Tracinski on the coming election Options

[Jack Wakeland]

My good friend Robert Tracinski just published his election recommendations for 2006 in yesterday's TIA Daily. I called him up this morning and asked him if I could post them on this discussion board and he agreed. You've probably read similar comments on the election from me, but Rob addresses the topic with a more precisely cast context.

TIA Daily, October 31, 2006

"D" Stands for "Defeat"
The Democrats Stand for Defeat, Not Just in Iraq, But in the War on Terrorism
by Robert Tracinski

Shortly after September 11, I wrote an article titled "The Three Wars of World War III," in which I predicted that the War on Terrorism would involve three levels of conflict: a military conflict, a political conflict, and an ideological conflict. What I didn't realize is how closely the military aspect of the war would be tied to its political aspect.

This strange war has been moved forward, directly and immediately, not by breakthroughs on faraway battlefields, but by the results of our own elections here at home.

The pattern is persistent: a period of action moves America forward, followed by a frustrating period of inaction before an election, followed by another burst of action. We saw the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, followed by months of diplomatic lip-flapping in 2002, followed by an election—and then the invasion of Iraq in 2003. We suffered through another period of inaction in the face of the Sunni uprising in Fallujah in 2004, followed by an election—and then the crushing of the Sunni insurgency as a significant military force in late 2004 and 2005, with all of the dividends that this paid in Iraq and Lebanon. For the last six months to a year, we've been stuck in another period of inaction in the face of sectarian violence fueled by Shiite militias. The result has been the loss of all of America's momentum in Iraq and Lebanon. But President Bush is once again making the election a referendum on the war.

Perhaps this is the lesson President Bush took from the Vietnam War: that a war requires the support of the American people—a lesson he is taking too literally, seeking direct approval every two years in an election. And he has a funny way of going about it. At every election, he goes in promising to fight the war, while taking no significant new initiatives on the ground. Bush would be much better off asking the American people to support the war while the tanks are rolling and the enemy is being put on the defensive. Instead, he asks us to approve a vigorous war policy just at the point that he is offering us the opposite.

This is a great frustration to those of us who advocate voting for Bush and for the Republicans, and it might be tempting to wash our hands of the whole process—if the Democrats didn't insist on offering a far worse alternative.

The Democrats are consistently campaigning on policies that would lead to a disastrous defeat, not just in Iraq, but in the entire War on Terrorism, from Lebanon to Afghanistan.

That's true whether or not the Democratic candidate in your own particular district advocates withdrawal from Iraq. With control of both houses of Congress at stake, a vote for any Democratic candidate is a vote for a Democratic leadership in Congress, with the power to set the legislative agenda, hold hearings, issue subpoenas, and, crucially, control the Pentagon's purse strings.

This last is particularly crucial. If the Democrats gain control of the House, for example, the new head of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee will be Jack Murtha. The man who writes the Pentagon's budget will be an advocate of immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. The House Ways and Means Committee, which writes the federal budget, would be chaired by Harlem Democrat Charlie Rangel—who has already warned, "You've got to be able to pay for the war, don't you?"

To be sure, Democrats are divided on how they would prefer to lose the war. Some want an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, while others want a phased withdrawal. A recent New York Times story surveys the alternatives.

Nineteen House members sponsored a bill to cut off funds for the war. The Democratic Senate candidate in Pennsylvania opposes a deadline for ending American involvement in Iraq. The Democratic candidate for Senate in Ohio wants all the troops out within two years. Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the current minority leader who is likely to be the next speaker of the House if Democrats win back the chamber, is calling for immediate steps to begin to remove American forces, with all of them out of Iraq by the end of 2007…. [Richard] Holbrooke said that it was the administration, not the Democrats, that was in disarray on Iraq. The Democrats, he said, are united in their desire for disengagement. Disputes over when and where the troops would go are merely technical, he said.

Even worse, the Democrats have started a campaign advocating negotiations with Iran and Syria, the two main sponsors of the insurgency in Iraq, over what these dictatorships would do to "stabilize" Iraq after we leave.

This, then, is the Democrats' strategy in Iraq: declare defeat, and negotiate with Iran over the terms of our surrender.

If you imagine that this disaster will be limited to Iraq, think again. The Democrats have tried to portray Iraq as the bad war they oppose, while Afghanistan is the good war they support. But will the battle in Afghanistan get any easier if we surrender in Iraq? In the September 28 edition of TIA Daily, I indicated the much more probable result:

Ask yourself: what would happen if the jihadists achieved a victory over the American infidel in Iraq? Flush with victory and confirmed in the assumption that the Americans, for all of their technological superiority, don't have the moral fortitude to fight a war, where would they go next?

A lot of them would go to Pakistan and Afghanistan and launch an even bigger war against us there, which they would be confident of winning. And what would the leftists do then? They would throw up their hands and declared that Afghanistan was a mistake, too. Indeed, many on the left have already reached this point. Then all of Pakistan, along with its nuclear weapons, would fall to the Islamists, and Afghanistan, cut off from the support of the civilized world, would be doomed (again).

But don't worry. Maybe Pakistan's new Islamist rulers wouldn't go after us first. Maybe they would start a nuclear war with India, instead.

And for those of us who are concerned about the Iranian threat, a retreat from Iraq would be a green light to Iran to develop nuclear weapons with impunity (or to buy them from the North Koreans) and to achieve Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's goal of making Iran into a miniature superpower, ruling over an Islamist Axis that stretches from the Mediterranean to the Himalayas.

As bad as things are now, a Democratic victory is likely to make things much, much worse very soon. The Democratic plan, if it is enacted, would deliver America into a period of retreat, humiliation, and uncertainty that we haven't seen since the end of the Vietnam War—while delivering a glorious victory that would be seen as a historical vindication of the Islamist cause.

And after such a victory, how long will it be before the Islamists decide that the time has come to strike an even harder blow against America, attacking us again on our own soil, perhaps armed this time with a nuclear weapon? It is easy to debate the failings of the Bush administration at leisure, now that we have once again grown accustomed to the sense that our cities won't be blown up by terrorists. But it is not a feeling we should take for granted, and it is not an issue on which we should take our chances.

This is the choice we are being asked to make next Tuesday.

In the last week, I've linked to several reports (here, here, and here) about an Oval Office conversation between President Bush and a group of conservative journalists. What emerges from those reports is a sense that the president wants to win the war in Iraq and do whatever he can to protect America, but he's uncertain about how to do it.

That's why I cannot promise that a Republican election victory will lead to a glorious success on the battlefield. But with a Republican Congress, the Islamists will at least be denied an American defeat that vindicates their cause, and there will at least be a chance for some significant new action against the Islamists.

A report in today's New York Times makes the effect of the election on the Bush administration pretty clear. The US is considering sending more troops to Baghdad to take on the Shiite militias, but, the report continues,

it was unlikely that any announcements would be made until after the elections on November 7. Bush administration officials have said that any major changes in American policy will require bipartisan support, and they are clearly waiting to see which party will control the House, and possibly the Senate, before proceeding.

If Republicans maintain control of Congress, there will be a chance for another post-election American offensive, both in Iraq, and possibly against Iran.

The reason I regard this as a real possibility is because this president clearly understands that we have to fight the Islamists, and he now understands that Iran is our central enemy. Here is how he put it in a speech in early September:

[The Islamist] caliphate would be a totalitarian Islamic empire encompassing all current and former Muslim lands, stretching from Europe to North Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia…. [The] Shia strain of Islamic radicalism is just as dangerous, and just as hostile to America, and just as determined to establish its brand of hegemony across the broader Middle East. And the Shia extremists have achieved something that al Qaeda has so far failed to do: in 1979, they took control of a major power, the nation of Iran, subjugating its proud people to a regime of tyranny, and using that nation's resources to fund the spread of terror and pursue their radical agenda.

Like al Qaeda and the Sunni extremists, the Iranian regime has clear aims: they want to drive America out of the region, to destroy Israel, and to dominate the broader Middle East. To achieve these aims, they are funding and arming terrorist groups like Hezbollah, which allow them to attack Israel and America by proxy. Hezbollah, the source of the current instability in Lebanon, has killed more Americans than any terrorist organization except al Qaeda….

Iran's leaders, who back Hezbollah, have also declared their absolute hostility to America…. [Iran's president has] delivered this message to the American people: "If you would like to have good relations with the Iranian nation in the future… bow down before the greatness of the Iranian nation and surrender. If you don't accept [to do this], the Iranian nation will… force you to surrender and bow down."

America will not bow down to tyrants.

I couldn't have summed up the situation—and the proper answer—any better.

This is why there is reason to hope that President Bush will take more vigorous action after the election. A man who sees the picture this clearly and takes it this seriously will face, in his final years in office, the fear of being remembered as the leader who did nothing to stop the rise of a new Nazi Germany in the form of an Iranian dictatorship. And my judgment of President Bush is that he is not the kind of leader who will be content to leave this problem for a successor to solve.

This is not a certain hope, but it's not an empty one, either.

This, then, is our choice. It is not certain that, with a Republican majority, Bush will take vigorous action in Iraq and against Iran—but it is possible, and it is far more likely to happen if Republicans win next Tuesday's election. Nor is it certain that a Democratic congressional majority would have the power or the nerve to de-fund the war or plunge it into a permanent stalemate as we negotiate fruitlessly with our enemies. It is not completely certain that we will lose Iraq, surrender our interests to Iran, lose Afghanistan, and surrender Pakistan to the Islamists—but it is probable, and it is far more likely to happen if Democrats win the election.

On the one side is the possibility of victory, on the other, the near certainty of defeat. This is as clear-cut a choice as you are likely to find in today's politics.

So remember when you enter the polls next Tuesday: that "D" next to a candidate's name stands for "defeat."

Let's make sure that on Wednesday morning, we can say instead that it is the advocates of defeat who have been defeated.

For Objectivists, this is another fratricidal election season. I would much rather see us lined up in common opposition to the Islamo-facsist enemy without any internal disputes about the how and the why of it, but that has not happened. In yesterday's issue of TIA Daily Rob Tracincki also addressed the error in Leonard Peikoff's declaration of support for all candidates of the Democratic Party.

TIA Daily, October 31, 2006

Philosophy and Elections
What Do Elections Decide?
by Robert Tracinski

I have given my recommendation for next Tuesday's election above, but leading Objectivist philosopher Leonard Peikoff has stated a very opposite recommendation.

As a general practice, I don't like to directly address this kind of argument in TIA Daily. The main purpose of TIA Daily is to look outward at events in the wider world, not inward at debates and disputes within the Objectivist movement. But I have received enough inquiries from readers that I think it is necessary for me to comment on Dr. Peikoff's recommendation.

So readers know that I have included the whole context, I will reprint Dr. Peikoff's entire statement (presented in the form of a Q&A) in its entirety:

"Q: In view of the constant parade of jackassery which is Washington, is there any point in voting for candidates of either entrenched party? Throwing out the incumbents 'for a change' is to me an idea based on the philosophy that my head will stop hurting if I bang it on the opposite wall.

"A: How you cast your vote in the coming election is important, even if the two parties are both rotten. In essence, the Democrats stand for socialism, or at least some ambling steps in its direction; the Republicans stand for religion, particularly evangelical Christianity, and are taking ambitious strides to give it political power.

"Socialism—a fad of the last few centuries—has had its day; it has been almost universally rejected for decades. Leftists are no longer the passionate collectivists of the 30s, but usually avowed anti-ideologists, who bewail the futility of all systems. Religion, by contrast—the destroyer of man since time immemorial—is not fading; on the contrary, it is now the only philosophic movement rapidly and righteously rising to take over the government.

"Given the choice between a rotten, enfeebled, despairing killer, and a rotten, ever stronger, and ambitious killer, it is immoral to vote for the latter, and equally immoral to refrain from voting at all because 'both are bad.'

"The survival of this country will not be determined by the degree to which the government, simply by inertia, imposes taxes, entitlements, controls, etc., although such impositions will be harmful (and all of them and worse will be embraced or pioneered by conservatives, as Bush has shown). What does determine the survival of this country is not political concretes, but fundamental philosophy. And in this area the only real threat to the country now, the only political evil comparable to or even greater than the threat once posed by Soviet Communism, is religion and the Party which is its home and sponsor.

"The most urgent political task now is to topple the Republicans from power, if possible in the House and the Senate. This entails voting consistently Democratic, even if the opponent is a 'good' Republican.

"In my judgment, anyone who votes Republican or abstains from voting in this election has no understanding of the practical role of philosophy in man's actual life—which means that he does not understand the philosophy of Objectivism, except perhaps as a rationalistic system detached from the world.

"If you hate the Left so much that you feel more comfortable with the Right, you are unwittingly helping to push the US toward disaster, i.e., theocracy, not in 50 years, but, frighteningly, much sooner."

This is not the first time Dr. Peikoff has put forward what I identify, on the sense-of-life level, as the Dominique Francon voting strategy, after the character in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. As with Dominique Francon, this approach seems to be grounded in a sincere disgust with the current state of the world and with how far short it falls from the ideal. But also as with Dominique Francon, it implicitly regards the good as doomed in this rotten world, and offers only a negative solution. We're besieged by "killers," and our only choice is how we will die.

Regular readers of TIA Daily will know that I disagree with this outlook in general, and with Dr. Peikoff's position on recent elections in particular. I have given some of my reasons in my recommendations for the 2004 and 2006 elections, both above and elsewhere.

In particular, though I am alarmed by the goals of the far religious right, I regard the assertion that the Republican Party is ambitiously moving America toward an Evangelical Christian "theocracy" in the next few decades as an immense exaggeration. No one, to my knowledge, has offered compelling evidence for such a conclusion, and TIA Daily has frequently presented evidence to the contrary. This claim is also an injustice, in my view, to the many commentators and politicians on the right who have explicitly stood up against theocracy and censorship in the face of threats such as the "cartoon jihad."

But Dr. Peikoff has framed the issue, in this case, as involving the "the practical role of philosophy in man's actual life." This is a subject on which I have a great deal to say, some of which I think is new and may well differ from Dr. Peikoff's views. But I would like to focus for the moment on exactly how I think the role of philosophy applies to elections.

My election recommendation is based on the premise that politicians are not philosopher-kings. Because they are not philosophers, they often hold a haphazard, contradictory mix of good and bad philosophical premises, and they rarely follow any one premise to its full, deductive logical conclusion. In this respect, they reflect the voters who elect them. Because they are not kings, they are constrained by the limits of their power and by the constant pressure of political opposition from enacting their entire personal philosophy into law.

In practice, a politician's ability to act is largely determined by what he campaigns on. If a politician or a party campaigns on a promise to fight a war, for example, and not on a promise to impose religious controls, it cannot easily overstep its election mandate—as the Republicans found out during the Terri Schiavo case, which was a political disaster for Congress and the administration.

All of this is a complex way of saying that elections are about the issues. A legislature is not a free-floating philosophical debating society. Its agenda is driven by the concrete demands of the day: budget deficits, inflation, taxes, immigration—and war. Those are the issue that voters are called upon to decide in an election, and they are usually called upon to decide these issues one at a time, to the extent that an election focuses on a single central issue, as this one does.

Of course, certain philosophical assumptions lay behind every political debate, but a nation's wider philosophical culture is not decided by elections. It is shaped by the writings and arguments of public intellectuals, from the best journalists and political commentators to those academics, artists, and philosophers who have something worthwhile to contribute to the debate. This intellectual contest is much wider and more important than any particular election. The mute, short-term "yes" or "no" of casting one's vote in an election affects what will happen in the next two years; it is one's action in the wider intellectual debate that affects what will happen in the next 20 years.

As for Dr. Peikoff's own views on "the practical role of philosophy in man's actual life" and specifically on how this applies to elections, I cannot comment on those views because he does not state them, either here or in any other publicly available form. (I am told that Dr. Peikoff's views on the subject have just been made available, in the past few days, in the form of downloadable audio of a fifteen-hour lecture series—which no one could reasonably be expected to listen to, absorb, and understand between now and November 7.) Whatever merit there may be to his views on this subject, they are not presented, explained, or proven in the mere 300 or so words Dr. Peikoff devotes to the argument. They are certainly not demonstrated sufficiently to demand the reader's agreement.

And that is the main reason I found it necessary to comment on this statement about the election. Dr. Peikoff's second-to-last paragraph states:

"In my judgment, anyone who votes Republican or abstains from voting in this election has no understanding of the practical role of philosophy in man's actual life—which means that he does not understand the philosophy of Objectivism, except perhaps as a rationalistic system detached from the world."

This is entirely inappropriate.

Bear in mind that Dr. Peikoff is addressing this statement to Objectivists, to those who have read Ayn Rand's works, accepted her philosophy as true, and who regard her philosophy and their understanding of it as a profound value. To tell them, on the basis of this brief statement, that if they don't accept his exact recommendation on how to vote in an election—and in a mid-term congressional election at that—that they don't understand Objectivism, is a form of intellectual bullying.

In The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand described the Argument from Intimidation as "an ultimatum demanding that the victim renounce a given idea without discussion, under threat of being considered morally unworthy." Dr. Peikoff's statement amounts to an epistemological Argument from Intimidation, an ultimatum demanding that the reader vote in a certain way, under threat of being considered epistemologically unworthy, incapable of understanding Objectivism "except perhaps as a rationalistic system detached from the world."

One cannot make agreement on such a narrow, concrete, complex topic as an election into a test of anyone's philosophical understanding. On an issue that requires factual judgments about the ideas and character of politicians and tactical calculations about the likely results of different political outcomes, even the most accomplished philosopher is not guaranteed to come to the correct conclusion. A respect for the independence and objectivity of other people's minds requires that such issues be open to civil discussion and debate.

For that reason, I much prefer the attitude stated by a prominent Objectivist intellectual in the September 1992 issue of The Intellectual Activist:

"I want to stress at this point that the above is [my] recommendation for November, not Ayn Rand's or Objectivism's. A philosophy is a view of the universe; it does not back candidates. There can be legitimate differences among people of the same philosophy in regard to political tactics and strategy. So please think the issues over and judge for yourself. I have merely told you how (and why) I propose to vote in November."

The author? Leonard Peikoff.