We whooped and we hollered and the next thing we did find,
a pig in the ditch, and that we left behi-ind,
looky there now  . .  . .   . .
One said it was a pig, one said nay.
One said a politician with his clothes stole away-ay,
looky there now  . .  . .   . .    — from  “The Three Jolly Huntsmen”  as sung by Burl Ives

In his podcast of 20 October 2008  Leonard Peikoff says he won’t vote for either candidate. First consider his reason for rejecting Senator McCain. Is it because McCain blocked investigation into the looting of the  S&L s  in the 1980s, at the time the biggest financial fraud ever perpetrated? Or is it because McCain made Neocon aggression in the Middle East and their lies justifying it part of his campaign platform? Or because McCain sings Israel’s praises at American-Israeli PAC events?  Surely not the last two, for like everyone at ARI  Mr. Peikoff worships Israel and calls for a war against Iran.

But Mr. Peikoff doesn’t go into detail. Instead, he says he won’t vote for any Republican, because  “that party has to be wiped out or severely punished for its affiliation with Evangelicals and with religion more broadly.”  An affiliation vague – we point out – and Evangelicals who threaten you not, while statism is eating you alive. Mr. Peikoff goes on to say that religion  “is the greatest threat to the country, infinitely more so than socialism ... .”

He claims that McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin for running-mate, made after his nomination, proves that Republicans are reaching out to Evangelicals. That may be, and/or they grabbed a handy lady politician expecting they would be running against Hillary Clinton instead of Barack Obama. [1]

Despite Mr. Peikoff’s 2006 pronouncement urging everyone to vote Democrat no matter what (see Part III), he won’t vote for Obama either. [2]  He says that  setting aside everything else, Obama’s affiliation with the Reverend Wright, only reluctantly abandoned, was enough for him to reject Obama. And though Obama  “has ties to the Muslim religion ... let’s suppose he’s only a deeply religious Christian. That’s not much better, so I wouldn’t vote for him on religious grounds either.” Apparently Mr. Peikoff’s opposition to Obama, like that to McCain, is based primarily on his being religious some way or other. In addition, Mr. Peikoff – who at times acts as if he is really anti-American – opposes Obama because, and we agree,  “he is really anti-American.”

Mr. Peikoff concludes regarding the two candidates that we  “have a choice [such] that it would be a disaster if either gets in.”

Yet neither Mr. Peikoff nor anyone at ARI helped promote a real choice in future elections by supporting the most honest man in the current lot of politicians, a man who in fact is honest – a man among pigs. Far from supporting, they denounced him.

Let’s go back to the time of the primaries, before the Republican and Democratic nominations.  Though none of the candidates were perfect, or even a better sort of Objectivist,  Ron Paul was by far the best man ever to run for president since the beginning of our chronology in Part I.  To repeat: Perfect, no. Objectivist, no. Good, both as to practical and philosophical politics, yes.  If you insist on John Galt for president, read no further – and wait forever, while the Obamas and McCains take over America.

Elsewhere we address Ron Paul’s flaws as a political candidate and show them to be of little consequence. For now, what does the ARI crowd say about him during this period, the election of 2008? There is practically nothing. Though ARI’s non-profit status didn’t prevent it from expressing an opinion of Bush in 2000 (see Part II), this election they ignore Ron Paul, officially. Unofficially however, in personal statements, some ARI writers could not bring themselves to ignore him entirely.

Harry Binswanger titles his 4 November 2007 post to readers of his discussion list (HBL)  “Saint (Ron) Paul.”  The post is not public and I haven’t read it, but Mr. Binswanger’s snide and witless joke alone — considering Objectivists’ antipathy to Christianity — misrepresents Ron Paul.  We discuss Ron Paul’s Christianity elsewhere and merely note here that he was the only candidate who warned against the misuse of religion in politics, at one point in his campaign saying (attributing it to Sinclair Lewis):  “When fascism comes to this country, it will be wrapped in the flag, carrying a cross.” [3]

Then again it might be wrapped in law and order. In his 17 January 2008 post Mr. Binswanger announces he is supporting Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, for President. According to HBL member Gregory Zeigerson:  “primarily in order to remove the influence of the religious right from the Republican Party and from the U.S. government.”  Really !  Not to mention – but we do – that Giuliani recruited Daniel Pipes, Norman Podhoretz and other neocons as his foreign policy advisors.  (Giuliani was by far the highest ranked candidate in Israeli polls.)

Mr. Binswanger acknowledges Giuliani’s withdrawal from the race in his 29 January 2008 post titled  “Giuliani gone ? ”  You can almost hear the dismay.  (After the primaries Mr. Binswanger favors McCain by criticizing him less than Obama.)

Mr. Peikoff discussed Ron Paul obliquely, and then directly using Yaron Brook as his mouthpiece in his podcast of 23 December 2007. He begins by saying that a politician’s party takes precedence over his personal beliefs and voting record. To keep his political base satisfied in a mixed economy an individual politician must, Mr. Peikoff says, use his power to advance the causes of various pressure groups  “no matter what individuals, with what ideas, hold what offices, in the [party].”  Mr. Peikoff thinks the Republican Party is the more dangerous one:

And where does Mr. Peikoff get off criticizing any group for Medievalism when ARI is the Western world’s foremost advocate of government institutionalized torture? [4]

According to Mr. Peikoff, though the Democratic Party may seem just as religious as the Republican only the Republicans are  sincere:

Mr. Peikoff goes on to say that the basic political issue today is not what it was fifty years ago, when it was “the individual versus the collective”:

It’s possible a man might be independent enough to be worth supporting, but today, insists Mr. Peikoff, no such man exists:

Whether or not a decent man can get elected president or even nominated at this time, supporting him encourages such men to run in future and will help them win. It also makes politicians of all stripes competing with him address important issues instead of spouting vague bromides about change.  And even a losing campaign, as long as truth be told, helps educate the public. Supporting a good candidate, as Ayn Rand said of Barry Goldwater in 1964, helps  “preserve two-party government.”  This is not to disagree with Mr. Peikoff’s general statement. His mistake is in his idea of a good candidate.

Mr. Peikoff continues:

One can agree that today engaging in politics should take second place to promoting better philosophical ideas among students and within the culture generally. But after all, elections are of some importance. Even Mr. Peikoff thinks so judging from his past and current animated discussions of political candidates.

Mr. Peikoff next begins with a general truth regarding the importance of philosophy and segues into more false insinuations about Ron Paul:

With that out of the way Mr. Peikoff finally comes to his main point:

There are two more election items ARI or its affiliates published which we must add to our list:  “McBama vs. America”  by Craig Biddle in the journal The Objective Standard (Fall 2008) and his speech of the same title and theme given a few days before the election (29 October 2008) under the auspices of ARI (specifically its division called the “Ayn Rand Center” or ARC).

Mr. Biddle begins his talk by observing that this election is an Objectivist’s nightmare, and asks  “How did we get here?”  One wonders who Mr. Biddle thinks he is, to ask the question, since in many ways he and other ARI associates helped in the getting.  In any case Mr. Biddle’s talk is standard fare denouncing altruism, leavened with examples from current events (among which he fails to mention U.S. support of Israel, but then ARI has always maintained that’s somehow in your interest). He makes no mention of religion in his article but discusses it at length in the talk, saying that Obama and in recent years Leftists generally, use religion to justify their socialist causes. McCain, he says, justifies the same sort of causes using ideas traceable to Kant.

There’s nothing much to disagree with here, except Mr. Biddle’s insinuation that Obama or McCain might be sincere, instead of grasping at anything to justify their lord of the manor mentality and greed for the unearned. [6]

That concludes our account of ARI’s output on the 2008 election.  In  Yaron Brook vs. Ron Paul  we offer a few words about the candidate these moralizing hypocrites do their best to smear when they are not evading his existence.