An Objectivist on American Tribalism
Still being a listener of the Ayn Rand Institute Podcast, I again take issue with their current stance on politics. Onkar more recently has said to people who are asking why he is attacking both sides that that’s “tribal thinking,” when really, Rand never calls the political parties themselves tribal. (Though, please let me know if I’m incorrect). How can they be if they are supposed to be about ideas? ARI is choosing commentators like Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes as representative of the entire Republican Party, which is just picking on its worst voices. I think Ben Shapiro and other true conservative voices are the ones to follow, who are not being tribal but looking at reality. It's not simply “tribalism” if their arguments are tied to their religion or moral belief system.
One of the last podcast episodes concerning ICE and the killing of Renee Good did not even mention or refer to Ayn Rand or her works. This appears to be turning into a What-the-Host-Believes podcast, I’m afraid. The reason I hesitate with this throwaway term of “tribalism” is because it does not point out why the issues, such as those concerning ICE, are so fraught with differing viewpoints—even about a video of the same event.
I went back to my trusty old Ayn Rand Lexicon to look up the term “tribalism,” which she says, in Philosophy: Who Needs It, is “the best name to give to all the group manifestations of the anti-conceptual mentality.” Meaning that tribalism only occurs when a man does not think but only agrees through associations, like he grew up Christian so that is why he’s Christian. In the case of Renee Good, people are seeing the same video and parroting that the liberals thought she was trying to run away, so I agree with them, or the conservatives say she was trying to run over an ICE agent, so I agree with them. Now, I don’t know the percentage of people who think this simply, but no intellectual is just siding with their political party without reason. Ayn Rand was never speaking to “the masses” but to the individuals, those who were not anti-conceptual to begin with.
To me, then, it is unfair to chalk it all up to tribalism for those people on the side of ICE. Again, quoting from Philosophy: Who Needs It:
Observe that today's resurgence of tribalism is not a product of the lower classes—of the poor, the helpless, the ignorant—but of the intellectuals, the college-educated “elitists” (which is a purely tribalistic term). Observe the proliferation of grotesque herds or gangs—hippies, yippies, beatniks, peaceniks, Women's Libs, Gay Libs, Jesus Freaks, Earth Children—which are not tribes, but shifting aggregates of people desperately seeking tribal “protection.”
The common denominator of all such gangs is the belief in motion (mass demonstrations), not action—in chanting, not arguing—in demanding, not achieving—in feeling, not thinking—in denouncing “outsiders,” not in pursuing values—in focusing only on the “now,” the “today” without a “tomorrow”—in seeking to return to “nature,” to “the earth,” to the mud, to physical labor, i.e., to all the things which a perceptual mentality is able to handle. You don't see advocates of reason and science clogging a street in the belief that using their bodies to stop traffic, will solve any problem (Rand, 43).
Which side does this sound like to you? If you’re thinking mostly the liberals, then I agree. The liberals are the ones violently protesting instead of talking or making educated arguments. They are using rhetoric that equates to physical violence—the conservatives are not.
The folks at ARI seem dumbfounded, like the liberals, that an ICE officer could shoot and kill a civilian. But many police officers have come out to say that their training says to shoot to stop the threat, which does not mean aiming for a tire or a leg, if they believe their lives are in danger. Don’t they get the same right to defend themselves and go back home to their families as much as a protestor? Regardless of Renee Good’s intent, she hit that officer who was in front of the vehicle, and he ended up with internal bleeding from the hit. While tragic, it was not illegal. ICE and other law enforcement officers are not “Nazis” or “the gestapo” or “mobsters.” They are men and women who are trying to maintain the peace while enacting an order put out by the President of the United States, who was lawfully voted into power.
Therefore, ARI’s dumbfounded behavior has me just as dumbfounded at their confusion. I believe the same “ivory tower syndrome” is getting to them again. They need to talk to military members or their local police. Most of them are doing their jobs honorably, and the bad apples get fired eventually, just like in any other profession.
Presenting evidence in terms of video proof and legal conversation is what I am seeing on the right and not on the left, who are using emotionalism and hyperbole to get more of the masses out there to protest with their bodies rather than their minds. The left is behaving more like a mindless tribe than the right, especially when taking its best minds into account.
There is a right and a wrong view on each of these “breaking news” stories that make up a political ideology—that does not make it tribalist. Going back for a minute to the topic of immigration in general. Ayn Rand only had a single, emotional moment during a Q&A session, saying she was for open borders because otherwise she would not have been in the U.S. But could she have foreseen an event like 9/11? What would she say today about the immigrants who come in, especially illegally? Not all of them are ambitious and hardworking, as Ayn Rand may have perceived back in the seventies and eighties. Just because she had specific views on political hot-button issues does not make them gospel or some axiomatic fact that is a new branch on the tree of Objectivist thought. Knowledge is contextual, and, I believe, at the time that her comment was more rational. Today, it seems shaky at best. However, that does not mar the Objectivist philosophy itself.
This is the reality-oriented take I believe ARI should have and not the road it’s been going down for years now.
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Links: https://www.streetnews.info/daily-news-2/new-footage-of-the-renee-good-shooting-sparks-outrage-after-people-spot-this-small-detail/; https://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/anti-conceptual_mentality.html; *Philosophy: Who Needs It by Ayn Rand: https://amzn.to/3Za9iO7
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Views Expressed Disclaimer: Please know that while I consider myself an Objectivist and my work is inspired by Objectivism, it is not nor should it be considered Objectivist since I am not the creator of the philosophy. For more information about Ayn Rand's philosophy visit: aynrand.org.
