Why Obama's Association with Bill Ayers should disqualify him from the Presidency

[jordan179]

I've heard several people claim that it is unfair for John McCain and Sarah Palin to attack Barack Obama over his association with Bill Ayers. They say alternately that the association was not a close one, or that Bill Ayers is a perfectly respectable figure in Chicago politics who many people associated with

Comments

Re: See Things As They Are

[anonymous]

You continue to insist that I should propose an alternative social structure. In the meantime, you are critiquing something broad and vague, "anarchy," which I have not proposed.

If by "anarchy," you mean the absence of a single, final, monopolistic arbitrator in matters of justice, then you are describing the situation that currently prevails in the relations between states. Do you think a one-world government would be preferable to this inter-state anarchy?

You are right that if, in a given territory, the state suddenly disappeared, another criminal gang would eventually take its place. But, as you yourself have acknowledged, the current government of the United States will most likely devolve into an overtly authoritarian regime in due time. So, clearly, your favored system is no more sustainable than a condition of statelessness.

The reason I won't answer your call for a better system is because I disagree with the whole premise of the question. I have no more to solve the problem of states than you have to solve the problem of murder. That murder is in the nature of man, and cannot be eliminated from the world, does not make it good or worthy of support, even in a relative sense (i.e. murder one because you think it will save ten). To the extent that people recognize it as evil, and consequently will have nothing to do with it, the world is a better place.

I know, as surely as I can know anything, that we reap what we sow, that our ends are preexistent in the means that we choose. That is the iron law of the moral universe. The mythology of the state is that we "need" a little bit of evil to fight a bigger evil. In other words, a utilitarian argument. But such arguments are unprovable. Who is to say that a worse outcome would result from laying down our arms and welcoming the invading army, than from submitting to taxation and conscription by our rulers, and fighting the enemy to the death?

I'm not arguing for either choice, or even that these are the only choices available. Rather, the desirability of each outcome would depend on the circumstances and subjective valuations of each individual. So a utilitarian policy is impossible, except in the sense of serving the interests of one group at the expense of another.

As an individual, I choose not to pursue evil means, or to argue for them. That means no support for states, at all.