That's part of it. There's also something else going on. Some people (mostly conservative intellectuals but also a large number of others) believe, or want to believe, that proper ethics and/or politics are the result of rational deduction (despite the seemingly insurmountable is-ought problem). Reason is for them a sort of magic charm that keeps out evil spirits, and so if you deny the primacy of reason (as pomos and Heidegger are believed to do), you get exposed to all kinds of evil cooties that will corrupt you. It lets the devil in. (As if Heidegger's Nazism is more explicable by reference to his philosophy as opposed to, oh, his being a southern German in the 1930s.)
--- On Tue, 7/8/08, Thomas Seay <entheogens at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I SUSPECT that it is for the same reason that people act
> like members of the Temperance League only when discussing
> Christopher Hitchens or sound like the producers of
> "Cocaine Fiends" when discussing the
> President's youthful indulgence in coke. In other
> words, CHEAP SHOT.
>
> -Thomas
>
>
>
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