perversely wrong

Carl Remick carlremick at hotmail.com
Sat Mar 23 15:28:36 PST 2002



>From: "Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com>
>
>>I keep hearing from you and other sources how brilliant Posner is, but
>>frankly the man sounds like a hyper-opinionated horse's ass. I simply
>>cannot see how someone who's supposed to have a logical mind of such
>>Swiss-watch intricacy and accuracy can come to completely wrong
>>conclusions
>>about major social issues over and over and over again
>
>Carl, is it actuallly your view that intelligent people cannot disagree
>about fundamentals? That smart people cannot be right wing?

Bingo, that is exactly my view. I think right-wing philosophies are inherently not only cruel but stupid -- ideas that will keep all humankind mired in needless misery so long as they are taken seriously.

And I think people who trot out sophistical arguments on behalf of right-wing notions should be shunned not praised. Posner seems to fit the description John Randolph offered of Henry Clay: "This being, so brilliant yet so corrupt, which, like a rotten mackerel by moonlight, shined and stunk."

The West has been in the iron grip of fundamentally evil social doctrines ever since Thatcher and Reagan appeared on the scene, and after these many years, I no longer have the patience to entertain retrograde thinking no matter how cleverly put.


>But I admire a lot of
>smart people on the right: Posner, Hayek, Schumpeter, Coase, Scott Arnold,
>David Lewis, Max Weber, even Heidegger. Cherish your enemies, you'll learn
>more from then than from your friends.

To me, that seems like slamming your head against a wall to stimulate the flow of blood to the brain; it yields sharply diminishing marginal returns.

Carl

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