Why are seemingly sensible people cheering the Iran deal, given the regime’s notorious brutality and belligerence? The answer lies in a wonkish affliction that you could call the split-personality fallacy.

Glance at the regime we’re talking about. Iran is a horrific theocracy that methodically violates individual rights. Iran’s worldwide backing of jihadists last year (according to our own government) was “undiminished.” Across the Middle East, Iran vigorously seeks dominion: in Beirut, Damascus, Sanaa, Baghdad, and Gaza, it already exerts significant influence, and it has begun outreach to the Taliban.

Post-deal, might the mass chants in Iran of “death to America” end? Might the regime’s hostility toward us (“the Great Satan”) abate? Whoever cherishes such hopes had them slapped down by Iran’s “supreme leader” Ayatollah Khamenei: Our policy toward the “arrogant” U.S. government, he announced after the deal, “won’t change at all.”

Yet in a major speech last week at American University, President Obama noted the deal’s many backers: “The United Nations Security Council has unanimously supported it. The majority of arms control and non-proliferation experts support it. Over 100 former ambassadors — who served under Republican and Democratic Presidents — support it.”

To that tally, add two scholars from the self-described libertarian Cato Institute, who also praised it. They argued the “agreement must be viewed as a clear success.”

The Split Personality Fallacy

How could anyone think that it’s a good idea to negotiate with an openly hostile regime that fuels jihadists and seeks our destruction? Enter the split-personality fallacy. The crux of this fallacy is to treat the actions of Iran (or another tyranny we want to engage diplomatically) in isolation, as if carried out by distinct, firewalled personalities that happen to coexist in the same physical regime.

Iran’s drive for nuclear capability (officially: for civilian purposes!) reflects one personality. Iran’s pervasive violation of individual rights domestically? That’s another. How about its ongoing backing of jihadist groups? Still another. What about Iran’s quest for regional domination? Yet another, dissociated personality.

The logic of this fractured perspective means that we must handle each personality separately, divorced from any wider context. Thus, many boosters of the Iran deal bless it on the minutely narrow grounds that it might delay Iran’s nuclear program. Everything else — domestic repression, the drive for regional conquest, backing jihadists, hostility toward us — is beyond the deal’s scope, and therefore not something we should consider in judging the deal and consequences.

Projecting Our Disorder Onto Iran

Segmenting Iran’s nuclear program for piecemeal attention is touted as reflecting a nuanced, hard-headed concern with practicality. But what actually underlies the fractured, ultra-narrow approach toward Iran is a desire to evade the regime’s animating ideological character. Observe how we have no concern about nuclear weapons in the hands of the United Kingdom or France; but precisely the same weapon in Iran’s hands is a grave concern, because of its militant character. Push that out of mind, though, and you can dream up a dealable-with persona, one which (like the UK or France) might actually comply with a pact.

But ignoring Iran’s character is policy malpractice. To assess the situation rationally and formulate sound policy, it is crucial that we have a clear understanding of the regime’s character. Is it a good idea to negotiate with Iran? Is the nuclear deal signed in Vienna a “clear success”? When you look at the contours of Iran’s nature, you see the answers are: no, and no.

The Iranian regime embodies the idea of Islamic totalitarianism. Its founder and first “supreme leader,” Ayatollah Khomeini, brought into reality a theory of clerical rule. Tehran demands from its citizens submission to religious law. Ergo the “morality police” that patrol the streets and harass women for wearing the wrong kind of veil.

Stop Ignoring Iran’s Totalitarian Nature

At the core is the totalitarian ambition to subjugate people. Witness the fate of six Iranian twenty-somethings who videoed themselves singing along to Pharrell’s “Happy.” Their video went viral. Then they were arrested, tried, and found guilty of “participation in the making of a vulgar clip” and “illegitimate relations between members of the group.”

They may yet escape being flogged or doing jail time (their sentence), but the fact that they were swept up for something so benign perfectly illustrates Tehran’s rule by intimidation. Insulting the theocratic government and “blasphemy” are crimes. Hashem Shaabani, a poet, was accused of criticizing the regime. An executioner’s noose wrung the life out of him. To the Iranian regime, human life is cheap.

This same totalitarian lust for domestic subjugation animates Tehran’s aggression beyond its borders. Iran’s founding constitution states that its army and the Revolutionary Guards Corps

will be responsible not only for guarding and preserving the frontiers of the country, but also for fulfilling the ideological mission of jihad in God’s way; that is, extending the sovereignty of God’s law throughout the world (this is in accordance with the Koranic verse ‘Prepare against them whatever force you are able to muster, and strings of horses, striking fear into the enemy of God and your enemy, and others besides them’ [8:60]).

Iran has made good on that mission by helping build and train jihadist groups. Its main proxy force is Hezbollah (“the army of God”). It has carried out attacks from Beirut to Buenos Aries, and it has slaughtered American soldiers and diplomats in Lebanon and in Iraq. Despite being subjected to years of supposedly biting economic sanctions, Iran funneled billions of dollars to support the Assad regime in Syria and to provision Hamas, in the Gaza strip, with weapons and rockets.

Iran Doesn’t Have Split Personality Disorder

But suppose we took the facts of Iran’s character seriously. We would be able to formulate a rational approach toward that regime. Here are two key takeaways that ought to shape it.

First, Iran’s domestic repression and its imperialist march and its nuclear aspiration are inseparable. They stem from the same causal factor, the regime’s declared ideological mission. If Allah’s word is the truth (and Iran’s leaders definitely think so), then all mankind must be brought under its purview. How can there be any limits to where the truth must reign? (Tehran certainly sees no such limits.) How can any means to advance that grandiose vision be precluded? (For Iran, none should be.) Going nuclear would provide Iran with a new means to advance the goal of expanding Allah’s dominion.

Second, diplomatic engagement with Iran over the nuclear issue is a disaster in the making. Quite apart from the material “carrots” Iran might pocket and use to fund its jihadist proxies, simply allowing it to pull up a seat at the negotiating table is to confer on the regime an undeserved legitimacy. It implies that Iran, despite all the blood on its hands, is somehow a peace-seeking state; that despite its manifest belligerence, Iran is somehow committed to persuasion. Recall that Iran has engaged in deception at every step. Here we’re providing that tyranny with moral cover. Far from putting distance between Iran and the bomb, all this appeasing deal can do is encourage the regime in its malignant campaign.

The split-personality fallacy sabotages policy thinking. Fracturing Iran’s character into dissociated shards will not make Iran’s character something other than what it clearly is. Blinding ourselves to it just puts great distance between us and the crucial facts needed to resolve the situation.

And the nuclear deal promises to land us in graver problems down the road. It strengthens Iran, bringing the regime ever closer to going nuclear. By allowing that to happen, we will multiply the difficulty of using military force to defend ourselves from the Iranian menace. The reality we face is unpleasant and deeply distressing, but ignoring the truth can only subvert our security.

About The Author

Elan Journo

Senior Fellow and Vice President of Content Products, Ayn Rand Institute

After the attacks in Paris and Copenhagen, many began questioning whether the right to free speech includes the right to offend. For example, does Charlie Hebdo have a right to publish cartoons offensive to Muslims? In this talk, Steve Simpson explains why our ‘culture of sensitivity’ reveals a troubling ignorance about the nature and value of free speech. (Recorded March 25, 2015.)

About The Author

Steve Simpson

Former Director of Legal Studies (2013-2018), Ayn Rand Institute

Following the massacre of journalists at Charlie Hebdo in Paris, the intimidation of Sony Pictures over The Interview and a growing climate of self-censorship, this panel opens up a conversation on the future of the freedom of speech. What is the right to free speech? Does it include the right to offend? Is there such a thing as “hate speech” or “Islamophobia”? How should the government respond when foreign groups and regimes threaten Americans’ freedom of speech? What can you do to protect your freedom to voice your ideas?

The panelists are Flemming Rose, foreign editor of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten and the author of Tyranny of Silence: How One Cartoon Ignited a Global Debate on the Future of Free Speech; Onkar Ghate, senior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute; Harvey Silverglate, co-founder and chairman of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education; and Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe syndicated columnist. The moderator is Gregory Salmieri, a philosophy fellow at the Anthem Foundation for Objectivist Scholarship.

This panel discussion was recorded on January 21, 2015, at the Old South Meeting House in Boston, Massachusetts.

After the slaughter at Charlie Hebdo in Paris and the lethal shootings at a free speech event in Copenhagen, some Western intellectuals are now raising the question whether we, in the West, are guilty of abusing our free speech.

Is it really necessary, they ask, to offend one billion Muslims, just to make a point? How many more will have to pay with their very lives, they ask, before irresponsible provocateurs and troublemakers like Flemming Rose, Lars Vilks and the cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo, realize that they have gone too far? The very fact that such questions are raised at all only underscores the severity of the threat to our freedom of speech.

In this talk, which was delivered as a part of ARI’s Road to a Free Society Tour, ARI’s executive director, Yaron Brook explains why free speech is being attacked today and argues that it’s imperative to defend this most precious freedom. (Recorded January 21, 2015.)

About The Author

Yaron Brook

Chairman of the Board, Ayn Rand Institute

In this interview, Dr. Onkar Ghate discusses the “new atheists” — men like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, who have lodged important, new criticisms of religion in the wake of the attacks on 9/11. Topics covered include:

• The connection between faith and force
• The nihilistic streak of the “new atheists”
• The need for a rational alternative to religion

Does support for capitalism require belief in Christianity? In this interview, Dr. Ghate explains why the contrary is true — until capitalism is severed from religion, he argues, a true moral defense of capitalism is impossible and unconvincing. Topics covered include:

• The authoritarian mentality of the secular left
• The left as the secularization of religion
• The wider meaning of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby

Many of our political discussions today assume that the advocacy of economic freedom and of religion go together, that to be against social security and our tens of thousands of other controls means you must also be against evolution and contraception. As Americans we’re told that our choice is to embrace either superstition and capitalism or science and the modern regulatory-welfare state — and faced with such a choice, many of us understandably choose the latter. In this talk, Onkar Ghate argues that in fact religion undermines freedom and that our real choice is to embrace science and capitalism or the authoritarianism of religion and today’s Big Government. (Recorded on December 3, 2014 at ARI’s headquarters in Irvine, California.)

About The Author

Onkar Ghate

Chief Philosophy Officer and Senior Fellow, Ayn Rand Institute

Upon signing the Social Security Act of 1935, FDR declared that it was “a cornerstone in a structure which is being built but . . . is by no means complete.” It would not be finished, he held, until the government guaranteed Americans a “right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.”

Franklin Roosevelt was unable to complete the structure — he lacked the political support for government to seize control over health care. Barack Obama was determined to finish what his progenitor had started.

In pushing for Obamacare, President Obama followed FDR’s playbook to the letter. Social Security had been sold on the premise that people must be forced to save for retirement; Obamacare was sold on the premise that people must be forced to buy health insurance. FDR had smeared opponents of Social Security as cold-hearted enemies of the old; Obama would smear opponents of Obamacare as cold-hearted enemies of the sick. FDR found it necessary to hide the true costs of Social Security from the public; Obama had the audacity to sell Obamacare as a means of lowering health care costs.

More perplexing, Obamacare’s opponents have followed the playbook of their predecessors — those who lost the debate over Social Security during the 1930s.

Want to predict Obamacare’s future? Look at Social Security’s past.

When FDR began pushing for Social Security, his proposal was seen as radical, which it was: He wanted to create an American welfare state. Yet the central argument he offered for Social Security was hardly novel: Elderly Americans were among the country’s most vulnerable citizens, and it was America’s moral duty to guarantee them a secure retirement. To oppose Social Security was to oppose helping old people.

How did the opponents of Social Security respond?

Some Republicans shouted that Social Security was socialism, which the New Dealers easily brushed off as fear-mongering (never mind that Bismarck, who created the modern welfare state, admitted that his program was partial socialism).

Others, including Roosevelt’s 1936 presidential challenger, Kansas Gov. Alf Landon, conceded that a welfare program for the elderly was a moral imperative to achieve “social justice,” assured the country that the president was acting out of benevolent impulses, and only quibbled over the details of FDR’s law, particularly its enormous cost. Whereas Roosevelt’s program would give handouts to a huge proportion of elderly Americans, the Republicans countered with a less ambitious plan targeted only at the elderly poor. Roosevelt won.

Once the Social Security Administration started dispensing handouts in 1940, opposition to the program virtually evaporated. Almost no Republicans were willing to advocate taking handouts away from Americans who were putatively in need. By the time Eisenhower assumed the presidency, Republicans as often as not were the ones proposing to expand Social Security.

So what can we expect from Obamacare? A pessimist might say that it too is now set in stone and Republicans will be working to expand it come next election cycle. We aren’t quite there yet. But any challenge will need to drop the focus on the program’s cost and its poor implementation, and expose it as immoral.

How? First, by defending the free market against those who would blame it for problems, such as the high cost of health care, that are in fact created by government intervention.

Second, opponents will have to make a clear distinction between an individual’s voluntary decision to support people and causes he cares about, and the moral premise underlying the welfare state: that a person’s need entitles him to support by others. In a free society, we can help others when we value them, but government cannot force us to sacrifice for others. But the welfare state forces our hopes and dreams to take a backseat whenever anyone presents us with an unfulfilled need. If an ambitious young adult is saving up to buy his first car, and Obamacare dumps an inflated health insurance bill in his lap to subsidize the elderly, that is not charity: That is immoral.

Finally, opponents of Obamacare have to offer an inspiring moral alternative: a fully free market, in which individuals are free to take care of their own health care needs, in which they are free to contract with health care providers in whatever way they judge best, and in which those who want to help others are free to do so voluntarily.

Until and unless we embrace such a crusade, Obamacare is here to stay.

About The Author

Don Watkins

Former Fellow (2006-2017), Ayn Rand Institute

This spring, Vermont passed a law requiring any food that includes genetically engineered ingredients — otherwise known as “GMOs” for “genetically modified organisms” — to carry a label. Vermont is the first state to pass such a law, but it likely won’t be the last. Oregon voters will decide on a similar measure in November and about 25 other states have proposed mandatory labeling legislation so far this year.

Proponents of the laws claim that the labels will lead to “informed consumers” making “better choices” about the foods they are eating. That sounds laudable. So what information will consumers actually find on the labels?

Will the labels inform you that approximately 80 percent of foods on grocery store shelves contain genetically engineered varieties of corn, soybeans and other fruits and vegetables? Despite the scariness of the term “GMO,” chances are you ate one for breakfast. People have eaten trillions of meals containing GMOs since farmers first pushed the first biotech seeds into the ground back in the mid-1990s. These foods haven’t caused a single ill health effect.

Will the labels point out that humans have been “genetically modifying” foods for centuries? Even something as familiar as sweet corn began as a wild grass-like plant that produced a few, tiny cob-like fruits. More than 5,000 years ago, Mesoamerican people began selecting and planting the seeds of the plants they preferred, discarding the rest. Our ancestors, without knowing anything about DNA or genes, were influencing changes in the genetic make-up of their food, making it tastier, more nutritious and easier to grow.

Today, scientists are using their understanding of genetics to make small and targeted improvements to the foods we eat. If you imagine that the genome of a plant is like a book, modern genetic engineering amounts to editing a few sentences to make it read better.

Will the labels tell you that farmers have rapidly adopted these engineered varieties because they are easier to grow and keep healthy in the field? Varieties of corn and cotton resistant to insects can be protected with fewer pesticides. Papayas and squash inoculated against nasty plant viruses don’t get sick and rot on the branch.

No, the labels won’t include any of these facts about GMOs. In fact, the labels won’t convey any actual information at all — just an intimidating warning that the product contains GMOs. So what’s their real purpose?

In an episode of Penn & Teller’s aptly named TV show “Bullsh*t!,” a woman gets a bunch of people to sign a petition to ban “dihydrogen monoxide.” Dihydrogen monoxide, of course, is just the scientific name for “water,” but for people who aren’t scientifically versed, the name isn’t informative. It just sounds scary.

The term “genetically modified organism” is as unfamiliar as “dihydrogen monoxide” and anti-GMO activists know that. The goal is not to inform consumers, but to frighten them away from buying something that is in reality as innocuous as water.

The activists’ long-term strategy is to achieve an outright ban on GMOs. As one prominent anti-GMO leader, Dr. Joseph Mercola, said: “Personally, I believe GM foods must be banned entirely, but labeling is the most efficient way to achieve this. Since 85 percent of the public will refuse to buy foods they know to be genetically modified, this will effectively eliminate them from the market just the way it was done in Europe.”

The anti-GMO fear-mongering is not based on science, but on the dogma that man should not “play God” by trying to improve nature — and that if he does, his hubris will lead ultimately to disaster. But there’s no evidence of this pending disaster, so activists have resorted to fear tactics and the strong arm of the government to drive people to reject a successful technology and the foods improved with it.

What really needs a warning label is the anti-GMO activists’ toxic, anti-technology stance. They pose an actual threat to people’s health.

About The Author

Amanda Maxham

Former junior fellow and later a research associate (2012-2018), Ayn Rand Institute

Supporters of campaign finance laws have been apoplectic since the Supreme Court struck down a ban on corporate political ads in Citizens United. Having lost another big case this year in McCutcheon v. FEC, they now want to write their views directly into the Constitution.

Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a resolution calling for a constitutional amendment that would let government limit contributions to candidates and spending by and on behalf of them. The House will take up a similar proposal soon. To see where this amendment would lead if enacted, consider that the law in Citizens United prevented a group from distributing a film that criticized Hillary Clinton during her last presidential bid. During arguments in the case, the government’s lawyer admitted that the law could apply to books as well.

At the core of this effort is the very dangerous view that freedom of speech isn’t an inalienable individual right — a right to say what you want regardless of what others think — but a privilege that we exercise at the sufferance of “the public.”

This is the prevailing view among many intellectuals and politicians today. Justice Breyer expressed it in dissent in McCutcheon joined by his three colleagues on the left. In his view, the First Amendment protects the “public’s interest” in having its “collective speech matter.” Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-VT, echoed this view when he complained in advance of a hearing on the proposed amendment that the Court is ignoring “the voices of all Americans” in order to “amplify the voices of billionaires and corporations.”

This is a fashionable view — we need campaign finance laws to prevent rich and powerful “special interests” from drowning out the “the public.” But being fashionable doesn’t make it true.

After all, who is this “public” that allegedly isn’t being heard? Does it include newspapers like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal? Broadcasters like MSNBC and Fox News? Millions of bloggers and Facebook and Twitter users? Donors to hundreds of political and advocacy groups? Jaw-boning politicians?

The fact is, “the public” doesn’t exist. Only individuals do. Terms like “the public” are never used to refer, literally, to every last person who lives in society. Instead, they are always used to justify one group of people using the force of law against others.

Consider how easy it is to define “the public” to mean groups whose ideas you favor. To Harry Reid and his allies, “the public” doesn’t include the Koch brothers or Tea Party groups targeted by the IRS, but it does include unions, environmental groups and others who support unlimited government power.

Of course, the right sometimes does the same thing. But that’s part of the point. The “public interest” can be used to justify any restriction on speech. No one ever admits that they want to silence others, so they invoke this magic concept to do that dirty work for them.

And make no mistake: silencing people is the point of campaign finance laws. Yale law professor Owen Fiss defended those laws in his 1996 book, The Irony of Free Speech, by saying that government may “have to silence the voices of some in order to hear the voices of others. Sometimes there is simply no other way.”

Silencing the loudest voices is the only way to make sure “the public” gets heard over individuals. And it’s always where campaign finance laws lead, because people easily find ways around them. Limit contributions to candidates, and people will spend money on their own ads. Prevent people from saying “vote for” or “vote against” and they will criticize candidates in other ways. That’s why, in 2002, Congress passed McCain-Feingold, which banned groups from even mentioning candidates near an election. No restrictions on spending for speech can be successful unless all spending is restricted.

The solution to this creeping censorship is to defend free speech as a right, not a privilege. That right does not protect our “voices” or guarantee that we’ll have “influence.” It protects our freedom to speak. Whether we are loud enough, persistent enough, or articulate enough is up to us.

Amending the Constitution is a long shot, and today’s effort will almost definitely fail. But tomorrow’s may not. If you value free speech, now would be a good time to start making yourself heard.

About The Author

Steve Simpson

Former Director of Legal Studies (2013-2018), Ayn Rand Institute