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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