I wrote this message to an Objectivist facebook group:
Supporting Trump is the only realistic way to stop Hillary this year. Stopping Hillary, and judging her to be worse than Trump, seems compatible with Objectivism to me. (Note Gary Johnson's problem isn't just that he can't get enough votes to stop Hillary. His campaign has actually been less anti-Hillary than Trump's campaign.)
Let's look at some of the issues to see that Hillary is a lot worse than Trump:
Trump is pro drilling for fossil fuels, Hillary wants to put coal miners out of work.
Trump opposes the Iran deal and Obamacare.
Trump wants to enforce US immigration law and secure our border against criminals and terrorists.
Trump isn't running as Obama's third term.
Trump has promised to appoint supreme court judges from a pro-constitution list. They aren't ideal, but Hillary will appoint truly awful judges.
Hillary wants to make government way bigger, more intrusive, more rights violating, bigger budget, more agencies, etc. Trump isn't any kinda small government guy. I'd guess Trump views himself as planning to keep government around the same size, and will in fact grow it significantly. But he won't expand government as much or as enthusiastically as Hillary.
Trump isn't a literal traitor who would be in jail if not for government corruption.
Trump likes America and wants us to win. He mostly promises to do good things (that he probably won't live up to very well). Hillary dislikes America and mostly promises to do bad things.
Trump is not very religious and is kinda moderate. I don't approve of moderates, but it's still better than Hillary. Moderate means compromises, lack of principles, and (for a right winger) some leftist sympathies. Trump will compromise and sympathize with the anti-human left in a variety of ways, and will not solve most of our problems. But Trump will also do a few things pretty well, and we'll fall apart slower than with Hillary who has promised to destroy us in a dozen ways.
One of the issues where Trump is a breath of fresh air is opposing establishment politicians in both parties. Will he fix it? Nah. He'll try a bit and we'll be better off with him than with Hillary who will intentionally make it worse. Of the people on the ballot, Trump's the best one to vote for.
Messages (4)
Binswanger
I don't think people like Binswanger appreciate how bad Clinton is and what she could do to the country. Just consider the importation of thousand of Syrian Muslim refugees. She knows full well what these people are doing in Europe and what they will do here.
Good Post
I consider myself to be a student of Objectivism and really love the idea of a Philosophy of reason. However, when it comes to the leaders of the Objectivism movement today I am totally lost on their political views.
I do understand why they do not agree with The Donald on political matters. What is so perplexing to me is their leftist media like support for and outright Socialist and known criminal.
Trump not only campaigned on Making America Great Again but he actually has an inkling of what America a.k.a. the U.S.A is all about. Unlike Hillary's definition of America. She wants to make America Socialist and doesn't hide it in any way save one, she doesn't call it by name.
It seems to me that Objectivism or any Philosophy of reason would support any rational fight for Capitalism a.k.a individual rights to free trade.
Hillary is an admitted and direct threat to capitalism and individual rights. Not only does she speak against it when she can but her actions back up her beliefs.
Again, the Objectivist distain for Trump's idea's is mostly understandable, their support for the Hilary is completely baffling to me.
My love and understanding of the Objectivist Philosophy keeps me from thinking that the current leadership in the Ayn Rand community is nothing more than another crop of intellectual idiots. But I cannot, for the life of me, find any of their arguments for Hillary over Trump to have any rationality behind it and thus, I am unconvinced by them.
Even more so now that Trump has accomplished some of the pro-capitalist things like tax cuts (not big enough, but in the right direction) and deregulation (not even close to enough, but again, in the right direction.)
He is not a great president in my opinion, but he is far more superior than Hillary is or ever was.
> I consider myself to be a student of Objectivism and really love the idea of a Philosophy of reason. However, when it comes to the leaders of the Objectivism movement today I am totally lost on their political views.
> I do understand why they do not agree with The Donald on political matters. What is so perplexing to me is their leftist media like support for and outright Socialist and known criminal.
One issue is that what you might call Institutional Objectivism (as reflected by ARI) has tried to make itself more compatible with libertarianism, which is a much bigger community. Institutional Libertarianism (as reflected by groups like the Cato Institute) is basically left-wing now (see their support for open borders, letting criminals out to slaughter innocents, etc.) So institutional Oism has been corrupted into being more leftist by trying to outreach to people who have left wing attitudes and prejudices.
> Trump not only campaigned on Making America Great Again but he actually has an inkling of what America a.k.a. the U.S.A is all about. Unlike Hillary's definition of America. She wants to make America Socialist and doesn't hide it in any way save one, she doesn't call it by name.
Yeah.
I remember Trump being introduced at a rally by some lady in Texas who said something like "It's nice to see a candidate who isn't ashamed of his wealth!" Big sense of life difference there!
> It seems to me that Objectivism or any Philosophy of reason would support any rational fight for Capitalism a.k.a individual rights to free trade.
> Hillary is an admitted and direct threat to capitalism and individual rights. Not only does she speak against it when she can but her actions back up her beliefs.
She seriously considered running on UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/9/12/16296532/hillary-clinton-universal-basic-income-alaska-for-america-peter-barnes
so yeah, total horrible commie
> Again, the Objectivist distain for Trump's idea's is mostly understandable, their support for the Hilary is completely baffling to me.
I can understand them being critical of various things: e.g. tariffs. But Objectivists should also recognize importance of CONTEXT. During election they shoulda been like "yeah tariffs suck but more taxes/regs/communist healthcare/a lawless supreme court/a corrupt cleptocrat as president sucks worse, VOTE TRUMP!" This was not their attitude however :|
Also his foreign policy has been very nationally self-interested. He's pushing for things to help Americans (getting us out of bogus climate stuff, pushing for more open trade). Seems like Oists should appreciate this?????
> My love and understanding of the Objectivist Philosophy keeps me from thinking that the current leadership in the Ayn Rand community is nothing more than another crop of intellectual idiots. But I cannot, for the life of me, find any of their arguments for Hillary over Trump to have any rationality behind it and thus, I am unconvinced by them.
It's good to give people a chance and think abou their arguments seriously, but I would not give much respect to ARI at all.
Ayn Rand was singular and didn't really have a suitable intellectual heir.
curi has written various criticisms of their stuff and also talked about how even Peikoff (who was solid esp when Rand was alive) didn't even *like* philosophy much.
> Even more so now that Trump has accomplished some of the pro-capitalist things like tax cuts (not big enough, but in the right direction) and deregulation (not even close to enough, but again, in the right direction.)
> He is not a great president in my opinion, but he is far more superior than Hillary is or ever was.
Two solid Supreme Court picks too -- not super amazing, but solid.
Trump is basically a solid conservative president so far. If he builds the wall he will go down as great IMHO.
#10641 Objectivism has lots of people who value respectability, allies and philosophy PhDs. They aren't much like Ayn Rand. They try to get along with the libertarians and the leftist intellectuals. It's really sad.
> It seems to me that Objectivism or any Philosophy of reason would support any rational fight for Capitalism a.k.a individual rights to free trade.
They get confused because e.g. Trump is not a free trader.
http://curi.us/1804-donald-trump-is-a-protectionist
And they don't understand current politics and read books like *Adios America*, so they see open borders as a freedom issue and assume Trump is the bad guy. All the comments about immigrants lowering wages by competing for American jobs serve to alienate Objectivists further – economic nationalism is disgusting, ignorant and dangerous.
Harry Binswanger was getting election politics info from sources like: NYT, Nate Silver, HuffPo. He didn't understand it at all when I thought that was super biased and he should read e.g. some David Horowitz. I think most Objectivists are similar and are in the thrall of the #FakeNews mainstream media. Like most MSM victims, they know the media has a lefty bias, which they believe they are clever enough to correct for – but they *under correct* for that bias by a large margin and end up believing a bunch of lefty lies. They underestimate how thoroughly and extremely the media could be lying.
Hillary is much worse than most people know, including Objectivists like Binswanger. They aren't educated about it because they aren't looking at the right sources of information.
> My love and understanding of the Objectivist Philosophy keeps me from thinking that the current leadership in the Ayn Rand community is nothing more than another crop of intellectual idiots.
I fear that they are. Peikoff excommunicated the George Reisman – a great economist who studied under Mises and Rand, and used to be on the ARI board.
http://ariwatch.com/WhosWho/ARIvsGeorgeReisman.htm
ARI doesn't have a discussion forum. The Objectivist community in general lacks ways for mistakes to be corrected through public, rational, online discussion. Charles Tew has some good YouTube videos criticizing some ARI ideas/people and I link to several of my own criticisms in my letter to him:
http://curi.us/2119-open-letter-to-charles-tew