Keith,

Whatever you want, dude, but in the “transitive property” quote from me, you may notice that I’m objecting to the guilt-by-association argument, not endorsing it. So your parody of a slippery slope argument (as if I were endorsing that kind of reasoning, rather than objecting to it) seems like an odd response.

Bay Area National Anarchist,

Speaking as one irrelevant subculturalist to another, I’ll mention that I have a litmus test of my own. When someone starts talking about “irrelevant intellectuals” as if it were a bad thing to be one, I know that there is probably something wrong both with their ideas about both relevance and intellect.

Me:

It doesn’t really explain the paucity of black or other non-white authors, either. I hear there’s a lot of black people in America.

Robert Paul:

But Charles, we’re talking about the West going back 3,000 years, not just America in the last few centuries.

Yeah, but in fact such lists, while containing a smattering of titles that go back that far, and that get as far out as the outer boundaries of “the West” (which apparently, given the ideological slight-of-hand that goes into defining that peripatetic bit of real estate, get out towards Iraq, except not when there are Muslims there). But in reality they tend to be slanted very heavily towards the last 400 or 500 years of literature (Great Books of the Western World samples heavily from the Hellenes, tosses in a couple of Helenistic writers and a couple of Roman writers for good measure, and then traverses almost 1,000 years of history between Volume 16 and Volume 19 with only four authors covered — Augustine, Aquinas, Dante and Chaucer — so that the next 40 volumes, out of a total of 60, can be spent on covering the most recent 500 years.) Given the typically expansive coverage of modern authors, and given the typical tilt of such lists (when prepared by English-speakers) towards works in English, I think the argument that black American, or other non-white authors, simply got crowded out by all the historical and geographical expanse is correspondingly a lot weaker. If you have 40 very large volumes’ worth of space to devote to the last 500 years, and more than half of that specifically devoted to English-speaking authors, I would be very surprised if a selection based on quality or influence, did not make at least some room for some of the excellent black American authors who have written in that stretch of time and space (or Latin American authors, for that matter, or any number of other Westerners who seem to be typically missing from this kind of list).

In this case, the alleged problem is the left-wing statist criticism that the lists are “mostly” DWEM. … My problem with the criticism (not the list) is that, instead of focusing on the quality of specific works as you are suggesting, the focus is on some sort of equitable proportional representation by race and sex.

Well, maybe; that’s one way of looking at it. But I think a more charitable way of understanding the criticism (and one which happens to line up better with what radical literary critics have usually said, when I’ve encountered them) is not that they’re after some kind of statistical proportion between the authors on the list and the demographics of the general populace, but rather that they have many specific very good authors in mind, who typically don’t show up, and who the critic thinks are being excluded, in spite of the quality of their work, because the compilers of the list are blanking out large demographic groups. (Presumably that’s usually because of ignorance or indifference on the part of the critics, rather than conspiratorial bigotry; they don’t include works that they aren’t aware of or don’t care about. But what the compilers of such lists tend to make themselves aware of, and to care about, is not innocent of American racial or sexual or national politics. It may well be true that Zora Neale Hurston hasn’t had much effect on Mortimer J. Adler’s life; but the question is whether that’s because of her qualities as an author, or because of the kind of life he has led.)

On this reading of the complaint, the idea is not to force some kind of purely demographic proportion, but rather to criticize the ignorance or willing blindness which the disproportions are a symptom of.

Of course, I’m talking about serious literary critics here, not necessarily about (for example) school curriculum committees. I’m sure there are lots of those that threw Chinua Achebe onto the reading list solely in order to avoid complaints from black or white Leftist parents, without the administrators having bothered to give much a damn about how good his books are.

Me:

Children can and do administer over-the-counter and prescription drugs to themselves in homes, libraries, stores, museums, parks, and just about every single other institution that they encounter in their daily lives, with the sole exception of schools.

PG:

Homes have parents.

I don’t know about you, but sometimes when I was 13 years old, I was at home when my parents were not. Sometime I even took an Advil when they weren’t around, and without having checked with them first.

Children in libraries, stores, museums and parks generally are attended by parents.

I think you’re underestimating the amount of time 13 year olds spend outside of immediate parental supervision. But even if you weren’t, I don’t know what I’d be expected to infer from what you say here. If, when parents are around, 13 year olds aren’t generally subjected to zero-tolerance policies where they absolutely cannot consume prescription or even mild OTC drugs except through the mediation and supervision of their parents, then that would seem to indicate that the school’s policies are out of touch with what responsible 13 year olds are able to do, and in fact do, outside of the school. Which was my point.

Moreover, librarians, storekeepers, docents and rangers never have been deemed to stand in loco parentis. Schools have been, which is why you see this exception.

I’m aware of the legal reasons that government schools have felt compelled to adopt this kind of policy. But I think that’s an explanation of the policy, not a justification of it, and it is absolutely not a justification of using invasive and sexually humiliating methods to ensure that it is rigidly enforced.

As for standing in loco parentis, I think it’s a funny sort of justification for imposing policies that are far more invasive and busybodying than the practices of actually-existing parents. Of course, I know the legal reasons why this is so (specifically, the threat of a lawsuit), but that’s a good reason for dealing with the out-of-whack legal situation, not a good reason for anti-ibuprofen policies.

Black Bloke:

Interesting that he quotes something by Murray from his pre-anarchist days to “prove” that Murray himself knew that he wasn’t “really” and anarchist.

Brad:

Actually, if I recall correctly, Rothbard is said to have first become an anarchist in 1950 and the piece mentioned is said to be “from the 1950’s”, so it’s most likely not from before he became a complete anti-statist. That said, anarchists (like any other normal people) change their minds about stuff all of the time. By, at least, the time of the New Banner interview circa 1970(?) he was using the word anarchist to describe himself, if I recall correctly.

For what it’s worth, the article that Anarcho is citing as his critical source (“Are Libertarians ‘Anarchists’?”) is available online from Mises.org (has been for over a year now), which is almost certainly how he came across it, although, as per the usual AFAQ standards of scholarship when it comes to anarcho-capitalists, he doesn’t link to it. It’s the article in which Rothbard declares himself a “non-archist;” at the time his position was basically what Bob LeFevre was arguing for in the 1960s; that is, he had come out against the monopoly state as such (he explicitly argues against “limited government” in the article, and argues that “the pure libertarian must advocate a society where an individual may voluntarily support none or any police or judicial agency that he deems to be efficient and worthy of his custom”), but chose not to call himself an “Anarchist” because, at the time, he thought that “Anarchism” entailed either coercive collectivization, Proudhonian theories of interest, or Tolstoyan pacifism, all of which he rejected. By 1965 he had changed his mind and was speaking positively of anarchism and anarchists (see for example Liberty and the New Left, from Left and Right 1.2) as examples of libertarian politics, and by 1969 (see for example “Anarcho-Rightism” in Libertarian Forum 1.13) he was definitely using both “anarchism” simpliciter and “anarcho-capitalism” to describe his own views. Of course the big shift had partly to do with the fact that he had broken decisively from the Right and was hanging out with anarchists within the New Left; it also had partly to do with the fact that, based on the textual evidence, he seems to have read a lot more actual anarchist writing in between.

Anarcho-Mercantilist:

Tucker himself never described himself as a “mutualist.”

I don’t know off the top of my head whether or not Tucker ever specifically used the letters M-U-T-U-A-L-I-S-T as part of a description of his own views, but, just from a quick glance at materials I have on hand for electronic search, I am reminded that Tucker describes the economic principles he subscribes to (specifically, the cost principle and co-operative organization of capital) as “mutualism” and “mutualistic” in Mutualism in the Service of Capital (originally from Liberty, July 16, 1887; reprinted in Instead of a Book).

RonF:

The school has an interest in ensuring that drugs (whether OTC, prescription or illegal) are not distributed among the students outside of the control of the faculty and administration.

No it doesn’t.

No school in the United States spent a minute of its time worrying about anything of the sort until about 15 or 20 years ago, and there’s no real reason why they should, any more than they worry about whether or not students are distributing snack-packs or mechanical pencil refills outside of the control of the faculty and administration. Children can and do administer over-the-counter and prescription drugs to themselves in homes, libraries, stores, museums, parks, and just about every single other institution that they encounter in their daily lives, with the sole exception of schools. The current fixation of schools on trying to tend to every conceivable need that students might have and control every conceivable action that students might take, while on school grounds, is foolish and destructive.

It’s quite reasonable to presume that a kid might stash illicit drugs in their underwear if they don’t want to get caught holding them.

There needs to be some way of searching a kid to see if they’ve done that.

No, there absolutely does not.

If I were to grant, solely for the sake of argument, that schools ought to be concerning themselves with whether or not kids are carrying around Motrin outside of the control of the school nurse, then it would certainly not follow from that that the school has to be able to use strip searches in order to detect violations of the policies they set. Just because something is Against The Rules doesn’t mean that you’re entitled to do anything and everything in order to find out whether or not people are doing it.

Sometimes the only way to catch someone at breaking The Rules is to use procedures that would be too costly, that would interfere too much with other more important goals that the school is trying to accomplish, or that would unacceptably violate the student’s liberty, privacy, or dignity. If so, then what you have to do is just come to terms with the fact that you can’t always enforce all of your school policies all the times, and sometimes clever kids are going to manage to get away with something that the rules say they shouldn’t do — and, well, Christ, what else is new?

Bianca,

If I’d been able to make it to my local Tea Party, I would have done so, unironically.

The reason I would have done so is that I don’t approve of 30% of my income being taken away from me in order to fund the U.S. government’s ongoing efforts to blow up innocent people in foreign countries. Or to throw a few trillion dollars at failing corporations, so as to force me and my fellow workers to cover the costs of their bad investments, all for the explicit purpose of trying to use the force of the state to preserve the economic status quo.

Of course, you could say, “Well, aren’t there some things the government does that you do find useful?” Sure; I drive on the roads like everyone else. But if you total up the numbers, the government is spending more money — a lot more, by several orders of magnitude — on things that I find foolish, destructive, or morally appalling, than it is on things that genuinely help people. If I had a choice, I would certainly be happy to direct my money money away from the government’s war-machine and its corporate bail-out machine and direct a fair amount of that of my money towards things like roads and liberal education and mutual aid for my fellow workers. But, then, if I had a choice, we wouldn’t be talking about taxes anymore. We’d be talking about donations. The distinguishing feature of taxation is precisely the fact that the government makes me pay taxes in, whether or not I approve of the uses that they’ll be put to; and that I have no direct control over what purposes the government puts my money towards.

Robert Paul:

I’m sure you’re right; not many people would explicitly state a number like some AA quota. But if anyone complains that a collection is “mostly” DWEM (as if that is a crime in and of itself), then of course the only way to immunize yourself against that would be to make the collection at least 50% non-DWEM. The problem is the focus on race, sex, etc. over quality.

Could you help me out with a concrete example here? I mean, some specific work that you think oughtn’t be included on such lists, that does get included (or suggested for inclusion by Leftist canon critics) because of a focus on race, sex, etc. over quality? Or a work that ought, on the basis of quality, to be included, that isn’t included because of a focus on race, sex, etc. over quality? I hear this kind of complaint all the time, but the complaint is usually pretty thin on concrete demonstrations of the alleged problem.

Because if the answer is going to be something like Their Eyes Were Watching God or Nervous Conditions or Things Fall Apart, then my reply would be simply be that, y’know, those are actually some pretty good books.

In any case, the western-ness of the list doesn’t explain the paucity of female authors.

It doesn’t really explain the paucity of black or other non-white authors, either. I hear there’s a lot of black people in America.

GT 2009-04-19: Men in Uniform #3, (possible trigger warning) in which an L.A. county sheriff’s deputy stalks, terrorizes, and forces unwanted sexual contact on a woman he singled out at a bar, flashing both his badge and his gun along the way, and, by way of consequences, gets to plead out to “disturbing the peace” and return to work after a two-week vacation. Malestream media treats the case as if it were an example of a problem with alcohol abuse on the force, rather than, you know, sexual predators being allowed to roam around the city with badges and guns.

<a href=”http://radgeek.com/gt/2009/04/17/death_by/>GT 2009-04-17: Death by Homeland Security #3: The Disappeared, in which the United States government’s border Securitate leaves a man to die from a heart attack while in immigration lock-up, because they just couldn’t be bothered to get a mere immigrant medical attention, and then spends the next few years denying that the man ever even existed.

Brandon:

I can’t see much evidence of any exploitation of women by men.

Of course you can’t. Sex-class is so deep as to be invisible.

If you want to find evidence of systemic male oppression of women, there’s a lot of detailed discussion of it in those feminist books that you haven’t read. I can make some suggestions for places to start, if you’d like.

Brandon:

If there really is a male conspiracy against females …

There is as far as I know no serious feminist theorist in the world who believes, or who has ever claimed, that there is any kind of conscious global conspiracy by men against women. Feminist theory, especially radical feminist theory, makes frequent use of concepts like “patriarchy” and “rape culture,” but that’s not the same thing as a deliberate plan to keep women down. You don’t need a conscious global conspiracy in order for there to be large social structures with intense systemic effects that tend to benefit men as a class and hurt women as a class. The second article that Roderick refers you to, Women and the Invisible Fist, specifically discusses this point at some length.

Hope this helps.