Transcript of Hesperado's comments on Auster
In Dean Ericson's defense of Auster, he writes:
"The reason liberals and conservatives have been ineffectual at countering our leftist enemies, the reason we remain morally paralyzed and incapable of effective defense, is that we share certain basic moral premises with leftists -- all people are equal", and "discrimination is wrong", being two of the most paralyzing."
This accurately represents Auster's method & analysis, and unintentionally discloses one major problem with it: Auster hammers his point relentlessly and with myriad permutations on the level of description, but never seems to bother to probe the level of causation. While it is useful to call attention to the massive fact that the vast majority of Centrists and Conservatives share with Leftists the same tendency to whitewash Islam, it is of equal importance to investigate why this is. I find Auster's failure to do the latter tends to result in the development and communication of a taxonomy separating "liberalism" from "true conservatism" that is curiously and paradoxically at once simplistic and tortured, not to mention vulnerable to paranoid conspiracy theory and/or a Gnostic view of society and politics -- at least, to the degree that one wrests coherency from it. The only thing that seems to save this Austerian taxonomy from these flaws is the contraction of the "true conservative" to the rump of a remnant composed only of Auster, his approved commenters on his blog, and those preciously rare individual writers or politicians in whom Auster has detected no signs of the "false conservative" -- a rump so negligible and echo-chamberishly incoherent it would not rise even to the level of a Gnostic sect.
Incidentally, and apropos of the above, Dean Ericson mentions Auster's ability to sniff out "liberalism" in Conservatives by testing their posture with regard to the problem of Islam and by thus detecting unacceptably soft approaches to that problem -- or among those who pretend to have a stronger stand, by noting their lack of any concrete plan to deal with that problem. I have analyzed Auster's concrete plan on my blog and found it wanting mainly due to incoherence. In this context, I also sniffed out "liberalism" in Auster's own approach. One example: when articulating his plan of containment of Muslims in Muslim lands, he writes:
..this containment of the Muslim peoples can be accomplished without violating their dignity and essence as Muslims.
Aside from the preposterousness of claiming that a people's "dignity and essence" would not be inherently violated by forcing them into quarantine at the point of a gun (and, of course -- to the extent Auster is capable of pursuing the logic of his own formulations -- to punish them with violence if need be should they defy the quarantine), and aside from the blatantly incorrect notion of Islamic "dignity and essence" which in the Islamic worldview is precisely violated when their God-given right and mandate to imperialistic Lebensraum is denied (which it would be on the most massive scale imaginable under Auster's containment policy), there is the deeper, more "liberal" problem with Auster's words here: who gives a flying fiqh about the "dignity and essence" of Muslims anyway? Only "liberals" do that, I thought.
For the full details of my analysis, see my essay The Iron Veil -- in which, incidentally, I propose what I think is a more coherent plan of global quarantine of Muslims to solve the metastasizing problem their Islam is causing the world:
Two Cents,
Your argument in defense of Auster has an internal defect: it fails to account for the overwhelming likelihood, given the powerfully dominant and mainstream climate of opinion throughout the West that prevails now and that shows no signs of abating, that in fact the West will in the coming two decades at the very least (if not much longer) continue to refuse to see the building burning -- while even the timid voices of "perhaps we should call the fire dept." will remain marginal, though growing as time goes along.
Given this concrete factor that alters the abstract position of Auster, Auster needs to have a contingency plan: because the West in 20+ years -- with the population of Muslims within the West having increased by millions due to immigration continuing to be allowed and even encouraged in the meantime as well as untold numbers more being born within the West to multiple baby-factory wives -- will have changed sufficiently to alter the configuration of the problem. At that point, merely halting immigration will not be enough, and Auster's supplementary carrot-and-stick incentives to Muslims to voluntarily leave will have even less traction among them than they would now. Indeed, assuming the West is ready to engage the gears of immigration halting at that point, it will likely inflame and "radicalize" the increased millions of Muslims within the West, putting us in increased jeopardy (for it is safe to assume that during those intervening decades, innumerable and unpinpointable Muslims will have been patiently laying the groundwork for multiple WMD attacks in addition to smaller-scale attacks on us from within), and leading to a chain-reaction of events that would force the West to violate the "dignity and essence" of Muslims which Auster worries about in far more ruthless ways than he ever imagined.
Two Cents,
A counter-argument requires actually understanding the argument you are countering. Your attempted counter-argument fails to adequately factor in my argument.
The first step to establishing the proper footing for an actual debate in such a circumstance, then, would be to paraphrase the argument of your interlocutor, followed by the interlocutor agreeing that you have indeed understood him correctly. At that point, you would engage with the argument point by point, and then your interlocutor would have something actually substantial and relevant to respond to.
I only point these elementary things out for general purposes; not with any expectation that they will be respected and practiced.
Two Cents responded:
"I responded to what you wrote."
Unfortunately, simply claiming something is so does not suffice as an equivalent of actually demonstrating it. The only way to do that, again, is:
1) to paraphrase my initial argument
2) to wait to see that I agree that your paraphrase is accurate
3) to then proceed with a counter-argument.
All else is just so much hot air. And not only is it hot air, it is an insult to Western Civilization.
moldbug,
Everything you say has merit, but still doesn't exempt Auster from the remedy of constructive criticism which, when it is appropriate, helps anyone who isn't God. The task then is to winnow out the constructive criticism from the useless or counter-productive criticism; not to bracket out all criticism. The former requires a kind of rational labor that Auster and his acolytes often don't seem to be capable of, whatever other talents he and they, following him, do possess. It is thus left up to others. That's the way of Western Civilization.
Hesperado says,
Aside from the preposterousness of claiming that a people's "dignity and essence" would not be inherently violated by forcing them into quarantine at the point of a gun (and, of course -- to the extent Auster is capable of pursuing the logic of his own formulations -- to punish them with violence if need be should they defy the quarantine)
The liberal case for open borders is precisely that it inherently violates people's "dignity and essence" (and their "human rights", etc.) for a country to control its borders and deny aliens entry (if necessary, by force). If you say it is preposterous to claim that a country cannot control its borders without violating the "dignity and essence" of those aliens who seek entry, then you are clearly a liberal who has accepted the liberal premise that "borders must be open" and is paralyzed by it. Auster, on the other hand, is not a liberal, so why should he accept this liberal premise?
Ilíon adduces apparently inconvtrovertible evidence that Auster misrepresents Steyn. I have also seen incontrovertible evidence of Auster misrepresenting me (though I don't expect readers to believe me without evidence, for now too tedious to reproduce). Given the mature comportment of Ilíon here, I tend to trust his word on others whom he claims Auster has similarly misrepresented, as well as on the ensuing stubbornness of his denials in the face of criticism re: his initial misrepresentations.
I don't, however, necessarily draw the same conclusion that Ilíon does -- that Auster is willfully lying. This could be the case, but I think it's worse. At least a liar has coherence. I think Auster has some serious problems with ratiocination, which if so must include psychological factors. Among other effects this has is to render his analyses suspect, particularly when they rely on evidence he uses, evidence the reader sometimes doesn't have time and patience to peruse and amplify with larger contexts.
This doesn't apply everywhere at all times the same, of course. Sometimes Auster is quite good at critiquing the expressions of others who need a good thrashing. Other times, however, he fails, sometimes in small points, sometimes egregiously, as Ilíon has documented. And when Auster fails egregiously, he compounds the problem by digging in his heels and making the problem morph into sometimes grotesque proportions. And then his acolytes circle the wagons, and the rest is intra-Blogospheric history.
JP,
You made an elementary, yet also unforunately major, error in reading me.
You quoted me --
Aside from the preposterousness of claiming that a people's "dignity and essence" would not be inherently violated by forcing them into quarantine at the point of a gun (and, of course -- to the extent Auster is capable of pursuing the logic of his own formulations -- to punish them with violence if need be should they defy the quarantine)
-- then you objected:
"The liberal case for open borders is precisely that it inherently violates people's "dignity and essence" (and their "human rights", etc.) for a country to control its borders and deny aliens entry (if necessary, by force)."
Before I reproduce the rest of your objection, I apparently need to clarify what I thought was already clear in my post: namely two points:
1) to quarantine a people under military force does in fact "violate" their "dignity and essence";
however,
2) violating a people's "dignity and essence" is a good thing, when that people follow a dangerous, unjust and evil ideology and when as a logical consequence that people pose a danger to our societies too great for us to expect to assimilate them and respect their dignity and essence.
What my post was objecting to was Auster's clear implication that we can militarily quarantine a people without violating their dignity and essence -- which is an absurd, and liberal, notion. Sometimes in this world people have to do tough things to other people. Only a liberal would think we can handle the problem of Islam without violating the dignity and essence of Muslims. That assumption by Auster is spectacular poppycock -- and also, it is supremely liberal.
You went on to write:
"If you say it is preposterous to claim that a country cannot control its borders without violating the "dignity and essence" of those aliens who seek entry, then you are clearly a liberal who has accepted the liberal premise that "borders must be open" and is paralyzed by it."
No. As per above, I think it's preposterous to claim that we can do what we need to do to control our immigration in general without hurting people's feelings and without violating their dignity and essence. If a poor Mexican family wants to immigrate from their Mexican hell-hole and take advantage of our society's superiority, and we deny them that chance, we are hurting them. So what? Life is tough sometimes. Tough frijoles. If we have to do tough things that hurt people in order to maintain our security, stability and way of life, that's the way it has to be. But to claim we can do this without hurting people is preposterous, and if you would claim this, it would mean that liberal assumptions have crept into your mind and informed your thought without your awareness.
"Auster, on the other hand, is not a liberal, so why should he accept this liberal premise?"
I think I have effectively argued that the premise is not, in fact, liberal. As for Auster being not a liberal, yet simultaneously holding a liberal thought process about this -- I chalk that up to the incoherence of his thought process, for which I have seen many different instances of evidence on many different issues.
JP quoted Steyn:
Q: You say in your book that we can “submit to Islam, destroy Islam, or reform Islam.” What would you like to see us do?
Steyn: Well, I don’t really think we can really, credibly do any of those—I think if those are the choices, we’ll probably end up submitting to Islam.
Steyn is correct -- IF those are the only choices.
But beyond these three --
1) submit to Islam,
2) destroy Islam, or
3) reform Islam
there is a fourth option, the only realistic one optimally conducive to our ongoing security:
4) manage Islam.
And the management most comporting with the dimensions of the problem Islam poses is a global quarantine, which I have argued would require the adjunct of total deportation of Muslims out of the West. Auster's version of this option, however, is incoherent on some key points, as I have argued in my essay, An Iron Veil --
http://hesperado.blogspot.com/2009/05/iron-veil.html
Now, whether Steyn tends to be inconclusive about the logic of his own position, that's another matter, distinct from Auster's claim that he wants us to submit and wants us to make nice with Muslims even as Muslims begin to become demographically and sociopolitically dominant in the future.
Roach:
"Larry is smart and writes a great many useful things. He is also prickly, self-righteous, angry, and constantly pissing people off."
I don't necessarily mind prickly, self-righteous and angry intellects who constantly piss people off. What I do mind is another defect in Auster more pertinently problematic than the venial sins you list, which Ilion above has been trying to impress upon readers here: namely, Auster's tendency to misrepresent the positions, counter-arguments and criticisms of others. With this one defect remaining in play, it would not matter if Auster were otherwise remarkably mild-mannered, humble, even-tempered and kindly generous in manner.
Two Cents writes:
"not allowing Muslims in your country is hardly such a violation given that they rigorously deny Christians the right to enter their countries and set up churches and ministries."
Not allowing Muslims in your country is a violation -- and it's good. We should violate them. They deserve it, and the danger they pose to us makes it impossible for us not to violate their "dignity and essence" in any number of ways as we rationally pursue ways to make our societies safe from their ideology.
Is that so hard to digest? I think you are trying to have your cake and eat it too, just as Auster is: Hey, we can control this problem of Muslims and at the same time not violate them! Utter poppycock. And supremely liberal.
Billy Nudgel wrote about Auster:
"He's out there every day hammering the same old tried and true point home: that a complete and absolute rejection of Islam in total is the way to go."
Actually, he does not "absolutely" reject Islam "in total". In an exchange with me, he specifically, and crucially, restrained himself from what he was afraid was my "totalistic" proposition that we deport all Muslims from the West. Whatever merits this hesitation by Auster may have to some observers who lean more in his direction than mine, it cannot be described as an "absolute rejection of Islam in total".
Mack wrote:
"I hearken back to the first time Hesperado called Larry a Gnostic. It was at that point that it became evident that vitriol and aspersions would be cast at anyone not fully entertaining Larry's personal orthodoxy. I think I stopped taking any of it personally when I was personally characterized as a 'pure liberal'."
I never called Auster a Gnostic. What I did do, as I unfolded the question of why Auster seems to fail to probe the etiological puzzle of why there are so many conservatives who are liberalized, was to conjecture about
"...various different permutations [used by Auster] of labels that try to capture that animal the "false conservative", who seem to be sprouting up all over the place, often in highly unlikely places to boot, which makes the puzzle all the more puzzling, one would think. One alternative explanation that might be implicitly lurking in Auster's paradigm is that of the "ecclesiola" -- i.e., the "pure remnant" who alone know the truth, while the vast majority have gone astray. This would be an impermissible explanation, unless one were -- either willfully or unwittingly -- succumbing to the Gnostic temptation to damn the Western cosmion. I tend to think Auster is not doing this, but I'd like to see more tangible and copious indications to make sure."
In that same thread at the blog "Mangan's Miscellany", Auster weighed in and, of course, with egregious inaccuracy accused me of accusing him of being a Gnostic. I see that Mack has just taken Auster's word for this, rather than bothering to read the facts.
After I reiterated -- patiently and maturely -- that I never said that, Auster's torturous paranoia morphed into perceiving "attacks" by me on him (as he wrote subsequently on his own blog). Fuller details of the grotesque contortions Auster generates out of nothing may be found here:
Mack, sorry -- I hastily misread your comment to Ilion. However, most of my post remains relevant, including your misapprehension of what I did actually say about Auster re: Gnosticism.
Got a question for you, Hesperado.
You say,
I would much rather fault a Proposer of Solutions who has failed to integrate a proper analysis of the problem (i.e., an Auster), than I would an Analyst who shows he grasps the problem more or less but who hasn't yet profferred a Solution.
For the benefit of those of us who don't know the reason for your hostility to Auster, could you please briefly summarize the proper analysis of the situation that Auster fails to give? I'd like to know where you're "coming from."
Alan Roebuck,
It would be difficult for me to boil down my analysis of Auster's deficiencies -- with respect to his solution proposal of Quarantine -- further than I have down in part of my essay on my blog (the Auster critique there is less than half of the essay, though you might need to read the full essay to understand why I make the critique in the first place).
Those deficiencies stem I think from the apparent fact that Auster is what I call an "asymptotic analyst" of the problem of Islam -- he's almost at the point of total condemnation, but not quite. I don't know what makes any given analyst asymptotic, but I think one common motivation is the presence of PC MC in their heads (however much they think they may have rooted it out), and the persistence, therefore, of the notion that if we the West take a total condmenation of Muslims to its logical conclusion, we will have no choice -- being the evil white Westerners we are always ready for the opportunity to oppress and abuse non-white non-Westerners -- but to go down the "slippery slope" to genocide.
Sometimes it's that .01% left short of total condemnation that can exert an anomolous amount of resistance in the analyst to certain things. Auster's disinclination to be "totalistic" about the Islam problem (i.e., re: deportation of all Muslims) is one important indicator of this. In this respect, Auster is not taking his own advice. Or, if he thinks that merely having proferred a Plan is sufficient to be a Serious Anti-Islamist and absolves him of following the logic of the problem (let alone of being substantively criticized), then that is dismaying. You will see what I mean I think in more concrete detail, if you read my essay.
Hesperado,
I’ve read the article you linked. Looks like your dispute with Auster is that you call for the expulsion of all Moslems from the West, but Larry, while agreeing in principle, makes some exceptions that, to your way of thinking, undercut his entire position of “Separationism,” thus rendering him contradictory and therefore ridiculous.
I don’t think this is sufficient warrant for harsh attacks. I presume that you are interested in defending America and the West from the Moslem menace, and therefore are interested in convincing as many people as possible that your position is correct. But John Q. Public doesn’t care about the nuances that separate your position from Auster’s, and he cares even less about the alleged character deficiencies of Auster or anyone else.
For what it’s worth, I think Auster is more correct than you on this issue, but you two could certainly work together toward eliminating the Moslem menace, while at the same time acknowledging that you have some strong disagreements.
The reason I think Auster is more correct is that he understands that the problem is with the entire intellectual/spiritual/moral/social orientation of the West, an orientation I describe by saying that liberalism—the worldview of the left—is our not-officially-acknowledged State Religion. And this means that the problem is comprehensive: we cannot just correct one discrete part of our thinking (e.g., “multiculturalism”) and then be able properly to defend ourselves.
Because the problem is comprehensive, so is the remedy: we must deal with as much of liberalism as we can; we must offer a comprehensive solution that includes properly dealing with hostile foreigners. To ensure that John Q. Public will listen to us, we must point him toward truths that he can begin to grasp intuitively rather than demand that he immediately endorse a plan from which he will instinctively recoil.
I also point out in passing that you are criticizing Auster for the opposite reason that Steve Burton does: He says Auster is too harsh; you say Auster is too soft. But if Auster is too soft, Burton, Steyn and the rest of the conservative establisment deserve far more of your criticism.
Just so you know where I’m coming from: Yes, I’m one of Auster’s “minions;” I even have my own page at View From the Right containing links to most of my web-published writings on defending America from liberalism and its allies: http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/012252.html
Alan roebuck --
"Looks like your dispute with Auster is that you call for the expulsion of all Moslems from the West, but Larry, while agreeing in principle, makes some exceptions that, to your way of thinking, undercut his entire position of “Separationism,” thus rendering him contradictory and therefore ridiculous."
First, Auster's disinclination to deport all Muslims is only one thing I find defective in his solution. Second, rather than put it that the exceptions he makes to his otherwise apparently holistic view of the threat of Islam "undercut his entire position of Separationism", it's more that the exceptions make the whole thing incoherent. Auster is trying to have his cake and eat it too: i.e., trying to seem stronger than all the other analysts, but still retain provisions (mostly implicit and/or informally wedged in) that are based in suppressing that strength in the name of some kind of gingerly dislike for being "totalistic" against Muslims and in the name of wanting to ensure their "dignity and essence". He thus tends to weaken his own solution with the very same "liberalism" he accuses others of.
You wrote:
"I don’t think this is sufficient warrant for harsh attacks."
I do not "attack" Auster, let alone have I ever "harshly" done so. Auster has this strange predilection for the word "attack" everytime someone criticizes him. The word "attack" should be reserved for specific special instances of hostile intent and effect. It is like a red alarm bell in rhetoric. It should not be flung around glibly, as he does. (Robert Spencer also has that tendency.)
"I presume that you are interested in defending America and the West from the Moslem menace, and therefore are interested in convincing as many people as possible that your position is correct. But John Q. Public doesn’t care about the nuances that separate your position from Auster’s, and he cares even less about the alleged character deficiencies of Auster or anyone else."
A War of Ideas is a multi-faceted, complex process, and it usually takes a long time to wage on many different fronts. It is not reducible to convincing John Q. Public. That is one important facet, but not the only one. I would like to think that John Q. Public is smarter than to think everything has to be boiled down to pap sufficiently simplistic and mediocre so that the most people will be on board -- for, the question arises, on board what? The platform that galvanizes people also has to be a platform that will implement policies when the time comes. And the substance of that is important too.
"For what it’s worth, I think Auster is more correct than you on this issue, but you two could certainly work together toward eliminating the Moslem menace, while at the same time acknowledging that you have some strong disagreements."
I'm perfectly willing to work with Auster and anybody else who is roughly speaking anti-Islam. It's up to them to work with me, a person who may continue to critique them on points I feel need critiquing in the name of constructive criticism. Any healthy movement does not anxiously suppress internal criticism; it positively embraces it. That's what a healthy organism does. Unhealthy organisms put up paranoid defenses against all constructive criticism and labels them as "attacks". If they can't take criticism, then they can't work with me. And if they can't work with me, there's nothing I can do about it. Auster has ostracized me for a stranger reason than his hypersensitivity to criticism: he has ostracized me because in his view, I expressed some things to him in private emails that made him think, so he said, that my approach to debate & dialogue is robotic and mechanical -- because I try to value objective comportment as of higher importance than infusing emotionality into exchanges. This had come up because he kept pestering me about why I was continuing to treat a certain person named "awake" with what seemed to be civility after "awake" had been treating me rather shabbily and once made rhetorical mention of "putting out my teeth" or something like that. And I told Auster that I treat "awake" with what seems to be civility (such as beginning my missives to him with "awake" following by a colon) because in fact I don't care about "awake" as a human being but rather as an opportunity to continue the larger debate. It's my business who I treat with the human respect I think they deserve, not Auster's. In retrospect, I think I made the mistake of trying to counter-argue Auster's pestering of me in this regard, when what I should have done is lapse into a bit of "human" interaction and told him to "Mind your own beeswax!" At any rate, Auster at that point retreated from ever wanting to communicate with me again because he was too "uncomfortable" with my approach -- not because of anything to do with ideas or even to do with me criticizing him -- and his retreat included never citing me on his blog again except once in the context of also informing his readership how much of an enemy I am, and certainly never publishing my comments again on his blog. After that, he then used any criticisms I raised of his approach as evidence of my propensity to "attack" him and therefore as evidence of my status as an official enemy of his. Here's a little dose of "humanity" from me at this particular juncture: The guy has a screw loose.
"The reason I think Auster is more correct is that he understands that the problem is with the entire intellectual/spiritual/moral/social orientation of the West, an orientation I describe by saying that liberalism—the worldview of the left—is our not-officially-acknowledged State Religion."
On my blog, over the past three years, I have written over 100 essays, many of them detailed analyses, of my understanding of the primary problem with the West being PC MC, and how this is the #1 reason why the West remains perilously irrational in the face of a global revival of Islam. Your distinction between me and Auster, thus, is ill-informed. Whether my macro-analysis is better or worse than Auster's would then depend upon a comparison and presentation of argument based upon a reading of at least a representative sampling of my essays. But I definitely have plumbed the dimension of the problem which you claim only Auster has plumbed.
"And this means that the problem is comprehensive: we cannot just correct one discrete part of our thinking (e.g., “multiculturalism”)"
The term PC MC (politically correct multi-culturalism) can denote either "one discrete part" or it can denote a comprehensive paradigm shift that has occurred over the past 50-odd years throughout the West. It is the latter understanding that I have been analyzing on my blog.
I think Auster's term "liberalism" in fact gets a crucial aspect of the problem wrong, but that's a whole hornet's nest for another day, another venue.
"I also point out in passing that you are criticizing Auster for the opposite reason that Steve Burton does: He says Auster is too harsh; you say Auster is too soft. But if Auster is too soft, Burton, Steyn and the rest of the conservative establisment deserve far more of your criticism."
Well, yes and no. The softer analysts belong to a mass of millions. They thus merge into the comprehensive problem that becomes misleading when we attach too much significance to individuals (as Auster himself recognizes when recently he appropriately shot back at a commenter citicizing Bill Clinton for a pro-Islam speech he gave: Auster said, so what? Clinton is just going with the flow, and it's the flow that is the more pertinent focus of our critical analysis.) I guess my attention has been on constructive criticism from within our movement of those who are on the spearhead of the supposedly stronger stance. This isn't to say I would never consider criticizing a Burton or a Steyn in the future, just that it isn't my priority. In this respect I have also criticized Spencer (I had an entire blog dedicated to critical analyses of Spencer's defects in certain aspects of his methodology). I continue to believe this is time well spent: it's part of the division of labor of any movement, and part of the health of a movement to be able to accept, digest and learn from criticism. Only paranoid dictators, thugs and psychos become fearful of criticism and try to suppress it. Any movement that proceeds this way is no movement that will ultimately last, and any strength in numbers it might gather will really be only a superficial strength, not a real strength in the end.
I'll take a look at your link when I find time, thanks.
I not only agree with Hannon's point, but also think that "intellectually dishonest" is not a precise enough term for what Auster does (and he has done it more than once in my experience). The term assumes that he must be a liar. There are other reasons beside mendacity why people misrepresent the positions of their interlocutor and stubbornly persist in doing so even after cogent counter-arguments are presented to them. Some people have addled mentation, even otherwise intelligent people. I believe Auster is one of them. The liar charge is so serious, it should be reserved for special occasions. It is by no means ruled out in the case of Auster, but plenty of other indications in Auster's comportment support my view that he has a screw loose, and it is that which explains his perverse stubbornness and resistance to facts.
Perhaps the term "intellectually defective" would be preferable to "intellectually dishonest" -- for the former term describes the ostensible phenomenon, whereas the latter presumes a judgment absent sufficient evidence (for a liar must know he is lying even as he continues to lie, and we cannot know what's in Auster's head, unless we have in our possession a statement by him telling a confidante something like "I was lying about Steyn and I continue to lie about him for reasons advantageous to me").
That said, having a screw loose does not prevent a person from being otherwise intelligent and perspicacious, and even valuable -- though their value has to be utilized with extra caution, needless to say.
posted by Hesperado at 12:38 PM
Here begins the transcript:
I've had a couple of run-ins with Auster. He seems to have a remarkable problem reading and understanding his interlocutor. He compounds this problem by running with his misunderstanding like an enthusiastically wrongheaded quarterback running with the ball all the way across the football field in the wrong direction. And of course, the more his interlocutor tries to clarify the misunderstanding, the more that Auster exacerbates it, sometimes to grotesque proportions -- which only makes Auster comport himself with more and more aggrieved sincerity as the Only One Who Knows the Truth as the argument unfolds. He's a master of the tactic of trying to squirm out of corners he himself has painted himself into.
His attempts to argue that Nazism is not Leftism -- which he recently harks back to on his blog -- are a case in point. He links the reader to a comment by someone who begs to differ with him and who cites John Ray. Auster obliviously forges ahead with his torturously complex hypothesis about how Nazism must be “rightism” and cannot possibly be Leftist, and never once acknowledges the suggestion to read John Ray. No one should pontificate about this subject of Nazism vs. Leftism without first reading John Ray and then at least providing counter-arguments to John Ray’s arguments. And anyone who does so pontificate, as Auster does, cannot be taken seriously.