“Obama’s Not a Socialist”

A glimpse of the analysis in Dr. Leonard Peikoff's forthcoming book, The DIM Hypothesis.

At the 2010 Objectivist conference/OCON, Dr. Leonard Peikoff was presenting material from his forthcoming book, The DIM Hypothesis, in which he analyzes Western culture and history from the perspective of the epistemological process of integration. I was surprised to learn that, according to Peikoff’s analysis, Barack Obama is not, as I and others have been saying, a socialist or communist. Socialists or communists are examples of what Peikoff calls “misintegration,” or integration by non-rational means. Obama, Peikoff thinks, is anti-ideological, and as such has no long-range guiding values or theory of society. He does not integrate his thoughts and actions by any means, valid or invalid. Rather, Peikoff describes Obama as an almost-but-not-yet-fully consistent egalitarian nihilist, and thus a manifestation of the same trend which Peikoff calls D2, i.e., the form of Kantianism that gave us non-objective art, quantum mechanics, and progressive education. Because I am no expert on philosophy, for more on Peikoff’s views, I refer you to his forthcoming book.

egalitarian nihilism means they despise everyone equally and are driven to destroy everything. The only hierarchy of values I can discern is “We need to win and we need you to lose.”

Good summary. I always thought that liberalism was about changing things drastically so that the practitioners of liberalism ended up in charge. Back in the late 50s/early 60s, they though society was too conserverative, religious, educated, and industrious for the likes of them to ever attain power. So...they went about changing it by tearing down all the institutions that made American great and replaced it with the G-d of Government. In order to rule, they will have to transform American in to their Third World. This is why so many on the Left are sympathetic to Chavez. In their minds, he is the kind of leader they aspire to become.

One of the maddening things about the progressive-left is that it is imponderable. Their “great books” are unreadable. Every one of their “great thinkers” an authority unto himself.

In contrast, the great monotheistic religions of the world teach that God is One, that his laws are just and merciful, and that - while God cannot be fully known to the human mind - his laws are so reasonable as to be self-evident.

The progressive-left is atheistic not only in denying the existence of God, but in denying the existence or even possibility of objective truth, denying right and wrong, denying morality. Everything, ultimately, comes down to power, and, thus, it is for those with the will to power to rule.

As to how to attain power, whether through democratic methods or through revolutionary methods, this is not a fundamental difference. The end is still the same.

Now, there various kinds of big government, and - along the way to big government - various gradations. There are also various combinations of views.

There are those who would use religion (maybe I should say use the religious impulse of most people) to attain power. Think of the Aztecs and their rule by a religion that was nothing more than sheer terrorism.

Church leaders can become imponderable, irrational, and self-centered, as in the Catholic Church from the mid 19th to the mid 20th century, attempting to distinguish itself between socialism and liberalism, claiming to be a “third way.”

The Protestant Church, beginning with the Social Gospel Movement, overthrew God and deified the state. Nowadays, we can see that the Protestant Church has totally rejected the Bible and accepted its own opinions as the ultimate authority.

Ayn Rand’s philosophy is presented as a new and revolutionary form of atheism, call it “mono-atheism,” that is it’s own “third way.” In her philosophy, truth exists (but we refuse to cal the existence of truth by its proper name, God), and is discoverable to the human mind through pure reason.

Rand herself put it this way: only she, the Kremlin and the Vatican knew what they were about. She was for reason (in support of the pursuit of self-interest of each person for himself). The Vatican for non-reason (in the pursuit of self-sacrifice by all for all). And, the Kremlin for the nihilistic will to power. Communists were people who looked into the Abyss and fell in love with it.

Actually, I rather like reason. But, who’s reason is so perfect as to be treated as God (even if there is no God)? The traditional argument is that the truth can be discovered through multiple disciplines, each affirming the other. The two witnesses of the truth are faith and reason. And, when discovered, truth is “self-evident,” so reasonable as to be beautiful, and embraced by men and women of good will.

To be more exact: some people look into the Abyss and love it, and others look to God and love him. It appears to be a choice.

In the end, we saw that Rand’s “inner circle” devolved into yet another personality cult (although, nowadays, there are many admirers of Rand, even followers of her, who incorporate her insights and heroic spirit into their lives without treating her as a psuedo-Messiah).

In the re-casting of Rand’s trichotomy, there are those who attempt to integrate knowledge by reason only, those who attempt to integrate knowledge by means other than reason only, and those who deny the possibility of integrating knowledge. Not only Obama but all of those in the progressive-left are in the third category. Therefore, that Obama is in the third category doesn’t disprove that he is a socialist.

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