Objectivist Platform
I'm playing President Infinity, a game where you can run a customized Presidential campaign, so I'm creating the Objectivist Party and have to enter a platform. Economics and taxation is easy. I also assume the War on Drugs would be out. Other issues are not as clear. What do you think the Randian view would be on...
1. Foreign policy? I would think that something like Iraq would not serve our interests, but a pre-emptive strike or intervention where the combatants possess a threat to the United States could be in our interest. But can a COUNTRY itself have rational self interest? If it is, then one could make arguments for, say, universal healthcare, saying it's in the "country's" interests to have a healthy population. I don't subscribe to this view, but having the interest of the country does open up a can of worms?
2. Abortion? I don't want to get controversial, but this is tricky, because there are two interests (mother, baby) that may be in conflict with each other.
3. North Korea, Iran, War on Terror? You could say that a stable Middle East, etc. is in our interest to reduce terrorism, I can see others saying that it's a form of altruism toward the peoples of those countries?
1. Foreign policy? I would think that something like Iraq would not serve our interests, but a pre-emptive strike or intervention where the combatants possess a threat to the United States could be in our interest. But can a COUNTRY itself have rational self interest? If it is, then one could make arguments for, say, universal healthcare, saying it's in the "country's" interests to have a healthy population. I don't subscribe to this view, but having the interest of the country does open up a can of worms?
2. Abortion? I don't want to get controversial, but this is tricky, because there are two interests (mother, baby) that may be in conflict with each other.
3. North Korea, Iran, War on Terror? You could say that a stable Middle East, etc. is in our interest to reduce terrorism, I can see others saying that it's a form of altruism toward the peoples of those countries?
Even so, she did publish many essays and gave several lectures on those issues. See her address to a West Point graduating class published in Philosophy: Who Needs It.
Generally, she was opposed to foreign intervention. In our terminology, what we call "regime change" will not change the culture of a society, it will not alter the implicit philosophy of the population. Ayn Rand was opposed to US intervention in World War II. She did say that it would be morally proper to launch a first strike against the USSR. She also said that they were not an existential threat to the United States but only that we were bent on ideological surrender. For that she blamed not so much the liberals (though there was that) but the conservatives who tried to fight communism with Christianity.
So, you can see why a nation where a majority of people accept Biblical myths as fact cannot be changed politically. And that is jus the USA. We speak easily of Islamic fundamentalism, but the Qu'ran mentions Jesus 25 times calling him the Son of God and God; and the Qu'ran mentions Mary 12 times calling her the Virgin and the Mother of God. The disconnects between Islam and Christianity are similar to the schisms within the early Christian communities of the Roman Empire. So, you can see why if imposing a new government to improve Iraqi culture is unrealistic, the same applies to the United States.
On one specific point, Ayn Rand supported a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy. She was uncompromising in that.
Let us agree that it is best for a society to have its indivduals be educated. Is the government the best way to do that? Let us agree that people are better off wearing shoes. Is the govrenment the best way to do that? Objectivist political theory asserts that the only proper functions of government are the military, police, and courts. Those are needed to protect the rights of citizens. How that gets carried out was never explored by Ayn Rand as being too far down the historical road to be arguable now. She did say that while government is the "servant of the people" is not the unpaid servant of the people. But she was opposed to taxation on principle.
The philosophy of Objectivism is non-contradictory because it rests on a unified epistemology and metaphysics that is tested against empirical fact. Small o-objectivism in philosophy is also called "rational-empiricism." Capital-O Objectivism is a unified system that is logically consistent (rational) and empirically verified (real). It is the scientific method applied to philosophy, as it properly always should have been.
It's the ultimate conundrum, though, which is why I believe similar ideologies like Libertarianism struggle in elections. It's a Catch-22: If you're against a lot of government power, but in order to pass laws removing government power, you first have to attain government power to do it.
I am not much of a gamer. My wife and I were in a D&D Club about five years ago for about a year. We played a lot of it as Moria or Rogue on the computers back when our kid was growing up. The three of us had a good time running characters. I have done Risk, of course, and I have this monstrous World War II game I could never get anyone to play. It clearly takes a long weekend of cola and pizza. So, just to say, I understand the context.
Confederate election of 1900... Interesting...
There is a premise that I think qualifies as an axiom that you cannot really project an alternate history because you only lived in the history you know. Still, you have to accept the pure chance of fate. Hitler survived World War I as a runner. The odds were against that. Did he cause World War II or were larger forces acting? It speaks to your view of the world.
Personally, I think that it cuts both ways. Absent Edison, the incandescent lamp may or may not have been invented at that moment, but the technology was a given. And he did have a competitor in Westinghouse. So, while your own personal choices do make a difference, certainly to you, it is not clear what history would be like if only....
http://www.objectivistparty.us/6443.h...
Is this really capital-O Objectivism if it's not tested against empirical fact.
We can look at the alternative cases in which governments do other things in addition and see how that worked out. How are those freeways looking? Education? Healthcare?
Objectivism is a philosophy created from facts of objective reality by Ayn Rand and cannot remain Objectivism with changes to it. One applies it to ones own life in as non-contradictory a way as possible. Other objective philosophies, depending upon how contradiction free, are possible but should not be linked to Rand's Objectivism.
We can explore the question here, but I believe that a separate discussion under Philosophy is warranted.
I served.
But thanks for your your thanks.
Mike M.
Which religious tradition people follow is orthogonal to whether they accept reason vs. a literal, fundamentalist view of religion. I think you're right that imposing a new government will not change either one of these. The one that matters, though, is reason vs. fundamentalism. If there were an effective way (region change or other method) to make people change religious traditions, it wouldn't solve anything if one set of myths were substituted for another with no increase in reason. It might actually make these worse because people changing religion might fire up the anti-reason people who believe one religious tradition is better than another.
Interests are based upon conscious minds. Interest presupposes a self consciousness. A life requires certain biological processes which are necessary but not an interest of the organism. When a self consciousness develops, then interests by the organism develop and not before.
""The Prime Directive is not just a set of rules; it is a philosophy… and a very correct one. History has proven again and again that whenever mankind interferes with a less developed civilization, no matter how well intentioned that interference may be, the results are invariably disastrous."
– Jean-Luc Picard, 2364 ("Symbiosis")
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/...
1- We the Living
2- Anthem
3- The Fountainhead
4- Atlas Shrugged
Non-Fiction
5- For the New Intellectual
6- Virtue of Selfishness-
7- Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal
8- The Romantic Manifesto
9. Introduction to the Objectivist Epistemology
10. Philosophy: Who Needs It?
11. Return of the Primitive (formerly The New Left: the Anti-Industrial Revolution)
12. The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought by Ayn Rand, et al
(Two anthologies of early fiction go here.)
15. The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z by Harry Binswanger
16. Ayn Rand Answers: The Best of Her Q&A by Robert Mayhew
17. Who is Ayn Rand? by Nathaniel Branden and Barbara Branden
The Ayn Rand Lexicon is available online as a searchable database from the Ayn Rand Institute here:
http://aynrandlexicon.com
You can look up abortion, political party, healthcare, war, and foreign policy.
It also has a Conceptual Index.
http://aynrandlexicon.com/book/concep...