Oh, yes!

Yoo bad Ronald Reagan never came to regret that he launched his 1980 general campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi by proclaiming his love for "states rights."

why should he? states rights remain a viable issue except to those who slander it constantly and unendingly as a "racist" issue.

Why not? John Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, that's why not.

"States rights" to launch a Republican presidential bid in 1980 in that Philadelphia? Wrong place, wrong time, as in that context "states rights" was code for segregation and affirmation for attacks on civil rights workers.

Race relations was the weakest part of Reagan's presidency.

Better to have spoken and retracted than never to speak at all.

Yes.
Although it really is silly of me to be ashamed of what I said when I was six years old:)

BTW, I think most of those guys aren't embarrassed. Anthony Lewis doesn't strike me as the type to be ashamed of once saying that the USSR can't be evil, because most theologians agree that there ain't no such thing. It's still a rather fashionable claim. For some reason, belief in the existence of evil is considered Manichaean. My encyclopedia disagrees, but who needs facts when you have such a cool word? (Manichaean, Manichaean, Mani...)

Joel,
I don't believe in "code" language and I don't think Reagan did either. He was a plain language type. It's also a fact that Reagan was in favor of states' rights (the plain, non-racist variety), so why is it necessary to look for a deeper, more sinister, "code" interpretation?

I didn't go looking for anything. Reagan looked for a place to begin his campaign. He could have used that Philadelphia kick-off to praise black voting rights. Instead, he stuck by his opposition to the 1965 voting rights act.

Somewhere in my mother's basement is a box of casette tapes with songs by such bands as Christian Death, the Cure, and Alien Sex Fiend - in a case with a sticker that says "F**k Reagan/Bush".

Do I regret it? Nope - because Goth music is fun (although sometimes I think prozac "cured" the movement) and because the idiot that I was in the 80s has made me into the idiot I am today.

Joel: You do make a good point. On the other hand, as one of those weirdos who's rather tired of being accused of being a racist merely for believing in the Bill of Rights, and as one who's read several books on Reagan and knows that Reagan was never a racist or a segregationist, I'm not real impressed with the whole "code words" thing.

Opposition to some parts of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was principled on the part of many people who had not a racist bone in their bodies. Then again,go back 25 years and say, "was that the best time and place to bring that up?" and I would agree that it is cringeworthy. Then again again, it seems to me like we're working to find something bad to say. But then again again again (heh), maybe you have the right of it: we shouldn't deify the man, who was hardly perfect.

Maor: Most theologians agree there's no such thing as evil? Hmm. Define "most." ;-)

No. I've never regretted anything I have said or done in 70 years. Partly because regret is stupidly futile. If you have never done anything to feel ashamed about, and if you are not the kind of religious believer who is overwhelmed by "sin" (christians) or "guilt" (jews) or whatever sends muslims into agonies of self-recrimination, and if you are not running for public office (which is truly foolish), then what in hell do you care about how people respond to what you said 20 years ago? Or even to what you said 20 minutes ago?

Stop being other-directed. That means all of you. You will find that your lives are far happier and productive.

I remember one of the greatest lines I have ever read in English literature. It was in Ayn Rand's "Fountainhead". Howard Roark, the architect, is standing on a New York street looking up in open admiration at a skyscraper that he had designed -- a perfect example of modern architecture in which form totally follows function. An architectural critic who writes for a great newspaper, a man named Ellsworth Monkton Toohey, with a personality that matches his name, sidles up to Roark and asks him:

"Mr Roark. We are alone here. Why don't you tell me what you think of me? In any words you wish. No one will hear us."

And Roark answers him without even dropping his glance from the great building:

"But I don't think of you."

There has been no greater nor more appropriate put-down that I ever have read.

And that is the kind of person that all men ought to ought to be, who wish to accomplish anything in life.

For starters, do any of you have any real idea of what I mean by what I have written here? I hope so.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

A bit off topic, but I thought everyone might enjoy this Bush Country Ketchup . Check out the Top Ten

All that counts is the number of electoral college votes on November 8, 2004. After which, all these cute ketchup bottles are about as meaningful as "Win the War Quicker With Dewey and Bricker" pins (from 1944).

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Dean:

I'm getting tired of the "conservatives = racists" trope, too. You might ask Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell, Deroy Murdock, and Condi Rice what they think of it, too.

Arnold Harris:

I totally agree -- to disagree, i.e., to stand apart and rise above the herd like Roark and Dominique (and Wynand, as he could have been). Yes, I've always loved that passage you quoted, as I love so many other passages in "The Fountainhead", my favorite novel ever.

Here's one I'm thinking about: Dominique tells Roark: "You're casting pearls before swine without getting even a pork chop in return."

Ayn Rand. "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged". Dominique and Roark. Dagny and John Galt. What I'm thinking, and have thought before, is this: From one point of view, Dominique is to Roark as Dagny is to Galt, i.e., an androsexual woman (with whom Rand identified) in love with her ideal man, the hero of the novel.

But, from another point of view, it's reversed: Dominique is to Roark as Galt is to Dagny (and as Francisco D'Anconia is to Henry Rearden). Roark, Rearden, and Dagny just want to keep on keeping on, doing the work they love, not thinking of the Tooheys and other parasites. Dominique, Francisco, and Galt are urging them to quit, to stop casting pearls before swine, to stop feeding the parasites, to go on strike, to shrug. In "The Fountainhead", Roark ultimately convinces Dominique that he is right. In "Atlas Shrugged", Francisco and Galt ultimately convince Rearden and Dagny that they are right. And, after "Atlas Shrugged", Rand never wrote another line of fiction. A couple decades later, she stopped writing non-fiction. I know another blogger (not anybody here) who is about to do the same. Atlas is starting to shrug.

Dean, did you ever want to look back at some of the discssions that were posted on the Apple Tree BBS? Maybe I would take back some of what I said...

Arnold,

What I got out of what you wrote is that we should all be atheists and worship ourselves. Except that then would we still be atheists?

Well, the question was:

"Do you ever look back 20 years and wish you hadn't said certain things?"

As most of you have answered in freudian or Al-Gorean, I take the question to mean, do you ever look back 20 years and wish you hadn't said certain things, as in "I do."

Only the married and the no longer married will understand. We ain't talking atheism here. But that's only my opinion.

Bill Lambert: Oh, you're THAT Bill Lambert? Ha! Will have to send you a note.

Arnold: Oh, I'd take back all sorts of things I said 20 years ago. And it has little to do with being other-directed. Not that I give all that much of a damn about what that crazy old bat Ayn Rand said, but there's a matter of personal pride. When you're forced to re-evaluate things, it helps you avoid making the same mistakes over and over again.

When I was around 15, I told my dad that he was just an old, balding man who wore funny clothes. Yep, I regret that and lots of other things I've written or said. I regret many of the things I said about Hubert Humphrey. Because I was against the war, I wasn't willing to give him credit for doing anything good.

The past is the past, good and bad, brilliant or stupid, dedicated or indifferent. We all have our pasts...have I done or said anything in my past which was embarassing or stupid? Oh yes, we all have to grow up and learn, and we learn by our mistakes.

But would I change my past, would I correct my mistakes?

Would I do anything to change my past?

NO!

I've had a marvelous life, I couldn't list, without writing a book, all the great things which have happened in my life, as well as the many sad things which we all suffer.

My wife and I are in the 'late' years of our lives and we bless the lives we have led which brought us to each other for the past 31 years.

The present is a fragile child of the past.

If I had done better in the fifth grade on spelling, would I have found the love of my life at age 40?

Two things I have learned in life....Don't mess with the 'Lone Ranger' and don't toy with the past.

I know, I tried it once, and you all disappeared!

Thank God for reset buttons.

Mr. Harris, if you've never done anything to be ashamed of, good for you. Permit me to point out that most of us require a little more trial and error. Hell, I managed to ruin a friendship just last year by lapsing in discipline and letting my 0° K bitch persona get the better of me. I don't feel like a self-flagellating ninny for regretting it and taking a little time for self-reflection so I don't, you know, do it again.

To move on to other people's faults, which are far more fun to talk about, I think Sullivan's round-up was a good reminder of how people judged Reagan at the time, but I don't see any assertions that he was "always celebrated" that are in need of a "corrective." What most commentators seem to be saying is that his stock rose and criticism of him dulled after he left office, which isn't the same thing and strikes me as being pretty accurate.

I always look back and think "fuck 'em, shoot 'em" was a tad rash.
Then they say something stupid again and I think...

Dean,
'Most theologians agree there's no such thing as evil? Hmm. Define "most." ;-)'

Sounds pretty crazy to me (or maybe I'd say: define "theologians") but that's what Anthony Lewis seemed to be saying.

I don't know how people can say that it's crazy for Bush to believe that Saddam is evil, when they seem to be so confident that Dick Cheney (not to mention Enron) is evil. I guess it's OK if you don't say "evil". Not enough syllables.

Joel Thomas, I never ever have said I am an atheist. My self definition is apatheist. Go look it up on the website of the church of apatheism ("Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing." - H.L. Mencken).

About the other part of your great idea. Self-worship accomplishes nothing more than to turn a horse's ass into his own reflection. If you are one of these religious crazies who think they can commune with the dead, go ask the ghost of the Roman emperor Nero, who, when forced to commit suicide or face a mob, died complaining what an artist the world was about to lose. If you imagine that being self-directed and avoiding altruism implies self-worship, then you have only a shallow idea of what individualism and objectivism represent.

Dean, what I admire most about objectivism -- the philosophy of Ayn Rand -- is that it puts the human focus squarely on individualism and the heroism of human accomplishment in the face of great odds. In so doing, I could not care less what others think of Rand's life or her work. But you should be aware that objectivism is now being seriously studied seriously as a philosophy on major academic campuses.

Steven Malcolm et al, I admire Ayn Rand and her literary heroes as much or more than you do, having started reading her works almost 45 years ago in my undergraduate years. But I think that if bloggers are dropping out, it is because they are getting burned out trying to reply to so much commentary. Or, at the other end of the spectrum, few if any people come onto their websites and post comments.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Arnold Harris:

Very good! Yes, Ayn Rand is now being seriously studied by scholars. I subscribe to Chris Matthew Sciabarra's "Journal of Ayn Rand Studies". I must note that Leonard Peikoff and other orthodox Objectivists do not approve of Professor Sciabarra's approach.

A little note of clarification: The blogger I alluded to (and I am not at liberty to do anything more than allude) stopped allowing comments on his blog a long time ago. He is quitting for other reasons, very similar to the reasons behind the episode of Dominique and the statue of Apollo. That's all I'll say about that until it happens. Like the light of the remotest stars reaching men's eyes after a billion years, as Nietzsche said -- or like a star suddenly winking out.

Interesting comment on self-worship. From another point of view, though, I have often thought that Nietzsche was an atheist because he was entirely too humble. He said: "If there were Gods, how could I bear not to be a God? Therefore, there are no Gods!" He should have said: "If there were Gods, how could I bear not to be a God? Therefore, I must be a God! I must strive to become a God!"

Dean Esmay and Arnold Harris:

Yes, I admire "that crazy old bat" Ayn Rand -- _and_ I worship a pantheon of Supreme Beings, any of Whom may or may not have ever made love to any mortal women, Jewish or not, on this planet or any other. Like E. Merrill Root synthesizing the individualism of Ayn Rand with the theism of Whittaker Chambers, I'm synthesizing the synthesis of E. Merrill Root with the polytheism of Stephen A. McNallen. (Too bad Sondra K. isn't here, she knows more about that.) Root did admire Norse mythology, Odin and Thor fighting against the Frost Giants (who symbolized the Communists for Root).

It is also an absolute must that a gynosexual woman, a woman-worshipping woman, a Sapphist Ayn Rand, must someday write the book "Lesbianism: The Unknown Ideal"

All of which reminds me of holy Dawn and her holy Negro wife Norma, and their filmstrop and booklet "The Two Isms: Lesbianism vs. Communism"

Which reminds me of that book written in the 1950s: "Communism vs. the Negro"

The _style_ of it all!

their filmstrip and booklet

Maor wrote:
"For some reason, belief in the existence of evil is considered Manichaean. My encyclopedia disagrees, but who needs facts when you have such a cool word? (Manichaean, Manichaean, Mani...)"

Haven't they ever heard of Zoroaster, a.k.a. Zarathustra? He was the man or prophet who started the whole Middle Eastern (Zoroastrian, Jewish, Christian, Islamic) tradition of a dualism of God and His angels vs. the Devil and his horde of demons, and of the coming final battle between the two, followed by a resurrection of all the dead, a Last Judgement, Heaven and Hell. The Gospel of John and the Book of Revelation (a.k.a. Apocalypse) are very Zoroastrian.

Manichaeanism was but a later variant on Zoroastrianism. Mani identified spirit, the soul, with good but matter, the body, with evil. Closely related to the Gnostics and the Marcionites, they believed that the Zoroastrian-Jewish-Christian God, the Creator of this material world, was actually the Devil or an inferior being. They were heavily influenced by Plato, and, in turn, heavily influenced Christianity.

Steven,

Yeah, easy for you to can say but what did Ayn Rand think of St. Finbar and St.Muredeach along with a whole hosts of other Irish dudes including the firbolgs, Queen Maeve and the Tuatha de Danaan. The firbolgs were as you may not know the first bolggers, known centuries later as bloggers.

Arnold,

I never said you were an atheist. I said that's what I got out of what you wrote. In other words, that's how it sounded to me.

Ayn Rand was clearly anti-Christian, so it also amuses me that many Christians consider her writings like a second Bible. The writings of Rand and the Bible can't be reconciled, though.

"Ayn Rand was clearly anti-Christian, so it also amuses me that many Christians consider her writings like a second Bible."

Joel,

I can agree and disagree here. Many Christians do not know Ayn Rand and could care less. Her writings are largely idiocy but with enough reasoned nuance that some think of her as brilliant. I read her in the late 1950's and after. Recently, I scanned through a book at the local Barnes and Noble and anyone with half a brain will realize its all nonsense. One chapter conflicts with every other chapter. Why anyone would hang their philosophical beliefs on her writings are beyond my comprehension. There is only one core belief that I find in her writings that make sense. And that is man (i.e men and women) are individuals with individual decision making power. Other than that she ain't worth a dimes worth of interest. And her discovery is hardly original. Any student is much better off reading a core american writer like Samuel Clemens. At least, he will give you an honestly phrased argument instead of intellectual quicksand.

Catch 22 wrote:
"Yeah, easy for you to can say but what did Ayn Rand think of St. Finbar and St.Muredeach along with a whole hosts of other Irish dudes including the firbolgs, Queen Maeve and the Tuatha de Danaan. The firbolgs were as you may not know the first bolggers, known centuries later as bloggers."

Indeed! I care not what Ayn Rand thought of this nor of what others think of Ayn Rand. I care only at this point about the firbolgs, Queen Maeve, and the Tuatha de Danaan, and only to say that anything else I could say further in this thread would only be anticlimactic. So, only: Thank you!

Steven,
They don't accuse Bush of being Zoroastrian, because "Manichaean" sounds much cooler!

It's still mind-bogglingly stupid of them to confuse dualism and the concept of evil, even as an excuse to say "Manichaean".