Two Objectivists on the Election

Note added on Novermber 17, 2006: After careful evaluation of the evidence and some of the views pointed to here on my own, I have changed my mind. I was mistaken to side with Robert Tracinski. Some of my reasoning can be found at the above link.

Via Noumenal Self and The Primacy of Awesome comes Leonard Peikoff's take (apparently from a recent Q&A) on the upcoming elections. Because there does not appear to be a permanent link (and it is relatively short anyway), I will quote it in its entirety, minus the question.

How you cast your vote in the coming election is important, even if the two parties are both rotten. In essence, the Democrats stand for socialism, or at least some ambling steps in its direction; the Republicans stand for religion, particularly evangelical Christianity, and are taking ambitious strides to give it political power.

Socialism -- a fad of the last few centuries -- has had its day; it has been almost universally rejected for decades. Leftists are no longer the passionate collectivists of the 30s, but usually avowed anti-ideologists, who bewail the futility of all systems. Religion, by contrast -- the destroyer of man since time immemorial -- is not fading; on the contrary, it is now the only philosophic movement rapidly and righteously rising to take over the government.

Given the choice between a rotten, enfeebled, despairing killer, and a rotten, ever stronger, and ambitious killer, it is immoral to vote for the latter, and equally immoral to refrain from voting at all because "both are bad."

The survival of this country will not be determined by the degree to which the government, simply by inertia, imposes taxes, entitlements, controls, etc., although such impositions will be harmful (and all of them and worse will be embraced or pioneered by conservatives, as Bush has shown). What does determine the survival of this country is not political concretes, but fundamental philosophy. And in this area the only real threat to the country now, the only political evil comparable to or even greater than the threat once posed by Soviet Communism, is religion and the Party which is its home and sponsor.

The most urgent political task now is to topple the Republicans from power, if possible in the House and the Senate. This entails voting consistently Democratic, even if the opponent is a "good" Republican.

In my judgment, anyone who votes Republican or abstains from voting in this election has no understanding of the practical role of philosophy in man's actual life -- which means that he does not understand the philosophy of Objectivism, except perhaps as a rationalistic system detached from the world.

If you hate the Left so much that you feel more comfortable with the Right, you are unwittingly helping to push the U.S. toward disaster, i.e., theocracy, not in 50 years, but, frighteningly, much sooner.

With the approach of another election, we once again see a difference of opinion between major Objectivist intellectuals. Robert Tracinski, in a much longer article, recently discussed his initial leaning in the same direction, followed by his settling on the opposite conclusion -- to vote for the Republicans.

[I]f you want to have a debate over how to fight and win the War on Terrorism, you'll have to have it within the right. The left contributes nothing but proposals for surrender, appeasement, and passivity. As far as the war is concerned, that "D" next to a candidate's name on the ballot stands for "defeat."

A loss for the Democratic Party in November's election would be a crushing blow. If they lose when every short-term political trend was in their favor, everyone will see it as a public repudiation of the Democratic Party. I advocate this outcome, not because I think it will cause soul-searching and a change of policies within the left -- though that may well be the short-term result -- but simply because the decay of the left is the long-term trend of the past three decades, and we should do everything we can to hasten it.

The more the left fades from the scene, the more the national political debate will be a debate within the right. The American system is not friendly to monolithic one-party rule. The moment one party begins to dominate, it tends to split apart along its internal fault lines. The more the Republicans dominate American politics, therefore, the more intensely they will debate among themselves -- precisely the kinds of debates I have described above.

I can't guarantee that such a debate would produce the best result -- I would like to see the emergence of a small-government, pro-immigration, pro-war, secular right -- but I can guarantee that such a debate would be more interesting and much more productive than the debate we're having with the left right now. [bold added]

Each man makes very good points, although I disagree with Peikoff that "anyone who votes Republican or abstains from voting in this election has no understanding of the practical role of philosophy in man's actual life".

Why? First, the manner in which electoral results affect the nation's public debate is a complicated topic. As things currently stand -- with small government and religious conservatives allied against the socialists -- each election ends up being exactly the kind of "choice" Peikoff describes. But what if the left were finally quashed in this election? Although a political realignment might also happen through the left joining forces with the religious right (e.g., via the environmentalist agenda) I think Tracinski has a good point.

Second, there is the only slightly less complicated matter of how we should best recover from our poor prosecution, so far, of the war. I do not simply hate the left blindly. I have noticed that they have no interest in fighting the current war at all and -- far worse -- I fear what kinds of restrictions they would quickly impose on freedom of speech if they ever were to regain power. No freedom of speech coupled with a huge overdose of multiculturalism will also put a "rotten, ever stronger, and ambitious killer" in charge. It will just be the other rotten killer: Islam rather than evangelical Christianity. The left in power again would manage to degrade our position in this war no matter where we started.

Even aside from that, I am not so sure that kicking the Republicans out will necessarily slow down efforts to inject religion into government -- because the left has shown that it is not above pandering to religionists, including the Christians they allegedly hate. (Where were Ralph Nader and Jesse Jackson during the Schiavo debacle? Hint: Not defending Mr. and Mrs. Schiavo's previous agreement to "pull the plug" or the scientific evidence in the case or the rule of law.) At present, the religious right are allied with small government conservatives and the left is trying to court the religious right. We can continue having three factions, two of which compete to make the religionists the kingmakers. Or we can knock out the left and have two clearly opposing factions. I would far prefer the latter scenario, if at all possible.

In addition, I see the left as tending towards totalitarianism if in power (See "restrictions" above.) and -- as we saw in numerous incidents of violence and vandalism in the last presidential election -- irrational to the point of violence under the right conditions.

It is interesting that I learned of the Peikoff piece today since two postings at Sister Todjah, a conservative blog, had me thinking about just these issues. First, there is the matter of religious conservatives being unreliable allies of limited government, which Sister tells you in her "About" entry:

I've never looked back nor regretted my change from liberal to conservative, even when my party has sometimes not acted conservative - but that mostly seems to be happening on fiscal matters.

So the goals of the socialists are, apparently, tolerable so long as the government, say, forces our kids to pray in public schools (rather than abolishing them). Great.

But then we also have this (via Glenn Reynolds), which Sister quotes from The Huffington Post:

But whether it is hubris, loony tunes, or both, the White House's freakish calm about the elections makes me as nervous as the hell we seem to be headed for. Therefore we should all be on alert. If for whatever reason we don't win back Congress in November the only real answer will be to take to the streets. [formatting removed, bold added]

And this is what they're like without fangs....

This is a step beyond Al Gore's attempt to steal the 2000 election and reminds me of the following quote of Ayn Rand's that I dredged up when the loser -- a leftist -- of Mexico's recent presidential election did just that.

The only power of a mob, as against an individual, is greater muscular strength -- i.e., plain, brute physical force. The attempt to solve social problems by means of physical force is what a civilized society is established to prevent. The advocates of mass civil disobedience admit that their purpose is intimidation. A society that tolerates intimidation as a means of settling disputes -- the physical intimidation of some men or groups by others -- loses its moral right to exist as a social system, and its collapse does not take long to follow. [Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, p. 256]

I think the left is dying out, knows it, and will try to take us with it if it gets the chance. I think having the left in power remains a greater short-term threat (due to their suicidal levels of nihilism) than having the right remain in power. I'm with Tracinski on this one.

-- CAV

Updates

10-23-06: (1) Peikoff's Q & A now appear at Capitalism Magazine. (2) The Inspector voices concerns similar to mine.
10-24-06: (1) Mike N argues for split government here and here. (2) Via the trackback to Primacy of Awesome are links to two related discussions.
10-27-06: (1) Nick Provenzo agrees with Peikoff, but is unhappy with the way he presents his argument. (That's me in the "Amen corner" on the latter count.) (2) The original thread from Objectivism Online is here.
10-29-06: Michael Hurd weighs in in favor of a Democratic Congress, but stops short of Peikoff's advocacy of voting only for Democrats.
10-30-06: (1) Myrhaf says to "Wear a Gasmask and Vote Republican". He gives excellent examples of the threat to freedom of speech posed by democrats, as well as of their totalitarian tendencies. (2) Also, via Myrhaf's post are several others: Zach Oakes also advocates voting Republican. Advocating votes for the Democrats are Diana Hsieh, David Landy, and John Lewis.

The last of these gives the best rationale for voting Democratic.

In my view, if our choice is between two forms of welfare redistribution and military timidity, we would be best off with a president who openly espouses these ideas, and makes no claims to support the opposite. This would not lead to better policies, but it would result in clarity, a point of focus for an opposition, and a better chance for a true alternative to take hold.

If I thought freedom of speech could survive the rule of the left as it is today, I would be far closer to being on board with that.
11-1-06: (1) I have not read any of these yet as of this morning, but they are all "pro-" Democrat except the last: Craig Biddle, John Lewis, Andrew Medworth, and Myrhaf. (2) Added second link for Mike N.
at 10-24 update.
11-17-06: Added prefatory note on withdrawing my agreement with Tracinski.