| | (Sigh.)
The tacit premise of Jason's closing point (post #79) appears to be that even brief communication to clarify one's position is inconsistent with a focus on a "self interested life."
Now let me see how this works:
Because Bidinotto refuses to read certain people's writings -- due to his long personal experience with them, their past record of personal "diatribes" and "screeds," and other unsavory actions -- he has been publicly, repeatedly accused (for most of a year) of being an "evader."
But now, when for the first time he at last clarifies the reasons why he refuses to read these people, he is accused of a failure of psychological independence!
If my silence constitutes evasion, and my comment constitutes social metaphysics, what's a boy to do?
Let me point out that I'm employed full-time promoting Objectivism. It therefore is hardly a professional departure from a "self-interested life" for me to comment -- publicly, briefly, and in passing -- on some people's chronic warping of that philosophy from a tool of personal living, into an other-focused moral bludgeon. On this one thing, those people and I agree: the reputation of Objectivism is at stake, and protecting it is an issue of rational self-interest.
As to whether current commentaries by these individuals constitute "diatribes" and "screeds": like Patrick Henry, "I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and it is the lamp of experience." It is precisely their long, long history of moral jihadism that prompted me to refuse to read them any further. One does not have to continue eating the apple long after he has bitten into the worm.
Even so: Note that I did not comment on the contents of any post except those here on this thread. From my post #21:
I say this in principle only, because I haven't any specific idea of what Hsieh is accusing Sciabarra, or whether she provided sufficient evidence.
However, I do know that what some have described as a 12,000-plus-word personal denunciation -- following on the heels of several years of incessant posts denouncing others -- is as good a way as any to once again defer work on the requirements of an alleged scholarly career.
Robert C: Please note that the word I used to characterize her post was "denunciation," not "diatribe." That it was in fact a denunciation of Sciabarra is a characterization I have heard communicated by all of its readers so far.
Note too that my objection was not to the content of her post, or to the quality or adequacy of evidence she offered, of which I know nothing first-hand; it was to the very fact of such a public post -- it was to its subject: another public attack on somebody's personal moral character.
Does anyone wish to claim that this was not what her post was about?
Finally, and most importantly, I will happily recuse myself from self-defense while others ascribe to me the worst, most hypocritical of motives...in exchange for their addressing the four challenges I raised in my previous post about the warping of Objectivism into moral jihadism.
Or is the aim here to deflect attention from that substantive point, by now turning this into a preoccupation with my moral character? That would, ironically, only underscore the validity of the point.
|
|
