Objectivist Platform
I'm playing President Infinity, a game where you can run a customized Presidential campaign, so I'm creating the Objectivist Party and have to enter a platform. Economics and taxation is easy. I also assume the War on Drugs would be out. Other issues are not as clear. What do you think the Randian view would be on...
1. Foreign policy? I would think that something like Iraq would not serve our interests, but a pre-emptive strike or intervention where the combatants possess a threat to the United States could be in our interest. But can a COUNTRY itself have rational self interest? If it is, then one could make arguments for, say, universal healthcare, saying it's in the "country's" interests to have a healthy population. I don't subscribe to this view, but having the interest of the country does open up a can of worms?
2. Abortion? I don't want to get controversial, but this is tricky, because there are two interests (mother, baby) that may be in conflict with each other.
3. North Korea, Iran, War on Terror? You could say that a stable Middle East, etc. is in our interest to reduce terrorism, I can see others saying that it's a form of altruism toward the peoples of those countries?
1. Foreign policy? I would think that something like Iraq would not serve our interests, but a pre-emptive strike or intervention where the combatants possess a threat to the United States could be in our interest. But can a COUNTRY itself have rational self interest? If it is, then one could make arguments for, say, universal healthcare, saying it's in the "country's" interests to have a healthy population. I don't subscribe to this view, but having the interest of the country does open up a can of worms?
2. Abortion? I don't want to get controversial, but this is tricky, because there are two interests (mother, baby) that may be in conflict with each other.
3. North Korea, Iran, War on Terror? You could say that a stable Middle East, etc. is in our interest to reduce terrorism, I can see others saying that it's a form of altruism toward the peoples of those countries?
But thanks for your your thanks.
Mike M.
We can explore the question here, but I believe that a separate discussion under Philosophy is warranted.
I served.
We can look at the alternative cases in which governments do other things in addition and see how that worked out. How are those freeways looking? Education? Healthcare?
I am not much of a gamer. My wife and I were in a D&D Club about five years ago for about a year. We played a lot of it as Moria or Rogue on the computers back when our kid was growing up. The three of us had a good time running characters. I have done Risk, of course, and I have this monstrous World War II game I could never get anyone to play. It clearly takes a long weekend of cola and pizza. So, just to say, I understand the context.
Confederate election of 1900... Interesting...
There is a premise that I think qualifies as an axiom that you cannot really project an alternate history because you only lived in the history you know. Still, you have to accept the pure chance of fate. Hitler survived World War I as a runner. The odds were against that. Did he cause World War II or were larger forces acting? It speaks to your view of the world.
Personally, I think that it cuts both ways. Absent Edison, the incandescent lamp may or may not have been invented at that moment, but the technology was a given. And he did have a competitor in Westinghouse. So, while your own personal choices do make a difference, certainly to you, it is not clear what history would be like if only....
Interests are based upon conscious minds. Interest presupposes a self consciousness. A life requires certain biological processes which are necessary but not an interest of the organism. When a self consciousness develops, then interests by the organism develop and not before.
Objectivism is a philosophy created from facts of objective reality by Ayn Rand and cannot remain Objectivism with changes to it. One applies it to ones own life in as non-contradictory a way as possible. Other objective philosophies, depending upon how contradiction free, are possible but should not be linked to Rand's Objectivism.
It's the ultimate conundrum, though, which is why I believe similar ideologies like Libertarianism struggle in elections. It's a Catch-22: If you're against a lot of government power, but in order to pass laws removing government power, you first have to attain government power to do it.
Is this really capital-O Objectivism if it's not tested against empirical fact.
Which religious tradition people follow is orthogonal to whether they accept reason vs. a literal, fundamentalist view of religion. I think you're right that imposing a new government will not change either one of these. The one that matters, though, is reason vs. fundamentalism. If there were an effective way (region change or other method) to make people change religious traditions, it wouldn't solve anything if one set of myths were substituted for another with no increase in reason. It might actually make these worse because people changing religion might fire up the anti-reason people who believe one religious tradition is better than another.
""The Prime Directive is not just a set of rules; it is a philosophy… and a very correct one. History has proven again and again that whenever mankind interferes with a less developed civilization, no matter how well intentioned that interference may be, the results are invariably disastrous."
– Jean-Luc Picard, 2364 ("Symbiosis")
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http://www.objectivistparty.us/6443.h...
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