Peikoff's America vs. The Americans
I saved myself a weekday trip to Irvine last night. Thanks to Mark Da Cunha's Capitalism Magazine I was able to watch Leonard Peikoff's Ford Hall Forum talk over the Internet. I have to say that having now actually watched the speech I am much relieved. Based on the summaries I read I thought perhaps I would be embarrassed but Peikoff actually makes a perfectly reasonable argument. I was happy to find out that the part about total war and civilian casualities was a rather small, unemphasized part of his talk, which focused primarily on the deterioration of the American people. Despite some of my misgivings about the kind of war Peikoff would like to wage, Peikoff's criticisms of our self-imposed restrictions do have some justice on their side. I am not as pessimistic as Peikoff but the points he made about the present state of the American people do give one pause and remind us that thanks to 100 years of progressive eduction the people are intellectually nowhere near where they need to be. I do agree with Paul Blair who said that it once again shows how radical Objectivism is. We have our work cut out for us.