14 December 2001
Best Buy and Goldberg
I amused Callie during a trip to Best Buy earlier today.
We were looking at a Yamaha CD changer, and I was carrying on about the thing. And some guy came up to me looking puzzled and asked if I worked there.
What is funny about that is that it should have been ABUNDANTLY clear I did not work there. I was dressed comfy -- some ugly (but really comfy) cargo pants, a white t-shirt (not the usual ugly blue Best Buy thing), and a ratty black fleece jacket with more than a few Kiwi (dog) hairs on it. Not the usual Best Buy associate gear. But apparently I looked knowledgeable or approachable or something. And this is the sort of thing that happens ALL the time. I've even had London residents ask me directions IN London (when I was actually halfway lost!). It's weird. Anyway, after I told the guy I didn't work there, apparently ANOTHER guy walked behind me and was also disappointed to hear that I did not work there. Hmm.
* * * *
As I predicted last night, the libertarian blogger reaction to Goldberg has been fast and furious. Not to mention shrill. He apparently struck a nerve, and much time and verbiage has been expended in blasting him. And while his overly broad generalization opened him for criticism (however Goldberg, read carefully, is clearly talking about a subset of libertarians in that column), he does make a valid point or two. One of those valid points IS that there is a subset of libertarianism that one might call nihilistic (or libertine) -- and that bothers some people. It bothered Rand, for example, and still bothers the ARI Objectivist camp. Goldberg's a much easier target than Rand, of course, and he seems to get great pleasure out of picking fights with hardcore libertarians. Indeed, every time he writes a column like this, he generates a huge buzz among hardcore libertarians, who inevitably go read his column and start pounding their keyboards. That MUST amuse him. And that's kind of sad -- like tossing a "What about Nietzsche's influence on Rand?" question into an ARI gathering or picking on a child, it's sure to result in a big damn ruckus, and not much else.
* * * *
Nick Gillespie, of course, had a reason to respond to Goldberg today, since Goldberg mentioned him by name. It's an interesting enough read, although the style doesn't do much for me. Reason and National Review have some differences, but they also have quite a bit in common intellectually. Gillespie's writing that "Nothing exercises National Reviewers quite so much as the sense that despite their standing athwart history yelling stop, it still keeps on a rollin' without them" is not that much different than Goldberg painting the Reason crew as a bunch of drug addicts (whether he was trying to be humorous or not). And sadly, the conclusion to Gillespie's eighth paragraph makes the same error of generalization as the libertarians attribute to Goldberg:
Note "the way conservatives tend to." As if there's a monolithic conservative movement. But that's not the case, as I've often noted (most recently last night), and is overly broad (just as Goldberg's characterization of "cultural libertarianism" was overly broad). There are the Kirkeans, and the Evangelicals, and the supply siders, and the libertarians (yeah, some us classically liberal types actually advocate conserving the principles of the American founding while at the same time being forward looking -- shall I apologize to Gillespie for NOT fearing change?), and the NROers, and plenty more factions. American conservatives are not the Burkean Tories of England (something that, no doubt, disappoints George Will).
I wonder if Gillespie's mischaracterization will generate as much excitement among conservatives as Goldberg's among libertarians. I'm guessing not, as conservatives just tend not to be as excitable on these sorts of things -- although I shouldn't underestimate the freepers. :)
[Posted @ 08:49 PM CST]
