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| Comments on "2008 Choices" |
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 | Saturday, September 6, 2008 at 18:45:15 mst
Comment ID: #1
Name: Dan G.
Spot on.
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| Saturday, September 6, 2008 at 18:47:49 mst
Comment ID: #2
Name: Dan G.
Congratulations Burgess, a comment of yours seems to have given rise to this.
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| Saturday, September 6, 2008 at 20:04:34 mst
Comment ID: #3
Name: Jeff Montgomery
URL: http://funwithgravity.blogspot.com/
That image made me instantly LOL. Yes, they're both fascocialists (say that 3 times fast without spitting).
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| Saturday, September 6, 2008 at 20:38:17 mst
Comment ID: #4
Name: William H. Stoddard
E-mail: whswhs(at)mindspring.com
URL: http://whswhs.livejournal.com/
I certainly see the point of this comparison as far as economics is concerned. But at a deeper philosophical level, I see some differences:
"I would probably have to say yes, that the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation. But I say that in the broadest sense. The lady that holds her lamp beside the golden door doesn't say, “I only welcome Christians.” We welcome the poor, the tired, the huddled masses. But when they come here they know that they are in a nation founded on Christian principles." (John McCain, interview by Dan Gilgoff on Beliefnet)
"Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God's will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.
Now this is going to be difficult for some who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, as many evangelicals do. But in a pluralistic democracy, we have no choice. Politics depends on our ability to persuade each other of common aims based on a common reality." (Barack Obama, keynote address to a conference held by the Call to Renewal)
At a very fundamental philosophical level, Barack Obama is reaffirming the Enlightenment, and McCain is rejecting it. That makes him the lesser evil. Certainly we need to go beyond the mistakes of the Enlightenment, but going back to the Middle Ages is not a good first step.
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| Saturday, September 6, 2008 at 21:04:32 mst
Comment ID: #5
Name: madmax
E-mail: max34(at)wlcm.net
"At a very fundamental philosophical level, Barack Obama is reaffirming the Enlightenment..."
I don't agree with this. Taken as a whole, the Democrats are the party dedicated to post-modern philosophy. The entire Leftist project is aimed at destroying the Enlightenment. Obama himself is a prime example of this as well as the product of it. McCain represents a rejection of Enlightenment ideals as well but that doesn't mean that Obama is pro-Enlightenment in any way. He is just less interested in injecting religion into the social/sexual/cultural arena than are the Conservatives. If he were to do that at this point in time he would alienate his base. The Left still allows freedom in the social/sexual/cultural arena but not for the right reasons as we know.
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| Saturday, September 6, 2008 at 21:21:21 mst
Comment ID: #6
Name: Dan
"I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all."
Ah, we have to argue based on principles we can all agree with. And Obama's first principle? Sacrifice for the good of the whole.
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| Saturday, September 6, 2008 at 21:36:08 mst
Comment ID: #7
Name: William H. Stoddard
E-mail: whswhs(at)mindspring.com
URL: http://whswhs.livejournal.com/
The passage from Obama that I quoted reads to me like a flat rejection of postmodernism. Postmodernists, as I understand the matter, believe that truth is relative to one's culture; that there is no universal truth and there are no universal values, but only those that one culture or another happens to value, and that all we can do is affirm all cultures equally. But Obama's statements flatly reject that postmodernist assumption; they say that there is a single common reality, that there are common and indeed universal values not tied to a specific religion, but equally accessible to those of no faith at all (and note that he admits that there are people without faith, unlike the many people who argue that atheism is just another religion), and that such values are to be arrived at through reasoned argument. And note that they are addressed to a Christian audience, and explicitly deny their claims to have a special insight into good and evil, in a way that postmodernism cannot do with any confidence.
You seem to be judging Obama not by what he explicitly says, but by the views of other Democrats as a whole, and by your opinions as to what he truly means, even when those opinions flatly contradict what he says. This might make some sense if there were reason to suppose that Obama was lying to gain the favor of his audience; but he was speaking to a Christian audience, to whom appeals to reason and reality over religious faith cannot have been welcome. It's much simpler to assume that he said what he actually believes.
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| Saturday, September 6, 2008 at 22:02:21 mst
Comment ID: #8
Name: madmax
E-mail: max34(at)wlcm.net
"You seem to be judging Obama not by what he explicitly says, but by the views of other Democrats as a whole..."
Yes, this is true and that is how I judge him. I am not defending McCain here but just stating my view that no Democrat President is going to operate on an Enlightenment epistemology. I am sure that Obama will contradict that quote you presented 100 times (at least) by the time of the elections.
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| Saturday, September 6, 2008 at 22:11:28 mst
Comment ID: #9
Name: Dan G.
(I'm not the same Dan from #6)
William,
I think you are correct in suggesting that the focus should be directed to philosophical level, not economics (they both fail there, but the don't differ from the dominant trends in the culture).
Those are a nice pair of quotes you found and I agree with your analysis of them. My curiosity is now piqued and I will look for more such "pairs" to see if Mr. Obama is consistent in the position he represents here.
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| Sunday, September 7, 2008 at 5:12:58 mst
Comment ID: #10
Name: Paul McKeever
E-mail: pmckeever(at)mckeever.com
URL: http://blog.paulmckeever.ca
"Barack Obama is reaffirming the Enlightenment, and McCain is rejecting it."
Not so and, for the most part: not relevant. In terms of political philosophy, Locke arguably stands at the commencement of the enlightenment. However, the "Scottish Enlightenment" includes the likes of Hume, who asserted one cannot derive oughts (which includes rights) from the facts of reality. The French Enlightenment includes the likes of Diderot and the other fatalists/determinists, who denied man has free will. Even the "problem child of the Englightenment" - Rousseau - is considered by some to be an Enlightenment philosopher, though he is best categorized as standing at the commencement of Romantic philosophy. What these philosophers and polemicists had in common was a belief that reason is a means to obtain knowledge but, even there, they argued about what kinds of knowledge it can be used to discover, and about whether things like divine revelation are a way of obtaining knowledge. Accordingly, to say "the enlightenment" is to say very little about morality.
This is especially true if we're comparing McCain to Obama. Consider their respective acceptance speeches. In his acceptance speech, McCain takes the Lockeian view, essentially borrowed by Jefferson, that man has rights, but that they are given to him by a supernatural being. You cannot get more "Enlightenment" era than that...unless you regard Rand to be an Enlightenment philosopher (I don't: she's in an era and league of her own).
In contrast, Obama doesn't mention the word rights at all during his acceptance speech, which is completely compatible with his statement that "Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values." That Obama states "proposals [must] be subject to argument, and amenable to reason" does not imply that reason, for him, is a means for discovering morality and, more importantly: many (most) of those who claim to advocate reason do not accept Rand's assertion that it is the faculty by which we discover morality. Many so-called advocates of reason are whimsical or religious Humean empiricists (e.g., most economists today). That Obama speaks of reason, but not of individual rights, serves as evidence that he is no more an advocate of rationality than is Hume or Kant. In fact, during his acceptance speech, he said that "America's promise" was that "fundamental principle that I am my brother's keeper".
In summary, as to William's conclusion that "At a very fundamental philosophical level, Barack Obama is reaffirming the Enlightenment, and McCain is rejecting it", I must say I strenuously disagree. Politically, I'd argue that Obama's political philosophy is more akin to the Romantic Rousseau, and that McCain's is more akin to the Enlightenment's Locke. However, it is at the the more "fundamental" levels of philosophy where there is NO difference between Obama and McCain: both are altruists, and - as such - neither is committed to reality or reason. Both have false metaphysical, epistemological and ethical commitments and, as such, that one them claims that man has rights is pretty much irrelevant, because rights as a floating abstraction are prone to being interpreted as their antithesis.
For a more detailed, and more tongue-in-cheek, comparison of the McCain and Obama acceptance speeches, I would direct you to my blog post of two days ago: http://blog.paulmckeever.ca/2008/09/05/john-obama-and-barack-mccain ...
Cheers,
Paul
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| Sunday, September 7, 2008 at 6:12:47 mst
Comment ID: #11
Name: Tony Donadio
E-mail: tdonadio(at)optonline.net
Referring to comments made by McCain and Obama in specific speeches, William Stoddard wrote: "At a very fundamental philosophical level, Barack Obama is reaffirming the Enlightenment, and McCain is rejecting it."
I would suggest exercising some healthy skepticism about these statements, and caution against reading too much into one particular speech delivered to a particular audience. Obama's comment would be excellent if he actually meant it, but I don't believe that he does. Unless it's a platform position that the candidate repeats and emphasizes in multiple venues, I would regard any such comments as throwaways that are not necessarily reflective of their actual convictions. Remember, we are talking about politicians here.
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| Sunday, September 7, 2008 at 6:34:57 mst
Comment ID: #12
Name: Paula Hall
E-mail: paula.hall(at)live.com
URL: http://www.msthink.com
I still think the Christian Right is the scariest thing going. Viscerally terrifying. I have a blog post about this at Ms. Think: http://www.msthink.com/2008/09/on-mission-to-outlaw-thinking.html.
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| Sunday, September 7, 2008 at 7:44:43 mst
Comment ID: #13
Name: William H. Stoddard
E-mail: whswhs(at)mindspring.com
URL: http://whswhs.livejournal.com/
I believe that Paul and I have different conceptions of what is "fundamental" in philosophy. Paul refers to the ethical/political (individual rights) and to the more fundamentally ethical (altruism). And as far as that's concerned, both major party candidates are altruists, and although McCain speaks of rights, his advocacy of them is fatally flawed by such things as his opposition to abortion. But I take epistemology and metaphysics, not ethics, to be more fundamental than ethics. And in that realm, an open appeal to Christian faith as the basis for law and political institutions is wrong, and a statement that they must be founded on appeals to a common reality and to rational argument that transcend specific religious or cultural loyalties is right. This is so even if, as is clearly the case, the candidate who makes them is mistaken in his conclusions about what reason and reality require, or is arguing from mixed premises, both of which are surely true. Leaving the door open for other people to make more realistic, more rational ethical and political conclusions is better than slamming it shut, and McCain has chosen to appeal to a part of the electorate that is eager to do the latter.
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| Sunday, September 7, 2008 at 8:27:25 mst
Comment ID: #14
Name: Bill Perry
Obama does appear to reject postmodernism in the quote that William Stodard cites. However, I think that Obama is a postmodernist. At the very least he is extremely influenced by that philosophy. I've read all of his second book _The Audacity of Hope_ and portions of his first book. He uses postmodernist jargon and applies its theories to many of the thinks he talks about. A classic example of this is when he talks about Reagan. He says that Reagan's narrative was valid and still resonates (I'm paraphrasing, but that is pretty close.) But then he rejects Reagan because the narratives of oppressed people are more valid.
He is also heavily influenced by the progressive movement. This is not a good combination. On the other hand McCain is a pragmatist through and through. This is illustrated by his compromise legislation, McCain Feingold etc.
I think that we need to examine the ideas of the candidates more deeply than to listen to their soundbites. Right now what they are saying is solely influenced by their desires to get votes. Their real beliefs are shown by what they wrote and how they acted before they got into this election cycle. In this case both candidates are operating from premises that Objectivists consider to be immoral.
That does not mean that we shouldn't comment when they say something outrageously pernicious, if it is a good opportunity to influence readers, viewers or listeners.
Bill
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| Sunday, September 7, 2008 at 9:37:22 mst
Comment ID: #15
Name: Paula Hall
E-mail: paula.hall(at)live.com
URL: http://www.msthink.com
For some reason, the period at the end of my comment above was incorporated into the link, rendering it inoperative. Here's the link again: http://www.msthink.com/2008/09/on-mission-to-outlaw-thinking.html
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| Sunday, September 7, 2008 at 15:12:50 mst
Comment ID: #16
Name: madmax
E-mail: max34(at)wlcm.net
Paul,
Nice summary of The Enlightenment. Thanks. In many ways we are living through the failures of The Enlightenment as well as its successes.
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| Sunday, September 7, 2008 at 23:28:06 mst
Comment ID: #17
Name: Andrew Baker
E-mail: smoke_owner(at)mac.com
Still makes me laugh.
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