Sean Andrews: Yes. Their numbers are growing.
On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 6:09 PM, Tom Walker <[email protected]> wrote:
> Unless they're all Randians...
-----------
This intersects with the issue that raised: the confusion generated by
ascribing political wrongness to lack of intelligence on the part of (for
example) viewers of Fox News. Raghhu seems implicitly to have granted the
intelligence of the commentators on Fox, saying he was referring to the
viewers. But that sill leaves us with obnoxious ideas held by some people of
obvious intelligence. How do we relate the intelligent holders of stupid
ideas with the stupid holders of stupid ideas?!!! I say we can't: we have to
explain stupid ideas in some other ways than in attacks on those who hold
those ideas. (Note: Randian ideas don't exist except in the brains and
actions of those who hold them, but this doesn't explain _why_ those brains
hold those ideas.) Where do those ideas come from!
Incidentally, those ideas do NOT seize on people in the sense Marx had in
mind when he argued that when they seize on the masses ideas become a
material force. Marx's thesis refers to direct participation in political
activity (in other words the politics of mass action), NOT in ideas
passively held and expressed only in the most passive of 'acts,' voting.
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