rights including property)." But I don't think it is necessarily sloppy to use the term to describe aspects of U.S. foreign policy. Rand recognized the same dynamics at work in both U.S. domestic and foreign policy. She states unequivocally (in "The Shanghai Gesture"): "Foreign policy is merely a consequence of domestic policy."

In my forthcoming article, I present Rand's critique of both domestic and foreign policy (in their inextricable connection), showing how Rand saw the same forces at work in each sphere. In fact, Rand routinely saw the failures of government policy (in each sphere) as the pretext for more and more government involvement. Intervention caused a problem or made it worse, and government routinely used this as the pretext for ~further~ intervention to 'resolve' the problem, only creating more problems in its wake. Rand points this out in her examination of government intervention in the economy (with its consequences for individual rights---economic and civil liberties), but she does the same thing in her examination of U.S. intervention abroad.

In a sense, one can find this on display in Rand's discussion (in "The Roots of War") of the twentieth-century history of U.S. wars, where there is the clear implication that U.S. entry into World War I did ~not~ make the world safe for democracy... but that it made fascism, Nazism, and communism possible; that U.S. intervention in World War II did ~not~ bring forth the Four Freedoms, but that it delivered 750 million people into communist despotism; that the resulting Cold War made possible the illegitimate "hot wars" in Korea and Vietnam. And so forth. (Granted, there were very complicated reasons for the genesis of each of these wars; I'm simply focusing here on how each war, like each regulation, begets another.)

One can also see these interventionist dynamics at work in Rand's discussions of U.S. foreign aid policy (not just her written essays, but in her audio lectures, Q&A periods, and radio interviews---all of which I have referenced extensively in my forthcoming essay). Here the connections between government ~politico-economic~ intervention at home and abroad are mutually reinforcing.

This is an almost-lost aspect of Rand's approach to global politics. Rand focuses on the global financial manipulations of the Federal Reserve System, the World Bank, etc.---upon which statist businessmen built their illicit fortunes. One can glean a radical critique in Rand's examination of international political economy that echoes many of the concerns voiced by New Left critics of U.S. "capitalist imperialism." Except that, for Rand, the cause was not capitalism---but its opposite.

It is for this reason that I believe both the TOC and the ARI sides to this discussion have come up short. Yes, each points out something of value. But there is almost ~no~ appreciation for Rand's ~radical~ understanding of global political economy, a system that was an international extension of what Rand identified as the "New Fascism." (I should note that not ~all~ Objectivist commentary on these issues comes up short; there are notable exceptions.)

And this is not simply a legacy of ~substantive~ radical insights; it is a radical ~methodological~ legacy: one that seeks to grasp things by the root. As I write in a recent essay [a preface to my forthcoming article, see: http://www.solohq.com/Articles/Sciabarra/What_the_Hell_Has_Happened_to_the_Radical_Spirit_of_Objectivism.shtml --- which you may have to cut and paste into your browser], "for Rand, to examine roots and origins, to engage in any analysis of fundamentals, one must be committed to a thoroughgoing, comprehensive strategy. Rand's strategy entailed both logical and dialectical thinking. The art of noncontradictory identification (logic) required the concomitant art of context-keeping (dialectics)."

And in her analysis of any social problem, Rand ~never~ dropped the context---the realities and conditions of global statism and the irrationality it required and perpetuated---that was slowly destroying the world. That is why Rand wrote: "If . . . mankind cannot afford war any longer, then ~mankind cannot afford statism any longer~ . . . if war is ever to be outlawed, it is ~the use of force~ that has to be outlawed"

Cheers,

Chris

==========================================

Chris Matthew Sciabarra

Visiting Scholar, NYU Department of Politics

726 Broadway, 7th floor

New York, New York 10003

From: Chris Matthew Sciabarra <chris.sciabarra@nyu.edu>

To: Philosophy of Objectivism List* <objectivism@wetheliving.com>

Subject: OWL: More on "Intervention" and "Interventionism"

Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2003 10:40:40 -0400

I decided to do a search for both "intervention" and "interventionism" on my trusty CD-Rom of Rand's writings. I wanted to share the results with my colleagues here on OWL.

I thought Phil Coates had made a ~valid~ distinction between intervention in its ~defensive~ aspects versus intervention in its ~initiative~ aspects.

In general, however, I think that the word, as used by Rand and the Austrian economists has almost always connoted "initiative" intervention.

Taking his cue from Ludwig von Mises, for example, Murray Rothbard defines intervention as "the intrusion of aggressive physical force into society; it means the substitution of coercion for voluntary actions" (MAN, ECONOMY, AND STATE). He examines different categories of intervention in his economic analysis, including so-called "autistic" ("when the invader coerces a subject without receiving any good or service in return," e.g., homicide, assault), "binary" ("when the invader forces the subject to make an exchange or a unilateral 'gift' of some good or service to the invader," e.g., slavery, taxation, and conscription), and "triangular" ("when the invader compels a pair of people to make an exchange or prohibits them from doing so", as in any price or product control) (POWER AND MARKET).

I think Rand's understanding of "intervention" is consistent with these Austrian uses.

Note, however, that before Rand made a ~clean~ distinction between defensive and initiative use of force, she makes this point in her unpublished journal notes ("The Moral Basis of Individualism", October 28, 1944):

>>Breach of contract comes under the same category. If a man is up against a single man and a contract is broken, the man can deal with the breaker by force. But he cannot [protect himself] if the breaker has a collective of followers under his command. Then the intervention of government—of law to protect contracts—is needed, because this keeps the issue between two men and their rights, allowing no recourse to violence in which the man with the most followers would win. Again, a contract society is an anti-collectivist society.<<

So this seems closest to the points that Phil was making. But, again, I don't think the rule of objective law and the defensive use of force to protect individual rights at home or abroad, qualifies as "intervention" in the sense that it has been used by most free-market thinkers.

Speaking of "intervention" abroad, however, one can find Rand quoting approvingly from Arthur Ekirch on the coercive nature of a certain ~kind~ of foreign intervention:

>>In regard to Woodrow Wilson, Professor Ekirch writes: "Wilson no doubt would have preferred the growth of United States foreign trade to come about as a result of free international competition, but he found it easy with his ideas of moralism and duty to rationalize direct American intervention as a means of safeguarding the national interest." (p. 199.)<< ("The Roots of War")

This is why I focused, in my previous post, on the nature of intervention as a ~politico-economic~ phenomenon (especially with regard to how the "mixed economy" globalizes its "pull-peddling"). And it is also instructive that Rand agreed with Ekirch specifically on the folly of the Wilsonian project; this Wilsonian project [making the world safe for democracy by "direct American intervention"] is of ~central~ importance to the current neoconservative architects of U.S. foreign policy.

Of course, Rand's most typical use of "intervention" can be found throughout her writings. See, for example, "The Intellectual Bankruptcy of Our Age":

>>The fundamental principle of capitalism is ~the separation of State and Economics~—that is: the liberation of men's economic activities, of production and trade, from any form of intervention, coercion, compulsion, regulation, or control by the government. . . . A full, perfect system of capitalism has never yet existed in history. Various degrees of government ~intervention~ and control remained in all the mixed, semi-free economies of the nineteenth century, undercutting, hampering, distorting, and ultimately destroying the operations of a free market.<< (emphasis added)

I also did a CD-Rom search for "interventionism." In "The Chickens' Homecoming," for example, Rand clearly takes the "isolationist" side, and repudiates the notion of "interventionism" because it undermines a proper U.S. foreign policy. She writes of the Vietnam war:

>>But a philosophical approach [examining the Vietnam war] would consist of tracing the ideological history of how we got into that war, what influences or interests pushed us in, what errors of our foreign policy were responsible, what basic premises created that policy and how they should be corrected. If such a study were made, it would remind the country that the war in Vietnam was started by President Kennedy, who is the idol of all the anti-war protesters; that the basic premises of our foreign policy were set by another idol, President Roosevelt, and reinforced by the United Nations and by every peace and One-World group ever since: the premises that we owe a duty to the rest of the world, that we are responsible for the welfare of any nation anywhere on earth, that isolationism is selfish, immoral and impractical in a "shrinking" modern world, etc. Such a study would demonstrate the evil of altruistic "interventionism" or "internationalism," and would define the proper principles (the premises of national self-interest) that should guide America's foreign policy.<< (The Chickens' Homecoming)

Finally, I would like to make one more point about the character of U.S. action abroad, even when it is legitimate. ~Because~ the U.S. has a mixed economy, ~because~ the dynamics of the New Fascism do not cease at the nation's borders, even ~legitimate~ action by the U.S. government to retaliate against those who violate the individual rights of American citizens must be carefully and constitutionally controlled. I say this because even so-called "good wars" like World War II have had a tendency to bring about all sorts of deleterious long-term alterations in social life caused by the extension of government power. It is no coincidence that Randolph Bourne saw war as "the health of the state."

I'm not talking just about the use of conscription and increasing levels of taxation. I'm talking about both the government cartelization of industry (which industry has historically ~welcomed~) and outright nationalization of industry for the "common good." I hope to republish, soon, an old article of mine on this subject: "Government and the Railroads During World War I"---where I document how railroad executives ~welcomed~ the government takeover, something that should be kept in mind as we careen toward possible government nationalization of the airlines.

I'm also talking about the control of prices and wages, full-scale regulation, the criminalization of certain forms of speech and expression (the Alien & Sedition Acts, US Patriot Acts, etc.), and so forth.

Thus, even when a semi-free country wages ~just~ war, it must guard against infringements of individual rights at home; too often, these infringements become a part of the permanent architecture of political economy. And, unfortunately, because of the nature of a mixed economy, the waging of war and the infringement of liberty often go hand-in-hand. The infrastructure for governmental control of the economy is often established during war (much of the New Deal benefited from the infrastructure created by "war collectivism" in World War I), just as the establishment of governmental control of the economy lays the institutional groundwork for massive military action (see, for example, the creation of central banks throughout history as a means of funding war).

Indeed, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance (attributed variously to Wendell Phillips and Thomas Jefferson).

Cheers,

Chris

==========================================

Chris Matthew Sciabarra

Visiting Scholar, NYU Department of Politics

726 Broadway, 7th floor

New York, New York 10003

Dialectics & Liberty Website:

http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sciabarra

The Sciabarra "Not a Blog" (regularly updated):

http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sciabarra/update.htm

The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies:

http://www.aynrandstudies.com

From: "Michelle F. Cohen" <michal35@comcast.net>

To: objectivism <objectivism@wetheliving.com>

Subject: OWL: Re: British influence in India and Pakistan

Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2003 23:52:39 -0400

In response to Erik Herbertson post of 4/17, in which he presented facts on British rule in Pakistan in the 20th Century:

According to my Oxford Encyclopedic World Atlas, the British East India Company was formed in 1600 and, by 1757, became the leading power in India. It was a trading company that found willing partners in India and brought with it Western influence. The British East India Company did not occupy most of what is today Pakistan. Only in the 1840's, the British East India Company entered areas in the Punjab and Sind regions of Pakistan. In 1858, the British Government took over the territories occupied by the East India Company. At the same time, the British Government took over all of what today is Pakistan. (It was a Statist takeover, but the British Government still had a Parliamentary system and introduced a Western legal system.) According to this data, Pakistan did not have the 1600-1858 period of influence by the British East India Company. The takeover by the British Government occurred at the same time in India and Pakistan, but against very different backgrounds.

-- Michelle Fram Cohen

From: PaleoObjectivist@aol.com

To: objectivism@wetheliving.com

Subject: OWL: Patriotism and Imperialism

Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2003 01:32:41 EDT

These are assorted comments on recent OWL posts:

1. In his post of April 17th, Bill Dwyer did such a good job of commenting on Allen Costell's April 14th post, that he left little else to remark on. However, I would like to share one or two tidbits on points Bill apparently overlooked:

Allen wrote: "I've heard Bill O'Reilly repeatedly say film maker Michael Moore was anti-American for being against both Bush and the war in Iraq. Yet this is a bunch of crap. One can be critical of a war or offer moral support for a declared 'enemy' -- or even lack support for US troops -- and still be fully American."

Personally, how ~anyone~ claiming to be "fully American" can justify giving moral support to Saddam Hussein, and decline to support our troops, even if the United States' rationale is incorrect (though sincere), and even if our troops are doing their level best to avoid atrocities and needless loss of life, is completely beyond me. It's like offering moral support to Al Capone because the government had to resort to tax evasion charges in order to nail him -- and being down on the officers doing the arresting.

Allen wrote: "Being an American means you believe in basic rights such as the right to life and to basic self determination (i.e., "liberty" and "democracy." If you find your government working against those principles, then a true American would be against the US government -- in all its relevant forms, in varying degrees from the President down to the individual soldier."

Yes, but ~how~ you oppose the U.S. government depends crucially upon whether you think the government is acting with good intent and sincerity in trying to defend the rights of its citizens against a clear and present danger, but on a mistaken factual premise -- or with cynical, dishonest intent, seeking not defense of U.S. citizens, but for the sake of securing oil markets, obtaining revenge, etc. If the former, i.e., if the government is ~trying~ to work in defense of rights of U.S. citizens, but doing so misguidedly, it is your right to speak out publicly and organize protests against the government's misdirected, but well-intended (i.e., American rights-defending) policies. Just as you would against a chief of police who believes (mistakenly) that enforcing the drug laws is going to defend the rights of members of the community against violation by drug users and sellers. You don't ~demonize~ them, let alone the people working in good faith for them. Naturally, if the police or military cause not merely unintended collateral damage to innocents, but deliberate atrocities, you scream bloody murder -- and I'll be there with you. But that is not happening in Iraq, so all the claims of "war crimes" are just so much vicious absurdity.

Allen wrote: "Until this war is proven to have been nothing but an act of liberation for an oppressed people, the US military is once again guilty of acting imperialistically."

I think Allen is confusing imperialism and rational national self- interest, much in the same way that some critics of egoism package-deal the deliberate innocent-victim-trampling kind of "egoism" with the no-deliberate-innocent-victim-trampling kind of rational egoism that is espoused by Rand. (See below, for more on this.)

2. Bill Dwyer argues in his 4/18 post (contra Allen Costell's 4/17) post) that imperialism per se is neither good nor evil. I agree.

First of all, economic "imperialism" (one of the variants in the dictionary definition) is like a "natural monopoly." It arises not through political force, but through economic power -- i.e, through productivity, persuasion, and trade. There is nothing here for libertarians or Objectivists to object to, in principle.

Secondly, even political imperialism, when exercised against a state that has engaged in mass murder of its own citizens and unprovoked attacks of its neighbors, is not unjust to that country, especially when the imperialists are making every effort to avoid unnecessary civilian deaths and property damage.

Political imperialism may indeed be unjust to the citizens of ~one's own~ country, if such imperialism is not an integral part of a policy aimed explicitly and primarily at defending the rights of the citizens of one's own country. In this respect, contrast the rationales offered for fighting in Vietnam vs. fighting in Iraq. As Rand pointed out, our involvement in Vietnam was "justified" on a gratingly altruistic basis. While it is a shame in some respects that so many American soldiers died in a losing cause, perhaps it is for the best that an altruistically based conflict ended in ignominious defeat for the U.S. In contrast, Bush has repeatedly stated the official U.S. rationale for Gulf War II as being the defense of our rights against violation by WOMDs being given by Saddam's regime to international terrorists who would use them in an attempt to one-up the 9/11 disaster.

That is what I mean by "rational national self-interest." You may reject the asserted factual basis for this rationale, but it is a fact that this is the official rationale. You may also reject the sincerity in back of this rationale -- but in so doing, you are rejecting the honesty and sincerity of the most honest and sincere man to inhabit the White House in decades. I am a pretty good judge of character, and I have been comfortable with GWB's moral character since I first started paying attention to him in the fall of 2000. He positively reeks of honesty, integrity, and steely resolve. Perhaps I am wrong, and perhaps the cynics are justified. Time will tell. But automatic knee-jerk cynicism is neither justified nor attractive -- especially in Objectivists.

One more comment: the nay-sayers and doom-mongers go into high gear when a U.S. President stands up to totalitarian bullies. They start their inevitable weak-kneed rants about how exercising our military power will stir up our enemies to cataclysmic violent reaction against us. You'd think that after such Islamic-led Armageddon failed to materialize after the Afghanistan war, they'd have caught on. But they still haven't learned. All's quiet in the Islamic world (except for those protesting ~FREELY~ in Iraq), and still the appeasers haven't realized that a bully's pals ~will~ get the message, when they see the bully getting a bloody nose.

The world became safer after we dismantled the Taliban and Al Caeda in Afghanistan. It became even safer after we deep-sixed the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. And it will become still safer in the days ahead, as the regimes in Syria and North Korea begin to moderate their behavior and attitudes in ways that the peaceniks still don't grasp. The legitimate use of physical force is to defend rights, and Bush's and Blair's motives for using it are legitimate and effective. There is no split between the moral and the practical. (Who said that? :-)

Best 2 all,

REB

From: Edward Karlinski <epkj@erols.com>

To: objectivism@wetheliving.com

Subject: Re: OWL: British Imperialism Was Bad?

Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2003 03:21:32 -0400

Allen Costell writes about the Indian "heroes" who opposed British rule. This is an inaccurate characterization, as heroism has a specific meaning. Gandhi and his followers knew that the British were not evil. They used civil disobedience because they expected less than deadly response. To be heroes, Gandhi and his supporters would have had to try their non-violent protests against Hitler or Stalin. That would have been heroic. The Chinese who faced tanks in Tienamen Square were heroic. The Hungarian uprising was heroic. These people really faced death for their beliefs. The Indians merely pretended to do so. It is interesting to note that in the 55 years since the end of British rule in India, the greatest achievement of India is to develop nuclear weapons for use against Pakistan, the other half of British India. Most people in India still live virtually medieval lives. I am not impressed. The British ruled India and changed it for the better. That is more than can be said of the followers of Gandhi, in particular the Nehru dynasty which ruled the country for over 30 years.

Edward Karlinski

From: Chris Matthew Sciabarra <chris.sciabarra@nyu.edu>

To: Philosophy of Objectivism List* <objectivism@wetheliving.com>

Subject: OWL: Historical interpretations of intervention & colonialism

Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2003 16:03:34 -0400

I wanted to reply briefly to Phil Coates before addressing the issue of colonialism---as interpreted by the great liberal thinker, Herbert Spencer.

Reply to Phil

Phil writes that in terms of "overseas intervention . . . Intervention could be rights-protecting or rights-assaulting. One can be talking about defensive action . . . or aggressive action. . . ." I agree. And my posts have not disputed this.

Phil also suggests that ~I~ made the argument that "our 'intervention' in WWI and WWII had harmful effects (some of which [i list]). All of these claims would require a -very sizable- amount of historical argument, including refuting the standard views of most historians - left, right, and center."

I agree wholeheartedly; but I actually wasn't making ~any~ argument in my April 18th post, and was only ~hinting~ at an argument in my April 19th post.

What I was claiming was that ~Rand herself~ argued that our intervention in those wars had effects that were entirely opposite from the stated intentions of two US Presidents---beloved in the "standard" historical view: Woodrow Wilson and FDR. The first argued for "making the world safe for democracy" in WW 1, and the second argued for the "Four Freedoms" in WW 2, and, ~according to Rand~, neither of these goals was achieved. So, I agree with (and chuckled over) Phil's suggestion: "If you're going to do libertarian revisionist history, you'd better come well armed and bring the apache attack helicopters, the tank divisions, and the frogmen." But while I do marshal lots of evidence in my own revisionist historical work, my central concern has not been ~libertarian~ revisionist history per se.

My central concern has been ~Ayn Rand~, and it was ~Ayn Rand~ who made these revisionist claims---claims with which I largely agree, actually---and I could not have possibly documented these claims in a post on OWL.

Finally, I would agree with Phil that Islam is a ~necessary~ condition for the shape of the Middle East ("It's the *religion*, stupid" is a classic statement of this)---but it is ~much more complicated than that~, and certainly not ~sufficient~ as an explanation, as my previous posts suggest.

On British Colonialism

The whole discussion about the "good" or "bad" character of British colonialism brought me back to the books... again.

Ayn Rand takes her cue from Isabel Paterson on the issue of colonialism, praising the British emphasis on the rule of law and commerce. Rand argued: "As in the case of Rome, when the repressive element of England's mixed economy grew to become her dominant policy and turned her to statism, her empire fell apart. It was not military force that had held it together."

British colonialism went through several distinct phases; its earliest manifestations were fully mercantilist---which is why American colonists revolted against British rule. The 19th century brought a much freer economy, but the mercantilist aspects of British colonial policy were ~never fully abandoned~. And as Britain turned increasingly toward statism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, its policies became more and more "neomercantilist."

Herbert Spencer: Foe of Colonialism

The original critics of British colonialism were not 20th century communists. They were 19th century classical liberals. One of the most vocal critics of 19th century British colonialism was none other than the great liberal thinker, Herbert Spencer. I'd like to share some of Spencer's words with my colleagues here---for even though the British are to be applauded for extensions of the common law and free commerce into the outer reaches of their Empire, I hardly think of colonial rule as the paradigm for "capitalism: the unknown ideal." I don't want to engage in ahistorical reasoning here, but these issues are important---especially since there is a segment of the current intellectual world that is now calling for a new U.S. colonialism in the 21st century. That new U.S. colonialism won't have the benefit of drawing upon the strengths of the 19th century's approximation to laissez-faire capitalism, which is now a distant historical memory. Neofascism and neomercantilism rule the day.

In both his SOCIAL STATICS and his THE MAN VERSUS THE STATE, Spencer argued that even though much revenue was derived from trade, colonial expenditure still required various oppressive taxes to support "a judicial staff, a constabulary, a garrison, and so forth," and that these taxes, as such, were morally "unjustifiable." Spencer states that no government can "without reversing its function, tax one portion of its subjects at a higher rate than is needful to protect them," and that such taxation violates the rights of the citizens of the colonizing power.

But Spencer also argued that "colonial government, properly so called, cannot be carried on without transgressing the rights of the colonists. For if, as generally happens, the colonists are dictated to by authorities sent out from the mother country, then the law of equal freedom is broken in their persons, as much as by any other kind of autocratic rule." Spencer admitted that the British had seriously backtracked from the "tyrannies so atrocious" as those committed against the American colonies. But even in the 19th century, Spencer says, the British were constantly quelling discontent among their colonial subjects: three times with the Boers, "tumultuous agitation" in the West Indies, Jamaica, Guiana, Ceylon, massive "mismanagement" in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and so forth.

The British were just as guilty of barbarities as their French and Dutch colonial counterparts, Spencer maintained. Indeed, in their past rule over indigenous populations, "the English compelled the natives to buy or sell at just what rates they pleased, on pain of flogging or confinement. . . . Princes were betrayed into war with each other. . . . Dependent chiefs holding coveted lands were impoverished by exorbitant demands for tribute; and their ultimate inability to meet these demands was construed into a treasonable offense, punished by deposition. . . . Down to our own day, too, are continued the grievous salt monopoly, and the pitiless taxation that wrings from the poor ryots nearly half the produce of the soil. Down to our own day continues the ensuing despotism which uses native soldiers to maintain and extend native subjection---a despotism under which, not many years since, a regiment of sepoys was deliberately massacred for refusing to march without proper clothing. Down to our own day the police authorities league with wealthy scamps and allow the machinery of law to be used for purposes of extortion. Down to our own day so-called gentlemen will ride their elephants through the crops of impoverished peasants and will supply themselves with provisions from the native villages without paying for them. And down to our own day it is common with the people in the interior to run into the woods at the sight of a European!"

Spencer argued further that British colonialism had an insidiously negative effect on British society. "No one can fail to see that these cruelties, these treacheries, these deeds of blood and rapine, for which European nations in general have to blush, are mainly due to the carrying on of colonization under state management, and with the help of state funds and state force. . . . A brutality will come out which the discipline of civilized life had kept under, and not unfrequently they will prove more vicious than they even knew themselves to be. Various evil influences conspire with their own bad propensities. The military force guarding them has a strong motive to foment quarrels, for war promises prize money. To the civil employees, conquest holds out a prospect of more berths and quicker promotion---a fact which must bias them in favor of it. Thus an aggressive tendency is encouraged in all---a tendency which is sure to show itself in acts and to betray the colonists into some of those atrocities that disgrace civilization."

Spencer does ~not~ deny that colonization, though "accompanied by endless miseries and abominations," can have positive effects if it is carried on in an "equitable" manner. He surely praised the importance of the rule of law and of property rights. But, in most instances, Spencer observes, the "equitable . . . mode of colonizing" is carried on not by the state, "but by private individuals. It needed no mother-country protection, for it committed no breaches of the moral law." He points to the work of William Penn in Pennsylvania, who concluded treaties with the Indians that were "never broken" and that "served it in better stead than any garrison. For the seventy years during which the Quakers retained the chief power, it enjoyed an immunity from that border warfare, with its concomitant losses and fears and bloodshed, to which other settlements were subject. On the other hand, its people maintained a friendly and mutually beneficial intercourse with the natives; and, as a natural consequence of complete security, made unusually rapid progress in material prosperity."

Spencer extends his belief that an "equitable" policy, free of state privilege, would have worked much better; for example, if "the East India Company [had] been denied military aid and state-conferred privileges, both its own affairs and the affairs of Hindustan would have been in a far better condition than they now are. Insane longing for empire would never have burdened the Company with the enormous debt which at present paralyzes it. The energy that has been expended in aggressive wars would have been employed in developing the resources of the country. Unenervated by monopolies, trade would have been much more successful. . . . Private enterprise would long ago have opened up these sources of wealth, as in fact it is at length doing, in spite of the discouragements thrown in its way by conquest-loving authorities."

Spencer denied that "the extension of empire" was "synonymous with increase of wealth." Indeed, "on the contrary, aggressions bred of the desire for territorial gain entail loss. The notion that we secure commercial benefits by legislative connection with colonies is a proved delusion. At best we throw away the whole sum which colonial government costs us; while we may, and often do, incur further loss by establishing an artificial trade."

Words from a 19th century classical liberal observer---well worth remembering.

Cheers,

Chris

From: Chris Matthew Sciabarra <chris.sciabarra@nyu.edu>

To: Philosophy of Objectivism List* <objectivism@wetheliving.com>

Subject: OWL: Churchill on World War I

Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2003 19:16:23 -0400

In our various discussions of U.S. wars, I've suggested that World War I was ~the~ defining moment of the 20th century, especially with regard to its long-term consequences for U.S. foreign policy. As Ayn Rand argued, the war did not "make the world safe for democracy"; the Wilsonian dream became a nightmare and gave birth to Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and Soviet Russia---and all the nightmares thereafter.

I was reading a very interesting review of Warren Zimmermann's new book, FIRST GREAT TRIUMPH: HOW FIVE AMERICANS MADE THEIR COUNTRY A WORLD POWER (Farra Straus & Giroux). The review, entitled "Teddy Roosevelt's Hidden Legacy," written by Michael McMenamin for REASON magazine (6/03, pp. 56-63), includes a very interesting quote from Winston Churchill. McMenamin writes:

"A good argument can be made . . . that American foreign policy in the 10 years after the first Roosevelt---especially the policy followed by Roosevelt's nemesis, Woodrow Wilson---played a major, albeit unintended, role in the births of both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.

"No less than Winston Churchill suggested as much in 1936:

>>America should have minded her own business and stayed out of the World War. If you hadn't entered the war the Allies would have made peace with Germany in the spring of 1917. Had we made peace then there would have been no collapse in Russia followed by Communism, no breakdown in Italy followed by Fascism, and Germany would not have signed the Versailles Treaty, which has enthroned Nazism in Germany. If America had stayed out of the war, all of these 'isms' wouldn't today be sweeping the continent and breaking down parliamentary government, and if England had made peace early in 1917, it would have saved over one million British, French, American and other lives.<< "

Clearly, there is no way to know the accuracy of Churchill's alternate history. But it does provide a bit more speculative substance to Rand's own view of Wilsonian folly.

Cheers,

Chris

From: "Philip Coates" <philcoates@worldnet.att.net>

To: "owl" <objectivism@wetheliving.com>

Subject: OWL: Chris, Are You Falling for Libertarian/Marxist RevisionistHistory?...Don't Do It, Young Man!

Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2003 22:43:08 -0700

Subject: Chris, Are You Falling for Libertarian/Marxist Revisionist History?...Don't Do It, Young Man!

Chris Sciabarra [4/30] presents the view that if only the U.S. had not entered WWI, Germany and Russia would have not been so damaged by war that Nazism and communism inevitably arose.

The reason this is worth discussing today is that it is hardly "old news". Isolationists would argue that if Chris is right we should avoid making the same mistakes. And that fighting other wars overseas today may lead to like 'destabilizing' consequences.

I've explained in great detail elsewhere* why the Iraq war was necessary (and the need to root out terrorist training camps and a host regime justified Afghanistan) so let's move forward (or backward in this case).

Let's deal with the if-only-we-hadn't-gone-to-war-with-Germany-in-1917 argument:

1. WWI wasn't a 'war of choice'. It was a response to aggression:

In early 1917, Germany announced that it would launch unlimited U-boat warfare against all commercial ships, including those of neutral America, anywhere near Britain and France. They followed up promptly by starting to sink unarmed American merchant vessels. As a Philadelphia newspaper put it at the time the "difference between war and what we have now is that now we aren't fighting back." Unless Chris wants to argue that America can allow Germany to dictate its trade with Europe and to sink our ships if we don't comply, Germany was the initiator of acts of war.

And there is also the matter of the Zimmerman telegram at the same time, signaling an intent to escalate hostilities further - in which the German foreign secretary proposed an alliance with Mexico in which it would regain Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona as fruits of war.

2. It wasn't the war, it was the peace:

It's not the fact of the war's devastation that caused fascism, Nazism, communism. It was the aftermath of the war. After WWII, which caused far more devastation, the U.S. participated in an occupation policies and de-Nazification and war crimes policies and economic / free trade policies which set the defeated countries back on their feet. So it's reasonable to assume that if the post-WWI Treaty of Versailles had been more benign, rather than aimed at crippling and impoverishing Germany, Hitler would not have been able to flourish. There is a whole section in most histories of the period on this topic. They are usually entitled something like "The Peace Treaty that Bred a New War."

3. It wasn't the war, it was the lack of free trade:

Moreover, if the free market low tariffs of post-WWII had been in place, rather than the high tariffs of post-WWI, prosperity rather than economic upheaval could have resulted.

4. It wasn't the war, it was the appeasement (...and the fact the bad guys thought they could 'get away with it'):

This is well-known both with regard to Hitler and with regard to the Bolsheviks so I won't spend much time. The totalitarians found they could get away with murder. Then they went further. The free countries could have defeated them early very easily and without much loss of life. And maybe even without war (hot or cold) in one or both cases. Instead they waited until they were entrenched, had conquered the continent of Europe (Hitler) and were on the verge of developing nukes, or had consolidated power and developed an arsenal of atomic ICBMs.

We are very, very, very lucky the Soviets, operating often thru committee post-Stalin and post-Khrushchev, were somewhat more risk-averse than Hitler would have been in their position. And didn't destroy the world in some hair-brained miscalculation or brinkmanship during the years from the Cuban Missile Crisis through the late eighties.

5. With regard to whether Russia would have gone communist eventually if they had not been defeated in WWI, I have no informed opinion. But the following logic: U.S. does not enter the war, therefore peace breaks out, therefore Russia doesn't lose, therefore the czars stay in power forever, therefore the horrors of the century are averted --- seems like a quite a stretch to me.

5b. With regard to the etiology fascism in Italy, I'm going to take a pass. (My customary omniscience is in remission on this.)

6. I want to make a broader reply to a currently fashionable set of doctrines on the left, which libertarians have sometimes swallowed whole and which undergird much of the debate about isolationism (although Chris didn't mention them and may or may not subscribe to them as sweeping principles):

War is destabilizing. It causes more harm than good. So leave things alone. Leave the status quo alone. Find another peaceful way to deal with the bad guys.

The fallacy is that each of these statements is an overgeneralization. Some wars which leave matters unresolved -do- indeed destabilize. Some don't. WWII stabilized Germany and Japan and ended their threats to the world and their forms of totalitarianism or authoritarianism.

Why would it be the case that every war leaves things worse off or unleashes new demons?

It just doesn't follow. Did the American Revolution leave things worse off than they were before? What about the Cold War? What about the Civil War? And what about the cases when the bad guys are "hungry" and don't want to be deterred or kept in their box? (It's often forgotten how militantly expansionist the antebellum South was. This was a main cause of war. The Southern slavers wanted new lands for slavery - the fact they couldn't get Kansas/Nebraska, California, and south of the border drove hostilities.) Wouldn't you want to "destabilize" a status quo in these latter cases which involved dictatorship or slavery, especially when they threaten to spread further?

Assuming you could do it successfully without literally or figuratively blowing up the world...which first the colonies, then the North, then the United States did.

--Philip Coates

*I did so in the following posts: "Dummies Guide to Iraq" [1/23]...."The Case for War" [2/26], "The Case for War - Revisited" [3/8]. Observe that many of the arguments there and in today's post could be accumulated into a long treatise entitled AGAINST LIBERTARIAN ISOLATIONISM if I felt there were a large enough audience, which I doubt.[/siz

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Seriously, so why did it not occur to me to do a Google search, since I typically do many searches in the course of a workday?...

George,

Something kept nagging at the back of my mind about your comment.

I think I know what it is, so here's my shot.

There should be no shame in a lapse of use, or a lapse of knowledge, regarding computer stuff. Internet stuff. We are being bombarded daily with irritating changes to things we know how to do and bewildering changes to the sheer amount of stuff that is available. And all of it needs to be learned.

It seems like just when we get comfortable with a resource and start automating the commands in our brains (so we can concentrate on what we really want to do), they come along and change everything.

I believe this new technology is literally rewiring our brains. There's even a best-selling book about this called The Shallows by Nicholas Carr.

Individuals have never before processed as much information as they currently do, and at such a rapid pace. I don't know if our brains were wired to go slower since they seem to do a pretty good job of assimilating, but I do know that newer kinds of neural pathways are being developed in the average person (one who uses electronic media regularly) than existed before.

And, generally, attention spans are being shot to hell. That goes for short-term memory, also.

So I don't see a problem with not remembering to do a Google search when your mind is full of other stuff. That has happened to me plenty and I have read lots of others complain of similar stuff. But I also see the contrary--I don't know how on earth we manage to remember to do it when we do.

This problem is often called information overload, but I believe it goes far beyond that. The current glut of instant information situation is prompting us to literally find new ways to use our brains. And it sometimes interferes with the old ways.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Seriously, so why did it not occur to me to do a Google search, since I typically do many searches in the course of a workday?...

George,

Something kept nagging at the back of my mind about your comment.

I think I know what it is, so here's my shot.

There should be no shame in a lapse of use, or a lapse of knowledge, regarding computer stuff. Internet stuff. We are being bombarded daily with irritating changes to things we know how to do and bewildering changes to the sheer amount of stuff that is available. And all of it needs to be learned.

It seems like just when we get comfortable with a resource and start automating the commands in our brains (so we can concentrate on what we really want to do), they come along and change everything.

I believe this new technology is literally rewiring our brains. There's even a best-selling book about this called The Shallows by Nicholas Carr.

Individuals have never before processed as much information as they currently do, and at such a rapid pace. I don't know if our brains were wired to go slower since they seem to do a pretty good job of assimilating, but I do know that newer kinds of neural pathways are being developed in the average person (one who uses electronic media regularly) than existed before.

And, generally, attention spans are being shot to hell. That goes for short-term memory, also.

So I don't see a problem with not remembering to do a Google search when your mind is full of other stuff. That has happened to me plenty and I have read lots of others complain of similar stuff. But I also see the contrary--I don't know how on earth we manage to remember to do it when we do.

This problem is often called information overload, but I believe it goes far beyond that. The current glut of instant information situation is prompting us to literally find new ways to use our brains. And it sometimes interferes with the old ways.

Michael

Perfect people for flying drones and bombing us in our peaceful homes just because.

A world of shit. I'm only an observer. You can't write good and important books for morons. Let the technology run.

I'll write one anyway. Maybe two. But not for them.

--Brant

the acceleration of history because of economic and technological collapse and change and transmogrification of sundry societies--i.e., most of them--that's today and that's tomorrow