And now for some good news: San Francisco Proposition K

In the midst of the current avalanche of Ayn-Rand-bashing (blaming Rand for Greenspan's paper-money games, Obama's snide sound byte about "making selfishness a virtue") I just came across a quote which shows how far Ayn Rand's ideas have come in penetrating throughout America's culture. Here is the starting point of a political argument for San Francisco Proposition K in the coming elections: "When there is no victim, there is no crime...."

Back when "Atlas Shrugged" first came out in the late 1950s, the idea that governments exists solely and only to protect the individual rights of individuals, struck most Americans as bizarre. Even the "Classical Liberals," who came closest to Ayn Rand's principle of individual rights, advocated a panoply of laws "for the public good," and were among the fiercest advocates of, among other monstrosities, laws enforcing compulsory attendance in government schools. The idea that "when there is no victim, there is no crime" was revolutionary.

And here is how far Ayn Rand's idea has come: it appeared at the head of an argument coming from, of all places, Erika McDonald, San Francisco Green Party Spokesperson. Unfortunately, Ms. McDonald's party is not noted for ideological coherence. They are quite active in advocating for legislation to "protect the environment" and so on. The idea that only violations of individual rights are objectively crimes has gone far, but in the absence of logic, or even of simple conceptual consciousness, its words are merely a slogan and not a guide to right political action. Without an epistemology of reason, neither slogans of individual rights, nor agreement with self-realization as an ethical ideal, can be enough to affect the social praxis. (It may be time for Objectivist activists to balance the advocacy of Objectivist ideas in ethics and politics with more activism on logic and epistemology.)

As for San Francisco Proposition K, it aims to decriminalize prostitution in the city. Not a particularly interesting issue for me personally, since I'm happiest in romantic relationships that last for years or decades. Myself, I'd see no point in visiting San Francisco without my wife. Most customers of prostitutes are temporary refugees from Christian or gender-feminist antisexualism at home; the sex workers, pragmatist or nihilist rebels against the same, or women or gay men in revolt against the tyranny of the Christian patriarchal family order, and the occasional Hindu or Pagan practitioner of prostitution as a religious sacrament. It is, however - even Green Party spokespersons are occasionally right - a matter into which the government has no legitimate business inserting itself. And the enemies of Proposition K, both Christo-Fascists animated by antisexualism and anti-commercialism, and gender-feminist Socialist statists, equally animated by exactly the same antisexualism and anti-commercialism - both factions, as a matter of justice, deserve to lose. If you live in San Francisco, don't let the sheer loathsomeness of the presidential candidates keep you away from the polls. Go, and vote against Proposition 4, and against Proposition 8, and FOR Proposition K.