On Sun, 4 May 2003 05:05:54 -0700 (PDT) andie nachgeborenen
<andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> writes:
> No, the point is not that what he does is immoral, In facr, he's
> probably got an illness, comulsive gambling. We ingulge in glee
> because he's a hypocrite, Mr. high-and-mighty precahing to all of us
> about self restraint when -- lo! he can't. And his litany of
> erxcuses (it didn't hurt anyone, he can afford it, it's no one
> else;s business) -- while all true, is just the sort of thing he and
> his followers reject in others. Elmer Gantry, recall, like to drink
> and screw, two perfectly delightful activities, especially the
> latter -- it wasn't his doing them but his denouncing them as
> immoral while doing them that made him a hypocrite. jks
Of course that's hardly unique to Bennett, among the Straussians. After all, Saul Bellow in his novel *Ravelstein* which was a very thinly veiled account of Allan Bloom, Bellow presents his old friend as a very active sodomite. However, from their own standpoint, I don't think they would regard this as hypocrisy though because I think they regard conventional morality as rules meant for non-philosophers. Philosophers, on the other hand, live by their own rules. In this respect, as in others, they are very Nietzschean.
Jim F.
>
> Michael Pollak <mpollak at panix.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 3 May 2003, Jim Farmelant wrote:
>
> > Bennett says that he sees no moral issues with his gambling.
>
> I'm not sure I do either. He says it's never been secret and he's
> declared all his winnings and losings to the IRS. He was quoted in
> 1995
> in the Las Vegas Review-Journal of all places saying, "I've played
> poker
> all my life and I shouldn't be on my high horse about it." That
> seems
> pretty straightforward to me.
>
> Just because you're a moralist doesn't mean you think everything is
> immoral. Bennett says he's never considered drinking, smoking or
> gambling
> to be sins in themselves. I agree with him, and so presumably does
> everyone on this list. So where's the crime? High stakes poker is
> legal
> in modern casino America.
>
> Unless there turns out to be tax fraud or some hidden family
> suffering
> here, the hypocrisy seems to me to be entirely on our side. It's
> like
> we're more Catholic than the Pope.
>
> Michael
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