Moral sanction

It's not just for Objectivists anymore! First let's get the main article out of the way. This is an article about Obama.

OK, so what's this moral sanction business all about? Moral sanction is a concept from Objectivism. Here's what the Ayn Rand Lexicon has to say about moral sanction. At first glance this doesn't seem all that bad, sort of like the idea behind they came for the Communists, but I wasn't a Communist. However, let's take a glance at how moral sanction is supposed to work in practical terms. Essentially what the Objectivists are saying is this. If you are in any way associated or dealing with somebody who is evil, you morally sanction them, i.e. support their ideas. Note that this seems to be the completely opposite meaning of "moral sanction" from how it's generally used in philosophy. There it seems to mean what you'd expect, you sanction (punish) someone for a moral lapse.

OK, so what's this got to do with the original article? The article attacks Obama's statement that Bill Ayers had nothing to do with the formation of his political ideas. Bill ayers is apparently super duper scary and evil, because he was in a group that bombed the Pentagon, and he like, never apologized and stuff, this all according to the article, you understand. So how does the article go about disproving Obama's statement that he and Ayers didn't exchange ideas on a regular basis?

Well it seems that Obama was on a board for something that was Ayers idea, and they worked together on that board. Here's where the moral sanction comes in. Because Obama dealt with the daily operations of an educational foundation which Ayers was connected with, it's obvious that Obama approves of Ayers and all he stands for and clearly they exchanged political ideas. In other words, moral sanction, as defined by Objectivism. You're probably more familiar with it under another name, guilt by association. Here's why it's a problem, aside from it's being incredibly stupid.

Let's assume that the article is completely correct. Obama and Ayers have a connection and they talked frequently during these board meetings for this foundation. How does this in any way prove that Obama's political ideas are based on or inspired by those of Ayers? I would assume that they pretty much talked about things related to the running of the foundation, myself. The body of the article clearly does not support the claim being made of it, namely that it refutes Obama's statement concerning Ayers and his ideas. On the contrary, the true argument is that Obama gave Ayers moral sanction, in other words, Obama is guilty because he is somehow associated with Ayers. Good job, conservatives. That vaunted rationality is really working out for you, you seem to have such a firm grasp of its principles and how to use them.