A change of topic for 2007:
Ann Althouse recently attended a Liberty Fund conference, and made some striking comments on her blog, here: Althouse: Where I was when I was out of my milieu.I am struck -- you may think it is absurd for me to be suddenly struck by this -- but I am struck by how deeply and seriously libertarians and conservatives believe in their ideas. I'm used to the way lefties and liberals take themselves seriously and how deeply they believe. Me, I find true believers strange and -- if they have power -- frightening. And my first reaction is to doubt that they really do truly believe.And here: Here's the post where I take on Ron Bailey of Reason Magazine.
One of the reasons 9/11 had such a big impact on me is that it was such a profound demonstration of the fact that these people are serious. They really believe.
I need to be more vigilant.
My friends, in all honesty, what made me cry -- and I'm not too sentimental, as you may have noticed -- was the realization that these people didn't care about civil rights.And here: Are we having Fund yet?
I was also astonished by the poise with which my tablemates handled Althouse. Our companions did not raise their voices nor dismiss her (as I would have), but tried to calm her down. In fact, Althouse made the situation even more personal by yelling repeatedly at one of my dinner companions (who is also a colleague) that she was an "intellectual lightweight" and an "embarrassment to women everywhere." In fact, in my opinion, with that statement Althouse had actually identified herself. Before Althouse stalked away, I asked her to apologize for that insult, but she refused.
I don't think I said "embarrassment to women everywhere." That doesn't sound like my language. But I really was very angry at this young woman for her smiling and for her incessant justification of racial discrimination. I left the table because Bailey himself yelled at me in an extremely harsh way. He just kept saying "You don't know her. I know her." Basically, they were colleagues, and he was vouching for her. He didn't respond on the substantive issue. How could he? He agreed with her about private discrimination. At that point, I was so offended by these people that I got up and left. I felt terrible about causing a scene and being part of any ugliness. But on long reflection, I think I would have felt far worse if I had sat through all of that without saying anything.
Idea geeks. Okay. Well, my experience in legal academia is that people who try to get into the idea geek zone need to get their pretensions punctured right away. The sharp lawprof types I admire always see a veneer on top of something more important, and our instinct is to peel it off. What is your love of this idea really about? That's our method.I am interested in Althouse's reactions, because a few years ago I was invited to a Liberty Fund event, and found it a mixed bag. The Liberty Fund does some good things, has republished works by the Founding Fathers, copies of which they donated to my Russian and Uzbek universities. In addition, there were some very interesting people at the conference on aesthetics I participated in--I got to meet Canadian painter Alex Colville, whom someone I know and I later visited in Nova Scotia, as well as critic Roger Shattuck, whose writings on Proust are worthwhile. Nevertheless, I think that Althouse has picked up on something that was in the air. In her verbal confrontation with Ron Bailey (not my favorite person--he once came up to me at an AEI event to berate me for my publications on PBS, demanding that I should criticize C-Span, instead, because C-Span is part of a lobbying effort by the cable industry--I answered something like, "So what?" Which ended the conversation), in any case, it comes out that Althouse didn't go to the Liberty Fund "hospitality suite" for cocktails after dinner. I did go to one of those late-night "bull sessions." What I heard wasn't pretty, and not fit to print. (Neither Colville nor Shattuck appeared to be there.) Not used to this sort of thing, I excused myself soon after arriving. So, I tend to conclude that if Althouse had gone drinking with the boys and girls, she might have encountered even more evidence for her case... I do agree with Althouse that certain cult-like aspects undercut the seminars' potential for making more of a useful contribution to intellectual discourse and dialog. There should be a place for more robust debate. Unfortunately, Liberty didn't fully rise to the challenge, in my experience--or Althouse's.
We are here to harsh your geek zone mellow.
