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Post 0

Friday, April 23, 2004 - 12:46pm

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Thanks to Adam for the excellent analysis. I've posted some comments on it here:

http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog/2004_04_18_weekly.html#108274874353848703

The relevant bits:

Before examining Adam Reed's critique, I did carefully read Roger Donway's article. I found it extraordinarily mushy and muddled. Still, after wading through all the confusion, I found much to doubt and much to reject. The central questions of the article did not even makes sense:

Should we welcome this influence [of ideas from abroad on judicial decisions], as we welcome the vitality and fresh perspectives that certain immigrants bring to our economy? Or should we fight against this influence, as we fight against the tribalist and statist ideas that certain immigrants bring to our politics?

Augh, so much wrong packed into so few words! The presumption of these two questions is that the national origin of ideas ought to be regarded as somehow relevant to our response to them. But why should that be? Rational people are concerned with the truth or falsehood of the ideas they encounter, not with irrelevancies like being home grown or imported from abroad. They do not adopt one strategy for fighting domestic ideological disasters and other for fighting foreign ones. Yet such is what Donway recommends in the conclusion of the article:

Those who believe in America's Enlightenment philosophy should not fight these internationalists with the simple-minded doctrine that Americans must not listen to foreigners. We should not erect an ideological Fortress America that keeps out European ideas simply because they are European. But we do need to man the ramparts of an ideological Fortress Americanism that keeps out ideas alien to the philosophy of liberty on which our country was founded.

The twisted ideas about liberty promoted by "internationalists" who look to Europe for guidance are not fundamentally different from those developed and promoted by American intellectuals. All varieties can and ought to be fought on philosophic principle as deeply wrong and dangerous, not superficially hen-pecked as antithetical to our American traditions.

Post 1

Friday, April 23, 2004 - 4:35pm

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A minor correction: when I wrote that "the principles that specified the design of the Constitution of the United States - "separation of powers," "checks and balances," "government of laws and not of men" - were quoted in the Constitutional Convention by our Founding Fathers who had translated them, directly and literally, from "L'Esprit des Lois." - I was thinking from a vague recollection that Jefferson translated Montesquieu. I just double-checked, and it seems more likely that the Founding Fathers used the Thomas Nugent translation, which was published in London in 1752. Thomas Jefferson apparently read the French original of Montesquieu, and later translated the Destutt de Tracy "Commentary and Review of Montesquieu's 'Spirit of Laws': To Which Are Annexed, Observations on the Thirty-First Book, by the late M. Condorcet: and Two Letters of Helvetius, On the Merits of the Same Work." Thomas Jefferson's translation of the latter was published in 1811 in Philadelphia. Sorry for the error.

Post 2

Monday, September 13, 2004 - 3:59am

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Thank you! I must admit I never thought of Rousseau in connection with Rand before, but I most agree with your explication here and I feel most educated. Subtle and compelling... and far better than the conventionalism of TOC.

Currently reading William Blake's "the Marriage of Heaven and Hell".

- Jeanie

Post 3

Friday, October 21 - 2:17pm

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I found this critique of a 2004 article by Roger Donway most interesting when it came up at the bottom of my browser window today.

I didn't like that particular article any better than Adam did. I thought it was an expression of social conservatism and not of a recognizably Randian position. We can debate whether Rand was entirely successful at it, but as far back as The Fountainhead her aim was to transcend the dichotomy between bourgeois and Bohemian. Donway's article simply failed to acknowledge that Randian project--which I happen to think was a good one.

Of course, an article in a TOC publication doesn't speak for the members of TOC, and is not generally understood as speaking for them. If I'd thought, over the years, that articles in TOC publications were being taken as speaking for me, I'd have complained about a bunch of them--pretty vociferously, on some occasions.

It would be interesting to know how an ARI-affiliated writer would handle Rousseau's contributions to "romantic individualism." Or what happens when persons affiliated with ARI sharply disagree with any article that appears in an ARI-sponsored or ARI-leaning publication.

Robert Campbell