Objective Voting

Trump’s reign has ended. Joe Biden, the bumbling moderate grandpa, has been elected president of the United States of America. The left are ecstatic, as are inner-city shop owners. But for a few tens of thousands of votes in a handful of swing states, everything could have been very different. I, for one, am not particularly bothered with the outcome of the election; I was mildly in favour of Trump, but with the Republicans maintaining control of the senate, I don’t think president Biden will do much more damage than Trump would have. What was interesting to me during this election was the wild differences in voting opinions among the right, particularly Objectivists. It may seem a bit late in the day to be writing about voting, but I want to put into words my own opinion on voting objectively, even if largely for my own benefit.

It’s a simple idea: I believe one should vote for the candidate that is less likely to increase state violation of individual rights. In effect, I do believe one should be voting for the lesser of two evils, assuming one can identify which candidate that is. Voting is important in the fight against statism, although it is understandable to think otherwise; after all, how much difference can one vote really make? But the point is one of principle. Every rational, principled person should do what they can, assuming it fits in the context of their life, to stem the tide of statism that is sweeping the West. This is not a duty; it is a selfish requirement to slow down the descent into dictatorship. Even when voting in jurisdictions that are overwhelmingly made up of one strain of voters, it is still worth voting, as the amount by which a party wins or loses in a particular state does have an effect on future candidates and the governance of that area.

Some people, including many Objectivists, supported abstaining in this election. I believe this is wrong, unless you consider it too difficult to tell who is the worse candidate – whether it is something you have struggled but failed to understand, or something that you consider too much work to be worth your time. To put it another way, abstaining due to not wanting to ‘endorse’ a bad candidate, when another candidate is worse, is wrong; you are not endorsing a mugger when you hand over your wallet, and the threat of force from a politician is no different. To use a clear example: if somehow there was an election between Hitler and Mussolini, I would vote for Mussolini. He is a literal fascist, and quite obviously a much worse candidate than any of those we in the Western world choose from today; but compared to Hitler he is an incompetent nobody, who could never have achieved the destruction, death and sheer evil Hitler did during the Third Reich. No matter how bad two candidates are, if one is less-bad – even if only slightly – you should vote for him.

Another issue that came to light during this election is what I call the ‘cultural prediction’ voting strategy. This is where someone chooses to vote for a candidate based on the potential for cultural or political shifts in the future due to this candidate being elected. For example, in this election many Objectivists (including Yaron Brook) argued that defeating Trump would defeat Trumpism in the Republican party, allowing the better elements of the party to regain power, paving the way for a somewhat-less-terrible candidate in 2024. I do not think this type of voting is always wrong, however I do think one must be very careful in predicting such outcomes. It is almost impossible to do so correctly, and it is very easy to construct elaborate, rationalistic fantasies as to why voting for a worse candidate will actually make things better in the long run. Philosophy is what dictates changes in the culture, and without changing the philosphy any political event will be interpreted along cultural-philosophical lines. In modern times, political events tend to have only one interpretation – as proof of the requirement for more statism. Let’s see what happens with the Republican party now Trump is out of office – I would not be surprised to see ‘Trump 2.0’ on the ballot in 2024.

In order to save Western civilisation, we need to change the philosophic fundamentals of the culture. But to do that, we need time, and voting is one small but important way of giving us as much time as we can. It is difficult to tell whether there is much hope for the West left. But as long as there is any doubt, supporters of freedom should do what they can, within the bounds of rational egoism, to slow the spread of statism. My advice – which is both a little late and very early – is to vote.

Racism’s Founding Fathers: Emotionalism and Collectivism

Watching the world from quarantine, it is difficult not to feel as if civilisation is hurtling towards collapse. The power of the government is increasing by the day, the economy has seemingly detached itself from reality, and the media’s shrieking is only increasing in its absurdity, fanning the flames of public anger. Now, America is burning – and fittingly so, for the nihilistic destruction of the riots is nothing more than a cashing in on the infection at the core of America’s soul. To many, these events must just seem like chaos, but they are actually as lucidly logical as the plot of a good novel; the actions, reactions and responses are just as should have been expected given the ideas present in the Western world today.

The spark that started the flames was the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, who was killed by a white police officer who knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes. The act – captured on smartphone camera – was a sickening example of police brutality, and the world was rightly outraged at the killing. In response, the jury of public opinion was unanimous – the ultimate cause of George Floyd’s death was racism.

It is true that genuine racism is on the rise, and it may well be the case that the white police officer was racist, and this racism lead him to ignore Floyd’s desperate cries for air. Racism, however, is merely one example of a more fundamental sickness, as Ayn Rand explained many decades ago:

“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 is truly evil and must be defeated, but the tragic fact facing us today is that the loudest voices opposing racism are completely infected with collectivism. The so called ‘woke’ left are obsessed with identity politics, placing everyone in groups based on their privilege or victimhood; many sub-groups and supporters of ‘woke-ness’ – such as Antifa – are explicitly socialist or communist, blaming capitalism for ‘systemic’ racism; and Black Lives Matter, now propelled to centre-stage in this political drama, claim to be against the “Western-prescribed nuclear family structure”, instead favouring “supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another”. It should be no surprise that these groups, who are supposedly against racism, support such racist policies as affirmative action and reparations for slavery; as collectivists, the fact that an individual white person isn’t racist and hasn’t any slave-owning ancestors means nothing – it’s his group that is guilty.

With this kind of collectivist mindset, emotionalism reigns supreme. In emphasising the group, collectivism negates the individual – and there is no more individual a faculty than man’s rationality. If a man rejects reason, emotions become his only guide to action, and in the case of a collectivist this feeling amounts to hatred of the ‘enemy’ tribe. This cocktail of group-identity and emotionalism is what fuels the rioter who attacks an innocent police officer, the Antifa thug who destroys the business of an innocent minority, and the police-officer who brutalises an obviously peaceful bystander. These people don’t see individuals, they see only instances of a hated group – a ‘complicit’ police officer, an ‘oppressive’ capitalist store, an ‘anti-police’ trouble-maker – and they strike out in unthinking rage.

The left are particularly infected with emotionalism and collectivism, but the right are certainly not innocent either. Observe how many commentators on the alt-right focus entirely on the violence of protestors, ignoring the genuinely horrific police brutality captured on smartphone cameras, and notice how President Trump is exclusively concerned with ‘Law and Order’, not the issues which lead to its breakdown. The one thing that the left and right should agree on – that police brutality is a massive problem in America – is minimised by the alt-right in favour of scoring points against the left, their opposing tribe. Meanwhile, many members of the mainstream right proclaim their support for Black Lives Matter, denounce ‘white privilege’, and encourage ‘unity’. All of this only serves to swell the ranks of the white nationalists, who are only too happy to welcome in bewildered white collectivists in need of a group.

It is difficult to tell whether racism is fuelling police brutality in America, or whether racism was the cause of George Floyd’s death specifically. Regardless of these questions, to fight racism one must fight against emotionalism and collectivism – the founding fathers of racism – and to do that one must fight for reason and individualism. Racism is a real, growing malignancy in the Western world, and a rational, individualist mindset that refuses to see things in terms of ‘groups’ is the only antidote. To an individualist races literally don’t matter; even if it were somehow proved that different races had different levels of intelligence and different character traits, this information is completely irrelevant to him. An individualist only cares about the intelligence and character traits of himself and the individuals he deals with, not the averages of the groups they can be placed into. He understands that, even if his ancestors experienced discrimination and violence due to their race, the descendants of the perpetrators are innocent and cannot be blamed for the actions of their ancestors. He realises that no amount of racism in the police force can justify attacks on innocent police officers, and no amount of violence against police officers can justify random beatings of innocent protestors. He knows that what matters are the thoughts and actions of individuals.

Many commentators are comparing the violence and rioting in America with the Boston Tea Party, the violence that sparked the American revolution. Such a comparison is riddled with logical holes, but perhaps the most blatant is the equivocation between the rational individualism behind the Boston Tea Party, with its clear positions and explicit target, and the emotional collectivism driving the current rioters, who’s clearest goal is the nonsensical demand to ‘defund the police’, and whose target is the nearest smashable window. Whatever revolution this has the potential to create would be nothing but blind chaos and mindless destruction, and as long as emotionalism and collectivism reign this is what awaits us. To stop this descent into chaos, along with racism, emotionalism and collectivism must be fought – and championing reason and individualism is the only way such a fight can be won.

The Bias Fallacy

It is a common experience for me now, in political discussions, to come up against a wall at some point. The arguments run their course, the ebb and flow of intellectual battle sways from side to side, but then my opponent throws up his arms and says – “you are just biased. You just look for confirmation of your world view in everything”. To an Objectivist this kind of sentence should seem ripe for analysis. Let us preceed to analyse it.

First, the definition of bias. According to the Cambridge dictionary, bias is “the action of supporting or opposing a particular person or thing in an unfair way, because of allowing personal opinions to influence your judgement”. This is quite accurate, but I think an explanation of what exactly is meant by “unfair” is required here. To support or oppose an argument in an “unfair” way means to evade or misinterperet some evidence that actually goes against your own position. The only way one can be “unfair” in the search for the truth is to go out of your way to avoid some aspect of the truth, and that is what is required to be biased. However, bias is an accusation aimed at the psychological perspective of a person, and psychological perspectives are very hard things to prove. One cannot claim anyone who misses any amount of evidence is “biased” – it is perfectly possible to do such a thing innocently.

How can the word ‘bias’ be accurately used? The first requirement is for the accuser to point out what evidence the supposedly biased person has evaded or misinterpreted. One would have to point at facts of reality the person is missing as the primary, and then, if that kind of evasion is common practice for the person, one can speculate that the reason for the evasion is bias. To achieve certainty that bias is the cause of a multitude of evasions, one would have to know the person and his arguments very well.

Now, onto the bias fallacy. This fallacy is the act of accusing someone of bias simply due to the consistency of their world view. It amounts to the claim: ‘Since you are so uncompromising in your opinions, you must be wrong’. For example: to say to a Socialist, ‘you view everything as a struggle between the rich and poor, and you always blame the rich. You are biased’, is invalid, at least in a vacuum. When you have a solid knowledge of the history of socialism, its philosophical arguments, and the history of capitalism and its philosopical arguments, you can speculate that most socialists in the modern world are biased, since the evidence is so overwhelmingly against socialism. But in an argument with a socialist individual, you have to point to the specific evidence as the primary before throwing out accusations of bias.

The ‘bias fallacy’ is essentially an attack on certainty. As is so common in today’s world, practitioners of this fallacy (whether explicitly or implicitly) view certainty as impossible, and as such regard anyone with firm beliefs – especially consistent, integrated beliefs – as ‘biased’ on the face of it. The essence of intellectuality to them is prostrating oneself before reality, cautiously positing a few out of context, smart-sounding theories and opinions, all the while worshiping the impossibility of ever truly knowing anything of actual value. This is the kind of person who proclaims with confident certainty the importance of helping the poor, the sick, and the trees, while flirting with subjectivism and moral nihilism during discussions at a party.

The only answer to these people is to attack their ideas at the root. Tell them how any amount of knowledge – even the knowledge that something might be true – requires objectivity to be achievable, and implies the possiblity of certainty on almost any topic one can think of. If they do not accept this argument, walk away – there is no use arguing with a man who proclaims himself deaf, dumb and blind.

Brexit and Objectivism

From an Objectivist perspective, the political situation of the United Kingdom is like a glaring searchlight pointed at the philosophical corruptions of the country’s culture. When reading the news one is bombarded with countless examples of bad philosophy, from the pragmatism of the middle-roaders trying to compromise between ‘yes’ and ‘no’, to the rationalism of the arguments for a second ‘people’s’ vote, to the invalid concept of ‘soft Brexit’. People are tired of it all, one frequently hears, and it’s no surprise – it’s exhausting listening to arguments made up exclusively of floating abstractions, misunderstood concepts and empty slogans, all sprinkled with a liberal helping of emotionalism.

I voted for Brexit, and this article will explain, in clear terms, the philosophy behind that decision.

My position on Brexit centers around the concept of individual rights. According to Objectivism, reason is man’s means of survival, and the basic function of a political system is to protect man’s ability to use and benefit from his reason. To achieve this a society must be free from the initiation of physical force – the ultimate enemy of reason – and it is individual rights that define exactly what force is. Crucially, individual rights are not up for debate; they are inalienable, meaning they cannot be voted away no matter how big your gang is. This includes the right to private property, meaning the right to use and dispose of what you have earned in any way you see fit. Included under this definition is the act of selling products free from regulation, and the act of buying foreign products tariff free (setting aside war and sanctions, which are responses to violations of individual rights). This is the crux of the issue: no government or governmental body has the right to regulate industry, inlcuding the use of tariffs, no matter how many people vote for it.

It is obvious from this basic overview of individual rights what an Objectivist’s view of the European Union should be. The European Union is essentially no different from a mafia; while a mob boss demands payment for not breaking your legs, the EU demands payment and the following of regulations for not stealing your money using tariffs. It is a massive violater of individual rights, siphoning off tax money to fund its bloated buearocracy, regulating just about every aspect of the economy, and enforcing external tariffs on countries it has yet to agree a ‘deal’ with. It is true that, out of context, we benefit from the tariff-free trade with Europe we enjoy as a member of the EU, but it is also true that the restaurant owner who pays the mob boss enjoys the benefit of not having broken legs. By what right were these ‘benefits’ taken from us, then sold back to us at the price of money and freedom?

The answer is obvious: properly, a country should not give up the rights of its citizens for any kind of supposed ‘benefit’.

A principled perspective on the Brexit vote, therefore, should be that it should never have taken place. In a free society the joining or leaving of such an institution would not be up for a vote, anymore than murdering your neighbour would be. Democracy – that altar the pragmatists will sacrifice any number of corpses on – is not a good form of government. Under pure democracy, pressure groups battle over who is to lose their rights and who is to reap the spoils, and it is never long under such a system before today’s beneficiary becomes tomorrow’s victim. To respect individual rights we require a politcal system with a constitution limiting what the public can vote on to only that which doesn’t infringe on those rights, namely things like the choosing of who is to hold office.

Now, while the Brexit vote is invalid on principle, that does not mean one shouldn’t have voted. The United Kingdom has – to put it mildly – a less than ideal form of government, and we must engage in the political systems available to us to enact pro-freedom political change. I voted to leave the EU because, on principle, being a part of such an institution shouldn’t even be up for a vote, since it is such a massive violator of individual rights. The least we can expect, now that the public have chosen the correct choice in a vote that should never have happened, is for the political class to follow through with that choice.

Finally, on to the current situation. I came to a strange realisation when Boris Johnson became prime minister and announced his new cabinet: I realised that this is the best Objectivists can possibly hope for in a British government [edit – I mean in the current cultural context]. This cabinet represents the most pro-capitalism, freedom loving sector of the mainstream political establishment, including: Sajid Javid, who is a fan of Ayn Rand’s writing as well as an athiest and a defender of Israel, Jacob Rees-Mogg, who is such an old-fashioned conservative he appears positively Randian in comparison to the modern bunch, and various other politicians invariably descibed as ‘Thatcherite’ – a smear that serves as a compliment from our perspective. Boris himself has a track record of gaffes and machiavellianism, along with worrying attitudes towards government spending, socialised medicine and environmental regulation, but I don’t believe he is as ‘unprincipled’ as many claim. Perhaps I am wrong, but I sense a certain amount of Gail Wynand in him; he is (somewhat) principled and pro-freedom in his political views, but is willing to do any amount of lying, backstabbing and politicing to get into power. I actually think he means it when he says we will leave on the 31^st of October, deal or no deal – and so far his actions seem to support that belief.

So let’s say I’m right, and we leave on the 31^st of October with no deal. What will happen?

There will be some economic disruption, that much is certain, although I very much doubt it will be as bad as the remainers have claimed. The pound will probably slide then start to recover, a few businesses will close, but by the end of the year I expect the economy will be growing again, assuming Boris and his cabinet follow through with their plan for slashing tariffs, lowering taxes and pursuing trade deals. The danger, however, is in the possibility that Boris manages to lose an election shortly after Brexit. Should labour get in they will enact all their insane economic policies and blame no-deal Brexit when businesses and workers suffer. There is a possibility, then, that Brexit results in the public viewing low tax, low tariff, free-market capitalism as the cause of economic disaster – although that would require Jeremy Corbyn to win an election, which he seems incapable of doing. On the other hand, if Boris keeps to his word on Brexit and wins an election, he will have massive political capital due to being the man who delivered Brexit, especially when the economy starts to recover and the doom and gloom remainers start to look like idiots. At that point, the most pro-capitalism government the UK has had for decades will have complete freedom to pursue its agenda, and that is the best a British Objectivist can hope for.

Rand was Right: Conservative Compromise

“Today’s ‘conservatives’ are futile, impotent and, culturally, dead. They have nothing to offer and can achieve nothing. They can only help to destroy intellectual standards, to disintegrate thought, to discredit capitalism, and to accelerate this country’s uncontested collapse into despair and dictatorship.”

Ayn Rand:  Conservatism: An Obituary

It is remarkable how, over thirty years after her death, in a country she never visited, Ayn Rand’s analysis of the conservative movement is still lucidly clear and mercilessly accurate. The country I am writing of is the United Kingdom, a country only a few miles further along the road to statism than America. The signs of the intellectual decay of the conservative movement are everywhere.

On recent travels I bought a copy of The Times, a respected centre-right newspaper, and in the opinions section an article drew my attention. It was by Paul Johnson, a director of an economic think-tank, and it asked the question: How much can Britain afford to spend?  Johnson spends the first half of the article quite rightly questioning whether we can afford the promises made by all three potential future prime ministers – that is, Boris Johnson, Jeremy Hunt and Jeremy Corbyn – then in the second half he proposes his favoured solution:

“More borrowing can only be a short-term fix, however. High taxes, by contrast, are possible in the long run. In most European countries the state spends a bigger slice of the national income than we do. There is no economic reason why we couldn’t go down that route.”

In a few sentences Johnson manages to encapsulate everything Ayn Rand criticised conservatives for:

She criticised conservatives for being unprincipled, for wanting less taxation and regulation but accepting the premise that the government has a right to tax and regulate. Here we have a supposed economic expert, writing in a centre-right newspaper saying more taxes are what we need – in fact there is “no economic reason” why we shouldn’t raise them – while ignoring even the possibility of a moral argument against taxation.

She criticised conservatives for sharing the corrupt philosophical premises of the left. Here we have the Kantian ‘social’ epistemology on display, where the mere fact that European countries tax more than the UK proves raising taxes a viable option, never mind the massive debt these same countries are wallowing in, their absurd youth unemployment rates, or even the seven month long protests specifically against high taxes happening in France.

She criticised conservatives for viewing capitalism as nothing more than a ‘practical’ system for achieving collective prosperity. Here we have a conservative writer describing the earnings of individual men and women as the “national income”, as if all property is actually owned by the state,  and as if that state has the right to “slice” it up whichever way it thinks will benefit society the most.

Rand said that if you accept the premises of the left yet defend capitalism you are doomed to failure. Well, imagine you are a typical left-wing student; you believe that raising taxes is economically feasible, that the support for left-wing policies in Europe proves them feasible, and that the moral goal of political systems is to benefit the group. Imagine you see a conservative writer accepting the same premises, yet supporting a right-wing party and denouncing left-wing policies. How could you view him as anything other than a liar or an idiot? He thinks taxes are moral and practical, yet he supports a party that wants to slash public services. He accepts the will of the majority as the truth, yet he ignores the majority when he sees fit. He views the collective as the moral standard, yet votes for cuts to welfare and disabled benefits while voting for tax breaks to the rich.

As long as the premises of the left go unchallenged, their vitriolic hatred of the right is justified.  As long as altruism is the dominant moral code, the altruistic left will be held up as moral crusaders, while the half-heartedly altruistic right will be lambasted as immoral compromisers. As long as reason is misunderstood and twisted into unrecognizability,  the right’s criticisms of left-wing policies as ‘impractical’ will achieve nothing. Ayn Rand argued that, in a contest between political movements, the most morally consistent movement will win in the long run – and it is obvious which side of the spectrum is more consistent by the standards of today.

To beat the left and the right we must challenge these standards and show how immoral, impractical and inhuman they truly are.

 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-much-can-britain-really-afford-to-spend-nl2cx68np

Climate Change: The Most Important Political Issue of Our Time

Climate change is the most important issue in the modern western political landscape. It is the ace in the pack against capitalism’s track record of prosperity and success, the ‘scientific’ proof of the evil of the one minority it’s still acceptable to hate – the businessmen. As long as this supposed impending doom is treated as gospel defenders of capitalism will appear like suicidal maniacs, willing to watch the world burn for a few percent off unemployment, a rise in wages or a higher stock market.

The left don’t actually have any unified plan of what they want. All they know is what they don’t want – capitalism. Climate change’s status as ‘settled science’ is hugely important to them because they need something to prove that political freedom is an untenable goal; not just to the extreme of free-market capitalism, but even the amount of freedom we have in mixed economies today. Gone are the days of the late twentieth century, when sundry western leftists viewed Soviet Russia and Red China as political systems to emulate; all they can do now is criticise, undermine, destroy, and say: “What do we want? We’ll figure that out later, all we know is it isn’t capitalism.”

To be clear, the mere fact that the left have a vested interest in believing in climate change doesn’t prove their theories wrong, any more than our vested interest proves us wrong – it merely shows the importance of the issue. Regardless, we must start with the concrete, scientific points that cause climate realists like myself to question the dogma:

1. No one is disagreeing with the science that is actually provable and has evidence to support it: that co2 is a greenhouse gas, that the planet has warmed over recent decades and centuries, and that humans have had some impact on this warming. What climate realists challenge is the idea that scientists have ‘proved’ that human co2 emissions are going to cause a runaway warming effect that will massively harm the planet. The reasons for this scepticism are numerous: co2 levels used to be much higher in the past, including during the most recent ice ages; co2’s warming effect suffers from diminishing returns, and subsequently a ‘feedback’ system is required for this to be a real threat – something which is hideously complex and not well understood; there is evidence for other factors playing larger roles in global temperature, including sunspot activity and cloud formation (water vapour being the most abundant greenhouse gas on the planet); and many more
2. The climate change movement is now largely pseudoscientific, as well as being massively overconfident in its predictive powers. Any weather event is now considered evidence for climate change – drought or flood, heatwave or cold snap – making climate change unfalsifiable, a defining feature of pseudoscience. The movement relies on computer models with numerous assumptions to make their ominous predictions, then when the model’s predictions are proven wrong they ‘discover’ some excuse that actually means everything is worse than before, like the ‘extra heat is just trapped in the ocean’ explanation for the (debatable) pause in warming from 2000 to around 2012. They claim climate change is ‘settled science’, despite the huge complexity of the field and the growing number of dissenters challenging the supposed consensus.
3. Climate alarmists exaggerate how easy it is to stop using fossil fuels, while belittling the difficulties of relying on renewables. They ignore the vast gap in energy production between renewables and fossil fuels, celebrating the successes of countries like Norway, with its tiny population and massive government subsidy program funding the construction of wind farms – funding coming from its state trust, a massive stash of money created largely by their oil industry. They ignore the necessity for fossil fuel usage in things like boats, planes, and construction vehicles, which are decades to centuries away from being powerable by anything other than liquid fossil fuels and are vital to the functioning of almost every modern industry (especially agriculture – i.e. how we avoid mass starvation).
4. Climate alarmists underestimate the ability of wealthy countries to deal with climate related issues, while ignoring potential benefits from an increase in co2 and global temperatures. Countries that embrace capitalism have easy access to air-conditioning, central heating and if necessary sea walls and tornado-resistant buildings (not that there has been an increase in extreme weather events). Furthermore, the increases in co2 across the globe have led to a massive greening of the planet, resulting in richer harvests and a better ability to feed ourselves, while increases in temperature may reduce the risks of the most dangerous climate-related threat – extreme cold.
5. Climate alarmists are not trustworthy. The ‘97% of scientists agree’ stat is used as a club to beat sceptics with, ignoring the fact that this stat comes from a number of studies that asked simple questions like: “Do you think the climate is warming?” and “Was human activity significant in this warming?” Most climate sceptics would answer yes to these questions – the question is, is it actually a problem, and if so is political force the solution? There is also the quickly forgotten episode known as ‘Climategate’, where hacked emails from one of the most important climate research institutes in the world showed respected climate scientists lamenting the “travesty” of not being able to explain the lack of temperature increases in modern times, and discussing keeping sceptical papers out of an IPCC report by “redifine[ing] what peer review is” (the BBC recently released a short video attempting to dismiss the scandal as a misunderstanding, conveniently ignoring the emails that contained the above quotes).
6. Due to the terrible cost of stopping the use of fossil fuels, the evidence for co2 emissions being an existential threat must be extremely solid and convincing before we take such an action. Although many climate sceptics claim to be certain that climate change isn’t actually an issue, at the very least it is clear that the question isn’t ‘settled’ and is still up for debate. Until the evidence for climate change is actually overwhelming, we should not be pursuing radical decarbonising policies guaranteed to cause massive problems for industries we rely on to survive.

(This is merely a brief overview – I will include links to further reading.)

One of cause of the popularity of climate alarmism is its pretence at empiricism. While the devotees of the movement fill up their six different bins and carry their reusable bags to the supermarkets, the climate scientists are producing endless reams of numbers and facts – much of it true, but none of it integrated into the bigger picture, or in some cases even relevant to the debate. Journalists write articles on the increase in wildfires in California, or the shrinking glaciers in one national park, skip the step of proving these are due to human activity, and blame capitalism. Then, when the green zealots hear someone question the dogma, they say: “he’s a science denier – look at all these numbers and graphs.” The sceptics are painted as irrational, science-denying crooks in the pockets of the oil industry – despite the fact that just about every climate alarmist could equally be accused of being ‘in the pockets’ of the government, which funds all their research and is all too happy to agree with the scientific ‘consensus’ if it means they can pass another carbon tax.

The modern belief in climate change is now almost completely faith based. Challenge a typical person on the welfare state, taxes or even healthcare, and they will at least attempt to provide an argument for their position, even if their argument only amounts to ‘what about the poor?’. Question the idea that climate change is on the verge of destroying civilisation and you are likely to be met with laughter or incredulity. Are these types of people all climate scientists who have read all the studies and reached their conclusions based on reason? The vast majority have not – they have simply read the headlines of a few news articles and accepted their premises over those of sceptical arguments on faith. “Trust the experts,” is the mantra, which is nothing more than a blatant appeal to authority.

The motivation of many believers, as mentioned earlier, is their virulent anti-capitalism, but the fundamental behind such a position is even more corrupt. Many alarmists are, as Ayn Rand argued, anti-human; these types gleefully announce how greed and selfishness will bring about our downfall, and they do not regard it a tragedy (assuming it’s true) that civilisation will have to change dramatically due to climate change. They seem to relish the coming disruption, with some past eco-fanatics even celebrating the potential “benefits” of epidemics wiping out much of the population (“As radical environmentalists, we can see AIDS not as a problem, but a necessary solution” – “until such time as Homo Sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along”). They detest any and all human influence on nature, denouncing even such innocent practices as the stacking of rocks on beaches (a “worrying trend” that “spoils” the landscape – “The first rule of the environment is leave no trace”).  To them, nature is a value in and of itself that must be left untouched by man, regardless of any benefit doing so may bring to human life, and regardless of the fact that man’s method of survival is to adapt his environment to his needs. Animals can live as their nature dictates they must, but humans – they must exist as ghosts, never allowing their presence to spoil the perfection of nature.

Should it turn out that there is some truth to the claims of the climate alarmists, what should our response be? As argued by Alex Epstein in his book The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, the response must be guided by philosophy, but not just any philosophy; it must be a philosophy that understands that man’s life is the standard of morality, not the unblemished perfection of rivers and forests, and that political freedom is a necessary condition for man to exercise the faculty that allows him to survive – his reason. Morality is nothing more than a guide to action, and such a guide is only needed for beings with a conceptual consciousness; with the ability to form principles and choose how to act. While water and sunlight are ‘good’ for plants, they have no need for a system of morality as they cannot choose their actions, and the existence of these plants, never mind rivers and marshes, is not a metaphysical ‘good’ that humans should preserve without reference to their own needs.  To worship untouched nature as a moral goal apart from the needs of man is mysticism, plain and simple – and it should be no surprise to find these mystics arguing for force to be used to achieve their goals, as all mystics must do after abandoning reason. The advocation of political force through laws and regulations should be a last resort, not a knee-jerk response to flimsy data and fuzzy feelings for rocks and trees.

At times Alex Epstein is too focused on the abstract, as he was in his debate against leading climate scientist Bill Mckibben, in which he appeared somewhat like a reality-blind ideologue incapable of seeing the trees from the forest.  But it is philosophy which is at the root of this issue, and his insight is important – we just need to fight the factual battle at the same time, never allowing the climate scientists to get away with their out of context data and bogus claims of ‘consensus’.

More than any other issue, it is climate change emboldening the left to become ever more radical.  As James Delingpole argues, climate alarmists are like watermelons – green on the outside, but red on the inside. In other words, if you don’t want some kind of horrific eco-socialism taking over the Western world in the near future, this is a fight you must be involved in, and to do so you must be armed with the facts and the philosophy.  Nothing less will do.

Arm yourself before it’s too late.

 

Further reading:

(I do not necessarily support everything contained in these sources)

Blogs:

https://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/

https://wattsupwiththat.com/

https://www.steynonline.com/

 

Books:

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/24475607-climate-change

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20821049-the-moral-case-for-fossil-fuels

 

Youtube:

On Milkshakes and Principles

One of the most common objections I come across when discussing Objectivism amongst philosophically minded friends is an argument I think of as the “Why bother with principles?” argument. I can explain, in brief terms, Ayn Rand’s ethics and how they link to politics, but many people don’t see the point in this exercise; they don’t think or act in terms of principles themselves, and cannot fathom the idea that something might be right or wrong all the time, in every circumstance. “Surely we need some regulations?”, they say after hearing my arguments, because the principle of individual rights holds no value to them; I could talk for hours about banking, housing, education and medicine, and how regulations in these industries have inflated prices and destroyed consumer choice due to the principle of force and its destruction of the principle of reason, and they would come back with: “Ok, but what about the food industry?”

“You have no choice about the necessity to integrate your observations, your experiences, your knowledge into abstract ideas, i.e., into principles. Your only choice is whether these principles are true or false, whether they represent your conscious, rational convictions—or a grab-bag of notions snatched at random, whose sources, validity, context and consequences you do not know, notions which, more often than not, you would drop like a hot potato if you knew. . . .”

Ayn Rand: Philosophy: Who Needs it

The key point to take away from this is that when principles are abandoned it is that ‘grab-bag of notions snatched at random’ that dictates your decisions and actions. Without identified and understood principles, man becomes a whim-worshipper; he takes drugs because the principle of doing no harm to one’s body isn’t important to him; he lies to his friends to inflate his ego because the principle of honesty is “moralistic nonsense”; he votes for a welfare state because it feels wrong not to, and he’s never even heard of the principles that might have given him pause. For those who know of principles but disregard them, once a principle has been broken there is nothing to stop these people from breaking it ever more egregiously, whenever the whim takes them.

I saw a modest but eloquent example of this when I woke up this morning and read the stories about the attack on Andy Ngo, an editor at the online magazine Quillette. Specifically, he was attacked by Antifa thugs with milkshakes containing fast-drying cement, something which can cause chemical burns, in a sickening emulation of the milkshake attacks in the UK.

This milkshake craze started when a random leftist threw a milkshake over Tommy Robinson, the anti-Islam activist the left love to hate. Before long milkshakes were being thrown over a multitude of right-wing  figures; the response from leftist pundits was largely no better than mild disapproval, with some actively supporting the actions of the milkshakers. Most commentators ridiculed the idea that throwing a milkshake on someone is an act of violence, but the most revealing comment came from Dan Kaszeta, a former US secret service operative, whose tweets were reported on by The Independent:

“FFS, Nigel, Carl, Stephen. You got a whole posse of handlers and factotums. Keep a change of clothes handy and man up. What some fail to understand is that this is not a binary all or nothing, black or white thing. There’s a whole lot of grey area in a spectrum between completely innocuous funny s*** and actual physical violence. And a milkshake is towards the former, not the latter.”

Notice the complete denial of the possibility of principles; everything is just different shades of grey, there are no lines to be drawn, nothing is ‘black or white’. Except there is a clear and obvious line to be drawn – when you cause someone or their property damage or harm, that is violence. Throwing these drinks over someone ruins their clothes, costing them time and money to have them cleaned. It may only be a minor example of violence, but it is violence – it is an assault on these people and their property. To make this clearer, imagine if I went out with a milkshake today and threw it over an old lady from a poor area of town – would anyone in their right mind dare to say to her, “just get a change of clothes and man up”? The fact that richer people can afford the dry-cleaning bill doesn’t make it okay to ruin someone’s property, not to mention the psychologically intimidating aspect of having an unknown liquid thrown over you.

Once that principle had been broken, it was only a matter of time before these acts of violence became more extreme. After all, as Dan Kaszeta said, a milkshake is ‘towards’ non-violent ‘funny s***’ – so if we add in a few chemicals that might cause some mild burns, does that really swing it all the way ‘towards’ political violence? What about if we push a guy around a bit – no lasting physical damage is caused, is that just ‘funny s***’? How about stealing Trump signs and MAGA hats, is that actually theft or just a laugh? These questions are unanswerable without principles defining violence, theft, and rights in clear-cut, objective terms – and until this respect for principles is embedded in the culture, attacks like the one on Andy Ngo will only increase.

But the milkshake attacks are only one tiny, concrete example of the lack of respect for principles in Western culture. This cavalier attitude towards abstract ideas is also the epistemological fundamental behind the steady shift towards statism in the West over the last century. Without clearly defined principles voters and politicians look for guidance in that ‘grab-bag of notions snatched at random’ Ayn Rand spoke of decades ago, and in our current culture that bag is filled with altruistic slogans and anti-reason epithets telling us we can be sure of nothing – except the need for more welfare programs, more regulations, and more taxes.

It’s not just Andy Ngo and other right-wing journalists that are in danger without principles – it’s all of us.

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/antifa-attack-portland-andy-ngo-portland-proud-boys-alt-right-a8981331.html

http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/principles.html

https://www.popdust.com/in-defense-of-throwing-milkshakes-2637900170.html

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/milkshake-protest-nigel-farage-brexit-tommy-robinson-carl-benjamin-a8925646.html

 

That’s Not Real Capitalism vs That’s Not Real Socialism

Both socialists and capitalists use the ‘That’s Not Real X’ argument fairly frequently, but there are big differences between how the argument is used by the two camps. I certainly do not agree with the people who cry ‘no true Scotsman fallacy!’ and think they have won the argument, as there are legitimate situations where you can say ‘this isn’t an example of X’ and be completely correct. However, I would argue that while the capitalists in general have good reasons for using this argument, the socialist’s use of it is more of a result of the misuse of concepts.

One standard argument is as follows: the capitalist claims that Venezuela is an economic disaster due to socialism, to which the socialist responds that Venezuela isn’t actually socialist, as the workers don’t have control over the means of production. The reason for the mix up is that there are two different concepts of socialism being used in this argument. The socialist is using the word ‘socialism’ as a political/economic  term, meaning worker or democratic control of the means of production. The capitalist, on the other hand, is using the word Socialism (with a capital ‘S’) to name a political movement, with all the complex differences in objectives and methods that implies.

I believe that describing countries like Venezuela as socialist is accurate and justified, because they are products of Socialism as a movement. Socialists around the world are generally in favour of nationalised industry, high taxes and price controls, so it is legitimate when these things cause economic disaster in a country to blame Socialism itself, even if the majority of socialists do not consider such a state as ‘socialist’ in the economic sense. Every argument for socialism or communism, whether arguing for a state or for no state, necessarily has a transition stage that will rely on nationalising industries, taxing the rich and distributing welfare to the people – either that or they simply plan to ‘smash’ the capitalists and worry about what to do next afterwards.

Now onto capitalism. The standard argument is as follows: The socialist claims that bankers have ruined the economy with their greedy ways, which is the fault of capitalism, to which the capitalist responds that the bankers are not operating under capitalism, as there is massive government regulation in the banking sector. Why is this a justified response in this case? Because the capitalist political movement does not argue for any of the policies that dominate the banking system – it argues for complete deregulation. It argues against the federal reserve, against too big to fail, against quantitative easing – against all interventions in the banking system. Conservatives often argue for interventions in the economy, but they rarely describe themselves as ‘capitalists’ any more, and if they do they almost always acknowledge that capitalism must be ‘moderated’ in some ways, i.e. that these interventions in the economy are not examples of capitalism – that capitalism itself is the complete absence of regulation.

An analogy: If a man says ‘don’t drink any alcohol and you won’t get drunk’, and then another man spends half the day drinking water and the other half downing shots of vodka, he can’t then say ‘but I didn’t drink any alcohol all morning! How did I get drunk?’ Capitalism, in this example, advocates against all drinking of alcohol, so cannot be blamed for the results of doing so, even if you do spend half the time not drinking alcohol.

The socialist argument in this analogy would be as follows: The ideal is to only ever drink straight vodka, which will make you feel brilliant, but until we reach that goal drinking vodka and orange juice is a step in the right direction. At which point a man spends all day drinking vodka and orange juice and asks ‘why do I feel so terrible’, and the socialist says ‘You weren’t drinking straight vodka! This isn’t real vodkaism’. Here the man can justifiably say, ‘you said drinking vodka and orange juice would be fine, and it wasn’t. I feel terrible, and I blame Vodkaism’.

Furthermore, capitalists can and do point to actual examples of pure capitalism within the current systems we have. For example, the technology industry is largely unregulated and continues to produce amazing technology while cutting prices year on year. Essentially, the closer one gets to capitalism the better things are, and capitalists can show this in reality. Socialists, on the other hand, have nothing to show to the world except a series of complete failures – they can’t even get their system as they define it into the world in any form, let alone have it succeed.

As a final point, the fact that some socialists don’t advocate for nationalised industries, high taxes and price controls doesn’t change my argument. Since Socialism is a political movement, the criticism applies to the movement as a whole, even if a minority of members do not support the policies mentioned above. For the same reason, defenders of capitalism should be very careful about who they identify and associate with – for example, members of the so called ‘alt-right’ must be kept at arms-length, despite areas of agreement, because if the alt-right ever became seriously entwined with pro-freedom movements it would be perfectly legitimate to criticise both groups as a whole, and capitalists would have to repeatedly say how they aren’t racists or xenophobes – something which is already happening to a certain extent thanks to the likes of Stephan Molyneux.

Game of Thrones: A Song of Romanticism and Naturalism [SPOILERS]

Perhaps I am a bit late to the party on this one, but I can’t resist commenting on the spectacularly popular HBO show Game of Thrones, which fizzled out rather pathetically a few weeks ago. I have been following the show for a very long time – longer than I have been an Objectivist, actually – and since around season four I have spent countless hours criticising it for numerous reasons, being the artistic perfectionist I am. Now it is over, however, I can finally say what fundamentals lie behind the popularity – and downfall – of the show.

Game of Thrones owes its intense popularity to its pretence at belonging to the literary school of Romanticism. Briefly speaking, Romanticism in literature means extreme, larger than life characters, in stories with universal themes, and purposeful plots that dramatize these themes. The characters have deep, fundamental motivations, and it is these motivations that drive the events of the plot.

The fundamental problem behind the series is the fact that this is only a pretence – it is not Romanticism but Naturalism that best describes the series’ style. Naturalism is the opposite of Romanticism; the characters tend to be ‘realistic’, in the sense of being shades of grey morally speaking, and driven more by chance and environment than their own motivations and beliefs, while the plot tends to simply be a series of events connected by nothing more than the possibility that they ‘could’ happen.

How does this apply to Game of Thrones? As I stated earlier, I believe what drew people into the show was the fact that at first glance it seems to be quite Romantic. The good characters tend to be obviously heroic and moral, while the evil characters are downright evil. There appears to be some level of purpose to the plot at first, a promise of the good characters gaining victory over the evil, or at least some thematic point being made. But as the series progresses, it becomes clear this was only an illusion.

Take Arya, for example. In the first season we are introduced to a plucky, likeable young girl with a preference for sword-fighting over dress-making. We see her suffer the loss of her father at the hands of the Lannisters, and later most of the rest of her family as well. She sets out on a quest for revenge, progressing from a young girl into a powerful, face-changing assassin. Her entire storyline is based around her getting revenge, and Cersei is clearly her ultimate target. In a simplistic form, this is a Romantic plotline; the motivations of a character lead to choices that result in that character’s progression, and ultimately success – only the success never comes. Instead, in the last episode Cersei is killed by falling bricks, while Arya runs around pointlessly in a city she now has no business being in. The entire scene feels emotionless, because the character no longer means anything to us – her supposedly Romantic storyline, building into a climax, has been stopped short at the final moment.

Another example is Jamie Lannister. He begins the series as a clearly evil character, but his progression is one of atonement and moral growth. We are shown how his desire for Cersei is the root of his evil, and in the scenes with Brienne we see how actually, he has some level of honour. This culminates in him joining the Starks, his family’s series-long enemy, in the battle against the dead. After the battle he sleeps with Brienne, apparently cementing his position as a changed man. But suddenly, everything falls apart; he leaves for Kings Landing and Cersei, undermining all that complexity and progression we were lead to believe he possessed. He ends the series as he started it – as a man who loves his sister and cares about nothing else.

For Game of Thrones’ other characters, there is barely even a pretence at Romanticism. Most of the good characters are ‘good’ in a completely vague, generic manner, appearing to have no real motivations or desires behind their actions. Jon Snow, who could arguably be called the shows main character, is defined by what he doesn’t want to be – the king in the north, the king in the south, or anything at all. He ends the show, fittingly enough, on the wall back where he started. The same criticism, however, is just as apt for the shows evil characters. Joffrey has no real basis for his evil, he is just a pointlessly nasty little brat who does the most cruel action possible to him at every occasion. The exact same sentence could apply to Cersei, excluding vague notions that she ‘did it all for her children’.

How could the series have been ended better? All I know is that it would have been incredibly difficult to do. For a start, having three climaxes happen at different times was never going to work – the Night King, Cersei and Danyraes had to all reach their demise in the same event, as having three seperate climaxes leads to all of them feeling a little pathetic. Not only that, but the major characters had to reach the end of their progressions in that same moment, so we see the triumph of their personal challenges at the same moment as the defeat of the evil characters.

For a start, Arya should have killed Cersei with the help of Jamie. This would have resolved Arya’s progression in a simple, satisfying way, and cemented Jamie’s development from evil sister-lover to changed man in a very dramatic fashion. Don’t ask me exactly how this situation should have played out, though.

Jon killing Dany is fine, but it should have been portrayed in a way that showed a change in Jon’s mental thought processes – essentially, a change from love and respect for Dany to the horror of realising her true nature. Jon should also have been crucial to the killing of the Night King, even if he didn’t physically stab him, as he spent the entire show, broadly speaking, defending against the dead. Bran should also have been involved, as his character is loosely involved with the fight against the dead as well.

Finally, Tyrion would have to be fundamental to the final victory, as his character arc is essentially one long battle for the good of the realm. To have him essentially fail as his final act, as he does when he chooses Dany over Varys, destroys the one likeable thing about the character – that he is smart and uses his brains to outsmart the bad guys. Same could be said for Varys, but as a minor character it wouldn’t be the end of the world if he died in some way.

The final series of Game of Thrones was badly paced and had terrible dialogue, to be sure, but no amount of polishing could have made the series anything other than a let-down. George RR Martin’s focus on unpredictability over purposeful plot, stemming from his Naturalistic literary style, finally won out over the elements of Romanticism in the series, and it was this that made the final season such an underwhelming experience.

A World Without Force

If tomorrow some burst of mystical energy flicked a switch in the brain of every human being, a switch that stopped the area of the mind that feels righteous in initiating force – in stealing, murdering, and slaughtering – and suddenly the millions of warlords, criminals, and thugs, and the countless bureaucrats committing the same crimes with the false sanction of ‘democracy’, just stopped what they were doing – most of the world’s problems would be gone within a year.

Too much is said about the disastrous effects of force on the world. The wars, the killings, and the senseless impoverishment driven by the ever-encroaching controls of government – the controls which people so righteously vote for, year on year – all of this is standard capitalist copy. But doom and gloom is of little encouragement to anyone; what needs to be told is the story of a world without all these troubles, a world which would be the closest thing to heaven possible to mankind, the heaven of a reality untroubled by those that think it right to force their views on others.

Within a decade, civilisation would have transformed.

Technology is an amazing thing; imagine the level of innovation and creativity we see in the smartphone industry spread out across every sector the economy, from schooling to medicine to travel, after the tangled mass of economic regulations has withered away. Imagine having not just one country dominating the world economy, but every country exploding in a supernova of innovation; Russia resurrecting itself, Africa ballooning with prosperity, The West regaining its old dynamism, Asia accelerating its economic bloom. And all of it open and free – you can go anywhere, every country is safe, every corner of the world is steadily climbing up the rungs of civilisation.

Imagine seeing, instead of stories about waiting lines in hospitals and underpaid staff, announcements of the newest medical technologies – and knowing that it would only be a few years before they would be available on your insurance, insurance as cheap as a phone bill. Imagine seeing the life expectancy of western countries actually increasing, and wondering how long your life might stretch, thinking how your grandchildren might make it to two-hundred. Imagine watching your wages increase, while the cost of living is decreasing, and feeling that upwards energy still present in developing nations, instead of the tired, heavy weight of stagnation that drags at the souls of those in Europe.

All of this is utopian, but only in its extremity. Human beings have free will, and there will never be a world where every man renounces force. There is no switch in the brain, and no mystical energy to turn it off regardless – but every man has power over his own mind. To the extent men use this power, is to the extent that this world is possible. You may not agree with this article, and it is not trying to persuade you to change your views directly. I just have one request, a plea from one honest mind to any other.

Use your mind. Question your ideas. Think – before it’s too late.

The Philosophical Roots of Transgenderism

Transgenderism is on the rise.

It seems the media can’t go five minutes without publishing an article on transgender people. There has been a fourfold increase in the number of gender-reassignment surgeries from 2000 to 2014. Psychologists have started talking about ‘sudden onset gender dysphoria’, where young teenagers suddenly announce they are transgender. Documentaries are airing about transgender kids as young as eight, supporting injecting these children with powerful hormones. People in left-leaning circles talk of trans-rights with passionate fervour, and denounce anyone asking questions as ‘transphobic’.

But what does it even mean to be transgender?

Firstly, transgenderism is a separate phenomenon from being ‘intersex’, which is when someone has unique biological abnormalities in their sexual characteristics. Being transgender is, for the most part, a psychological disorder; transgender children usually have completely normal hormone levels and sexual characteristics associated with their biological sex. Some studies have shown identical twins are more likely to both be transgender, even when separated at birth, which could potentially point to some biological basis for the condition, but with sample sizes in the single digits it is hard to really tell.

Many trans-rights activists dispute the classification of transgenderism as a psychological disorder, and indeed the official term for the condition in the DSM was changed from gender identity disorder to gender dysphoria in 2013. But transgenderism is a disorder by definition; since biological sex is an objective fact, a mind that refuses to recognise such a fact is not functioning correctly, it is broken, confused – disordered – even if there is some biological basis for this mental defect. In such a situation, the obvious solution should be to fix the mind of the person, since that is what is malfunctioning. When people go to doctors and tell them they believe they ‘should’ have been born with no legs, the doctors send them to the psychiatric ward, not the surgeon. Why, then,  do the trans-rights activists, doctors and media all support treating transgenderism with physical means, namely gender reassignment surgery?

The answer, predictably, is philosophy. Metaphysically, the answer is the primacy of consciousness.

The primacy of consciousness is the belief that consciousness in some way creates reality. It is fundamental to the Christian belief that God, a supernatural consciousness, created reality; to the sceptic’s notion that we each create our own unique mental world; to the Kantian idea that the truth is what a large number of people believe. To the supporter of gender reassignment surgery, the consciousness of the transgender person is superior to reality; the person’s objective biological sex was a mistake, while their feelings are an immutable fact that reality must conform to. The idea of changing the person’s consciousness through therapy, which can and has been done in many cases, is ridiculous to such a mentality. Consciousness is what matters, reality is secondary. Even other people must conform to the power of a transgender person’s consciousness, by using certain pronouns, ignoring certain obvious sexual traits, and, according to some activists, even engaging sexually with transgender people as if nothing was different.

Epistemologically, the rise of transgenderism is an example of emotionalism. The feelings of the transgender person are what matters, regardless of the facts of the situation. But why do the feelings of transgender individuals seem to matter so much to modern intellectuals? What about the feelings of businessmen, or straight white males? What makes transgender people the current darlings of the progressive left?

The answer lies in the modern intellectual’s ethical code.

If modern intellectuals were simply concerned with the plight of the less fortunate, as they always say, the rich should be their heroes – after all, they are the ones who pay the taxes that fund all the government programs intellectuals are so fond of. The fact that intellectuals actually detest the rich, with all the vitriol of old-fashioned, bible-bashing racists, betrays their true motivation – the ethical code of Egalitarianism.

Egalitarianism is essentially moral nihilism; it proclaims that everyone is not just equal before the law, but equal in morality and value, no matter how depraved their ideals and actions, effectively making the concept of ‘moral’ meaningless. What this means is the intellectuals must champion the rights of the damaged, depraved and despicable, while attempting to drag down the rich, strong and healthy – only then will the truly ‘equal’ nature of men be realised. Precisely because transgender people are mentally damaged, intellectuals hold them up as something that should be seen as normal, and even worthy of respect and admiration. Precisely because straight, white, mentally stable men are more likely to be successful, healthy and happy, intellectuals denounce them as privileged oppressors and the cause of all the world’s problems. To the extent that you are a victim, you are a hero; to the extent that you are successful, you are a villain.

What is the common theme running through the philosophical basis of transgenderism? What ties all these corruptions together? What philosophy, or more precisely philosopher, promotes the primacy of consciousness, emotion over reason and a championing of the self-down-trodden over the strong, healthy and happy?

Anyone who has read Ayn Rand will know there can only be one answer: Immanuel Kant.

Moses Mendelssohn once called Kant the ‘all-destroyer’. It is an aptly horrifying title. His theory of innate structures in the mind creating a warped version of reality effectively destroys reality; his separation of the senses from anything real destroys reason (resulting in a reliance on emotionalism); his view of the moral as complete sacrifice, with no personal motive allowed, not even the supposed satisfaction of helping the suffering, destroys morality.

“Hold Peter Keating as a great architect”, Ellsworth Toohey says in The Fountainhead, “[and] you’ve destroyed architecture”. Hold up Kaitlyn Jenner as a woman, and you’ve destroyed the concept of gender. Transgenderism is not just a weird but insignificant fad – it is a symptom of the complete philosophical bankruptcy of modern culture. It is a direct result of Kant’s philosophy, a horrifying example of the Kantian nihilism infecting western civilisation.

It is not transgender people as such who are to blame, as many of them are merely victims of the culture they grew up in. It is the intellectuals who caused this; the media activists who spit their bile in the face of anyone opposing gender reassignment surgery, the doctors who actually do the surgery, taking scalpels to the genitalia of the mentally ill, and the lecturers in the Universities, who now claim biological sex is a myth, there are more genders than you can count, and everyone has a right to be referred to as anything they like.

Transgender people should not be ridiculed or blamed for this problem. The blood is on the hands of the intellectuals – and it is the blood of Western civilisation.

https://www.christianpost.com/news/gender-reassignment-surgeries-rise-study.html

http://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/biblio/articles/2010to2014/2013-transsexuality.html

https://www.theodysseyonline.com/no-dont-have-to-tell-you-im-trans-before-dating-you?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Owned%20Social&utm_campaign=Aud%20Dev

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s57T27M1ZXk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMb2xafRMxU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJAKQKPD5UI

Rationalism: The Fake Intellectual’s Method of Thinking

To many it seems there is an impossible situation in the modern intellectual world. Everyone is divided, split, sundered – every issue is a vicious battle of two opposing sides, without a single point of agreement between them. Crucially, both sides are utterly convinced their opponents are irrational – or even insane – while they themselves are bastions of rationality, and have clearly seen the truth amongst a web of lies. How can this be? How can people, from all different walks of life, levels of education and intellect, be completely convinced of the idiocy of their intellectual opponents– while these opponents think the same of them?

Epistemologically, the answer is Rationalism.

Rationalism is the fake intellectual’s method of thinking. It is a shortcut to feeling you are correct – a method of convincing oneself that something is true. It is the single epistemological technique that allows countless men of great intellect to all have completely opposing opinions, all while observing the same reality – the reason being that Rationalism is a method of thinking that doesn’t relate to reality.

Rationalism is a method of creating floating castles of logic in the sky, completely detached from reality itself. For example: statists bemoan the plight of the poor when they have no access to healthcare. Healthcare for the poor is good, they say, but the poor have no money, while the rich have plenty of money, and they wouldn’t suffer too much from sacrificing some of it to help pay for universal healthcare.  Therefore, it would be good to tax the rich to pay for healthcare for the poor.

All of the original statements of the argument are correct, but they are assertions floating in a void, without any of the necessary context to evaluate the argument’s conclusion. It is true, in a general sense, that healthcare for the poor is good, and that some percentage of them cannot afford it, but this is not enough information to even begin to form an argument. There has been no discussion of the possibility of private charity taking care of these individuals, or whether they deserve help or have caused their problems by their own carelessness. The basic morality of the argument – altruism – is simply taken as fact, without any attempt to state why the plight of the poor as a group is morally important. Finally, the results of the proposed policy – the effective enslavement of doctors, the punishment of the rich for their success, the inevitable ‘brain drain’ progressive taxation will cause – all of this is in another dimension completely. All that matters is: ‘Poor people need something – rich people have it – therefore we should make them give it up’.

Central to Rationalism is the reliance on definitions of words as the means of an argument. To a Rationalist, as long as he knows the definition of a word, he need not look at what it denotes in reality. If, as many people do, he understands ‘selfishness’ to mean ‘acting in one’s own interest at the expense of others’, he simply knows this is true, and never checks this against reality. If he did he would see people acting for their own interests, without harming others in the process – and realise his definition is wrong.

Rationalism is central to just about every mainstream political or philosophical doctrine. We have already seen an example from the left, but the modern right is no better. Take Donald Trump’s argument for tariffs: American workers can’t find jobs in the manufacturing sector of the economy, because everyone buys manufactured goods from China. They do this because Chinese goods are extremely cheap – therefore, imposing tariffs on these goods would be good for American workers as more people would buy American goods, thus increasing the demand for manufacturing jobs. Once again, the argument ignores the context – the fact that American workers are also consumers, and subsequently benefit from cheap Chinese goods, and will be forced to suffer an increase in prices order to give Randy his job at the factory back.

The antidote to this method of thinking is Induction.

Induction is the method by which knowledge is originally created. Behind every great intellectual discovery is a man who had to induce that discovery, and the only way to do that is to look at reality. No matter whether you are discovering new knowledge or simply understanding what others have already discovered, every single concept in the argument must be brought back to concrete, observable reality. If an argument involves the word ‘good’, before accepting it you must first be sure of what this word actually means, by looking out at reality and seeing ‘good’ in action. To have fully induced even the meaning of the word ‘good’ you have to reduce the concept to something you can point at (sometimes only figuratively, as the ‘something’ may be an aspect of consciousness), and then show how that necessitates a certain meaning of the word. It is beyond the province of this article to go into induction in depth, but I will leave a link to Dr Leonard Peikoff’s invaluable lectures on induction at the bottom of the article.

It is worth saying that Induction itself is no joke – fully inducing complex philosophical concepts can take hours and hours of work, and can hardly be expected of every-day, non-philosophical people. It should be the job of the intellectuals to induce these principles and show the world in concise form how it can be done, but (with the obvious exceptions) no one is providing such a service. Therefore, if you want to fully understand politics, ethics, knowledge and reality itself, it’s largely up to you to induce everything yourself.

However hard that may seem, just remember – someone had to have the brains to induce it in the first place.

https://campus.aynrand.org/campus-courses/objectivism-through-induction

Facts and Fundamentals

Suppose you are amongst a group of friends discussing a an upcoming election, and one of your friends announces his support for a Bernie Sanders type socialist. As your other friends confirm their agreement, it comes to your turn to say your point of view. You tell them you are going to vote for the classical liberal candidate–and they scoff and sneer. They mock you as a rich toff who only cares about himself. They tell you how their candidate is going to help the poor, the sick, the homeless, the trees and the animals, and how the conservative candidate is a bastard who should burn in hell.

How do you respond?

It is common for libertarian types to respond on economic grounds; they might tell their friends how the socialist candidate’s policies will bankrupt the country, how the welfare system will encourage people out of work, how the saving of trees will result in the destruction of human standard of living, etc. etc. This is all true, but this type of argument almost never works.

The problem is this: for every moronic socialist idea one can think of, there are a myriad of facts waiting to be twisted to support its practicality. For every issue, from free education to anti-abortion, there are studies and figures that allow people to believe whatever they want to believe–not to mention the outright falsehoods that stain every inch of the modern day political battleground. Free education will bankrupt the country, you say? Why, no, investing in education increases innovation, leading to economic growth in the long run. Haven’t you seen the latest study in The Guardian? Against this sort of wilful make-believe, arguing with facts alone simply does not work.

The answer to this problem is to argue the fundamentals.

The reason why socialists never abandon their beliefs, despite the countless failures of socialist countries across the globe and the dazzling success of capitalist countries, is because their socialism is a result of their fundamental principles. One is a socialist not because of a study in The New York Times, but because of one’s belief in altruism and collectivism, and one’s jealous hatred of success. No amount of facts supporting capitalism will undermine these principles; only a direct attack can work. This is why Ayn Rand is so enduringly popular, and viciously hated at the same time; she always argued the fundamentals, which can only result in a smashing of a person’s philosophic principles – or their lashing out in defence of them.

To be clear, facts and figures can be incredibly useful as concrete examples of what you are talking about. But the bread and butter of any good explanation of a political question should be the fundamentals it takes into account; the facts are only the jam.

We now return to your friends awaiting your response. How should you respond?

You should tell them the rich earned their money with their own effort. You should tell them the poor have no right to steal from the rich, even if they vote to do so. You should ask them if they would accept you and your other friends to vote on how much money they should give you, and if they would happily give you half of what they earn simply because you voted on it. You should tell them that initiating force is wrong, no matter how many people you plan to save with the spoils of such an act. You should tell them you don’t believe another person’s misfortune is a mortgage on your time, money or life.

Finally, as the icing on the cake, you should tell them how under capitalism the poor of 19^th century America sky-rocketed to wealth due to the economic freedom of the time, and how under a truly capitalist society the standard of living of the poor would be staggeringly greater than it is today.

This is nothing more than a primer for a fuller argument. Will it change your friend’s minds? Right there and then, almost certainly not–but maybe you will have sown the first seeds of doubt for their political beliefs in their minds.