Today, it was reported that Pope Benedict XVI, on a trip to that Caribbean paradise, has said, "...Marxism was out of place in the contemporary world," and has urged Cubans to find "new models".
"Today it is evident that Marxist ideology in the way it was conceived no longer corresponds to reality."
Not that it ever did correspond, but recognizing even this much is what I call "progress".
Reading that story, my eye happened on another story linked from September 14, 2010, which is much more entertaining, and I don't know how the hell I ever missed it:
"Capitalist storm clouds loom over Havana after state cuts 1M jobs ... Cuban workers told to become entrepreneurs in bid to boost island's private sector"
This is brilliant -- the communist nation held up as the model of communism for the West for 50 years is abandoning communism and laying off one million government workers.
Let's put that in perspective: Cuba has a population of 11.2 million people. That's almost ten percent of the population are being given pink slips. If it was the U.S. -- with a population of 312 million -- that would be the equivalent of laying off almost 28 million government workers.
Note that total Federal Government employment today is about 3 million. (And isn't it interesting that the population of Cuba has plateaued? What would have caused that?)
Echoing the Pope, a year and a half earlier, Fidel Castro told a correspondent of The Atlantic magazine:
"The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore."
The shock heard 'round the communist world. Not that it ever did work, of course, but I'll give him that shred of his pride to hang on to.
It was supposed to be the start of a brave new world in which the customer was king. But the teenage boy in the barber's chair stared at his reflection, aghast and almost crying. "What have you done?" he asked, caressing uneven clumps on a shorn scalp.
The barber, a fortysomething man with a grubby white coat, put down the scissors, lit a cigarette, and shrugged. "Looks OK to me. Don't know what you're on about."
That about sums up Obama's approach. But the difference is that Cuba is fleeing from communism, while Obama is still racing towards his Brave New World.
... providing good customer service, let alone expanding market share, is an alien concept to many accustomed to receiving the same pittance wage regardless of job performance. "I don't want to take over this place," Luis, the barber, who preferred not to give his surname, told the Guardian. "How do I know it'll make a profit? How do I pay suppliers?"
Oh, the pain of independence. But he'd better start learning: sheep shears do not a profitable barber make.
"The Communist party document admitted lack of experience, insufficient skill levels and low initiative could sink new enterprises. "Many of them could fail within a year," it says.
This just sounds like the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act -- or just Solyndra.
...Unemployment last year was officially 1.7%, but with average monthly salaries of only $20, supplemented by a ration book and free health care and education, many Cubans make minimal efforts, prompting an old joke: "They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work."
And there you have the Obama vision for all of us. "Hope and change" really meant "hope for loose change."
"Leftwingers abroad may feel let down by the cuts, but Cuban officials believe the thriving black market is an indicator that the private sector will soak up surplus labour."
God knows, Barack "Che" Obama is probably feeling let down. Raul Castro, brother of Fidel, said,
"We have to erase forever the notion that Cuba is the only country in the world in which people can live without working," he told the national assembly last month.
Can anyone imagine Barack "Mao" Obama saying such a thing? Easier to imagine him asking to extend unemployment benefits by another trillion or three.
[Said Raul Castro,] The decades-old US embargo – a crippling, punitive measure – could no longer be blamed for all the island's woes...
And over here, capitalism can no longer be blamed for all our woes, after the decades-long, crippling, punitive measures that have been imposed on it.
Even the Cuban Labor Federation gets it, as they issued this mea culpa:
"Our state cannot and should not continue maintaining companies, productive entities, services and budgeted sectors with bloated payrolls [and] losses that hurt the economy," said the official Cuban labour federation, which announced the news. ...It was no longer possible to protect and subsidise salaries on an unlimited basis and cuts will affect all government sectors, said the labour federation. "Losses that hurt our economy are ultimately counterproductive, creating bad habits and distorting worker conduct."
If Obama wants to continue appointing communists to be his Czars, I could probably get behind these guys.
Leftwingers abroad may feel let down by the cuts, but Cuban officials believe the thriving black market is an indicator that the private sector will soak up surplus labour. ...One Havana-based western diplomat was less sanguine about Cuba's response ... "People knew this was coming, but now it's here, it's real, and they're worried. Bosses will get rid of the least productive employees, the ones who don't work or show up for work. The type of people who may lack the get up and go to start a business."
Amen to that.
Cuba has a lot of growing up to do, and that last quote echoed something said by John Galt in Atlas Shrugged -- his words are good advice for anyone on the long road back to independence and self-respect:
"Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours."
Postscript from the Department of Life meets Grand Irony:
The day after writing this, I read this report of Obama's trip to look across the DMZ and see North Korea through binoculars, where he said,
"It is like you are in a time warp," Obama said Sunday, after he toured a rocky border post in the demilitarised buffer zone that has split the Korean peninsular for longer than he has been alive. "It is like you are looking across 50 years into a country that has missed 40 years or 50 years of progress..."
"If a country can't feed its people effectively, if it can't make anything of any use to anybody, if it has no exports other than weapons and even those aren't ones that in any way would be considered state of the art. If it can't deliver on any indicators of well-being... for its people... then you'd think you'd want to try something different. There are certain things that just don't work and what they are doing doesn't work."
This doesn't mean Obama "gets it", or "gets" anything at all. From his perspective, those dumb North Koreans simply don't know how to properly run a communist state.
In a related news item that has exploded over the web, at the summit he attended in South Korea -- concerning nuclear proliferation -- Obama got caught talking very candidly to Russian President Dmitri Medvedev in this exchange:
President Obama: "On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved but it’s important for him to give me space."
President Medvedev: "Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you…"
President Obama: "This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility."
President Medvedev: "I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir, and I stand with you."
Flexibility for what? On all of what "issues"?
You have to wonder what Obama's true allegiances are. Well, I know. And I'm sure Vladimir knows. You all recall my many posts on Obama's goal of unilateral nuclear disarmament of the United States? My claims that after the election he will attempt to eliminate all U.S. nuclear weapons by Executive fiat? Stay tuned. After the election he will have more "flexibility," for this, and so much more.
Many people are in love with their e-books -- and the convenience is certainly a factor. I'll stick with my print copies.
But when I hear from many friends who delight in their ability to dispose of all their print books -- and many of them are literally throwing their books in the garbage -- I imagine the most-pessimistic scenario: post-apocalyptic, end of the world stuff, and descent into a new Dark Ages.
Maybe it's the aftermath of a global nuclear armageddon, or maybe it's just slow decay into world-wide despotism and economic decline. But suppose before it happens most of the print industry ceases to be cause of e-books. Maybe in the post-Armageddon period most of the print libraries are burned to the ground, or burned for heating. Everybody has their e-books, of course. But there's no way to power the damned things. Industrial civilization is in smoking ruins. No power plants, no chargers.
But it gets worse: the microchips and hard-drives that all the knowledge of humanity is stored on -- those electronic devices die of their own accord after awhile. Atoms move around randomly over time, cosmic rays break down crystal structures, heat de-magnetizes disk platters. Most of it won't work after 20 years, but after 50 years? Not much will remain.
So your world has ended, most libraries are gone, everyone got rid of their print books -- and e-books go permanently dead. Education goes completely in the toilet in the short term, without books. And in the long-term -- the utter lack of books will greatly facilitate the decline into a _Very_ _Dark_ _Age_.
There's an interesting connection between two recent news items. One was this fascinating description of the prison camps in North Korea, a place so horrific that it almost defies description.
The other was this story today, which describes Harry Reid's sponsorship of the latest attempt to regulate the internet under the guise of the need for "cybersecurity. Coming after the recently failed attempt to "craft" a bill (ever notice reporters always say "craft" when it's for legislation they back?) to stop internet piracy (SOPA / PIPA), or not-so-failed attempts to expand the oversight of the FCC via the imposition of "net neutrality" regulations (after Congress refused to authorize them by legislation), I'm struck that, even though one can find legitimate rationalizations for "cybersecurity" or control of online piracy, it's evidence of a deeper pattern -- which surely must be given scrutiny and consideration, given the connection I think exists to the first news item.
One can always find rationalizations for the necessity of these things, but this latest cybersecurity bill that the Democrats are trying to ram through (tell me again why is it more important than everything else right now??) is clearly evidence, as I said, of a pattern and a motive that's more evil and deliberate than simple incremental encroachment of government power -- a motive that even many of its supporters wouldn't dare admit to themselves, but which I think the Democratic leadership, and Obama in particular, does consciously have -- a motive which all the "flaws" in these pieces of legislation and new rules, hidden under the veneer of the "public interest", have been adding up to:
The power to impose full censorship of the internet, so they can muzzle critics.
This is what connects to that North Korean gulag, and not very metaphorically, given time.
You'll always find plenty of naive people who might actually believe these kinds of bills and regulations are only about legitimate purposes to prevent fraud, stop intellectual property theft or protect national security -- but I don't think that's the reason here. To quote the Goldfinger Principle, "once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action."
I think there's an organized motive behind the pattern of bills and regulations, evidenced by the way they keep surfacing over and over until passed. For instance, the net neutrality regulations were imposed unilaterally by the FCC, without any statutory or constitutional authority, when Congress refused to authorize them. Then SOPA / PIPA came along, and you can bet your bottom dollar they'll be revived in some new form, very soon, probably around 2AM on a Federal holiday -- or Obama will simply have the FCC or DHS unlaterally declare the authority.
The one thing you can count on in all these sorts of bills is a flawed content that one must notice always leaves the door wide open for full statutory control of the internet by means of some convoluted legal qualifier or interpretation.
Why?
If you buy into my premise, inquiring minds have to ask: why do they want full control to censor the internet?
One must also pay attention to the timing of these bills: the proponents appear determined to have them get passed before the election, despite much more urgent things the Congress could be doing -- like pass a budget, what a concept. As Ayn Rand noted in the early 1960's, the last time the Left attempted to authorize FCC censorship,
"...a federal commissioner may never utter a single word for or against any program. But what do you suppose will happen if and when, with or without his knowledge, a third-assistant or a second cousin or just a nameless friend from Washington whispers to a television executive that the commissioner does not like producer X or does not approve of writer Y or takes a great interest in the career of starlet Z or is anxious to advance the cause of the United Nations?"
Pick your radical Left-wing (or Right-wing) cause that needs the support and help of a muzzle. In the 1960s, they failed -- except in the sense that over time the brainwashing of the media was completed by their takeover of the school system -- so today, most print and TV suffers a self-imposed de facto censorship (with the exception, perhaps, of Fox and a few others). But most people now get their news from the internet -- and that threatens the agenda of the Left, which is once again trying to regain the upper hand to control the one medium they haven't muzzled.
"Censorship, in its old-fashioned meaning, is a government edict that forbids the discussion of some specific subjects or ideas—such, for instance, as sex, religion or criticism of government officials—an edict enforced by the government’s scrutiny of all forms of communication prior to their public release. But for stifling the freedom of men’s minds the modern method is much more potent; it rests on the power of nonobjective law; it neither forbids nor permits anything; it never defines or specifies; it merely delivers men’s lives, fortunes, careers, ambitions into the arbitrary power of a bureaucrat who can reward or punish at whim. It spares the bureaucrat the troublesome necessity of committing himself to rigid rules—and it places upon the victims the burden of discovering how to please him, with a fluid unknowable as their only guide."
Censorship plays an utterly crucial role in the decline of a country into full dictatorship, because once in place, anything goes -- totalitarian leaders find it much easier to "lock down" a nation when they are the gatekeepers of what can be said or heard -- and what can't. Censorship is not merely a defining characteristic of dictatorship, it's the essential means to impose and sustain a dictatorship -- much more so than simple brutality. To quote Ellsworth Toohey,
"...It's the soul, Peter, the soul. Not whips or swords or fire or guns. That's why the Caesars, the Attilas, the Napoleons were fools and did not last. We will. The soul, Peter, is that which can't be ruled. It must be broken. Drive a wedge in, get your fingers on it--and the man is yours. You won't need a whip--he'll bring it to you and ask to be whipped. Set him in reverse--and his own mechanism will do your work for you. Use him against himself."
The means to the soul are the ideas, opinions and voices that are heard. What people think and know and think they know. That is the object of censorship.
Once in place, it becomes almost impossible for a country to change course without revolution, and practically, in this day and age, constructive forms of revolution are effectively impossible, Hollywood to the contrary notwithstanding.
I invoke exhibit A: North Korea. Today, physical revolutions have become little more than exercises in substituting one dictator for another, and anyone who thinks otherwise simply hasn't a clue about the effectiveness of modern methods of warfare.
Putting aside the masterminds of this latest attempted putsch of the internet, the naive dupes who have been supporting these bills or regulations break down into two camps. The largest camp comprises the truly stupid, including either the well-intentioned pragmatists who are too-willing to accept anything they hear, or who are unable to grasp the deeply flawed nature of a legislation that grants government powers to trample individual rights unfettered.
Then there is the smaller sub-group (at least, outside of Congress) of grifters-of-the-moment receiving political payola to give some "friends" advantage over someone else. In Atlas Shrugged terms, this latter faction are the Orren Boyle / Jim Taggart types paying off the Wesley Mouch types.
I could slice and dice this endlessly, but without going down that path, let's break this down more fundamentally to include the masterminds themselves. Including even the human dross of naive fools who think they are "doing good", we can categorize everyone by means of two definitions provided by Ayn Rand: what she called (through the voice of John Galt) the mystics of spirit and the mystics of muscle.
"The mystics of both schools, who preach the creed of sacrifice, are germs that attack you through a single sore: your fear of relying on your mind. They tell you that they possess a means of knowledge higher than the mind, a mode of consciousness superior to reason—like a special pull with some bureaucrat of the universe who gives them secret tips withheld from others. The mystics of spirit declare that they possess an extra sense you lack: this special sixth sense consists of contradicting the whole of the knowledge of your five. The mystics of muscle do not bother to assert any claim to extrasensory perception: they merely declare that your senses are not valid, and that their wisdom consists of perceiving your blindness by some manner of unspecified means. Both kinds demand that you invalidate your own consciousness and surrender yourself into their power. They offer you, as proof of their superior knowledge, the fact that they assert the opposite of everything you know, and as proof of their superior ability to deal with existence, the fact that they lead you to misery, self-sacrifice, starvation, destruction."
You can see the connection to censorship. Whether your senses are not valid, or whether these mystics are really smarter than you, either way, they claim superior knowledge that must be imposed by them.
Aka, via censorship and state controlled organs for disseminating knowledge to the lowing herd. ("Lowing"; verb: (of a cow) Make a characteristic deep sound: "the lowing of cattle".)
Wherever the adherents of either school gravitate on the parasitic food chain, in a sense they always converge to the same level: a mystic of spirit will always gravitate to power to impose his ideas, and a mystic of muscle will always gravitate to manipulating the means of the spirit -- ideas -- to cement his power.
The two types are best summed up by two quotes. The first comes from villain Floyd Ferris in Atlas Shrugged:
Dr. Ferris smiled. "Don't you suppose we knew it?" he said, his tone suggesting that he was letting his patent-leather hair down to impress a fellow criminal by a display of superior cunning.
"We've waited a long time to get something on you. You honest men are such a problem and such a headache. But we knew you'd slip sooner or later-and this is just what we wanted."
"You seem to be pleased about it."
"Don't I have good reason to be?"
"But, after all, I did break one of your laws."
"Well, what do you think they're for?"
Dr. Ferris did not notice the sudden look on Rearden's face, the look of a man hit by the first vision of that which he had sought to see.
Dr. Ferris was past the stage of seeing; he was intent upon delivering the last blows to an animal caught in a trap.
"Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against--then you'll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We're after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you'd better get wise to it. There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted-and you create a nation of law-breakers--and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Rearden, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with."
The second quote comes again from villain Ellsworth Toohey in The Fountainhead. More than any other, he sums up the deepest motives of the perpetrators behind our own little drama (for instance, the motives of Barack Obama), as he explains what he's been trying to accomplish by orchestrating the destruction of the independent man represented by hero Howard Roark:
"I don't want to kill him. I want him in jail. You understand? In jail. In a cell. Behind bars. Locked, stopped, strapped--and alive. He'll get up when they tell him to. He'll eat what they give him. He'll move when he's told to move and stop when he's told. He'll walk to the jute mill, when he's told, and he'll work as he's told. They'll push him, if he doesn't move fast enough, and they'll slap his face when they feel like it, and they'll beat him with rubber hose if he doesn't obey. And he'll obey. He'll take orders. He'll take orders!"
Today that means: control of the internet. To quote Galt once again,
"Make no mistake about the character of mystics. To undercut your consciousness has always been their only purpose throughout the ages—and power, the power to rule you by force, has always been their only lust.
This is the essence of the flurry of bills and regulations promoted by the Obama administration.
"Did you wonder what is wrong with the world? ...All your gangs of mystics, of spirit or muscle, are fighting one another for power to rule you..."
If I may paraphrase his next sentence: "...snarling that suppression of malcontents is the solution for all the problems of your spirit and that hope and undefined change is the solution for all the problems of your body — you who have agreed to have no mind."
To continue the same quote:
"Granting man less dignity than they grant to cattle, ignoring what an animal trainer could tell them — that no animal can be trained by fear, that a tortured elephant will trample its torturer, but will not work for him or carry his burdens — they expect man to continue to produce electronic tubes, supersonic airplanes, atom-smashing engines and interstellar telescopes, with his ration of meat for reward and a lash on his back for incentive."
That is, with TARP and "stimulus" as his reward and the fear of a regulator as his incentive.
"A mystic is a man who surrendered his mind at its first encounter with the minds of others."
Everyone imagines everyone is just like themselves -- this is one reason that dishonest people imagine everyone else is dishonest -- and likewise, the person who surrenders his mind to the group rationalizes that everyone should surrender their minds to the group.
The means is censorship.
"Every dictator is a mystic, and every mystic is a potential dictator... His lust is to command, not to convince: conviction requires an act of independence and rests on the absolute of an objective reality. What he seeks is power over reality and over men's means of perceiving it, their mind, the power to interpose his will between existence and consciousness, as if, by agreeing to fake the reality he orders them to fake, men would, in fact, create it. ...No matter whose welfare he professes to serve, be it the welfare of God or of that disembodied gargoyle he describes as 'The People,'...in fact, in reality, on earth, his ideal is death, his craving is to kill, his only satisfaction is to torture. ...Death is the premise at the root of their theories, death is the goal of their actions in practice — and you are the last of their victims."
Before the last Presidential election, I predicted everything Obama was, is and would do (see Good Night, America, for instance) So on that note, I must say: if he isn't removed from office in the coming election, this last quote captures our fate in his hands--maybe not literally in his second term, but over time, by his successors.
To end on a more positive note, with regard to both Obama and the Senate's latest incarnation for regulating the internet,
"...there comes a point, in the defeat of any man of virtue, when his own consent is needed for evil to win."
One thing I watch for closely is how Obama is working to undermine the military. My track record of prediction is quite good since he was elected -- 100%. Elimination of 2/3 of the U.S nuclear arsenal while letting the Russians increase their nuclear forces -- under the new START treaty. His "budget deal" that gave him the authority to cut DOD budget 50% -- as long as the Congressional "super-committee" failed to reach agreement on other cuts (they did fail -- the Dems on that committee were the most left-wing, including known communists like Patty Murray). His cutting of F22 fighter program, and soon the F35. And more. The common denominator is: eviscerate the military.
- Delay development of a new ballistic missile submarine by two years.
- Eliminate six of the Air Force's tactical-air fighter squadrons and retire or divest 130 aircraft used for moving troops and equipment.
- Retire seven Navy cruisers and two smaller amphibious ships early, postpone the purchase of a big-deck amphibious ship by one year and postpone the planned purchase of a number of other vessels for several years.
- Eliminate two Army heavy brigades stationed in Europe and compensate by rotating U.S. based units into the region for training and exercises.
- Study the possibility of further reducing the size of U.S. nuclear arsenal.
This last is the primary goal of Obama. The submarines -- secondary. The others -- gravy.
Then this next story, Senior NSC aide vetted for Pentagon assistant secretary post, about an NSC aide being sent to the Pentagon to help with budget cuts. Well, Obama is putting a lot of NSC aides over in the Pentagon right now to help with budget cuts. People close to him. Reliable people. But I immediately thought, what about this new guy, Derek Chollet? Who is he? What's his background? Does he have any suspicious associates?
Well, it turns out my first guess was exactly right--he was a "special advisor" to Strobe Talbott during the Clinton Administration. So what? Well, the most important Russian defector after the fall of the Soviet Union, Sergei Tretyakov, who used to run the KGB mission at the U.N. (hundreds of KGB agents) said Talbott was "our most important intelligence asset". During the Clinton Administration.
I would ask Tretyakov more, but two summers ago Putin had him killed -- "heart attack". (See my post The Spy Who Came in from the Cold ... to a place getting rather chilly.) Two weeks after Tretyakov's surprise death on June 13, 2010, you'll note, we arrested 10 Russian moles and were going to prosecute them--but Obama rushed to send them back to Russia.
And people wonder why I suggest Obama is a Russian mole himself? His every action is consistent with that end. Quite aside from the communist parents (two fathers) and grandparents, KGB mentor (Frank Davis), ad infinitum.
I think Obama is gearing up to win the election. When that happens -- the gloves come off. I'm 100% sure he will do everything in his power to completely eliminate the U.S. nuclear deterrent. Stay tuned.
"Listen to Mr. Thompson's report on the world crisis, November 22!"
The newspapers did not mention the outbreaks of violence that had begun to burst across the country--but she watched them through the reports of train conductors about bullet-riddled cars, dismantled tracks, attacked trains, besieged stations, in. Nebraska, in Oregon, in Texas, in Montana--the futile, doomed outbreaks, prompted by nothing but despair, ending in nothing but destruction. Some were the explosions of local gangs; some spread wider. There were districts that rose in blind rebellion, arrested the local officials, expelled the agents of Washington, killed the tax collectors--then, announcing their secession from the country, went on to the final extreme of the very evil that had destroyed them, as if fighting murder with suicide: went on to seize all property within their reach, to declare community bondage of all to all, and to perish within a week, their meager loot consumed, in the bloody hatred of all for all, in the chaos of no rule save that of the gun, to perish under the lethargic thrust of a few worn soldiers sent out from Washington to bring order to the ruins.
The newspapers did not mention it. The editorials went on speaking of self-denial as the road to future progress, of self-sacrifice as the moral imperative, of greed as the enemy, of love as the solution--their threadbare phrases as sickeningly sweet as the odor of ether in a hospital...
It was the first acknowledgment of the unacknowledged. The announcements began to appear a week in advance and went ringing across the country. "Mr. Thompson will give the people a report on the world crisis! Listen to Mr. Thompson on every radio station and television channel at 8 P.M., on November 22!"
First, the front pages of the newspapers and the shouts of the radio voices had explained it: "To counteract the fears and rumors spread by the enemies of the people, Mr. Thompson will address the country on November 22 and will give us a full report on the state of the world in this solemn moment of global crisis. Mr. Thompson will put an end to those sinister forces whose purpose is to keep us in terror and despair. He will bring light into the darkness of the world and will show us the way out of our tragic problems...
Then the chorus broke loose and went growing day by day. "Listen to Mr. Thompson on November 22!" said daily headlines. "Don't forget Mr. Thompson on November 22!" cried radio stations at the end of every program. "Mr. Thompson will tell you the truth!..."
"Don't despair! Listen to Mr. Thompson!" said pennants on government cars, "Don't give up! Listen to Mr. Thompson!" said banners in offices and shops. "Have faith! Listen to Mr. Thompson!" said voices in churches. "Mr. Thompson will give you the answer!" wrote army airplanes across the sky, the letters dissolving in space, and only the last two words remaining by the time the sentence was completed.
Public loud-speakers were built in the squares of New York for the day of the speech, and came to rasping life once an hour, in time with the ringing of distant clocks, to send over the worn rattle of the traffic, over the heads of the shabby crowds, the sonorous, mechanical cry of an alarm-toned voice: "Listen to Mr. Thompson's report on the world crisis, November 22!"
Over on Facebook, where I sometimes ruminate to my demise, there pops up, now and then, like a multi-headed hydra out of a jack-in-the-box, the epi-phenomena of friends demanding their friends de-friend other friends who aren't acting like friends. That is, acquaintences in the virtual drawing-room of the web who are -- shall we say? -- consorting with the devil.
I think there are multiple reasons for these recurring moral pronouncements and condemnations of moral turpitude, with accompanied vitriolic demands for "de-friending".
The most superficial of the rationalizations for these assertions is that anyone disagreeing with Ayn Rand or Leonard Peikoff on this or that issue are corrupting Objectivism, damaging a great value, etc. Therefore if you stand for truth and goodness and don't wish to sanction evil, you must prove your rectitude in the court of public opinion and dissociate yourself from the blight, as well as dissociate yourself from the blighters of the blight.
Let's go beyond superficialities. I think the real underlying notion motivating these pronouncements is less about religious conformity than it is the false notion that a self-evident argument can be made in a simple assertion--from which comes the conviction that anyone who fails to acknowledge the facts of a matter (as presented and presumed by an apparently omniscient presenter) is inherently dishonest.
I'm intentionally not naming names on either side of the equation. I'd prefer that people form their own judgments without coloring things with personalities. For the purposes of this point, I'm asking everyone else who comments here not to name names, either.
Sometimes the pronouncements and demands are simple ones, but sometimes they are accompanied by such overwhelming "evidence" as can be crammed into a paragraph on a Facebook thread -- a link to a damning blog post, a youtube video, the latest insult, the bloodied candlestick in the broomcloset of Colonel Mustard. But it's all held up as incontrovertible proof of intellectual dishonesty, corruption and even evil, which only a blind man can't see and a dishonest person won't see.
You see the syllogism at play here: "I present here incontrovertible proof of the evil of person X. Here it is. If you won't grasp it, you are evil, too. And if you know someone who won't grasp it, they are evil. And if you don't divorce yourself from all evil associations, you are even more evil. So there. Listen up and fly right. Yours, God."
Or at least, Demi-god.
Strangely, I think the people most often associated with this technique (I won't call it reason) are generally honest and well-intentioned in some way. At least, as I've seen it on Facebook. They want to do right. They want to stand up and defend the good. But along the way, they are betraying the very thing they claim to be standing up for.
Their error is a disastrous form of intrinsicism.
I don't mean that the way some are going to jump to the conclusion -- a religious orthodoxy. That may be the eventual consequence. Hold that thought if you wish. More specifically, I mean:
The idea that a rational mind can grasp truth by simple statements.
That is, the idea that the truth is inherent in simple statements -- as if an assertion and a few randomly selected words and facts constitute sufficient intellectual grounds for another mind to reach a complex judgment about another person's thoughts and motives.
I wish I could color that statement in red, highlight it, capitalize it, enlarge the font and add a screaming voice with a brooding background musical accompaniment. Oh, wait. I can:
The idea that a rational mind can grasp truth by simple statements is false.
Sans musical accompaniment, unfortunately.
Many people take from Ayn Rand the idea that moral pronouncements and praise of the good or condemnation of the evil is proper. Well, yes, it is. If you know what the hell you are talking about. But in lieu of that it's foolish, stupid, or evil in itself.
Moral pronouncements are easy. Anyone with vocal chords can make them. Rational judgment and reasoned arguments are much harder. And in a contest between those two, I've noticed that people who lack the ability to do the former particularly well are much more inclined to do the latter. Call it a form of empowerment.
But if reasoned argument is hard, it appears that respect for the independent minds of those to whom the assertions are made is the most difficult of all.
Let me say this unequivocally: any person who attempts to impose by threats their assessments on others is operating on a standard of social metaphysics and acting completely contrary to the most fundamental principles of Objectivism.
Those who claim to be defending Ayn Rand or Leonard Peikoff while employing a method that openly rejects the Objectivist positions on independence and reason are themselves guiltier than those making errors about any other aspect of the philosophy.
By way of reminder, here are some quotes from Ayn Rand on the subject. The particular sources will be left as an exercise. In no particular order:
"We never make assertions, Miss Taggart," said Hugh Akston. "That is the moral crime peculiar to our enemies. We do not tell—we show. We do not claim—we prove. It is not your obedience that we seek to win, but your rational conviction. You have seen all the elements of our secret. The conclusion is now yours to draw--we can help you to name it, but not to accept it-the sight, the knowledge and the acceptance must be yours."
"I don't ask for opinions."
"What do you go by?"
"Judgment."
"Well, whose judgment did you take?"
"Mine."
"But whom did you consult about it?"
"Nobody."
"I am not committing the contemptible act of asking you to take me on faith. You have to live by your own knowledge and judgment."
"If you want to see an abstract principle, such as moral action, in material form--there it is. Look at it, ...You had to act on your own judgment, you had to have the capacity to judge, the courage to stand on the verdict of your mind..."
"Consider the reasons which make us certain that we are right," said Hugh Akston, "but not the fact that we are certain. If you are not convinced, ignore our certainty. Don't be tempted to substitute our judgment for your own,"
"Don't rely on our knowledge of what's best for your future," said Mulligan. "We do know, but it can't be best until you know it."
"Don't consider our interests or desires," said Francisco. "You have no duty to anyone but yourself."
"Cherryl... Cherryl, you poor kid, ...You don't have to see through the eyes of others, hold onto yours, stand on your own judgment, you know that what is, is--say it aloud, like the holiest of prayers, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise."
"No, you do not have to live; it is your basic act of choice; but if you choose to live, you must live as a man—by the work and the judgment of your mind."
"The most depraved sentence you can now utter is to ask: Whose reason? The answer is: Yours. No matter how vast your knowledge or how modest, it is your own mind that has to acquire it. It is only with your own knowledge that you can deal. It is only your own knowledge that you can claim to possess or ask others to consider. Your mind is your only judge of truth—and if others dissent from your verdict, reality is the court of final appeal. Nothing but a man's mind can perform that complex, delicate, crucial process of identification which is thinking. Nothing can direct the process but his own judgment. Nothing can direct his judgment but his moral integrity."
"Learn to distinguish the difference between errors of knowledge and breaches of morality. An error of knowledge is not a moral flaw, provided you are willing to correct it; only a mystic would judge human beings by the standard of an impossible, automatic omniscience. But a breach of morality is the conscious choice of an action you know to be evil, or a willful evasion of knowledge, a suspension of sight and of thought. That which you do not know, is not a moral charge against you; but that which you refuse to know, is an account of infamy growing in your soul. Make every allowance for errors of "knowledge; do not forgive or accept any breach of morality. Give the benefit of the doubt to those who seek to know; but treat as potential killers those specimens of insolent depravity who make demands upon you, announcing that they have and seek no reasons, proclaiming, as a license, that they 'just feel it’
"Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgment and nothing can help you escape it—that no substitute can do your thinking, as no pinch-hitter can live your life—that the vilest form of self-abasement and self-destruction is the subordination of your mind to the mind of another, the acceptance of an authority over your brain, the acceptance of his assertions as facts, his say—so as truth, his edicts as middle-man between your consciousness and your existence."
"This much is true: the most selfish of all things is the independent mind that recognizes no authority higher than its own and no value higher than its judgment of truth. You are asked to sacrifice your intellectual integrity, your logic, your reason, your standard of truth—in favor of becoming a prostitute whose standard is the greatest good for the greatest number.
"Every man will stand or fall, live or die by his rational judgment."
"You have cried that man's sins are destroying the world and you have cursed human nature for its unwillingness to practice the virtues you demanded. Since virtue, to you, consists of sacrifice, you have demanded more sacrifices at every successive disaster. In the name of a return to morality, you have sacrificed all those evils which you held as the cause of your plight. You have sacrificed justice to mercy. You have sacrificed independence to unity. You have sacrificed reason to faith."
"...conviction requires an act of independence and rests on the absolute of an objective reality."
"The basic need of the creator is independence. The reasoning mind cannot work under any form of compulsion. It cannot be curbed, sacrificed or subordinated to any consideration whatsoever. It demands total independence in function and in motive. To a creator, all relations with men are secondary."
"The choice is not self-sacrifice or domination. The choice is independence or dependence."
"The code of the creator is built on the needs of the reasoning mind which allows man to survive. The code of the second-hander is built on the needs of a mind incapable of survival."
"Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn't done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity. There is no standard of personal dignity except independence."
"Notice the malignant kind of resentment against any idea that propounds independence. Notice the malice toward an independent man."
"Don't you know that most people take most things because that's what's given them, and they have no opinion whatever? Do you wish to be guided by what they expect you to think they think or by your own judgment?"
"God damn you!" he screamed. "God damn you! Who do you think you are? Who told you that you could do this to people? So you're too good for that building? You want to make me ashamed of it? You rotten, lousy, conceited bastard! Who are you? You don't even have the wits to know that you're a flop, an incompetent, a beggar, a failure, a failure, a failure! And you stand there pronouncing judgment! You, against the whole country! You against everybody! Why should I listen to you? You can't frighten me. You can't touch me. I have the whole world with me!...Don't stare at me like that! I've always hated you! You didn't know that, did you? I've always hated you! I always will! I'll break you some day, I swear I will, if it's the last thing I do!"
"Peter," said Roark, "why betray so much?"
"As a matter of fact, Mr. Roark, I'm not alone in this decision. As a matter of fact, I did want you, I had decided on you, honestly I had, but it was Miss Dominique Francon, whose judgment I value most highly, who convinced me that you were not the right choice for this commission--and she was fair enough to allow me to tell you that she did."
"When facing society, the man most concerned, the man who is to do the most and contribute the most, has the least say. It's taken for granted that he has no voice and the reasons he could offer are rejected in advance as prejudiced--since no speech is ever considered, but only the speaker. It's so much easier to pass judgment on a man than on an idea."
"And what, incidentally, do you think integrity is? The ability not to pick a watch out of your neighbor's pocket? No, it's not as easy as that. If that were all, I'd say ninety-five percent of humanity were honest, upright men. Only, as you can see, they aren't. Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea. That presupposes the ability to think. Thinking is something one doesn't borrow or pawn. And yet, if I were asked to choose a symbol for humanity as we know it, I wouldn't choose a cross nor an eagle nor a lion and unicorn. I'd choose three gilded balls."
"Gail Wynand was not good at taking orders. He recognized nothing but the accuracy of his own judgment."
"You're beginning to see, aren't you, Peter? Shall I make it clearer. You've never wanted me to be real. You never wanted anyone to be. But you didn't want to show it. You wanted an act to help your act--a beautiful, complicated act, all twists, trimmings and words. All words. You didn't like what I said about Vincent Knowlton. You liked it when I said the same thing under cover of virtuous sentiments. You didn't want me to believe. You only wanted me to convince you that I believed. My real soul, Peter? It's real only when it's independent--you've discovered that, haven't you? It's real only when it chooses curtains and desserts--you're right about that--curtains, desserts and religions, Peter, and the shapes of buildings. But you've never wanted that. You wanted a mirror. People want nothing but mirrors around them. To reflect them while they're reflecting too. You know, like the senseless infinity you get from two mirrors facing each other across a narrow passage. Usually in the more vulgar kind of hotels. Reflections of reflections and echoes of echoes. No beginning and no end. No center and no purpose. I gave you what you wanted. I became what you are, what your friends are, what most of humanity is so busy being--only with the trimmings. I didn't go around spouting book reviews to hide my emptiness of judgment--I said I had no judgment. I didn't borrow designs to hide my creative impotence--I created nothing. I didn't say that equality is a noble conception and unity the chief goal of mankind--I just agreed with everybody. You call it death, Peter? That kind of death--I've imposed it on you and on everyone around us. But you--you haven't done that. People are comfortable with you, they like you, they enjoy your presence. You've spared them the blank death. Because you've imposed it--on yourself."
"That, precisely, is the deadliness of second-handers. They have no concern for facts, ideas, work. They're concerned only with people. They don't ask: 'Is this true?' They ask: 'Is this what others think is true?' Not to judge, but to repeat. Not to do, but to give the impression of doing. Not creation, but show. Not ability, but friendship. Not merit, but pull. What would happen to the world without those who do, think, work, produce? Those are the egotists. You don't think through another's brain and you don't work through another's hands. When you suspend your faculty of independent judgment, you suspend consciousness. To stop consciousness is to stop life. Second-handers have no sense of reality. Their reality is not within them, but somewhere in that space which divides one human body from another. Not an entity, but a relation--anchored to nothing. That's the emptiness I couldn't understand in people. That's what stopped me whenever I faced a committee. Men without an ego. Opinion without a rational process. Motion without brakes or motor. Power without responsibility. The second-hander acts, but the source of his actions is scattered in every other living person. It's everywhere and nowhere and you can't reason with him. He's not open to reason. You can't speak to him--he can't hear. You're tried by an empty bench. A blind mass running amuck, to crush you without sense or purpose. Steve Mallory couldn't define the monster, but he knew. That's the drooling beast he fears. The second-hander."
"By seeking self-esteem through others. By living second-hand. And it has opened the way for every kind of horror. It has become the dreadful form of selfishness which a truly selfish man couldn't have conceived. And now, to cure a world perishing from selflessness, we're asked to destroy the self."
Footnote:
In response to some personal comments posted elsewhere, I'd like to add that there are two aspects to my post: independence and epistemology, and they're closely related in this context. Let's say Person A wants to inform other people about grievous errors by Person B. How do they do it? I am in no way against this. I am only for doing it rationally, in a manner Ayn Rand would smile upon--not because I want to imitate everything she did, blindly, but because she was the best example I've ever seen of how to engage in reasoned argument, and I think that gets forgotten by many people.
It takes many forms. Sometimes it's open insults, four letter words, this person is a louse, don't have anything to do with them, etc. Sometimes people are explicit and say "de-friend them or you're no friend of mine". Sometimes that's left implicit. And everything in between. But most people can read between the lines.
Sometimes it's got a veneer of reason behind it -- some limited attempt to provide a reasoned explanation for the shortcomings of Person B, with implications of "you'd better look into this and get with the program". But insufficient reasoning for anyone else to really form any kind of proper judgment, and by implication, insufficient respect for the priorities of other people in expecting them to find the reasoned argument you didn't provide.
But what's the proper way to raise an issue about someone's errors or dishonesty? Believe me when I say, that's the thrust of my original comment.
Genuine intellectual dishonesty isn't so hard to treat. It may still take the presentation of a lot of evidence and explanations to actually prove, but comparatively, not so hard to treat. It should not involve screaming and insults and endless moral condemnation, as so much is done on FB -- it should be, in the words of Joe Friday, "Just the Facts, Ma'am". Well, mostly, but the facts leading to a conclusion of moral turpitude. It's not simply that superficial, emotionally laden arguments set a bad example (though they do that), or that it makes O-ism look bad (it does that). The fundamental is that it's not how you persuade people. It's not a process of reason. That is what I'm arguing against.
But here's the deal: intellectual dishonesty isn't usually the issue, even though most people seem to think it is. Most people just do a really crappy job of assessing honesty in other people, and the rush to condemn someone as dishonest -- which is the only proper basis for the flurry of condemnations of "evil" people -- is just horribly misplaced and destructive when the evidence as presented is insufficient and the argumentation sucks. ("Crappy" doesn't really capture just how utterly putrifyingly shitty most of the reasoning is that I see in this context.)
I think this is vastly more destructive to Objectivism than errors by any Person B I've seen. (There's more than a few.)
What I would like to see is more genuine reasoning -- on both sides of the aisle, because that's the only way to make one side.
I'd like to see more genuine recognition that many people can be blind to their errors without being dishonest.
I'd like more recognition that an honest person genuinely trying to understand the truth needs a reasoned argument and that no amount of insults and condemnations are a reasoned argument.
I'd like recognition that you don't make allies out of friends, but out convincing opponents of the truth -- and the truth requires a well-reasoned argument.
And I'd like recognition of the fact that pointlessly alienating and dissociating yourself (and asking others to dissociate themselves) from those who are honest and are trying to understand the truth is destructive in itself -- because you only expand your ranks by persuading those who aren't in your ranks. And nothing is as hopelessly stupid as alienating an honest person who agrees with you on 98% of everything.
All that said, I am defending no one's views here beyond those of my own. I am defending a process, and my comments apply to both sides.
I do sympathize with the frustration of those who see people who vociferously advocate points of view that are wrong (sometimes catastrophically) on important issues, or which seem to willfully be blind to the broadest context, or which just trivialize philosophy with inane "lifeboat situations" or worse. Again, I'm trying to leave those issues out of this discussion. I've just seen very bad reasoning on both sides. That's my point.
I'm simply saying, if you want to win the argument and bring people to your side, you have to be the most rational, and set the best example.
Footnote #2:
In later discussion, I remarked elsewhere,
1. Moral condemnation over intellectual disagreements is always inappropriate when the disagreements are honest.
2. Public condemnation demands a high standard of evidence, and mere suspicion of dishonesty in intellectual disagreements is not adequate.
3. There is no such thing as "quality control" in a proper intellectual movement. The only arbiter of "quality" is rational persuasion about ideas. Condemnation is not an argument.
A gentle reminder about focusing on the positive. Reason is the positive in this context -- the method of identifying what's true.
My interest is primarily in reminding people that advocates of reason should be focused on making rational arguments about ideas, not about getting into arguments.
My primary value is reason, and persuading people with reason. I don't really give a damn about spending time on other things; Ayn Rand certainly didn't. She was the model par excellance about how to conduct an intellectual movement. Spending time on minutiae is mostly a waste of time and effort and accomplishes nothing in the end. If people are wrong, reality will be the ultimate arbiter of that. If people are dishonest, that too.
Much more important, and difficult, is persuading people what is right. If people want to be exemplars of Objectivism, they'd better spend their time learning how to make coherent, persuasive arguments. Even if you don't persuade your opponent with those arguments, if there's an audience you'll reach other people. That's what spreads the right ideas.
Put it another way: you don't spread the right ideas by spending all your time talking about every mistake that other people have made. People want to know what you know that is right, and why.
They also want to see integrity in action -- that is, if integrity is loyalty to values, and loyalty is consistency, they would want to see, in advocates of reason, really skilled reasoning in advocating the ideas that reason implies, qua Objectivism. But if they see advocates of reason who don't care to take the time and effort to form comprehensive arguments, with precision in formulation -- the right choice of word or phrasing, the attention to answering obvious questions, reference to source materials and facts, etc., the argument is lost by the appearance of a lack of conviction among the advocates.
Ayn Rand was the master of all these qualities. Review how she conducted herself. No one was attacked more viciously than her, but she always conducted herself with class, above the fray. Even if her questioners were antagonistic (for example, Mike Wallace, Phil Donahue), she would always answer questions with detailed, respectful arguments--that is, she took them seriously.
I'm not saying she turned the other cheek when it was clear someone was dishonest, nor that she never expressed anger, but her primary focus was always on making rational arguments for her ideas.
As a further addendum, one thing that drives disputes over intellectual matters far too much is an unwillingness to admit error. Very few people like the feeling of loss of self-esteem that accompanies admission of error to an opponent.
But the genuine intellectual is interested in truth, and doesn't indulge the self-licking ice cream cone of confirmation bias -- the quest for only those arguments and facts that support their position, to the exclusion or evasion of arguments that don't. The genuine advocate of reason simply delights in discovering the truth of things, and if an opponent (or, better, a colleague) discovers it first and makes one aware of it -- the emotion is delight and gratitude, not fear of admitting wrong.
Consider it in the context of, say, some new theory of gravity. You'll have the advocates of General Relativity and the Big Bang fighting for their position, and the Newtonians and Galileans fighting passionately for their viewpoint. And along comes John Galt, let's say, who shows them a new anti-gravity motor he built, based on a completely different theory that makes General Relativity and Newtonian mechanics as obsolete as stone knives and bearskins. What would a rational man feel on being proved wrong? To quote Ayn Rand, "It's so wonderful to see a great, new, crucial achievement which is not mine!"
No institution based on a set of firm principles can survive if it allows members who hold opposite principles. Imagine if the AMA allowed witch doctors among its members, or if the American Physical Society (physicists, not massage therapists!) allowed flat-Earther's to be members. It would guarantee the end of medicine or physics.
Yet the United States, an institution founded on the principle of individual rights, allows citizens who actively promote socialism and communism -- in education, law and government.
I'm an advocate of free speech, but I don't think that means a nation should have to tolerate those among it who openly reject, by their own word and deed, the core founding principle of the country--individual rights--and work to subvert it every waking minute of their day.
I'm not saying criminalize those who reject individual rights, except where they commit crimes. But there's an enormous gulf between agreeing with individual rights and commiting crimes that prove you don't agree with individual rights. Socialists and communists -- and now Islamists -- have been working that angle for almost 100 years. I wouldn't allow them in the country to do it. In absence of a state of war against them, I would at least evict them. (In a state of war I would imprison them until the state of war is ended.)
Politicians who try to make law that violates individual rights, or who achieve that end and find it ruled unconstitutional -- should immediately lose their job and be deported. Teachers who openly advocate doctrines that violate individual rights should be judged similarly--they should be deported.
It's not a violation of their rights to deport them. It's a basic condition of "membership", or citizenship. Today, naturalized citizens or members of the military are asked to declare loyalty to the Constitution; all I'm doing is refining that statement and taking it seriously. I think everyone reaching the age of 18 should be required to take an oath of loyalty to the Constitution and to the principle of individual rights. Natural-born or naturalized citizens alike who breech that oath should all be stripped of citizenship.
There should be a formal mechanism to determine that fact, a kind of court separate from the criminal courts, dedicated to one question: does this person reject individual rights? A legal process similar to a criminal trial, but with only one penalty: loss of citizenship and deportation. Bring charges and present objective evidence based on a person's words, actions and writings, and if overwhelming (as it would be in the case of someone like Obama or Pelosi or William Ayers) strip them of their citizenship and deport them as "subversives" who are incompatible with the principles of the United States of America.
It couldn't have been done before now, because until Ayn Rand there was no objective definition of individual rights. It probably couldn't be done until a rational philosophy becomes dominant, at least in the sense that it was dominant when the Founders created the United States. You'd get the religious people campaigning to make God a requirement, too. But imagine if it had been in place from the beginning, with a basically sound rational philosophy for the country--even the religious people who advocate violations of rights could have been evicted as "undesirable".
I've asked myself repeatedly if this notion somehow violates free speech. Is it wrong to demand a loyalty oath? We already do that, we just don't enforce it. If you demand a loyalty oath, is it wrong to define it precisely, in objective terms, on the basis of the one idea that one *should* demand loyalty to--fealty to individual rights? And if you have a loyalty oath, is it wrong to take it seriously and enforce it with real consequences? Does that violate "free speech"? I don't think so.
Yes, the idea could be abused if someone attempted to implement it today. But I always come back to the principle I stated above, which I think is true:
No institution based on a set of firm principles can survive if it allows members who hold opposite principles.
Ayn Rand put it somewhat differently:
"When opposite basic principles are clearly and openly defined, it works to the advantage of the rational side; when they are not clearly defined, but are hidden or evaded, it works to the advantage of the irrational side."
I'm simply saying, define the basic principle of our government, clearly and openly--and put it into practice as more than a slogan. In the absence of recognizing that, I'd say the chances for the long-term survival of any rational society are bleak.
"Our state cannot and should not continue maintaining companies, productive entities, services and budgeted sectors with bloated payrolls [and] losses that hurt the economy," said the official Cuban labour federation, which announced the news. ...It was no longer possible to protect and subsidise salaries on an unlimited basis and cuts will affect all government sectors, said the labour federation. "Losses that hurt our economy are ultimately counterproductive, creating bad habits and distorting worker conduct."
