I never knew Andrew Breitbart, but I admired his courage. The left despised him; in fact, they still do, and they are now heaping scorn on his corpse, as one would expect from the tolerant and kindly left. They hate him because he was effective. He took down Acorn, their instrument for undermining elections in America, and so became a leading target of leftist bile.
Following his Twitter feed was a daily lesson in the frothing madness of the left. Breitbart always retweeted the insulting, hate-filled tweets he got; he was happy to let his enemies reveal themselves with their own vituperation. They are a seething, juvenile, mean-spirited lot, and not terribly clever, either.
(I gave up following Twitter because every week or so my password would not work and I would have to change it — most exasperating. Maybe my computer has a virus or something.)
Courage is important in our age. The increasingly totalitarian left depends on conformity of thought. This does not mean persuading those who disagree with them, but shutting them up. And the best way to shut someone up is make him afraid to speak his mind. Smears, intimidation and character assassination are the methods of the left. (How many people in Hollywood , publishing, government or academia remain silent because they know that speaking out is career suicide? How many women, minorities and gays toe the PC line because stepping over it means shocking decent people more than profanity did in the Victorian age?)
The main purpose of government schooling now is to mold young Americans into docile conformists. Political correctness is leftist thought control: these things you are permitted to say — those other things, no decent person must say. Independence is the virtue above all others that the left cannot abide.
When the left accepted the premise that the end justifies the means, they crossed a line. They are now the totalitarian left. This ain’t your father’s Democrat Party. These people are radicalized, and they mean war. Words are no longer tools of rational communication; they are weapons to be used in the political struggle.
With the left so far down the road to serfdom, good men need courage above all. Andrew Breitbart had it. We lost a brave fighter for freedom.
How many people in Hollywood , publishing, government or academia remain silent because they know that speaking out is career suicide?
Every non-Leftist lives in fear and CAN’T express themselves. At least not until (and if) they become super famous (ie Rob Lowe, Tom Sellick, etc).
How many women, minorities and gays toe the PC line because stepping over it means shocking decent people more than profanity did in the Victorian age?
Not many. The overwhelming majority of gays and minorities are Leftists. As for women, pretty much all single white women are Leftists. (Being a non-Leftist is associated with Conservatism and thus with sexual restraints. They will always vote against that.) They get a little common sense IF they get married (and don’t become cat-loving yentas after screwing around until their forties riding the alpha-c**k carousel) and become somewhat more conservative (reality sets in a little).
Political correctness is leftist thought control: these things you are permitted to say — those other things, no decent person must say.
Wow. Sounds like something I would say. But notice, PC is LEFTIST thought control. Not “imminent Christian Theocracy” thought control. Someone tell that to Dr. Peikoff, “Dr. Diana Hsieh” and the entire staff of the ARI.
These people are radicalized, and they mean war. Words are no longer tools of rational communication; they are weapons to be used in the political struggle.
Awesome. Finally, an Objectivist acknowledges that the Left is at war with ALL non-Leftists. It is WAR but note, its not war against “imminent Christian Theocrats ™” but against secular, “pro-science” Leftists. Again, someone inform Peikoff and the ARI about this.
Perhaps the ARI might actually acknowledge that there is such a thing as the Left (and not just use the sterile, anemic word “collectivists”) and that they are waging a war.
One can hope.
From his recent comments, I gather that Dr. Peikoff plans to vote Republican because he fears what Obama might do with four more years. He thinks they are both bad, but the nihilist left will cut our throat sooner.
In my opinion it’s all about buying time. A Republican president will buy us more time. If Obama is reelected, I seriously think he will strive to pass two years of compulsory national service for young people. He talks about it a lot. Whenever some event evokes profound emotions, Obama’s knee-jerk reaction is “we need more community service!” He equates service to the collective with moral ideals. He believes we should honor 9/11 with service to the state.
On the other hand, I think theocracy is decades away. I still have not heard any argument to persuade me it is an imminent threat. I do believe it is the more serious long-range threat, but the Dems are on the verge of enslaving Americans for two years of their youth. Maybe the Bible thumpers can be used to block the totalitarian left and we can finesse this thing until Objectivism spreads.
But just watch: some Republican such as Santorum will get elected, and he will pass the national service law, so long as some kids can choose to serve a church. Then who will look stupid?
Madmax,
Er…. I take it you haven’t been keeping up with the ARI or Peikoff? Because they’ve both been of the attitude that the Left is the primary target for… I think it’s been a year or more now. As have most of the writers here, and… well, I really don’t know which Objectivists you’re referring to, actually. Other than Hsieh, but I don’t keep up with that one, so I couldn’t comment.
Max –
Like Inspector, I am a bit perplexed by your comments. I certainly fear socialized medicine, economic collapse and government imposed lifestyles and political correctness from the Left than I do being subjected to theocracy in my lifetime. And if the theocrats do take control, it will be through laws and regulations enacted by the Left. But I am not aware of a single thing in Myrhaf’s posting that Peikoff or ARI would be in disagreement with.
Let me just make an observation on something I have noticed for a very long time among various commentators and people I have known who have an interest in Objectivism.
Part and parcel with the battle lines in today’s Left vs Right political and culture wars are certain sense of life clashes that can be very loosely but nevertheless accurately associated with each side.
It is entirely possible for Objectivists to fall very much on one side or another in sense of life terms. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that such people are somehow latent Leftists or closet conservatives. Two individuals can fall on opposite sides of the sense of life spectrum and still remain on more or less the same page philosophically. But the differences can manifest themselves in many subtle and even not so subtle ways. For example, a person’s revulsion and denunciation of one side could very well be far more emotionally passionate than it is towards the other.
Here is my very crude but nevertheless accurate way of describing the sense of life battle lines: It consists of those who do NOT drink the sort of coffee served in truck stops and gas stations verses so-called “middle America.” The first tends to be associated with the elite, Establishment Left. The second tends to be regarded as conservative – and denigrated by the Left as idiots and bumpkins.
The important thing to keep in mind is that when one has emotional reactions to one side or another, one is reacting to stereotypes. On the other hand, for any stereotype to actually exist and work, there necessarily must be at least some basis in reality that gives rise to it (however distorted and out of context it might be).
Because academia has been under the control of the Left for so long, people with higher educational backgrounds then to be Left of center. If interacting with people who have an academic background is important to you, chances are that a great many people who you regard as “interesting” in some way or another are going to, unfortunately, lean Left. Likewise, the arts have been under the firm hold of the Left for decades – so if you enjoy being around “artsy” types, chances are you are going go spend a lot of time around people who lean Left. And if one enjoys being around those with academic and artistic backgrounds, chances are one is going to live in an urban setting where the concentration of and opportunities for such people are greater. If so, one might find one’s self becoming very fond of certain “lifestyle” options that are financially viable only in dense population centers – certain types of restaurants, coffee shops, grocery stores and other retail options.
If so, then it would be entirely understandable for such a person to feel that they have very little in common with and few mutual interests to talk about with a typical family who lives in, say, Mississippi or in rural Nebraska. If you enjoy an urban, cosmopolitan lifestyle, moving to and having to live in a part of the country where grocery stores can afford to stock only mainstream, widest common denominator type items, where restaurant options are limited to fast food, mom and pop “country cooking” type places, truck stops and all-you-can-eat buffets and where arts performances and cultural opportunities are almost non-existent – well, having to live in such a place might be regarded as stifling and even a form of hell.
On the other hand, if you have roots in middle America or have friends who do, it is entirely understandable why one might feel a certain contempt for the other side as a result of lumping together the obnoxious behavior of the Left with certain lifestyles that tend to lean heavily Left.
As Myrhaf and many others have pointed out, Leftists are conformists and rule by enforcing such conformity. There is nothing wrong with being highly educated – quite the opposite. But there is something PROFOUNDLY wrong with being a SNOB about it and regarding yourself an somehow morally superior to perfectly honorable people who are not and in mocking and denigrating such people the way that the Left does. There is nothing wrong with enjoying the arts and gourmet food – quite the opposite. But there is something profoundly wrong with being snobbish and proclaiming moral superiority about such things. And let’s just name an ugly truth here: a great many people who profess to be interested in literature, the arts, fine wine and various “intellectual” type topics deep down don’t really give a damn about such things . Many are a bunch of Peter Keatings who wish to be SEEN as liking such things because, otherwise, they might lose their “Creative Class” and “Smart People” credentials and be ostracized by “Good People” after being demoted to the status of a bumpkin flyover country nobody who drinks the sort of coffee served in truck stops and gas stations.
For the above reasons, it is entirely understandable why a self respecting person from middle America might feel a profound sense of suspicion and even disgust towards Leftists that spills over into the otherwise perfectly innocent lifestyle options that Leftist types tend to either practice or pretend to practice.
Personally, I think the sort of coffee served in truck stops and gas stations tastes like swill. I do enjoy espresso drinks. It would be very difficult for me to buy a great deal of the food that I enjoy on a regular basis outside of a major metropolitan area. I enjoy the arts and enjoy “intellectual” conversation. So do most of my friends. In my own personal tastes and lifestyle, I have much more in common with people who lean Left. But my sense of life sympathies on the battle lines tend to fall towards middle America where people rarely have much interest in many of the things that I enjoy and am interested in. My reason is because I hate people who are pretentious and phony – and so many Leftist types are full blown Peter Keatings in that regard. I would much rather be around a decent, honorable blue collar worker from a rural area with whom I share very few outside interests than some well educated, holier than thou phony who happens to share my interest in certain things.
I grew up in a conservative, blue collar town with a very definite “redneck” feel to it. When Leftist bigots denigrate such people – well, they are also denigrating certain people from that background who I happen to know, admire and think very highly of. On the other hand, conservative, blue collar, “redneck” culture can be very stifling, conformist and bigoted in its own unique ways – something I experienced first hand myself (happily my parents are not of such a background so the impact on me was limited). I can fully understand why someone who grew up exposed to such a cultural background would have a PROFOUNDLY negative sense-of-life reaction towards anything they even remotely associate with it or even be outrightly hostile towards it.
There are a number of Objectivist commentators online who very clearly do NOT drink the sort of coffee served in truck stops and gas stations – and some of them clearly have VERY negative sense-of-life emotions towards those who do. The result is that those people might very well be more animated and more vocal about traditional Christian religionists trying to ban alcohol sales in their community verses environmentalist religionists trying to ban disposable shopping bags in local supermarkets. But that doesn’t necessarily make them latent Leftists.
Like Myrhaf, I don’t follow Diana Hsieh (to take her as an example) very closely. She clearly does NOT drink the sort of coffee served in truck stops and gas stations (and most certainly she doesn’t drink it with refined sugar!). I am sure she would NOT be very happy living in rural Nebraska verses rural Colorado within commuting distance to a metro area with various amenities Lefties tend to like. I have never met her – but my guess is she would feel more at home with the people in an organic “fair trade” coffee shop in an “urban village” than she would with the people in a truck stop or small town cafe in Podunk Tennessee. Certain types of religious people definitely evoke a more powerful emotional reaction for her than they do for me. She DOES write a lot about religion. But she also has been very active in the fight against ObamaCare.
It is not my desire to defend or attack Diana – I don’t follow her closely enough to do either. And whatever philosophical issues people may or may not have with her is not my concern here. My bigger point is this: it is normal for a person to write about and be more animated by and attach a higher priority in terms of his activism to the things that they are – for whatever reason – most passionate about. And, for most people, sense of life is an important and perfectly valid factor in determining the things towards which people are passionate,
And I think a lot of this is what animates many (certainly not all) Left vs Right discussions amongst those interested in Objectivism. The reality is that both Left and Right are wrong. Most “which side is worst” conversations I have had tend to be glass is half full vs half empty type discussions.
Ooops. I just noticed a mistake. I should have said “Like Inspector….. ” not “Like Myrhaf…..” My apology to Myrhaf
Sense of life differences do not fall along political lines. That is why even leftist pols roll up their sleeves, talk like hicks (dropping their final g’s, which I doubt they would do at an Upper West Side cocktail party), and make a big show of going to church.
My relatives love “American Idol” and “Dancing with the Stars,” and other TV shows I cannot abide. They are liberal Democrats and I’m the free market Republican. What can we assume from this? Nothing that I can see.
Myrhaf – you are correct in that sense of life differences per se do not fall along political lines. But lifestyle and cultural divisions – including the sort that I mentioned – very often do have political parallels. And one can – and often does – have a sense-of-life reaction, positive or negative, towards various lifestyles and cultural differences.
For example, one staunch free market capitalist who enjoys certain types of music and movies might regard a bustling “walkable, bikeable” urban core filled with trendy and/or offbeat shops and lots of restaurants, interesting nightlife and the extreme diversity of people who tend to be in such settings as really cool, adventurous and emotionally exciting. At the same time, his emotional reaction towards the suburbs and those who tend to live there might be that of extreme boredom and/or mild contempt towards that which he regards as commonplace, plain Jane vanilla and conventional.
Another equally staunch free market capitalist who enjoys the same music and movies as the first man might have the exact opposite reaction and regard the suburbs – or even a small rural town – as a safe, sane and stable place to quietly pursue one’s life and regard the urban center with a certain revulsion as noisy, crowded, overpriced, chaotic and filled with large numbers of bizarre and even freakish people.
Both reactions are perfectly valid for a person to hold – and are often in large measure a product of a person’s sense of life. Such reactions fall within the very wide realm of optional values. And in the realm of optional values one’s sense of life plays an important role.
And, for a variety of reasons, the people the first man in my example is likely to hang out with and have things in common with will most likely tend to lean Left – and the people the second man is likely to relate to and spend time with will most likely be far more conservative in their leanings.
Political do not fall along sense of life lines. But there are certain divisions along lifestyle and cultural lines that tends (with many, many individual exceptions) to parallel the political divisions. And, at least when it comes to what side of the lifestyle/cultural divisions one tends to fall (at least in the realm of optional values) very often is a product of one’s sense of life.
This discussion reminds me of a man I knew who used to visit an old Jewish man who had emigrated from Europe. The old man loved to play his old 78 recordings of The Merry Widow and other operettas.
The young man asked the old man if he did not feel bad listening to music that Hitler loved. The old man’s reaction was, “Who cares what Hitler loved? It’s great music!”
Hitler was a madman and one of the worst villains in history, but he loved the benevolent, beautiful music that he grew up with in Vienna.
I always enjoy it when you comment, Dismuke.
You know what else the people who do NOT drink the sort of coffee served in truck stops and gas stations are really all about? Macs. (Apple computers) Ipods, Ipads, Iphones, and all that other overpriced, overbearing-vendor-locked Icrap I hate. They most definitely want to be seen in their coffee shops drinking their Fair Trade blends and NOT doing it on a PC. Because they’re not the kind of person who uses a PC. They even made commercials centered around the kind of person who uses a Mac and the kind of person who uses a PC. And boy howdy, does the “I’m a Mac” guy not drink the sort of coffee served in truck stops and gas stations.
But, then, you know who else is a vocal Mac guy? Rush Limbaugh. (!) So like you said it’s a loose parallel.
“He thinks they are both bad, but the nihilist left will cut our throat sooner.”
The right is a long term threat; the left a short term threat. Its as simple as that.
“In my opinion it’s all about buying time.”
It seems a bit late for that, though.
The right is a long term threat; the left a short term threat. Its as simple as that.
This is the kind of nonsense that I just don’t get. What evidence do you have of this? EVERYTHING in the West is pointing to TOTAL DOMINATION by modern “liberalism”; ie The Left. EGALITARIANISM is the dominant cultural force. IT CAN NOT BE CHALLENGED. Do you not see this? What world are you looking at?
What Dismuke wrote is interesting but irrelevant. My increasing RAGE at the O’ist movement is that they do not see the EVIL that is staring them in their face in the Left. It is not SANE to live in the world in which we live and complain about Conservatism. “Dr. Diana Hsieh” is wrong in her approach. So wrong, it entirely appropriate to feel contempt that she is even considered an Objectivist “intellectual”.
I see NO evidence for a Christian theocracy. Myrahf and Steve D are WACKED imo. I see every indication that we are heading for a Leftist, egalitarian authoritarian state with POTENTIAL (not absolute) Christian WINDOW DRESSING. The Left controls ever major component of our society and they are gaining the ability to punish, censure, and one day even criminalize non-leftist thought.
You mainstream O’ists do not follow Conservative blogs. So you don’t know that true Conservatives themselves (like Auster) have conceded the fact that THE LEFT HAS STOLEN CHRISTIANITY! Most Evangelicals are economic leftists. Hell, most Christians today are ok with gay marriage and true Christianity is not compatible with gay freedom. (I say this not to defend Christianity but to properly explain what it is.) Today’s Christians are largely Christian Leftists with some Christian libertarians (like Breitbart and Beck). There is ABSOLUTELY NO CULTURAL SUPPORT FOR A CHRISTIAN AUTHORITARIAN STATE. The underlying EPISTEMOLOGY does NOT support it. You would need an epistemology that supports some type of absolutes. Today’s dominant epistemology are offshoots of skepticism. It is SUBJECTIVISM that reigns. You will not get a Christian authoritarian state with that.
America is going to become a multi-raical, largely Hispanic, egalitarian cesspool with a white minority living in fear in gated communities (if they can afford it – if not they are screwed). There may be a Christian overlay to the society but it is just window dressing. Don’t you understand that Christianity was a white, European phenomenon? Look at Christianity in Africa. Is that culture going to produce a Chaucer or a Thomas Aquinas? Take a big-picture look and understand that Christianity as it existed is DEAD!!!
Mainstream Objectivism is fighting windmills. I’m dumbfounded that otherwise smart people like Myrhaf and Steve D (who I think is a Bio-chemist no less) believe in the “eventual Christian dictatorship” bullshit.
Oh God. I want to cry. And then spit.
Let me ask it this way. There ARE smart people here. Do all of you really think that America is heading in the direction of Calvin’s Geneva? Do you really think we are going to get some Christian version of Big Brother? That enforces the culture of 16th century white genteel society?
Where were all these Christian theocrats in ‘Atlas Shrugged’ or ‘The Fountainhead’? Do you think if Ayn Rand were brought back from the dead and decided to update AS that she would focus on Christian theocrats? With monsters like Obama, Pelosi, Reid running around? I would bet anything that she would be harsh and critical of the Right, but also sympathetic (kind of like the way she was when she was alive).
No Right winger wants to challenge the welfare state, the regulatory state, the central bank, LEGAL immigration, etc. Hell, no right winger even wants to challenge the abolition of don’t ask don’t tell in the military. The only exception to some of the above is Ron Paul who is a partial libertarian. The main point is that the Right will not challenge egalitarianism at all, not for liberty oriented or Christian reasons.
We are ruled by egalitarian overlords. They have the power of life and death over us. You can’t even use the expression “chink in the armor” without the fear that you might lose your job b/c you offended some Asian person. Don’t even think of using the word “niggardly”. That Objectivists don’t see this and instead think that we are ruled by Christian overlords, or that there is even the potential for such, really depresses the fuck out of me.
Madmax,
Here is Yaron Brook, giving a lecture at The Citadel.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBCSi4ERVq0
It’s two hours but it’s worth listening to the whole thing. In it, he says the way ahead for the Objectivist movement to should be to influence the conservative movement and Republicans into the direction of Laissez-Faire and individual rights. And that there is no hope of doing so from the Left, that they’re too far gone.
Brook is the spokesman for the ARI. So – again – I’m baffled that you think the Objectivist movement is overly focused on the threat of Christian Theocracy. Maybe some individual blogger (who is controversial among Objectivists, even) is, but the Objectivist movement?
As for Peikoff, he’s talking in terms of in the next century, should we survive to it. He’s said repeatedly in the last year that the Left – and Obama, specifically – is the bigger danger right now.
Personally, I will absolutely affirm that the Left is culturally dominant right now. They control the media, the universities, even the language. They are indisputably the larger threat. If we don’t stop Obama and his movement, there won’t be an America left to save.
There. Are you satisfied with my position?
Whoa, Maxy-baby, relax dude.
I have removed Madmax’s vitriol against Jim May. I will continue to do so whenever anyone argues the man and not the ideas. I also have a much more limited tolerance for attacks against the authors: no one here is paid anything and this is our house.
You are welcome to comment, Madmax, just keep it germane.
The religious right is only a threat to the extent it reinvigorates religion, independent of any politican flavouring. It is the religion part we need worry about, not the ‘right’.
*** A side comment that needs some elaboration for the purposes of continuing the above
I’ve still half a mind to add a comment to The Ackbar Spectrum. Here’s a summary of what I would say. Jim, yes, you’re right that it IS a trap – but “left” and “right” DO have definite meanings that are quite distinct and put the two groups at loggerheads against each other, and whose presumptions in that fight sets both at loggerheads against us and all other proper-thinking people. The nature of the trap consists of forcing us to take only one side or the other, and adopting a certain view of politics in the process. It is that fundamental view we are being trapped into working from.
The essential difference between the Left and the Right that you are looking for is attitudes to what differentials in “power” that the government ought actively enforce. The *modern* left is as has been said by others in the comments of your post: the ideal of egalitarianism, *legally enforced*. The real right is exemplified by old-world feudalism and the Indian caste system, that of sets of *legally-enforced* hierarchies of people with different powers and responsibilities. The Trap consists of not allowing people to know that there are alternatives to dichotomy of legally-enforced differentials in ‘power’ versus legally-enforced equality of ‘power,’ of never allowing people to know that the proper politics consists of equality before the law and then letting individuals work out their own social relationships and highly volatile economic powers. The fundamental essence of the Ackbar Spectrum consists of equating economic and political power and never letting people know that the two can and should be separated with a meat-cleaver wielded with moral gusto.
The general mechanics of the trap – set by the *modern* left rather than the original left – are predicated on co-option of the validity of certain epistemological and ethical viewpoints with their matching political viewpoints, just as everything that gives the left power today is predicated on co-option (read: expropriation) of other’s metaphysics, epistemologies, ethics, and politics. Historically, the original left was identified solely by contrast against the original right, ie by those who were opposed to the monarchy and aristocracy of le Ancien Regime and who had established a habit of sitting together en-bloc on the left-hand-side of of the French Estates General. The modern leftist bastards co-opted the label “leftist,” in the same fashion and for the same reasons that the bastards also co-opted “liberal” and how they pass themselves off as the proper heirs of science’s teachings applied sociopolitically in various ways.
I submit, first, that socialism is NOT a classless society but a ruthlessly-enforced ONE-CLASS society while still remaining most definitely a class-based society with all the evils this inherently entails, and second, that the modern ‘right’ of today is **NOWHERE NEAR** as rightist as we are lead to believe (the modern “right” is mostly just pragmatist with a mere labelling of ‘rightist’ applied to them by themselves or others in the same way that homeopathy provides water with a ‘memory’ of an active ingriedient that is diluted so much that you’re lucky if a single molecule of it is in fact present in whole the bottle). On that basis I further submit that it is a critical part of the mechanics of the Trap that these two facts NEVER EVER be allowed to be discovered by people – and note that I think that this also explains why your commenters in that thread had such agonising difficulty in trying to pin down what “right” meant and in how to categorise the Republicans et al.
Always remember that it it is the *modern* left who set this trap so as to destroy the memory of the enlightenment system of equality before the law and people thereafter taking care of their own ever-changing economic circumstances and economic power-relations. Do you remember Marx’s whine about that constant upsetting of social relations brought about by capitalism? Do you also remember how Miss Rand noted “scratch the socialist, find the feudalist”? All of the above is critical to what both writers meant by their respective words. The Ackbar Spectrum is a tool in preventing regular people from recognising the full meanings of both those writers’ words.
*** end side-comment
I hope (a) you all forgive me for that side commentary, and (b) absorb it and make use of it in what is to follow!
What is to be feared the most – and which as been current in the ARI for years now (I recall Yaron taking pains to point it out back in OCON08) – is a religious **left**, especially but not limited to environmentalism fused with both socialism and religion. This is the trend of today, independently of what power the secular left presently has and what they are trying to claim and do.
The problem is that the secular left is a cultural dead-end, existing purely on the momentum they’ve achieved by way of taking control of the universities, co-opting the sanctity of science, and pointing out the consequences of the stupidities of a cracker-barrel “right” that is politically pragmatist and scientifically hopeless. The reason is that there is no secular basis whatsoever for leftism – there never has been and never will be. That is, there is no earthly justification whatsoever for egalitarianism. The left have of course tried to concoct justifications, but the attempts have been incredibly inane (have you ever tried to read Marx’s “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts”? OMFG what a loon he was!!)
So, where did the modern left get that momentum from? The momentum that the secular left is riding on has a decidedly NON-secular core, without which there would never have been a momentum in the first place and the continued existence of which necessarily will transfer cultural ascendency away from the secular left in due time. That core is the value-content and the value-generation-system of the religious. Epistemologically, they accept the religious view that emotions are means of connection to another realm that provides infallible values, even if they – unlike the religious – are evasive about their views on what that other realm consists of. Like all subjectivists, they do not and cannot generate fundamental content on their own and rely on the content provided by others, particulary that which has been drummed into them and which has become an automatised emotional reaction, which will hold even in defiance of what exists of their better, scientific judgement – witness Dawkins’ total turnaround at the end of The Selfish Gene, for instance. All else most of them have is that which has been shoe-horned into that, such as the real motive behind the metric system being “rationality” imposed top-down by an elite rather than the actual people’s needs for precision (note also the revolt of physicists in defence of the Angstrom). This core set of values and methods is the province of the religious, however much the secular left tries to co-opt them. The sanction given to them by that secular left is keeping alive that ideational and motivational core of religiousity, and so in time the proper fruits thereof will grow at the expense of the secular left. It has always been the case that subjectivism cannot sustain itself but can only set the scene for the resurgence of the intrinsicism whose content-cake that subjectivism tries both to have and eat.
The only substantially-different alternative content that some secular leftists have ever offered in this regard is the mindlessness and physicalism of various promiscuous types promoting codes of behaviour that are even more revolting and obviously destructive than that found in wild animals’ established communities. But even here this is just giving fuel to the religious, precisely because those systems are only held to by minorities and are easily seen by others not to be terribly bright, and nevertheless STILL gives deep-seated sanction to the idea of emotions as tools of cognition. Religion wins out both ways.
What will happen politically – insofar as Objectivism is not influential – is that the mechanics of tyranny generated by the secular left will be taken over by the religious, be that right or left or whatever else in terms of political-economy that the winning mystic creed sanctions. So, while today the secular left has clear ascendancy, its power is not absolute and cannot be, nor can it maintain ascendancy because everything it relies on to maintain that ascendancy can only give ever more power to the religious. The only other thing that the secular left can do is wreak utter destruction in its death-throes.
Thus, to the extent that the metaphysics and value-generation side of the epstemology of the religious are not replaced – and which can only be replaced by what we Objectivists have to offer (because, unlike the case of the old-school clerics’ responses to the Aristotelians and then the Renaissance & Enlightenment, Kant has provided them ways to skirt around Aristotle) – some form of religiousity will slowly take over the culture and politics. Not necessarily in any immediate hurry, nor in the concrete ways that the present Religious Right would approve of or what anyone else freaks out about, but *something* mystic will rise in time and inevitably so if we Objectivists do not succeed in taking control of the culture. This is what Kant laid out. It is not happening precisely according to his plan, but the gist of his plan consisting of destroying reason and putting up a grotesque caricature of it so as to make religion seem epistemologically-plausible and valuationally-preferrable is humming along nicely.
On top of all that, there are the potential for the break-up of the United States and also the question of the various parts of the rest of the world. Nevertheless, the principle is clear: today and tomorrow the rightful fear is the secular left, what mechanics of tyranny it will enact, and what destruction will come from the death-throes thereof, while for the day after tomorrow the rightful fear is something religious (which will steal mechanics wholesale from the secular left) because only either religion or Objectivism can provide something can philosophically last indefinitely across the generations of man. All consideration of politics today by Objectivists – in the United States anyway – must consist of what keeps enough freedom today and tomorrow so as to have a chance at having freedom the day after tomorrow? That is: what gives us the time we need to gain influence?
JJM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyWVPHoFGJA
I apologize in advance, but I felt compelled to post this.
As for Peikoff, he’s talking in terms of in the next century, should we survive to it.
Peikoff doesn’t get, and NO Objectivist gets, that one of the CENTRAL fact about the future of America is DEMOGRAPHICS. Yes, racial composition. Do you realize that close to half the children being born in America are now non-white? This has consequences for OUR world. If we lived in an individualist utopia, if such is even possible, then things would be different.
But America is becoming a non-white largely Hispanic population in the context of egalitarian Leftism. The old European approach to Christianity is dead. Peikoff’s vision of some Christian version of Anthem is wrong and delusional actually. The only possibility that I see for a M2 Christian theocracy is IF there is regional breakdown and all the white Christian Paleos move in and occupy one region of North America and create a white nationalist state. (And even that really wouldn’t be a theocracy but a white version of Singapore.) Is that possible? Maybe. But that is not the “Imminent Christian Theocracy ™” that most O’ists like Brook and Peikoff and Hsieh talk about. Santorum does not portend a Christian theocracy. He portends the complete takeover of the Right by the Christian Left that will CAPITULATE to egalitarianism. The Santorum’s of the world are WEAK Christian egalitarians. They are NOT John Calvin. “Dr. Diana Hsieh” is INSANE to think that. I could cry.
We are heading for a version of Mexico unless there is some turnaround; Iberian whites living in gated enclaves while Mestizos terrorize the entire country. America will have its own version of that. Read Charles Murray’s work to see the destruction of the white middle class and the behavior patterns they are falling into. They are not getting married and they are not having children. No duhh. Female hypergamy combined with the egalitarian Left has seen to that. Oh, but Mike says that’s all stupid Game stuff. Oh yeah and women aren’t hypergamous. That’s just silly deterministic crap. I could spit.
1) Racial conflict, 2) Islamic immigration (did you know that 25% of today’s Muslims in America have arrived here since 9/11 – is that sane oh open borders Objectivists?) and 3) dystopian cultural dynamics (such as the behavior of today’s women and the soft polygamy that is developing) should be of far greater significance to Objectivists than any potential Christian theocracy.
But what do I know. I’m just a racist who likes to play mind games with women. Right Mike?
Peikoff and Brook are delusional and they say we should all focus on an M2 theocracy? The same Peikoff who came out in support of Arizona’s stance on immigration? The same Brook who said priority number one is stopping Obama?
Get your facts straight.
Don’t lump Brook and Peikoff in with Hsieh like that. In fact Hsieh has been more than vocal in voicing her disagreement with Peikoff on a great number of issues, and Peikoff has called her out in a podcast, although not by name.
I’ve told you all these things here repeatedly and yet you continue to repeat these inaccurate statements. I’m beginning to think you’re ignoring me just like you’re ignoring the facts that I’ve pointed out which don’t fit the picture you’re trying to paint.
So…..Max…… you make it all sound so hopeless. You are suggesting that we are all doomed by a demographic time bomb. You say it “cannot be challenged.” If so, why get so upset about it? Why not just give up cash out emotionally as much as possible and focus on enjoying the remnants of what’s left for however long is possible? If it is hopeless, anything Peikoff or ARI and others here say or do is not going to amount to jack squat anyway. If so, why the outright hostility in your tone? Why not just take pity on poor fools who are blind to the inevitability of their own doom? Why be hostile towards deluded victims of the same evil that is obviously intensely and emotionally disturbing to you?
Or are you saying it is not hopeless and that somehow Peikoff, ARI and others are standing in the way of what needs to be done to solve the problem?
If so, then what on earth is YOUR positive agenda and plan of action for addressing the situation. You haven’t put one forth – at least not that I am aware of.
You have obviously been spending a great deal of emotional energy over the past weeks and months lashing out against Peikoff, ARI, et al. So what do you propose to do differently?
It is very easy to poke holes in somebody else’s plan of action. What is not so easy is to come up with a viable alternative plan.
The basic plan of action for Peikoff, ARI and most Objectivists is to minimize/defeat the short term threats as much as possible to buy time to spread the ideas and cultural change necessary to turn the direction around in the long term.
I can’t think of any Objectivist who doesn’t regard the POLITICAL thuggery of the Left as THE major short-term danger to our liberty and economy (and I emphasize political because, intellectually, the Left is way past bankrupt – today’s left is based entirely on raw emotion and thus not even interested in or open to intellectual challenge. To the degree the Left’s ideas are exposed they self-destruct and thus spend so much of their energy hiding who they really are and trying to change the subject by demonizing enemies).
I am not aware of a single Objectivist who isn’t rooting for the Tea Party movement – and some are actually active in it. I know some are skeptical of the movement’s ability to pull it off – but most Objectivists are rooting for it.
As for long term strategy – actually, it doesn’t really matter very much who the enemy is long term. What is needed to counter a long term threat from the Right is the exact same thing that is needed to counter a long term threat from the Left – a positive philosophy of REASON verses intrinsicism, skepticism, nihilism. As you point out, in the end, the Left and the worse elements of the Right are not all that different in terms of essentials.
So if there is a profound flaw in the Peikoff/ARI et. al plan of action – let’s see a brief description of yours.
You say immigrants, especially Hispanic immigrants, are the problem. But most illegal Mexican immigrants I have known come here to work and actually do work – very hard. Most I have known are far, far, more reality and common sense oriented than the typical educated, latte sipping Good People type who dwells in trendy walkable, bikeable “urban villages. At least here in Texas, the vast majority of immigrants represent the BEST of their respective cultures. They seek opportunity – not handouts. How are they fundamentally different from “undesirable” immigrant types of past generations – Irish, Poles, Chinese, eastern European Jews, etc who were supposed to dilute our Western European stock and whose descendents who are now an interwoven part of everything that is good about this country?
Of course, I DO recognize that the Left, though immigration laws, seeks to import the drones from other countries and put them on the welfare roles so that they can have the same sort of totally dependent, easily manipulated mob of pathetic souls that Hugo Chavez enjoys and makes his hold on power possible. But is the problem the immigrants – or the Left which seeks to manipulate them and hook them on welfare state benefits in order to perpetuate their power? Get rid of the Left and the welfare state and the problem with immigrants goes away over night.
Obviously the efforts of the Left to import a mob dependent upon the State for survival must be opposed. But don’t take your venom out on the honorable immigrants who come here for the same motives as your ancestors and mine.
The thing to do is allow legal guest worker status to any non criminal of a non hostile country that wants it – with an ID card and the condition that they are NOT eligible for benefits, government funded health care or government funded education. That would frighten off potential drones very quickly. Those who come under such terms would be hard working, resourceful types willing to start at the bottom and work their way up. I will take such people any day over the lilly white elitist Good People types who don’t drink the coffee served in truck stops and gas stations and who go through life with a sense of condescending superiority and entitlement. Cut immigrants off of government healthcare and government education and give them time, my guess is they will come up with their own private doctors, hospitals, schools and charities. And I think that would be hilarious – because no doubt their schools would quickly out perform our own union run government schools.
But that is just my idea. You say that we are a bunch of deluded boobs deserving of the verbal venom you have been sending our way. Ok. Then let’s hear YOUR plan of action – to fight the Left in the short term and win the culture in the long run. A plan we can all get around and become so enthusiastic and busy with that we simply don’t have time to listen to what Peikoff and ARI have to say.
If Peikoff and Brooke are so horrifically wrong – tell us what you would do differently if you were in their position. Telling us how rotten we are and what deluded fools we are is not going to change anybody’s mind. Tell us your alternative and your positive agenda. Perhaps many here will even agree with you and come over to your point of view.
So let’s hear it. What would you do different?
Mr. Dismuke,
You write:
_____
You say immigrants, especially Hispanic immigrants, are the problem. But most illegal Mexican immigrants I have known come here to work and actually do work – very hard.
_____
This is a silly argument. It’s like arguing that since you don’t know anyone who has served time in prison there aren’t people in prison.
I wouldn’t expect you to hang around with people who aren’t hard working.
The fact is that Hispanics have higher crime rates and other problems, such a higher illegitimacy than whites.
Whether this should be a factor in immigration policy I’ll leave for another day, but let’s not convince ourselves that the current group of immigrants are just like those who came in the past.
Mr. Dismuke,
I don’t think the left wants immigrants to come here to get them hooked on welfare, which they shouldn’t be getting if they are illegal anyway.
The left knows that the group of immigrants we have (or their children) will tend to vote Democratic ensuring a Democratic lock on the electoral college.
The left also knows that the more immigrants we have the more multiculturalism and the like we will have.
Since, according to current understanding of the Constitution, if you are born here you are automatically a citizen, a worker program wouldn’t solve the problem. The left wants immigrants and lots of them.
But I’m curious, would you place any restrictions on the numbers of immigrants? Do you agree with “open immigration” Objectivists such as Kelly Valenzuela that Israel is morally obligated to allow unlimited numbers of Moslems into their country even if becomes Islamic? Do you believe Greece should limit the number of Albanians and Turks that would enter if Greece ever gets its economic act together?
Leonard Peikoff has said (in response to my question) that even if New Zealand had laissez faire and no welfare it is entitled to restrict the number of Islamic immigrants to prevent an Islamic takeover.
Who on earth is Kelly Valenzuela? There are all sorts of people these days who are constantly popping up on their own blogs, on message boards and facebook who proclaim themselves to be “Objectivists” and, at times, say stuff that is just truly bizarre. People can label themselves however they choose – it doesn’t follow that the label is necessarily accurate.
Nothing against Kelly Valenzuela – for all I know he/she is a perfectly wonderful, charming person and a knowledgeable Objectivist. But if what you say is an accurate representation of his/her position – then that is simply nuts.
Context is everything – and that is something Objectivist newbies and even some old timers have difficulty with. Israel is in an ever constant state of hot/cold war surrounded by fanatical enemies hell bent on its annihilation. The single most important task of government is to protect the liberty and property of its citizens. If there is a credible, objective danger that large numbers of immigrants hostile to liberty will arrive and engage in subversive behavior or take over free institutions such as elections for the purpose of abolishing freedom then the government is morally obligated to take action to stop it – and that unique context overrides the usual considerations that are assumed by a proper principled open immigration point of view. What does and does not constitute such a credible, objective threat is, of course, a different topic with lots of room for debate. I don’t think in the case of Israel there is much room for debate.
I am as pro-immigrant and pro-immigration as you can get. But even I acknowledge that under even the best circumstances there is a role for government in establishing an immigration process that is orderly and protects citizens by screening for criminals, those who are openly hostile towards liberty and those who are mentally ill or have no means of taking care of themselves or a sponsor lined up willing to do so.
In our context, we are not at war with Mexico or Latin America (though Mexico is in the process of collapsing into a state of anarchy). But we do have a welfare state – and, yes, large numbers of immigrants have become a huge burden on government run school systems and hospital emergency rooms which are required by law to treat all who show up.
But the problem is the welfare state and government mandates. If there were no government run schools and if there were a free market in medical care, there would be a boom of schools and clinics and insurance products specifically targeting the sizable immigrant population – just as there is a boom of ethnic grocery stores, check cashing/financial services and international phone card kiosks seeking to serve that market. Your line at the grocery store is not lengthened by large number of immigrants. Instead, your range of shopping options and product selection has been significantly increased. But since we do not have a free market in education or medicine and the government funds/regulates both, those same immigrants have become a burden to our school and healthcare systems and to those taxpayers who have no choice but to pay for and use those systems.
What is important is to assign blame where it belongs. It is not immigrants or immigration that is the problem. It is the welfare state and the Left.
As for your argument about Hispanics having a higher crime rate and higher illegitimacy rate, assuming that is correct – so what? Is it because they are Hispanic? Or is it because there are great numbers concentrated in urban areas? Higher crime and higher illegitimacy are common among the urban poor in general – including those whose families have been here for generations. And my strong guess is there was also a higher crime rate and perhaps illegitimacy rate among urban 19th century immigrants as well. There certainly was in the stereotypes at the time used to portray such groups – though obviously stereotypes are not the same thing as fact.
As for the long term demographic argument that children of immigrants will become dupes for the Left, there may very well be something to that. The Left is certainly trying, that’s for sure. But I don’t consider that to be, in the grand scheme of things, a big priority to focus on.
First off – there is little we can do about it short of an organized effort to educate and persuade such people with a pro individualism pro freedom message to counter the Left. These children are already here. And it is not real world to think that it will be possible to round up and deport the millions of immigrants who are already here. Think of the logistics of such an endeavor. And, so long as the market for domestic labor in this country is chained down with minimum wage laws, taxes, union rules, licensing regulations there will be employers and individuals in this country eager to hire illegals in order to escape the cost of such burdens. And that is going to especially be the case if ObamaCare is not repealed before it starts to into effect next year making the cost of hiring a US citizen even more burdensome. So long as that burden remains – and so long as Mexico continues to disintegrate into anarchy, the flood of immigrants across the boarder WILL continue.
I say don’t worry too much about it because, quite frankly, by the time such trends come to full fruition, it will be too late anyway. Government at all levels in this country is bankrupt. If something is not done soon to reverse current trends and if ObamaCare is allowed to go in effect, we will be facing economic collapse long before the children of today’s immigrants become of voting age.
If that happens all bets are off – and today’s Leftists will be swallowed up and their lives destroyed by it along with the rest of us. With or without immigrants we will be in for a period of chaos. There certainly won’t be a welfare state as we have known it left because there will be precious little left to loot to pay for it.
If the result is the collapse of the remnants of liberty we have left and the rise of some form of authoritarian regime, it is an open question whether the various minority constituencies that the Left has pandered to will still be considered useful and thus a favored political class or regarded as a financial burden that the State can no longer afford and end up as our fellow cell mates in the labor camps/gulags that the Left is so historically fond of and to which people like us would probably be doomed if we even survive.
Bottom line is the Mexicans who come across our border are the least of our problems right now. In fact, here in Texas I am much more worried about the lily white Good People immigrants flooding out from the economic disaster that is California coming here to vote than I am of the illegal aliens from across the Rio Grande. And the efforts of the Left to radicalize Hispanics is really no different than what they are already trying to do with children of all backgrounds in this country though the public schools and universities. The Left already commits widespread voter fraud in states where very few immigrants live.
Immigration is just one of many areas of the Left’s assault on this country’s remaining free institutions. Magically remove the immigration issue overnight and we are still under assault. To focus on that to the exclusion of the wider problem as some on the Right seem intent on doing is to allow one’s self to be diverted by a side show.
Sure, block the Left’s initiatives in this area as much as possible. But don’t make it our main or even minor thrust of offensive assault on the Left. We don’t have much time left and we pretty much have to go for the jugular. And the most immediate threat to both our economy as well as our own physical health and safety is Obamacare. If something isn’t done about that we are all screwed – and some of us might even end up on the wrong side of a death panel.
Republicans are concerned about how long term demographic changes will impact the electoral map. If current trends continue and if the Left gets its way, there probably won’t even be any elections to worry about.
Mr. Dismuke,
Mexico and most Central American nations have very high crime rates. In fact, there are more Hispanics in prison in the US for murder than Whites. Since there would be a tremendous influx of people from Central America should the US adopt open immigration it would obviously increase crime.
I mention this because various Randians, such as “Dr. Diana Hsieh” and Harry Binswanger claim that there are no disadvantages to mass immigration.
Another problem with mass immigration would be the decline in wages for the working class. While immigration is not incompatible with rising wages, tens of millions of immigrants a decade would definitely depress the wage rates of the working class.
Do you really things the riots in the UK last year and the “no go zones” in major European cities have nothing to do with immigration?
It is also true that one can point to higher crime statistics and prison incarceration statistics amongst black people. But it does not follow one has any moral basis whatsoever to demand, therefore, that black home buyers and renters be forbidden to purchase and live within one’s neighborhood.
The question is also one of my own rights: if I wish to hire somebody who happens to be a peaceful native citizen of some other country, do I have a right to do so? By what right can somebody presume to stop me? Same if I wish to sell a house: if a peaceful person from some other country wishes to purchase my house by what right does somebody else claim to forcibly block my free trade with a person who just happens to live in another country?
As to the crime rate in Latin America, that has to do with the fact that the police in almost all those countries are thoroughly corrupt and most normal, decent citizens fear them and do NOT go to the police when they are victims of crimes because, for all they know, the criminals are bought and paid for friends of the police. Juarez is one of the most violent cities in the word. But it is not because the population is somehow violent but rather because that portion of Mexico has collapsed into anarchy and is a flash point in a fierce turf war between rival drug lords.
As to Dr. Binswanger I am vaguely familiar with his position as I do recall reading a posting in which he expressed disagreement with some remarks that Dr. Peikoff made on the subject regarding the incompatibility of open immigration with today’s welfare state. But I rather doubt that Dr. Binswanger stated that there are “no disadvantages” to mass immigration. There are disadvantages that flow from pretty much everything in this world. The question is: a disadvantage to whom? And is it a violation of the person’s rights?
And nobody has a right to a particular job or a right to a certain wage rate. And your comment displays an almost shocking lack of understanding of basic economics coming from someone who hangs around various pro free market online venues. A wage is a price for labor and, economically, is no different than any other form of price. If wages are lower, that either frees up money for other economic activity that would not have otherwise taken place or results in economic activity that would not have taken place had the employer been required to pay a higher wage. The long term result is a higher standard of living for everybody. If keeping wage rates artificially high improved the standard of living of the working class, places like Michigan would be booming. But they are not – and the population there is fleeing to other states that actually have lower wages.
Finally, American workers are already competing against low wage foreign workers – in places such as China, India and a bunch of other countries. There are actually quite a lot of disadvantages when it comes to using labor in those countries – they are hard to do business in and, in the case of China, there are serious quality issues. If we had a mass immigration from Latin America or elsewhere of people willing to work for low wages, that would actually result in a boom for many Americans because it would make it more viable to bring work that is presently being done in China back home where there can be greater attention to productivity and quality control. If so, those people will need to buy things such as housing, transportation and a host of services that our domestic market is not able to sell to those who currently do such work overseas.
And the riots in the UK and the no go zones in Europe have more to do with the welfare state than they do immigrants. The people rioting live in government housing and receive government benefits – and if those benefits are cut they are screwed. Since the advent of the EU there is all sorts of immigration taking place in those countries. You don’t see the lower wage Poles who move westward in order to work out on the streets rioting. The people rioting are on dependent on government benefits. There is similar rioting in Greece – by people whose ancestors have lived there since the days of Aristotle.
Finally, perhaps I did not make my position on the subject clear: I am all for open immigration. On the other hand, we have a welfare state and the Democrats and the Left seek to make immigrants dependent upon that welfare state and wish to place immigrants on Obamacare and use such people in order to commit voter fraud. Given that reality even I have difficulty accepting complete open immigration under the current context. Last thing we need is the sort of issues that the UK and Europe have with large numbers of immigrants hopelessly dependent upon the State – and which the Left would LOVE to have. People in this country on welfare have a vastly higher standard of living than hard working people in many other countries. The welfare state for our own citizens is driving us to bankruptcy – extending to people from the rest of the world would be a disaster.
Again, one has to assign blame to where it belongs. The problem is not immigration – it is the welfare state.
Do you really things the riots in the UK last year and the “no go zones†in major European cities have nothing to do with immigration?
The riots in the UK were welfare state riots. From this very perceptive piece :
What we have on the streets of London and elsewhere are welfare-state mobs. The youth who are shattering their own communities represent a generation that has been suckled by the state more than any generation before it. They live in urban territories where the sharp-elbowed intrusion of the welfare state during the past 30 years has pushed aside older ideals of self-reliance and community spirit. The march of the welfare state into every aspect of urban, less well-off people’s existences, from their financial wellbeing to their child-rearing habits and even into their emotional lives, with the rise of therapeutic welfarism designed to ensure that the poor remain “mentally fit”, has undermined individual resourcefulness and social bonding. The antisocial youthful rioters are the end-product of this antisocial system of state intervention.
and here is another good piece on the same subject matter
Dismuke,
Well said, especially on Obamacare and the rats fleeing California and voting other states into the hell they fled.
I think you have the right idea here – Neil and Max need to answer the question about what they intend to do about their racial beliefs. I think the discussion might benefit from them laying bare their position.
So you believe that Blacks and Hispanics have some biological difference… what laws are you proposing in regard to your belief, then? Specifically, what laws that are different from what we here at TNC advocate?
damn, that link didn’t come out properly, here it is below:
http://winstonsmith33.blogspot.com/2011/08/riots-in-london-are-culmination-of.html
John McVey,
Thanks for the comment including the sidebar. I think that it is one of the most cogent descriptions of why the secular left lacks staying power and why their momentum depends on co-opting the values generated by others.
John McVey,
I have no idea how but I missed your comment until just now. Maybe it got caught in a filter?
In any case, brilliant. There’s definitely some food for thought, there.
Oh! There it is! Initially I figured that because the cause of the redirection to porn sites (yes, really!) I sometimes get from this site when I look at it from mobile meant that my mobile had a virus and my post had been eaten by Bill’s anti-virus systems, then I then figured maybe it had been lost in Bill’s system because for the last few days I’ve been seeing “device full” errors show up on this site. It seems as though neither is at play, though I still think that both my mobile and the site needs a going-over with anti-virus software?
I’m glad it was not seen as too long-winded, and that it helped clarify matters for others. There is one thing I forgot to add, though. I can’t remember if Dr Brooke mentioned it at OCON08 or not, but to my mind the reason why a religious *left* is to be feared the most is that it would lead to what amounts to an even more epistemologically- and ethically-primitive version of Plato’s Republic. Both the religious part and the leftist part would each serve to isolate, mark, and destroy the independent thinker. This would consist both of the mind-implosion that Toohey boasted of (see his comment about deep-sea creatures) and also the identification of thinkers as sinners and their subsequent ostracism or even murder. Both together would provide a coup-de-grace to the mind that is likely to last indefinitely (and the society exhibiting it perpetually in a mindless pre-industrial state) unless destroyed by outside forces armed with better cultures (hence concern with the vicissitudes of the world beyond the United States).
A religious right would do the same, of course, but real rightism – ie formal aristocratic hierarchies – is philosophically and culturally dead, even in Europe and Asia I think (I can’t say anything about the third world, though), where I think the enthusiasm exhibited for royal families is just a variant of celebrity worship rather than indicative of cultural force behind what royalty used to mean. The last vestiges of real rightism in the West is racism, but that is still a far cry from the anxious concern for bloodlines down the the family unit that the aristocracy of old had in such abundance. The modern western Brahmins’ concern for “breeding” is a pale shadow of that, and is not likely to grow into anything of political substance because there is no rational justification for it as a political idea and the efforts of Locke et al have destroyed it as a religious one. At best, concern for bloodline will be part of a nationalist-collectivist system (eg Nazism) – but within that (insofar as it may exist at all) the mainstay of political power in event of some form of mysticist take-over will be obtained through adoption of chosen individuals into the elite rather than notions of birthright, in a similar fashion to how the Catholic Church is run (see also environmentalism as spear-headed by university academics, a world similarly entered into by adoption).
What is also apt to exist, if what is left of society is complex enough for it, is unofficial nomenklatura based on familial relations and connections. That will officially be corruption, but there will be varying degrees of efforts against it as the sentiments and concerns of the leadership and the laity shift this way and that. Again, see the Catholic Church in the middle ages, such as the Borgia era, plus also the Soviet Union. Still, that is not the same as a formal Aristocracy.
That is enough for now, I think.
JJM
“I’m glad it was not seen as too long-winded, and that it helped clarify matters for others. “
It won’t be seen as long-winded here – not in the comments on this blog. You see, I occasionally comment here as well – so people around here are already used to long-winded. And I am long-winded even by my own standards (it is quicker to blurt out what one has to say stream of consciousness style than to go back and condense and edit which I rarely have time for).
And let’s face it – there are points that are simply impossible to express adequately in two paragraphs or less. Atlas Shrugged ran well over 1,000 pages which is unusually lengthy when compared with most novels. But I don’t know very many people who have actually read the novel from start to finish who would consider it “long winded.”
Anyhow, I, for one, enjoyed your comments. And my GUESS is the filter had nothing whatsoever to do with a virus and everything to do with your posting being mistaken for spam. Comments sections on blogs and online message boards are frequently bombarded by automated bots.
Your comment as well as Madmax’s were deemed to be spam. I was on vacation in San Francisco so I didn’t check it for a few days.
Our hosting account was hit by some WordPress malware awhile back and I tried my darndest to clean it out. These things are super pernicious and if you don’t remove every last bit of malicious code then it re-opens the backdoor and re-installs the malware. It’s finally gone for good now and I’ve changed the passwords for the last time—I hope. Thank you everyone for your patience.
Michael,
Aha, finally someone uses the term, “lumpenproletariat.” It fits those riots so perfectly, and I’d been snarking it since day one. I was just wondering when anyone would get it published.
That explains a few things, thank you.
And thank you for all the work you do and expenses you pay in running this site!
JJM
Despite their seeming inanity at times, I really appreciate Madmax and Neil Parille’s comments here as they generate a lot of interesting discussion few other blogs provide. A lot of of Objectivist forums have been boring me as of late. Thanks gents!
Despite their seeming inanity at times, I really appreciate Madmax and Neil Parille’s comments here as they generate a lot of interesting discussion few other blogs provide. A lot of of Objectivist forums have been boring me as of late. Thanks gents!
You’re wrong about the insanity part but you are right about the interesting discussion and about the O’ist movement being boring. Oh god is it boring. For example here are subjects that are ripe for discussion:
* The Travyon Martin episode – Gee, if Obama had a son he would look like Travyon Martin. I wonder if he would be a savage black thug like Martin also. Do any of you O’ists hear the language being used by Sharpton and Jackson? They are screaming for WAR. War against who? War against whites. Does this not concern the Objectivist movement? Is it “irrelevant” that a potential RACE WAR is brewing?
* Mohammad Merah and the Toulouse killings – Only Ed Cline is anywhere near the heart of this issue; ie the total incompatibility of Islam with the West and the need to REMOVE Muslims from Western nations. I think this can be done without violating individual rights. Does any O’ist even care about this issue? Do any of the New Clarion bloggers EVER blog on Islam or the problems of Muslim immigration? Or the failure of American foreign policy. I disagree with Auster’s philosophy but at least he writes on these subjects. Objectivists have their heads up their asses! Oh but “Dr. Diana Hseih” hates the Conservatives and Jim May says if he were king for a day he might ban Conservatives from voicing their ideas. May the non-existent god save me.
* Black crime rates – I hope all of you O’ists are smart enough to avoid the black sections of the cities you live in because there is a very REAL possibility of escalating black violence directed at all those evil whites. But this would mean that you would have to actually take not of skin color. Would that make you all waaaayciiiists?
* Charles Murray’s data on white males giving up on work and marriage. Yeah female hypergamy – any Oist even want to acknowledge that hypergamy exists? No. Gee isn’t the blue-pill world blissful.
* The fact that women are earning more than men due to massive government intervention. Do O’ists think that it is good that women earn more than men? Do you think that our species is wired for that? That there will be no consequences to that? Do tell.
* How about Hollywierd and its assault on white, heterosexual males. Hey, the latest dystopia move is out and guess what it has a 16 year old girl, a real Rambette, kicking everyone’s ass. I am woman hear me roar! But who are the villains in these movies? Oh never mind, that lifeless, passionless Rand-drone Ari Armstrong tells us it is an anti-big government movie. Ask yourself this, is it even CONCEIVABLE that the Hollywood Left could ever really make an anti-big-government movie? Or is it the case that what is really being demonized is that evil 1%. You know, the evil white male hetero devil.
Anyway there are a shitload of subject for you New Clarion bloggers to consider. Or any O’ist to consider. What the hell does the ARI do with its money? Essay writing contests?
I cry.
Madmax:
For example here are subjects that are ripe for discussion:
Actually, I have a topic you should discuss first. Quoth Dismuke:
If Peikoff and Brooke are so horrifically wrong – tell us what you would do differently if you were in their position.
You’ve had 10 days to consider a response to this–if you were really interested in convincing us, you’d doubtless have had a cogent, well-reasoned, brilliant essay posted by now. Instead, you ignored such a fine opportunity and didn’t post anything until someone gave you a platform for insulting your hosts. Are you a troll? Maybe, but what’s clear is that you’re just a punk.
Mr. Max,
Objectivists can only view things through the categories of the individual versus the collective, selfishness versus altruism, and philosophical ideas control everything versus determinism. Of course, with “Dr. Diana Hsieh” it’s all about the imminent rise of a theocracy.
If “Dr. Diana Hsieh” ever discusses the Trayvon Martin case she’ll probably tell us that because Sharpton and Jackson are (allegedly) Christian ministers that we are about to see the merging of the Christian Left and the Christian Right to create a theocracy.
“Of course, with “Dr. Diana Hsieh†“
Seriously? Why are the two of you still talking about her here? Trying to troll us into fighting other Objectivists? It won’t work. She’s got her own comments sections, you know. If you’re so keen on publicly disagreeing with her you might try doing it there.
And what is the deal with putting “Dr. Diana Hsieh” in quotes? Is someone suggesting that her degree is somehow less than legitimate? You are free to love the lady or hate her – and free to agree with her or disagree with her. But if she has successfully jumped through all the necessary hoops to earn such a degree – well that means she has earned and is fully entitled to place “Dr” in front of her name. If I had spent all those years and jumped through all those hoops to earn such a title, you can be darned sure I would not be shy about using it.
Are you a troll? Maybe, but what’s clear is that you’re just a punk.
And what’s clear is that you are an oblivious idiot. I gave you six serious cultural issues to discuss that are EXTREMELY relevant; especially the Martin/Zimmerman debacle. But you ignore that and focus on me.
My position is that the minarchist politics, while noble sounding, is still an unproven hypothesis. We know historically that a Conservative society can last. We don’t know that a mixed race, Islam-friendly, sexually liberated egalitarian society can last. I doubt it. My point is get you to answer the greatest challenges to Minarchism/O’ist politics/true liberalism, etc.. Namely Islam and Muslims, immigration of Mexicans and non-whites that will change the culture permanently, Feminism’s war against men and masculinity, the destruction of the nuclear family and the dropping out of white beta males from the sexual marketplace (in droves – read Charles Murray), unleashed hypergamy in the context of a Leftist man-hating society, the growing totalitarian power of the Left to essentially control EVERYTHING in our society, the relative insignificance of today’s Conservatives, etc.
I pick on Hsieh because she is the epitome of the blank-slate, blue-pill, oblivious air-head Randroid. There are many of them. I WANT to see the Objectivist movement succeed. But the movement itself is not serious. It focuses on nothing but simple economics and the threat of Christianity which is a JOKE!. It TOTALLY ignores very serious cultural issues like: race-conflict, feminism’s brutal war against men, female hypergamy and the RADICAL change in the sexual market, the very existence of a sexual market, Islamic and Mexican immigration, Islam’s stealth Jihad, etc, etc, etc.. Even Ed Cline admitted to some of this in one of his recent posts. Thank goodness for Ed Cline. He’s getting the picture. I wonder how soon he will be called a a racists by Objectivists like “Dr. Diana Hsieh” because of his views on Muslims; he hates them as much as I do.
So if that be Punkness, then long live Punkness. Really, you may read alot but you come across as an educating fool.
And what is the deal with putting “Dr. Diana Hsieh†in quotes?
She’s a fool and deserves derision. That what’s up.
If “Dr. Diana Hsieh†ever discusses the Trayvon Martin case she’ll probably tell us that because Sharpton and Jackson are (allegedly) Christian ministers that we are about to see the merging of the Christian Left and the Christian Right to create a theocracy.
Neil, you are an annoying prick but you do get some things. I give you credit where its due. The above is absolutely correct. Dr. Diana Hsieh is a sorry excuse for an Objectivist “intellectual”. I loath that woman. She’s utterly useless as a cultural/intellectual commentator. I hope she never contributes anything to the Objectivist movement other than her worthless blog and podcast.
But I will give her this, she married well. She was lucky to find an Asian doctor 14 years older than her and marry him at the tail end of her fertile period (24). She had very little looks to begin with. Had she waited to her late 20s she would have been screwed and there would have been no millionaire doctor and mult-acre ranch in the whitest and safest part of America for her.
And oh by the way, what is the Oist opinion on Martin the supposed angelic black youth, he who referred to himself as “No Limit Nigga”, and Zimmerman that “white Hispanic” monster? One wonders if they would refer to Zimmerman as a “white Hipsanic” if he discovered a cure for cancer? I have a feeling that they would drop the term “white”. Gee, what do you think is going on there. What do you think Mr. Jim May? Got any ideas?
But, hey, I’m only a punk.
“We don’t know that a mixed race, Islam-friendly, sexually liberated egalitarian society can last.”
Wow. What a package deal – equating an individual’s ancestral background with ideological upbringing and consciously chosen ideologies.
I am sure that there are plenty of white supremacist groups out there who would be more than willing to welcome you into their ranks.
“But I will give her this, she married well. She was lucky to find an Asian doctor ….
Yep. The fact that he happens to be Asian would be a big deal to someone like you.
As to your comments that followed…..well all I can say is that they tell us far more about you than they do her.
As an example of Diana Hsieh’s brilliance, she posted a humorous video on her blog in which a woman couldn’t figure out if a car is going 80 miles an hour how long will it take to go 80 miles.
Diana said blamed it on the “government schools.”
I’m sure public education has a lot to answer for, but no doubt this beautiful but brainless gal was taught basic math problem solving. The fact is, however, that intelligence is largely genetic. The woman was (in all likelihood) born not very bright. Chances are her parents aren’t that bright either.
Charles Murray gives an interesting example. If you ask people what 10% of 100 is, 99% percent of people get the answer right. If you ask what 100+10 is, ditto. But if you ask
____
ABC Corp. has 100 employees. It plans to increase the total number of employees by 10% at the end of the year. How many employees will it have at the end of the year?
____
the number of people who get that right is less. (I don’t recall but around 96% I think.) Some people are just born “concrete bound.”
But with Diana it’s all about the individual versus the collective.
Yes, Neil, we know. You don’t like Diana.
Yawn.
At least she doesn’t spend her time following (and occasionally trolling) blogs of various people she despises.
Finally, your piling on immediately after Madmax’s disgustingly offensive venom regarding her marriage – that you would do so speaks volumes about you.
I don’t like President Obama. But I sure as heck would not pile on with my views after a Fred Phelps. I had problems with George Bush – but I sure as heck would not pile on with my views after a Cindy Sheehan.
A serious person with intellectually sincere concerns regarding Diana would not wish to pile on in any way after Madmax.
Comments of the sort that Madmax made – that’s the kind of “argument” one hears on MSNBC or on various Angry Left wing radio programs or blogs.
Doesn’t surprise me at all that you would feel comfortable jumping into the water that Madmax had just finished polluting.
Personally, your approval of someone is what would set off red flags to me about the person.
“We don’t know that a mixed race, Islam-friendly, sexually liberated egalitarian society can last. I doubt it. My point is [to] get you to answer the greatest challenges to Minarchism/O’ist politics/true liberalism, etc.. Namely Islam and Muslims, immigration of Mexicans and non-whites that will change the culture permanently, Feminism’s war against men and masculinity, the destruction of the nuclear family and the dropping out of white beta males from the sexual marketplace (in droves – read Charles Murray), unleashed hypergamy in the context of a Leftist man-hating society, the growing totalitarian power of the Left to essentially control EVERYTHING in our society, the relative insignificance of today’s Conservatives, etc.”
Well, this is better than what you’ve been doing so far, anyway.
But what you haven’t articulated is: what position do you believe that Objectivists hold, which you disagree with, and what is your alternative proposal? I mean something more specific than “minarchism vs a ‘conservative society.'” AND I mean, Ayn Rand or a LEGITIMATE authority on Objectivism said “x,” which you disagree with and instead advocate “y.”
(You may not cite a lone blogger who is controversial among Objectivists and in open disagreement with Dr. Peikoff on the specific issues you’re referring to. Nor may you cite less authoritative Objectivists where someone like Brook or Peikoff have specifically weighed in to the contrary. Not because of any argument from authority, of course, but because the nature of your criticism is directed at the Objectivist movement, and the ARI and Peikoff are the most representative sources thereof.)
For instance, where do you think that the Objectivist movement is caving in on the issue of Feminism’s war against men and masculinity? As near as I can tell, we’re the only ones who aren’t doing that.
And what conservative criticism I have seen of the movement is a pale imitation of Ayn Rand’s absolutely devastating critiques that she wrote of Feminism decades before any conservative worked up the smarts or the marbles to do so.
Madmax – This isn’t a gotcha game, by the way. I’m not trying to “catch” you in some trap. The questions I ask are aimed at advancing the discussion to some form of understanding, at least.