The New Clarion

The Right has reacted loudly to the Left’s ongoing exploitation of the attack on Gabrielle Giffords. Glenn Reynolds has been supplying a steady stream of links to rebuttals, including this incredible compilation by Michelle Malkin of Leftist violence (not just “rhetoric”, note, but actual violence), as well as egregious examples of Leftist projection, one of the most revolting ones being Paul Krugman.

Some, such as George Will, have spotted the nub of the Left’s real goal: to keep the national discourse away from ideas, which is the pre-eminent danger posed to the Left by the Tea Party.  As I have noted before, that would be a battle they would lose.

Some, however, are worse than wrong; they actively play into the Left’s hands.  One such is Dan Riehl, who not only fails to realize what the Left is afraid of, but posits as their biggest fear what is in fact a key part of their goal: the inflammation of passion.

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Over at Instapundit in November, Glenn Reynolds took to task a reader who deploys the “but they have good intentions” argument against morally equating communists with Nazis.

Glenn is completely right on this count.  What I wish to lay down here is why he’s right; why the “good intentions” argument, no matter which of its forms is used, is never a valid defense against moral responsibility for the consequences of one’s actions, in either the physical OR the ideological realm.

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There has been a recent effort on the Left to drive a wedge into what they see as a weak point in the Tea Party: the divide between the statist wing of conservatism (the “social” conservatives), and the libertarian-ish one.  This effort has been loudly dismissed by some on the right, most notably Glenn Reynolds (as evidenced by his chosen links on this topic, mainly in November and December).  An example of such a link, and of the counter-argument being deployed against this Leftist effort, is this post by Eric Scheie at Classical Values.

Unfortunately for Reynolds, Scheie and others, they are right only on the most superficial level. There is no reason why the Right can’t remain united at the ad-hoc level, which is what a narrow focus on merely downsizing government is.

The problem is that such ad-hoc alliances are necessarily short-lived, and short-range.  By their nature, the success of such coalitions terminates their raison d’être.  If two people disagree on everything except one issue, they can work together on that one issue.  Once that common goal is achieved, there is no longer anything holding those people together afterwards.

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Over at Hot Air, Jimmie Bise Jr. piles on to the reaction against a group of wealthy individuals who are lobbying the Democrats for higher taxes:

“They have “I can” confused with “You must”. This confusion is at the very heart of the progressive mindset. Folks like Saperstein and Buffet believe that because they can easily weather a big tax increase, everyone else has to, or it wouldn’t be “fair”. But what is fairness if it is coerced?

I’ll give you a big hint, Bise.  It starts with an “A”.

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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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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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I spend a lot of time attacking conservatism on this blog, and for good reason; conservatives claim to be the defenders of America against the Left, and this claim is ultimately untenable and fraudulent for many reasons.  It is, however, very plausible for various reasons, primarily the conservatives’ professed opposition to the Left, and to the consequent migration of pro-Americans to the side they have been led to believe is theirs — and so exposing conservatisms’ anti-American essence is much more urgent.

What often gets lost in all this, largely due to the utter implausibility thereof,  is that the Left in America also makes these claims on occasion.  Since their followers have been almost completely weaned away from the knowledge of what Americanism actually is, it is usually not necessary for them to do so.  Such efforts are without exception laughably weak, plainly meant for internal consumption as a means for modern “liberals” to reassure themselves and each other that they are still, somehow, “liberals” in the grand American meaning of the term.  That these efforts are so fleeting illustrates how insubstantial are the last remaining links of the modern American Left to its victim, the hollowed-out shell of what was once liberalism.

I offer as a case in point, the following article by Michael Lind, which attempts to deflect the ever-accurate charge that American “liberalism” has been on an anti-American road since FDR by the incredibly thin means of attacking the charge as “Straussian”.  Below is the fisking I posted in his comments. Passages in italics are Lind’s, and items in [] are corrections I added here that are not in the original comment, with the exception of the “[citation needed]” references to Wikipedia.

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Back in July, Marcus Cole at PileusBlog penned a wonderful post, describing the importance of the individual right to bear arms in connection with the freedom of blacks to take up arms in self-defense amid recurrent failure of government to do its job of defending them (to the point of aiding, abetting and even mandating racism itself).

The best part, however, is how Cole proceeds from this point to challenge the liberal-conservative assault on the open-ended nature of individual rights.  This is the principle that individuals act by right (i.e. they are free to act as they please except for certain things prohibited by law) while governments act by permission (i.e. government cannot do anything except what is permitted to them by law).

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1962:

“Greatness is achieved by the productive effort of a man’s mind in the pursuit of clearly defined, rational goals.  But a delusion of grandeur can be served only by the switching, undefinable chimera of a public monument — which is presented as a munificent gift to the victims whose forced labor or extorted money had paid for it — which is dedicated to the service of all and none, owned by all and none, gaped at by all and enjoyed by none.”

“Rome fell, bankrupted by statist controls and taxation, while its emperors were building coliseums.  Louis XIV of France taxed his people into a state of indigence, while he built the palace of Versailles for his contemporary monarchs to envy and for modern tourists to visit.  The marble-lined Moscow subway, built by the unpaid “volunteer” labor of Russian workers, including women, is a public monument, and so is the Czarist-like luxury of the champagne-and-caviar receptions at the Soviet embassies, which is needed — while the people stand in line for food rations — “to maintain the prestige of the Soviet Union.”

–Ayn Rand, “The Monument Builders”, from The Virtue of Selfishness

2010:

“But the pols couldn’t resist soaking the Meadowlands. They siphoned track proceeds into the state budget; repeatedly refinanced the NJSEA’s bonds, pushing repayment dates far into the future; and relied on the authority’s good credit rating to launch other building schemes, including a costly but unsuccessful aquarium in Camden. Today, 35 years after its first bonds, the NJSEA is $830 million in hock.”

A fantastic post by Gus Van Horn on the topic of anti-Objectivist screeds discusses what I have long known about 99% of Objectivism’s and Ayn Rand’s critics:

And that — the attempt to prevent Rand’s ideas from getting a fair hearing — is the common thread that has run through all the misconceptions, smears, and outright lies about Rand and her ideas that I’ve encountered ever since. You can draw your own conclusions about why so many of her ideological opponents elect to use such tactics.

Well, Gus, I will indeed draw those conclusions, to wit:  what her critics expect, is that if her ideas get a fair hearing, their ideas will lose.

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It’s time I weighed in on on the Great NY Mosque controversy at this point in time.

I wish to note that there are in fact, two huge issues at play for me in this discussion.

The first is the issue itself, which is the debate over whether we should support the immediate use of certain innately arbitrary legal powers (zoning laws) by government in order to stop the construction of a mosque near Ground Zero.  I will discuss this issue here.

The second issue, is how Objectivists handle disagreements like this.  That’s of greater long-range interest to me, and I will address it at some point; however, that will have to wait until I have gathered all the data and the discussion has more-or-less played out.

The very quick summary, to set the initial direction, is this:  I am in agreement for now with Paul and Diana Hsieh, in their posts here and here, and the reader may wish to also note my comments there.

For the Record:  I remain open to being convinced that the construction of the mosque represents a sufficiently immediate and pronounced danger to our liberty and country, that it should be stopped by *any* available means.

As yet, I have not yet seen the countervailing argument that meets the necessary conditions: to wit, that demonstrates a grasp of the opposing argument.  I have chosen to respond to this post by New Clarion co-blogger Embedded I to illustrate and clarify my position.

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Directly on the heels of the discussion about the Civil Rights Act and its consequences for freedom of association, comes this gem of incipient fascism built upon the precedent established thereby:

• “Plaintiffs’ assertion of a new ‘fundamental right’ to produce, obtain, and consume unpasteurized milk lacks any support in law.” [p. 4]

• “It is within HHS’s authority . . . to institute an intrastate ban [on unpasteurized milk] as well.” [p. 6]

• “Plaintiffs’ assertion of a new ‘fundamental right’ under substantive due process to produce, obtain, and consume unpasteurized milk lacks any support in law.” [p.17]
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Having recently taken a class on self-defense and the law, I would caution the “purple people eaters” of SEIU to not try this stunt in states like Utah, Arizona or Nevada.

At PajamasMedia, conservative Clayton Cramer (who, resemblances notwithstanding, is not to be confused with the commenter Clayton Jones here) takes up the discussion over Rand Paul’s recent controversial comments about the Civil Rights Act and its overreach into the private sphere.  The following started as a comment on his article, but fits better here as another instance of epistemological primitivism — which I hereby rename as the Cargo Cult Epistemology series.

Italicized Quotes are Cramer’s.

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As the Greek crisis unfolds in Europe, the latest chapter involves a potential bailout from the IMF — about 17% of whose total funds come from this country.  This prompted my recall of the following quote (with one word updated):

What are all those people counting on? If a [Greek] factory goes bankrupt, the equalizers will find another factory to loot. If that other factory starts crumbling, it will get a loan from the bank. If the bank has no money, it will get a loan from the government. If the government has no money, it will get a loan from a foreign government. If no foreign government has any money, all of them will get a loan from the United States.

What they don’t know—and neither does this country—is that the United States is broke.

–Ayn Rand, “Egalitarianism and Inflation”, June 1974

That one led to this one, echoing the same theme:

What were they thinking now, the champions of need and the lechers of pity?—she wondered. What were they counting on? Those who had once simpered: “I don’t want to destroy the rich, I only want to seize a little of their surplus to help the poor, just a little, they’ll never miss it!”—then, later, had snapped: “The tycoons can stand being squeezed, they’ve amassed enough to last them for three generations”—then, later, had yelled: “Why should the people suffer while businessmen have reserves to last a year?”—now were screaming: “Why should we starve while some people have reserves to last a week?” What were they counting on?—she wondered.

Ayn Rand, “Atlas Shrugged” Part Three/Chapter V

Those who cannot say no to the open mouths of altruism, shall be swallowed thereby.

Says a commenter commenting on this article at LegalInsurrection:

Living here is a privilege, not a right that every human being on earth is born with.

This is the end-of-road for conservative anti-immigrationists:  the selective  degradation of the liberty to live in a particular place from a right to a “privilege”.  As a hostile commenter put it sarcastically (albeit a tad illiterately) at LegalInsurrection:

“Nothing says freedom from government interfernce like “show me your papers.”. Of course, limited government only applies to people who are real americans,not to mexicans.”

Let us examine the conservatives’ trip down the anti-immigration road, and see how it ended there — and what it means for conservatism’s purported fealty to Americanism.

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To hear the Left tell it, Christians are the ones who threaten us.  One way to spot the worst of them is to look out for the ones spouting eschatology.  That’s the part of Bible study involving prophecy, often involving those types who walk around intoning “Repent!  The End is Near!”

I mean, obviously, someone who thinks the world is going to end any time now must be crazy.

Right?  Actually, no — Left.

Well, at least Leftists can still walk around claiming to be the vanguard of society against racism, yes?  I mean, if it weren’t for the Left, nobody would ever have detected all those racists hiding among the Tea Party and the Republican Party.

Right?  Actually, no — Left, again.

Jeebus! Can things get any more obvious?

Well, okay, they may be cultish and more than a bit racist, but you don’t see them taking the final, easy way out for  those who lose the intellectual debate — threatening violence.  At least the remain the side of peace.

Right?  Whoops… sadly no.  Left once more!

Pssst, Leftists — your soul is showing.  Cover up with something, why don’t you… nobody wants to see that.