Democrats: The future Republicans?

First off, this is a thought experiment not a proof. You can take my conclusions with a grain of salt, but you never know... stranger things have happened e.g. the Watergate break-in and (cough) "Monica-gate". You might think that I'm interested in elaborating how the Democrats are going to try emulating a past Republican President. Admittedly, if we returned to the likes of Ronald Reagan, then there would be some advantages. Naturally, I would prefer someone like Barry Goldwater to be a possible archetype of choice, but then you know how that campaign went! I'm actually going to try to setup a potential situation where someday (...maybe at the time of the next generation after the next) there could be a new alternative that takes flight from within the host of an old alternative.

At this point, it should be crystal clear where the two major political parties stand. The Republicans have various factions, but they are driven by Christian conservatism. The Democrats have various factions, but they have no real direction and have shown signs of imploding. (Don't let the recent Congressional changeover fool you on this point! The Democrats can say that they aren't Republicans all that they want, but that isn't a forward moving platform or strategem.)

Like other Objectivists who are interested in new philosophical ideas and formations, I've been listening to Dr. Leonard Peikoff's DIM hypothesis lectures. (Caveat: His theory was only made available several years ago, and he's indicated that it may undergo some revising, so anything anyone says about this theory should likely be considered tentative until the related book is published. Also as a side-note, Dr. Peikoff was looking for possible refutations in 2004.) DIM is an acronym that represents _all_ of the possible views of conceptual application with respect to subsuming concretes and/or concepts into higher-level concepts: Disintegration/Integration/Misintegration. Dr. Peikoff also mentions the epistemic "zeroes" and the eclectics, but they do not have an essential view of conceptual usage that leads anywhere directly.

He indicates that the DIM trichotomy comes from a two-step process. First, people choose whether to integrate or not. This is represented by D(isintegration) vs. I(ntegration). The next choice people have is to integrate based on reality or not. This is represented by I(ntegration) vs. M(isintegration). In other words, Disintegration is the default or starting position for a person when faced with the prospect of conceptual integration.

Now, at this point in time, The Republicans are being lead by Ms. In fact, Dr. Peikoff refers to the President as an M2 aka an extreme misintegrating agent. On the other hand, the Democrats are being lead by ideological Nihilists. In terms of applied theory of knowledge, the Democrats are being steered by Ds. (It was suggested during the lectures that Ds and Ms appropriate and actually require each other's thinking methods though they do this to a lesser degree...)

If the Republicans have failed to realize a proper view of Capitalism, and they are intransigent in their interest in religious metaphysics, then they are simply going to derail over time. The Democrats are obviously going to also need a few years before their destructive approach resolves. If the Republicans are "derailing off the train" of political philosophy, then the Democrats are currently doomed to "running out of steam" in the midst of their theoretical travels.

What occurred to me is that: If facing reality with a disintegrated mind is the starting point, and misintegrating reality is a failed attempt, then the Democrats could _potentially_ do the otherwise unthinkable. That is, the Democrats could over time rediscover the basis for political philosophy i.e. rational selfishness. In turn, they could "re-lay the train tracks" and become agents of political integration. The Democrats could eventually discover and employ Capitalism. The problem is that there is this one little thing getting in the way....

Now, for some background material..... DIM is a HIGHLY essentialized theory, and any essentialization involves loads of abstraction and temporary concrete-dropping i.e. what Ayn Rand called "measurement-omission." Examples of measurement-omission are readily available in mathematics, although the technique can be applied across human endevours. Let's say that home building contractors are hired to build a new home. They have to run measurements along the ground to figure out how to install a foundation. They have to make measurements as far as the size and weight of their building materials go. They have to also generate total quantities for those materials. When they communicate and otherwise work with those materials, they do _not_ use the full reference to the measurements, and they certainly omit more detailed descriptions of the items which are measured. For example, let's say that part of a wall requires a dozen boards. Workers are likely to talk to each other along the lines of saying, "Hand me 3 of those boards." They wouldn't continuously say, "Hand me 3 boards which are x feet long, y inches wide, and z inches deep." Could you imagine how long a project would take if every time a contractor needed materials he said, "Hand me some boards which are x feet long, y inches wide, z inches deep, weigh w ounces, are made of such-and-such material, coated with this-and-that material, etc. etc."?!?!? Obviously, people have to use measurement-omission and other conceptual techniques if they want to ever be productive. ...so using DIM as a tool for projecting a possible future won't automatically generate much of the details. Instead, I do think that it can be used for outlining a trend.

Of course, what people should remember is that the DIM theory is contextual, and I don't mean to suggest that any Objectivist would patronize relativistic positions either. In fact, it's the principles that DIM depends on that allow for what would appear to be reliable results. Again, it's the essentialized nature of the theory that makes prediction workable. There are certainly some qualifying factors to consider when it comes to how my idea could be manifested. One of the more obvious stipulations is that the Republicans and Democrats have been keeping each other in check by way of a process of nullification i.e. "gridlock". For the next couple of Presidential terms, we'll likely be fortunate to only be able to keep this tenuous holding pattern. Dr. Peikoff actually reminded students of the 2004 Integration course that an unstable philosophical situation has to eventually be either reconciled or it will break down. In terms of politics, that simply amounts to Capitalism vs. Anarchism. Also, Ayn Rand noted that Anarchism leads to a "power vacuum", so we certainly have yet another reason to fight for Capitalism otherwise America could find itself facing dictatorship down the road. In other words, there won't be a substantial transition to Capitalism without periodic stalling points and other non-essential periods of the trend.

This also may seem like a curious experimental idea given what Objectivists (and other Capitalists) want to do. Objectivists want to actually train enough people in philosophy at least to the point of influencing the culture in a positive and more liberating way. Also, it will always be tempting to want to do away with some aspect of the current political system. In fact, non-Objectivists seem to be much more impatient as far as political change is concerned. I can't remember whether it was Sen. Clinton or someone else, but after the Bush vs. Gore voting debacle, one Democratic Senator called for the elimination of the electoral college. This isn't the direction that my hypothesis is meant to suggest. I certainly do endorse what Objectivists are generally fighting for i.e. the spread of the right philosophical ideas throughout venues of academia and press communications. By the way, none of the recent election commentary was meant to take away from the importance of influencing culture by way of transforming intellectual tendencies.

What I am now suggesting is that it could be that something else will happen at the same time some people will develop into political agents after studying and applying Objectivism. It could be that enough people will become more familiar with Objectivism (or maybe just its effects) around the same time that they comprise the future current political force at the time of a major paradigm shift. If this happens, then there could be a new version of the "inside-outside" question. That is, the ideological changes within Congress might actually begin to keep up with those in academia.

...oh, you wanted to know that little problem for the Democrats, huh? They have to be able to learn to "(re)connect the dots" i.e. they have to first get a motive for learning integration.

Some cultural effects of Ayn Rand’s theory of concepts, part 2.

I want to set up some circumstances which lead to my motivation for wanting to focus on conceptual thinking as an impetus for communication. Making this argument is not unlike trying to explain a 3-D world to animated entities that lived in a hypothetical 2-D world. (Carl Sagan used this comparison in the _Cosmos_ TV series, but my purpose here is substantially different than his was. Actually, in reality it's a matter of explaining 2-D epistemology to people living with the idea of a fragmented 1-D epistemology.) As I mentioned before, Modern philosophers do use hierarchy although I've never come across any of those types of teachers who explicated the concept (properly.) They take context for granted, but they don't do that as much as they disregard context by attacking the process of conceptualization. (Dr. Leonard Peikoff's "Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy" is actually good for exploring bad teaching methods because that essay suggests how Modernists support all sorts of imaginary splits e.g. terms vs. meaning, object existence vs. object identification, and so on.) Therefore, it's important to identify the sort of problems which people have in understanding objective concepts.

Let's start with hierarchical relationships before regarding potential context. Ethics subsumes self-defense i.e. the concept of morality includes the concept of self-defense. In this case, morality is the more abstract concept. Likewise, self-defense is more immediately understandable and applicable. You can see this by looking at children. In any typical playground environment, children will get into arguments when they play together. As children, they are likely to consider resorting to physical force far earlier in a confrontation than they should. Why do they choose initiating force before making logical arguments? Essentially it seems like a more immediately reliable method. That is, force is a more readily available and recognizable tool as far as children normally learn. More viscerally, emotional reactions are automatic, and its tempting for them to simply respond after feeling. (It takes an act of independence to stop and take time to think instead of immediately following up with initiating force.)

Consider the details of a specific incident as follows. If one kid throws a punch at another, then it's clear that the first kid is upset, it's clear who one of the people he's upset with is, and it's clear that he is passionate. The kid who got hit certainly will have some semblance of understanding the importance of self-defense after getting in a fight. On the other hand, it's unlikely that he will know much about what goes into a code of ethics. Even without formal study but through experience, he'll pick up pieces of information that he'll use to form a morality. Still, without formal study, he will also have a hard time developing the correct ethical code. The larger point then is that while we are born with some ability to deal with concretes via perception, it takes additional work to assemble a body of knowledge let alone one that is more consistent and integrated. The only way to get that improved system is by working with a proper theory of concepts.

Now, typically in public schools, kids are told that fighting is wrong. (This mirrors the Christian idea of "Thou shalt not kill" although there's a difference of magnitude involved between the final attempt to kill and the start of a physical fight.) According to Objectivism, the school administrators' policy contains an error that results in unfair situations for kids who are fighting. The fallacy underpinning that policy is one of equivocation. I will tell you now that this is an error involving an improper view of context as applied to concepts and principles. The equivocation in this case is of considering the initiation of force as morally equal to the defense against force. To see that this is true, consider two different possible resolutions of the aforementioned children's fight. Let's also leave aside motives at first. If the 2nd child who is being hit does nothing, then he will suffer injury and maybe feel some humiliation. On the other hand, if the 2nd child defends himself against the instigator the results are substantially different. Regardless of how the fight ends, if he has some idea in how to defend himself, then he will likely be in better physical shape, and he will probably also feel more pride in his abilities to cope with a bad situation.

Now, note that in order for anyone involved in the children's fight to distinguish between initiating force and defending against force i.e. self-defense, each person needs a code of ethics that makes the distinction important. Likewise, for the kid who was struck to come out the winner of the fight, he has to have the understanding (and motivation) that goes with having a healthy self-esteem. In particular, the concept of self-defense has to be converted into a principle. That is, the concept of self-defense must be related to at least one other concept by way of a consistent connection so that the person in question can make use of the conceptual relationship. Just as a parent should train a child to defend himself physically, that child should be told why he has value so that he is intellectually armed.

This difference in training leads to what I want Objectivist activist do as far as using the power of concepts is concerned.

Epistemic-Political relationship in respect to the 2006 elections.

Note: Although I certainly do it on rare occasions…. I don’t like to write entries which are mainly follow-ups or tangential or trendy. Over the past 2 weeks, much ado has been made by some lay Objectivists in regard to expert analysis of the impending elections. I’m not even going to make direct references to those comments ….for the simple reason that it’s not a priority now for me to do so nor is it particularly beneficial. Consider division of labor for one thing….

Synopsis: Part 1 indicates proper evaluative method. Part 2 indicates improper evaluative application. Part 3 indicates proper evaluative application. See prior posts for additional relevant information.

Part 1 Using the inductive method

What I have to say now amounts to this: Issues regarding knowledge are more fundamental than political issues, yet political issues are _easier_ to explain from an inductive standpoint. I’m actually trying to frame the general idea in a way that seems contradictory, but that is difficult to do since philosophy is so throughly integrated as a system by itself as well as it being substantially involved with myriad disciplines of a more immediately sensory and mechanical nature. In particular, philosophy includes politics (as a theory), but philosophy also guides political science (as a practical application.) My interest in seeking a contradiction comes from wanting to locate the most severe differentiation possible in order to best clarify the nature of the process. At this point in time, I have not found such a contradiction.

To personalize the above point, if you want to judge ideas, then you have to see how they effect people when those ideas are put into action. By the way, people must be judged both on their thoughts and actions. Thoughts without action can't be seen, and actions without ideological explanation can't make sense. You have to have both a person's thoughts (causes) and actions (effects) to truly understand how and why he does what he does. This goes for politicians and voters alike.

As Ayn Rand indicated, knowledge has two core dimensions, hierarchy and context. The Modern university professors wish to consider human behavior in terms of hierarchy without regard for context. This is why they want to perform Linguistic Analysis and use symbolic logic instead of operating more like a detective or a legal prosecutor from before the Red Decade.

Induction requires gathering large amounts of evidence about a subject to the point of saturation i.e. at a point of acquiring data redundancy. In turn, the scientific method must be applied when evaluating evidence. The more the evidence is cross-referenced in as many number and types of ways possible the more reliable the related evaluations can be.

This is why the various Objectivist essays on voting Democrat are important. It's why Dr. Peikoff's DIM hypothesis is important. It's why considering American history in order of forward sequence without skipping relevant events is important.

I happen to be among a very small group of people who personally attended both Dr. Peikoff's original publicly offered _Objectivism Through Induction_ lecture series and his 2 original lectures comprising an overview and application of his D-I-M hypothesis. I have to say that I find Dr. Peikoff's DIM hypothesis plausible. On the other hand, I think his general inductive theory needs to be further revised (even more than it already has been over the past several years.) For me as a guiding rule (and as a side note to you the reader), I suspect that Dr. Peikoff has a fairly reliable way of evaluating other peoples' abilities to think in essentials, but I figure that he has much more work to do before being able to throughly evaluate the culture of whole societies. I believe that he is motivated to find such an overriding method, and if such a method was reliable and easily applicable, then evaluating the prospects for the coming elections would indeed be a more straight-forward and scientific process.

Part 2 Assessing logical errors

I can’t write this without some level of anger and ultimately… disappointment. I swore to myself that I would not revisit the issue of how to vote in this month’s American elections, but what I wanted to avoid in specific is re-arguing the step-by-step process of drawing the relevant conclusions. Instead, what I will do is go to the underlying nature of the sort of mistakes that some of my fellow Objectivists are making.

Again, I think that there’s absolutely no reason whatsoever for people to vote for Republicans if these voters understand the issues that would motivate people such as Dr. Leonard Peikoff and John Lewis to make the arguments which they have made. Whether someone understands those issues or not, there is a universal solution which I will suggest for everyone regardless of their philosophy or their knowledge of politics if they want to double-check their thinking as far as selecting political candidates go.

Keep in mind, that the current differences of opinion among many Objectivists don't come down to traditional differences between political parties. Today's Democrats and Republicans are nothing as they were at the time of their parties' creation, they are nothing as they were before our American culture was inculcated with German philosophy in the early part of the 20th century, and they are fast becoming something wholly different from the days when Carter opposed Reagan a quarter of a century ago. I contend that the difference of opinion among Objectivists comes down to arguing the importance of hypothetical short-term consequences versus the importance of hypothetical long-term consequences. The Objectivists who argue for voting straight-line Democrat would argue that fighting to protect the long-term future outweighs any dangers for the foreseeable near future.

I certainly have not tried to read much of the commentary on the several of the more serious Objectivist forums, and I have no intention of reading much more for the following reasons: What I’ve read so far was generally quickly becoming redundant. Likewise, many arguments are also rife with logical errors. I would contend the major logical fallacies which people have resorted to using are:1) jumping to conclusions and 2) context-dropping. There’s another fallacy which has appeared less frequently, but the fact that it has been used as much as it has would indicate that it’s as much a major potential crutch as the previous two are. That fallacy is: 3) begging the question. Further, some lesser fallacies have been used more sporadically as well. These include (but aren’t limited to) argument from intimidation (and it’s utterly absurd that someone would suggest that Dr. Peikoff is guilty of this for the position he’s recently offered!!!) and appeal to authority.

It is certainly true that some fallacies are related to each other; in fact, some are variations of others. Further, many fallacies can be placed into general groups. For example, some fallacies inappropriately reference people instead of central facts e.g. appeal to authority, appeal to popularity, and ad hominem; on the other hand, some fallacies depend on inappropriate attempts at forming conceptual relationships (ignoring the nature of concept-formation) e.g. non-sequitur, slippery slope, and context-switching. Ultimately, what most fallacies come from is the failure to think in essentials. That is, the core concepts have not been identified, and an argument has been offered _as if_ it uses the core concepts when it does not. Of course, sometimes an argument will include more than one fallacy ….sometimes even within the same premise.

Part 3 Comparative analysis of systems

(As a side-note and to avoid confusion, arguments depend on core principles. Still, those principles depend on core concepts. Those concepts are often taken for granted, but the fact that their importance is often ignored does not change the fact that they are _necessary_ for a proper argument to be made.) The underlying principle for judging political candidates comes from a statement of normative ethics which Ayn Rand made: “Those who practice their philosophy the most consistently will win….” Just as Dr. Peikoff was correct in highlighting that the Christians have been putting their philosophy in the practice of politics for thousands of years, it is also worth noting that the opposition of ideas is happening in ONE DIRECTION predominantly. Republicans overwhelming ignore Nihilism; they simply haven’t taken much of Modernism seriously at all. The exception is Socialism. Why this exception? Out of the canon of modern philosophy, it is Socialism which is most compatible with conservative Republican philosophy. As Dr. Peikoff has already noted several times, Socialism is dying, it is on the way out even while people of various political stripes attempt to revive it.

Simply put, Socialism is treated by Americans as a particular polar opposite to Capitalism; they do this while making simultaneous partial use of both systems. Capitalism only exists as theory at best; it doesn’t exist in a mostly purified way as far as the practice of American politics is concerned. Obversely, Socialism controls American politics for now, but it has been widely discredited among new intellectuals. (Note what Dr. Andrew Bernstein stated in _The Capitalist Manifesto_, the economists are not the problem… they appreciate the practical aspects of applied Capitalism.)

Now consider both Christianity and Socialism together. Flatly, which party is best suited to and most interested in using both religious and secular altruism in politics? There’s no contest; it’s obviously the (conservatives in the) Republican Party who have the greatest interest in altruism in the wholesale sense.

Did you notice where the similarities and differences exist? It’s true that both the Democrats and the Republicans are altruistic in some way in essence, and it’s true that both parties are interested in using both types of altruism. There are two points of distinction though i.e. that is there are two critical differentiating points. 1) Capitalism can only exist in opposition to altruism, and that means that freedom can only exist if no form of political self-sacrifice is codified and employed. 2) It is the Republican Party which is on the ideological warpath. Conversely, the Democrats neither have the quality of ideas in substance which the Republicans have, nor do they exercise the passionate will to invoke their ideas to near the degree that the evangelical Christian Republicans do.

What does this boil down to? It means that in both quantity and quality, the Republicans are poised to take over the mind-set of the American body politic. That is, they're are the ones who will win by being the most consistent, and as I and others have already stated the opposition to this employment of religion in politics does not exist in current political discourse. In point of fact, the only opposition to Christian politics which can exist can only come from Objectivism put into political practice. In turn, this means that the only way to really stop the Christians is to get laissez-faire Capitalists to oppose them.

Some would say that what Objectivists are now searching for isn’t so focused on how to offer ideological opposition to conservative Republicans; they might say that the difference among Objectivists is in the debate over the execution of the particular required logistics. In fact, Objectivists are already arguing whether it’s better to support the Democrats or the Republicans for the whole reason that they want to find a host party to inculcate with laissez-faire ideology. The problem is people aren’t robots; candidates have their respective psychologies. A person’s thinking is a volitional matter after all. Even Objectivists can not and should not try to force their ideas into the minds of politicians.

What this amounts to is that all voters including Objectivists need to come to terms with how politics is and how it will be regardless of what any one desires. (No amount of whim-worshipping will make the Republican Party better, nor will that make the conservatives voluntarily leave politics.) I have stated that ideas can not be forced into the minds of citizens, and at the same time taking the wait-and-see approach has already failed. ....so then what to do? Objectivists are already doing the best thing anyone can do viz. they are trying to infuse the American culture in as many substantial ways possible with the core philosophical ideas required for the growth and survival of a free culture.

Given the respective motivations of politicians within their respective parties, it’s the conservative politicians who are already offering evidence of real ideological conviction. They are the ones who need to be stopped if America is to survive. Since it’s the Republicans who 1) are willing to change their respective ideology first 2) are willing to politicize religion first and ultimately 3) fight for their values, it’s the Republicans who Objectivists most desperately need to stop _first_.