| Wednesday, May 21, 2008 |
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Why the New Atheists Can't Even Beat D'Souza: The Best and Worst in Human History
By Greg Perkins @ 12:10 AM   
In the firefight between Christian apologist Dinesh D'Souza and "New Atheists" such as Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris, the New Atheists are suffering serious damage. The tragedy is that D'Souza wouldn't stand a snowball's chance if they had a strong philosophical grounding.
For example, several of the New Atheists point to the Inquisition and Crusades and Witch Trials of early Christianity, the deadly Jihad waged in the name of Islam today, and so on—and D'Souza agrees this is a terrible toll that religion is responsible for. But he goes on to argue that when you actually look at the numbers, this responsibility is minuscule in comparison to the slaughter of over 100 million by the atheistic regimes of the 20th century. So he contends it is obvious that "Atheism, not religion, is responsible for the mass murders of history."
This point has devastated the New Atheists. They try to defuse it by arguing for some causal association between religion and those bloody regimes: if not explicitly by talking about the Catholicism in Hitler and Nazi Germany, then implicitly by gesturing to a "religious mindset" or some other vague influence of religion. But discussion of the Catholic connection to Hitler and Nazi Germany quickly turns into a back-and-forth of citations from competing historical experts. And while the dust is swirling over whether religion might be connected to that one part of 20th Century totalitarianism, D'Souza points to the explicitly godless Communist regimes. The New Atheists have been reduced to weakly objecting that the Crusades and Inquisition were done "in the name of" Christianity, while Communism and Nazism weren't done in the name of atheism—but given all the references that can be made to those regimes' explicit work to eradicate God, this approach is not convincing. The New Atheists are struggling because they aren't able to frame the issue properly.
What Atheism Isn't
First, consider that atheism is not itself an ideology; there is no such thing as an "atheist mindset" or an "atheist movement." Atheism per se hasn't inspired and doesn't lead to anything in particular because it is an effect—not a cause—and there are countless reasons for a person to not believe in God, ranging from vicious to innocent to noble. The newborn baby lacks a belief in God, as does the Postmodern Nihilist, the Communist, and the Objectivist—but each for entirely different reasons having dramatically different implications. So lumping all of these together under the "atheist" label as if that were a meaningful connection is profoundly confused. Yet this is exactly what the New Atheists do and encourage: they talk about how there are so many atheists out there, and advocate their banding together into an atheist community to seek fellowship, foster cultural change, build a political voice, and so on.[1] But what would a committed Communist and an Objectivist have in common—regarding what they do believe, why they believe it, how that leads them to live personally, the sort of social system they would strive for in government? Nothing. They are polar opposites in principle and practice, across the philosophical board.
The New Atheists can't rebuff D'Souza because he is actually following their own lead to associate them with brutal totalitarian regimes. And worse, that confusion makes it difficult to see the fundamental cause of the misery and bloodshed found across all of those failures of humanity—from the early Christian Crusades and Inquisition, through the 20th Century totalitarian regimes, up to the Islamic theocracies in the Middle East today. The important contrast is not atheism vs. religion, but rather rationality vs. irrationality.
The Wages of Irrationality
All of that bloodshed is a result of people rejecting reason as the way to do business in reality—which means rejecting our only means of peaceful and productive coexistence. Operating in the realm of reason, people are oriented to the facts, their means of dealing with one another is persuasion, and reality is the court of final appeal when there is disagreement. Take scientists, for example: necessarily focused on reason and reality, they resolve their scientific disputes with logic and by reference to facts. We don't find them fragmenting into sects and breaking out into violence over their disagreements. Indeed, just the opposite happens: the body of scientific knowledge converges over time as disagreements are sorted out and facts are acknowledged. Their successes and this convergence don't come from the use of guns and clubs, but from a commitment to reason and reality, facts and logic.
While it is easy to see brutes in totalitarian regimes reaching for a gun rather than peacefully persuading free minds, the connection to force may not be so obvious in the case of people of faith. Yet just as reason and freedom go together, so do their antagonists, faith and force. As Ayn Rand observed, "every period of history dominated by mysticism, was a period of statism, of dictatorship, of tyranny"—and she underscored this shared rejection of reason in identifying the two as species of the same basic animal: the brutes as "mystics of muscle," and the faithful as "mystics of spirit." To see how religious faith plays into the use of force, consider theologians in contrast to the scientists discussed above. Here we find ever-expanding divergence and fragmentation in their body of thought—just notice how religions and the denominations within them have multiplied through history. And we don't see believers resolving disagreements over their articles of faith by persuasion and reference to the facts of reality—whether it is Muslims vs. Christians, Catholics vs. Protestants, Baptists vs. Mormons, or one part of a congregation breaking away from another. This is because articles of faith aren't based on a grasp of the facts of reality, and so they can't be explained or defended by references to the facts of reality. Since people of faith can't resolve such differences using facts and rational persuasion, they are left with only one alternative: force.
Having it Both Ways
Besides trying to tar his opponents with the worst atrocities in history, D'Souza regularly tries to give Christianity credit for mankind's positive strides. For instance, he argues in an op-ed that "Christianity has illuminated the greatest achievements of the culture" such as the rise of science, human rights, equality for women and minorities, ending slavery, and so forth. That "when you examine history you find that all of these values came into the world because of Christianity." He contrasts Christianity and atheism, saying that these advances arrived in Christendom and by the hands of Christians—not atheists. And he uses this to score extra points in debate by asking his opponents what atheism has to offer humanity, other than the chance to undermine all that progress.
Once again, such a comparison is fundamentally confused. Recall that atheism is not itself an ideology and therefore doesn't lead people to do anything in particular—good or bad. So again we need to approach the issue in terms that will actually shed some light. The illuminating question to consider is: What does reason offer humanity over faith?
Here we see a striking contrast. Every discovery, every invention, every new idea that guided every step we have taken up from the poor, nasty, brutish, and short lives of those who came before has been made possible by one thing: thinking. Revelation never delivered a vaccine or explained the rainbow. Faith never designed a building or fed a baby. Submission to authority never discovered a better social organization or put a man on the moon. The power of this-worldly reason did.
Even the broadest strokes of history make this clear: Mankind stagnated for a thousand years through the Dark Ages while the Christian faith reigned supreme. Then what changed? Mankind started to believe that this world matters and that we are worthy and capable of living in it. The suffocating grip of faith and otherworldliness began to loosen as more people turned to reason and reality, and the West clawed its way from darkness into the Renaissance and Enlightenment. It took this-worldly thinking to discover the methods of science—not scripture and revelation, which had been present for millennia. It took free minds aimed at the task of living on earth to ignite the Industrial Revolution and the Information Revolution, and to deliver every bounty in the explosion of progress that followed—not prayer and intercession, which have been with us for all time.
Correlation isn't causation. Obviously, long-standing Christianity only accommodated the relatively recent changes that unleashed minds brought while its overwhelming authority eroded. We were delivered from the Christian Dark Ages despite Christianity, not because of it. Countless lives were made shorter and more miserable by its cruel stranglehold—and how much higher would we be flying now without its dead weight?
The New Atheists haven't been able to slam-dunk D'Souza because they lack the objective philosophical perspective necessary to penetrate to the core of these issues. In this case, their struggles reveal a failure to genuinely appreciate how religion is not itself the fundamental problem—irrationality is. Religion constitutes just one form of unreason, and the only thing that makes it particularly noteworthy and dangerous is that it has at its heart an explicit, committed, philosophical attack on reason: extolling faith as a virtue.
(Upcoming in the series: Science vs. Miracles, The Gap in Religious Thought, and Morality and Life.)
Notes:
- Sam Harris stands out as an exception to advocating atheists banding together under the atheist banner, though his rejection of the label appears to be more of a pragmatic move to avoid troublesome connotations than a principled avoidance of the basic mistake it represents.
Labels: Atheism, Objectivism, Philosophy, Religion
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| Monday, May 12, 2008 |
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Objectivism Seminar's OPAR Sessions Begin Sunday
By Greg Perkins @ 11:10 AM
The Objectivism Seminar will begin going through Leonard Peikoff's book, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand this coming Sunday. If you are new to Ayn Rand's ideas, I encourage you to join us!
From the original announcement:
Whether you are new to Rand or a veteran student of Objectivism, our sessions will be valuable to you: we'll go through the entire system, with the experienced folks refining their understanding and ability to articulate and apply the ideas, while the newer folks grapple with the ideas and ask all the right questions. So please don't be shy about jumping in -- the reading and meeting load is light, and you'll be working with a great group of people!
We'll begin the weekly sessions for OPAR on Sunday May 18, 7:30pm Mountain time, reviewing and discussing two or three sections per meeting. I'll almost always be moderating to keep us on track. And as we go, each section will have two volunteers at the helm of the discussion (maybe you!): one reviewing the material, and one playing Devil's Advocate to stimulate productive engagement. Everyone else can join in as desired to flesh out our picture of important elements and connections, explanations and applications, and to bring questions and concerns for us all to grapple with. For more information, please visit the www.ObjectivismSeminar.com site!Labels: Announcements, Objectivism
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| Saturday, May 03, 2008 |
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Upgrade Your Understanding of Objectivism!
By Greg Perkins @ 7:38 AM
Ready to engage your brain and get serious about understanding Rand's philosophical system? The Objectivism Seminar is about to go through Leonard Peikoff's presentation of the entire philosophy in Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand (OPAR)!
Whether you are new to Rand or a veteran student of Objectivism, our sessions will be valuable to you: we'll go through the entire system, with the experienced folks refining their understanding and ability to articulate and apply the ideas, while the newer folks grapple with the ideas and ask all the right questions. So please don't be shy about jumping in -- the reading and meeting load is light, and you'll be working with a great group of people!
We'll begin the weekly sessions for OPAR on Sunday May 18, 7:30pm Mountain time, reviewing and discussing about two sections per meeting. I'll almost always be moderating to keep us on track. And as we go, each section will have two volunteers at the helm of the discussion (maybe you!): one reviewing the material, and one playing Devil's Advocate to stimulate productive engagement. Everyone else can join in as desired to flesh out our picture of important elements and connections, explanations and applications, and to bring questions and concerns for us all to grapple with.
For more information you can read the original Invitation to The Objectivism Seminar, and you can visit the www.ObjectivismSeminar.com site to get geared up for the journey!Labels: Announcements, Objectivism
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| Saturday, April 26, 2008 |
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Are Mathematical Truths Discovered or Invented?
By Paul Hsieh @ 11:23 AM
This question is one of the topics in the upcoming June 2008 issue of the European Mathematical Society Newsletter. As Science News reports, this subject "has provided fodder for arguments among mathematicians and philosophers" for thousands of years, with no seeming resolution.
On one hand, there are Platonists who believe this:...[A] mathematician discovers timeless truths independent of human observation and free of the transient nature of physical reality. "The abstract realm in which a mathematician works is by dint of prolonged intimacy more concrete to him than the chair he happens to sit on," says Ulf Persson of Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, a self-described Platonist. But the Platonists are forced to deal with some tricky implications of their views:Those who espouse discovery note that mathematical statements are true or false regardless of personal beliefs, suggesting that they have some external reality. But this leads to some odd notions. Where, exactly, do these mathematical truths exist? Can a mathematical truth really exist before anyone has ever imagined it? In contrast, there are those who believe that such talk of an abstract realm is just mystical hogwash:Brian Davies, a mathematician at King's College London, writes that Platonism "has more in common with mystical religions than with modern science." And modern science, he believes, provides evidence to show that the Platonic view is just plain wrong. He titled his article "Let Platonism Die."
...Reuben Hersh of the University of New Mexico ...rejects the Platonic view, arguing instead that mathematics is a product of human culture, not fundamentally different from other human creations like music or law or money. But the latter school is faced with a different set of intractable questions:On the other hand, if math is invented, then why can't a mathematician legitimately invent that 2 + 2 = 5?
...The challenge, [Hersh] admits, is to explain why it is that mathematical statements can be definitively true or false, not subject to taste or whim. The solution to this millenia-old argument is to abandon both the intrisicist approach of the Platonists and the subjectivist approach of their opponents. Instead, mathematical concepts (like all concepts) are neither intrinsic nor subjective but objective. It is in debates like this where the Objectivist approach to epistemology and concept formation prove their value -- in being able to cut through the errors made over the centuries by struggling philosophers and mathematicians.
Of course, properly applying Rand's theory of concept formation to the philosophy of mathematics is a non-trivial task. Concepts of number are both seemingly self-evident, but also represent feats of tremendous abstraction. But scholars such as Dr. Pat Corvini have made a good start. Her course at the 2007 OCON, "Two, Three, Four and All That", was on precisely that topic -- namely how to apply the Objectivist theory of concept formation to concepts of number:The concept of number as used in science today is one of man's greatest achievements: a grand-scale integration capping centuries of effort and enabling a vastly expanded efficacy in all areas of life. But the growth in complexity of the number system has rendered the meaning of number ever more mysterious; number is seen both as a touchstone of certainty and as an arbitrary human construct whose applicability to the real world is a deep mystery. This is because the nature of number has not been properly identified; and as Ayn Rand pointed out, that imprecision is dangerous.
This course clarifies the meaning of "number" by examining it in the light of Miss Rand's theory of concepts. Recognizing the objectivity of number provides a new framework for resolving both historical and modern debates, and yields a heightened appreciation for the science of mathematics as a whole—further reinforcing the value of Objectivist epistemology. She is also offering a follow-up course at this year's 2008 OCON, "Two, Three, Four and All That: The Sequel":Science shelves of bookstores are today awash in accounts of modern extensions of the idea of number, including infinity and the continuum, set theory, transfinite numbers, and the like. Many of these ideas, and the "mysteries" that proceed from them, figure prominently in modern philosophy and in popular discussion of the nature and limits of reason.
In this course, Dr. Corvini explains and evaluates some of the most influential of these ideas, using as a frame of reference both their historical context and the view of number as objective developed in her earlier courses. By identifying the fundamental nature of the ideas and of the errors involved, we see again the importance of a proper theory of concepts, and clarify the differences between an objective approach to mathematics and the more traditional views. I have long had an interest in those topics such as foundations of set theory, the nature of the concept "infinity", etc. Hence, if her 2008 course is as good as her 2007 course, then it promises to be a real treat. Diana and I have already signed up for it.
Although I have a degree in mathematics (B.S., MIT, 1984), her courses do not require any advanced math background. Dr. Corvini is a very clear and engaging lecturer, and she is excellent at explaining the relevant mathematical concepts to a general audience. If you can count to 10 and you are a normal intelligent adult, then you can follow her lectures.
So if you want to see how the power of the Objectivist theory of concepts can resolve questions that have stumped some of history's greatest minds for thousands of years, check out her courses!
(I don't believe that her 2007 course is available yet through the Ayn Rand Bookstore, but I expect that it will be eventually. It was available for purchase by 2007 conference attendees as part of the usual post-conference package, and hence I think it will eventually make it to the main bookstore listing.)Labels: Objectivism, Philosophy, Science
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| Tuesday, April 22, 2008 |
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Leonard Peikoff's Podcasts
By Diana Hsieh @ 1:21 PM
Back in January, I finally listened to Leonard Peikoff's first six podcasts. He has posted a bunch more since then, but I've not yet heard those. While I knew I'd find them interesting, I didn't listen to them sooner because I'm on mostly break from studying Objectivism while writing my dissertation. They are definitely worth a listen or two, as the questions are almost always well-chosen and well-answered.
In the sixth podcast, Dr. Peikoff discusses the pitfalls of discussing Objectivism in online discussion forums. I won't repeat his comments here, but I largely agree with his concerns that such online debates risk divorcing a person's ideas from his values and promote disintegrated examination of ideas in isolation. It's also true that many self-described Objectivists arguing with confidence online are completely clueless, rationalistic, or even outright dishonest.
I would add a few points, based on extensive experience reading and posting to such discussion forums over the course of about 15 years. (For the record, the only public discussion forum that I regard as remotely Objectivist is ObjectivismOnline. The contributors can be far better than found elsewhere, but I still think the forum suffers from the standard problems of that medium.)
First, thoughtful and productive discussion is a rarity on most discussion boards, whether supposedly Objectivist or not. Mostly, the threads consist of discombobulated streams of unjustified assertions, ill-considered opinions, nasty remarks, ignorant assumptions, and outright dishonesty. To participate in those discussions is, at best, a huge waste of time. The fact that someone has said something particularly stupid in some online debate is not a good reason to spend hours arguing with that person and his fellows.
Second, the capacity to beat the pants off some random opponent in online debate doesn't mean that you know what you're talking about, that you're thinking clearly, or that you're right. Unfortunately, people often suppose that argumentative might makes right. And so they seek the thrill of victory in online debate with all the fervor of a crack addict. In fact:
If you wish to seriously test your ideas in debate, the proper approach is to carefully study and think about some issue of personal interest to you, then discuss it in private with someone whose knowledge and judgment you trust, whether in person or e-mail.
Third, if Objectivists want to change the culture for the better, they ought not waste their time and energy by arguing with other Objectivists -- even on the better forums. To actually change the culture, Objectivists need to present their ideas to people unfamiliar with them. That's often harder -- but far more rewarding in the long run. (That's precisely why I created my OActivists mailing list.)
However, even with people unfamiliar with Objectivist ideas, lengthy online debates will likely be a waste of time. (If the person is someone known to you in real life, then the situation is somewhat different. Then long-running debates can have some value.) With strangers, the goal should be to clearly and briefly make a point or two that might intrigue an reasonable reader and perhaps point him in a new direction. That's often all that the better people require.
In general, with any protracted online debate, I recommend asking oneself: Could I be spending my time in a more productive or enjoyable way? If so, then do go that other thing! If not, then get a life! And yes, that includes protracted arguments in the NoodleFood comments.Labels: Activism, Objectivism
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| Wednesday, April 09, 2008 |
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OAC Early Application Deadline
By Diana Hsieh @ 7:00 AM
An announcement from the Ayn Rand Institute:
The Early Admissions deadline for the Objectivist Academic Center (OAC) is April 16, 2008 -- just a few weeks away!
The OAC is a distance-learning program of the Ayn Rand Institute offering classes on Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism, as well as on the methods of objective thinking and communication. If you are interested in Ayn Rand’s ideas and would like to study them in greater detail under the guidance of ARI staff intellectuals, then the OAC is the program for you.
By applying early, you greatly increase your chances of acceptance into a limited number of openings. Also, those who are not offered Early Admission are reconsidered during the Regular Admissions process on an equal basis with other applicants, giving them, in effect, two chances to be admitted. The application process is quite competitive, so we urge you to apply today!
Visit www.objectivistacademiccenter.org for more information. If you have any questions about the program, please contact oac@aynrand.org. As I've said before, the courses offered by the Objectivist Academic Center have exceeded my wildest expectations. I cannot recommend the program highly enough.Labels: Announcements, Objectivism
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| Friday, April 04, 2008 |
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Nuisance and Pornography
By Diana Hsieh @ 7:44 AM
Paula Hall recently sent me the following inquiry:
I was browsing the Ayn Rand Lexicon and came across the following [in the entry on free speech]:
Only one aspect of sex is a legitimate field for legislation: the protection of minors and of unconsenting adults. Apart from criminal actions (such as rape), this aspect includes the need to protect people from being confronted with sights they regard as loathsome. (A corollary of the freedom to see and hear, is the freedom not to look or listen.) Legal restraints on certain types of public displays, such as posters or window displays, are proper but this is an issue of procedure, of etiquette, not of morality.
The rights of those who seek pornography would not be infringed by rules protecting the rights of those who find pornography offensive e.g., sexually explicit posters may properly be forbidden in public places; warning signs, such as "For Adults Only," may properly be required of private places which are open to the public. This protects the unconsenting, and has nothing to do with censorship, i.e., with prohibiting thought or speech. [The NoodleFood reader continues:] I can readily understand the concept of statutory rape. I am having difficulty with the notion that "[l]egal restraints on certain types of public displays . . . are proper," when the context refers to displays on private property -- no matter what the content. Rights can be violated only through physical force, and words and pictures are not force. Since when has there been a right not be "confronted with sights [a person] regard[s] as loathsome?" By what public standard could anyone determine what was "loathsome" and subject to restriction?
I am inclined to assume that I am missing something, rather than that Rand is inconsistent(!). What am I missing? Paul and I have discussed this matter at some length, but I don't have time to write up our present view in any detail. Very briefly, our view is that the government can properly forbid nuisances as a kind of tort. However, a nuisance is not just something that someone doesn't like. Rather, it's an unavoidable, perceptual impingement, such that a person cannot go about his ordinary business in its presence. Examples of nuisances would include bright lights, loud music, and nasty smells -- but not a Mexican flag, a mural of a nude woman, or rap music at a normal volume. The particular content of the nuisance is irrelevant. A person has no right to be protected from exposure to disagreeable aspects of the world. That would open the door wide to all kinds of rights-violating restrictions on speech. However, a person does have a right not be "assaulted" by physically painful or unavoidably distracting percepts via some kind of nuisance law.
Some of that analysis fits with Ayn Rand's quoted comments, but not all of it. If we disagree with her on this fine point of legal philosophy, so be it. However, since neither Paul nor I are experts on philosophy of law, we're definitely interested in hearing arguments on all sides.Labels: Law, Objectivism
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| Sunday, March 23, 2008 |
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BB&T Chair for the Study of Objectivism
By Diana Hsieh @ 5:42 PM
Awesome news:
BB&T Donates $2 Million for Ayn Rand Research At The University of Texas at Austin
March 20, 2008
AUSTIN, Texas -- BB&T Corporation, one of the nation's largest banks, has awarded $2 million to the Department of Philosophy at The University of Texas at Austin to establish the BB&T Chair for the Study of Objectivism.
Tara Smith, professor of philosophy, has been named the first holder of the chair. Over 10 years, the gift will support research on Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism, as well as conferences, workshops, guest lecturers, visiting scholars and research on the moral foundations of capitalism.
Smith spearheads Objectivism scholarship in the university's philosophy department. She has published several articles on Rand's philosophy and the 2006 book, "Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist" with Cambridge University Press. She holds the Anthem Foundation Fellowship for the Study of Objectivism and is organizing the interdisciplinary conference, "Objectivity in the Law," April 4-5.
"Ayn Rand's philosophy has been the subject of increasing academic interest in recent years, and this generous gift will allow us to deepen examination of her thought and engage leading scholars in other fields, such as law," the Rand scholar said. "It's an exhilarating opportunity and a testament to BB&T's recognition of the vital importance of philosophy in people's lives."
Rand, a Russian-born American philosopher and novelist, is best known for her magnum opus, "Atlas Shrugged." A joint survey conducted by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club found that "Atlas Shrugged" is the second most influential book for Americans today, after the Bible. According to the Ayn Rand Institute, an estimated 20 million copies of her books have been sold.
"We believe that ideas matter. In this context, BB&T is trying to encourage a thorough and fair discussion of Rand's philosophy and the moral foundations of capitalism on university campuses," said BB&T Chief Executive Officer John Allison. "We are pleased to support the philosophy department's important work in the study of Objectivism at The University of Texas at Austin."
BB&T Corp., headquartered in Winston-Salem, N.C., is a financial holding company with $132.6 billion in assets. With more than 29,000 employees, its bank subsidiaries operate more than 1,500 branch offices in 11 states and Washington, D.C. If you'd like more information on John Allison, you can listen to an excellent EconTalk interview with him. (To hear of a company systematically practicing the Objectivist ethics is quite thrilling!) You can also read about BB&T's philosophy and values on their web site.Labels: Announcements, Objectivism
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| Wednesday, March 19, 2008 |
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OCON Early Registration Deadline
By Diana Hsieh @ 8:02 AM
The early registration deadline for OCON 2008 is fast approaching: it's March 31st. So if you plan to attend or if you're thinking of attending, you'll wish to register sooner rather than later to receive the price discounts.
If you want recommendations on particular optional courses, I'd be happy to provide those. Just e-mail me. I'm taking fewer than usual this year, as I expect to be working on my dissertation during OCON. I've signed up for:
Depending on my work schedule, I'm also hoping to be able to attend John Lewis' course Rome's Punic Wars: Three Victories and Their Lessons in Session 2, but I won't commit to that until OCON itself. (Paul is taking it.) John's courses are always excellent, so I'll definitely buy the course if I'm unable to attend.
As for the general courses, I'm especially looking forward to:
As usual, Paul and I will be attending the opening banquet, but not the closing banquet or the Fourth of July picnic.Labels: Objectivism
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| Tuesday, March 11, 2008 |
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Alex Epstein on Market Neutral
By Diana Hsieh @ 10:00 AM
In this 35 minute "Market Neutral" podcast, Chip Hanlon interviews ARI's Alex Epstein. The description reads: "Ayn Rand Institute analyst, Alex Epstein, discusses government's proper role in 'fixing' the subprime mess. He also weighs in on Libertarians, with remarks that may surprise given the recent euphoria surrounding long-shot presidential candidate, Ron Paul." (Via Mike)
I was able to listen to this podcast in early January. It was definitely interesting, particularly the comments on Ron Paul and libertarianism. I'm not sure that I agree with Alex's analysis of libertarianism, but it was good food for thought.
Update: I recalled what in particular I disagreed with in Alex's analysis of libertarianism. It's posted in the comments.Labels: Libertarianism, Objectivism, Politics
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| Sunday, March 09, 2008 |
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OCON 2008
By Diana Hsieh @ 12:55 AM
The full schedule and registration for the Ayn Rand Institutes's summer conference, OCON 2008, was recently made available online at http://www.objectivistconferences.com/ocon2008/. The conference will be held in Newport Beach from June 28th to July 6th.
Please forward the URL to anyone you think might be interested in attending. OCON can be a great experience for anyone with a budding interest in Ayn Rand's ideas. Such people will be able to see those ideas in action -- not just as applied in the lectures but also as embodied in the people present. They'll also be able to discuss the philosophy in greater depth and with far more knowledgeable people than perhaps they've ever done before. In addition, the theme of the conference will be a topic near and dear to my heart, namely "changing the culture."
Note that student prices are heavily discounted -- and student scholarships
are available.
Interestingly, I didn't think to forward this announcement to the mailing lists of Front Range Objectivism and the Boulder Objectivist Club mailing lists until I'd thought to post it on the new OActivists list. So, much to my delight, that list is helping remind of me of what I can do. It's shaping my habits -- even more than I expected! Hooray!Labels: Announcements, Objectivism
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| Wednesday, March 05, 2008 |
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Yaron Brook at Ford Hall Forum
By Diana Hsieh @ 7:31 AM
Ford Hall Forum announces a May lecture by Yaron Brook:
"Apollo and Dionysus" Revisited
In 1969, Ayn Rand's Ford Hall Forum talk, "Apollo and Dionysus," addressed the near simultaneous events of Woodstock and the first lunar landing. Employing Greek mythology's god of the sun and god of wine, she compared the awe-inspiring accomplishments of NASA's Apollo space program to the famous three-day concert that has come to exemplify the counterculture of the 1960s and the "hippie era." Almost four decades later, Dr. Yaron Brook, President and Executive Director of the Ayn Rand Institute, reflects on her words and takes a new look at our society's drives toward individualism versus wholeness, light versus darkness, and civilization versus primal nature.
Thursday, May 8
6:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Old South Meeting House If you know of people in the Boston area who might like to attend, please send them the announcement.Labels: Announcements, Objectivism
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Summer Conference on the Moral Foundations of Capitalism
By Diana Hsieh @ 12:55 AM
As some of you might know, the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism in South Carolina sponsors a three-day summer conference for undergraduates on Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and the Moral Foundations of Capitalism. This summer's conference will run from June 5th to 9th at Clemson University.
It is an excellent conference, so I highly recommend it. (I was the graduate assistant last year.) The description on the web site is exactly accurate:
[The conference] brings together students from around the country and around the world to learn about capitalism with top professors in the field. Students attend lectures, participate in small group discussions, and have free time to discuss and debate the ideas presented in the formal sessions. Throughout the three days of sessions, students have ample opportunity to speak one-on-one with faculty and ask them questions in a more informal setting. The faculty this year will be Drs. Yaron Brook, Onkar Ghate, Eric Daniels, C. Bradley Thompson, and Andrew Bernstein. Full scholarships will be granted to qualified undergraduate students. Send completed applications to edan@clemson.edu. (Please e-mail that address with any questions too.) More details including the application form, a full description of the event, a video from last year, and a FAQ are available on the web site.
Here's the most critical bit of information: The deadline for applications is March 5. So if you're thinking that you might like to attend, don't delay!Labels: Announcements, Objectivism
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| Tuesday, February 26, 2008 |
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Some News from ARI
By Diana Hsieh @ 10:36 AM
Some news from ARI:
Mary Ann and Charles Sures' memoir of Ayn Rand, The Facets of Ayn Rand is now available on the web at http://www.facetsofaynrand.com.
On Thursday, March 13, 2008, at 7:30 PM, Dr. Keith Lockitch will be speaking on "Darwin and the Discovery of Evolution" at the Hilton Costa Mesa (3050 Bristol Street, Costa Mesa, CA 92626). The lecture is free. More information is here.
I'm delighted by the topic, because in the process of grading student papers on the argument from design, I've realized that gross misunderstandings of evolutionary theory are quite common. It's definitely a topic that I'd like to study more, not just because it's relevant to the refutation of William Paley's argument for design, but also because I find it intrinsically interesting. Biology has always been -- by a long shot -- the most interesting of the sciences to me.
Brad Thompson published a great op-ed a while back entitled "An Open Letter to America's Students--Will Atlas Shrugged Change Your Life Forever?" If you haven't read it yet, you'll find it here.Labels: Announcements, Objectivism
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| Sunday, February 24, 2008 |
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The Undercurrent
By Diana Hsieh @ 12:20 PM
The Undercurrent now has a regularly updated blog. I've added it to my blogroll; it looks like it will be worth checking regularly. (Unfortunately, it doesn't show the full post on the main page. I find that annoying, as it's almost always easier to scroll past a long post that's not of interest than to click through to posts that are of interest. But oh well.)
For those of you unfamiliar with The Undercurrent, here's how they describe themselves:
The Undercurrent is a student-run newsletter. Its content is written primarily by (and for) college students across the country, with additional articles from the Ayn Rand Institute op-ed program and other writers.
We aim to release a print edition once a semester. The Undercurrent is distributed to college campuses nationally. If you're interested in distributing on your campus (or anywhere else), more information can be found here.
The Undercurrent's cultural commentary is based on the philosophy of Ayn Rand, a philosophy she named "Objectivism." Objectivism animates Ayn Rand's fiction, but it is first and foremost a systematic and comprehensive philosophy of life.
It holds that the universe is orderly, comprehensible, and conducive to human flourishing. It affirms that human beings are not only capable, but worthy of living on earth. The individual's own life and happiness comprise his own highest moral purpose. Man flourishes only in a society that values science, technology, freedom and capitalism. And beauty, too.
In these pages we hope to defend these values where they are under attack in our culture. To learn more about the ideas behind these values, you can begin by reading Ayn Rand's books, such as The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, or by visiting the web site of the Ayn Rand Institute. Just FYI, any regular blogger for The Undercurrent is more than welcome to join my OBloggers mailing list.Labels: Activism, Objectivism
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| Saturday, February 23, 2008 |
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OActivists: An Easy Deal
By Diana Hsieh @ 8:00 AM
The new OActivists list -- my informal private mailing list for Objectivists committed to fostering positive cultural change by effective advocacy of Objectivist ideas -- will open for business on Tuesday. It already has over 80 subscribers, but I want to offer an easy deal for anyone interested in subscribing yet hesitant to make a commitment to engage in activism.
As you might recall from my original post, the list requires that subscribers meet two conditions.
First, subscribers must be Objectivists, meaning that they agree with and live by the principles of Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. Subscribers should also support the mission and activities of the Ayn Rand Institute.
Second, subscribers must be committed to engaging in intellectual activism to promote Objectivist ideas in online or print forums on a semi-regular basis.
The first criterion is pretty straightforward. But what does satisfying the second require? I'm willing make that very, very easy. Basically, at least once every six months while you're on the list, you must post at least one comment advocating the Objectivist view on some news article, op-ed, or non-Objectivist blog. That comment doesn't have to be long: just a few sentences will do. You could even just link to or quote from an essay by Ayn Rand or an op-ed from ARI. You'll be alerted to plenty of opportunities to engage in that kind of minimal activism via the OActivists list itself.
In fact, you could even get started by posting a friendly comment on this positive review of The Fountainhead by a blogger.
Of course, I will encourage subscribers to do more than just the minimum: they can write letters to the editor, publish op-eds, speak to local groups, write to their representatives, and so on. In fact, I hope that a person's experience with a wee bit of activism will embolden more. However, that wee bit -- just one comment in a public forum every six months -- is all that's required to subscribe to the OActivists list. Basically, that's five minutes of time every six months. That's not asking much in exchange for the value of subscribing to the list, I don't think.
If that sounds like a fair deal to you, you are more than welcome to subscribe to OActivists via its web interface.Labels: Activism, Objectivism
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| Monday, February 18, 2008 |
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A New List: OActivists
By Diana Hsieh @ 8:38 AM
A message for Objectivists:
We Objectivists often lament the sorry state of the culture. Too often, faith and emotion are lauded as superior to reason, the individual is merely a means to some collective, service to others is deemed more noble than personal happiness, and rights are nearly forgotten in politics. Yet we're also inspired by the unexpected inroads forged by the Ayn Rand Institute over the past few years, particularly by the wild success of their program offering "Free Books for Teachers."
However, the Ayn Rand Institute cannot change the culture on its own, not even with our financial and moral support. It's just too big a task for a few dozen professional intellectuals. Objectivists must effectively advocate their values in the the forums open to them, if they want to see substantial and enduring change in the values of the culture.
Thanks to Lin Zinser's FIRM (Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine), I'm now convinced that so much more is possible than most people imagine when like-minded people join forces in a loose, ad hoc way. In those ongoing efforts, FIRM's "Activists" mailing list for people committed to promoting freedom and individual rights in medicine in Colorado has been of surprising value. It enables us to quickly and easily alert each other to opportunities to advocate good ideas, to discuss effective methods of argument, to praise and encourage the work well done, to report on our own accomplishments, to marvel at our impact on the debate, to inform others of useful sources of information, to brainstorm about venues for advocacy, to announce upcoming events, and more.
I've realized that a mailing list modeled on similar lines -- but specifically for Objectivists committed to fostering positive cultural change -- could be of similar value. So I've created OActivists @ OList.com. Here's the basic list description, including the requirements that all subscribers must satisfy:
OActivists is an informal private mailing list for Objectivists committed to fostering positive cultural change by effective advocacy of Objectivist ideas. Its basic purpose is to facilitate communication about matters of mutual interest to Objectivist activists, such as opportunities for advocacy, methods of persuasive argumentation, announcements of upcoming events, useful sources of information on issues, examples of advocacy, and the like.
To join the list, you must be an Objectivist, meaning that you agree with and live by the principles of Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. You should support the mission and activities of the Ayn Rand Institute. You must also be committed to engaging in intellectual activism to promote Objectivist ideas in online or print forums on a semi-regular basis. (Notably, arguing with other Objectivists does not qualify as intellectual activism!) If you meet those criteria, please subscribe via the web interface. If you have any questions about the list -- including whether you qualify -- please e-mail me, the list's owner and administrator, at diana@dianahsieh.com. Subscribers will be expected to respect the purpose of the list. Those who prove themselves disruptive to its basic aims will be removed.
To give people time to subscribe, the list will not open for discussion until Tuesday, February 26th.
Finally: OActivists is not an Objectivist discussion list. Objectivists (including myself) have wasted far too much time and energy arguing amongst ourselves about minutia in far-off corners of the internet. We can do better. We can defend our values from attack in debates that matter. We can refute the standard strawmen of our philosophy. We can introduce people to rational, principled philosophic ideas. We can do all that more effectively if we communicate. That communication is what OActivists aims to make easy.
Update #1: OActivists has 55 members in just 24 hours. Excellent!
Update #2: Now it's 72 members in 48 hours. Even better!Labels: Activism, Announcements, Objectivism
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| Monday, February 04, 2008 |
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New Blog on Activism for Objectivism
By Diana Hsieh @ 8:30 AM
An up-and-coming Objectivist intellectual from my OBloggers list recently created a blog specifically to discuss methods for effectively advocating Objectivism. It's password protected, so that discussions are private. I can give out the password, but I will do so only for Objectivists I know and trust. You must promise not to distribute the password except on those same terms. (As usual, friends and admirers of Nathaniel Branden, Barbara Branden, David Kelley, Chris Sciabarra, and the like need not apply.)
The blog is Intellectual Activism. E-mail me for the password, if you're interested and if you think you qualify.Labels: Objectivism
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| Saturday, January 19, 2008 |
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Eric Daniels on Capitalism
By Diana Hsieh @ 8:33 AM
Mark your calendars, New Yorkers:
The Morality of Capitalism
Who: Dr. Eric Daniels, speaker for the Ayn Rand Institute and visiting scholar at Clemson University's Institute for the Study of Capitalism
What: A talk making the case that capitalism is the only moral social system. A Q&A will follow.
Where: Kimmel Center, Room 914, New York University, 60 Washington Square South, NY, NY 10012 Maps and directions: http://www.nyu.edu/about/virtual.html.
When: Wednesday, January 23, 2008, at 7 pm
Registration: Attendees must RSVP to nyu@objectivistclubs.org
Description: Despite the enormous success of American capitalism at producing material abundance and political freedom, critics continue their assault on the system, calling it immoral. In this lecture, Dr. Eric Daniels makes the case that capitalism is the only moral social system. He also examines the conventional defense of capitalism, which relies on the practical, economic argument, and illustrates why only a defense of pure laissez-faire capitalism can succeed.
Bio: Dr. Eric Daniels is a visiting scholar at Clemson University's Institute for the Study of Capitalism. He taught for five years at Duke University, in the Program on Values and Ethics in the Marketplace, and at the University of Wisconsin, where he earned his doctorate in American history. He has lectured internationally on the history of American ethics, American business and legal history, and the American Enlightenment. Daniels's publications include a chapter in Abolition of Antitrust and five entries in the Oxford Companion to United States History. Eric Daniels is one of my favorite speakers. So go, if you can!Labels: Announcements, Objectivism
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| Sunday, January 06, 2008 |
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National Review Does It Again
By Diana Hsieh @ 12:31 AM
Yet again, National Review manages to reach new lows in its swipes against Ayn Rand. In a just-posted article, Michael Novak describes the "many different belief systems are found among people who call themselves atheists." His second type reads as follows:
Those relativists and nihilists who do believe, as Nietzsche warned, that the “death of God” has also meant the death of trust in reason and science and objective rules of morality. Such atheists, therefore, may for arbitrary reasons choose to live for their own pleasure, or for the joy of exercising brute power and will. This is the kind of moral nihilism that communist and fascist regimes depended upon, to justify the brutal use of power. It appears, also, to be the kind of atheism that Ayn Rand commended. That gross misrepresentation is required for Novak's argument that the ethical practices of morally decent atheists are basically those of Christianity, "all the way up the scale from mere sentiments, to effective personal help to the poor, and to heroic self-sacrifice." Since that's obviously not true of Ayn Rand, Novak can only marginalize her by falsely lumping her with amoralists (!!), fascists (!!), and communists (!!!). Intellectual dishonesty doesn't get any worse than that.Labels: Objectivism
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| Saturday, December 01, 2007 |
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FCC Censorship
By Diana Hsieh @ 7:35 AM
Since I've not paid much attention to the news lately, I'd not heard of this latest attempt at censorship by the FCC. It's very disturbing, for all the reasons cited in this excellent op-ed:
Doing Violence to Free Speech by Don Watkins
The Federal Communications Commission recently asked Congress to hand it broad powers to regulate "excessive violence" on TV, the way it currently restricts "indecent" speech: broadcasters who violate the FCC's limitations on "excessive violence" will face crippling fines and, potentially, the loss of their broadcast licenses. Isn't it time to ask: How did a country that reveres free speech end up with a government agency that imposes continually expanding speech restrictions--and where will those restrictions end?
Free speech means the right to express the products of the mind (scientific conclusions, artistic creations, political views, etc.) using whatever words or images one chooses over a medium one can rightfully access, without interference by the government. It means the right of a publisher to publish a controversial novel; the right of a newspaper to run an article criticizing the government--and the right of broadcasters to decide what content will flow over their airwaves.
But in 1927, just as radios were becoming widely used, the government seized control of the airwaves, declared them "public property," and assumed the power to regulate them in the name of the "public interest"--an undefinable term that can be stretched to mean anything. Thus broadcasters' right to free speech was cut off at the root, as the government, having irrationally barred broadcasters from owning the airwaves they made valuable through their technological innovation and broadcast content, went on to dictate how those airwaves could be used.
Initially the government pledged that only "obscene" speech--materials that "depict or describe patently offensive 'hard core' sexual conduct"--would be barred from the air. But having abandoned the principle of free speech and established itself as the unchecked arbiter of what could be said on the airwaves, the government was later able to ignore its pledge and, in 1978's FCC v. Pacifica ruling, expand its speech restrictions to include the broader (and even more nebulous) category of "indecent" speech. Thus, broadcasters could be fined for anything from profanity to sexual double-entendres, to vague references to sexual acts. Now, advocates of censorship are appealing to this precedent in order to justify regulating "excessively violent" content as well.
Moreover, Americans had been assured that speech restrictions would apply only to broadcasters operating on the "public airwaves." But now, in its quest to regulate "excessive violence," the FCC is insisting that its regulatory mandate be expanded to cover subscriber-based media such as satellite and cable TV.
If we allow this progression to continue, it is only a matter of time before the FCC starts restricting "offensive" philosophic or scientific views (as some religious opponents of evolution would like). And having gutted free speech on radio and television, what is to stop the government from censoring the Internet, books, and newspapers?
What made this trend toward increasing censorship possible--and inevitable? When the FCC assumed the power to subordinate free speech to the "public interest," it declared, in effect, that individuals are incompetent to judge what speech they and their children should be exposed to, and so their judgment must be usurped by all-wise FCC bureaucrats, who will control the airwaves in their name. Given this disgraceful principle, it did not matter that the FCC's initial restrictions were supposedly limited to speech pertaining to sex: if the government knows what's best for us in the realm of sexual speech and can dictate what we watch or listen to, then there is no reason why it should not control what ideas we should be exposed to across the board. To reverse this destructive trend, therefore, we must do more than resist new speech restrictions--we must abolish existing ones and restore our commitment to the principle of free speech.
Does this mean that parents must be forced to let their children view programming they regard as indecent or violent? No. It is a parent's job, not the government's, to decide and control what his child watches, just as the parent is responsible for deciding what he himself watches. If a parent determines that a show is not appropriate for his child, he is free to change the channel, turn off the TV, or block his child's access to it in some other way. His need to monitor what his child views on TV no more justifies censoring broadcasters than his need to vet what his child reads justifies censoring authors.
Americans face a choice: free speech or censorship. There is no middle ground.
Don Watkins is a writer and research specialist at the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand--author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead."
Copyright (c) 2007 Ayn Rand(R) Institute. All rights reserved. Labels: Objectivism, Politics
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| Wednesday, November 28, 2007 |
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ARI’s Growing Impact
By Diana Hsieh @ 12:49 PM
Yaron Brook, President and Executive Director of the Ayn Rand Institute, sent out this heartening bit of news today. I'm reposting it with permission:
Dear ARI Contributor:
I have outstanding news that I wanted to make you aware of as soon as possible.
As you may already know, Tom Bowden's op-ed, "Deep-Six the Law of the Sea," appeared in the November 20 edition of "The Wall Street Journal."
The impact of that op-ed has been extremly encouraging. Both Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma and Sen. John Kyl of Arizona have referenced Tom's article; see, for example:
http://www.jiminhofe.com/News/Read.aspx?guid=c11eaa4c-5d9e-4cfb-9a0f-1c6132903467
This is a major milestone for the Institute--with not only our views making the editorial pages of one of the nation's most prestigious newspapers, but for that editorial being cited approvingly by two prominent U.S. Senators.
I believe that this is clear evidence of the extraordinary potential that we now have to make an impact on policy issues.
Who would have thought, five or ten years ago, that something like this would have been possible?
Our ability to continue to produce articles such as Tom Bowden's--and to get them published in the nation's leading newspapers, where they come to the attention of key policymakers--is directly related to the support we receive from donors such as you.
Likewise, your continued backing of our media and advocacy efforts is vital to our success; so I hope you will consider a special contribution to ARI to allow us to keep this momentum going; you can do so online at:
http://www.aynrand.org/contribute
Thank you again for your support of our efforts!
Best,
Yaron Brook
President and Executive Director
The Ayn Rand Institute Fantastic!Labels: Objectivism
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| Thursday, October 18, 2007 |
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Objectivism Versus Christianity
By Diana Hsieh @ 7:54 AM
The already-lengthy comment thread on this article on the rejection of Christian values by Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism might be worth a post or two. The article itself accurately states the principles of the Objectivist ethics, then leaps off the cliff with the following:
Rand's inversion of biblical norms had predictable results: Scott Ryan, who wrote a book on Rand's philosophy, called objectivism a "psychologically totalitarian personality cult that allowed Rand . . . to exercise personal power over [her] unwitting victims." He cites, for example, the way she manipulated "her own unemployed and dependent husband" to get him to agree for her to have "an adulterous sexual affair."
We're not talking here about personal flaws or merely human weaknesses. As Ryan puts it, these abuses are "demonstrably connected to Rand's own 'philosophical' premises"--that is, her worldview.
Rand and her followers, you see, lived in a way consistent with her worldview. But you can hardly regard a philosophy that exalts selfishness and condemns altruism as the basis for a good society. Obviously, that characterization of Ayn Rand's actions is completely wrong. (Thank you, Nathaniel and Barbara Branden, yet again!) Yet the critical point is that the author merely quotes Ryan's assertion of a strong connection between her philosophy and that supposed behavior -- without even hinting at the nature of that actual connection. One can only suppose that the author regards respecting other people as a form of self-sacrifice.
I'm happy to see articles like this one published. It doesn't misrepresent Objectivism, except by implication. It rightly claims that the ideas of Objectivism are wholly opposed to those of Christianity. Those two points might well inspire some curious people to pick up Atlas Shrugged. Heck, it might even lead some ordinary conservatives to question whether they can admire both Jesus and John Galt, as many claim to do.
You can find the comments -- over 210 so far -- here.Labels: Objectivism, Religion
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| Tuesday, October 02, 2007 |
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The Opposite of Googling for Objectivism
By Greg Perkins @ 8:52 AM
This is the latest incarnation of an email I've sent to a few friends to give some context and offer helpful leads in their investigations. Feel free to copy or adapt it for your own use!
Hi, Anonymized. You mentioned that you were looking around the web for information on Objectivism and Rand. Heh, that should prove entertaining: there are a lot of cranks and confusions to get tangled up in. So now I feel compelled to defend the honor by offering a few carefully-selected links for your propagandistic enjoyment. :^)
Seriously, though, it is a large topic and an extremely challenging one to assess fairly. She and her philosophy are recent enough that the signal-to-noise ratio regarding them are pretty horrid compared to the (still not exactly sterling) levels found with centuries-dead philosophers and their ideas -- and this goes for both detractors and defenders. With that warning, though, it isn't hopeless. Wikipedia, for example, is really weak in the more detailed articles, but the top-level entries for Rand, Objectivism, and the Objectivist movement are pretty reasonable to check out (with an extra dash of salt, of course).
However, if you want a clear overview from which to form your own judgment, I would suggest checking out some material from Rand herself, along with the top specialists in Objectivism. Summaries and explanations for any topic can range from elevator-pitch length, to a couple minutes for a hallway appetizer, all the way up to full volumes on the subject and then technical treatises on ever-narrower aspects of it. Probably the most productive way to approach a vast topic like this would be to begin with the anchor of an "elevator summary" and then spiral over the system at increasing levels of detail and completeness, amplifying on and further integrating what you've seen with each pass.
So with that path in mind, here is the best single-sentence summary of Objectivism I know of. It is by Rand, from an about-the-author appendix to her epic novel Atlas Shrugged, and while it is extremely broad, it really does nail the fundamental spirit of the system:
My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.
Then spiraling over that same domain again but in a different and more detailed way, there is a little single-page summary of the essentials of Objectivism by her, and the people at the Ayn Rand Institute also have a one-page discussion of what is important and distinctive about the philosophy.
Slicing through from another direction, here is Dr. Onkar Ghate, senior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, with a very nice series of bite-sized articles (one, two, three, and four) introducing people to the spirit of Objectivism as a moral philosophy for human life and happiness here on earth.
Taking it up another notch, you might enjoy this nice 11-page summary of the philosophy that was written for a general audience. It is from an excellent quarterly journal of culture and politics that presents analyses from an Objectivist perspective (the editor Craig Biddle wrote it to introduce and set some context for the journal).
Shorter and more technical, but probably the most impressive link I have on this front is a brief overview of Rand and Objectivism (a mere 2500 words), authored by Greg Salmieri and Dr. Allan Gotthelf for a dictionary of modern philosophers. They accomplished so much in so little space, and so brilliantly -- reading it feels almost like reading a poem.
Finally, there is this brief summary in about ten pages (fairly dense with more references to the history of philosophy) by Rand's top student, Dr. Leonard Peikoff, taken from the appendix of his first book. (His second book is a wonderful summary 50 times as long. :^)
Those are still only a taste, of course, and would (should!) leave lots of questions and concerns to be explored. The next pass in the spiral might best involve actually going through a book by Rand herself. A friend who went off to Chicago a few years back dropped me a note out of the blue asking for a lead on that, so I'll recycle my response below.
Happy exploring,
Greg
> I've never read Rand, but would like to. Where do you suggest I start?
How cool. Hmm, it depends a bit on your purposes. You didn't specify fiction or nonfiction, or ask about any particular branch or domain in philosophy (e.g., theory of knowledge, ethics, politics, aesthetics), so I'll stay away from purely nonfiction works that are more focused or dry and technical. That leads us to either of two great places to start, based on time and tastes:
1. The Ayn Rand Reader (500 pages, 194k words, about $14)
In the introduction, co-editor Leonard Peikoff talks about how Rand has a lot of published material and many time-pressed readers wouldn't know where to begin or how to select a representative sample. "The present book is designed to meet these needs. ... this anthology is intended as an entree for those who know little or nothing about her. Each of her four novels and [her nonfiction work in] every branch of philosophy are represented within its pages, even if only in brief excerpts. Whoever finishes the book, therefore, can say in all conscience that he knows the essence of [Rand] -- and that he knows it by means of actually having read her." (Please be careful, though: this book contains major spoilers and you'll seriously miss out if you read Rand's novels some day.)
2. Atlas Shrugged (1100 pages, 561k words, about $12 for the size that doesn't require a magnifying glass)
Rand's artistic and philosophic magnum opus, a novel that has rightfully earned a place in the Western canon. It is no hyperbolic exaggeration to call this an innovative and gripping story that both embodies and presents an entire, revolutionary system of thought in an astonishing display of literary and philosophic integration. As far as I know, that feat is unprecedented in the history of literature, and it would be impressive independent of whether or not the ideas made any sense at all. What's over the top from my perspective is that in almost two decades of poking and prodding and holding her ideas up to the harshest scrutiny I can find in myself or others, I have yet to discover an essential that she didn't nail. The chick was that good.
While you are waiting for one of those meaty tomes to arrive, you could entertain yourself with her little blockbuster gem of a novella, Anthem, written a decade before another big dystopian novel, Orwell's 1984. It is still in print and selling well, but also out of copyright and available on the web, and you could probably read the whole thing in about two hours. While stylistically unlike anything else by Rand, I can see why she described it as dear to her spiritually, a poem, a hymn.
Updates: a few tweaks; added Onkar's New Statesman article series (HT: Ergo); added spoiler disclaimer on the Reader (HT: Aeon)Labels: Objectivism
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| Monday, July 23, 2007 |
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OAcademics
By Diana Hsieh @ 1:06 PM
Now that OCON is past, I'm posting one final announcement about my new OAcademics list before opening it for business tomorrow:
The OAcademics mailing list is a private forum for Objectivist academics to discuss teaching, research, coursework, dissertations, job prospects, publication, and all other aspects of life in (or after) academia. The list is basically a means of sharing knowledge and experience as ever more Objectivists enter academia.
The list isn't limited to philosophers. All Objectivists in academia, whether professors or graduate students, are welcome. Future academics, i.e. those in the process of applying to graduate school, may also join.
No subscriber is obliged to participate in list discussions. However, I do make two requests:
(1) That subscribers post the syllabi from the courses they teach (including the list of readings) at the beginning of every semester so that others may consult them in the process of their own course development.
(2) That subscribers post any significant announcements about their work, e.g. the successful defense of a dissertation, an article accepted for publication, a fabulous new teaching job, leaving academia to hunt bears in Alaska.
These are strong recommendations but not ironclad obligations.
The list is not moderated. Posts should be polite, friendly, and reasonably relevant to life in academia.
Messages will be archived, but those archives will be available only to other list members. List members should not forward list messages to anyone else or post them to any other forum without permission from the author(s).
If you have any questions, please e-mail Diana Hsieh, the list's owner and administrator, at diana@dianahsieh.com. To subscribe, enter the relevant information on the web interface. Also, please feel free to forward this post (or a link thereto) to anyone you think might be interested in joining the list.Labels: Academia, Objectivism
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| Monday, June 18, 2007 |
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New List: OAcademics
By Diana Hsieh @ 9:32 AM
Along the same lines as my OBloggers mailing list, I've created a list for Objectivist in academia: OAcademics:
The OAcademics mailing list is a private forum for Objectivist academics to discuss teaching, research, coursework, dissertations, job prospects, publication, and all other aspects of life in (or after) academia. The list is basically a means of sharing knowledge and experience as ever more Objectivists enter academia.
The list isn't limited to philosophers: all Objectivists in academia, whether professors or graduate students, are welcome. (Those in the process of applying to graduate school are also welcome to subscribe.) If you're not an Objectivist in academia, please do not subscribe.
No subscriber is obliged to participate in list discussions. However, I do make two requests of subscribers:
(1) That you post the syllabi from the courses you teach (including the list of readings) at the beginning of every semester so that others may consult them in the process of their own course development.
(2) That you post any significant announcements about your work, e.g. the successful defense of your dissertation, an article accepted for publication, a fabulous new teaching job, or leaving academia to hunt bears in Alaska.
The list is not moderated. Please make sure that your posts are polite, friendly, and on-topic.
Messages will be archived, but those archives will only be available to other list members. Please do not forward list messages to anyone else or post them to any other forum without permission from the author.
If you have any questions, please e-mail Diana Hsieh at diana@dianahsieh.com. Objectivists in academia are welcome to subscribe themselves to the list. I'll also be contacting people privately, but since I don't have e-mail addresses for all the Objectivists in academia I know, please feel free to spread the word.
FYI: If some responsible person wants to manage an "OLawyers" or "ODoctors" or "OWhatevers" list, I might be willing to host that. Just drop me an e-mail. It's not that I want Objectivists to talk to each other in some cloister -- quite the contrary, in fact. The point is to foster success in the real world by sharing advice, experience, and expertise.Labels: Academia, Objectivism
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| Sunday, November 05, 2006 |
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Mike Williams on DIM
By Diana Hsieh @ 7:40 PM
Mike Williams recently sent a lengthy post on Dr. Peikoff's (free!) DIM Hypothesis course to FRODO (Front Range Objectivism's discussion list). I thought it worth reposting on NoodleFood.
Like many others, Mike was in strongly favor of voting for Bush in 2004. He's changed his mind after thinking through the issues. When I asked him whether I could say that in introducing his post, Mike replied:
Absolutely. Most importantly, my progression came about after I reviewed Peikoff's DIM course as well as reviewed the factual evidence about the rise of religion, both in the culture at large and within the leadership structure of the Republican Party. In retrospect, I think the evidence has been there (about the culture but particularly about the Republicans) at least since 1980 and certainly by the close of Reagan's first term. However, it really took reviewing the fundamental significance of philosophy ("Duel Between Plato and Aristotle" and "For the New Intellectual", in particular) combined with the insights of The DIM Hypothesis to see religion as the real threat that could preclude the advocacy of a rational alternative. (The most easily accessible factual info about the influence of religion within the Republican Party has been theocracywatch.org. Yes, its run by ACLU-types, but the best thing either side of the aisle ever does is expose the flaws of their opponents!) So here's Mike's post on DIM:
In order to fully grasp what is at stake in the 2006 (and future) elections, it is important to bear in mind one of the central tenets of Peikoff's DIM Hypothesis: that societal change [for the better] will not come from electing a given political candidate or slate of candidates from a particular party.
Fundamentally, electing neither Democratic nor Republican politicians will advance freedom or in any way secure our rights. Politicians from both parties will continue to erode the Constitution, hamstring our national defense and move us closer to a totalitarian regime. Both pose significant threats to our rights of free speech, self defense and free choice in medicine. Neither party's members have any clear conception of how to fight and win the war with the Islamic bloc, nor the requisite moral certainty to do so. The party platforms of both the Democrats and the Republicans (as well as the Libertarians) are recipes for disaster in the short term and for tyranny in the long term. There is, however, a key fundamental philosophical difference between the two major political parties, and that difference has real consequences for us as advocates of a rational philosophy.
One of Peikoff's identifications in his DIM hypothesis work is that the current schools of thought and future trends in a given field are shaped by the underlying approach toward integration of the intellectual leaders within that field. In spite of the successes that ARI and other intellectually active rational individuals have recently enjoyed, a reality-oriented, reason-based conceptually integrative orientation is not widespread in any culturally influential field today. The 'I' approach is not even a factor in the political arena (where it has no significant adherents), while it is just barely represented in the educational and cultural fields to which politics is derivative. Further, Peikoff notes that an other-worldly, faith-based misintegrative (or 'M') approach will be more internally consistent, more attractive, more influential and ultimately more sustainable in practice than the third possible alternative: concrete bound, conceptually blind disintegration.
Some in the Democratic Party, particularly the ideological hardcore of the far Left, are representatives of the disintegrative approach in politics (to the extent that they represent anything). They seek to destroy America and the West (for the sake of the third world, or the environment, or in the name of equality, or however they care to excuse and dress up their hatred of the good). While the majority of Democrats are surely less consistent mixed cases, and even with some consistent religionists obviously included, the most consistent 'D' types set the trend and the agenda within the Democratic party. The DNC is far more in thrall to Greenpeace, MoveOn or the ACLU than it is to Focus on the Family. If elected, the long term political influence of today's Democrats will be to continue America's slide toward self-destruction through increasingly statist policies.
However, Peikoff argues that the disintegrative approach is impotent in the long term. Politically, the far Left does not appeal to the majority of the American population and will not be able to hold political power or remain culturally dominant for any lasting period of time. These mixed cases or even pure nihilists do not offer any type of integrated worldview, no deeper motivating internally consistent system with which to justify or sustain their political ambitions. Whatever ideological remnants of their Marxist past might remain are in decline in the broader culture and pose no lasting threat to the advocacy of a rational philosophy. The Democrats in power will not be successful in implementing the full gamut of their political agenda, even if they were to gain control of both houses in Congress. And, though tenuous and vestigial, the Left retains some nominal commitment to hearing all viewpoints and to the equality of all opinions in their multicultural relativism.
Yet continuing political control by the Republicans could and would lead to political domination of the US by religionists. Make no mistake: the RNC is as deeply committed to as it is indebted to the Family Research Council, the Christian Coalition, Focus on the Family and their ilk. Unlike the disintegrative, nihilistic agenda of the far left, the misintegrative policies of the religious right are supported by an ardent, confident and growing base of US fundamentalists, who cannot be opposed by their less consistent, but equally faithful, fellow travelers. Republican success would fuel the ascendancy of an other-worldy misintegrative theology in both academia and the wider culture. Further, and most alarmingly, the continued control of the US federal government by the Republicans could lead to the political imposition of totalitarian Christianity, supported by a comprehensive though false worldview that has proven to be as sustainable as it is destructive (see medieval Europe).
And a primary target of the Republican religionistas is and will continue to be freedom of speech. Keep in mind Rand's observation that each political party in the US seeks to control the realm that it considers important, either the mind or the body. The breakdown of the 1st Amendment injunction against state-sponsored religion under Bush, combined with the stacking of the judiciary to prevent legal challenges to this breakdown, continues unabated and will only accelerate if Republicans remain in power. The substitution of Christianity for cultural relativism in the schools, direct government funding for religious organizations, censorship of the media and the internet in the name of decency and family values: all these are only precursors to the political actions the religionists will take in their all out attack on the remnants of our rational, secular Enlightenment heritage (which they correctly identify as their only real enemy, rightly dismissing the hardcore of the nihilistic Left). Clearly, the Christian Republicans are seeking to control the minds of US citizens, or at least enough of us to ensure their dominance of the country.
Prior to the landslide election of Reagan in 1980, individual candidates from either party could be evaluated independently for their political philosophies, as they were often almost identical pragmatists, each grabbing for power and not serving to advance any real intellectual trend one way or the other. Exceptions like McGovern, who were holdovers from an already fading secular Marxist past, were soundly defeated. Today, individual dissenters within the Republican Party are ineffective and do not serve to stem the current dominant misintegrative trend as long as the Christian-Neocon cabal sets the agenda for the Republican leadership. Any truly pro-freedom Republicans cannot come to the fore until the religiously motivated political agenda of today's Republicans has been stopped. Also, widespread failure of current Democratic candidates to get elected may prompt a philosophical shift within that party, giving a further boost to true leftist religionists, such as Barack Obama, while lessening the prospects of a pragmatic power luster such as Hillary. Failure to support a political stopgap today might destroy the possibility for such an alternative, and could lead to the further rise of an 'M' element within the Democratic party as well.
Try not to think of this election in terms of which candidate has the better understanding of the fact that we are at war, or who might lessen the chance of socializing medicine. (If you are concerned with the war, recall the assessment of Peikoff, Lewis, Brook and others that there is no foreign enemy that can defeat the United States militarily if we have the will to defend ourselves.) The real threat is not the Islamic theocracies abroad. Rather, it is the possibility that our political system will continue to be co-opted by Christian theocrats as they serve to reinforce and further institutionalize their growing influence, thereby shutting out the possibility of a true rational alternative ever having the chance to matter. Voting for a truly pro-freedom candidate in the future will be the eventual consequence of widespread adoption of a rational philosophy not its cause. Such a possibility will never even come to pass if the majority of individuals in this country succumb to Christian fundamentalist delusions and their mandates are enforced by law.
Regards,
Mike Williams
PS: For comprehensive historical documentation of the calculated power grab within the Republican Party by the Christian fundamentalists, please see Theocracy Watch or the books With God On Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America by William Martin and The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege by Damon Linker, in addition to the Thompson article in The Objective Standard. While informative, recognize that these details are not necessary to understanding the basic alternatives we face in this election. Labels: Objectivism, Religion
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| Sunday, October 29, 2006 |
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Why I'm Voting for the Democrats
By Diana Hsieh @ 8:16 AM
Dr. Leonard Peikoff recently posted the following Q&A on the upcoming election on his web site.
Q: In view of the constant parade of jackassery which is Washington, is there any point in voting for candidates of either entrenched party? Throwing out the incumbents "for a change" is to me an idea based on the philosophy that my head will stop hurting if I bang it on the opposite wall.
A: How you cast your vote in the coming election is important, even if the two parties are both rotten. In essence, the Democrats stand for socialism, or at least some ambling steps in its direction; the Republicans stand for religion, particularly evangelical Christianity, and are taking ambitious strides to give it political power.
Socialism--a fad of the last few centuries--has had its day; it has been almost universally rejected for decades. Leftists are no longer the passionate collectivists of the 30s, but usually avowed anti-ideologists, who bewail the futility of all systems. Religion, by contrast--the destroyer of man since time immemorial--is not fading; on the contrary, it is now the only philosophic movement rapidly and righteously rising to take over the government.
The survival of this country will not be determined by the degree to which the government, simply by inertia, imposes taxes, entitlements, controls, etc., although such impositions will be harmful (and all of them and worse will be embraced or pioneered by conservatives, as Bush has shown). What does determine the survival of this country is not political concretes, but fundamental philosophy. And in this area the only real threat to the country now, the only political evil comparable to or even greater than the threat once posed by Soviet Communism, is religion and the Party which is its home and sponsor.
The most urgent political task now is to topple the Republicans from power, if possible in the House and the Senate. This entails voting consistently Democratic, even if the opponent is a "good" Republican.
In my judgment, anyone who votes Republican or abstains from voting in this election has no understanding of the practical role of philosophy in man's actual life--which means that he does not understand the philosophy of Objectivism, except perhaps as a rationalistic system detached from the world.
If you hate the Left so much that you feel more comfortable with the Right, you are unwittingly helping to push the U.S. toward disaster, i.e., theocracy, not in 50 years, but, frighteningly, much sooner. I fully support Dr. Peikoff's statement.
I am acutely aware of the concrete evils of voting for the Democrats: high taxes, environmentalism, welfare programs, socialized medicine, and gun control. Nonetheless, I will vote for Democrats as long as necessary, even for Hillary Clinton in 2008.
That is a substantial change for me, as some of you might recall. In the 2004 election, I was hopelessly torn by the choice between Bush and Kerry. While I knew that both were evil, I could not say Bush was apocalyptically evil while Kerry was merely ordinary evil. (Frankly, that middle ground was progress for me, as I'd been pro-Republican in the general vein of TIA Daily for many years beforehand.) I continued to pursue the matter after the election: I knew I needed to understand the relevant principles much better than I did. Listening to Dr. Peikoff's excellent DIM Hypothesis course made the most difference to me: upon hearing the whole course, I finally understood the real meaning of the posted excerpt on the 2004 election. Of course, I still had much more thinking to do. Dr. Peikoff's Religion Versus America and America Versus Americans lectures were illuminating, as was Dr. Yaron Brook's lecture The Morality of War and Dr. John Lewis' Ideas and the Fall of Rome. Dr. Brad Thompson's recent article The Decline and Fall of American Conservatism is also a must-read.
I mention those sources for a very specific reason: It's hard to understand the depth and power of Dr. Peikoff's position unless you are familiar with them, particularly his DIM Hypothesis course. Dr. Peikoff's position is not based on any casual survey of recent events; it is well-grounded in fundamental principles, particularly the essential factors governing philosophic change in cultures over the course of centuries. The Objectivist view of the role of philosophy in shaping individual lives, politics, culture, and history is a massive integration. While most professed Objectivists could summarize it, they do not genuinely understand it for themselves, i.e. based upon their own induction from the concretes. Dr. Peikoff's DIM Hypothesis course makes that induction so much more clear. It helps a person cut through the confusing sea of today's concretes, so as to see the essential trends. (Note: The Ayn Rand Institute has made Dr. Peikoff's DIM Hypothesis course available for free to registered users!)
As regards the election, the past two years of the Bush Administration and its Republican Congress have displayed the true philosophic commitments of today's conservatives more starkly than ever. In their domestic policies, the Republicans fully support socialism and statism. They simply do so in craftier ways than the Democrats. Most obviously, the Bush Administration successfully pushed its prescription drug plan -- a massive new entitlement -- through a Republican-dominated House and Senate. Even with his Democratic Congress, Clinton was unable to match that feat of welfare statism. As a general matter, the Bush Administration is not even slightly concerned with controlling spending or the growth of government. Consider these "hard facts" from Dr. Thompson's The Decline and Fall of American Conservatism:
Government spending has increased faster under George Bush and his Republican Congress than it did under Bill Clinton, and more people work for the federal government today than at any time since the end of the Cold War. During Bush's first term, total government spending skyrocketed from $1.86 trillion to $2.48 trillion, an increase of 33 percent (almost $23,000 per household, the highest level since World War II). The federal budget grew by $616.4 billion during Bush's first term in office. If post 9/11 defense spending is taken off the table, domestic spending has ballooned by 23 percent since Bush took office. When Bill Clinton left office in 2000, federal spending equaled 18.5 percent of the gross domestic product, but by the end of the first Bush administration, government outlays had increased to 20.3 percent of the GDP. The annualized growth rate of non-defense and non-homeland-security outlays has more than doubled from 2.1 percent under Clinton to 4.8 percent under Bush.
Increased spending inevitably means increased taxes. Thus, despite President Bush's much vaunted tax cuts, Americans actually pay more in taxes today than they did during Bill Clinton's last year in office. The 2006 annual report from Americans for Tax Reform, titled "Cost of Government Day," sums up rather nicely the intrusive role played by Republican government in the lives of ordinary Americans. The report says that Americans had to work 86.5 days just to pay their federal taxes, as compared to 78.5 days in 2000 under Bill Clinton. In other words, the average American has worked 10.2 percent more for the federal government under George Bush than under Bill Clinton. When state and local taxes (controlled in the majority of places by Republicans) are added to federal taxes, Americans worked for the government eight hours a day, five days a week, from January 1 until July 12, meaning they worked full-time for the government for more than half the year. As Tom Feeney, a congressional Republican put it: "I remember growing up and reading in some school textbooks that if more than half your paycheck went to the government, then you were living in a socialist society." Just so, Mr. Feeney. The profligate spending of President Bush and the Republican Congress is thoroughly consistent with current Republican principles. In fact, Bush's massively expensive prescription drug plan was based upon the very same model of a "conservative welfare state" as his failed attempt to reform Social Security, his support for school vouchers, and his tax cuts. As Dr. Thompson explains:
How does a conservative welfare state work? And how does it differ from a liberal welfare state? The neocons advocate a strong central government that provides welfare services to all people who need them while, at the same time, giving people choice about how they want those services delivered. That is what makes it "conservative," they argue. That is how the neocons reconcile Adam Smith and Karl Marx, Hayek and Trotsky.
In practice, this means that the coercive force of the state is used to provide for all of the people's needs--from universal social security to health and child care to education--but the people choose their own "private" social security accounts; they choose their own "private" health and child-care providers; and parents receive vouchers and choose which schools their children will attend. The choices, of course, are not the wide-open choices of a free market; rather, the people are permitted to choose from among a handful of pre-authorized providers. The neocons call this scheme a free-market reform of the welfare state.
As economic "supply-siders," the neocons occasionally support tax cuts--but not because they want to return to taxpayers money that is rightfully theirs. Instead, they advocate lowering the marginal tax rate because it will provide an incentive for people to work harder, earn more money, spur economic growth--and, thereby, generate more tax revenue that will be used to fund the conservative welfare state. In other words, President Bush's occasional vaguely free-market rhetoric means nothing. The guiding ideal of his administration is that of total government control over our lives, albeit with some nominal choices sanctioned and regulated by that government. That's the kind of "freedom" that today's Republicans support -- and that TIA Daily routinely praises. It's worse than a farce: it's a dangerous illusion. Due to the apparent choices still available to them, Americans might not recognize the ever-tightening vise of government control until it's too powerful to effectively resist. To put the point somewhat crudely, the Republicans want Americans to indulge their power-lusting fantasy that their kinder, gentler form of rape is actually consensual sex, i.e. that their form of statism is actually freedom. It's not. If Objectivists can't see that, then America's prospects are very bleak.
Even more alarming, Republicans at the local, state, and federal levels are actively intertwining religion and politics. Republican candidates clearly display their Christian credentials in their campaign literature and declare their intention to govern by Christian principles. They claim that America was founded upon Christian principles -- and advocate a return thereto. They actively promote religion with state power and taxpayer dollars via faith-based initiatives. Many now openly reject the very idea of secular government, i.e. of separation of church and state. For example, Janet Rowland, the woman Colorado's Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez selected as his running mate, openly advocates teaching creationism in public schools, wholeheartedly supports faith-based initiatives, and denies any Constitutional support for separation of church and state. She claims that "we should have the freedom OF religion, not the freedom FROM religion."
Based upon recent threads on Objectivist discussion boards, many Objectivists seem to think that the meaning of Christian government in America is limited to marginal issues like abortion, stem-cell research, evolution, euthanasia, and the like. That's completely false. Christianity is an all-embracing worldview: otherwordly, mystical, altruistic, and authoritarian. Its holy scriptures are explicitly and unequivocally opposed to all the values of this world: success, wealth, pleasure, science, justice, love, reason, pride, independence, and even long-range planning. It demands poverty, incompetence, misery, suffering, mercy, humility, submission, miracles, faith, and death. In recent decades, ever-growing millions of American Christians, both Catholics and Protestants, have embraced an ever-truer faith. They are committed to living in obedience to God. They are rediscovering the actual meaning of the teachings of the New Testament. They are rejecting the common sense worldliness that has long tempered American Christianity; they are embracing the blind emotionalism of faith. Ominously, they are raising an even more radical generation of Christians, teaching them to be "sons of God" rather than "children of the world," just as Augustine demanded. This new Christianity is a whole new animal.
Unsurprisingly, these millions of serious Christians want to live in a society that reflects and supports their Christian values. Also unsurprisingly, they are perfectly willing to use the coercive power of the state to achieve that end. They fight to implement and/or retain laws criminalizing homosexual sex, forbidding the co-habitation of unmarried couples, and requiring modest clothing. They support the Bush Administration's vigorous prosecution of obscenity and heavy fines for indecency in the name of "family values." They demand that religious nonsense (i.e. "intelligent design") be taught as science in public schools. They demand the removal of un-Christian books from public and school libraries. Significantly, serious Christians will not be satisfied with success on those limited issues. They will demand strict divorce laws, limit access to birth control, prosecute adultery, and demand religious instruction in schools. To set a proper moral example for the children, they will force everyone to live a Christian life. They will silence critics of religion, whether by actively denying the right to offend religious believers or by passively permitting the intimidation of speakers. (Sadly, that's not much of a stretch in light of Bush the Father's response to the fatwa Salman Rushdie and Bush the Son's response to the Muslim jihad against the Danish cartoons.) Meanwhile, these Christians will continue to support socialism for the simple reason that the New Testament commands it. It demands total collectivization of property and distribution according to need. In passage after passage, it inculcates vicious hostility to wealth, in part on the grounds that the wealthy exploit the poor. Marxism collapsed as an ideological force with the Soviet Union, but Christianity can and will give socialism a new lease on life. The utter misery created by Christian socialism will not be a reason to abandon it; Christianity is explicitly opposed to worldy values like happiness and prosperity. It lauds the silent endurance of suffering and misery as a virtue -- and Christians will force you to be virtuous.
The size and power of the evangelical Christian subculture in America should not be underestimated. It is millions strong, generously funded, and growing quickly, often below the radar of the mainstream media. (See the excerpt from the DIM Hypothesis course for details.) Moreover, consider the slew of large Christian organizations seeking to influence American politics, such as American Family Association, Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for America, Christian Coalition of America, Pro-Family Law Center, and Family Research Council. All were created in the last 30 years. In addition, Christian conservatives are successfully infiltrating academia, filling the vacuum created by the ideological death of the left. (To head off a likely objection: Yes, Democrats are increasingly appealing to religion. However, they're doing so because they've seen the great success of the religious Republicans. For now, it's just opportunistic me-too-ism. If religious Republicans are rejected by the American people sooner rather than later, it will disappear. If not, Christian Democrats will gain power over their party and thereby eliminate the possibility of secular government.)
For those who understand the awesome power of philosophy in human life, the grave threat posed by this virulent new strain of Christianity is obvious. If America embraces the Christian government of the Republicans, the anti-reason and anti-life ideals Christianity will soon permeate every aspect of American life: politics, business, foreign policy, art, science, criminal and civil law, medicine, education, child-rearing, and more. Of all people, Objectivists ought to see that, precisely because Objectivism recognizes that philosophy is the fundamental driving force of human life and society. Yet many of Dr. Peikoff's critics dismiss the reinvigorated Christianity spreading throughout the Republican Party as irrelevant or marginal, focusing only upon superficial issues of policy. They are utterly missing the point.
As if the prospect of Christian government in America isn't bad enough, the foreign policy of the Republicans is even more dangerous. The Bush Administration is not fighting a half-war against Islamic totalitarianism, as its Objectivist apologists claim. It is fighting an altruistic pseudo-war in which the lives of thousands of American soldiers and billions of taxpayer dollars are openly sacrificed for the good of the enemy.
To take the most telling example, President Bush has embroiled the American military in years of fruitless war in Iraq -- with no end in sight. On the present course, America can only leave Iraq in defeat, i.e. by withdrawing troops as the country sinks further into chaos. When that happens, Iraqis will be free to do as they please, namely to slaughter each other in religious and civil war culminating in the establishment of a repressive Islamic theocracy. That new Iraq will be far more dangerous to America than Saddam's regime ever was; it will be another Iran. Notably, Bush's lofty plan for Iraq diverges only slightly from that grim reality: he wants Iraqis to democratically vote themselves some new government, any new government. Since his basic goal is to promote democracy rather than secure America, he's willing to accept an Islamic theocracy hostile to America, so long as Iraqis vote for it. That's what our soldiers in Iraq are fighting and dying to protect in President Bush's "war on terror." The fact that they have killed some jihadists is wholly irrelevant: militant Islamists are not in short supply in the Middle East.
America's bloody self-sacrifice in Iraq is the concrete reality of President Bush's "Forward Strategy of Freedom." According to that doctrine, the root cause of the "stagnation, resentment, and violence ready for export" common to almost all countries in the Middle East is the absence of democracy. So the solution to Islamist terrorism is to allow Islamists the power of the vote. By implication, Islam is fundamentally unrelated to terrorism. As a "religion of peace," Islam cannot inspire or motivate terrorism, whatever the terrorists might say. Notably, Bush explicitly connected his Forward Strategy of Freedom to his own religious faith. He declared the spread of democracy to be America's "calling," a task to be accomplished with God's assistance and American sacrifice. Iraq was supposed to be the first major step: "the establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution." In fact, the only significant outcome has been an explosion of Islamism in Iraq.
President Bush's much-lauded Forward Strategy of Freedom has worked equally well elsewhere. The Bush Administration has vigorously promoted government by democratic vote in Muslim countries, even when that elevates violent Islamic totalitarians to power. Democracy brought Hamas to power over the Palestinian Authority, injected Hezbollah into the Lebanese government, and enshrined Islam as the law of the land in Afghanistan. Yet Bush continues to push for full-blown elections in Egypt and Jordan, even though that would undermine the efforts of those semi-friendly countries to suppress militant Islam. By promoting democracy, President Bush is aiding our enemies, openly helping them gain political power that otherwise would have been out of reach. Yet he has not been deterred from his God-given mission by the ever-growing political power of the Islamists around the Middle East. Like any good Christian, he is impervious to the facts of this world.
The Bush Administration's foreign policy is influenced by Christianity in more than just this "love your enemies" plan for Islamists. In his recent talk, "Nothing Less Than Victory," Dr. John Lewis rightly argued that America ought to demand that the Muslim world wholly separate mosque and state. As in Shinto Japan after World War II, Muslims would be free to pray to Allah in their private lives, but Islam would be barred from public life and politics, including education. Muslims could rationalize that public secularism however they pleased -- or abandon Islam entirely. Such secular government in Muslim countries is required to eliminate their threat to the West. Yet President Bush is completely incapable of demanding anything of the sort. He does not believe in the separation of church and state; he's actively intermingling religion and politics in America. So he has no principled objection to states governed by Islamic law. He regards religion as a positive force in human life and in the state. He merely prefers Christianity to Islam.
In essence, by the very nature of his guiding philosophy of life, President Bush is incapable of defeating Islamic totalitarianism. He lacks the capacity to identify the enemy as Islam and to demand the separation of mosque and state. The result is not some half-good measures against Islamic totalitarianism. He's actively sacrificing American lives, dollars, and security in order to promote Islamists to political power.
Even worse, by so doing while posing as a tough defender of America, the Bush Administration has substantially destroyed the critical ingredient in the battle for Western civilization against the Muslim barbarians, namely our will to fight. America's military might is awe-inspiring. If victory was the goal, America's military could probably crush Islamic totalitarianism in mere months, if not sooner. The only question is whether America has the moral confidence to use that awesome military power in the service of its own defense. In the weeks and months after 9/11, most Americans were eager to terminate the deadly ambitions of the Islamists. The Bush Administration bled dry that fighting spirit with years of war in Iraq, not to mention the ongoing appeasement of terrorists and the states that sponsor them. The cultural and political power of the Islamists in the Middle East has only grown since 9/11, so much so that many Americans now regard victory against the Islamists as impossible and self-defense as slow suicide. They do not think we can win; they aren't certain we deserve to win; they don't even know what "winning" would mean. That's obscene. In concrete terms, the loss of moral confidence means that America will not confront Iran or Saudi Arabia, even though they are the two ideological and financial fountainheads of terrorism against the West. Our government will continue to appease Iran with diplomacy while it openly pursues nuclear weapons. It will continue to pretend that Saudi Arabia is an ally.
Of course, I cannot imagine that the Democrats will wage anything like proper war against the Islamic totalitarians determined to destroy America. However, I can reasonably hope that their fearful cowardice will protect us from self-sacrificial wars. They will not sap America's will to fight, but perhaps even reinvigorate it by their inaction. For example, by pulling out of Somalia in disgrace, the Clinton Administration saved us from the self-sacrifice of Bush the Elder's humanitarian "war" to protect and serve a hostile population. Americans were not sapped of their will to fight thereby: most understood that we could and should have retaliated -- even though we shouldn't have embroiled ourselves in that mess of a country in the first place. In contrast, if Bush the Younger were in charge, American soldiers would probably still be dying senselessly in Somalia, just as in Iraq today, on the premise that Somalis really want freedom too.
The world would be a safer place today if President Bush refused to take any action in response to the 9/11 attacks. Fewer Islamists would be in positions of political power in the Middle East. Americans might be frustrated by the inaction rather than cowed by improvised roadside bombs.
Objectivists ought to recognize the total failure of Bush's foreign policy in the Middle East, particularly in light of the slew of articles and lectures on the topic in recent years by Dr. Lewis and Dr. Brook. Yet many seem utterly blind to the disaster, focusing only upon insignificant concretes. The fact is that the Bush Administration is not fighting a war against Islamic totalitarianism: as a matter of deliberate policy, it is promoting their political and cultural domination of the Middle East. Yet that's the Administration that TIA Daily praises, supports, and urges you to vote for -- precisely on the grounds of its "war on terror." It's appalling.
Those are my basic reasons for regarding today's Republicans as far, far more dangerous than today's Democrats. The problem is not some few individual Republicans but the whole Republican Party, including its leadership. It must be told in no uncertain terms to reverse course. It will only do so if punished by voters for injecting religion into politics and promoting Islamism in the Middle East. Yes, the Democrats are awful. Yes, it will be painful to vote for them. However, the alternative of Christian government is so much more dangerous to our liberties.
The fundamental philosophic principles required to clearly understand the nature of our choice in this election are not self-evident. They can be difficult to understand, even for someone long familiar with Objectivism. An honest Objectivist could be confused by the flood of irrelevant concretes and misleading analyses, particularly if attentive to the seemingly Objectivist defenses of the Bush Administration published in almost every TIA Daily and commonly posted on HBL (based on what I saw during my trial membership this spring). However, I think such confusion is possible only to a person without anything like a firm grasp of the relevant philosophic principles. That's why I agree with Dr. Peikoff's claim that "anyone who votes Republican or abstains from voting in this election has no understanding of the practical role of philosophy in man's actual life--which means that he does not understand the philosophy of Objectivism, except perhaps as a rationalistic system detached from the world." Sadly, that assessment has been confirmed by the flurry of concrete-bound objections to Dr. Peikoff's statement posted on various Objectivist forums. More particularly, most critics of Dr. Peikoff dismiss as insignificant (or even deny) the rise of a new form of Christianity among millions of Americans over the last three decades. They treat Christianity as relevant to little more than birth and death, i.e. to abortion and euthanasia, even though millions of Christians are determined to live by the actual teachings of the New Testament. They claim that America's sense of life makes theocracy impossible, as if the sense of life of a nation is independent of and impervious to massive changes in explicit philosophy. In essence, they do not recognize that Christianity is an all-encompassing philosophy with the power to drag America into a second Dark Ages if unchecked. In other words, they fail to grasp "the practical role of philosophy in man's actual life."
In response to Dr. Peikoff's claim, some argue that a person's vote reveals nothing about his understanding of Objectivism. In fact, a person's concrete actions often do reveal failures of understanding--particularly when the choices are stark. An Objectivist who occasionally shoplifts doesn't understand property rights (and more); an Objectivist who stumps for the Libertarian Party doesn't understand the role of fundamental philosophy in politics (and more); an Objectivist who admires Kant's philosophy doesn't understand much of anything. Similarly, an Objectivist who thinks that today's Republicans are less evil or as evil as today's Democrats fails to grasp the fundamental ideological commitments of the Republicans and the real life meaning thereof, particularly the totalistic crushing oppression of life in a Christian culture and under Christian government.
Moreover, I'm glad that Dr. Peikoff was so blunt, even though some were insulted. Many Objectivists needed to hear those shocking words. They needed to be told in no uncertain terms by the foremost expert on Objectivism that their understanding of the philosophy is seriously deficient. If Dr. Peikoff had stated his views in less stark terms, most pro-Republican Objectivists would have dismissed them without much consideration. Others would have remained oblivious to the enormous differences underlying the positions advocated by Yaron Brook, John Lewis, Craig Biddle, and Leonard Peikoff on one hand and Robert Tracinksi, Jack Wakeland, and Harry Binswanger (at least in 2004) on the other. A wake-up call was needed. Yes, it's blaring -- probably because the softer alarms weren't often heeded.
Obviously, a person who fails to properly understand Objectivism is not thereby dishonest or immoral. However, some of Dr. Peikoff's most vehement critics have interpreted him as saying just that -- wrongly, I think. Dr. Peikoff wrote:
Given the choice between a rotten, enfeebled, despairing killer, and a rotten, ever stronger, and ambitious killer, it is immoral to vote for the latter, and equally immoral to refrain from voting at all because "both are bad." In my judgment, that claim of immorality presumes that a person understands the choice in question basically as stated, i.e. between an ever-weaker killer and an ever-stronger killer. If a person fails to understand that despite serious and honest effort, then his failure to vote for the Democrats would not be a moral failing, although still a serious mistake. More generally, the identification of a certain act as immoral doesn't imply that everyone performing it is immoral. For example, it's immoral for a husband to lie to his wife to spare her feelings, but if he's accepted the standard view of honesty, he might reasonably think that some "white lies" are proper. Such a husband has done something wrong by lying, even though he's not acted immorally in the sense of evading his knowledge. Hopefully, someone will tell him that he's doing wrong, that lying to his wife is immoral, and that he doesn't understand honesty. That's what Dr. Peikoff has done for Objectivists. (Of course, some pro-Republicans Objectivists are probably dishonest in their views. However, my point is simply that Dr. Peikoff didn't say that all were.)
Finally, I must comment upon some of the vicious attacks on Dr. Peikoff posted to the ObjectivismOnline and The Forum threads on his statement. To be blunt, I'm appalled by them, particularly by the many accusations of intimidation, bullying, dogmatism, and the like. (For example, Jack Wakeland began this post with "Thank you, [name omitted], for so quickly standing up to Dr. Peikoff's attempt to bully.") Such charges are absurd: a person does not dogmatically impose himself upon anyone else by expressing strong epistemological and moral judgments. (That's David Kelley's "tolerationist" view; it's not Objectivism.) Dr. Peikoff is certainly not obliged to sugarcoat his negative judgments for the sake of spineless cowards fearful of his disapproval, particularly not on such weighty issues like the fate of America.
More generally, Dr. Peikoff deserves far better treatment from Objectivists than he's received of late. Apart from Ayn Rand, he's undoubtedly the most knowledgeable and accomplished Objectivist philosopher -- by far. No one else could have so skillfully and clearly systematized Objectivism as he did in Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. For that feat alone, he deserves the deep respect and admiration of Objectivists. In action, such respect means that Objectivists ought to give his arguments careful attention and scrutiny, even if ultimately disagreeing with them. That's hardly too much to ask. However, that's not happened in this debate. Dr. Peikoff has been attacked in the very same terms as I often heard in TOC circles, i.e. with the same casual disregard for facts and the same specious arguments about intimidation. Also like at TOC, many people have dismissed his arguments as absurd without any substantial effort to understand them. That's inexcusable.
To be perfectly clear, I will not tolerate any such attacks upon Dr. Peikoff in the comments on this post. Disagreement is fine, but I want nothing to do with anyone who treats him with the dismissive contempt I've seen elsewhere. My admiration for Dr. Peikoff and his accomplishments means something to me, something serious and important. So those supposed Objectivists who cannot treat Dr. Peikoff with some minimal respect are kindly invited in advance to remain silent.Labels: Objectivism, Religion
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| Monday, April 03, 2006 |
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ARI's Funnel: Taking Ideas Seriously
By Greg Perkins @ 8:56 AM
Despairing at various events leading them to wonder whether there's any hope for humanity, a couple of friends were asking me about getting politicians with good ideas elected. I answered that it seems premature to worry about electing politicians to support the right things today, because without the right culture they probably can't be elected -- and they wouldn't be able to do what we want even if they were elected. But if you change the culture to be less hostile to the right ideas, then you'll have a chance. Of course they only heard their goal of a little sanity receding toward the vanishing point. Sighing, they asked how to best do that.
Archimedes famously wrote, "If you could give me a lever long enough, I could move the world." As many here would expect, I explained that the fulcrum point is philosophy, and I briefly sketched the pattern of how philosophical ideas shape culture and history (ala Peikoff's Ominous Parallels):
- Philosophy, good and bad, is the fundamental integrator of human knowledge.
- Some hot philosopher comes up with an idea and it can spread to his colleagues.
- If it sticks, it can spread to other parts of the humanities, affecting and shaping those who study people, those who write stories and make films and report the news, etc.
- It can then filter out into the general culture, affecting politics and the harder sciences.
- Out here in the world, we eventually see the effects, major and minor, high and low... fundamental philosophical ideas shape everything from the political landscape and what government does, to popular TV, and even current theories being proposed in science. Consider Continental/postmodern philosophy's effects in literary criticism, in legal theory, in art, in politics (totalitarian collectivism), and in physics (Copenhagen interpretation of QM). The effects are everywhere, implicitly and explicitly, and they are the result of some smart dude in a school writing a book: like Kant, who affected Hegel, who affected Derrida, etc., on down to these insufferable left-wing pointy-heads we're surrounded by (to pick on the postmodernists).
After not paying attention for a while, I was delighted to learn that an Objectivist organization seems to be taking this idea very seriously. Diana began sharing how ARI is doing so after attending her first "State of ARI" talk by Yaron Brook. Mike of Passing Thoughts blogged on the following year's version. Plus I've poked around a bit on my own. I really want to hear the next one, because the more I learn, the more I can see the purposeful, integrated, and productive efforts of a well-run organization focused on connecting the right people to the fulcrum point by which they can move the culture.
ARI calls its strategy the Funnel, and here's the best sketch I can muster from what I've learned (please fill in more details and straighten me out on any mangled bits):
- Millions. First, there is the tremendous effect of Rand's books. Selling at least a half million copies a year all told, they affect millions and millions of people in varying degrees and on various levels, though mostly modest.
- Hundreds of thousands. The first real stage of the Funnel is ARI's Free Books for Teachers Program that places Rand's novels in schools where they'll be taught as literature. The result is hundreds of thousands of kids studying them each year and a further "softening" of the culture to the work of Objectivist scholars and specialists (after all, cranks don't get taught as novelists in the Canon worthy of serious study).
- Thousands. ARI offers big cash prizes to students in their annual essay contest. This means thousands of kids motivated to critically analyze and write on Rand's novels each year, being exposed to philosophical ideas in general and Objectivism in particular. Plus, ARI gives each essayist a free copy of the novel they didn't write about, so most of those thousands will deepen their appreciation and understanding of Rand and perhaps strengthen their respect for the importance of ideas.
- Hundreds. When students arrive at college, they'll find ARI-sponsored campus Objectivist clubs which draw on an active ARI speakers bureau to present on campuses, and they'll see Objectivist experts from ARI regularly appearing on radio and TV, and producing a steady stream of op-eds and letters to the editor that appear in major papers. Also, they'll see active ARI campaigns taking on important cultural causes like the free world's response to the cartoon jihad. So hundreds of students who might make a career of working with ideas are further exposed to Objectivist thought and encouraged to study Objectivism seriously. Also, there is further softening of the culture to Rand's ideas and their application in other disciplines (after all, cranks aren't called to be on big cable and radio shows to argue issues of the day).
- Dozens. If they become serious about studying philosophy in general and Objectivism in particular, these students will find generous support at ARI's Objectivist Academic Center. There, dozens of philosophy majors are receiving rigorous supplemental undergraduate and graduate training in the Objectivist system, its methodology and relation to other systems, as well as training in related disciplines such as writing which are required for strong, effective scholarly work. (Great stuff, these guys are coming out sharp as hell.)
- Handfuls. Finally, Objectivist PhD's recieve critical support from the Anthem Foundation for Objectivist Scholarship headed by John McCaskey of Stanford. Anthem is an organization working within academia to elevate respect and demand for Rand studies by sponsoring fellowships, making book grants, helping with networking, etc. Their long-term goal is to support twenty Objectivist professors in the top fifty schools, doing significant work in writing books and articles, teaching Objectivist ideas -- doing the core work that will affect the culture and further reinforce the Funnel. Along the way, we will enjoy the fruits of academia progressively opening up to serious engagement of Rand 's ideas. In addition to Anthem's efforts, ARI also has its own grant programs and other forms of support for professors who wish to teach and work with Rand's ideas.
This past year saw the results of almost a dozen Objectivist books like Dr. Bernstein's Capitalist Manifesto and Dr. Hull's The Abolition of Antitrust, to name two I bought. And with the help of the Anthem Foundation, important works are beginning to emerge from prestigious academic publishers, like Dr. Smith's forthcoming Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist. We've seen the launch of The Objective Standard, a strong scholarly journal of politics and culture from the Objectivist perspective. There have been scores of op-eds and letters to the editor out of ARI, and ever-more frequent appearances by their experts on TV and talk shows. And besides existing scholars being productive, I'm told the supply of Objectivist professors is now inadequte to meet demand from schools, so it seems the Anthem Foundation is doing a good job of creating demand.
Lather, rinse, repeat. After a while, things will turn more sane and we'll be in a position to elect representatives who understand the proper role of government. In the meantime, though, I'll support ARI's Funnel and benefit from being an early-adopter of philosophical technology that will save the world.
UPDATE: Noodlefood's own Don Watkins mentions that chipping in $35 or more to ARI's Funnel gets you a subscription to Impact, ARI's monthly newsletter for keeping donors up to date on progress in effecting cultural change. (What's extra cool is that Don now writes Impact!)Labels: Objectivism
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