Four years ago, I endorsed liberal Democratic Sen. John Kerry for President primarily as a rejection of Republican President George W. Bush’s re-election, which I regarded as an advancement toward totalitarianism. I am inclined to do the same with regard to this year’s presidential election—I have researched, met, and interviewed Sen. John McCain and I have studied Sen. Barack Obama (see earlier blog entries) and read his Dreams from My Father (book review to come)—for the same reason.
Last time, three intellectuals I respect—each of whom I have studied under—also favored John Kerry. This time, of the three—Craig Biddle, John Lewis, and Leonard Peikoff—only Objective Standard Publisher Craig Biddle has taken a public position, rejecting McCain and Obama because they are both altruists. In his essay “McBama Vs. America,” he asserts that the two major candidates are essentially the same and thus are equally bad.
I disagree. Certainly, it is true that both Sens. McCain and Obama accept altruism as the moral ideal—at home and abroad. But that has been the case with every major presidential candidate in recent memory. Sen. McCain is worse.
On the right to an abortion—an important test of one’s orientation to individual rights—McCain, who opposes a woman’s right to abortion (Obama favors the woman’s right), is worse. On this issue alone, Ayn Rand rejected the candidacy of McCain’s mentor, Ronald Reagan (though she did not endorse his opponent, President Carter). On economic issues, McCain, an avowed enemy of free market capitalism who falsely claims to defend the philosophy, is worse because he’s a fraud. On freedom of speech, which is essential to man’s rights in a free society, McCain is worse because he explicitly opposes freedom of speech. From so-called campaign finance reform to violating Microsoft’s rights, McCain is a consistent—and, alarmingly, successful—opponent of the right to speech, profit, property, and the press, his latest thinly veiled target for extinction, though he deftly used the easily manipulated media to abet his insidious rise to Republican power.
A few exceptions—his opposition to some government programs, deployment of the Marine Corps to Lebanon, and his famous quote that the U.S. would have “no mercy” on the 9/11/01 attackers—are contradicted by his actions; he supports the Bush administration’s gigantic expansion of the welfare state and he favors U.S. military presence in Iraq, which he famously declared may last one hundred years.
Whether he’s adopting a child from Mother Teresa or proposing government intervention in the economy, John McCain’s driving philosophy—moral duty to the state—is clear and he will impose this duty on every American. By his own admission, he will strive to ban abortion, criminalize capitalism, and he has all but admitted he may bring back the draft (Obama promotes socialism and does so openly, opposes the draft and, as discussed, favors the right to an abortion).
As McCain confirmed in my 1999 interview, the freedom of speech is under particular threat from a McCain administration. This potential danger is reaffirmed by his choice of vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin, a conservative Christian who sought to ban books while she was mayor of a village in Alaska. According to the Anchorage Daily News, Palin asked the local librarian shortly following her election if the librarian would be willing to ban books and, when the librarian refused, Palin had the woman fired, reinstating her only after a public outcry. Palin also placed a gag order on the town’s department heads, forbidding them from talking to the press. Palin had successfully urged the town to elect her as the first Christian mayor by running on issues such as her opposition to abortion. Palin’s defeated opponent, admitting he is not a churchgoer, told the New York Times that, upon losing an election partly because he didn’t attend church: “I thought: ‘what’s happening here?’” That’s what many Americans may be wondering within weeks of a McCain/Palin administration.
The state of the union is at a low point. Both Obama—an avowed proponent of wealth redistribution—and McCain oppose individual rights. But they are not equally bad in my estimation and only one candidate will win. While Obama, who talks about man as his brother’s keeper, will advance government control of the economy, he will do so only because the Republicans have made it possible after years of misrepresenting Christian socialism as capitalism. In other words, anti-capitalist Republicans made Obama possible, practically inevitable. And Obama demonstrates better judgment, from changing his mind about drilling for oil, which he now partly supports, and nuclear power (same) to selecting a running mate—liberal Sen. Joe Biden, who actively opposed conservative Judge Robert Bork’s nomination to the Supreme Court—who is eminently more qualified to be president than his opponent.
When Leonard Peikoff endorsed Bill Clinton over George H.W. Bush in 1992, the idea was that it is better to elect an anti-capitalist Democrat than a Republican who claims to defend—and instead acts to destroy—capitalism. Democrats, went the logic, will rightly be blamed for the failure of government intervention. I agree with this view and I would add that there is a new urgency in what I regard as the most important issue of our time: the mass destruction of the United States of America.
Obama’s candidacy is predicated on an end to the so-called war in Iraq and Obama is the only major candidate, unlike Clintons and Bushes and McCain, to endorse attacking an Islamic country (Pakistan). An Obama presidency will be judged chiefly on whether he pulls troops out of Iraq, ending what is an historically disastrous blunder with an incalculably enormous cost—in lives and dollars—to this nation. Obama has pledged to stop the mindless militarism in Iraq. McCain, who championed a surge of U.S. troops, which accomplished nothing, will expand it.
No issue in this election is more important than Iraq. America’s foreign entanglement in Iraq is inextricably linked to the ominously rising power of the religious state and, to paraphrase Leonard Peikoff, we can survive socialism—we may not survive religious totalitarianism. I think that the more religious the president, the more likely he will be to turn the other cheek to the enemy in the face of danger and I think Obama, like Franklin Roosevelt (who led the nation against Japan after they attacked us) and Harry Truman (who dropped two atomic bombs when necessary), may be a liberal Democrat capable of crushing the enemy. McCain, like Ronald Reagan, George Bush and George Bush—each of whom repeatedly appeased Islamic terrorists and their state sponsors—is more likely to forgive the enemy and lay down our weapons.
I am also not fully convinced that Obama, who speaks about his wife and his daughters and routinely refers to his personal values, is a complete altruist. He appears to have a functional ego, making speeches as if he has something important to say and as if saying it matters. There’s none of that McCain humility, or the tinny voice and petulant manner, and Obama’s perceived arrogance is part of what his religious opponents, with their contempt for anything intellectual, detest.
If a man’s background is relevant to his character, and I think it is, Obama’s biography is authentically American, specific to a 20th century, college-bred altruist pursuing his values. McCain’s manner is that of a presumably well-bred, badly behaving brat getting caught—and tortured—by the enemy, renouncing his country at gunpoint and spending the rest of his career making everyone else do what he believes he failed to do: “serve a cause greater than self-interest.” Their backgrounds reflect the choice we face this Election Day: more of the same socialism—branded as socialism, for a change—or a major advancement toward religious totalitarianism. Given that unfortunate choice, and barring any credible reports to the contrary, Barack Obama and Joe Biden—because they are not John McCain and Sarah Palin—get my vote.
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