Gavrosh,
Welcome to RoR. You wrote:
Objectivism is a philosophy, created by Ayn Rand. If it ever took a political form it would be a government o[f] philosophers. Individuals with better skills of persuasion would lead the rest in a similar fashion as people with money lead the way now. But there was this guy Solomon, philosopher king, don't know much about him though. The insinuation being two-fold:
1) That the political facilitation of cultural Objectivism would require a philosopher-king.
2) That King Solomon is a good example of where that would lead.
Taking the second insinuation first, I got the following from the Jewish Virtual Library:
Solomon was also renowned for his other building projects in which he used slave labor from the Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. He spent 13 years building his own palace, and also built a city wall, a citadel called the Millo, a palace for the daughter of Pharaoh (who was one of his wives) and facilities for foreign traders. He erected cities for chariots and horsemen and created storage cities. He extended Jerusalem to the north and fortified cities near the mountains of Judah and Jerusalem.
Solomon’s downfall came in his old age. He had taken many foreign wives, whom he allowed to worship other gods. He even built shrines for the sacrifices of his foreign wives. Within Solomon’s kingdom, he placed heavy taxation on the people, who became bitter. He also had the people work as soldiers, chief officers and commanders of his chariots and cavalry. He granted special privileges to the tribes of Judah and this alienated the northern tribes. The prophet Ahijah of Shiloh prophesied that Jeroboam son of Nebat would become king over ten of the 12 tribes, instead of one of Solomon’s sons.
--http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Solomon.html
So, it appears that Solomon utilized slaves, upheld religious freedom, heavily taxed his people, drafted people into his army, and redistributed wealth by picking winners and losers (cronyism, nepotism, etc.) in a centralized, command-and-control economic scheme. Well, aside from the religious freedom (or "tolerance" of rival religions), that pretty much counts Solomon out as being an exemplar of the kind of philosopher-king that you would get from appointing an Objectivist as head-of-state. Objectivism is pretty much an antithesis to slavery, taxation, a military draft, and central planning of an economy. So Solomon is not a good example.
But, even still, does the political facilitation of cultural Objectivism really require a philosopher-king?
No, it just requires a free press. You see, if folks are free to dissent and to ridicule -- then you don't need that one guy at the top to have had all of the needed answers for the governance of a country. Instead, you need an adept culture that can hold his feet to a fire. You need outspoken citizen intellectuals. Here's Ayn Rand talking about such a thing in an essay called: "For the New Intellectual":
The intellectual ... sets a society's course by transmitting ideas from the "ivory tower" of the philosopher to the university professor--to the writer--to the artist--to the newspaperman--to the politician--to the movie maker--to the night club singer--to the man in the street. ... Those who deal with the sciences studying nature have to rely on the intellectual for philosophical guidance and information: for moral values, for social theories, for political premises, for psychological tenets and, above all, for the principles of epistemology, that crucial branch of philosophy which studies man's means of knowledge and makes all other sciences possible. The intellectual is the eyes, ears and voice of a free society ... So, the intellectually-transmitted ideas permeate everywhere from the politician all the way down to the common man in the street, and they involve such things as morals, social theories, political premises, and basic knowledge accrual. It is apparent, then, that Objectivism would not need a philosopher-king, but merely some kind of communication for free intellectuals -- perhaps posting on some kind of internet discussion forum somewhere. Now, I don't know where you'd find such a thing (an internet discussion forum devoted to advancing the philosophy of Objectivism), but I'm sure if you keep your eyes open, you may find just such a thing out there somewhere. Heck, it could even be right under your very nose.
:-)
Ed
(Edited by Ed Thompson on 6/17, 12:42pm)
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