"Unfortunately, your movement has spawned Toxic Randroid Cultists who reject reason in the application of your philosophy and who treat your every word on every topic as if it were biblical truth" - Dr Tom Stevens, founder of and Presidential candidate for the Objectivist Party in a speech at Ayn Rand's grave in April 2009
The Objectivist Party is an interesting recent development (official website here). Founded in 2008 on February 2 (Ayn Rand's birthday) by lawyer Dr Tom Stevens (who sounds like an interesting fellow) The Objectivist Party is a would-be political force not only unaffiliated with the main players in Objectivism such as the Ayn Rand Institute or their arch enemies The Atlas Society, but, judging by the quote above, apparently openly rejecting them (Stevens' quote above is surely aimed at the ARI at least).
Typically, the party seems heavy on principle but light on policy. And how The Objectivist Party's interpretation of Randian doctrine actually differs from the "Toxic Randroid Cultists" version is not immediately clear - in fact, it is hard to see how anyone can avoid the deep-rooted cultic incitements built into Objectivism by its founder without ending up avoiding Objectivism itself. But perhaps The Objectivist Party's USP will emerge over time. You can follow Dr Tom Stevens' blog here.
36 comments:
At the end of the day it will be for the voters to decide if they accept or reject this party. But the old saying is, you don't subert the system it subverts you. If they did get elected i'd give 'em six weeks as Ayn Rand states in the VOS that the 1st objective of an Objectivist country is to wage war on the non-objectivist ones. I can'r remember a single war that America that won on it's own. Hope they don't make Vietman the 1st country they invade, would probably be the last to.
My worry is that although I hate the Democrats and the Republicans at least when they lose they have the good grace to go from office. Would and Objectivist party allow themselves to be voted out of office, asuuming and it's a pretty big if, they got voted in in the 1st place?
I doubt the party ever will though, fare better than a socialist, libertarian or a green party at the polls.
"The "In Galt We Trust" Campaign For A Secular America seeks to build and join secularly-oriented coalitions with a common interest in a strong separation of religion from the state. People can believe whatever they wish but it is outrageous that in a supposedly secular America, the government places "In God We Trust" on its money and in its courtrooms. The country's government and justice system should trust in the rule of law and respect for individual rights. It should not trust in God or Zeus or even jolly ole Santa Claus.
The "In Galt We Trust" campaign was started by Objectivists who wished to point out that reason and respect for individual rights should be the guiding principles behind our government and justice system, not trust in God.
Support the "In Galt We Trust" campaign by crossing out "God" from "In God We Trust" on your U.S. paper currency and replacing it with "Galt" so it reads "In Galt We Trust".
Exercising your 1st Amendment rights in this manner will make an important political statement.
The "In Galt We Trust" Campaign For A Secular America formed as an outgrowth of the original "In Galt We Trust" grassroots movement.
We intend to make our mark!"
This, from Dr. Stevens' blog, makes it very difficult to take them seriously.
Daniel Barnes,
Well this is certainly an interesting development.
How many layers of irony are there in the "In Galt we trust" campaign?
Reminds one of the WASP single, I forget which one, where the singer imforms us "that I'm a real bad dude...I got pictures of bare nekkid women all over my room"
Does the blog say which is the 1st non-objectivist country they would invade?
What would happen if a country voted in an ARI approved Objectivist party at the same time as another country voted in a TOS Objectivist party? Would they fight each other, to the death, first? The victor them going on to fight everybody else?
The ARI would never approve an Objectivist party. Rand's position was that such a party would be pointless, and the ARI has upheld that position unfailingly by shunning the idea of a party and instead promoting its cultural change project (this, by the way, is among the irritants that make belonging to the orthodox movement unpalatable: we are told, concerning the spreading of Objectivism, that the future of mankind hangs in the balance, yet political organizing is verboten, and the emphasis instead is on writing essays). Whether that departure by Dr. Stevens from a longstanding Rand/ARI political position amounts to a different interpretation of Randian doctrine I leave to others to decide.
Well they do say the pen is mightier than the sword. So maybe those essays may win out in the end.
But does anybody really think the party will get more than 0.1% of the vote in 2012?
Anon69:
>..we are told, concerning the spreading of Objectivism, that the future of mankind hangs in the balance, yet political organizing is verboten, and the emphasis instead is on writing essays...
This is typical of the basically Scholastic/verbalist nature of Objectivism. If my assessment of Objectivism is correct, it will produce any amount of verbiage loftily informing us of, say, What Art Is,* or what "proper" literature should be, but hardly any actual art or literature. Likewise, this project of "cultural change" I see as just an excuse for more reams of blab about the importance of creating a "proper" culture with about the same level of actual cultural contribution. (And let's leave aside the actual scale of cultural change vs political change, not to mention the distinctly nasty precedents of recent history of such projects...)
*As a perfect example of tunnel-visioned verbalism, observe how a book that purports to explain the superiority of Objectivist aesthetics to us has such an ugly, amateurish afterthought of a cover!
Really, what "cultural change" means in Objectivism is that if mankind does not fit the fantasy world of "Atlas Shrugged", it must be remolded until it does.
Anonymous,
You wrote,
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Does the blog say which is the 1st non-objectivist country they would invade?
What would happen if a country voted in an ARI approved Objectivist party at the same time as another country voted in a TOS Objectivist party? Would they fight each other, to the death, first? The victor them going on to fight everybody else?
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I don't think there are many objectivists out there that would support going to war with a non objectivist country, just because its not objectivist. There maybe some flaws with her philosophy, but Rand herself denounced forcing people to agree with her, even if she sometimes contradicted herself. Plus it would need to than use force to make people support the unreasonable war, because many would not, and that would require a big government, and coercion. Two things that the philosophy denounces.
That does not mean that it couldn't happen, but it would make them look like hypocrites and it would be incredibly hard, not make themselves appear so, because they denounce censorship and initiating coercion.
But does anybody really think the party will get more than 0.1% of the vote in 2012?
I don't even think it will exist in 2012.
Wells,
We will find out in 2012. When the year comes around, lets Google the Objectivist Party and lets see what we find. I doubt that they will ever get a candidate in the white house, but still it might kind of interesting to see what happens with them.
"But does anybody really think the party will get more than 0.1% of the vote in 2012? I don't even think it will exist in 2012." - Wells
Ditto. But if it does still exist, I predict the party gets 0.0000001% of the vote, maximum.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go back to scrawling "In Galt We Trust" on all my greenbacks.
The revolution starts here, people!
:-P
But remember, if the party does not get more than 0.00000001% of the vote they can always take the Libertarian line and say it's because the voters are stupid. Or it's Kants fault.
Yep, because nothing works better than telling your potential voters that they are idiots!
Yes Glen I know! Tell that to the editors of Reason magazine, who ran an issue with the front cover "why voters are stupid"!
But, voters, who dont' vote for the OP could be immoral to?
I'm confused, how is changing the wording on a dollar bill going to achive anything?
Is this group just a bunch of arty students acting out some satire on Ayn Rand
Assuming we can take at face value Dr. Tom Stevens's description of himself as a real-life Doc Savage, what does he need Ayn Rand for? The experiences he has allegedly accumulated in his life swamp whatever he could have learned from Rand's verbose comic books without the pictures.
Good to know that Objectivists are against initiating force. Now we can elect Peikoff president, I mean he doesnt want America to nuke anybody now does he?
Anon:
>Good to know that Objectivists are against initiating force. Now we can elect Peikoff president, I mean he doesnt want America to nuke anybody now does he?
And the answer to that is....it's "contextual"!....;-)
I'd offer you even money the 1st nuke is aimed at Havana, Paris, the Saudis? Or would it be Afghanastan, Libya or Iran?
Nahhhhh, I think he'd send the Feds rounds to beat David Kelly and the Brandens to a pulp.
"But does anybody really think the party will get more than 0.1% of the vote in 2012?"
No, not anyone who has a head for political reality. I wonder if they will be on the ballot for more than a few states.
In America, we have a two party system. If you want to work for change you have to work within that system. When 3rd parties have any influence at all, they merely take votes and hence weaken one of the two major parties (the party closest, ideologically, to the 3rd party). Such parties are particularly pathetic when they don't represent any major social forces in the country at large (which is true of the Objectivist Party). They are quixotic exercises in vanity.
I also can't help noticing the following quote from Dr. Steven's blog: "People can believe whatever they wish but it is outrageous that in a supposedly secular America, the government places 'In God We Trust' on its money and in its courtrooms." Here we have perhaps another motivation behind the Objectivist Party. It's members wish to fight for free markets without having to make alliances with the dreaded religious right. Unfortunately, the way social forces are aligned in America, if you want to have any chances against the economic left, you have to align yourself with the religious right. That's just the way politics works. It's all about making alliances with people you don't entirely agree with. That is how Reagan got elected. What makes this obssessive fear of the religious right all the more unwise and irrational is the fact the religious right tends to be satisfied, in their role as ally, with trivial things (like the "In God We Trust" on the coins and an utterly innocuous form of "school prayer"). Rand's obssession with an individual's stated "premises" (rather than their conduct) leads her followers into self-defeating paths.
Greg,
Well I can say from experience that Objectivists are not always unwilling to compromise and tolerate some level of disagreement. I have a buddy in the anti Jihad movement who is an objectivist, named Bosch Fawstin. Although I never met him face to face, I know a few things about him. He's an artist working on a graphic novel called "The Infidel." During the 2004 election, Bosch supported John McCain, not because he thought he would do everything he would like, but because he thought that of the two of them, he'd be better than Barrack Obama. He understood full well, that it was unlikely that we'd have an objectivist in the white house anytime soon. He wasn't exactly thrilled with McCain through. Also on his website, he links to at least one Christian website, called MosqueWatch, that supports many of his views on the War On Terror and the fight against Islamitization. He even posted some of his cartoons there, despite the fact that many of the articles on the site have a conservative christian bent.
But even through I don't agree with much of their philosophy, I can empathize with those objectivists who are really unwilling to compromise. I hate it, when a politician does something I don't agree with, even through I know that its unlikely that I will ever agree with everything one of our leaders do.
However, as for as dealing with the right or the left, its not just objectivists, but libertarians in general, who have a problem. If you are a full fledged libertarian, than it is safe to say that you oppose both the right and the left.
Think about the platform of the libertarian party. First they disagree with the right. They oppose laws against prostitution, they support repealing all drug laws, and think that there should be no restrictions on fire arm ownership, (excluding of course, people in prison). But they also oppose the left. Libertarians, oppose socialized medicine, want to repeal environmental regulations, support free, unregulated markets, in general, and often oppose political correctness.
The fact that libertarians are opposed both of the two biggest political factions, is one of the reasons that they are only a third party. If you are a libertarian candidate for any office and you show a willingness to compromise with either the left or the right, you maybe seen as a sell out, by more committed libertarians, regardless of weather they are objectivists or not. It wouldn't really matter to many of them, if compromise was necessary to win, in fact many of them would refuse to accept that compromise was necessary. Plus if a libertarian got even remotely close to getting enough votes for the white house, he'd have to deal with both the republican and democratic attack machines. That would be a nightmare for him.
Note, that I'm not really a libertarian, despite often agree with them, but I still can empathize with there desire for a less intrusive government.
Come to think of it, how would a libertarian president govern effectively, if almost everyone in congress were still republicans or democrats and there were a significant number of both? How would he govern effectively without being willing to compromise with both parties?
He wouldn't Damien as the system runs itself and cares not a jot who is in power; republican, Democrat or Libertarian.
Capitalism has it's own logic and woe betide any party that tries to mess with that. I think we all know that when governments try to interfere with the running of the economy, well it's never end up for the good does it? They tried to do things differently in the USSR but the system eventually collapsed, even China is run along free market lines now. Hell even Rauol Castro is thinking about doing deal with the US. Under capitalism you cant buck the market. That is why I never vote, as here in the UK the level of umeployment kept on rising during the 80's even though the Conservatives said it wouldnt and they reduce it. They even claimed to have controlled inflation but prices doubled in the 11 years Thatcher was in power.
By the way, just to clear something up, I should have put the part about libertarians opposing gun control under where they disagree with the left, because the right tends to oppose gun control, that was a mistake. However, I didn't notice it, until I reread my comment after, posting it. Sorry about that mistake.
In the beginning Greg you state that the appearnace of the Objectvist party is an interesting development. In what sense are you using the word interesting?
As I understand they only received a little over 1000 votes in the 2008 presidential election.
"In the beginning Greg you state that the appearnace of the Objectvist party is an interesting development. In what sense are you using the word interesting? "
It was Daniel that made that comment (he's the author of this post). It's an interesting development only in the context in what could be called "objectivistology," or the study of Objectivism as an ideological movement. Politically, it has so little significance we might as well say it has no significance at all.
Greg,
Apologies for the confusion over who wrote this post and thanks for clearing the matter up on Daniels' behalf.
BTW, does is make a difference to his, Dr. Stevens, election chances that the only state he has not visited is Alaska?
Surely that comment would cost him votes in that state? Is there a rational reason for avoiding Alaska?
"does it make a difference to his, Dr. Stevens, election chances that the only state he has not visited is Alaska?"
Yes, it reduces his chances of success from 0.0000001% to 0.00000001% (a decrease of ten percent).
But I wouldn't worry. Being an optimist, I prefer not to see the glass as 99.99999999% empty. I see it as 0.00000001% full!
Michael: "Yes, it reduces his chances of success from 0.0000001% to 0.00000001% (a decrease of ten percent)."
Wouldn't that be a decrease of 90%?
You're right, it's 90%.
Things are looking even worse for the Objectivist Party than I'd thought!
I am an objectivist. And I see Objectivist party as a silly libertarian joke. It's like a voluntarist party. Or an anarchist party. It makes even more no f*cking sense since those party members of theirs like to attack the objectivists more than they like to debate the issues that are actually important.
I hope their founder and his supporters drowns in debts after their failed election campaign.
So do we all CapitalJustas, so do we all. But this Dr. Tom Stevens, if his website is anything to go by, is a clever and resourceful man. He'll be back! You can't keep a good man down.
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