When Robert Paul Wolff strays from the 'reservation' of Good Sense and floats up to Cloud Cuckoo Land* I refer to him as 'Howlin' Wolff.' The man is quite a study, a representative specimen of the species, academic leftist. When I criticize him, there is nothing personal about it: it is the species, not this particular specimen that is the cynosure of my interest. The way to study a species is via representative specimens.
Some of Wolff's posts at The Stoned Philosopher The Philosopher's Stone are outstanding and I agree with them in toto. But others are just loony. And the good professor seems unaware of just how crazy and irresponsible they are. The man is 80, but not demented as far as I can tell. But he is a lifelong lefty, having first drunk the Kool-Aid at the Sunnyside Progressive School, a "red diaper operation," as he himself characterizes it.
In a recent outburst, he writes,
I'm not sure you youngsters know just how hard it is for me to keep writing light, amusing things on this blog while the world around me is going to hell. There is so much to be angry about -- legitimately morally outraged -- at home and abroad that I can scarcely get through the day without encountering six or seven reasons to despair. [. . .] I am talking about genuine man-made evils . . . . Sometimes they spring from religion, such as the barbarism of ISIS or the oppression of the Palestinians. Sometimes they are rooted in bureaucratically entrenched racism, like the murder of Michael Brown. Often they are grounded in the very structure of our political economy, like the obscene inequalities of wealth and income.
Wolff here vents "a rage that can find no appropriate expression" over "The judicially sanctioned murder of Trayvon Martin . . . ."
"Meanwhile, Zimmerman's gun will be returned to him. He would have suffered more severe punishment if he had run over a white person's dog."
What fascinates me is the depth of the disagreement between a leftist like Wolff and a conservative like me. A judicially sanctioned murder? Not at all. A clear case of self-defense, having nothing objectively to do with race, as I have made clear in earlier posts. And please note that "Stand Your Ground" was no part of the defense. The defense was a standard 'self defense' defense. Anyone who is not a leftist loon or a black race-hustler and who knows the facts and the law and followed the trial can see that George Zimmerman was justly acquitted.
Wolff ought to be proud of a judicial system that permits a fair trial in these politically correct times. But instead he is in a rage. What would be outrageous would have been a 'guilty' verdict.
Was the blogger at Philosopher's Stone a stoned philosopher when he wrote the above nonsense? I am afraid not. And that is what is deeply disturbing and yet fascinating. What explains such insanity in a man who can write books as good as The Autonomy of Reason and In Defense of Anarchism?
Does the good professor have a problem with Zimmerman's gun being returned to him after he has been cleared of all charges? Apparently. But why? It's his property. But then Wolff is a Marxist . . . .
It is sad to see how many fine minds have been destroyed by the drug of leftism.
Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions. (Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right)
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