Cardinal Value(s) in the Objectivist Ethics

[Xray]

Rand's philosophy is based on reason, the impotence of evil and her idea of the ideal man.

What Rand calls based on "reason" is actually based on her personally preferred subjective values.

I'll exemplify it by "the impotence of evil" quoted above. Not only is the label "evil" an entirely subjective value judgment - for what person A regards as 'evil', person B may regard as 'good' - her claiming that whatever she subjectively perceives as evil is "impotent" is mere wishful thinking, almost magical thinking. What does such thinking have to do with rationality?

Small kids often fantasize that they are "stronger" than a gangster and can actually fight him. These omnipotence fantasies are a normal stage in a child's psychological development, but an adult clinging to the fantasy that evil is impotent?

It's easy to see though where Rand's fantasy has its roots: in her traumatic experiences of being denied so much in her early years of life in Russia by a state she perceived as evil. That she never overcame her trauma shows in her obsession with words like "looters" and "moochers". For it was SHE who felt surrounded by "looters and moochers" in Russia, and kept her image of the enemy ("THEY") even when she later lived in entirely different circumstances in the USA.

and her idea of the ideal man

Like e. g. Howard Roark who felt entitled to blow up a building because a contract was breached. That was Rand's man as man should be - a role model to emulate for her readers. Can you imagine what a society full of real Roarks would look like? Full of such walking time bombs? Just think if the many breaches of contract which happen among people all the time - since Rand's ideal man is allowed to use violence in such cases, man o man would we hear a noise of explosives every day! :shocked:

I can only hope no reader ever got and will get the idea to emulate Roark & Co.

Edited June 30, 2009 by Xray

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I can only hope no reader ever got and will get the idea to emulate Roark & Co.

Xray,

The good thing about freedom is that you (Xray) don't get to tell people what to think. That goes for anybody.

Your understanding of Rand's message is so... er... subjective and so restricted to a small number of Rand-haters that there is absolutely no danger of people going around blowing up buildings because they are trying to emulate Howard Roark. Not even Randroids do that.

You have a biased opinion in Xray-speak on your side. I have history—the 60+ years of The Fountainhead's mainstream success—on the other side.

I think it is a wonderful thing that Rand readers do not think in Xray-speak. From what I can tell, they think in normal English and they buy Rand's books in droves.

Isn't the free market a wonderful thing?

Michael

[Xray]

"The consequences of the action are something else. Johnny may be lucky and not get hit by the car, or the opposite happens."

And the consequences of what he learns from either outcome or any range of influences that might mitigate the potential serious impact will have an effect on his perception of what his individual self interests is...Correct?

That depends on how the experience is processed. If Johnny is so young that he does not yet have the mental maturity to connect an approaching car with danger, he may repeat the experience.

Just think of how even the awareness of danger often does not stop adults from having potentially dangerous hobbies. In that case, their self-interest leads them to value a dangerous challenge more than their safety.

Edited June 29, 2009 by Xray

[Michelle]

Small kids often fantasize that they are "stronger" than a gangster and can actually fight him. These omnipotence fantasies are a normal stage in a child's psycholgical development, but an adult clinging to the fantasy that evil is impotent?

When I was a kid, my mother would try warning me off from wandering about by myself by telling me that strangers might get me. "I'll just beat em up," I told her. But what if they have guns, she'd ask me. "I'd just kick the guns out of their hands and then beat them up," I responded.

The innocence of youth.

But seriously, when Rand speaks of the impotence of evil, she is not talking about evil people. She is talking about evil qualities. A purely evil person, possessed of no virtues, would never be any threat to anyone else, as they'd be unable to sustain their own lives. This type of person doesn't exist, of course, but it makes for a nice illustration.

CS Lewis addresses the impotence of evil in his "Mere Christianity." Here Lewis is discounting dualism, which he defines as "...the belief that there are two equal and independent powers at the back of everything, one of them good and the other bad...":

"The two powers ... are supposed to be quite independent. ... Each presumably thinks it is good and thinks the other bad. ... Now what do we mean when we call one of them the Good Power and the other the Bad Power? Either we are merely saying that we happen to prefer the one to the other--like preferring beer to cider--or else we are saying that, whatever the two powers think about it, and whichever we humans, at the moment, happen to like, one of them is actually wrong, actually mistaken, in regarding itself as good. ... If "being good" meant simply joining the side you happened to fancy ... then good would not deserve to be called good. So we must mean that one of the two powers is actually wrong and the other actually right.

"But the moment you say that, you are putting into the universe a third thing in addition to the two Powers: some law or standard or rule of good which one of the powers conforms to and the other fails to conform to. But since the two powers are judged by this standard, then this standard ... is farther back and higher up than either of them..."

He goes on to say:

"If Dualism is true, then the bad Power must be a being who likes badness for its own sake. But in reality we have no experience of anyone liking badness just because it is bad. The nearest we can get to it is in cruelty. But in real life people are cruel for one of two reasons--either because they are sadists, that is, because they have a sexual perversion which makes cruelty a cause of sensual pleasure to them, or else for the sake of something they are going to get out of it--money, or power, or safety. But pleasure, money, power, and safety are all, as far as they go, good things. The badness consists in pursuing them by the wrong method, or in the wrong way..."

[Xray]

I will not sanction any more of this approach to philosophy, however. She's attacking all philosophy--the very idea and need of it.

--Brant

Nobody 'needs' philosophy, since everybody has one.

[Xray]

I can't crawl into the head of each person who adopts the altruist philosophy, but the one who believes that self-sacrifice (Rand's version of altruism) is good on a metaphysical level—say, Jesus Christ—could be acting motivated by self-interest. In His case, say, love for God is His greater value.

A value prompted by the self-interest to get the "benefits" of an afterlife in the paradise promised "to those who do god's will".

Edited June 29, 2009 by Xray

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

A value prompted by the self-interest to get the "benefits" of an afterlife in the paradise promised "to those who do god's will".

Xray,

That's how I believe most Christians see it. But I've known some who prefer to leave it in God's hands and not worry about it.

They prefer to sacrifice themselves because they are convinced that this is the good.

I have had no reason to disbelieve them.

Michael

[Xray]

A value prompted by the self-interest to get the "benefits" of an afterlife in the paradise promised "to those who do god's will".

Xray,

That's how I believe most Christians see it. But I've known some who prefer to leave it in God's hands and not worry about it.

They prefer to sacrifice themselves because they are convinced that this is the good.

I have had no reason to disbelieve them.

Michael

Once you dig you will always find self-interest motivating the action.

Whether a believer hopes for an afterlife or not (indeed there also exist those who don't expect one), when you ask them they will tell you god gives their life "meaning" and a "deeper sense". So again 100 per cent self-interest lies at the root of it.

But there are some cases that are a hell of a lot fuzzier and I can't see self-interest, especially in light of the enormity of the loss from sacrifice. A person who goes into a depression who adopts altruism and sacrifices himself could be acting in an unselfish manner since his depression is only a short-term window into his "self" and his hormonal and chemical imbalance pretty much scramble his brains.

Adopting altruism can be a desperate attempt to flee from depression, the self-interest then would lie in the hope to escape an illness. Quite a few people suffering from helper's syndrome btw are actually depressed, suffering from a lack of self-worth leading them to constantly to seek approval by others via helping them. The self-interest is "appreciation and approval from others".

[Michael]:

I once knew a lawyer who left a very lucrative TV station position because a church bought it out and there were several lawsuits he was asked to defend that turned his stomach. Sometimes in the throes of religious conversion, people donated the deed to their house to that church. On waking up the next day, they discovered that they did not act in their own best interests and did not have anywhere else to live, so they wanted it back. The church would refuse. These were the court cases my friend refused to defend on behalf of the church.

Your lawyer friend's self-interest was not wanting his personal subjective ethical values betrayed by defending an institution whose actions he did not approve of. This self-interest of his won over his other self-interest "very lucrative job".

In many decisions, we constantly have to choose between various (often conflicting) self-interests, but in the end the specific self-interest subjectively judged as the most valuable by the chooser will win. There is no exception to that rule.

When e. g. John Doe is on a diet, his stomach is gnawing and he salivates at the thought of double cheese pizza followed by tiramisu, he has the choice to give in or to resist. Whether he does the former or the latter, his choice is trading in a subjectively believed lesser value for subjectively believed higher value.

But surely John will know that giving in to the the pizza craving will jeopardize his goal "weight loss", one may ask. But it plays no role what John knows as fact. It's about what John subjectively decides to do.

So when John gives in to his craving to binge on food, he, at the moment of the decision, values the taste of pizza & co more than his the long-term goal weight loss. His momentary self-interest to taste the food wins over his other self-interest weight loss.

It's that simple and just another illustration of the self-interest principle operating 100 of the time, regardless of what people decide.

As for Rand, she subjectively approved of the self-interests of Roark, Galt, Rearden, Dagny and Co, while subjectively disapproving of the self-interests of Keating, Taggart & Co.

Choosing the the label "altruists" for Taggart & Co does not make them so. For they are as much motivated by self-interest as the others.

Edited June 30, 2009 by Xray

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Xray,

What happens in Xray-land when there is more than one interest?

Michael

[Selene]

Here is some "think" music for you x-ray:

:console:

Adam

[Xray]

Xray,

What happens in Xray-land when there is more than one interest?

Michael

Michael, I was editing my # 384 post while you wrote yours and it gives examples of more than one (self)-interest - not only in "Xray land" but also in "Michael-land", "Selene-land", and everyone else's.

Edited June 30, 2009 by Xray

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Xray,

Nah...

Only in Xray-land does a person act in his/her own interest if that person acts at all.

Out in reality people have a variety of interests. I have already given a few, but they don't grok well in Xray-speak.

btw - Who is behind you being here? I know for a fact you are not interested in learning Objectivism. You even called it boring in one post.

Michael

[Xray]

Xray,

Nah...

Only in Xray-land does a person act in his/her own interest if that person acts at all.

What is that supposed to mean? :question:

`

Out in reality people have a variety of interests. I have already given a few, but they don't grok well in Xray-speak.

btw - Who is behind you being here? I know for a fact you are not interested in learning Objectivism. You even called it boring in one post.

Michael

What "interests" are you talking about?

And where did I make the comment re "boring"? I'd like to reread that post please.

As for why Im here, in a past post I told you how I got interested in Ayn Rand. But how you can derive from my posts that I'm a member of a church (!) :shocked: is beyond me. You must completely have misread the things I posted on religion, or (another possibility) not have read them at all.

Edited June 30, 2009 by Xray

[Brant Gaede]

She's the worst troll so far--that is, best at trolling.

She's not here to trade for value, but to win an argument she cannot lose because her argument is a closed loop inside her head. She refuses to differentiate between perceived and real self interest. Whether you step in front of a car and get killed or step into a car and go buy groceries, it's all the same thing: self interest. Like a three-legged stool with one leg missing, it falls down in reality but in her head she can imagine it standing up just fine--even with someone sitting on it.

This is the onion of self interest: keep peeling back the layers and the self interest gets better and better until best. But then you have to deal with the objectivity of values, which she denies, but won't own up to the contradiction. It's all nihilistic.

Stuck in stupid-land, this intelligent woman is reduced to such circumlocutions as people don't need philosophy (false) because everyone has a philosophy (true) ignoring the need for the right philosophy which means, of course, any philosophy not already in your head-banging-on-reality head.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Brant,

Xray is here playing to some audience for God knows what reason. I can't prove that, but I am convinced of it.

Nobody goes through all that effort without a payoff of some kind. She claims hers is understanding. I don't believe her.

All her acts and posts point away from even trying to understand. Her questions come off strongly as ruses and set-ups to try to debunk Objectivism.

What can you say about someone who says "existence doesn't exist" makes sense and goes into spiritual bliss when she thought you were renouncing Ayn Rand?

I know what I think. People yukking it up in some place in the world, or congratulating her.

There is one thing I am convinced of, however. She is not using proxies, although she has had 449 IP numbers so far. (Most people only log 1 to 5 over months.) This is probably due to Deutsche Telekom AG (her ISP) using dynamic IP's for the general public. The reason I don't think they are proxy IP's is that I checked the first handful and they all resolved to the Bayern region of Germany, with Munich, Essenbach, Freising, and Erding being the probable cities. (They were repeated.)

So to that extent, I believe she is legit.

I will be addressing the trolling issue shortly.

Michael

[Xray]

Do all those ad-hominem attacks refute the arguments made?

Michael/ Brant, for example can you refute any argument in Dragonfly's post which so excellently sums up the objective value issue?

Xray, my dear hornet, you're right about the problem with "objective values". Let's go back to the source and have a look at what Rand wrote. She defines "value" as "that which one acts to gain and/or keep" (AR - The Virtue of Selfishness). Well, it's obvious that in this definition value is a subjective notion, in the sense that different persons may have different values: what A wants to gain and/or keep isn't necessarily the same as what B wants to gain and/or keep. Or as Rand says: "The concept 'value' is not a primary; it presupposes an answer to the question: of value to whom and for what?". She defines "sacrifice" as "the surrender of a greater value for the sake of a lesser one or of a nonvalue" (AR - The Virtue of Selfishness). Example: "If a mother buys food for her hungry child rather than a hat for herself, it is not a sacrifice: she values the child higher than the hat; but it is a sacrifice to the kind of mother whose higher value is the hat, who would prefer her child to starve and feeds him only from a sense of duty." (AR - Galt's speech), a perfect example of the subjectivity of values: for one woman a hat has a higher value than her child, while for another woman the child has the higher value.

But then she switches to a so-called objective theory of values: "The objective theory of values is the only moral theory incompatible with rule by force. Capitalism is the only system based implicitly on an objective theory of values—and the historic tragedy is that this has never been made explicit. If one knows that the good is objective—i.e., determined by the nature of reality, but to be discovered by man’s mind—one knows that an attempt to achieve the good by physical force is a monstrous contradiction which negates morality at its root by destroying man’s capacity to recognize the good, i.e., his capacity to value. Force invalidates and paralyzes a man’s judgment, demanding that he act against it, thus rendering him morally impotent" (AR - Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal).

The latter statement is a completely arbitrary assertion: why should force invalidate and paralyze a man's judgment? She doesn't present any evidence to support that notion. Note also how she introduces a subjective notion in her argument: "the good is objective" - what is the definition here of the good? No doubt she means that what's good according to Objectivism, but nowhere does she give an objective derivation. She defines the "standard of value" as follows: "The standard of value of the Objectivist ethics—the standard by which one judges what is good or evil—is man’s life, or: that which is required for man’s survival qua man." (AR - The Virtue of Selfishness). There we have the infamous switch again! "Man's life" suddenly becomes "that which is required for man's survival qua man", i.e. survival according to Objectivist principles ("then a miracle occurs"!). Calling a theory of values objective doesn't make it so.

http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/in...amp;#entry73548 Edited June 30, 2009 by Xray

[Brant Gaede]

Xray,

I made a comment about DF's post which you in turn did not comment on. I made many comments on many of your posts many of which you wholly ignored.

Michael,

When did Xray get the idea I was renouncing Objectivism? I missed or forgot that.

Don't worry about trolling, just don't feed trolls.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Xray,

It's not an ad-hominem attack. It's an evaluation of what you are doing here.

I think you are playing games to score points and get applause and yukkedy-yuk-yuks from a private audience.

As to "refuting" and all that other competitive garbage you demand others do, I can't even discuss things in Xray-speak, much less refute. I don't understand Xray-speak.

I suspect Xray (you) doesn't either...

For instance, I have no idea what "objective" means in Xrray-speak. I only know that Xray says it is something you can never apply to values (in addition to a lot of "is not this, is not that") and that Xray says a consensus of experts will tell me why.

But I don't know who these experts are and I don't know how I am supposed to know the "is not this, is not that" part other than accept Xray on faith when Xray makes up lists.

Imagine that, I used to be a professional translator, too...

Michael

[Selene]

Xray,

What happens in Xray-land when there is more than one interest?

Michael

Michael, I was editing my # 384 post while you wrote yours and it gives examples of more than one (self)-interest - not only in "Xray land" but also in "Michael-land", "Selene-land", and everyone else's.

I have no land ... I am now a global slave ...oops citizen since

O'Biwan the magnificent just got his filibuster proof vote in the Senate by adding a traitor from Pennsylvania and a comedian from Minnesota.

Adam

Global Slave

[Selene]

Xray,

Nah...

Only in Xray-land does a person act in his/her own interest if that person acts at all.

What is that supposed to mean? :question:

`

Out in reality people have a variety of interests. I have already given a few, but they don't grok well in Xray-speak.

btw - Who is behind you being here? I know for a fact you are not interested in learning Objectivism. You even called it boring in one post.

Michael

What "interests" are you talking about?

And where did I make the comment re "boring"? I'd like to reread that post please.

As for why Im here, in a past post I told you how I got interested in Ayn Rand. But how you can derive from my posts that I'm a member of a church (!) :shocked: is beyond me. You must completely have misread the things I posted on religion, or (another possibility) not have read them at all.

Try reading the following:

Definition: Dry Drunk:

A colloquial term generally used to describe someone who has stopped drinking, but who still demonstrates the same alcoholic behaviors and attitudes.

Also Known As: Dry, Not Sober

Examples: His behavior hasn't changed at all, he acts like a dry drunk.

[Xray]

She's the worst troll so far--that is, best at trolling.

She's not here to trade for value, but to win an argument she cannot lose because her argument is a closed loop inside her head. She refuses to differentiate between perceived and real self interest. Whether you step in front of a car and get killed or step into a car and go buy groceries, it's all the same thing: self interest.

No, Brant. You have to differentiate between self-interest motivating an action and the consequences of the action.

So when someone steps in front of a car, the action itself does not give information as to what the self-interest of the person is. The car may simply have been overlooked because the self-interest was to get somewhere in a haste; it may have been a suicide attempt, etc.

This is the onion of self interest: keep peeling back the layers and the self interest gets better and better until best. But then you have to deal with the objectivity of values, which she denies, but won't own up to the contradiction. It's all nihilistic.

There is no "best" self-interest, only the subjective self-interest which wins over a person's other other self-interests.

As for nihilism, it implies that one thinks life is senseless. But this is not my philosophy at all.

Nor does the conclusion of no objective values existing imply that the person claiming this has no values of his/her own.

Stuck in stupid-land, this intelligent woman is reduced to such circumlocutions as people don't need philosophy (false) because everyone has a philosophy (true) ignoring the need for the right philosophy which means, of course, any philosophy not already in your head-banging-on-reality head.

But the wish for the "right" philosophy lands you on the doorstep of subjective values again. Just look at the many philospies of which people have felt they were "right", and the many subjective values believed to be "objective" and imposed on others, often by force. I have listed several examples on this thread. Edited June 30, 2009 by Xray

[Xray]

For instance, I have no idea what "objective" means in Xrray-speak. I only know that Xray says it is something you can never apply to values (in addition to a lot of "is not this, is not that") and that Xray says a consensus of experts will tell me why.

We can take Rand's definition of 'objective' and 'fact' if you feel more comfortable with it. No problem.

Just post it here. TIA.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

We can take Rand's definition of 'objective' and 'fact' if you feel more comfortable with it. No problem.

Just post it here. TIA.

Xray,

I'm not the one preaching Rand is wrong in Xray-speak.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

When did Xray get the idea I was renouncing Objectivism? I missed or forgot that.

Brant,

I tried to do a search, but there are just too many posts. On skimming some of the earlier ones, I started noticing just how dogmatic she was.

I just don't have time to wade through all that crap. She joined in April and has over 500 posts so far, most all of them saying Rand was wrong or the posters here on OL are wrong.

(Meanwhile getting Rand all wrong...)

Busy busy busy...

Michael

[Selene]

She's the worst troll so far--that is, best at trolling.

She's not here to trade for value, but to win an argument she cannot lose because her argument is a closed loop inside her head. She refuses to differentiate between perceived and real self interest. Whether you step in front of a car and get killed or step into a car and go buy groceries, it's all the same thing: self interest.

No, Brant. You have to differentiate between self-interest motivating an action and the consequences of the action.

So when someone steps in front of a car, the action itself does not give information as to what the self-interest of the person is. The car may simply have been overlooked because the self-interest was to get somewhere in a haste; it may have been a suicide attempt, etc.

This is the onion of self interest: keep peeling back the layers and the self interest gets better and better until best. But then you have to deal with the objectivity of values, which she denies, but won't own up to the contradiction. It's all nihilistic.

There is no "best" self-interest, only the subjective self-interest which wins over a person's other other self-interests.

As for nihilism, it implies that one thinks life is senseless. But this is not my philosophy at all.

Nor does the conclusion of no objective values existing imply that the person claiming this has no values of his/her own.

Stuck in stupid-land, this intelligent woman is reduced to such circumlocutions as people don't need philosophy (false) because everyone has a philosophy (true) ignoring the need for the right philosophy which means, of course, any philosophy not already in your head-banging-on-reality head.

But the wish for the "right" philosophy lands you on the doorstep of subjective values again. Just look at the many philospies of which people have felt they were "right", and the many subjective values believed to be "objective" and imposed on others, often by force. I have listed several examples on this thread.

Ayn Rand vs. Barack Obama on Iran

By Erika Holzer

Jun 30, 2009

How would Ayn Rand’s response to the Iranian crisis have differed from Obama’s? For many conservatives, libertarians, and even some Objectivists, the answer is not self-evident.

It depends on one’s definition of “self-interest.”

An articulate critic of California’s spendthrift politicians recently blasted away at a seemingly infinite list of special-interest groups lobbying for government handouts — until he veered off track with a wisecrack remark about “Randian self-interest” being in the same league with the “self-interest” demands of teachers’ unions, civil service bureaucrats, and the like.

But anyone conversant with the philosophy of Objectivism and its uncompromising defense of individual rights is acutely aware that when Rand spoke of self-interest, it was with a crucial modifier in mind: rational self-interest. And to seek the unearned, as the above-named special-interest groups do, is both patently irrational and antithetical to the concept of individual rights.

Bearing this in mind, what would be Ayn Rand’s take on the current Iranian crisis?

In “The Wreckage of the Consensus” Rand wrote about the “...need for a foreign policy based on long-range principles, i.e., an ideology.” (Emphasis Rand’s.) “But,” Rand stated emphatically, “a revision of our foreign policy, from its basic premises on up, is what today’s anti-ideologists dare not contemplate....” She went on to point out that “[a] proper solution would be to elect statesmen — if such appeared — and with a radically different foreign policy, a policy explicitly and proudly dedicated to the defense of America’s rights and national self-interests…” (emphasis mine) (The Objectivist, April 1967).

In other words, unlike Obama, whose “foreign policy” is so fuzzy as to be almost devoid of principles (not even short-range, let alone long-), Rand would have advised a newly elected president to give high priority to a clear-cut foreign policy as soon as he took office, thus eliminating the possibility of being caught off-guard — as Obama was — five months into his first term by the Iranian crisis.

Nor is it hard to predict how Ayn Rand would have defined America’s “self-interest” today in dealing with the likes of Ayatollah Khamenei or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad if some talk show host were to interview her. All one has to do is extrapolate from a revealing 1964 Playboy interview, substituting Iran for Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia or Cuba.

Playboy: What about force in foreign policy? You have said any free nation had the right to invade Nazi Germany during World War II.…

Rand: Certainly.


Playboy: ...And that any free nation today has the moral right — though not the duty — to invade Soviet Russia, Cuba, or any other “slave pen.” (Emphasis mine.) Correct?


Rand: Correct. A dictatorship — a country that violates the rights of its own citizens — is an outlaw and can claim no rights.


Playboy: Would you actively advocate that the United States invade Cuba or the Soviet Union?


Rand: Not at present. I don’t think it’s necessary.... I would advocate a blockade of Cuba and an economic boycott of the Soviet Union; and you would see both of those regimes collapse without the loss of a single American life.... ”

Rand also told her interviewer: “I do not believe that an individual should cooperate with criminals, and for the same reason, I do not believe that free countries should cooperate with dictatorships.”

In other words, Ayn Rand would disagree with well-meaning conservatives and Objectivists who think that we necessarily have a duty to intervene in Iran.

Robert Tracinski, in his June 22, 2009 TIA Daily newsletter, writes that “[w]e have the opportunity to encourage the collapse of the longest-standing, most militant modern Islamic regime — a leading sponsor of terrorism.” He also makes this understandable assumption: “The success of the new Iranian revolution is, of course, vital to American’s interests.”

But is it?

Despite the heart-rending plight of literally millions of Iranians (many of them young men and women whose “Death to Dictatorship” protests and brave defiance of a monstrous regime have been met with bloody slaughter), from Ayn Rand’s perspective whether our government should intervene — and if so, how — rests on what is in America’s self-interest.

That said, I think a strong case can be made that Ayn Rand would conclude it is in America’s rational self-interest to intervene.

On June 22, 2009, Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the late Shah of Iran — who normally keeps a low profile — addressed a packed room of sobered reporters at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. ten days after the protest movement began. “If the popular uprising in Iran is crushed,” Pahlavi warned, “this would not only threaten global stability but could lead to nuclear war.... [F]anatical tyrants who know that the future is against them may end their present course on their terms: a nuclear holocaust.”

Columnist Pat Buchanan recently noted that despite Obama’s efforts to sweet-talk the ayatollahs into linking their nuclear program to energy purposes, the regime has continued to engage in the process of enriching uranium.

Columnists Dick Morris and Eileen McGann are convinced that Iran is a “dire threat to our national security.” That the president of the United State’s “pathetic performance vis-à-vis Iran...cannot but send a message to all of America’s enemies that his “transparent appeasement of Iran’s government and it’s obvious lack of reciprocation” show him to be “a wimp” and sends a clear signal to rogue nations that Obama is “clueless” about handling foreign policy crises (emphasis mine). That “...[A]s North Korea prepares to launch a missile on a Hail Mary pass aimed at Hawaii, Obama’s Democrats slash 19 missile interceptors from the Defense Department budget.”

To be a “wimp” under these circumstances is to be an appeaser, which is what Barack Obama is. And in Ayn Rand’s view, rogue nations like Russia and Nazi Germany (read Iran, North Korea, Putin’s Russia) “...like any bully, feed on appeasement.” Such bully regimes, Rand stated, would “retreat placatingly at the first sound of firm opposition” (emphasis mine) (Los Angeles Times, Nov. 11, 1962).

Obama has proved deaf to the arguments Ayn Rand would have made about how to deal with the revolution in Iran. It took him one week of dithering with his advisors before he saw fit, in the words of Jonah Goldberg, Editor-at-large of National Review Online, to give “a full-throated denunciation of the regime’s clampdown and a statement of support for the protesters.” (And only after Congress and the Europeans had beat him to it, Goldberg noted dryly). “f the clerical junta prevails,” Goldberg warned, “anyone who shakes hands with Ahmadinejad will have a hard time washing the blood off his own....”

All things considered, I think that Ayn Rand would have quickly sized up the Iranian crisis and weighed the threats to our country’s national security. She’d have grasped that if the most powerful man in the world — the president of the United States — did not confront the ayatollahs and voice strong unqualified support of the protesters, our country would risk nuclear proliferation, not just in Iran, but in other rogue nations. That the unthinkable — nuclear holocaust — was a real possibility.

I think that, as Robert Tracinski correctly argued, “The success of the new Iranian revolution is ... vital to America’s interests.”

And I have no doubt that Ayn Rand would have written a scathing denunciation of President Barack Obama for not recognizing and acting on his moral duty to — if not invade Iran — then at least to support the Iranian revolution with all the means at his disposal.

Well folks, any reactions?

I have since Gulf War One had Iran in my strategic sights. This had to come. We should not waste time. Essentially we should:

1) help Israel by guaranteeing them AWAC support;

2) make sure that they have overflight clearance over Iraq;

3) make sure that they have the delivery, ahead of schedule, of the "bunker busting" bombs that we sold them last year;

4) join our European allies, like Merkel, in publicly condemning the Mullah led theocracy as unfit for a seat at the table of civilized nations;

5) condemn the enslavement of women by the theocratic terrorists; and

6) assure the Iranian students, professionals and middle class that we will stand with them in their moment of need.

Immediately, after the strikes on the entire set of facilities. If, the regime did not collapse, or sue for peace, their only refinery should be eliminated by the underground we had better have in place, or by a second strike.

As close as logistically possible, the Gulf should be sealed. Operatives/troops supported by the special forces compounds adjacent to the se border of Iran and our Allies the Afghans and push hard across that entire frontier. Same mo for the sw corner of Iran from Iraq and the Basra area.

That should disrupt and disintegrate Iran from within.

Adam

Post script:

X-ray I underlined italicized and bolded a section which you will not understand, but since I recognized you quite early for what you are you will utilize it to conflate concepts, definitions, etc. until you are right again.

Moreover, you and I both know that you have at least one little friend on this board.

Adam