Category: Commentaries

The 2008 elections are coming into full swing, and prominent Objectivists are beginning to weigh in with their perspectives.
The Intellectual Activist Editor Robert Tracinski has formally endorsed Rudy Giuliani. I could not find the text of this endorsement on his web site to link to, so I’m pasting below the message I was forwarded.

TIA Daily — January 3, 2008
Vote for Rudy
Support the Defense of Freedom over Religious Politics
by Robert Tracinski
With the opening of the primary season — tonight’s Iowa caucus isn’t a real primary, but it is the first test of candidates’ support among grass-roots activists, and thus it will have an impact on the primaries to come — now is the time to give TIA’s official endorsement for the Republican primary.
I say that this is my official endorsement, because it has been clear where I’ve been leaning, unofficially, for most of the past year: I support Rudy Giuliani as by far the best candidate for the Republican nomination. He is the only candidate who will promote the influence of what I call the “secular right”: support for free markets, a strong national defense, and strict separation of church and state.
Giuliani is famous for his stand on the War on Terrorism and for his firm and dignified performance as mayor of New York City following the September 11 attacks. But perhaps the best example of his virtues on this issue is more recent: his response to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. While Mike Huckabee embarrassed himself by offering empty pabulum about appreciating the peaceful transition of power in America — indicating that Huckaabee was unprepared to say anything important about what is going on in the rest of the world — Giuliani replied: “Her death is a reminder that terrorism anywhere — whether in New York, London, Tel-Aviv, or Rawalpiindi — is an enemy of freedom. We must redouble our efforts to win the Terrorists’ War on Us.”
Last August, I wrote an extensive analysis (which I have just put up on our website) of Giuliani’s foreign policy, and it is not as assertive as we might hope. But we can still count on Giuliani to keep his eye on the threat of radical Islam and to regard it as his top priority as president.
Giuliani does not have an established record as a staunch pro-free-marketer. In fact, he first made a national name for himself as a US attorney prosecuting mobsters — and prosecuting Wall Street financiers as if they were mobsters. (I mean this literally: Giuliani pioneered the use of vague laws against “racketeering,” originally designed to fight organized crime, as a tool for persecuting businessmen.) And yet Giuliani has campaigned as a free-marketer, not only in vague rhetoric but in some intellectual depth. A few months ago, the Washington Post carried an important article about a series of seminars organized for the candidate by Giuliani’s long-time friend and advisor Bill Simon. Dubbed “Simon University” by Rudy’s campaign staff, they amount to a course in the principles of free-market economics.
Most crucially, Giuliani has been excellent on a topic that is likely to be central to the 2008 campaign: socialized medicine. All of the Democratic candidates are proposing, and will campaign on, some form of nationalized health care — while Giuliani has come out in favor of a free-market >proposal based on tax credits that will make it easier for individuals to purchase private health insurance.
At the same time, Giuliani offers a break from the intrusion of religion into politics. It is not merely that Giuliani supports a woman’s right to an abortion, and that he has refused to alter his convictions on this issue to fit the needs of his campaign. More broadly, Guiliani has asserted that his religious views are private and a matter to be left between him and the priests.
In short, if you support a secular-right outlook, then Giuliani is clearly the top candidate.
Continue reading “TIA Editor Robert Tracinski Endorses Rudy Giuliani”

Ayn Rand Institute Press Release
Bush Signs Automobile Fatality Act
December 21, 2007
Irvine, CA–The energy bill that President Bush just signed into law is a significant victory for environmentalists, who have long pushed for such measures as expanded ethanol production. But the centerpiece of the bill–for which environmentalists have been agitating for years–is a major increase in automobile fuel economy standards, the first such increase since 1975.
The law forces auto manufacturers to increase the average mileage of cars, SUVs, and light trucks to 35 mpg by 2020. Currently, the standard is 27.5 mpg for cars and 22.2 mpg for SUVs and light trucks.
It might seem obviously beneficial to decree that cars must use less fuel. But according to Dr. Keith Lockitch, resident fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, “The new mileage standards will make cars more expensive and more dangerous and will cause many more traffic fatalities.
“Compelling automakers to achieve higher mileage forces them to compromise automobile safety. To achieve fuel economy, they are forced to make vehicles lighter and smaller. But lighter, smaller vehicles are much more dangerous in an accident. Because the car absorbs less of the crash impact, the passengers absorb it instead.
“The original Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, imposed in 1975, have already led to a substantial increase in traffic fatalities–an additional two thousand traffic deaths per year, according to a 2002 study by the National Academy of Sciences. With the new standard, manufacturers will be forced to downsize even further all cars, as well as SUVs and light trucks. But these vehicles will still be sharing the road with buses, delivery trucks, and massive commercial trailer trucks. One shudders at the thought of how much greater a risk Americans will face. Nevertheless, environmentalists have continued to fight for higher fuel economy requirements, consistently and cavalierly dismissing the risks and the tragic consequences.
“Despite the drumbeat of constant assertions to the contrary, it is far from a settled scientific fact that we face catastrophic dangers from climate change. Yet, under the guise of protecting us from the alleged dangers of global warming, environmentalists force upon us the very real, provable dangers of increased auto injuries and deaths. Clearly, what they value is something other than human well-being.”

New Individualist editor Robert Bidinotto has written a lengthy and trenchant critique of Ron Paul’s candidacy for President.

Robert Tracinksi, owner and publisher of TIA Daily, is scheduled to appear on “Your World with Neil Cavuto,” a Fox News Channel program on Jan 8, time to be determined.
In a recent TIA Daily he outlined the three current strategies for Iraq under discussion by the Administration: “Going Big, Going Long, and Going Home.” He presents an alternative he calls “Going Wide.” This involves essentially looking beyond Iraq’s borders to the wider source of the problem, namely Iran and Syria.

From Ed Hudgins at The Objectivist Center:
Saddam Hussein’s Execution
by Edward Hudgins
Saddam Hussein is deservedly dead, hanged as the heinous criminal he was. But the process by which justice was administered was disappointing and highlights the wide gap in values between Iraqâ??s culture and that of any civilized country.
I wrote three years ago (“A Trial for Saddam Hussein,” December 17, 2003) that a trial of Hussein offered an opportunity for Iraqis to affirm universal principles of justice the way the Nuremberg trials did after World War II. Nazi war criminals faced charges of committing aggression, crimes committed during war and crimes against humanity. The judges were representatives of the victors, but this was not victors’ justice. True, the Soviet government, whose leaders deserved the same treatment as the Nazis, had a representative on the panel of judges that included members from the United States, Britain and France. But the process allowed the Nazis to defend themselves and several were even acquitted.
But most important, the crimes of the Nazi regime were documented for all to see. Principles of justice plus a detailed look at how they were undermined offered an object lesson to all countries seeking to keep the commitment of “never again.”
In Iraq, Saddam was convicted and executed for the 1982 murders of 148 people in the town of Dujail in the wake of an assassination attempt against him. He deserved his fate but that trial did not lay out the broader principles of justice that should govern any legitimate regime. Nor did it review the full scope of his regime’s crimes that led to the torture and deaths of hundreds of thousands.
Continue reading “Nuremburg vs. Saddam's Sloppy Trial”