October 11, 2010
Intelligence, Wealth and Voters
Chris Dillow remarks:
“Whilst the public are happy to be ruled by people much richer than them, they don’t want to be ruled by those much smarter.”
This appears to be a general truism of 21st Century mass democracy. Tony Blair got a lot further selectively dropping his ‘aitches and being an apparently ordinary bloke than Gordon Brown did with his PhD and battering ram of statistics (or even worse, his attempts to fake normal human behaviour). Or consider George Bush, re-elected American president despite being apparently borderline retarded.* That Dublya appeared to be a man of the people was more potent than his membership of a billionaire, globetrotting elite.
Why do people tolerate being ruled by the ultra-rich, but not by those they perceive as being (significantly) cleverer than them? I have some hypotheses leading to some philosophical implications. (If anybody knows of relevant psychological research that confirms or denies my speculations, I’d be glad to hear of it).
My first hypothesis is that voters are (sensibly) worried about being dominated and exploited by those who wield power over them. Voters are faced with having to give power to one bunch of mendacious bastards over another, and it makes sense to give it to that bunch they believe least likely to abuse it. If you think somebody is much cleverer than you, then you may sensibly worry about them hoodwinking you. As most voters have middling to poor views of politicians already, they are perhaps predisposed to expect attempts at hoodwinking. Correspondingly, they are more likely to choose politicians whose intelligence (apparently) approaches their own, such that the chances of being hoodwinked (apparently) decrease accordingly.
Secondly and connectedly, we know that similarity breeds familiarity. If you think “hey, this bloke is a pretty straight kinda guy who is by all appearances a lot like me”, you may quickly jump to the conclusion “this guy will look out for people like us”. Such a sense of commonality, however, is likely undermined by evident differences in intelligence: “this egghead isn’t like me – can I trust him?”
This, however, is surely only part of the story. It’s also a fact that people, in general, don’t like to feel stupid. They are thus likely to be favourably disposed to people who don’t make them feel stupid. Hence politicians who are of average-voter-level intelligence (or at least appear to be) will resonate better with average voters, than will eggheads inducing a sense of inferiority.
Nonetheless it remains to be explained why voters don’t express the same antipathy to wealth as they do intelligence. Perhaps it’s that wealth is generally seen as a sign of success, rather than (say) an intrinsic superiority of character. We live in a culture which routinely equates success with money, and there may therefore be a widespread cognitive bias in favour of assuming the rich to be successful and therefore competent.
Accordingly, many voters may even be encouraged if potential leaders are wealthy; they may interpret this as proof of competence. Greater intelligence, by contrast, may lack the kind of strong socially enforced approval that wealth enjoys, thereby not offsetting the negative effects considered above.
But there remains a potential puzzle: wealth, after all, can give its possessors significant power over the poorer. How to explain the discrepancy between my hypothesis that voters are suspicious of being exploited by the more intelligent, but apparently worry less about exploitation by super-rich elites?
The answer might be widespread cognitive bias in capitalist societies exhibiting capitalist norms. Or as a Marxist might put it: the false consciousness of an exploited proletariat. Although G.A. Cohen (one of the late-20th Century’s leading Marxist theorists, incidentally) comprehensively demonstrated that wealth is power in many social contexts, this view is apparently not privileged in a society ordered to the interests of wealthy elites, and which has been so-ordered for centuries. The result may be that people worry (too?) little about how much money their rulers have, and a great deal (too much?) about how intelligent they are, or appear to be.
So: if my hypotheses hold any water, we’d have another example of how ideas (or rather, the priority of ideas) can shape everyday politics. And we’d also have another example of a political principle – wealth is power – being privileged by philosophical leftists, but whose concerns are not shared by ordinary voters.
As to whether any water is indeed being held…over to you.
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* Though this was almost certainly more act than reality.
September 10, 2010
Profile 364
Over at Normblog, I’ve the privilege of being the focus of the 364th Normblog Profile.
September 9, 2010
Plundering the Classics: How to think about the “self-interest” brigade
Long Post Warning! Available as a PDF for those who would rather print out.
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Why read the great works of philosophers past?
Lots of high-falutin’ answers present themselves: to gain self-knowledge; to avoid repeating the mistakes of history; to distinguish what is parochial in modern practices from what is timeless; to appreciate works of elegance and beauty which withstand the test of time – or to rediscover those that didn’t.
All good answers. But never forget a less glamorous yet extremely important one: to plunder old arguments in order to bash your opponents.
Matthew Taylor has some typically muddled thoughts about rational self-interest (with a big dollop of RSA propaganda), but correctly concludes that people are not simply self-interested utility maximisers but rather that altruism and disinterested benevolence are possible. Over at Crooked Timber, Chris Bertram has some sensible thoughts up, and the comment thread has predictably descended into those who are single-mindedly and ferociously determined to reduce everything to motivation by self-interest, and those who see this as being a little too simplistic.
If you already think this isn’t a new debate – what with “selfish gene” arguments, evolutionary psychology, and the self-interested utility maximisers of microeconomic theory now all being well-established concepts – you’re even right than you think. Because the modern “oh we just do everything to maximise our self-interest, even when we think we’re being benevolent and disinterested” meme goes way, way back. To at least the 18th Century, and the systems of “self love” at whose expense David Hume had rather a bit of fun.
Indeed, the second appendix to Hume’s Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals provides a veritable battery of arguments that are as applicable to the “we’re all just self-interested maximisers” crowd today as they were to their systems of self-love forerunners in the 18th century. Here are some of the best moves, plundered and relayed.
Hume is keen to observe that one possible outcome of reducing all human motivation to self-love is to collapse ethical distinctions between good and bad completely. For consider, if “the most generous patriot and most niggardly miser, the bravest hero and most abject coward, have, in every action, an equal regard to their own happiness and welfare”, then really what is the end moral difference between their characters and acts? Hume does not present this as necessarily a fallacy of the systems of self-love. The point is rather: if a consequence of your philosophical system is that moral distinctions everybody ordinarily takes for granted turn out to be erroneous and hollow, well that’s a pretty amazing upshot so you better have a good explanation for how these distinctions gained such widespread currency. And your system stands in a disfavourable light as long as it produces such upshots without satisfactory explanations for such massively counter-intuitive conclusions.
Hume pursues the point: “The most obvious objection to the selfish hypothesis is, that, as it is contrary to common feeling and our most unprejudiced notions, there is required the highest stretch of philosophy to establish so extraordinary a paradox”. Indeed. For not only can we think of many examples of personally disinterested genuine concern for others – the man dying of cancer who worries how his gay lover will survive when he’s gone; the campaigners fighting service cuts that will affect the severely disabled, elderly and mentally ill – but we must observe that our very language and culture are infused with words and concepts like “altruism”, “benevolence”, “kindness”, “self-sacrifice” and so on. If the selfish-systems are correct, they need to explain how all this comes about, and why it is common-sensical that altruism and benevolence are possible to all those who haven’t already been reading too much EvPsych or Rational Choice Theory (if you don’t mind me updating the argument).
What appears to motivate the reduction of everything to self interest is indeed “that love of simplicity, which has been the source of much false reasoning in philosophy”. Superficially, it looks as though there will be a neat parsimony to explaining everything by reference to self-interest. The problem, however, is that when we get into concrete examples – like the gay lover who is dying of cancer but makes exhaustive plans for his partner to be financially supported once he’s gone – to reduce all these to self-love requires an elaborate story of confused motivations and desires that are not even transparent to agents themselves, all so as to eventually reduce benevolence and affection for others to a secret selfishness. Yet the simpler explanation is surely the more desirable: that (say) a dying man feels affection and concern for his partner whom he loves, and wants to ensure the best for a future he will sadly not partake in. And that that’s all there is to it:
“But a man, that grieves for a valuable friend, who needed his patronage and protection; how can we suppose, that his passionate tenderness arises from some metaphysical regards to self-interest, which has no foundation or reality? We may as well imagine, that minute wheels and springs, like those of a watch, give motion to a loaded wagon, as account for the origin of passion from such abstruse reflections”.
Pressing the point, Hume shows us just how counter-intuitive and bizarre the claims of systems of self-love are when we get them under the microscope:
“Is gratitude no affection of the human breast, or is that a word merely, without any meaning or reality? Have we no satisfaction in one man’s company above another’s, and no desire of the welfare of our friend, even though absence or death should prevent us from all participation in it? Or what is it commonly, that gives us any participation in it, even while alive and present, but our affection and regard to him?”
When we take in the vast panoply of human experience we find multiple instances of people acting in ways that can only be reduced to “self love” by paradoxical machinations and assertions about hidden motives requiring great endeavours of contorted imagination. Reducing everything to self-love thus becomes a task undertaken in order to vindicate the system of self-love itself, when the process is supposed to be the other way around. Or in other words: the selfish systems end up with the cart before the horse because instead of the system explaining everything, everything ends up being explained so as to fit the system. It would therefore be better just to take the more simple and obvious explanation as the more likely one: that as per common sense people really can exhibit those qualities we have words for and treat as given on a daily basis – like benevolence, altruism, self-sacrifice and the rest.
But there is of course a demon manoeuvre left to deal with. And we all know what it is, because it’s been repeated ad nauseam since at least the 18th century. It’s to reply: “well, if people want to be benevolent, then that’s self-interest. They get a pleasure out of being benevolent, so they do it because it makes them feel good – so you see, it is really all self-interest after all”.
To this old canard Hume has a fitting reply:
“Now where is the difficulty in conceiving, that this may likewise be the case with benevolence and friendship, and that, from the original frame of our temper, we may feel a desire of another’s happiness or good, which, by means of that affection, becomes our own good, and is afterwards pursued, from the combined motives of benevolence and self-enjoyments? Who sees not that vengeance, from the force alone of passion, may be so eagerly pursued, as to make us knowingly neglect every consideration of ease, interest, or safety; and, like some vindictive animals, infuse our very souls into the wounds we give an enemy; and what a malignant philosophy must it be, that will not allow to humanity and friendship the same privileges which are undisputably granted to the darker passions of enmity and resentment; such a philosophy is more like a satyr than a true delineation or description of human nature; and may be a good foundation for paradoxical wit and raillery, but is a very bad one for any serious argument or reasoning.”
Hume’s point is partly ad hominem, but that is all to the good; for to a large extent this entire debate revolves precisely around which perspective one chooses to take on moral questions.
As Hume implies, there’s nothing wrong with taking pleasure in helping others – indeed quite the contrary, for that is surely a sign of a healthy moral character. And it’s evident from basic human experience that helping others can go far beyond any immediate benefits one may feel even from the pleasure of doing so – as Hume says, we admit this quality to the nasty passions like the desire for revenge, so why not the nice passions too? And that’s where the justified ad hominem point comes in: how very odd those people must be who so steadfastly deny the possibility of benevolence, altruism and the rest – things so evident to ordinary people, on a daily basis.
What are these philosophers of self love telling us about themselves, when they make (usually with ferocity) these counter-intuitive claims? And when answering that question, we should surely keep another in mind: are these the sorts of people we ought really to be listening to in the settling of moral issues?
It’s best to close with Hume’s opening remarks on this subject:
“This principle is, that all benevolence is mere hypocrisy, friendship a cheat, public spirit a farce, fidelity a snare to procure trust and confidence; and that while all of us, at bottom, pursue only our private interest, we wear these fair disguises, in order to put others off their guard, and expose them the more to our wiles and machinations. What heart one must be possessed of who possesses such principles, and who feels no internal sentiment that belies so pernicious a theory, it is easy to imagine: and also what degree of affection and benevolence he can bear to a species whom he represents under such odious colours, and supposes so little susceptible of gratitude or any return of affection. Or if we should not ascribe these principles wholly to a corrupted heart, we must at least account for them from the most careless and precipitate examination.”
September 5, 2010
From Machiavelli to Dale
Iain Dale is currently illustrating a fundamental dynamic of politics, and helpfully demonstrating a valuable Machiavellian insight.
Dale has written what can only be described, at least from an anti-Tory perspective, as a desperate blog attempting to defend Andy Coulson. The argument (such as there is one) runs: Coulson is good at his job now; allegations against him relate to his former job which he has already resigned from; accessing people’s voicemail without their knowledge is not hacking; John Prescott and Alistair Campbell were terrible media manipulators and are thus hypocrites to attack Coulson.
There’s several dozen things wrong with this, and I don’t need to spell them out. So just the most obvious will do: if Coulson is implicated to the extent the New York Times alleges, then he oversaw systematic criminal activity. If so, Coulson is not suitable for a role coordinating the Conservative Party’s relations with the media, and with access to the Prime Minister’s ear.
But I reckon Iain Dale knows all this, because he isn’t stupid. I’ve seen him debate and he is sharp. So what’s going on?
Quite simply, Dale is doing what is required of the high-placed party animal: fighting for his pack.
Regardless of the rights and wrongs of the situation, Dale is prepared to ignore the truth and go so far as to apologies for what may be criminal, and is certainly immoral. Twitter and the blogosphere are predictably becoming aflame, with Tim Ireland leading the charge.
But at a reflective level, I just won’t get worked up about this.
For Dale is being manifestly Machiavellian. And I use that term technically, in line with the great Florentine himself. Namely, that Dale is prepared to defend immorality and the possibly criminal in the service of his primary political aim: promoting and defending the Tory party, insofar as he sees this as necessary for achieving his fundamental political goal of a strong Conservative government
To those outside of Dale’s party this appears abhorrent. Non-Conservatives hold the relevant standards of morality and non-criminality above the career of Andy Coulson or the reputation of the Tory Party. But to Tory loyalists, what matters most right now is the perceived higher political value of defending the party. Hence obfuscation and defence of the indefensible are not only permitted – they are required.
And within the realm of politics, in a certain sense there’s simply nothing wrong with this. Because it’s just what politics is about: the visceral defence and promotion of your tribe, sometimes by accepting dubious means, to promote what you believe is a higher good.
Of course the best and most desirable political agents will also possess the capacity to step-back and judge when their political ends are trumped by other more important values. This balance between being a fierce political loyalist, and not a blinkered apologist for even the worst evils, is one of the most important to get right – and one that relatively few manage. It’s where John Rentoul continues to fail, but why Robin Cook will be remembered with reverence . Iain Dale, however, is nowhere near such a tipping point.
The job of political opponents is to clamour and howl; to do everything possible to tear down the enemy. Hence the merry dance of counter-blogs, outrage and faux-surprise against Dale will – and indeed must – continue. That’s how politics works. Indeed, I myself will condemn him: not only is Dale defending the indefensible, he’s doing it in the name of an end (strong Tory government) that I ferociously oppose. Hence for me, he is doubly damned.
But what I have no intellectual time for is yelling “hypocrite” or other assorted indignations in Iain’s direction. Although Dale has apparently abandoned dreams of becoming an MP, he still gives his life to politics and his party. Sometimes that demands of him that he be a hypocrite, and other nasty things. But that is just what politics does to its serious participants, and does to them by necessity. And whilst the rules of the ballroom demand that we on the other side hurl our accusations and rebuttals, we shouldn’t forget that we, too, are dancing the merry dance.
September 3, 2010
Unreasonable Reasonable Blogging
I should start by making clear that I like and respect Anthony Painter. Although he blogs relatively infrequently, he’s always worth reading. However, his latest post seems to me misguided in a few ways, and so I’m going to use him as a stalking horse for gripes about personal blogging niggles. Hence, apologies Anthony – it’s not personal.
Although Anthony’s blog starts strongly and gives a good diagnosis of why many people experience what John Rentoul calls “Blair Rage”, Anthony then goes fundamentally wrong.
First, a small gripe. Anthony says:
“However, none of this warrants the vengeful attacks on Tony Blair’s integrity. He is a man of honour and integrity. He takes responsibility for his decisions but just makes a different calculation of the justice of the Iraq War.”
I’m afraid this isn’t good enough. Sure, by his own standards – and perhaps those of others – Blair acted with honour and integrity. Indeed as Anthony says, Blair has been nothing if not consistent. But this isn’t enough.
Carl Schmitt arguably acted with honour and integrity…from within the paradigm of Nazi German rule.* Less controversially, General Robert E. Lee was indisputably a man of honour and integrity. Yet he led the U.S. Confederate forces in a war to preserve black slavery, and his military genius delayed the victory of the Union thereby guaranteeing many more deaths in an atrocious and drawn-out conflict. Sometimes “honour and integrity” are vices when the ends to which they are put are morally unacceptable.
Yet what really bothers me about Anthony’s post is this:
“But we bear collective responsibility for the Iraq War also- ‘not in my name’ is an easy refrain. And the best way to handle that responsibility is to insist that the mistakes aren’t repeated- we never accept arguments for regime change that are pre-emptive and insufficiently conclusive, we weigh the risks alongside the mission, our media becomes far more questioning, our politicians far more insistent on better evidence and more sufficient post-war planning, and we have a better awareness of what we may be walking into. Some did of course, most notably Robin Cook whose reputation can do little but rise. The vast majority did not and in this we are bound by collective responsibility as a nation.”
I fear that Anthony’s close proximity to the Westminster village and daily involvement in politics distorts his perspective here.
What, exactly, were people like me to do except shout “not in my name” and publicly protest and demonstrate? We held – and hold – no power and influence. Shouting the “easy refrain” was all we could do. As for not accepting arguments for regime change and weighing the risks alongside the mission – we on the anti-war left did exactly that in 2002 and 2003, and concluded the conflict could not be justified. As for the media and politicians becoming better at their jobs – well that’s out of the hands of ordinary Joes like me.
To say that “we” are bound by “collective responsibility” is frankly absurd. Those who opposed the war outside of politics and the media were revealed as being completely impotent and utterly ignored. That, incidentally, is one reason Blair Rage is so widespread; because the casual dismissal wasn’t confined to Iraq. New Labour was built around the view that the citizenry was to be ignored when it couldn’t be manipulated by media management. To say that anti-war protestors bear “collective responsibility” for the actions of Blair, Bush and their inner circle beggars belief.
So why might Anthony – a normally incisive and astute commentator – say such a thing? Apologies for the arm-chair psychoanalysis, but I fear this is a manifestation of a common over-compensation found amongst the better class of bloggers.
Whereas vile slanderers like Paul Staines and Devil’s Kitchen – or the maniacs who populate Harry’s Place – tend to go about launching one sided hate-filled attacks, more intelligent bloggers adopt the principle that there may always be two sides to every story; that responsibility may be a two-way street.
Which is a very sound principle to adopt. It leads to careful analysis, and a more accurate picture of events. But it can also spill over into something that is not desirable: the mistaken principle that there must always be responsibility on both sides, no matter what.
Yet as illustrated above, that’s simply not the case. Sometimes treating “both sides” as though they are equally responsible reduces us to inaccuracy; it can promote a breed of blogging so bent on being “reasonable” that the wood is missed for the trees. For there are times when it’s quite correct to call one side out as the culprit, without apportioning blame to the other. The case of Blair, Iraq and the disempowered and ignored anti-war left is clearly one of them.
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*Note to tiresome trolls: I am not comparing Blair with the Nazis. It’s just an example to illustrate a point.
August 29, 2010
Elsewhere
Recovering from a rather wonderful wedding yesterday, where I also picked up some rather less wonderful food poisoning. Nobody else seems to have got it, however, so I suspect conspiracy.
Yesterday I had a piece up at The Guardian appealing for people to donate to Prisoner Ben’s PhD appeal.
The comments over at CiF are a phenomenal display of the worst and best aspects of human behaviour. From compassion, forgiveness and generosity to hate, anger and the vindictive desire to hurt.
That, and bad grammar.
August 3, 2010
On Plagiarism
Norm thinks plagiarism is wrong. He’s right (obviously). The “moral-legal” point accepted, however, I’d like to return to the “sociology of belief” Norm puts to one side.
Apparently the “number who [believe] that copying from the Web constitutes ‘serious cheating’ is declining”. The New York Times reports:
“Now we have a whole generation of students who’ve grown up with information that just seems to be hanging out there in cyberspace and doesn’t seem to have an author,” said Teresa Fishman, director of the Center for Academic Integrity at Clemson University. “It’s possible to believe this information is just out there for anyone to take.”
Hmm.
There’s no doubt that cheats have always been around; plagiarism is as old as the hills. And it isn’t just undergraduate students that indulge. I have a strong hunch that an article in a well-respected Cambridge University Press compendium is heavily plagiarised. But let’s nonetheless focus on students, where the bulk of cases can be found.
Imagine a world in which the dominant ethos of undergraduate study was as follows. Students understand that they must work hard, consistently and conscientiously or they will not develop their own ideas, their own arguments and ultimately their own minds. Coursework, dissertations and exams are viewed not as battles with evil examiners but as opportunities for learning and self-development. “Do the work, and do it well” is every student’s motto because it is understood that university is not just about receiving a qualification, but about personal self-improvement.
Would there by plagiarism in such a world? Undoubtedly. Cheats will always exist, and sometimes people plagiarise out of desperation not just simple cynicism. But it seems reasonable to suppose that there would be rather less plagiarism than in the following possible world.
Here university is predominantly seen as a series of hoops to jump through so as to pick-up a qualification. This qualification is increasingly socially expected and is a pre-requisite to acquiring reasonably well-remunerated employment. However the university experience also comes with lots of cheap cash. This means the opportunity to consume copious amounts of alcohol and drugs, to sleep with similarly inebriated people, to upload the photos onto Facebook, and generally have a cracking good time. The educational hoops still have to be jumped through, of course. But because they’re just hoops surely there’s no harm in finding ways to pull the wool over the hoop-examiners’ eyes?
It would hardly be surprising if plagiarism was increasingly a problem in such a world. No prizes for identifying which one is closer to the world we actually live in.
In Britain increasing numbers of students view a university degree as something they are entitled to simply because they are paying for it. They are the consumers and they expect suppliers to reciprocate. And in a way you can’t blame them; when you go to McDonalds you don’t expect your burger to be conditional upon your working hard. Viewed this way around, plagiarism appears not only excusable but virtually acceptable. If the customer is always king why can’t he cheat if that’s what he feels like?
Sadly many universities are effectively complicit. It’s astonishingly hard to get kicked out of most institutions even for egregious cases of plagiarism. A friend of mine teaches at a Russell Group university, where a girl made a complaint(!) because she’d copied her friend’s essay but received a lower mark. Was she kicked out? Don’t be silly. Universities can’t get a reputation for academic exclusion, or the consumers will go to the competition – and government funding will quickly follow. The same underlying factors ensured that another academic acquaintance saw piles of failed and 3rd-class essays returned by the department, repeatedly, until they were given the 2:2 grades management desired.
In a world where both students and univeristies are complicit in quietly tolerating plagiarism (however unwillingly in the cases of most academics), attempts to excuse the practice by blaming external factors should be entirely unsurprising. That way hard questions about the worrying trajectory of higher education can be conveniently avoided. It surely won’t be long before we hear cries of “blame the internet!” on these shores too.
July 10, 2010
Heart of Darkness
It has just come to my attention that my friend Will Jones is writing a blog, mostly on Africa and African politics. Or more specifically Rwandan (and Congolese) politics, because that’s where he specialises and was (is?) working.
Jones’ head is already too big, so suffice to say that he’s a man of vaguely-above-average wit who won some competition or something.
I recommend starting with this excellent post about the deep hypocrisy and historical idiocy underlying the recent wave of homophobia across sub-Saharan Africa. Then read this long but very insightful entry debating – in an even handed and intelligent manner – the issue of Fair Trade, and whether it does more harm than good.*
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*Smug moment: I remember a pithy, look-how-controversial-I-am Jones harking on about the evils of Fair Trade (uttered – shock – from a leftist!) at some point about 4 years ago. I am amused to see that he appears to have concluded that although it’s complicated, there’s a lot of good in FT. But that, to be fair, is what makes his blog post worth reading: a sincere recognition of the fact the issue is complicated, and that neat answers are unlikely in any direction. So take that, Cato Institute and the ASI.
May 13, 2010
Blond Watch
It’s been a bit quiet on the Blond front round here, because the whole world has had far more important things to think about. However, the question of how Blond is going to adapt himself to a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, after last month releasing a book in which liberalism was claimed to be the root of all evil, is a tantalising one.
Stuart White over at Next Left has got the ball rolling, with a hilarious analysis of how Mr Blond has flipped 180 degrees to stress the great affinities between Cameroon Conservatism and liberalism. Which is funny, because his book Red Tory claims that the two are fundamentally at loggerheads (well, insofar as Red Tory contains anything resembling an argument, and allowing for the fact that the liberalism in his crosshairs is a pathetic caricature).
Anyway, to indulge in a little hyperbole, I’d like to follow Tim in pointing and laughing at the vaguely fascistic tendencies in some of what Blond appears to advocate (the roots of which you can read about over here). Of course, Stuart White is right when he stresses that Blond isn’t really a fascist of any kind, he’s just confused and suffers from delusions of intellectual grandeur. But on this particular point of turning 180 degrees to do whatever serves D-Cam the best, Blond does rather recall to mind another supine so-called philosopher* who was quick to offer his services to a political man of the moment:
Higgledy-piggledy
Herr Rektor Heidegger
Said to his students
“To Being be True!
Lest you should fall into
Inauthenticity
This I believe—
And the Führer does too!”
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* OK, OK, Heidegger is clearly much more of a real philosopher than Blond. But they’re both unreadable, right-wing and annoy me, and that’s good enough for today because I’m feeling lazy and facetious. Yes, even more so than normal.
May 3, 2010
Customers who bought the last post, also enjoyed…
…this excellent article by Flying Rodent.
Go read.
