HAIGHT SPEECH

… 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.

(more…)

Like Jane Galt and a lot of others on the right side of the political spectrum, I’m not particularly happy with the way the Bush administration and the GOP have been acting of late. So, does that make me liberal? I doubt it, but let’s check.

Atrios, via Kevin Drum, has a list of items that the port side of the blogosphere apparently agrees would be good policy. Let’s see how I stack up.

Undo the bankruptcy bill enacted by this administration

I’m hardly an expert on bankruptcy law, so I don’t have a strong opinion on this one way or the other. I have the impression that the lending industry pushed for the new law pretty hard, but that doesn’t automatically make it rent-seeking. (That’s the way to bet, though.) I’d have to know the details of what the law would be replaced with. This isn’t an issue that would lead me to vote for or against a given candidate, so I guess it’s a wash as far as I’m concerned.

Repeal the estate tax repeal

No. The basic argument in support of taxing people is that it pays for the government services they consume. Once I’m dead, I’m not consuming any more services, so why should I have to pay for them? Moreover, estate taxes make it difficult for families to accumulate wealth over generations, and accumulating wealth is good.

More generally, I’ve noticed that the tax code seems to be structured not to soak the already-rich, but to prevent the upper-middle class from becoming rich. The income tax is easily avoidable by the extremely wealthy; they can invest their assets in ways that produce tax-free revenue streams (e.g. municipal bonds) and live off them. Upper-middle class folks don’t have the assets to do this and sustain their lifestyle. They get socked by the progressive income tax schedule, AMT and the phase-out of deductions. Similarly, the extremely wealthy can do things like set up trusts to reduce the impact of estate taxes, but the estates of the upper-middle aren’t big enough for that to be viable. So they get socked by the estate tax.

People don’t get rich by having their money taxed into the hands of government officials; they get rich by being able to keep the money they earn. This is true both for individuals and families across generations.

Increase the minimum wage and index it to the CPI

No, no, and hell no. Price controls are bad. They’re bad in the market for commodities, they’re bad in the market for real estate, they’yre bad in the market for services, and they’re (surprise) bad in the market for labor. I’m pretty sure Frederic Bastiat nailed this one somtime in the 1850’s; I can’t belive we’re still arguing about it now.

Universal health care (obviously the devil is in the details on this one)

No. There is no such thing as a right to health care. The current health care regimen in the United States is clearly broken, but the way to fix it is with more freedom, not less.

Increase CAFE standards. Some other environment-related regulation

In general, no.

Pro-reproductive rights, getting rid of abstinence-only education, improving education about and access to contraception including the morning after pill, and supporting choice. On the last one there’s probably some disagreement around the edges (parental notification, for example), but otherwise.

This is a mixed-bag. I definitely support first and second trimester abortions, and the morning-after pill. I also think Roe was badly-decided and should be overturned, as long as it’s overturned for the right reasons. Abortion probably should be a constitutionally-protected right, but I’m not convinced that it actually is, and trying to twist the Constitution into saying something it doesn’t opens the door to a whole raft of pernicious shenanigans.

The question of abstinence-only sex education is only an issue because of public schools. Expand vouchers, education choice tax credits, work towards long-term privatization of the schools, and let parents decide how they want their children educated.

Simplify and increase the progressivity of the tax code

Simplify, yes. Increase the progressivity, no.

Kill faith-based funding. Certainly kill federal funding of anything that engages in religious discrimination.

The question here is what constitutes “religious discrimination”. I would agree that a program that specifically excludes secular organizations is a problem and should be halted. But a program that is open to both secular and religious organizations equally, but which the secular choose (for whatever reason) not to take advantage of, is not a problem. So, to take a specific example, a program of school vouchers that was legally restricted to parochial schools would be wrong. But a program of school vouchers that is open to both secular and sectarian schools is fine, even if the vast majority of currently-existing private schools are sectarian. If you want more such funding to flow to secular private schools, go and found some.

Similar logic applies to charity work. I don’t think the government should be funding religious or secular charities, but if it must do so it should do so in an ideologically-neutral manner. Discussions with liberals have lead me to conclude that this is not what they mean when they talk about religious discrimination.

Reduce corporate giveaways

Yes. (Although I can’t help echoing the snarky comment of another responder to this list asking whether universal health care would be considered a corporate giveaway.)

Actually, I’d go farther than ‘reduce’, all the way to ‘eliminate’. I support the full and complete separation of state and economics. While we’re at it, can we stop giving money away to non-corporate entities as well? Defunding the United Nations would be a good move, for example — I don’t see that they’re any more deserving of my tax dollars than Archer Daniels Midland or Northrop-Grumman.

Have Medicare run the Medicare drug plan

No. Kill the Medicare drug plan. For that matter, kill Medicare.

Force companies to stop underfunding their pensions. Change corporate bankruptcy law to put workers and retirees at the head of the line with respect to their pensions.

Let’s talk about forcing companies to fully fund their retirement plan obligations as soon as the federal government is fully funding its retirement plan obligations. End the Social Security Ponzi scheme.

Leave the states alone on issues like medical marijuana. Generally move towards “more decriminalization” of drugs, though the details complicated there too.

Here I can agree fully.

Paper ballots

I’m not wedded to paper ballots as such, but I think recent years have demonstrated an erosion in the quality of our voting system and a corresponding decline in public trust that needs to be corrected. We need a way for voters to verify that their vote was counted and counted correctly. We also need to clean up the voter rolls and keep them clean, and we need to ensure that the people who vote are actually entitled to do so. (I have to show photo ID when I buy beer; why don’t I have to do the same thing when I’m voting? What possible justification is there for treating the foundational process of our democracy more lightly than getting hammered on Saturday night?)

Given their almost hysterical opposition to things like photo ID voting requirements, I don’t think that the sort of comprehensive voting system cleanup I want to see is what liberals want. But I’d be happy to be wrong. Democracy only works when the side that loses is confident that their support was counted accurately and fairly.

Improve access to daycare and other pro-family policies. Obviously details matter.

This is too vague to assess objectively. If it means government-funded childcare, I’m out. Given how screwed up the public schools are, why would I want to let the government near my hypothetical child for several more hours a day?

Raise the cap on wages covered by FICA taxes.

No. Privatize Social Security.

Marriage rights for all, which includes “gay marriage” and quicker transition to citizenship for the foreign spouses of citizens.

I’m torn here, but I think I come down against in the end.

Reviewing the above, out of 16 points I find only one point where I can agree completely (on drug legalization). There are a few other points where I can find partial agreement. Overall I’d say it comes to about 3/16, which would make me just under 19% liberal.

I wonder if there’s a similar set of ‘points of agreement’ on the starboard side?