Ah, political rhetoric was once so wonderful. What happened to it? We go from Randolph to W, "I know how hard it is for ytou to put food on your families"; "The question is, is our children learning?"
But to business: these are the dominant ideas of the age. If we shun them, we will be shirking our duty. They must be discredited, attacked, criticized, exposed as sophistical, but not shunned. Or perhaps you mean the people should be shunned. I am sure it would break Dick's heart if you snubbed him in the elevator. Professionally I couldn't afford to snub an important judge in my jurisdiction, and I wouldn't want to. I like him as well as respect him. You and I agree that his ideas on these things are wicked, of course.
>
>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.
Point is as above. Marx had the patience. His life project was the _critique_ of political economy. Dare you do less?
>
>>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.
>
When the marginal returns diminish, I'll reduce my consumption. Right now I'd rather have comments on my work from Posner or Scott Arnold than just about anybody. Their remarks are insightful, thorough, interesting, to the point, searching, and constructive. A lot of right wingers aren't like that, most of them aren't, but neither are most left wingers. Remember what Bertrand Russell said about exposing yourself to views that fundamentally differ from your own.
jks
>Carl
>
>_________________________________________________________________
>MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos:
>http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx
>
_________________________________________________________________ Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com