HAIGHT SPEECH

Today is the 50th anniversary of the publication of one of my favorite novels, Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. There have been a lot of articles recently on the significance and influence of this book, which I won’t try to recap here. My own favorite such article is this one by Robert Tracinski.

Oddly enough, this year also marks the 20th anniversary of my own first encounter with Rand’s writing. Back in 1987 I was 16, a junior in high school, very intelligent but increasingly cynical. A girl I knew, and had kind of a crush on, spent about six months pestering me to read The Fountainhead. She said it was the “most rational thing” I would ever read, and she was more or less right. By the time I reached the scene where architecture student Howard Roark was explaining to the dean of his school why the Parthenon was badly designed, I was hooked. I ploughed through that 700 page book in three days, then hit the library.

There I found two other novels by Rand: a novelette called Anthem and a huge doorstop called Atlas Shrugged. Since I hadn’t done any schoolwork for the past few days on account of The Fountainhead I decided to do the responsible thing and check out the short one. That took about an hour, and I was back at the library the next day. The 1168 pages of Atlas took me five days, and boy did I not get any homework done. (Precious little sleep, for that matter — it was wonderful being young.) That summer I worked my way through most of the extant non-fiction, and never looked back. (Well, there was that unfortunate libertarian anarchist phase I went through in college, but I got better. Let us never speak of it again.)

Many people say that Rand’s writings changed their lives. I’m not sure I would go that far in my own case. I always valued reason and freedom. What Rand taught me was how right I was to do so, how to understand exactly what it was I was valuing, and how to defend those values in action. She showed me how to think systematically, a skill which has proven invaluable in my career as an engineer. And she taught me not to be ashamed of being happy, or of pursuing happiness.

Anne Speaking:

Sure sounds to me like her writings changed your life. I had a similar experience. I always valued freedom, individuation, and reason. But Rand gave me the words for it, and the justification down to the most elemental level. That certainty has made me more content, and made my life a more joyful journey.

Rand described her philosophy as one “for living on Earth”, and that’s exactly what it is. Properly understood and applied, I have found it leads to a happy and successful life. It’s true, and it works. What more could one ask for?

So, although I haven’t seen the girl since I graduated from high school, thank you Liz for pushing me into reading Rand. You were right, it was the most rational thing I’ve ever read, and 20 years later I’m still benefiting from it. And, more profoundly, thank you Ayn Rand for your insight, your courage and your inspiration. Well done.

Anne speaking:

But seriously, I had never heard of Ayn Rand until about 1993, which was when Kyle starting pestering me to read The Fountainhead (it only took me, what, 5 years into our marriage?) I went on to read Atlas, heeding Kyle’s advice to “read all of Galt’s speech. You think you know what he’s going to say, but you really don’t.” Good advice. Terrific books and an important philosophy that isn’t getting enough attention in schools or from humanity generally.

… you’re listening to a history lecture on the Reformation and you have to fight down the urge to ask the teacher why Superman didn’t do anything to stop the spread of Lutheranism.

This post from Adventures in Bowling Green raises one of those questions that comes up over and over again — are Objectivists libertarians? (Or, putting the point slightly different, is the Objectivist politics libertarian?) Given Objectivism’s advocacy of strictly limited government, free markets and individual rights, this seems like a well-duh question. Yet Objectivists, as in the letter from Paul McKeever cited in the above-linked post, argue vehemently that we are not libertarians.

I think one of the reasons that neither side is ever convinced by the other on this issue is that, in a way, both sides are right. (In a deeper way, I think the Objectivist side is right, but hear me out.) The problem is that the term “libertarian” is being used in a different sense by the two sides.

Back in the 1990’s, Leonard Peikoff gave a lecture arguing that a certain class of terms was legitimately possessed of two different types of definition, one general and the other more restrictive. The terms he had in mind were, essentially, ones connected to human choice. One sense of the term would be broad and would refer to a whole range of possibilities, the other would be narrower and would refer to the part of the range that was fully consistent with reality. Here are some examples.

Ayn Rand famously defined a value as “that which one acts to gain and/or keep.” In other contexts, however, she speaks of some things that people act to gain and/or keep as disvalues, when those things are harmful to long-term survival and flourishing. Many people act to gain and/or keep drugs such as cocaine and heroin. In the general sense, these are values — they are ends chosen volitionally as the goal of actions. But because drug addiction is harmful, treating cocaine as a value winds up being inconsistent. Pursuing it undercuts your life, and thus undermines the necessary conditions for acting to gain and/or keep anything. So in the more restrictive sense, cocaine is not a value.

Or consider the concept “virtue”. Broadly, a virtue is a character trait or principle of action that a system of morality upholds as desirable or morally good. So is humility, for example, a virtue? In a sense, yes — Christianity upholds humility as a principle of action required for living a morally good life. But again, taken in full context, humility accepted and practiced consistently undercuts the necessary conditions for moral goodness. It fails to achieve its stated ends, and so in the more restrictive sense it is properly identified as a vice, not a virtue.

Or consider “egoism”. There is a sense in which the Objectivist ethics is one of a number of egoistic ethical systems, along with the egoisms of Aristotle, Nietzsche, Stirner, etc. All of these systems advocate that individuals act so as to maximize their own self-interest. But since the broad definition leaves open the questions of what exactly a person’s self-interest consists of, and what actions will maximize it, you can have an ethical system that advocates pursuing self-interest while simultaneously advocating specific means and ends that undercut what your interests actually are. The actual effects of following such a system, even though it may have been developed with a genuine desire to achieve the pursuit of self-interest, will be counter to that goal. The system is inconsistent and, in its actual effects, not egoistic. From this perspective, the Objectivist ethics is not an egoistic ethics; it is the only egoistic ethics — the only one which, if practiced consistently, will actually lead to maximizing your self-interest.

The application of this analysis to the question of the ‘libertarian-ness’ of the Objectivist politics should be obvious. Just as in the egoism case, there is a sense in which any political system which advocates liberty can be described as libertarian. In this broad sense, the Objectivist politics clearly qualifies. But in the full, consistent sense of the term, for a system of thought to be described as libertarian, it would have to lead to freedom if implemented consistently in practice. By that standard, libertarianism as understood by libertarians fails because of its lack of foundation. No politics can stand apart from a foundation, as McKeever discusses, and libertarianism explicitly eschews the need for such a foundation by treating the NIOF principle as axiomatic. So in the restrictive sense of the term, the Objectivist politics is actually the only libertarian politics, because only Objectivism provides the necessary foundations in ethics, epistemology and metaphysics for the successful defense of the value of liberty. Ironically, the problem with libertarianism is that it isn’t libertarian.

As is often the case with perennial questions, what we have here are two sides talking past each other. Libertarians classify Objectivist as libertarian in the broad, neutral sense of the term, and they are right to do so. But the broad, neutral sense of the term isn’t the relevant one. What we are interested in is the actual effects of ideas and actions when practiced with full consistency in reality. And from that point of view, cocaine is not a value — humility is not a virtue — Stirner’s The Ego And Its Own is not a good guide to successful living — and trying to defend freedom on a non-Objectivist basis will not work.

A friend of mine (hi, Oscar!) was wearing one of these Evil Mastermind shirts, and I just had to have one. I’m a software engineer by profession, with a somewhat acerbic personality, and ‘Your Code Is Suboptimal’ is probably going to turn into my new catch-phrase. Luckily, Eric Sink was giving them away free. Well, mostly.

The cost is that I have to have a picture taken of myself wearing the shirt and blog it (and give SourceForge permission to use the image). As an Objectivist, I try to adhere to the Trader Principle and fulfill my contracts. Herewith:

As a bonus, for the estimated three people reading this who don’t already know me personally, this is more or less what I look like. (The extent to which this does not look like me is the fault of my wife Anne and the GIMP. Figuring out which parts are me and which are her is left as an exercise to the reader.)

I give you the Israeli Defense Minister.

I understand Bush is going to be unveiling his new strategy for the so-called “War on Terror” tonight. Wake me up when he argues for military action against Iran. Absent that, the United States is making the same strategic error that Israel made last year during its war in Lebanon: failure to correctly identify the enemy and then act to destroy it. And, as with Israel, that strategic error will make victory impossible. It doesn’t matter how powerful your military is if you won’t use it on the right targets.

Until the Bush administration is willing to continue with the strategy that was originally and successfully used in Iraq — targetting states that support terrorism and destroying them — they’re just engaged in a bloodier and longer road to defeat than the one urged on us by the left and their enablers in the Democratic party.

Michelle Malkin has a pointer to a lovely T-Shirt expressing a healthy Western attitude towards Islamicist demands. It simply says, in English and Arabic, “I Will Not Submit.” True and good.

However this shirt also points out a problem that, I think, hampers resistance to Islamicism from within Christianity. Anybody who has read Milton’s Paradise Lost (and many who haven’t) will recognize Satan’s motto “non serviam” — I Will Not Serve. The crux of the War in Heaven is Satan’s refusal to submit to God’s authority. That refusal, and consequent rejection of God’s authority, is the sin of pride and the essence of Satan’s evil.

The essential Islamicist demand on the West is the same as God’s demand to Satan in Paradise Lost — submit to the authority of divine will or suffer punishment. While I am not a Christian, it looks as though both Islam and Christianity insist that I should submit myself to God as a moral imperative. Both insist that I have a moral obligation to submit. The difference is that in the contemporary world, the Christians don’t advocate the use of raw force against unbelievers to anything like the same extent that Islamicists do. (This observation is the same one that landed Pope Benedict in so much hot water recently.)

In a war of ideas, which is a crucial front in our conflict with the Islamicists, that difference is a pretty weak one. In essence, Christianity and Islamicism share a moral goal — man’s submission to God’s will. They differ on the means. Christians favor persuasion, Islamicists endorse the use of the sword. But the real problem lies in the goal, not the means; the submission, not the manner in which men are driven to it.

That being the case, I suspect that many of the Christian opponents of Islamicism would be taken somewhat aback if people took the advice from Malkin’s T-shirt and applied it consistently across theologies. Since I’m not a Christian, I intend to do exactly that.

The shirt is in the mail.

Brilliant.

Bill Quick over at DailyPundit has been on fire lately. He’s pretty much nailed my own current views on both George W. Bush and the Iraqi Campaign. Read ‘em both.

Lastango’s posts on the collapsing housing bubble and its consequences are also worth reading, e.g. here. My own ARM doesn’t start floating for another 4 years, I have a reasonable equity cushion in my home, and I’m otherwise debt-free. This sort of thing still concerns me. I pity the folks who are in debt up to their ears, because it’s all going to come crashing down. (And, courtesy of Congress, declaring bankruptcy is a lot harder than once it was.)

No, not me, you nitwits. (But thanks for the compliment.) B-)

Anne and I went to see SUPERMAN RETURNS earlier in the week. Overall, a decent effort — certainly better than the last two Superman films, although that isn’t too high a bar to clear. I’m pleased to be able to relegate SUPERMAN III and SUPERMAN IV to the trashbin of ‘movie sequels that never existed’, tucked neatly behind HIGHLANDER 2.

Bryan Singer knows his source material, both from earlier films (”Do you know what my father used to say to me?”) and from the comics (”These pictures are iconic.”). (Am I correct in thinking that those two photos are reproductions of famous panels from Superman #1? I’m pretty sure I recognized the shot of Superman lifting the tail end of the car. But I digress…) Starting with the opening credits, and carrying through to the final shot, this movie sends the message that the Superman movie franchise has ‘come home’, back on track.

That said, the movie does have some flaws. Other commentors have made a big deal out of Perry White’s “Truth, Justice… all that stuff” line, wondering what happened to the American Way, but I find it difficult to get lathered up about that. The people who think this is a sign of Hollywood corrupting the ultimate American hero need to go pick up a copy of “Superman: Red Son”. It’ll either give them a sense of perspective or make their heads explode.

I thought the film suffered somewhat from pacing issues, being too slow at times and too quick at others. Lex Luthor’s evil plan didn’t make much sense to me either — surely there would be better ways to make a quick buck using Kryptonian technology than building a new and unappetizing mini-continent in the Atlantic Ocean? This guy is supposed to be a genius, and this is the best he can come up with? I’m neither impressed nor convinced. Perhaps it’s time for the Superman franchise to move on to another villain. Superman has plenty, and Luthor is starting to (literally) repeat himself. How about Brainiac?

John Ottman’s score also left something to be desired; the only memorable parts were those that reused parts of John Williams’ original theme. Wisely, Ottman reused it a lot, but still…

There’s one other gaping plot hole that bugs me, but since it’s a honking great spoiler I’ll push it into the extended entry.

Net conclusion: it’s definitely worth the nine bucks for admission, assuming you like superhero films. This isn’t a top-flight example of the genre, but it’s a cut above generic efforts like FANTASTIC FOUR and several cuts above the bottom-feeders like CATWOMAN. I look forward to the next installment.

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