> Also, the classic Lingua Franca piece on Posner:
>
> <http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/0005/posner.html>
>
> Shane
========== [snip] Provocation comes naturally to Posner. Like his hero Oliver Wendell Holmes, whom he has called the "American Nietzsche," Posner has sought to combine the roles of intellectual gadfly and authoritative lawgiver.
[snip]
As if nihilism would have any more use for authority than 'it' does for gods............Disguising what Holmes called "the infernal arbitrariness of the law" is getting ever more difficult for just about everyone these days; witness the sublime legalities of the last 8 years -- a war that deconstructs the so-called constitution yet again and the plunder of the Treasury and..........
*********
Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market-place, and cried incessantly: "I am looking for Experts! I am looking for Experts!"
As many of those who did not believe in Experts were standing together there, he excited considerable laughter. Have you lost him, then? said one. Did he lose his way like a child? said another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? or emigrated? Thus they shouted and laughed. The madman sprang into their midst and pierced them with his glances.
"Where has Expertise gone?" he cried. "I shall tell you. We have killed him - you and I. We are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained the earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not perpetually falling? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is it not more and more night coming on all the time? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying Expertise? Do we not smell anything yet of Expertise' decomposition? Experts too decompose. Expertise is dead. Expertise remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives.
Ian