Peikoff on the coming election Options

[Stephen Speicher]

There are people in this generation, extremely intolerant people, who would love to see witches, gays, and all manner of non-religious people burned at the stake. These are people like Pat Robertson (who, by the way, sought Republican nomination in 1988 against George HW Bush and finished in second place, ahead of Bush in Iowa), who claimed that 9/11 was ultimately the fault of gays, lesbians, abortionists, feminists, the ACLU, etc., and that America was being punished for her immorality.

I do not accept the rationale of your approach. You list a few facts -- numbers, people, events -- but there is nothing inherent in the statement of those facts that necessitates an impending theocracy. Actually, as I demonstrated in a previous post, some of your facts are taken out of context, and as such contradict, not support the notion of an impending theocracy. You pointed to a figure of 45% for certain beliefs, but the fact is that that figure was 2% higher eleven years earlier. You can't just utter statements, like you do above about "extremely intolerant people" who want "all manner of non-religious people burned at the stake," as if such a statement carries forth some argument innate to it supporting theocracy. You have to know many related facts, in psychological, philosophical and historical context before accepting what you offer as an argument. Do these people just want something, but would never act on it? Are there more or less of these people now, as compared to the past? In what way did people like these ever effect our country in the past? There are other questions to ask, but, the main point is that it is not sufficient to have a shopping list of scary things and confuse such a list with an actual argument for theocracy. I've read all kinds of anecdotal reports on blogs, forums, and the like, but someone's scary encounter with a religious nut does not an impending theocracy make.

[~Sophia~]

Religion is the oldest and greatest threat to mankind. The fact that religion does not have reality on its side has not stoped it for thousand of years. It is the reason behind the current war and a major reason behind why this war is not being fought in a right way, meaning to win. I wish it was as easy as voting for one political party and not for the other. I don't think it is because ideas shaped by religion are represented and accepted by both. Imho, the threat to American way of life is both from the outside (most immediate) and the inside (perhaps less immediate but making it much harder to fight the one from the outside). To dismiss ether as insignificant is a mistake.

[Ed from OC]

For those who agree with Peikoff that a Christian theocracy in America is imminent, the burden is on you to prove it. I grant that there is a large and growing number of fundamentalist Christians, and there are increasing attempts to put their dogma into law: banning abortion, teaching creationism, and so on. But by itself that does not a theocracy make.

How will the impending theocracy be established? How will the non-fundamentalists, liberals, leftists, abortion rights supporters, university professors, media pundits, and the ACLU be defeated?

Furthermore, what evidence supports the claim that this will happen in less than 50 years, as Peikoff claimed? I agree that religion and freedom cannot coexist forever, and one has to eventually go -- but eventually can be a very long time, such as the centuries from Thomas Aquinas to the Enlightenment. Will that be undone in the near future? It is entirely possible for the two sides to struggle back and forth, with religion winning for a while only to yield later to freedom and reason.

[Paul's Here]

-----
To dismiss ether as insignificant is a mistake.

Has anyone dismissed either?

[JRoberts]

For those who agree with Peikoff that a Christian theocracy in America is imminent, the burden is on you to prove it.

I whole-heartedly agree. I would also like those people to provide historical evidence for theocracy in the Western World, as well as an analysis as to its rise and fall. If you all are unable to provide such historical evidence, as well as significant evidence from current times, then the proposition of an "American Theocracy" under Christianity must be dismissed as silly.

[Gilliatt]

When you walk down the street, do you see religious nuttery in every face?...

I can tell you one of many reasons why this theocracy notion is very implausible: it would first have to survive mass revolt from a very large number of people who are, without the smallest doubt, totally against the idea, a revolt that would escalate to civil war.

Once upon a time people were totally against the idea of income tax and being forced to pay into social security.

Now only "nutters" argue for getting rid of those; everyone else is willing to accept less economic interference.

I don't think you could say that a nonviolent, democratic imposition of religious law would result in civil war. American religionists don't have to pick up a single machine gun in order to establish religious laws on people who are willing to accept either/or choices in terms of their rights.

For those who agree with Peikoff that a Christian theocracy in America is imminent, the burden is on you to prove it.

I grant that there is a large and growing number of fundamentalist Christians, and there are increasing attempts to put their dogma into law: banning abortion, teaching creationism, and so on. But by itself that does not a theocracy make.

Would you accept a proof that if people vote for Republican regardless of the religion-based laws they are intending, then voting for them will lead to the imminent establishment of theocratic laws?

Forgive me, but I don't see the significance in distinguishing between establishing a theocracy and establishing theocratic laws. I took Peikoff's position to mean that either one would be reason to vote the Republicans out.

[Paul's Here]

Religion is the oldest and greatest threat to mankind. The fact that religion does not have reality on its side has not stoped it for thousand of years. -------

Let's be clear. In one sense, religion will never be stopped. There will always be people who accept all varieties of irrationality. The only thing that needs to be stopped, and in my opinion has been largely stopped by the US Constitution, is the ability of religion to acquire the means to intitiate force on a social scale. The battle over ideas will be around forever, as long as man has volition. Even in an Objectivist society, there will be no guarantee that the next generation will not evade previously acquired knowledge.

[Thales]

Diana Hseih has a fascinating article "Why I'm Voting for Democrats" on her 10/29/06 blog spot HERE

She says that listening to Peikoff's DIM lecture on line is what made it clear to her.

Here is what she says:

Dr. Peikoff's position is not based on any casual survey of recent events; it is well-grounded in fundamental principles, particularly the essential factors governing philosophic change in cultures over the course of centuries. The Objectivist view of the role of philosophy in shaping individual lives, politics, culture, and history is a massive integration. While most professed Objectivists could summarize it, they do not genuinely understand it for themselves, i.e. based upon their own induction from the concretes. Dr. Peikoff's DIM Hypothesis course makes that induction so much more clear. It helps a person cut through the confusing sea of today's concretes, so as to see the essential trends.

I recommend reading her essay.

Considering her recommendation, and the fact that the course is freely available to registered users on aynrand.org, I've decided to listen to it myself.

[PhilO]

My wife and I saw the movie Jesus Camp mentioned by Liriodendron Tulipifera. While it is a chilling and disgusting (and sometimes unintentionally humorous) look at the extreme religious brainwashing of children (a monstrous moral crime), there's no proof whatever that these complete lunatics are able to "take over the country." There was a number mentioned of 30 million evangelicals, but (1) that's 10% of the country's population, and (2) there's no proof from the movie that even all of those people are as insane as those documented in the movie. One very interesting thing was a radio talk show host, whose name I unfortunately do not remember, who's definitely a Christian but entirely opposed to the evangelical movement - and explicitly pro separation of church and state.

I coincidentally ran across this news story today:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...6102900300.html

titled Evangelical-GOP Alliance Weakens.

Notable quotes from the story:

The number of conservative Christians with a favorable view of the party has plummeted from 74 percent to 54 percent between 2004 and this year, according to the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. Evangelicals comprise more than one-third of GOP voters.

...

The complaints are familiar. Through every Republican victory since the Moral Majority was formed in 1979, abortion remained legal, gay couples won greater acceptance and prayer was still barred from public schools.

In 1999, Cal Thomas and Ed Dobson, both veterans of the Moral Majority, examined these failures in their book "Blinded by Might," and concluded that politics was too corrupt to be used to spread Christian morality in America. A few other evangelicals suggested conservative Christians withdraw from politics and focus instead on faith.

The retreat never happened. Between 1999 and 2004, the share of white evangelicals identifying themselves as Republican grew from 39 percent to 49 percent, the Pew Center found.

...

Disillusionment has led to a backlash. Some evangelicals are once again warning that lawmakers are using Christians for their votes and politics is corrupting the church.

In the book "Tempting Faith, An Inside Story of Political Seduction," author David Kuo, a former aide in the White House faith-based office, wrote that Bush aides privately called conservative Christians "nuts," "ridiculous" and "goofy."

...

[Stephen Speicher]

Diana Hseih has a fascinating article "Why I'm Voting for Democrats" on her 10/29/06 blog spot HERE

In my judgment, I do not think her post has added anything substantive to the debate. Essentially, she has swept up a bunch of material into one pile. Though that summary may be helpful to some, the bottom-line remains the same: When conclusions deduced from a theory conflict with the facts of reality, you should question the theory, not the facts. There is nothing inherent in the facts presented to prove an impending theocracy.

See the many, many posts here on THE FORUM, and Betsy's astute and substantive comments on Diana's blog.

[Stephen Speicher]

I coincidentally ran across this news story today:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...6102900300.html

titled Evangelical-GOP Alliance Weakens.

Notable quotes from the story:

The number of conservative Christians with a favorable view of the party has plummeted from 74 percent to 54 percent between 2004 and this year, according to the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. Evangelicals comprise more than one-third of GOP voters.

Then voting Democratic will send a message to the Republicans that they are not paying enough attention to the Evangelicals. Just what we want, eh?

[JRoberts]

Diana Hseih has a fascinating article "Why I'm Voting for Democrats" on her 10/29/06 blog spot HERE

She says that listening to Peikoff's DIM lecture on line is what made it clear to her.

Here is what she says:
I recommend reading her essay.

Considering her recommendation, and the fact that the course is freely available to registered users on aynrand.org, I've decided to listen to it myself.

I read her article. There are very little facts in her essay-rather, there are striking generalizations and sparse accounts blown out of proportion that are supposed to serve as "facts".

One of the most glaring that is sadly quite prominent is the belief that we are losing in Iraq. Through the failures of our modern media, I can see how some people might reach that conclusion. But let's examine what a trusted source, Victor Davis Hanson, a man who has been to Iraq and spoke with both Officers and Soldiers, as well as Iraqi's themselves, says:

In the larger Middle East, the democratic splash in the Iraqi pond is slowly rippling out, as voting proceeds in Egypt and the Gulf, Syria leaves Lebanon, and Moammar Gadhafi and Pakistan’s Dr. Khan cease their nuclear machinations. Hundreds of thousands of protesters hit the streets in Lebanon and Jordan — not to slur the United States, as predicted, for removing Saddam Hussein, but to damn Bashar Assad and al-Zarqawi as terrorist killers. Walid Jumblatt, the Lebanese Druze leader, now calls for Western pressure to root out the Syrian Baathists.

You’d never know all this from the global media or state-run news services in Europe and the Middle East.

Seen in the history of past wars, the American effort to remove Saddam and seed democracy in the Middle East seems little short of miraculous. A successful military action has been carried out 7,000 miles from home. This has been done at far less human and material cost than almost any prior comparable U.S. war. A powerful, multi-pronged effort to eliminate the nexus of Arab autocracy and Islamism (the conditions that germinated bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terror) now continues to gain ground.

Almost every media stereotype about the American military vanishes when visiting frontline bases...We hear that the U.S. Army is worn out — propped up by national guardsmen and reserves. Yet young enlistees differ. They claim instead that more mature reservists are a godsend for reconstruction efforts since so many back home were successful contractors, businessmen, teachers and mechanics. Complaints circulate about the weight, not the dearth, of body and truck armor. I saw hundreds of Humvees on the roads, but not one was unarmored. I shot AK-47s with professional Iraqi soldiers and felt far safer amid their professional live fire than back at home at the local municipal range.

If many are determined to see the Iraqi war as lost without a plan, it hardly seems so to 130,000 U.S. soldiers still over there. They explain to visitors that they have always had a design: defeat the Islamic terrorists; train a competent Iraqi military; and provide requisite time for a democratic Iraqi government to garner public support away from the Islamists.

We point fingers at each other; soldiers under fire point to their achievements: Largely because they fight jihadists over there, there has not been another 9/11 here. Because Saddam is gone, reform is not just confined to Iraq, but taking hold in Lebanon, Egypt and the Gulf. We hear the military is nearly ruined after conducting two wars and staying on to birth two democracies; its soldiers feel that they are more experienced and lethal, and on the verge of pulling off the nearly impossible: offering a people terrorized from nightmarish oppression something other than the false choice of dictatorship or theocracy — and making the U.S. safer for the effort.

I dont offer these in an attempt to start a debate about the Iraq war. Rather, I wanted to point out a trend I see in many who support the Democrats and cry about a Theocracy: pessimism. This pessimism makes them assume that the world is a lot worse off than it is: we are losing in Iraq, we are on the verge of another Dark Age headed by a Theocratic America, etc. etc. But thankfully, the facts say otherwise. I wonder what would happen if those proponents actually drew conclusions from the facts?

[Gilliatt]

The bottom-line remains the same: When conclusions deduced from a theory conflict with the facts of reality, you should question the theory, not the facts. There is nothing inherent in the facts presented to prove an impending theocracy.

I think you may be being a bit hasty.

Peikoff spoke of "pushing the U.S. toward disaster, i.e. theocracy." You used a definition of theocracy that included

1. a diety is recognized as the immediate ruler
2. religious edicts are made law
3. laws administrated by a priestly order

"Pushing toward theocracy" means that some conditions for theocracy are being pushed toward - not necessarily all conditions of theocracy. We must be careful to objectively analyse what he's saying.

I would agree with you that there is no reason to believe that #1 or #3 is imminent (no reason to think that Peikoff would suggest such either). But is it really debatable that the Republicans are attempting to make religious beliefs into law???

I also think that the current situation is different from the past. Nowadays, the religionists are pushing for constitutional amendments and attempting to portray their faith-based positions as rational arguments. They seek to legitimize their irrationality, in the same way that government welfare was once a politically harebrained idea. Nowadays, welfare is de facto and the only real argument in politics is how much welfare should be, not whether it exists at all. We have the opportunity to prevent religious loonery from being similarly entrenched.

Then voting Democratic will send a message to the Republicans that they are not paying enough attention to the Evangelicals. Just what we want, eh?

In a sense.

What "we" want is for Republicans to realize that "we" rational men will not accept the sacrifice of one set of rights for the protection of others. If not voting for Republicans made them more religious in order to pursue the religious vote(a possibility I grant), what reason is there to think that voting for them wouldn't cause them to realize that they, despite their religious agenda, have the rational vote... and therefore can become more religious and also get the religous vote?

[Jack Wakeland]

...[T]he bottom-line remains the same: When conclusions deduced from a theory conflict with the facts of reality, you should question the theory, not the facts.

Amen!

From the 1900s to the 1980s the world was in constant danger of self-destruction: destruction by war with one or two of three giant, aggressive, totalitarian dictatorships; destruction in peace by the incremental adoption of socialist ideology and the incremental adoption of socialist programs. Everything that happened in the world was either heading towards socialism or a struggle against that pull.

After decades of growth in the ideological resistance to socialism among a substantial minority of people--centered here, in the United States (and at the center of that core resistance were the ideas of Ayn Rand). We outlasted them and the center of the black abyss, the Soviet Union, dissolved itself.

We live in one of history's moments of disillusionment. But, given the century our race just survived, that isn't bad news. The ship of the world is without the evil helmsman of the 20th Century; it is without its ideology of total enslavement, total war, total death.

Let's make no mistake about this--a Century of global war, 170 million murdered, whole reduction of man's highest civilizations into piles of rubble, the very foundations of any kind of human co-existence uprooted--the evils of secular totalitarianism dwarf all of the evils of religion through the ages.

Altruism remains the dominant morality of the world, but there is currently no ideology for puting it into practice.

That does no mean we have our final deliverance from evil or that we're doomed to fall into some newly-invented form of man-made hell. What it does mean is that civilization has more time for the people in it to learn the evils of altruist morality and the virtues of rational egoism.

Over the shorter political timescale of the past 20 years, inside America, we've seen the rise and fall of the "libertarian" wing of the American right. The fall came when the face of the Morrow Federal Building in Oklahoma City fell, but the fall is not final. The force behind that rise--the ideas of Ayn Rand--still exists and still has the power to drive.

The next time--if there is to be a next time--the secular American right needs to call egoism to its side. America's secular right failed because they tried to advance the cause of liberty without re-thinking their morality; without arming themselves with the moral ideal of rational egoism.

On the question of theocracy I would like to bring up an important issue. In order for there to be theocracy in America, there would have to be theocrats. It's not good enough to have a few people wanting to impose a few religiously motivated laws. One must also have theocrats.

Where are they?

David Koresh and Jim Jones had a following in the thousands, but they're dead. There are others like them? Who? Where? How many are their followers? How influential are their ideas? I've not read of even one of them. I read six to ten newspapers several days a week. Am I misinformed?

America's religious right has eclipsed by America's secular right only because the secular right slipped and fell. But, even if there were theocrats pushing for it, there is no clear sailing for theocracy. Things didn't turn out so well when the Republican Party leadership hijacked the 2004 mandate to resist the Muslim rebellion in Iraq and proclaimed that 22% of the electorate--"values voters"--and carried them into office. When they put it to the test in the minor and purely symbolic case of Terry Schiavo's brain-dead body, their president's approval ratings collapsed and, with continuing bad new from Iraq, they never recovered.

This contempt for theocratic leanings is not limited to the essentially secular centrist voters in America (who, for better or worse, are actually the ones who carry elections). Self-described evangelicals returned the same kind of verdict against one of their own. When Pat Robertson claimed that America's immorality cased the Muslim attack of 9/11, he was removed from the Christian Coalition and the organization (which was already weak at the time) totally collapsed. It now consists of a half dozen employees who arrange answers to court summons for unpaid bills.

I would go further than Stephen's gracious comments about the facts contradicting the theory.

The facts already point to a verdict. There are no influential theocrats in America. There is a deep well of opposition to any religious law in America. There is a core group of tens of millions of us who are implacable enemies of any form of "religion in the public square." Three quarters of the American people would kill or die to stop the imposition of religious rule in our country today. Witness the fact that--except for a hand full of vocal nihilists (who are secular)--Islamo-fascism is universally denounced as an absolute evil. If America were moving in a theocratic direction--or even if we were merely ripe for a theocratic trend--there would be a group of articulate Americans who would be telling us that the ideas of an Islamic Caliphate are "intriguing."

Theocracy coming down upon us within one or two generations? Don't be silly.

[Ed from OC]

On the question of theocracy I would like to bring up an important issue. In order for there to be theocracy in America, there would have to be theocrats. It's not good enough to have a few people wanting to impose a few religiously motivated laws. One must also have theocrats.

Where are they?

David Koresh and Jim Jones had a following in the thousands, but they're dead. There are others like them? Who? Where? How many are their followers? How influential are their ideas? I've not read of even one of them. I read six to ten newspapers several days a week. Am I misinformed?

<...>

I would go further than Stephen's gracious comments about the facts contradicting the theory.

The facts already point to a verdict. There are no influential theocrats in America. There is a deep well of opposition to any religious law in America. There is a core group of tens of millions of us who are implacable enemies of any form of "religion in the public square."

<...>

Theocracy coming down upon us within one or two generations? Don't be silly.

Well put, Jack. I agree.

And note we are not speaking of having religious leaders run for office: we've had that before, from William Jennings Bryan (who ran in 1900 and later fought evolution in the infamous Scopes trial) to Pat Robertson's efforts for the GOP and Jesse Jackson for the Democrats.) A theocracy entails the willingness to convert by force. Maybe a future theocracy will be of a kinder, gentler persuasion, with the guns hidden behind plastic smiles of a Christian Big Brother, but that is of a different kind than the more widespread religious type who wants to ban abortion or censor TV. The latter wants to have his freedom and eat it, too -- just as most Americans, unfortunately, do as well. The latter wants to make a few, piecemeal changes to the existing system, not scrap it whole and replace it. And even that will be a hard task in today's political climate.

[ewv]

... the bottom-line remains the same: When conclusions deduced from a theory conflict with the facts of reality, you should question the theory, not the facts. There is nothing inherent in the facts presented to prove an impending theocracy.

I haven't had the time to get into this topic primarily because I have been up to my neck in some very nasty real world politics, but I have to say that I agree with Stephen and more. (I have to add that because it may be much more.)

The common theme in these rationalizations on behalf of voting for the progressive New Left because the notion that "theocracy" is our most immediate and gravest threat, is that their arguments show the least concern with facts. Their sweeping generalizations badly misrepresent Republicans through selective, out of context denunciations, while ignoring the facts of what the Democrats routinely do and want to impose more of when they have even more power.

Most people in the country believe that "religion" is the basis of morality -- they know of no other source. That does not mean that their values and goals, many of which we share, are intended to bring on the Inquisition and a new Dark Ages. That kind of religion lost its influence long ago and with the exception of a very small minority is not what "Republicans" represent. Yet we see the spectacle of any basically decent person who mentions religion being denounced as advocating "theocracy" while the viros and other progressive New Leftists are given a free pass because they don't set someone off with the wrong religious buzz words.

It is clear that Leonard Peikoff and his most ardent followers on this issue know very little about about the actual use of power in government on a day to day basis, how it is imposed, who is responsible for it and who is actually doing the most to fight it. For all their alleged "superior integrations" and dramatic injunctions to "vote for Democrats", while claiming that those who don't are rationalists who only "hate the left" and know nothing about Objectivism, they have nothing to say about how to actually do anything other than pull a voting lever. That is fully consistent with their lack of desire to "get their hands dirty" in actual politics, favoring instead pontificating and theorizing from a distance -- where they have almost no effect and learn nothing.

I contend that it is no accident that Leonard Peikoff's website emphasizes at the top of his home page his belief that "To save the world is the simplest thing in the world. All one has to do is think." Those of us who have been forced to fight for our rights in the quagmire of politics learn very quickly that it takes considerably more than "thinking" -- you have to actually go out into the battle, learn how things work in reality and do things, which is far from "simple".

More often than not, if you are getting some help defending your rights here in reality, it is coming from a Republican and not a Democrat (or Rino).

Yet we are getting this eloquent but silly intellectual package claiming on behalf of Objectivism that we are the "rationalists" guilty of "moral evasion". How about starting with small "o" objectivity?

[Burgess Laughlin]

The common theme in these rationalizations on behalf of voting for the progressive New Left because the notion that "theocracy" is our most immediate and gravest threat, is that their arguments show the least concern with facts.

Two questions arise for me:

(1) Would you cite a particular example of a rationalization? A quotation will help.

(2) Would you cite a particular example of advocacy of voting for the "progressive New Left"? A quote will help.

I ask these questions because the charge of rationalization is as serious as the charge of immorality (in fact, a charge of rationalization is a charge of immorality) and because I am "concern[ed] with facts."

[ewv]

Two questions arise for me:

(1) Would you cite a particular example of a rationalization? A quotation will help.

(2) Would you cite a particular example of advocacy of voting for the "progressive New Left"? A quote will help.

I ask these questions because the charge of rationalization is as serious as the charge of immorality (in fact, a charge of rationalization is a charge of immorality) and because I am "concern[ed] with facts."

His whole presentation of Republicans as theocrats is a rationalization. It is factually incorrect and based on out of context deductions, isolated unrepresentative cases and distortions.

The Democrat party leadership is the progressive New Left. They are much worse than even Kennedy and Johnson with his Great Society. A prime example is John Kerry himself, who started his political career with the pro North Vietnamese communist New Left. To this day Kerry has the worst record on private property rights in the entire US Senate. Leonard Peikoff told us to vote for Kerry as president, mischaracterizing him as a only a typical liberal.

I don't doubt that Leonard Piekoff is in sincere in believing his theory, but he evidently lacks the factual knowledge required to give advice on the subject of contemporary political evaluation and does not understand what is required.

[Stephen Speicher]

I ask these questions because the charge of rationalization is as serious as the charge of immorality (in fact, a charge of rationalization is a charge of immorality) ...

I most emphatically disagree; rationalization is not necessarily an example of immorality. A person's inability to identify some aspect of their own psycho-epistemology can be an indication of a psychological problem, not neccesarily immorality. Rationalization can be a defense mechanism that functions automatically, a psychological process where the person's emotions cause an automatized response. That disconnect from reality may stem from a lack of or improper identification of introspection, but as an automatized process even an entire rationalistic structure need not be deserving of moral condemnation. It may be deserving of intellectual condemnation, but intellectual condemnation does not necessarily entail moral judgment.

[Burgess Laughlin]

His whole presentation of Republicans as theocrats is a rationalization.

You are begging the question.

I will ask again, but more specifically: What is your evidence for saying "[h]is whole presentation" is a rationalization? Please show proof of rationalization -- that is, if you are concerned about facts of reality as a basis for your allegation.

P. S. -- For anyone new to Objectivism, I recommend the "Rationalization" entry in The Ayn Rand Lexicon, pp. 406-407. It contains excerpts from Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It, pp. 21 (hb, but 18 pb) and 24 (20).