jriggenbach

Correction: I haven't taught at any level since January 2000. I miss it, and still hope to do it again. If I do, it'll probably be online. Frankly, it's hard for me to find work as a teacher at the college level. I have no Ph.D., only an M.A., like Michael. In today's academic environment, Ph.D.s are a dime a dozen. If you can get a guy (or a gal) with a Ph.D. to work for peanuts as an adjunct, what do you need with some superannuated guy with an M.A.? This is simplistic at best. Today, as for the past 40 years or more, the majority of libertarians have been either Randians or Rothbardians. And for all practical purposes, there is no significant difference, except that Rothbard was willing to pursue the logic of Rand's basic position to its logical conclusion - anarchism - and she wasn't. Read The Ethics of Liberty and tell me that Rothbard is an "anti-intellectual." JR

It's "Ghs," carol. The Phil thing was speculation. I don't think any apologies are necessary, especially since Phil never apologized to anyone for anything. Ghs I didn't say it was necessary. I said it would be gracious. Uncharacteristic, but gracious. cjs Oh, Phil, can you ever forgive me for suspecting you of being "Bertrand"? How well I recall the events of only a few weeks ago, when you were under attack on this list - under merciless attack by mean-spirited participants who ridiculed your ideals of civility and benevolence and gradually but inexorably backed you into a corner so that you found yourself in an almost impossible situation in which the only remaining thing you could do that was both civil and benevolent was to address Ellen as a "cunt." Everything else had been systematically stripped from you. It was like nothing I've ever witnessed before. Like a pack of hyenas. Or jackals. Oh, the shame I feel when I look in the mirror and realize that I was a part of that attack! JR

I thought I'd chime in here to say that I think Phil could write Bertrand's posts without breaking a sweat. I had myself suspected that Bertrand might be Phil. Then George gave voice to the same suspicion. In addition to the points George made, I'd note further Bertrand's devotion to tiresome bilge about "civility" and "namecalling" and "attacks" and supposedly "childish" conduct (to say nothing of his tacit asumption that we're all here for the identical reason - the only valid reason to be here, namely that we yearn to have a polite, structured discussion of important issues and "persuade" each other of our points of view on those issues. All this is very reminiscent of Phil. JR

I don't expect you to care anything at all about anything I might write, here or elsewhere, Michael. Far too much of it conflicts with what you passionately want to believe. I tried to stop writing about this particular topic approximately 24 hours ago, as I recall. If no one says anything further about it, I shall do the very same. If people insist on going on "correcting" my supposed "errors" on the subject, I'll probably continue to comment, though I think I find the whole subject far more tiresome than you do. If people don't like what I write, let them read something else. If everyone stops reading my comments on this subject, maybe they'll stop commenting about it themselves, and when that happens, I'll stop, too. JR

I somehow or other fucked up the formatting on the quote function for this post. When it comes to computers, I'm not very bright, and I haven't the time to figure out what I did wrong, so I'll insert lead-ins to indicate who is talking and who is saying what. I had written: "I'd say I don't really care what other people like." Jonathan replied: "Which is why you're so worked up about what they like?" Actually, I'm not "worked up" at all, Jonathan. If you think I am it's either because you've had so little experience with me that you simply don't know how to judge these matters, or, perhaps, because you are so "worked up" at the thought that someone has seen the truth about your childish preoccupation with football and basketball. There is another possibility, of course. Many people are unable to distinguish between someone who is being emphatic and someone who is "worked up." Particularly if someone is very emphatic in saying something people don't want to hear or don't like to hear - something that contradicts the conventional wisdom (the conventional wisdom in this case being something like "sports good, grunt, grunt, reading books boring and bad, grunt, grunt") or identifies a truth people feel uncomfortable acknowledging - they tend to become quite "worked up" themselves and generally are able to convince themselves that anyone saying such outrageous things and saying them so emphatically must be on some sort of emotional tear, raving and ranting in an incoherent and unhinged manner. (Ayn Rand does a fine job in Atlas Shrugged of depicting the behavior you can expect from most people if you openly identify some truth they don't want to acknowledge. I recommend it.) I had written: "Given what other people are, what they like will probably strike me as fairly stupid - somewhere on the scale from laughable to repugnant - but I don't really care." Jonathan replied: "As quick as you are to judge others for their liking of things which you don't, and as emotional as you are about it, it seems that you have a strong need to believe that others are beneath you." Does a man who declares that the sky is blue thereby reveal "a strong need to believe that the sky is blue"? I had written: "Short of rights-violating activities, I'm perfectly happy to let them like whatever they want. (I mean, it would be nice to live in a world that wasn't populated mostly by ignorant, tasteless clods, but I don't ask for perfection.)" Jonathan replied: "Ah, so you're the pinnacle of taste and refinement, are you?" By no means. Just a few light years ahead of around 90 percent of the population. Jonathan wrote: "I've asked some questions which you haven't answered." He was kind enough to repeat one of them: "Do you really not understand that the basketball or football games that an adult plays are much more complex than those which a child plays, or that adults who watch them are experiencing them on a level of complexity that children can't grasp?" I realize that adults who are secretly a little uncomfortable with their strong interest in such childish things have attempted to persuade themselves and others that this is true. It is, however, laughable on its face. There is clearly nothing about these games that would baffle a five-year-old, since that's the mental level of most of the thrashing, boneheaded jockstraps who play them. Anything else I can do for you? JR

I was thinking the same thing. In seeing JR's anger about others' enjoyment of sports, and his comparing it to the enjoyment of rape, murder and dismemberment, what popped into my mind was Hannibal Lecter's asking, "What did they do to you, Clarice?" Apparently someone badly hurt JR, and all these years later he's still lashing out at anyone who likes the things that his tormentors liked. J Yikes. I thought JR was just being polemical. Sports apply the mind to the body in specific focused ways for intense short periods - this kind of theme is addressed by literature, including some writers he admires-- though I see he thinks Roth is mediocre and obviously he did not enjoy The Great American Novel as much as I did, especially pitcher Gil Gamesh. I think of the non-enjoyment of sports as I do my non-enjoyment of jazz. But I don't think of the perpetrators and appreciators of that intensely irritating noise as subhuman or malevolent. I know they are highly intelligent and I just wish they had gone into a more agreeable line of work. Daunce, if you'll send me your real-world e-dress (using OL Messenger), I'll send you a couple of mp3 files that I think may challenge your "image" of the way jazz sounds. Care to try the experiment? JR

I'm sure you are aware that some say Trump has no solid business achievements - that it's all smoke, mirrors, hot air, and debt. As to your delusions about the people of America rising up in wrath at Obama because they realize he's manipulating them - dream on. I expect to see that when I see Godzilla walking through the streets of Manhattan. JR

Well, you know, The Management (as we call ourselves when we throw a party) does adapt to particular circumstances relating to the guest list. If we know a particular guest is coming and a has a fondness for a certain cheese - say, havarti or esrom - we make arrangements to have that cheese on hand. If we know a particular guest doesn't like jazz, we can easily set up an entirely classical program for that evening. JR

Well, of course, you know more about what my anger is directed at and what its sources are than I do, but I'd say I don't really care what other people like. Given what other people are, what they like will probably strike me as fairly stupid - somewhere on the scale from laughable to repugnant - but I don't really care. Short of rights-violating activities, I'm perfectly happy to let them like whatever they want. (I mean, it would be nice to live in a world that wasn't populated mostly by ignorant, tasteless clods, but I don't ask for perfection.) Back in the days when the majority were able, to varying extents, to ram their tastes down my throat, I bitterly hated them for it. Now, for the most part, I never even think about either their tastes or them. I focus my attention on what I want to focus my attention on and am seldom even reminded of the existence of those (and those activities) I don't like. I remember a few years ago, when I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, I heard an anecdote from a friend, Patrick. Patrick and his girlfriend, Christine, had gone to a party (they often did; Patrick was in public relations), and there was much talk at the party about the 49ers game that had taken place earlier that day. Finally someone spoke directly to Christine, saying something like, "How about those 49ers? Did you see the game?" And Christine responded, "Who are the 49ers?" Patrick looked at me in wonderment and said, "You know, I kind of envy her - that she could get that detached from the dominant culture and its distractions, that she could get that immersed in her own thing." He told me the story because he knew I would agree with him. Now and then, I do make a passing reference to one of my more intense dislikes, as when Selene (IIRC) asked me if I had read The Natural. Since I do hold Bernard Malamud in a certain amount of esteem, I thought I ought to offer at least a sentence or two by way of explanation of why I had not read his best known novel. So I said my antipathy toward sports makes it unlikely that I would read a novel or see a film that was centered on sports. Then someone else (PDS?) asked me to elaborate. This may have been a mistake. The novelist James M. Cain said once that all his novels were really about the same thing - the worst thing in the world: getting what you want. I think people who ask me to elaborate usually wish they hadn't. When I express my views at any length, it generally causes unhappiness. People become upset. A lot of people, knowing this from bitter experience, have adopted the policy of never asking me for my views. This is probably a wise policy. JR

How are you defining your cake rights, Jonathan? My cake rights are Peikovian in nature. When there is property which is common or shared, and whose ownership is in question, such as a last piece of cake at a party, then the person who "calls it first" is the rightful owner. Additionally, in this post, I pre-"called it first" on all existing and future last slices, as well everything else in the universe that no one has previously claimed to own. So, if you show up at JR's tea party before I do, and try to "call it first" on any pieces of cake or pizza, etc., be aware that I've already beaten you to it, and that if you attempt to take the last piece, you will be guilty of a vicious assault on the idea of property rights. J Further, I want it firmly understood that I recognize Jonathan's claim to have "called" the last piece of cake at my party first, and everyone is hereby put on notice that I will stop at nothing to defend his property rights while he is a guest at Chez Riggenbach. Sternly, JR

Why should I be? Have they been "lenient" with me? I don't suffer fools gladly. Which means I don't suffer the majority of human beings gladly. JR

One further comment on Jonathan's brilliant insights may be appropriate. The child's interest in games like baseball and basketball and football is not directly comparable to his interest in stories. This is because not all stories are simple enough to appeal to children, while all baseball, basketball, and football games inescapably are. It would thus be more useful to say that children like games and children like stories. Adults often continue to like stories after they have grown up, but typically they like somewhat more complex and intricate stories than the ones that appeal to children. There are, of course, many adults who go right on reading superhero comicbooks and other material of the same sort they read at the age of 10. Some of these adults never read anything any more complex or challenging than that. I think such adults may fairly be described as "stupid" or "retarded." An adult who reads a story like Atlas Shrugged or The Fifth Head of Cerberus is not exhibiting childishness. An adult who reads the story of the three bears is doing so - unless s/he is reading it aloud to a small child, or re-reading some favorites from childhood in anticipation of entertaining a small child in the near future, or perhaps re-reading some childhood favorites to indulge in a bit of nostalgia. If the adult is reading the story of the three bears because he or she still finds it as compelling and interesting and entertaining as s/he did when s/he was four, then the adult in question is displaying a quality I would call childishness. Similarly, adults often continue to like games after they have grown up, but typically they like somewhat more complex and intricate games than the ones that appeal to children. I can understand an adult playing bridge, but I have difficulty understanding an adult playing baseball or basketball, unless it's in the process of entertaining a child or to kill time during an exercise period, etc., etc., etc. The idea of an adult playing these games because, after all these years, s/he still finds them interesting is extremely difficult for me to wrap my head around - unless, of course, the adult we're talking about is retarded in some way. None of this is to deny or deprecate the various kinds of social reasons that might lead someone to attend sporting events or house parties where sporting events are displayed on a big screen TV. People like to get together. A sporting event is sufficiently mindless that you can sort of half pay attention to it and still make reasonably intelligent conversation about it with the people around you. It's not intrusive, like something you'd actually have to think about or pay close attention to. It can serve as a kind of noisy centerpiece to the gathering - the thing that nominally has brought all these people together, when in fact the thing that has brought them together is their desire to get together, and the "game" or "race" or whatever it is serves more as a symbol of that desire or as a pretext for acting on it. Now, have I thoroughly offended everyone? JR

Story time and make-believe are also for entertaining children, no? Do we see adults with serious expressions on their faces critically analyzing The Three Little Pigs or Hansel and Gretel? And yet we have adults dedicating large portions of their lives to talking about their favorite stories. Yes, I think that the proper definition of "barbarian" should be "anyone who has a talent for anything which JR does not, or who enjoys that which he does not." I think it would be quite entertaining to watch you trying analyze the structure of an NFL offense or defense, and then tell us again that it's a game for morons and 10 year olds. You really love your story time! Do you still do show and tell as well? J It's no fair to slice and dice a rant. A rant gets all it's strength and cohesiveness from its completeness. It's like this Easter stuff all over the television today. WTF? If you slice and dice Easter you'll have the left-over rabbit for diner; all else will be gone except the over-cooked eggs. --Brant Don't discourage Jonathan, Brant, I beg of you. He has insights into my dislike for sports that rival the insights of the great Austrian economists, Mises and Hayek, in their subtlety and well nigh universal applicability. For example, thanks to Jonathan's insights, I now realize that my own lack of talent for murder, rape, and dismemberment - and my lack of enjoyment when I watch these things - completely explains my tendency to label as a "barbarian" anyone who does have a talent for these activities and does enjoy either committing them or watching them. Thanks to Jonathan's brilliant insights, I now realize that there are no grounds for criticizing these people at all - unless, like me, one is consumed by an irrational prejudice against anything I don't do well and don't find interesting. Surely OL desperately needs analysis of this caliber on its site! JR

Story time and make-believe are also for entertaining children, no? Do we see adults with serious expressions on their faces critically analyzing The Three Little Pigs or Hansel and Gretel? And yet we have adults dedicating large portions of their lives to talking about their favorite stories. Yes, I think that the proper definition of "barbarian" should be "anyone who has a talent for anything which JR does not, or who enjoys that which he does not." I think it would be quite entertaining to watch you trying analyze the structure of an NFL offense or defense, and then tell us again that it's a game for morons and 10 year olds. You really love your story time! Do you still do show and tell as well? J Interesting, is it not, that Jonathan assumes any book I might read would tell a story? JR

I expect Hill wrote the scene because, not being very sophisticated in philosophical matters, she thinks moving the word "not" around in a sentence somehow mysteriously creates some sort of profundity where none existed before. The older Indian reminds me of my father. If I made any statement that began with the words, "I do not think," he would invariably say, "Don't tell me what you do not think; tell me what you do think." So, if I had said, "I do not think Rand makes a good case in her short article on the nature of government," I would rephrase that to "I think Rand does not make a good case in her short article on the nature of government." See? Did you catch the profundity in that rephrased version? Amazing, isn't it? JR

Where I live it is quite unnecessary to exert oneself in order to sweat. (Not even slightly.) JR

Now this is funny. With no evidence at all I had up to now thought that Ellen's husband was Larry Sechrest - and I don't know who Sechrest is except vaguely or why I made the association. Your mixup is understandable at least! Larry Sechrest died nearly three years ago. He was a libertarian economics professor at Sul Ross State University in West Texas. JR

Hmm, I didn't notice this before. You feel Bellow is a fraud, or a mediocrity, or both? I liked Herzog quite a bit, and I also liked Henderson the Rain King, though somewhat less. I finished Humboldt's Gift but wasn't interested in reading more Bellow after that. I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I've never finished anything by Philip Roth. He just doesn't click with me. I suspect JR has the same feeling I have, it's really just disinterest in sports, but when it gets foisted on you, like at a family get together where everyone's watching the football game and you're sitting there bored stiff, the feeling turns to antipathy. As he is so often, ND is astute in his analysis here. As a kid, I enjoyed playing neighborhood baseball on a diamond a group of us neighborhood kids built in a vacant lot at one end of my street. I even had a small talent for baseball. I couldn't throw, catch, or run worth a damn, but I could bat. And, as I say, I enjoyed it - up to the age of maybe around 12. Starting about then, I lost interest. This is, after all, a children's game. Why would it go on interesting an adult or even an adolescent? Do we see adults with serious expressions on their faces organizing tournaments and world championships and TV extravaganzas built around the game Go Fish? Or Tic Tac Toe? If I play a game like that now, it's because I'm entertaining one of my grandchildren - or some other little kid. The other major sports - which, where I grew up, meant football and basketball, never really interested me at all. I had zero talent for either of them and was repelled by the very idea of a game like football, in which one's goal (if one is a linesman, at least) is to knock one's opponent down and trample him. This is a "game"? This is "fun"? Maybe for barbarians, or for people with the intelligence of a mule or an ape. And the only interest I ever had in any sport was in playing it. If I didn't want to play it, I had no interest in it whatever. Sitting in an uncomfortable seat among a bunch of sweating, grunting morons, watching other people (grown men, if you can believe it) playing a game devised for and suitable for people about 10 years old - why would I want to do something like that? Why would I want to watch something like that on television, when I could watch a theatrical film or a documentary instead - or put on some music and read a book? If this is one's take on the whole sweaty subject and one has the misfortune to grow up in a place where it is believed that people without athletic talent or at least a strong interest in sports are utterly worthless and probably sexually deviant and definitely in need of a good beating - if one goes through the formative years of one's life having sports forced down one's throat in rather like the way corn is forcefed to a goose whose liver is going to become foie gras - one develops, over time, a fairly intense hatred of the whole sweaty, drunken, proudly meatheaded phenomenon. I'll say something about Roth and Bellow later. Right now I have to get dressed and go to a family gathering where I can turn my back on the TV and the stupid sporting event being displayed on its screen. JR

Never read it. My antipathy to sports tends to mitigate against my reading novels or seeing movies that focus on that detestable subject. (There are a few exceptions to this general rule, but not many.) I read Malamud's second novel, The Assistant, when I was just out of college. While I was in college, I read some of the short stories in The Magic Barrel. Both of those reading experiences persuaded me that Malamud was a much better writer than frauds and mediocrities like Philip Roth and Saul Bellow, who were being touted along with him at the time as important authors. Nevertheless, I never got around to reading anything else by him. I did see the movie of The Natural with Robert Redford (in an effort to be sociable and please my mother), but I remember almost nothing about it. JR Okay, now, this is very intriguing, JR's antipathy to sports. It reminds of Ulysses S. Grant's innate antipathy to the sound of music. JR: is your antipathy innate, or an acquired distaste? It's an acquired distaste. JR

Today's Süddeutsche Zeitung (the leading German newspaper) has a big interview of Philip Roth by the author, translator and literary critic W. Winkler. (Winkler has translated John Updike, Anthony Burgess and Saul Bellow not German. In the caption, Roth called 'the most important writer of our time'. What do you think of Roth as a 'fraud' and a 'medioctrity'? Edit your post again, Xray, so that it's comprehensible. Then I'll take a look at it and, perhaps, reply. JR

Jeff, Could you be so kind as to shed some light on what he was hoping for? Inquiring minds seek enlightenment. Michael I think you could describe it as acknowledgement of simple truth, or something like that. But I'll say no more about it. I'm an extremely unkind person, as you know. JR

Was it Anne Wortham, by any chance? JR

Martin, As far as I can tell, this is an opinion. You want me to take it as fact? I know a little, not much, but a tittle about the secondary oil market from having watched it up close. This was outside the USA, granted, but I was involved with real players. What I have seen doesn't align with your opinion. Nor is it as simple as you are putting it. But essentially, the following is true--when the bribes flow and the dictators in oil countries are killing their folks with USA support, we get long stretches of pretty cheap and stable gasoline prices. About whether Objectivist this or Objectivists that, I don't play that us-against-them game. I thought I have made that clear over several years posting online and running one of the most renegade outside-the-box sites on Objectivism on the Internet. Also, I am not a friend of Neocon policies like several prominent Objectivists are, and I have been open about my disagreements, so I have no reason to defend them. Nor do I play the one wrong justifies another game. Sorry. I am of the same opinion as before for the reasons I gave. Michael I know that wiggling, squirming, and retreat into meaningless rhetorical flourishes like "us-against-them game" and "one wrong justifies another game" were not really what you were hoping for here, Martin. But in all honesty, what else could you have expected? My congratulations for your usual eloquence and my condolences for what it led to. (At least we didn't have to sit through any incoherent rambling about "haters" or "bullies.") JR

Is it any dumber than standing beside Republicans and other conservatives and preaching individual rights? Just curious. JR

Jeff, Are you talking to me and addressing something I wrote? Just wondering... You quoted me, so it appears you are... Michael Yes, Michael, I was. But I now see my error. I had supposed that the second of your two short paragraphs quoted above was written on more or less the same subject as the paragraph that preceded it - that is, that we were still talking about the desperate need to defend Israel against the Satanic cabal of "leftists," "Islamists," and libertarians that is out to destroy it. My apologies. In the future, I will never assume that, in any given paragraph of one of your posts, you are talking about the same subject you were addressing in the immediately preceding paragraph. Humbly, JR