Aynatollah Rand howls for blood!
dbco...@www.webinbox.com
who subscribe to the insane death-think of Ayn Rand, Rand herself
is quoted as saying:
> Q: What should be done about the killing of innocent people in war?
>
> AR: This is a major reason people should be concerned about the nature of
> their government. Certainly, the majority in any country at war is innocent.
> But if by neglect, ignorance, or helplessness, they couldn't overthrow their
> bad government and establish a better one, then they must pay the price for
> the sins of their government as we are all paying for the sins of ours. If
> some people put up with dictatorshipas some of them do in Soviet Russia,
> and some of them did in Nazi Germany, then they deserve what their govern
> ment
> deserves. There are no innocent people in war. Our only concern should be:
> who started that war? If you can establish that a given country did it, then
> there is no need to consider the rights of that country, because it has
> initiated the use of force, and therefore stepped outside the principle of
> right. I've covered this in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, where I explain
> why nations as such do not have any rights, only individuals do.
As someone else remarked, Rand was stark raving mad. It is no wonder
that Objectivism is becoming a synonym for "nuke'em" bloodlust. This
quote conclusively proves that Rand herself was the author of the
genocidal doctrine that innocent people, even if they are helpless to
do anything about the government they live under (and indeed are its
principal victims), deserve the fate of their government.
This obscenity is a perversion of everything that genuine advocates
of individual liberty stand for. To say that someone is morally
responsible for something, not because they having any control over
it, but solely because of their national identity, is to descend to
the lowest, most irrational depths of tribalistic collectivism. It
is a primal evasion to say that man's fundamental identity is not as
a rational animal, but rather as a national animal.
In the hands of such depraved, primitive beasts such as Ayn has
spawned, capitalism will indeed remain an unknown ideal. One cannot
know the true meaning of individual rights among such Objectivist
savages. If you have been seduced by the faux individualism of the
Rand death-cult, it is time to wake up.
-Coop
Brian Holly
webinbox.com>...
I'm also a bit stunned by the gross inconsistency. Nations don't have
rights, only individuals, but I guess you don't have to respect the
rights of those individuals if they happen to find themselves in the
way of your attack on the country they're in. Utterly bizarre
reasoning. Also strange: she says that you don't have to respect the
rights of a country that initiated force, which implies that it has
some, and then denies that countries have any rights. She asserts that
most people are innocent, and that there are no innocents in wartime.
I guess this is what happens when you praise reason but never study
logic. - Brian
Steve Davis
> I'm also a bit stunned by the gross inconsistency. Nations
> don't have rights, only individuals, but I guess you don't
> have to respect the rights of those individuals if they
> happen to find themselves in the way of your attack on
> the country they're in.
What I think is utterly bizarre is thinking that the question of "rights
violation" even arises in this context.
Consider the plight of a passenger aboard an airplane that had been hijacked
by suicide terrorists bent on killing thousands of people on the ground.
The innocents in this circumstance, in the plane and on the ground, would
have had no moral claim on each others' lives if it were not for the
hijacker. But the hijacker took responsibility for the lives of everyone on
the plane by forcibly taking control over it. If the people on the ground
were to destroy the plane before it could strike, they would be morally
justified and there would be absolutely no question of "rights violation."
The exact same situation exists in war. For better or for worse, a
government acts in the name of and on behalf of its citizenry because it has
a monopoly on the use of force. The people who live under a statist regime
have no more moral claim against an aggrieved third party than the
passengers of a hijacked airplane have against their hijacker's targets.
"There are no innocents in war," is a turn of phrase that sums up this
situation. Of course there are "innocents" in the literal sense of the
term. 90% of the people onboard the planes that were hijacked on September
11 were "innocent." But if our government could have shot down those planes
before they hit the World Trade Center, it would have had a moral obligation
to do so.
Mark Kormes
their government. Certainly, the majority in any
they couldn't overthrow their bad government and
> establish a better one, then they must pay the price for the sins of their
government as we are all paying for the sins of ours. > If some people put
up with dictatorshipas some of them do in Soviet Russia, and some of them
did in Nazi Germany, then
in war.
> Our only concern should be: who started that war? If you can establish
that a given country did it, then there is no need to
> consider the rights of that country, because it has initiated the use of
force, and therefore stepped outside the principle of
> right. I've covered this in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, where I explain
why nations as such do not have any rights, only > individuals do.
Let me try to explicate this quote that has caused such a fury. There are
no contradictions in the above, though it is important to point out that the
remarks were extemporaneous.
> AR: This is a major reason people should be concerned about the nature of
their government.
The behavior of your government, which acts as your agent in the defense of
your rights, can bring about behavioral responses from other governments
that may affect you. This is a major reason you should be concerned about
the nature of your government.
> Certainly, the majority in any country at war is innocent.
Certainly, the majority in any country at war are not active agents who of
their government.
> But if by neglect, ignorance, or helplessness, they couldn't overthrow
their bad government and establish a better one, then > they must pay the
price for the sins of their government as we are all paying for the sins of
ours. If some people put up with > dictatorship--as some of them do in
Soviet Russia, and some of them did in Nazi Germany--then they deserve what
their
> government deserves. There are no innocent people in war.
You are rightly held accountable for your government's actions. You can
fight against it, particularly in relatively free places such as America, or
you can ignore it and try to struggle on, particularly in dictatorial
countries, but either way, you can not declare yourself independent of
responsibility for the condition of your country, or independent of the
consequences of actions taken by your government, unless you leave that
country altogether. In this way, no one in a country involved in a war is
innocent in that war.
> Our only concern should be: who started that war? If you can establish
that a given country did it, then there is no need to
> consider the rights of that country, because it has initiated the use of
force, and therefore stepped outside the principle of
> right. I've covered this in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, where I explain
why nations as such do not have any rights, only > individuals do.
The question is: who is the aggressor? If you establish which country is
the aggressor, then you have the responsibility to retaliate against that
country. Countries do not have rights--only individuals do. Therefore, the
aggressor nations may be attacked for violating the rights of individuals in
the attacked countries, and the "innocents" in the aggressor nation cannot
claim to be free from blame for the conditions in their country. Since
their country makes no effort to protect their rights, you can't speak about
their rights--the only way to defend their rights is to defeat their
government and establish freedom there. In this process, some of them may
die. But no genuine lover of liberty and individual rights can argue that
they are best pursued if aggressor nations are appeased and violated nations
are handcuffed by concern for "innocents" in the aggressor nations.
Mark Kormes
Chris Cathcart
Philosophy and Economics from the University of Chicago, says...
>> AR: This is a major reason people should be concerned about the nature of
>their government. Certainly, the majority in any
>> country at war is innocent. But if by neglect, ignorance, or helplessness,
>they couldn't overthrow their bad government and
>> establish a better one, then they must pay the price for the sins of their
>government as we are all paying for the sins of ours. > If some people put
>up with dictatorshipas some of them do in Soviet Russia, and some of them
>did in Nazi Germany, then
>> they deserve what their government deserves. There are no innocent people
>in war.
>
>> Our only concern should be: who started that war? If you can establish
>that a given country did it, then there is no need to
>> consider the rights of that country, because it has initiated the use of
>force, and therefore stepped outside the principle of
>> right. I've covered this in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, where I explain
>why nations as such do not have any rights, only > individuals do.
>
>Let me try to explicate this quote that has caused such a fury. There are
>no contradictions in the above, though it is important to point out that the
>remarks were extemporaneous.
Uh, how 'bout explaining this: Why is it evidently so important to you that
Rand's words be "explicated" and "clarified" so that apparent contradictions be
reconciled? Why is it so important to you that Rand not be regarded as having
erred? What's so important about whatever Rand may have said?
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Chris Cathcart [email suffix: yahoo dot com]
"Language is a powerful tool in the hands of the learned, and
a disaster in the making for the untrained." -- Thomas White
Mark Kormes
> Uh, how 'bout explaining this: Why is it evidently so important to you
that Rand's words be "explicated" and "clarified" so
> that apparent contradictions be reconciled? Why is it so important to you
that Rand not be regarded as having erred?
> What's so important about whatever Rand may have said?
What's important is the truth. And Ayn Rand's view is, in my view, the
correct one here. I wanted to explicate and clarify it because the wording,
read in a certain way, yields an apparent self-contradiction, which would be
a large, if not fatal, blow to her argument. So I defend Ayn Rand because I
agree with her view and I can't stand to see her characterized as "howl[ing]
for blood" by a bunch of pacifist, anti-American, Libertarian hippies.
Mark Kormes
Dave O'Hearn
> In the hands of such depraved, primitive beasts such as Ayn has
> spawned, capitalism will indeed remain an unknown ideal. One cannot
> know the true meaning of individual rights among such Objectivist
> savages. If you have been seduced by the faux individualism of the
> Rand death-cult, it is time to wake up.
Ayn Rand was saying something so utterly uncontroversial that it
really presses the imagination to see how it's getting misunderstood.
Much simpler, it goes like this:
Q. Am I allowed to risk the lives of hostages to stop a criminal?
A. Yes.
Q. And if the criminal is a continued threat?
A. Then you can kill the hostages along with him, if it's necessary.
This is just plain common sense. But philosophically, it separates
people who're holding the "NIOF principle" as a deontological
universal maxim from people who understand its teleological derivation
from the fundamental value of life. By all means, if you think Ayn
Rand write NIOF onto a big golden tablet and issued it into the world,
flee from Objectivism as from a plague. It is not what you're looking
for. And try to avoid hostage situations, unless you feel like
sacrificing your life like the Big Golden Tablet commands you to.
--
Dave O'Hearn
Brian Holly
self-contradictory. But no, she had to dress it all up with an
apparatus of "rights" talk that makes no sense. And it certainly seems
that this clunky apparatus of rights is considered to be very
important both to her and her true believers -- indeed, she likes to
give the appearance of deriving her particular positions from some
general truths about rights. In the current case, however, it looks
like she went with her gut instinct and the rights stuff is just
window dressing, which is why it makes so little sense. - Brian
Dave O'Hearn <dave...@pobox.com> wrote in message news:<3e05f9e4.010919192
6.5f2...@posting.google.com>...
JoeOrrion
your rights, can bring about behavioral responses from other governments
that may affect you. >>
But only a "proper" government does this or has this as a goal. If you live in
a society with some sort of totalitarian government, then you have no
organization that acts as your agent in the defense of your rights. It seems
that if this is how you want to characterize a government, then you shouldn't
blame the afghani people for the actions of their government, since their
government hasn't done anything, being that it doesn't exist.
Joe Teicher
Dean Sandin
> "Brian Holly" :
>
> > I'm also a bit stunned by the gross inconsistency. Nations
> > don't have rights, only individuals, but I guess you don't
> > have to respect the rights of those individuals if they
> > happen to find themselves in the way of your attack on
> > the country they're in.
>
> What I think is utterly bizarre is thinking that the question of "rights
> violation" even arises in this context.
Bizarre? Unfortunately, frozen abstractions and wild context-
dropping are endemic to opponents of Objectivism.
> Consider the plight of a passenger aboard an airplane that had been hijacked
> by suicide terrorists bent on killing thousands of people on the ground.
> The innocents in this circumstance, in the plane and on the ground, would
> have had no moral claim on each others' lives if it were not for the
> hijacker. But the hijacker took responsibility for the lives of everyone on
> the plane by forcibly taking control over it. If the people on the ground
> were to destroy the plane before it could strike, they would be morally
> justified and there would be absolutely no question of "rights violation."
>
> The exact same situation exists in war. For better or for worse, a
> government acts in the name of and on behalf of its citizenry because it has
> a monopoly on the use of force. The people who live under a statist regime
> have no more moral claim against an aggrieved third party than the
> passengers of a hijacked airplane have against their hijacker's targets.
>
> "There are no innocents in war," is a turn of phrase that sums up this
> situation. Of course there are "innocents" in the literal sense of the
> term. 90% of the people onboard the planes that were hijacked on September
> 11 were "innocent." But if our government could have shot down those planes
> before they hit the World Trade Center, it would have had a moral obligation
> to do so.
Moreover, were there to be innocents in war we would have to adopt
_sacrifice_, not self-defense, as our central concern. There
would have to be some intrinsic or utilitarian standard of
evaluation that determines which is to be sacrificed -- the lives
of the "innocents" held captive by the evil regime, or the lives
of the citizens of the free society under attack. This would
literally be a standard in favor of evil, for a bound and
determined evil can escalate its scale until the balance is tipped
in favor of it being moral and necessary for the free society to
let its own members die. This is the meaning of holding that
there are innocents in war.
Altruism vs. egoism is a binary choice. The error of abandoning
man's life as his proper fundamental concern, and instead adopting
altruism and sacrifice as the root principle in waging a just war,
is inescapably what Ayn Rand had in mind in holding that there
are no innocents in war.
--Dean
Steve Davis
> Well, if she'd said what you say, at least it wouldn't be
> self-contradictory.
She did say it, numerous times.
Brian Holly
Well, that's great, but as I'm sure you noticed, the issue being
discussed in this thread concerns the particular remarks cited, which
don't, alas, make a whole lot of sense without some real strong-arm
hemeneutics. It's something of a shame, I think, that one of her less
sterling performances should be bandied about as wisdom on this
subject. Best regards - Brian
Steve Davis <st...@pobox.com> wrote in message news:<pHrq7.27789$bG6.709230
4...@typhoon.we.rr.com>...
Steve Davis
> Well, that's great, but as I'm sure you noticed, the issue
> being discussed in this thread concerns the particular
> remarks cited, which don't, alas, make a whole lot of
> sense without some real strong-arm [hermeneutics].
I disagree. If those comments are unclear it is because they were spoken
extemporaneously as responses during unrehearsed audience Q&A's. If you
don't understand them, you should ignore them.
dbco...@www.webinbox.com
Dave O'Hearn <dave...@pobox.com> wrote:
> dbco...@www.webinbox.com wrote:
>> In the hands of such depraved, primitive beasts such as Ayn has
>> spawned, capitalism will indeed remain an unknown ideal. One cannot
>> know the true meaning of individual rights among such Objectivist
>> savages. If you have been seduced by the faux individualism of the
>> Rand death-cult, it is time to wake up.
>
>Ayn Rand was saying something so utterly uncontroversial that it
>really presses the imagination to see how it's getting misunderstood.
Nuclear war is uncontroversial?
> Much simpler, it goes like this:
>
> Q. Am I allowed to risk the lives of hostages to stop a criminal?
> A. Yes.
> Q. And if the criminal is a continued threat?
> A. Then you can kill the hostages along with him, if it's necessary.
Let's pursue this demented logic a little further:
Q. If a criminal and his allies are on the rampage, killing people,
seizing their land, stealing their oil, cutting off their trade, and
imposing dictatorships or religious "democracies" on them and
stationing troops in their lands in support these policies, isn't it
urgent to attack him and weaken him in any way possible?
A. Yes.
Q. Is it then allowed to attack the military headquarters and key
financial centers of the criminal's country, even at the cost of
thousands of hostage lives?
A. Yes, that would be an allowable strategy. It would even be a
highly rational response if the attack were spectacular enough to
inspire greater resolve among our own people and disrupted the
criminal's economic exploitation of his hostages by undermining their
sense of security.
Q. But isn't that terrorism?
A. It is collateral damage pursuant to just retaliation against
the criminal. Besides, the hostages aren't really innocent; they are
responsible for what their government does. The hostages who
got crushed and buried in the rubble deserve everything their
government deserves. How could that possibly be misunderstood?
> This is just plain common sense.
No it isn't. On an international scale, it is a formula for genocide.
> But philosophically, it separates
> people who're holding the "NIOF principle" as a deontological
> universal maxim from people who understand its teleological
> derivation from the fundamental value of life. By all means, if you
> think Ayn Rand write NIOF onto a big golden tablet and issued it
> into the world, flee from Objectivism as from a plague. It is not
> what you're looking for. And try to avoid hostage situations, unless
> you feel like sacrificing your life like the Big Golden Tablet
> commands you to.
A typical Objectivist strawman argument. "He disagrees with me - he
must be an evil Kantian!" What idiotic BS.
If aggression is always unselfish, so too is uncompensated collateral
damage. It is illogical to say that each man is properly an end in
himself and that there are no conflicts of interest among rational
men, but then demand that men rational enough to be innocent of any
crimes against you willingly subordinate their interests to yours. Of
course they're not going to do that.
Now, a crucial point about my argument that the Objectivist smear-
artists have evaded is my emphasis on the qualifier "uncompensated."
If you are willing and able to pay for the harm you cause innocents,
then collateral damage is morally permissible.
I'm not bringing a tablet down from a high mountain and commanding
NIOF; I'm saying that the value you place on the rights of
innocents ought to be greater than zero. You have to apply a rational
standard of value to measure the relative benefits of the retaliatory
act (i.e. stopping the criminal, deterring other criminals) versus
the costs of compensating the innocents you have harmed by that act.
Obviously, nuclear attacks against cities would create collateral
damage on a scale that no nation, not even the United States, could
afford to pay compensation for. Common sense dictates that killing
tens of millions of innocents and turning a billion or more people
into enraged enemies represents an enormous cost, one that might
ultimately result in World War III and the end of global civilization.
Yet, Objectivists say that we must pay no heed to the very real costs
to us of inflicting collateral damage on others, only to the principle
of doing whatever it takes to vaporize America's enemies. In
the face of this madness, I have thrown down the gauntlet and dared to
identify the nationalist-collectivist nature of Objectivism and expose
the corrupt falsehood that it is somehow is sympathetic to individual
rights or that it opposes collectivism.
Objectivists are worshippers of the zero, their top priority is
killing their enemies. Their principles are not inscribed on golden
tablets; they are written in blood on the side of an ICBM.
Yes, if you have any regard for liberty at all, do as aspiring
mass murderer O'Hearn suggests. Flee from Ayn Rand and Objectivism
as you would flee a plague -- or flee a cloud of radioactive fallout.
-Coop