Rorty reviewed

[Jon Fine]

>Brad De Long wrote:
>
>>>The harsh response to Rorty may have something to do with his
>>>penchant for gratuitous, con-baiting asides, such as the one in which he
>>>absurdly states that "we caused the death of a million Vietnamese out of
>>>sheer macho arrogance." In the course of the book, Rorty sets even
>>>liberal teeth on edge with such outlandish statements
>>
>>But we did cause the death of a million Vietnamese out of sheer macho
>>arrogance...

and Doug responded:


>
>And it was done by "liberals." It was Johnson who pulled out his johnson at
>a cabinet meeting to answer the question "why were we in Vietnam?"

not to nit-pick, but the truth is even more ridiculous than that. Johnson
was with a couple of (unnamed) _journalists_ who asked him that question,
whereupon he  displayed his etc. This anecdote was published in,
uh...wholever just published that massive bio on JOhnson a few months back.
Say what you will about journalism now (and there's plenty to say), but
there's no way an incident like that would go unreported today. For what
that's worth.

jf