Re: the Kerry smear and its antecedents (#40545)
by Chris Matthew Sciabarra on August 24, 2004 at 5:27 PM

Hi Irfan.

I just wanted to focus on one small part of your post here. You write:

BTW, as an Objectivist, don't you find it problematic that the phrase "neo-conservative" has now come to function as an epithet a la Leonard Peikoff's conception of an "inherently irrational idea" (from "Fact and Value")? Peikoff at least limited that idea to a fairly small set (fascism, Communism, etc.) Reading Objectivist/libertarian critics of the war, one gets the ideat that they've become hyper-Peikovians: it is not merely error, but outright evil to be a neo-conservative nowadays.

I, personally, would not consider it "outright evil to be a neo-conservative nowadays." Certainly not by definition. :) I'm sure this will sound like, "some of my best friends are neocons..." --- but the truth is that I have learned a lot from neocon writers (and even quote some of them), just as I have learned a lot from their intellectual predecessors who came out of the left.

Speaking only for myself, however, I've been very disappointed with those Objectivist commentators who, early on, jumped on the Bush bandwagon with little or no understanding of the neoconservative premises that were driving that bandwagon. (Some Objectivists, in fact, extolled the virtues of the neoconservatives---take a look at Robert Tracinski's praise for the "breathtaking" neocon vision---without any understanding of the neocon's Wilsonian internationalist, left-wing intellectual roots.)

Over the last couple of years, I've spent a lot of time "checking" those neoconservative premises, making them transparent so-to-speak, because I believe them to be fundamentally in error.

Re: the Kerry smear and its antecedents (#40554)
by Arthur Silber on August 24, 2004 at 10:05 PM

I am very busy with work at the moment, and so have time for only the briefest of replies to Mr. Khawaja.

First, as I have explained at no doubt tedious length on my blog, I do not call myself an "Objectivist" any longer. You can start with my essay entitled, "Please Do Not Call Me an 'Objectivist,'" and there are a number of other entries on the same subject.

Second, because of my first reason, I clearly am not obligated to respond to any claim preceded by the statement, "as an Objectivist, don't you..." But my second objection to your comments almost in toto is much, much broader: I was not aware that anyone, including me, was obliged to address every single argument ever utilized by a group which you happen to have decided I belong to.

That is, in my view, a rather remarkably intellectually irresponsible position to take: it would require that any individual first address all the ways in which his position differs from anyone else that any other person on the face of earth might choose to lump him in with. I am responsible for my views, and for my arguments against the interventionist foreign policy followed by the United States for the last hundred years -- and no one else's at all.

So when you have a criticism which is aimed at my comments and my arguments, I will be happy to address it.

And thank you so much for implicitly including me among those who are responsible for making our political discourse "dumber and dumber." A very cheap low blow -- if you mean ME, say ME. And try to say it on the basis of arguments that *I* have made, not those offered by people with whom I may not agree at all.

Re: the Kerry smear and its antecedents (#40639)
by Mark Fulwiler on August 26, 2004 at 1:46 PM

Arthur:

You are right on the money on this matter. Sorry, Irfan. Your response reads like a temper tantrum of a 7 year old.