http://ARIwatch.com/AynRandOnWWII.htm

“Ayn Rand on WW II”

It should also be noted that the quote about Rand’s opposition to all the above mentioned wars came from Ayn Rand scholar Chris Matthew Sciabarra. I know he checks his references.

We can agree that Rand opposed statist wars but also believed in the absolute right of individuals to defend themselves from aggression. A truly free state, which would require free markets and a voluntary military, could engage in war to defend the rights of individuals. As all those conditions have never been present in any war the U.S. has been invovled in, so any sympathy that Rand may have felt for any war would have been greatly qualified, as she understood that war is usually a weapon to further enslave individuals and literally rob them of their lives.

Very interesting article. I enjoyed reading your analysis.

I should, however, point out that you are incorrect in stating that “Rand did not support World War I, World War II, Korea or Vietnam”. While this may be technically correct - that is, she did not support the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and the effect that event had on the early part of the 20th Century - she most certainly did not oppose the involvement of the U.S. in WWII, at least in the Pacific theater (when Rand wrote about WWII, she addressed primarily the European theater - her opinion about U.S. involvement there is debatable).

Even with regard to Europe, it is reasonable to infer from her work (I can provide quotations if necessary - I’m just too lazy to do so now) that she would have advocated American involvement in defeating the Nazis if it became clear that they posed a threat to the United States (Germany did, after all, declare war on the United States).

While Rand opposed war vehemently, she certainly recognized - and I’m conjecturing now, but I think I’m doing so with justification - that we cannot rewind history and undo the actions of historical figures. When she lamented U.S. involvement in WWI, it is not logical to assume that she would have also opposed involvement in WWII. By the end of Woodrow Wilson’s tenure in the White House the damage was done, and lamenting his actions would have done nothing to deter the Nazis or respond adequately to aggression from imperial Japan.

http://www.peikoff.com/essays/iraq.htm dated January 28, 1997.

I could also be very wrong, but my understanding of the Objectivist stance regarding the present war is that it was tentatively supported as an effort to unseat a dangerous tyrant and secure safety and freedom for American citizens, but it is opposed as a humanitarian mission to free Iraq. The Objectivist commentators who’ve opposed the war, to the best of my knowledge, have only opposed it on the grounds that Bush is waging it from the moral foundation of altruism.

http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sciabarra/notablog/archives/000935.html

I researched their position before I wrote this article and as you can see from the comments that were left after it was published that many others got the same impression I did about their position.

I remember that at the time I wrote the article they had the flag of Israel prominently displayed on their site.

If what you say is true, then perhaps it was essays like mine that encouraged them to do a 180 degree turn in the past 18 months.

I hope so.

Further, the stated position of ARI’s scholars has not been that the US as a “free” nation can randomly attack an unfree nation. Rather, they have argued persuasively that even a mixed state has the responsibility *as a state* to protect the lives of its citizens against threats of foreign aggression . *IF* Iraq posed an objective threat, then military action would be justified to the extent to remove that threat, period. No nation building, no “spreading democracy.” No ARI scholar, to my knowledge, has argued for the neo-con position or even that Iraq was credibly a threat — and several ARI-associated scholars have actively and publicly called for US withdrawl from Iraq because nation-building there is not in our interests here.

So, in short, this article contains lots of persuasive quotes from Ayn Rand. But I see no material whatsoever here showing that ARI is being non-objective, deviating from her positions on war, or in any way endorsing our current actions in Iraq. The attacks on “orthodox Objectivists” are unfounded and unjust.

Thanks!

Thanks for your article. I thought I was losing my mind.

Binary is not in Peikoff’s lexicon. To say that the US has the moral authority - much less the “duty”- to invade Iraq juxtaposed with the fuzzy gray “thinking” of the first paragraph shows their utter abandonment of Rand, and logic.

They are blinded by hatred of mysticism. Now, I don’t like mysticism, either. But replacing it with nationalism doesn’t help.

Bravo on the article.

More fundamentally,I am not convinced that Ayn Rand was correct in asserting such a right exists, because the right is not qualified by the issue of defensive versus non-defensive engagement. I cannot imagine a properly constituted government, sworn to defend individual rights, legitimately asserting a right—namely, to engage in non-defensive military action—that its clients do not themselves possess. Nor can I imagine the clients of such a government, who by definition support its defensive activities through some means of voluntary finance, lending their support to military engagements not tied directly to their own defense.

Swaggering, war-hawk “Objectivists” who enthuse about the War for Iraqi “liberation” violate Rand’s insights in very fundamental ways. They violate her basic injunction of respect for facts and evidence, when they pretend that Iraq posed a threat to the U.S., or when they pretend that ANY of the American wars of the twentieth century were remotely concerned with our national defense. And they violate the principle of individual rights by suporting a tax-financed, non-defensive war that may have cost the lives of 60,000 to 100,000 Iraqi subjects, and the lives of 1,300 American soldiers.

War-state “Objectivists” seem to view their ideal state (as contrasted with legitimate, voluntarily-financed government)as a spiritual enforcer, an avenging angel of “justice” that swoops down on thugs and dictators to enforce a sort of moral hegemony around the world. But the idea of coercive state as spiritual enforcer contradicts the fact of individuals as moral agents.

However, having read this essay, I’ve changed my mind. This argument makes much more sense. Of course, I still have reasons for supporting the war unrelated to objectivism and more concerned with pragmatism, but as far the former goes, this argument seems more consistent with the views of Ayn Rand and her philosophy.

Just goes to show the power of logic. Unfortunately, I’m a plain-spoken person and have nothing further to say.