| | John Armaos' comment:
Evil has won more often than good. For the better part of the 100,000 year existence of humanity brutal, totalitarian rule was the norm, not the exception. Islam dominated 1/3 of the world for centuries, the Soviet Union killed 100 million plus people in a century's time before its demise, half of the world today is a brutal totalitarian hell hole. I am optimistic it is getting better but simply just being a beacon of hope and progress for the rest of the world has historically done squat to advance the cause of freedom. It took violent action to remove fascists from power. Not simply just exposing them for the intellectual frauds that they are. Now intellectually exposing them as frauds is certainly important, it serves to get people on board with you to help you fight.
It seems to me that what John, and others like him, seek in their quest for cosmic justice is simply obedience imposed through physical force. For John and these others are deeply infatuated with the alleged efficacy of guns and military power to control the outcome of history, i.e. to control other men's thinking. They believe, of course, that aggressive violence employed to a noble end, "freedom", is virtuous. They also argue (as in John's comment in the paragraph above), that "nothing else works".
John's thinking about this is radically antagonistic to the basic ideas that Rand emphasized, as explained, for example, in her essay "The Roots of War". In this essay, she explained that the essential prerequisite to resolving differences about ethics, justice, and politics, is the acceptance and understanding by the disputants that reason is man's only means of acquiring knowlege. She elaborated on the theme that war is the inevitable outcome among disputants who reject reason as the ultimate standard of dispute resolution, since ethics is discovered only through reason.
True, if some irrational thug aggresses against you--or against the legal jurisdiction under which you live--then you must repell the agression with defensive force. But strictly defined "defense" doesn't seem to be what John has in mind as justification for killing people. For John believes that nearly any action, if committed by someone who holds values antagonistic to his, is sufficient grounds to attack them militarily.
For example, John thinks attacking Iraq was justified, even though it has been established beyond reasonable doubt that the Iraqi State posed no military threat to the USA. Why? Apparently because he thinks the ideas held by many Iraqi's are potentially dangerous to the West, since some of their number would like to inflict death and suffering on Westerners (just as many Americans wish the same for Iraqi's).
Similarly, John and others applaud the US invasion of Afghanistan, on the grounds that bin Laden bombed the WTC and Pentagon, and that this crime justified bombing and invading Afghanistan, where bin Laden lived. Our invasion caused the deaths of perhaps 100,000 people, none of whom had ever been to NYC or seen the WTC. But that fact doesn't deter John from cheering on the invasion, because he thinks the Islamic ideas embraced by many in Afghanistan are dangerous thinking. Prior to the invasion, the Taliban offered to extradite bin Laden to the American authorities, under proceedures set forth in law, if the US authorities could produce evidence of bin Laden's culpability sufficient, under American law, to charge him with the crime and bring him to trial in the United States. Of course, the Bush people ignored this offer, choosing instead to invade.
There are two basic problems with this quest for cosmic justice. First, that quest is to be imposed on other Americans through physical force in the form of taxation, the restriction of the liberty of US citizens from official domestic spying and harrassment through such devices as the misnamed Patriot Act, and the elevated risk of terrorist blowback to innocent Americans in the USA. Prosecuting the quest for cosmic justice requires the violation of the rights, both of Americans, and of foreign people who have not aggressed against Americans living in their own country, but who do hold bad ideas and may sometimes wish us ill.
Second, John's program for our lives won't deliver on the promises he makes. One can't control the thinking of other people, because, obviously, thinking is individual and voluntary. The idea that Americans could ever improve their own lives and make the world a better place by killing millions who don't think properly is ludicrous. For many Americans themselves believe in collectivist ideas. Moreover, aggressively attacking people won't alter their thinking; but it will inflame feelings of retribution and revenge and reinforce the worst in their morally impoverished world view.
Clearly, our work is cut out for us right here in the United States, to bring about a revival of interest in the ideas that support classical individualism.
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