(urth) Predictions Re: The Politics Of Gene Wolfe

[Gwern Branwen]

On Wed, Aug 1, 2012 at 4:38 PM, James B. Jordan <jbjordan4 at cox.net> wrote:
> It's odd that a man who has written from a Christian, in his case Roman
> Catholic, strongly libertarian, anti-welfare state, and traditional
> conservative semi-isolationist perspective -- which after all is and has
> been advocated by people with IQs well over 150 for centuries and was the
> position of the founders of the United States -- is considered loony for
> doing so.

I sincerely hope the Founding Fathers would not have endorsed those
predictions when they were made; I had more respect for them. (On the
other hand, the colonists *were* conspiracy theorists who thought that
England was systematically undermining their liberties in order to
convert the colonies into fiefs which the Church of England and
monarchy could drain the blood out of for their private profit and
interpreted every move as a step in this cunningly laid plan by the
King's councilors and allies, so perhaps we shouldn't be overly
concerned with what they might have thought. No one's perfect.)

I don't consider him 'loony' for writing from that perspective. I even
cited 3 of my favorite authors who all fit that description (well,
except for the Roman Catholicism part - I believe Murray is not
Catholic).

I consider him 'loony' for making predictions that were obviously
going to be wrong at the time, and are even more obviously wrong now,
in the same way I consider contemporary Communists to be loony.

-- 
gwern
http://www.gwern.net