So we have a spectrum; at one end we invoke the power of the state to stop genocide and at the other end we do not invoke the power of the state to reeducate the passive racist. Is there a rational test upon which we determine when to invoke the state somewhere along the spectrum, other than the whim of Ayn Rand or some other libertarian, or the Democrat party, or the government?
I’ll let Rand answer that:
“The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man’s self-defense, and, as such, may resort to force only against those who start the use of force. The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law. But a government that initiates the employment of force against men who had forced no one, the employment of armed compulsion against disarmed victims, is a nightmare infernal machine designed to annihilate morality: such a government reverses its only moral purpose and switches from the role of protector to the role of man’s deadliest enemy, from the role of policeman to the role of a criminal vested with the right to the wielding of violence against victims deprived of the right of self-defense. Such a government substitutes for morality the following rule of social conduct: you may do whatever you please to your neighbor, provided your gang is bigger than his.” -from Galt’s speech
Good, that covers the genocide but what about the passive racist? If it's mere existence offends his neighbor, should we invoke the power of the state to reeducate him? If he refuses to associate with his neighbor, and we say that the objectivity and the offense has now been heightened enough to invoke the power of the state…I think you will note that the state has come down on different sides of these issues. For example, I can decline to form a partnership with Hispanics but I may not decline to serve African-Americans in my restaurant.
Well, I’m black and if you decline to serve me in your restaurant I’ll quietly walk out…and for some strange reason every window there will be broken by the morning. J To be serious though, if yo0u don’t want to serve anyone for any reason, its your place, your food, so you shouldn’t have to. As for the state, current laws aren’t really based on any moral system so I couldn’t really care much about them. Take the 60’s for instance, most segregation in the South was instigated and enforced by the state. Schools, buses, movies theaters, restaurants, etc were forcibly segregated by law, not their owners. This is still a capitalist society, unless enforced by the law, owners literally can’t afford it. But rand didn’t want it by force:
“The forcible occupation of another man’s property or the obstruction of a public thoroughfare is so blatant a violation of rights that an attempt to justify it becomes an abrogation of morality. An individual has no right to do a “sit-in” in the home or office of a person he disagrees with—and he does not acquire such a right by joining a gang. Rights are not a matter of numbers—and there can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actions forbidden to an individual, but permitted to a mob.”
-Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
Turn the coin over, when and where will the libertarian stand up and say to the state, "stop, although the man is an irrational racist, his sovereignty is a higher value than your political correctness." What about the racist who is not behaving irrationally, but rationally? Can there be such a case? I infer from your reply that that is not possible, "Now if one refuses to be rational, then one is merely a slave to their own preconceived collectivist beliefs."
There is a difference between being mistaken and being irrational. Being mistaken simply means one made either an error in summing up ones premises in the decision making process or a minor flaw in ones logic when composing a conclusion. In either case, one can go back and correct those minor errors and arrive at a correct conclusion. The irrational person will stick to their false premises and refuse to reexamine their beliefs despite evidence to the contrary.
So, no it’s not possible for the racist or collectivist to be rational. I never read Charles Murray’s book but I have met the man and read excerpts. In the book, he clearly states “The debate about whether and how much genes and environment have to do with ethnic differences remains unresolved.” And since he was ranking intelligence on a bell curve, it means there are still a whole lot of black people smarter than the average white person (including me).
As for being an irrational Newtonian, the answer is no. One is not irrational if they are willing to go back and adjust their premises in the light of new evidence. So you would still be rational as long you updated your beliefs when you heard of Einstein. And even if you believe in the Bell Curve, however if you were to “act on the data” as you said, then all that says is to keep your kids away from poor kids.
For example, if I am the father of a young white child should I decline to put them on a school bus which is occupied almost entirely by African- American schoolchildren because I fear for his physical safety? If I decline to put him on the bus, am I an irrational racist? If I do not have the financial resources to conduct a thorough and statistically reliable survey on the proclivities of African-American youngsters on a school bus to physically attack white youngsters, am I irrational if I act on the anecdotal evidence before my eyes?
Seems like you keep looking for a reason to be racist? One would not be irrational if they are operating from the best evidence they have. If your school bus was passing by the ghetto, maybe; if however the bus just passed by the suburbs you then fine, anecdotal evidence would suit you fine. What does your kid say about them (as long as you didn’t raise him to be racist), how do the other kids look?
I grew up in the country and had a good little bus ride to a schools that were pretty much 50/50. Most of the kids on the bus though were white and when I was young, they were the ones always picking on me and calling me names (That changed in HS after I joined the football team and started working out. One of my old tormentors messed with me again and I broke one of his ribs).
What is racism? Normally one says that racism is the assumption that all members of a race behave alike or are alike. But what about the situation described in The Bell Curve which says that there are statistical tendencies which mark the races? Am I irrational if I say that the Japanese race tends to be more academically adept than my own German-Irish race? Is that racist? Suppose I stipulate that individual exceptions exist in all races, may I then say that the statistical tendency is valid without marking myself as a racist?
“Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage—the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.
Racism claims that the content of a man’s mind (not his cognitive apparatus, but its content) is inherited; that a man’s convictions, values and character are determined before he is born, by physical factors beyond his control. This is the caveman’s version of the doctrine of innate ideas—or of inherited knowledge—which has been thoroughly refuted by philosophy and science. Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes. It is a barnyard or stock-farm version of collectivism, appropriate to a mentality that differentiates between various breeds of animals, but not between animals and men.
Like every form of determinism, racism invalidates the specific attribute which distinguishes man from all other living species: his rational faculty. Racism negates two aspects of man’s life: reason and choice, or mind and morality, replacing them with chemical predestination.”
- The Virtue of Selfishness
So what? Lets say Murray and co were absolutely right? What does that tell you about me? About you or anyone for that matter? Nothing. I could be on the highest end of that curve and you one the lowest. One of my best friends is Asian and he’s dumb as a rock (although that could be cause he smokes weed) and I have a cousin who is a neurosurgeon.
So how does that change how you treat individuals?
When and how will Ayn Rand permit me to act as a rational, sovereign being on my own perceived interests which admittedly are based on incomplete data? When will Ayn Rand substitute her Einstein rationality for my Newtonian rationality? When will she invoke the power of the state to force me to abandon my racism and put my kid on the school bus?
Uh, Rand died the year I was born. And she wasn’t really know as the type to change her mind so I’m not exactly sure what you’re talking about.
These questions are really political questions which have to be answered in a political context. Which brings me back to my original question, how much political heat are you willing to endure in the furtherance of your philosophy? The original question I posed is that we must recognize and somehow deal with the trade-offs between doctrinal purity and political reality.
As for conservatives, we have actual hope of becoming again the dominant political party as well as the dominant political philosophy of the country. Racism is perhaps the key issue in election after election. How it is handled by conservatives and Republicans may actually determine the fate of the nation?
Believe me, any political heat is nothing compared to what we out each other through. Objectivist don’t do trade-offs or compromises, at least none that are contrary to what’s moral.
So is there a conservative party or should I just assume you’re talking about Republicans. Yeah, how’s working out for you? And from what I’ve seen, racism is only an issue when liberals accuse conservatives of it, and you let them.
So what is conservative philosophy? Where exactly does it stem from and how is it’s morality determined?
At a sales conference at Random House, preceding the publication of Atlas Shrugged, one of the book salesmen asked me whether I could present the essence of my philosophy while standing on one foot. I did as follows:
- Metaphysics: Objective Reality
- Epistemology: Reason
- Ethics: Self-interest
- Politics: Capitalism
If you want this translated into simple language, it would read: 1. “Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed” or “Wishing won’t make it so.” 2. “You can't eat your cake and have it, too.” 3. “Man is an end in himself.” 4. “Give me liberty or give me death.”
If you held these concepts with total consistency, as the base of your convictions, you would have a full philosophical system to guide the course of your life. But to hold them with total consistency—to understand, to define, to prove and to apply them—requires volumes of thought. Which is why philosophy cannot be discussed while standing on one foot—nor while standing on two feet on both sides of every fence. This last is the predominant philosophical position today, particularly in the field of politics.
My philosophy, Objectivism, holds that:
- Reality exists as an objective absolute—facts are facts, independent of man’s feelings, wishes, hopes or fears.
- Reason (the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses) is man's only means of perceiving reality, his only source of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of survival.
- Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life.
- The ideal political-economic system is laissez-faire capitalism. It is a system where men deal with one another, not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves, but as traders, by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit. It is a system where no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force, and no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. The government acts only as a policeman that protects man’s rights; it uses physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use, such as criminals or foreign invaders. In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been) a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church.
The Objectivist Newsletter, Aug. 1962
