A Context If You Can Keep It

AS ALWAYS, when dealing with a seemingly complex political issue, we should seek to assert basic normative principles using core parameters with _strong_ respect to Objectivist epistemology (based on facts while adhering to the Aristotelian axioms).  Of course, America was founded on the concept of individual rights.  (See: Identity axiom.) While those rights are to be extended to all innocents, it (invariably at least) falls to the U.S.A. to make an example of itself and carry forward the gift that the Founding Fathers gave everyone.  While the Founders could not have possibly had the basic philosophical awareness that Ayn Rand would later develop, they did have enough historical perspective to know that they had to offer a better system than they previously observed or experienced.  The Charters of Freedom suggest that rights are to apply both within the U.S. as well as outside of the nation-state.  Obviously, for the American federal government, applying rights protection outside the confines of America can be a logistical nightmare, but then that is included in what government is actually for after all i.e. rights protection is exactly why the citizenry pays taxes (leaving aside that those taxes should be paid voluntarily given a trading context).  To put it differently, the Founders understood something unprecedented in politics: they had to work to provide for a government that would allow the American citizens to operate without the overhanging threat of force from that very government while simultaneously offering a justice system that would allow those citizens to reconcile problems of force amongst themselves.

It should be noted that at the same time the U.S. government is always obligated to protect the rights of U.S. citizens, it is NOT obligated to do any such thing for other nationals let alone for those who claim no nationality at all. For example, the matter of Elián González's immigration was one of deferring to sound philosophy whereupon he was to be united with his family in Florida.  Given that there already existed _explicit_ laws on the books for automatically naturalizing Cuban political refugees, and given that migrating the rest of González's family to America would be of negligible cost to other Americans, there was no legitimate reason for denying the American-based unification of that family.  (González was a pawn that both governments used to placate a miserable status quo.) The relevant point here is that the provision for migrating the González family to America was (and still is!) a viable and logical _option_ (not a requirement).

Again, government is a proxy for (and an extension of) an individual's survival mechanism.  That is (noting the division of labor principle), government is hired by citizens to do a far more efficient job of protecting the citizenry than those citizens could otherwise do for themselves in a direct way.  Some consequences to take note of: 1) This indicates why ideas such as "Let's make a Mulligan's Valley/Galt's Gulch today!" or the Libertarian "free-state" project are absurd. For one thing, there necessarily has to be a central authority (noting AR's reprisal against state fragments viz. "50 tyrannies vs. 1"). Also, there must be minimal proper philosophical and psychological standings in place i,.e. the specific populations of those breakaway groups would have had to already express the sanity let alone the comprehensive understanding to know the conditions for preserving and protecting freedom given that context.  In point of fact, they would have to be _more_ sophisticated than the Founders in certain respects, and that is _highly_ unlikely to happen in the time before America is reconstituted as a rights-adhering nation.  (Among other fallacies, that presumption of theirs involves question-begging... In point of fact, those type of idealists are also pretentiously dropping the context that neither are a) the national conditions synonymous with those in _Atlas Shrugged_ in the relevant respect nor b) do those idealists have altogether substantially greater facility than other Americans when it comes to the required "nation-building" skill sets.)  2) Likewise, another false alternative in the form of anarchism is absurd given that (as I already just mentioned) there's more than a passing role for government. The distinction between the actual government functions and the myriad of social benefits that Marxists approve of is well-defined, so not all of government need be considered pointlessly lost and useless.  3) The 2nd Constitutional amendment exists as a backstop acknowledging that a citizen's right to physical self-protection is to NEVER be abrogated under any circumstances even if that means having the citizenry taking on a failed government that was supposed to be responsible to those citizens. Suffice it to say that negotiating the time to fight a government in such a way is off-topic here and requires a fair amount of elaboration itself. (All rights are derived from an individual's existential nature of being a "rational animal".)

As Ayn Rand spent multiple decades expounding on, rights are the means to preventing others from initiating force against oneself (while presuming that one will respect the norm in kind). _The Virtue of Selfishness_ is the definitive starting point in understanding the (Objectivist) ethics, so consider that to be the underlying normative background for this issue.

The core government functions are represented by the police, the military, and the legal administrators (The Supreme Court, The Congress, and the Presidency).  Naturally, the obverse holds accordingly: The other "alphabet" organizations are counter-productive, tax wasting, and wholly immoral.  Naturally, core government functions can't be implemented without supporting staff.  With this in mind, there _are_ a few government agencies that are worth considering as legitimate supportive bodies.

I have personally wrestled with what value the USCIS (INS) might actually have in the aforementioned respect. Predicated on the premise that maintaining the nation's existential integrity is paramount (relying on the Objectivist ethics), I believe that the USCIS should be considered as a legitimate aspect of government ...under the guise of the military.  Note that immigration is physically unidirectional.  It is not primarily a matter of citizen travel (no more than the 2nd amendment is about game hunting)!  Because government is singly concerned with rights protection, the first obvious immigration-related question is: What threats does immigration pose to the American citizenry?  There are precisely 3 types of threats that are involved:  1) Serial aka "career" criminals who simply seek to take undue advantage of rights-respecting citizens in the usual ways of domestic violence that police must contend with 2) State-affiliated terrorists who for a variety of specific motives want to threaten the U.S. government itself which the military must contend with and lastly 3) Pathogen-carriers who have the potential to cause epidemics which most anyone in government may have to deal with due to the metaphysics involved.  The reason for cordoning and then expelling the 3 types is essentially the same.  They are all an explicit and outright threat to the greater populace.  That is to say, those threats can violate the rights of masses of citizens simultaneously.  Leaving aside ancillary concerns e.g. trying to get military intelligence from a capture, those who represent any/some of the 3 threats should without exception be immediately captured and controlled and in all likelihood also transported beyond U.S. civilian borders _at minimum_.

See here for the relevant Immigration Services mission statement for current status:
http://www.uscis.gov/aboutus

Likewise, the Border Patrol should also completely be subsumed by the greater military services. Obviously, the rationale for this is synonymous with that of subsuming the USCIS.  From a practical point-of-view Aristotle's identity axiom is the most fundamental principle.  Considering that philosophy is the foundation for all science, normative principles are themselves philosophical concretizations (while being abstractions in respect to everyday behavior i.e. teleological specifics). Naturally, Ayn Rand had quite a bit to say on this as well as on the relevant antecedent ethical theory.  A value "is that which one acts to gain and/or keep."  In concrete terms, if America fails to differentiate itself from the other nation-states which are currently not based on the same basic normative concept, then America itself loses value and vanishes (which would in turn, extinguish all other derivative values). In other words, America's borders mean the life or death of the nation just as a person's epidermis (including all cilia, etc.) exists as the differentiating factor between potential life or death as far as the physical elements are concerned.

See here for the relevant Border Patrol mission statement for current status:
http://www.cbp.gov/about

The above represents the _entire_ general border control policy as far as philosophy goes.  Because normative principles are still abstractions as far as specific events are concerned, it is naturally important to further concretize them for immediate application.  Understand that that point of application is where general philosophy already ends and where specialization begins.

To wit:
Some have concerns regarding illegal aliens inside the U.S.  It would be good to remember the most important inscription excerpt on the Statue of Liberty:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses, yearning to breath free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

http://www.scrapbook.com/poems/doc/3061.html

http://quotes.yourdictionary.com/articles/quote-on-statue-of-liberty.html

Assert the principle; it isn't an accident or a matter of caprice whereupon Ayn Rand fundamentally associated America's identity with the virtue of independence.

Those who have crossed U.S. borders illegally and subsequently have lived in America while working to better their respective lives without taking undue resources have presumably only broken the one law.  We aren't mindless machines.  If and when illegal immigrants are found, then ask them a simple question: "Do you wish to continue to live here after complying with the law?"  If they say "no", then send them from whence they came.  If they say "yes", then put them through the naturalization process.  It is the ultimatum that they asked for and deserve, and that is that.  (_All_ other related concerns e.g. potential for broken families and/or job cancellations are logistical matters or ideological derivatives.)

Other threats (such as the D.C. sniper from several years back as well as current Ebola fears) can and should be likewise resolved in general as follows: Identify the physiological (including psychological) and philosophical (including political) status of the threat agent, and then process such a threat given the pro-American/Capitalist paradigm. To put it differently, there are no gray areas, fine lines, or mysteries ultimately.  Once the nature of the threat is understood, that threat can be categorized and then processed.  It is incumbent on the American people to understand that a so-called "threat matrix" has no need for "complexity worship".  On the total contrary, thinking in essentials leads the way to reconciling any and all extant threats to America without unnecessary haste or confusion.

The One in the Many for Some

I could spend the rest of my natural-born life talking about the subject of false alternatives.  In the meantime, I am going to focus on a specific example of that logical fallacy.  It is entirely natural to wish to prioritize, judge, and make comparisons.  Of course, adjudication depends on references; in the case of ethics, the standard is in the form of normative principles.  Likewise, as Ayn Rand indicated, the specific reference is to Man's Life.  Briefly, she was considering not simply what comes to mind nor what is possible; no, she always was reaching for what was simultaneously possible and _ideal_.  That is, as a philosopher and literary expert she attempted to encourage people to look past their given momentary range, issues of the day, minor personal problems _for at least long enough_ to consider what could possibly be in store for their own future existence.

Since humanity lives and dies by its ability to not only think but also to make use of knowledge by way of manifesting practical solutions which improve their individual lives over long periods of time, it behooves those people to consider their values in an organized and, more to the point, a conceptually integrated fashion.  The bottom line is that: whether people know it or not, they explicitly acknowledge it or not, or they care about it or not, knowledge theory underpins all decisions including those decisions focusing on value-judgements.

With the aforementioned in mind, I find an ever-growing and ongoing peeve in the form of the pedestrian pretense for judgement today.  People routinely get defensive about their respective jobs, their favorite sports teams, their favored music or movies, and so on.  To be concerned with those subjects is fine and even sometimes valiant.  To be concerned with those issues without much understanding but with much emotionalism is _not_ suitable or productive.  As someone who has been using Internet services since the mid-1990's and as someone who has used social media and networking as long as they were recognized as such, I've got more than a fair idea of how people communicate online. 

Obviously, most people aren't interested in philosophy let alone Objectivism.  I'm more concerned with the lack of interest in logic _altogether_.  It goes without saying here, that more people should take epistemology seriously (and this very much includes supposed Objectivists).  Likewise, hardly anyone formally studies logic, and it's quite unlikely that hardly anyone will do that in the foreseeable future.  As both Ayn Rand and Leonard Peikoff have indicated, people induce their knowledge in a piecemeal way.  (These days, that's a process that goes on almost completely unwittingly.)

It's easy to establish that people depend on philosophy in general as well as the particular consequences of logic.  Likewise, just as most people understandably get their knowledge piece-by-piece, they attempt to form their respective philosophies part-by-part, but then those same people typically fall short of even trying to complete the process of systematizing any philosophy at all.  Naturally, this state finds these people at a disadvantage in that they can only hope to come to correct conclusions _sometimes_, solve problems _sometimes_, and in turn, work with other people in a mutually beneficial matter _occasionally_. 

Now to turn to the world of online communication as we know it today…

Examples of false alternatives and particularly the one I'm thinking of now are so readily available/seemingly omnipresent that I'll refer people to simply consider the online world for themselves.  It is true that what people discuss via Facebook, Twitter, blogging websites, et al. are normally of some minimal value at the least.  (It's not yet as if most people are contemptible and mindless post-Modernist fools although the current culture would suggest an unfortunate direction as far as that goes…)  In the main, while the _content_ of what is discussed is generally worthy of attention, it would be of far greater benefit if those same people also considered the realm of _methodology_.  Having an opinion does not indicate the validity of the opinion or the credibility of the person who has the opinion; there's more at stake… 

I could go into grave detail as to the nature of the false alternative in question, but for now I will offer a general overview.  One would think (after some consideration) that _not_ offering an opinion at all doesn't facilitate progress i.e. silence is _not_ golden in this context.  Yet, many online participants would have their readers think that simply offering an opinion should register a knee-jerk reaction that sweeps away anything not to immediate liking.  (See: AR's elaboration on the fallacy of argument from intimidation for more on this tendency.  http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/argument_from_intimidation.html )  It _is_ the case that coming up with a summary conclusion is not only prudent; such a result is also ideal …if it's truly _essentialized_.

Now we get to the meat of the matter:  Yes indeed, online participants will actually and frequently condemn those who offer objectively-honed opinions.  Wait for it, (of course!) there is even a corresponding conceptual trichotomy in this case.  Let's look at how people behave.  If someone were to explicate an honestly-obtained and simplified (let alone a properly essentialized) consequent, then many people will exclaim something along the lines of: "…but that's too broad!", "…that's overly simplistic!" or "…that doesn't fully consider all possibilities in the world!"  I've even had someone quickly conclude that I was _religious_ under such circumstances!!!  (There's a long-running problem of religion implicitly dominating the field of epistemology even in the midst of the transition to Modernism and thereafter, but that is for another discussion at another time.)

What is interesting to me about these particular reactions is that they provide evidence that those people are grasping …but only unsuccessfully starting to see the more fundamental issues which are in play.  What basic trichotomy (or false dichotomy) underpins this scenario further?  Well to start with, we can go back to the classic trap that Ayn Rand elaborated on: Intrinsicism vs. Subjectivism i.e. what Dr. Peikoff has referenced as the "I-O-S" trichotomy.  Just to make the point of reference, it's worth noting that _all_ religious people _are_ Intrinsicists (although like their Subjectivist brethren, they are want to utilize psychological rationalism).  In turn, when those who aren't familiar with philosophy encounter a wholesale concept, they are unlikely to know AR's conceptual theory.  Further, they are going to attempt to grasp for whatever reference that's available.  Hence, (given the popularity of religion) they make the headlong leap to associate a legitimate concept with the anti-concepts of religious mystics. (Suffice it to say that I can and have made the relevant and proper distinction between such anti-concepts and valid concepts many times …for decades actually.  In this light, it is wholly impossible for a real Objectivist to be dogmatic.)

The Subjectivist flip-side to this argumentative coin amounts to figuratively throwing one's hand up in the air in resignation: "Who knows?", "Who cares?", "There are multiple logics(!)…" and so on.  Such a person might very well continue to argue _while unwittingly trying to undercut i.e. concept-steal_ the very axioms their arguments depend on.  E.g. Claiming that there are multiple (inappropriate) explanations or multiple logics is an outright violation of Identity law.  Likewise, stating indifference and/or ambivalence while continuing to argue a point as before violates Causality law.  Such a person has put himself outside logic, and no benefit can be garnered from arguing with him (outside of skills testing).

An interesting conclusion we can draw right now: a) Typically (though naturally not universally) those who claim sympathy to Intrinsicist philosophies want to argue _more_ with the supposed purpose of gaining greater understanding (despite their assumption that "God" is already omniscient.) b) Typically (though not universally) those who claim sympathy to Subjectivist philosophies want to _cut off_ arguments sooner with the supposed purpose that more discussion would be futile (despite their typical support of university studies which is supposed to be predicated on gaining knowledge via scientific method).  (The underlying thinking is interesting but beyond the scope of the subject here.)

In summation, there is a prevailing but un(der)stated acceptance of the false choice between blind acceptance of the conventional thinking of the day vs. acceptance that knowledge isn't possible.  Of course, the true alternative is provided via truly scientific methodology viz. Objectivist episteme.

Now for a peculiar twist:  The reason why I was considering this false dilemma more frequently is that in recent years, there has been a growing though barely organized cadre of pseudo-Objectivists who have castigated formerly and justifiably venerated Objectivist intellectuals such as Leonard Peikoff and more recently, David Harriman.  There is a bitter and savage irony here.  Peikoff and Harriman have (almost exclusively) brought not just Objectivism but the inherent and fundamental structural aspect of conceptual validation in the form of induction to the foreground.  The very people who have most vociferously opposed them are supposed Objectivists …who suffer from badly pre-conceived notions on what Objectivism actually is.  That is, the very people who have done the most to promulgate real Objectivism in recent years haven't been supported by supposed ardent Objectivists (as would be expected).  Rather, Peikoff and Harriman have been considered as outcasts deviating from Ayn Rand's work(!!!) …by the very sophomoric and pretentious pseudo-intellectuals who hardly have a hairsbreadth of the understanding necessary to even begin to lodge such arguments.  (I will _only_ make a passing remark about a recent controversy involving David Harriman as to say that his newest attackers are not only devoid of epistemic prowess, they also fit the bill of the very Intrinsicist profile I outlined earlier i.e. it's just more of the same nonsense.  IF by some stretch of the imagination, David Harriman has some contradiction that poses a threat to his readership and students, then that can be dealt with at the time.  Leave it to Intrinsicists to try to pre-empt other people's thinking, when they haven't hardly checked their own premises at all!!!)

I can't reiterate the point enough:  I _STARTED_ with a long and persistent study of logic over a period of years before I ever encountered Objectivism as a full-blown system.  I always assumed and expected that Ayn Rand would depend on her readership to take such preparation to heart for themselves.  She is on record in expressing occasional disappointment with her readers, and it should be no misunderstanding or surprise as to what the nature of that disappoint ultimately is.  For it is the case, that that disappoint is of the same type as I have today.