The New Clarion

I’ve never voted for a Democrat in my life. However, you could say I’ve never voted FOR a Republican, either.

What motivates me to enter the voting booth is always the prospect of voting against the Democrats. For a long time the Democrats have been a power-lusting statist party with totalitarian aspects. They lie about and smear their opponents. They show contempt for the American people, whose lives they think should be controlled by our masters in Washington, D.C. They push relentlessly for more government control, more centralized power, more chains on the economy and less freedom everywhere. They undermine the integrity of our elections by cheating with the votes. They threaten free speech with such laws as campaign finance and the fairness doctrine. They weaken America’s security with their foreign policy of appeasement. They act as if the Constitution were meaningless.

Freedom in America will not survive with the Democrats in power.

The election coming up on November 2 is the ultimate vote-against-the-Democrats election. Since the election of Obama in 2008 we’ve seen everything bad about the Dems — in industrial strength. (Or should that read “bureaucratic strength”?)

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I had a good laugh today driving back from dropping off some Objectivist literature at a local community college. Michael Medved was interviewing his wife on his radio show and she pointed out that one of the more popular scary political costumes selling this season is a Nancy Pelosi costume. (Good thing I can multi-task, laugh and drive at the same time.) I decided to do a google search when I got home and found this. Yikes! That is scary!!

Over at PajamasMedia, “zombie” proposes that the Tea Party and the hippies of the 1960′s share a common set of ideas.  That sort of confusion sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Not so fast!  While zombie is indeed confused, there is much more involved here; rather than clueless overgenerosity, zombie is trapped by a much more fundamental error.  Go read the whole thing, as you will definitely need the context (and it’s very informative), and then come back here.

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Paul and Diana Hsieh have put up a detailed post collecting all the information known thus far on the resignation of John McCaskey, over at Noodlefood.

It is an excellent addition to the discussion in the comments on my previous post.

My position remains what I said in that post, while I ponder the newly expanded context.  I will say, however, that the ones who impress me the least in all this are the ones who have already leaped to conclusions, condemning either Dr. Peikoff or Dr. McCaskey on insufficient evidence.

Charlotte Cushman asks the question “Is America a Christian Nation?” over at The American Thinker.  It’s short but sweet, a very well-crafted shot across the theocrats’ bow.

Objectivists looking for target practice in refuting this Big Lie would do well to sift through the comments, which have become a veritable one-stop shop for all the usual religionist gambits.

Over at Chicagoboyz, Shannon Love pens this jawdropping piece of shallow fluffery entertaining the laugh-out-loud delusion that the Left needs to have its own version of the Tea Party.

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In the category of the Left bares its soul for all to see is this short video recently released by the environmentalist group 1010.    It pretty much makes explicit what has always been the Left’s attitude towards “global warming deniers” and others who refuse to jump on the bandwagon of their agenda.

Pretty horrifying.

Apparently, enough uproar has resulted that 1010 has removed the video from its site and issued an apology. The organization pleads humor as its excuse and adds “many people found the resulting film extremely funny.”

Actually, I can see how “many people” found the film to be funny. In order for any sort of joke to work, it has to have at least some basis in reality. And, in this case, there is a basis in reality – the sort of groupthink that is pervasive among the Left and its hatred and hostility towards dissenters. For those who share such a mindset, this video probably is funny.

I am quite sure that the SS in Germany and the guards at the gulags in the USSR had any number of jokes about the inmates they presided over that they probably fond quite hilarious. But the reaction of any civilized person to the same “humor” is one of revulsion and horror.

“Obey or die” has always been the ultimate argument that the Left falls back on when push comes to shove – and Nazi Germany and the USSR are but two of many examples. The recent “climate change” scandals have the environmentalist movement on the defensive. Arguments by intimidation are all they have in order to press their agenda.

No, the people who made this video are not on par with Nazis and Soviets – not yet. Real totalitarians would be much more careful and guarded in their propaganda. A Joseph Goebbels would never allow something so explicit to see the light of general circulation. What went on in the Nazi slave camps and extermination chambers was regarded as a state secret and kept from the general public.

This video is merely a reflection of its creators’ deepest, darkest premises – premises that they are too ignorant and brainwashed to grasp the full, logical implications of. If they fully understood and agreed with where such premises lead, they would, like Goebbels, keep their jokes to themselves. The would immediately understand how any such humor that makes their premises explicit for all to see would set back and not advance their ultimate agenda. But since these filmmakers either cannot grasp or refuse to grasp what their premises ultimately lead to in practice, it simply does not occur to them that being open and explicit about them is extremely counterproductive.

When the Allies liberated the concentration camps after World War II, some military commanders ordered ordinary German civilians from nearby villages to be rounded up and forced them to be marched through the camps and actually look at the piles of half burned corpses. Most of these civilians reacted to what they saw with fright and horror – many to the point of throwing up or passing out. Not all Germans supported the Nazis – but a very large percentage did to some degree or another. What occurred in those camps was a sadistic nightmare that the average German citizen could never have conceived of or imagined. And yet those camps were the logical expression of exactly what the Nazis stood for with the full and enthusiastic consent of a very significant portion of the German public.

These filmmakers and any member of the general public who regards this video as “humorous” are to the would-be totalitarians of the future what the German public was to the actual totalitarians of the 1930s and 1940s.

A few weeks ago, a controversy erupted in the Objectivist community when John McCaskey resigned from the Ayn Rand Institute Board of Directors, over a severe disagreement with Leonard Peikoff regarding David Harriman’s book The Logical Leap.

At the time, I decided to await further information before reaching any conclusions about the involved individuals.  This remains my position, notwithstanding the fact that I nevertheless am very much inclined to a particular conclusion regarding this event, based on information currently available.

However, in light of Robert Tracinski’s shot across the bow at TIA Daily, I have found it necessary to post here a comment originally made at Diana’s place three weeks ago.  While I have many disagreements with Tracinski regarding particulars in his article (mainly, his misunderstanding of the “transmission belt” metaphor and its description of the flow of ideas in a culture), I have long known as true Tracinski’s conclusion: that all Objectivists remain independent operators, and must be careful not to lose sight of this fact.

Below the fold is my Noodlefood comment.  Edits only for context.

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