"The irrationalism of others"

Brad DeLong today:

IN MEMORY OF ALEXANDER COCKBURN, AS HE DESERVES TO BE REMEMBERED

Alexander Cockburn, 1980:

"if ever a country deserved rape it's Afghanistan. Nothing but mountains filled with barbarous ethnics with views as medieval as their muskets, and unspeakably cruel too…"

Brad DeLong a few years ago, as I reminded him in a comment that he didn't let through.

R.I.P. JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK

Let me express my condolences to her two surviving sons John Evron and Stuart Alan Kirkpatrick, whom she loved beyond all measure.

She was a good friend to my grandfather Earl. She was an American and a world patriot: her counsel--even at its most boneheaded--was always devoted to advancing the security of the United States and the cause of liberty and prosperity around the world.

The handicrafts Cockburn refers to elsewhere in that famous quote are war rugs. I like them, but they're sad documents.

And he was writing during the time when the US was giving millions to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who threw acid in women's faces. Kirkpatrick bears partial responsibility for the deaths of thousands of people; Cockburn bears responsibility for being an ass.

Kirkpatrick

Authoritarian regimes really typically don't have complete command economies. Authoritarian regimes typically have some kind of traditional economy with some private ownership. The Nazi regime left ownership in private hands, but the state assumed control of the economy. Control was separated from ownership but it was really a command economy because it was controlled by the state. A command economy is an attribute of a totalitarian state

I'd pick Cockburn over Kirkpatrick without having to think about it.

Brian Leiter writes a review in the NDPR.

Of course, most people are just regurgitators of pablum, vectors of ideological and commercial forces at work in the broader culture, so what they "disclose" is only, in their eyes, a mark of their individuality.

For DeLong, Leiter, Waldron, Duncan Black, Schliesser, Shalizi, et al. (a long list) "most people" by definition can refer logically only to people other than themselves.

Neither Leiter nor Waldron understands the logic behind freedom of speech. I doubt any of them do.

Susie Bright: "Andrea Dworkin was a great pornographer"

All of us are most people most of the time.