Show 049 was an excellent discussion about the coming U.S. presidential election. Arthur explained his views starting with this question: Which party will do the least damage to Objectivist ideals? (I will try to summarize what he said, but please listen to the show for his own words.)
The Republicans essentially stand for religion. They consistently try to mix faith with government, of which even small amounts can be disastrous, and will lead to a theocracy. Furthermore, their religious altruistic beliefs conflict with the self-interest morality necessitated by capitalism, which they claim to defend. Because of this, they’re misrepresenting capitalism, making it disreputable and therefore harder to realize.
The Democrats stand for a disintegrated attempt at socialism (or pieces of it). But since the fall of the Soviet Union, communism and socialism are no longer the threat they once were. It has been demonstrated that such systems are horrendous. Moreover, since the Democrats’ views are disintegrated, they can not achieve long term success. So, in order to give Objectivism time, it makes the most sense to throw out the bigger threat, the Religious Right, and vote for the Democrats.
Many Objectivists will bring up a third option. What about the Libertarians? The Libertarians say they stand for liberty, but they have an anti-philosophical approach. Their guiding “principle” is the non-initiation of force, but without a proper underlying philosophy, no one can say what initiating force consists of. Politics is a derivative of ethics and must be treated as such. Otherwise, capitalism will continue to be misrepresented, which is immensely destructive. (For those interested, there is also a discussion of Ron Paul on the show.)
It was a great show and I highly recommend you listen to it. You may want to read Diana Hsieh’s post on the election as well.
Listen to this show and more at Talkshoe.
Hey Guys, sorry I haven’t been around in a while I have been busy with school. I have been listening to the posts though and when I read this blog I felt compelled to respond. First off I will probably vote republican just because I couldn;t stand to put either of the democratic nominees into the white house. I feel that would be disasterous not only for our country but for the world as well. I don;t know how you guys came to the conclusion that the Left would do less damage to objectivsim. I feel they would completely destroy the objectivist view. Sure the Right has religion, but thats all they have. Other then that they stand for limited government, strong education, strong military, and free markets. Now, while I can’t defend Bush on his policies it seems that his policies have been very liberal. Thats what Republicans hyave become, just lesser dangerous forms of Democrats. The full fledged democrats on the other hand have become socialists. I don’t know if you can accuratly say that socialism is gone and won’t be coming back because the left wants that very much so and will destroy whoever to get it. Look at Healthcare as an example. That alone should be enough to outweigh the religious right. Also, environmentalism, that is a heavly favored left ideal. That is a religion as well, but yet you have no mention a to that. How about the message of “equality above all.” I understand I am starting to rant and that I am giong off on many tangents. I don;t know how you could advocate to vote democrat when they want to destroy the very extistence of every ideal that this country was founded on. I see no news of the Religious right, I see no abuse of their power, if anything I see religion become less and less in our society (something I feel is hurting our country as well) I would love to discuss it further but I feel I have made my point somewhat. With democracts you get the abuse of: (dependency on the gov, high taxes, socialism, anti-captialism, anti-war, environmentalism, equality equality equality, and more gov programs) with republicans you get an abuse of (religion). I think I’ll vote republican, even if it is John Mccain.
Joe,
I will tell you my response to this on this week’s show (03/23/2008).
Thanks for the comment!
yikes.. this episode is like the sean hannity show… you basically dismiss 50+ years of American atrocities in the middle east, like it’s totally irrelevant. we installed the shah.. we created bin laden… now he’s our enemy… we supported sadam.. then removed him… we have military bases on “holy land”… we helped create Israel… to say that they hate us because we’re free is an oversimplification and frankly, an insult to history.
On to another topic… states rights… it’s my view that any supporter of individual freedom would support the idea of stemming the flow of power and money into Washington DC… which is how I view the 10th amendment… this is a fundamental principle to our current form of government that has been completely discarded over the years and has directly led to the over reaching nature of our federal government and continual infringement of our natural rights. This foundation is there specifically to diffuse the natural tendency of power to consolidate… it’s an important piece of a framework (imperfect as it may be) that was specifically geared to protect the rights of individual and leash the governmental body with the furthest reaching power in the fewest hands.
I could keep going.. but I’ll stop and try to call in on the next show.