ObjectivistMathematician

In logic, we can discount certain ideas immediately because they commit the fallacy of self-exclusion. This idea, no doubt having good intentions, after all you are only trying to preserve freedom and the prevalence of liberal ideas, excludes itself because you are advocating violating rights in the name of protecting rights. Expropriating property in the name of ensuring that property is protected doesn't make any sense, and therefore abandons the use of reason it was supposed to instill in the populace.

But there are further problems. The main idea itself seems to stem from a mistrust that the market can provide education or that market education will lack in liberal ideas. But if the market can't provide a populace educated in the use of reason and instilled with a liberal culture, why is it assumed that engaging in a policy that explicitly flouts the laws of logic and the consistency very liberal ideas it is supposed to protect is going to result in the very liberal culture that was otherwise assumed to be impossible? If the populace doesn't embrace liberal ideas, it's hard to see why engaging in explicitly anti-liberal ideas is going to change their minds. Are we to believe that the public would be entirely unable to "use their consciousness to reason" unless you take their money from them and spend it for them? If the public is incapable of making rational choices, then how this same public is expected to suddently be able to make the right choices in running a public education system is unclear.

In addition to the false assumption that engaging in illogical and anti-liberal policies would fix these perceived defects, the original assumption itself that (1) we would all be stupid, irrational, and incapable of making choices without public education, and that (2) the public will embrace anti-liberal ideas without public education, is not justified. It comes from the Marxian doctrine of historical development of capitalism, in which there is a growing number of poor, uneducated, unemployed proletariat, continually pushing against the verge of starvation as wages fall lower and lower, and all wealth is centralized into the hands of fewer and fewer capitalists. The dissatisfaction with the capitalist mode of production increases as "class consciousness" develops until such a level is reached that the working class demands social change. But this is nonsensical pseudo-science, as it is based on the fallacious economics, such as the "iron law of wages," and incoherent philosophical mumbo-jumbo, such as dialectical materialism. There is no reason to believe either (1) or (2), nor that the market is incapable of providing education services, nor that this in itself would result in more anti-liberal ideas being prevalent.

Not to stop there, we can further criticize its method. You say that school choice is necessary, that privately owned schools are a necessary, and that the current curriculum is unacceptable. Well, if you plan on retaining choice in competition between producers, then how are you going to allocate your tax funds? You can't give it to any of the producers of education services, because that would be choosing for the consumers, and favoring one producer over another. Suppose, you say, let's give it to the consumers of education instead, and let them use it as a voucher to choose. But this doesn't make any sense. You are taxing the people, i.e. taking money away from them, then giving them the tax money back in order to spend it on education. What is the point in that? Why not just let them keep it in the first place and spend it themselves?

But they might not spend it on education, or they might not spend it on education in liberal ideas, you say. But, you say choice is a must. This, again, contradicts itself. They are free to choose, but not to choose something you don't like. Suppose some Muslims send their children to strict Islamic schooling. Suppose some Christians send their children to orthodox schools. No, in the name of liberalism and freedom of choice, I am going to forcibly redirect your values and choices to where I want them to go. There will be less money for each individual's values, and instead the money will be taxed and redirected towards Nigel's values. But I only want to ensure liberal ideas! You say. "We are for free enterprise!" Dr. Ferris screams. But this amounts to saying that you want to seize money that doesn't belong to you, in order to dragoon the children in government run, or government approved schools, for the sake of instilling in them liberal ideas. I'm going to brainwash your children to be free, damn it! Whether you like it or not! In the name of freedom! Pay up or go to jail! The manifest incoherence and self-contradictory nature of this idea, should be readily apparent.

Parents, in their role as consumers, are as sovereign as they are in the software and computer industries. A system in which families decide the best educational vehicle for each of their children and in which entrepreneurs, eager to earn profits, compete to best satisfy the demands on them is the only kind of education system compatible with the liberal ideas of freedom and choice.

Answer's reveal a person's priorities. I am usually more interested in having discussions about Ayn Rand with people on this forum, or with those whom I know personally.

Be aware that he is setting you up for a "gotcha", he already believes anyone who responds is only responding mindlessly from the "cult". This paradigm he has already created is a sign that he may not respond favorably, but he is not essential. The essential you are aiming for is anyone in your audience who might be rational. You don't have to overtly tell the antagonist that he is not essential, but keep it in mind when forming your argument.

Building a common premise gives more of a foundation to stand on. Ask questions at first, questions that relate to something the two of you may already have in common. Rather than jumping out of the gate in opposition, appeal to what ever rational faculty he may have. For instance, he does not like cults. Figure out what can be construed as cult like behavior. Then, Illustrate how Ayn Rand is in opposition to cults?

What about Objectivism seems like a cult? Being sure, having convictions, a superior attitude, being closed minded... all make people afraid of cults. Pragmatism is a rebellion against absolute certainty, it has also been used as a self defense against various cults that have risen up throughout history.

I would say:
"What is wrong with freedom of speech, independence, self respect, reason, rationality, focus, the necessity of choice, volition? A cult is diametrically opposed to all of these. Cults thrive on selfless, defenseless, irrational, dazed people who never made or wanted to make an important choice in their lives, and they give that choice over to the power of the cult. Ayn Rand was opposed to cult like behavior. She valued argument, and questioning. She wanted fully conscious, focused, thoughtful people in her life. She wasn't opposed to charity or benevolence, she simply meant it is impossible to give genuinely if one is forced to give at the point of a gun. Because when generosity is forced, expected, and unappreciated it naturally turns into resentment. No one's life is yours to waste. I don't expect you to believe anything I say without thinking about it."

I have been thinking it is "self defense" that those opposed to Objectivism seem to feel so threatened by. Delve deeply into many of these random online conversations and you will see how controlling the antagonist usually is, how he projects his own control issues onto Objectivism. I have observed that he becomes insecure when his usual emotional manipulation tactics don't work against Objectivists. He uses emotion as a tool of cognition and so his attacks intensify in search of an emotional response.

Being a closed system doesn't mean mankind can't gain new knowledge, it means that Ayn Rand is no longer here to defend herself, nor to admit where she might have been wrong. There were times when she admitted she was wrong while she was alive, and amended her position.

Just throwing out a couple of suggestions:

1. Most people do not engage in detailed critical analysis of political philosophy. Concepts like "the free market," "capitalism," "rights," and so forth are floating abstractions to the average person. That is, they are concepts taken from, or learned from, other people without having grounded them upon a foundation first-hand. They come associated with various context clues, emotional connotations, tones, and packaged with other concepts, but the person hasn't actually asked what facts in reality give rise to the need for these concepts.

And so it's actually not all that "obvious" that we have a mixed-economy as differentiated from the free market, or a purely capitalist society. I remember there was some poll where people were asked for their opinions on capitalism, including what it means, and the majority defined it as something like "whatever that system America has is called." So I don't think it's that they just are totally blind to the facts, but that they see certain things going on that they don't like: they see people being pushed around that they want to protect them, they see massive corporations with seemingly unaccountable power, they see massive economic problems, massive amounts of oppression and abuse from an unaccountable and privileged plutocracy, groups being victimized, etc. Couple this together with massive jumbles of fallacies from a long line of statists throughout the centuries and their use of floating abstractions, it's not hard to see why they come to some of the conclusions that they do against capitalism.

Of course, this generally applies to the sort of leftist that might be classified as "anti-authoritarian" in some sense, and not the kind of leftist that genuinely has a blueprint for utopia and is willing to pile up a mountain of skulls to make it happen. Those people, I think, just actually hate the idea of freedom, or conceive of freedom in such a way as to mean obedience to doing what they want you to do.

This might also serve to explain why it is that conservatives are so bad. From what I can see, there seems to be a certain range of "acceptable opinion" for conservatives, and that they claim freedom and liberty as merely slogans disconnected from any rigorous meaning. Which brings us to the next point:

2. Given the above, there is a certain amount of cognitive dissonance involved. Kuhn cites an example of a study done on people perceiving what they expect to perceive, based on accepted notions of things. "[A] mind accustomed to functioning within a certain conceptual framework will have trouble recognizing deviations from the categories of such a framework... even if contrary evidence is detected, it will be dismissed as inessential."

In an experiment, people were shown various flash cards that had like a red ace of spades and a black 2 of hearts or whatever, and most of the people didn't even register or notice this. So if we transfix this on this context, it doesn't matter if Republicans support various statist measures indistinguishable from Obama's policies, or if Democrats support various corporatist and plutocratic measures, various wars, and champion the police state. If one expects Republicans to be "against big government" and Democrats to be "against war, big business, and pro-civil liberties" that is what one will see because to see otherwise would go against vital notions of things and force one to rethink a whole lot of crap, basically.

Even if they recognize some of the same facts as anyone else, they will interpret it vastly differently so as to fit in their framework. People will tend not to see a government decision as what it is. Obama will be called a "Marxist" even though he does some of the same exact things that Bush Republicans were doing, and "that was different, we were in a crisis, we were told it would be done right, it was necessary," etc. Most people are against violence and beating people. If I would ask a lot of leftists if they would think it to be okay to go hit someone on the head, they would probably say "no of course not." They just won't see the government as hitting people over the head then, they will interpret it differently. They would simply not recognize the government hitting someone on the head and doing the same exact thing that would otherwise violate widely accepted moral principles, because having government do this is necessary. Which brings us to the next point:

3. Largely the opposite of floating abstractions, there is also what Rand called the concrete-bound mentality (also in PWNI.) The case for liberty and capitalism depends entirely upon one's ability to see beyond the immediate particulars and abstract out to the principles involved. Bastiat and Hazlitt also made this distinction in the context of economics between the "seen" and the "unseen." A lot of things we have to point to are "unseen" and require long chains of reasoning and abstracting from abstractions. You see the glazier hard at work thanks to the spending injected in the economy due to the broken window, but it takes an act of abstraction and counterfactual reasoning to see the things that the baker cannot now do with the resources that he otherwise would have had. You don't want the government to do X? Then you must be against X. The government does Y. If the government would not do this, then we will not have Y.

Roderick Long wrote a paper and gave a talk at the Austrian Scholars Conference earlier this year on this type of thing, though maybe not dealing with exactly with the question at hand, but it's interesting nonetheless:

paper: Invisible Hands and Incantations: The Mystification of State Power
talk:
see also:
and see our very own Eiuol: The Process Of Deliberation and getting others to change their mind

I think it's worth mentioning that criminals are not detained because they're irrational, immoral, or because they don't ''deserve life'' (i.e. not because they don't know how to fit the puzzle pieces together). Criminals are detained for only one reason: to protect rational, moral people from coercion.

1. The US should not have had a draft during WWII, or and other war. Instating a military draft is a clear violation of the right to life. As to the second part of this question, I have no response.

2. No, it was not immoral for Ayn Rand to collect Medicare. It is completely okay to accept things like Medicare, so long as you do so as restitution (for being forced to pay for programs you do not approve of), and not as charity, or entitlement to other people's wealth. People living in the US have to pay taxes for programs they may or may not approve of, so it wouldn't be immoral to get some of the money back from the government, provided such money was taken immorally.

3. I don't know quite what you're asking here: is their existence immoral, or is using them immoral? To the first question: public libraries do not involve protecting the rights of citizens, so it is improper for the government to fund them, and they should be private. To the second question: once again, you do pay taxes that support these libraries, so it is okay to use them/benefit from them.

4. I have no good answer for this one, but I know someone else here will.

5. Objectivism is defined as the philosophy of Ayn Rand; therefore, in order for one to be an Objectivist, one must agree with the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Rand was right about philosophical issues. This does not mean, however, that Objectivists believe that Ayn Rand was right about everything or that she was infallible. I'm sure many Objectivists could find something about which they and Rand disagreed. So long as these disagreements are not in contradiction with beliefs that Objectivism explicitly advocates, there's no problem.

1. The US should not have had a draft during WWII, or and other war. Instating a military draft is a clear violation of the right to life. As to the second part of this question, I have no response.

2. No, it was not immoral for Ayn Rand to collect Medicare. It is completely okay to accept things like Medicare, so long as you do so as restitution (for being forced to pay for programs you do not approve of), and not as charity, or entitlement to other people's wealth. People living in the US have to pay taxes for programs they may or may not approve of, so it wouldn't be immoral to get some of the money back from the government, provided such money was taken immorally.

3. I don't know quite what you're asking here: is their existence immoral, or is using them immoral? To the first question: public libraries do not involve protecting the rights of citizens, so it is improper for the government to fund them, and they should be private. To the second question: once again, you do pay taxes that support these libraries, so it is okay to use them/benefit from them.

4. I have no good answer for this one, but I know someone else here will.

5. Objectivism is defined as the philosophy of Ayn Rand; therefore, in order for one to be an Objectivist, one must agree with the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Rand was right about philosophical issues. This does not mean, however, that Objectivists believe that Ayn Rand was right about everything or that she was infallible. I'm sure many Objectivists could find something about which they and Rand disagreed. So long as these disagreements are not in contradiction with beliefs that Objectivism explicitly advocates, there's no problem.