Really remarkable and worthy of note is that it is not prophecy but a logical projection of what happens in a welfare state even without a John Galt to hurry the process along.
That the results of years of social and economic planning should come home to roost in an election year is something that a fiction writer would not make part of a plot on the grounds of melodramatic overkill. That we should be talking openly -- and in the media, approvingly -- of the turn away from the current state of affairs (astonishingly to some, labelled "capitalism" by the media and economic pundits) to socialism.
Since it appears nearly certain that Obama will win the election, there are good reasons to abstain from voting this year. I, however, believe that he should win by a landslide with the majority in the House and Senate riding on his coattails. My reason is simple: he needs to feel that he has a mandate to destroy the economy. Only with an overwhelming mandate will he do openly what every ounce of his being wants him to do -- destroy the good for being the good.
I am not going to argue the case for this claim here today. Today my purpose is to point out, before the election, that anything less than a mandate will bring Obama to the left middle. This will give us time to continue the fight, of course, and that time must be weighed in the balance in making your decision. But I believe, given the underwhelming negative response to his ideas. that a "laboratory demonstration" is necessary if we are going to have a truly free country in the long run.
There is a single reason that I believe that the long run (and thus a mandate) is to be preferred -- the fact that this is a psycho-epistemological and ethical war. Objectivists are fighting a war against an enemy of which most of the public -- and certainly not the mob of students that is so enthusiastically cheering for Obama -- is unaware. As Tara Smith points out in her essay"The Menace Of Pragmatism" and as Yaron Brook reiterates in "The Resurgence of Big Government," the dominate philosophy in the US is now pragmatism combined with altruism. She says:
"[P]ragmatism steadily convinces people that they do not need to take a strong action in order to oppose destructive ideologies. It dampens the willingness to fight for spreading the belief that fights are never constructive."
If that isn't a description of the culture at work today, I can think of no better.
In addition, using Dr. Peikoff's DIM hypothesis, there are only mis-integrators and dis-integrators in leadership positions.
In short, we need the time to educate and develop a culture that is psycho-epistemologically long range and ethically egotistical and we need time to produce a statesman that is thoroughly steeped in such a worldview. Nothing could be worse,in my view, than Sarah Palin leading us into a future we do not understand and which they will not support past the first objection or the first claim that they are "extremists."
Today's voter should get what he is asking for and everything that it implies in immediately graspable perceptual concrete terms.
AF
2 comments:
I must say, as a believer in philosophic pragmatism, that anyone thinking that pragmatism leads to any particular scoial consequence has not studied it much.
One thing I like about pragmatism, and dislike about Objectivism, is that pragmatis sees reason for what it is: a process that can lead any number of places, rather than a way to get to a predetermined destination. Rnad (Smith and Peikoff) dismiss any conclusion they dislike as irrational (defining reason by whether its conclusion agrees with thier values). Pragmatism does no such thing. It is as compatible with libertarianism as it is with statism. (While pragmatism says that the right action is that which will work in practice, it leaves the question, "work for what purpose?" undefined.
I certainly do agree with you about where the US is, and that it is becoming more and more unjustifiably statist, but my libertarianism comes from pragmatism; there is no contradiction between those two.
Kevin,
I'm writing this on March 10th and the situation is much worse. And, almost as a demonstration of pragmatism in action. Starting, as you say, from the premise that reason can lead anywhere and all we can do is hope for the best; if the first attempt fails, try something else.
Problem is reality tells us what to do, in a sense, and if we do what it tells us, we achieve great results.
But you gotta know what reality says in advance. Let's suppose for the sake of argument that your conclusion is correct, that Objectivism "defines reason" as what ever agrees with its preconceived notions. I suppose you mean something like "Men should act in their own interest" is a preconceived notion and the arguments leading to that conclusion aren't sound. That begs the question, how do you know that? Why are they not sound? Is it because Objectivists are incorrect about the nature of reality? But pragmatism says there is no nature of reality that you can know in advance.
What say you?
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