My Recollections Regarding the New Intellectual Forum Meeting with David Kelley and Edward Hudgins
G. Stolyarov II
I first made my acquaintance with Dr. Kelley minutes prior to the beginning of the formal session, and our conversation quickly developed into a discussion of our work and the implications thereof. The theory of Objectivism as an �open system� whose practitioners continually debate, develop, and integrate ideas stemming from the fundamentals of Randian thought, and whose growth requires civility and toleration of disagreement, as espoused in Dr. Kelley�s book, Truth and Toleration, was explored in relation to my publication, The Rational Argumentator. Dr. Kelley had informed me that he had read TRA�s Second Anniversary Manifesto, which applies the idea of toleration to my editorial policy.
The formal meeting itself managed to explore in depth an impressive amount of topics, ranging from the Presidential election to the arts. Dr. Hudgins, who had worked extensively with policy makers, economic analysts, and elected officials in Washington, D.C., presented his evaluation of the consequences of a given outcome of this year�s race. Should John Kerry win, a Republican Party in opposition to his administration might be amenable to adopting a more consistent stance in favor of individual liberty and free markets, especially to furnish a contrast to Kerry�s consistent statism. However, a Kerry victory might also be perceived as the failure of the Bush Presidency, which is widely viewed as a conservative one. The populace might be persuaded by this argument to view Kerry�s wholly detrimental stances on social security, medicine, tax hikes, and government economic regulation as an antidote to the Bush administration�s purported �failure,� an outcome that will revitalize much of the political leverage of the Left. A Bush victory, on the other hand, is less menacing. Dr. Hudgins considers there to exist two Bushes, one, the advocate of private social security, lower taxes, and limited government, hearing whose planks might cause one to recall the image of Ronald Reagan. The second Bush is the promoter of �wetland preservation,� extension of Federal control over education, Medicare expansion, protectionism, and domestic civil liberties inhibitions, a character more akin to Ted Kennedy. Objectivists, whose ideas regarding free markets and limited government already have merit in the eyes of Republican Representatives such as Ed Royce, Bob Barr, and Ron Paul, might be able to influence the second Bush administration to capitalize on its pro-liberty elements and abandon its statist ones, in order to provide a full-fledged, consistent alternatives to Kerry�s blatant collectivism. Dr. Hudgins claimed that �we have won the intellectual battle� in the sense that there no longer exist authoritative, monolithic schools of thought that could put serious economic and political arguments in opposition to laissez-faire capitalism. We are far from having won the moral and ethical battle however, as rhetoric championing altruism and sacrifice continues to be seen as compelling by the masses and encourages them to support statist positions. Ayn Rand�s unique insights in ethics, and her use of objective reality and the absolutism of Reason as the foundations of rational egoism, will be integral in persuading both Republican politicians and their constituents that there is no principle more sacred in the realm of policy than individual freedom, and that no �greater cause,� no matter how lofty, can be placed above it in priority. An Objectivist ethics will give the general public a different sense of what is just than does the conventional altruist system. For example, rather than expressing indignation that the current �progressive� tax structure is �too easy� on the rich (whatever that means), a man introduced to rational egoism will be outraged at the true nature of the progressive income tax, a special penalty on those who are more productive, in proportion to their productivity.
To be sure, Objectivists will need to be vigilant against any government expansions attempted by a re-elected President Bush, but these will still pale in comparison to those that will be undertaken by a President Kerry, and reversing the tide of statism will perhaps be less of an uphill battle should Bush maintain his office, as opposed to the alternative.
Dr. Kelley spoke, in his introductory remarks, about a project currently underway to produce a film version of Atlas Shrugged. James Hart, the man renowned for creating the screenplay for the film, Contact, based on a Carl Sagan book of the same name, has already crafted the script covering the first part of the novel, having along the way received input from Dr. Kelley that assisted in maintaining the script�s consistency with the fundamentals of Objectivist thought. A film of Rand�s magnum opus will bring gargantuan mainstream exposure to the concepts therein, since Rand�s writings are already beginning to gain recognition in academia as �classic American literature,� and no serious reviewer would be able to afford to skip an opportunity to comment on a production of that scope. Moreover, the film could attract as many new adherents to the principles of Objectivism as do the massive yearly sales of Ayn Rand�s books.
Dr. Kelley�s second topic of focus was the War on Terror and the nature of the enemy that the United States and the entire Western world are confronting in this struggle. The Islamic fundamentalist is averse, primarily, to certain essential features that have developed in modern Western culture, namely, a respect for individual liberty and initiative, continual technological progress, and an open society which tolerates ideological differences and disagreements. Never before, not even during the Nazi era, had a more blatant foe of Western values manifested himself. The crucial difference between the Nazi killers and the Islamic terrorists, added Dr. Hudgins, is that, while the Nazis devoted an extensive effort to concealing the locations and evidence of their crimes, the modern terrorist groups boast of them on their media outlets. They are not the sort of enemy that can be dealt with by civil dialogue or diplomatic compromise, as the modern American and European multilateralists claim, for they have no concern about showing even a semblance of respectability in Western diplomatic circles. They cannot be appeased, for appeasement will only give them indication of the success of their suicide bombings, hostage takings, and hijackings. Moreover, they cannot be given the time and room to devise further schemes of terror against America and its allies. Waging a purely �defensive� war against them will be futile, for every blow they strike, every life they take, will be a victory for them already, and a psychological defeat for the West. In the War on Terror, only the preemptive doctrine of military action against terrorists and terror-supporting regimes can succeed in thwarting their goals. Dr. Kelley insightfully mentioned that this preemptive doctrine and its practical outcome, the Second Gulf War, was a distinct innovation of the Bush administration, whose foreign policy made such a new strategy conceivable in the eyes of Americans and the majority of the world. While Kerry is a pure collectivist and multilateralist in the foreign affairs arena, Bush needs to be given credit for his willingness to abstain from sacrificing American security to foreign or United Nations opinion.
During the question and answer session, the speakers addressed topics ranging from the sciences, to education, the upbringing of children, the libertarian movement, and the arts. The divide between toleration and orthodoxy in Objectivist circles was also inquired into by a libertarian turned Objectivist. This man recalled his first impressions of Objectivism as an efficacious system of thought, and his disgust at the stance of Leonard Peikoff�s �closed system� faction regarding the need for Objectivists to follow Rand�s writings to the letter and abstain from extrapolating upon the ideas therein, lest they be excommunicated. Fortunately, the questioner had made his acquaintance with TOC and the works of Dr. Kelley, and learned that not all Objectivists by far concur with Peikoff�s theory and its practical implications. In response to this, Dr. Hudgins pointed out a crucial difference between the way a tolerationist Objectivist approaches challenges to his ideas, and the way an orthodox Objectivist responds to them. The former reacts through civil, structured back-and-forth debate, exploration of the issue as related to the basic premises of Objectivism, and an attempt to clearly establish the similarities and differences between the two parties, working together where goals converge, and attempting to discover the truth where a disagreement exists. The latter, on the other hand, may renounce any affiliation with the dissenter, or launch into a tirade as to why the dissenter is just like Josef Stalin in essence. To the orthodox Objectivist, a number of questions, topics, and interpretations are taboo, and woe to him who espouses them! Throughout the past 14 years, The Objectivist Center had attempted several overtures at intellectual cooperation with Peikoff and the Ayn Rand Institute, never to receive even a civil rejection in return. Nevertheless, the idea of toleration can bring Objectivists other powerful allies, including libertarians and religious conservatives, many of whom explicitly endorse key insights made by Ayn Rand, and would readily assist in the practical aim of expanding individual liberty and curtailing the power of government.
Also present at the meeting was Professor Stephen Hicks of Rockford College, whose essay, �Ayn Rand and Contemporary Business Ethics,� has been featured on The Rational Argumentator, and whose new book, Explaining Postmodernism, I was able to purchase and seek to review in the future. I was privileged enough to ask the closing question of the discussion, regarding the recent explosive emergence of explicitly Objectivist art on a grassroots level (as evidenced in the works of Bryan Larsen, Damon Denys, and Christopher Schlegel, among others). This art aims at inspiring and triggering a massive cultural New Renaissance, and I wondered whether we are in fact at the threshold of such a magnificent development. After all, the old Renaissance was a movement inspired by perhaps several hundred creative artists and intellectuals scattered throughout Europe, and did not require the participation of the masses to turn the West from a series of backward Medieval states to the dominant force in global affairs. Professor Hicks responded that he has observed signs of improvement in academia which may signal a general cultural turn for the better; the worst intellectual atrocities are no longer committed in departments of filosofy, which, in their majority, affirm the existence of absolute reality and the ability to discover its nature through reason. (The bastion of academic irrationalism today is found in departments of literature, many of which stress post-modernism in both form and content.) Though the major art museums are still littered with works pertaining to the intellectual gutter, the multiple simultaneous emergences of talented painters and composers devoted to realism, order, logic, structure, and harmony, as well as a growing clientele for their works, may in time bring about a paradigm shift in �mainstream� circles as well.
After the formal session, I had ample time to converse with many of the other participants in this event, including several gentlemen who were familiar with work I had published on The Rational Argumentator and elsewhere. John Enright had given me a copy of his novel, Unholy Quest, which I shall endeavor to read and review. Don Parrish, a remarkable traveler who has visited over 100 countries and produced reports on his experiences from an Objectivist perspective, discussed with me topics ranging from longevity to the histories of Russia and China, and the impact of ideology on their current development. He brought forth an interesting insight, which further demonstrates the need to keep ideological systems open to new developments: a culture progresses only as far as its original intellectual discoveries can manifest themselves in practice. After it exhausts its store of new ideas and has actualized all of its old ones, a culture, be it a large national entity or a smaller intellectual movement, enters a period of stagnation and gradual decline, to be overtaken by new, dynamic discoverers and innovators. In order to maintain its preeminence and relevance, any cultural or intellectual movement must continually progress and be open to new ideas and innovations, developing them in such a manner as is optimally consistent with the facts of reality and the objective values of man. This insight illustrates that the �closed system� doctrine of Objectivism would be the death of the ideology before it would even be able to emerge as a contender on a global scale.
Overall, I obtained a remarkable depth and breadth of ideas and inspiration during this conference, which, in the nature of the topics covered and the multiple reciprocal connections found among them, illustrated the consistent, integrated nature of the Objectivist system. Its intellectual legacy shall long remain with me and guide me in my future endeavors.
G. Stolyarov II is a science fiction novelist, independent filosofical essayist, poet, amateur mathematician and composer, contributor to organizations such as Le Quebecois Libre, Enter Stage Right, the Autonomist, and Objective Medicine. Mr. Stolyarov is the Editor-in-Chief of The Rational Argumentator. He can be contacted at [email protected].
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