I can’t say that I’ve felt very much enthusiasm for the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, insofar as 1776 marks that date (and arguably, it doesn’t). It tells you all you need to know that I spent the Fourth of July under a tree in a nearby park, reading Machiavelli in hundred degree heat. But two of my friends wrote notable and interesting pieces commemorating the 250th, and did so in interestingly similar and dissimilar ways. Both are on Substack, and both are worth reading. My friend Bob Massie has a piece called “A New Birth of Freedom” on his Substack. And my friend Chris Sciabarra has one called “From America 200 to 250: A Personal Journey” on his.
Continue readingTag Archives: chris sciabarra
Reason Papers 43:1, JARS 23: Bromance, Romance, Scholarship
I’m very happy to announce the publication of Reason Papers 43:1 (Spring 2023), and the final, double issue of the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies (JARS) 23:1-2. There are a bunch of interconnections between these two journals, and connections back to PoT. Being the gossip hag that I am, I’m going to give you the juicy back story (romance, bromance, and all), so hold on to your hat.
The main piece of backstory here is that both journals bear a connection to Ayn Rand and the (American) Objectivist movement. (The preceding links go to Wikipedia, which was founded by Jimmy Wales, who was also a member of the Objectivist movement. You can’t make this shit up.) Reason Papers was founded in 1974 by Tibor Machan, a fervent Randian; JARS was founded in 1999 by Chris Sciabarra, a fervent Rand scholar. Many of the people associated with Policy of Truth were once Randians, associated in some way with one or both journals and/or the Objectivist movement. Whatever our proximity to or distance from Rand and Objectivism at this point, many of us still a bear a close relation to one another, and so, still find ourselves arguing about Rand and related topics (Aristotelianism, libertarianism, aesthetic Romanticism, etc.), whether as impartial scholars, as Rand-sympathizers, or as critics or even antagonists of Objectivism. Continue reading
Three Passings, Three Losses
Sometimes people you come to know in passing leave a more-than-passing memory. Three such people have recently passed away in quick succession, and I wanted to mark their passings.
Many readers of this blog may know, or know of, Chris Sciabarra, The Famous Dialectical Libertarian of Brooklyn, but far fewer have had the privilege, as I have, of meeting his late sister Elizabeth (1952-2022). To the best of my memory, I met her only twice; it may in fact only have been once, but she was the kind of person who would have left a double impression from a single encounter. Continue reading
9/11 + 20
This Saturday marks the twentieth anniversary of 9/11. To that end, I thought I’d haul out some of the more edifying things I’ve written over the years about, or of relevance to, 9/11. In doing this, I’m to some extent plagiarizing at least the form of Chris Sciabarra’s most recent blog post at his blog, summarizing the twenty annual posts he’s written about 9/11. But plagiarism in this case is intended more as a tribute than as mere theft. If you read one thing about 9/11, you should read Chris’s Post of Posts.
Thanksgiving, Gratitude, and the Flower of Life
Today is Thanksgiving, a day on which it’s appropriate to give public thanks for the gifts we’ve received from life itself. Until recently, I had great disdain for Thanksgiving–just last year, I wrote a bitchy attack on it–mostly because until recently, bitterness and resentment were my favorite go-to emotions.
Paradoxically, I had to lose a lot in the past few months to appreciate what I have, and to grasp the true meaning of gratitude: a job, a marriage, a house, a car, tens of thousands of dollars, hundreds of hours of labor, and a large handful of illusions, for starters. I sold the house, but stand to make very little from it, so I count it as a loss. I sold the car for a ridiculously lowball figure, so I regard that as a loss. I’m in litigation, make a nominal wage at a dirty job doing hard physical labor, and lack permanent housing or the means to pay for it. I have temporary housing, but it lacks running water. So there are challenges. And yet, life has never been better. Last year, I had everything I now lack, and made sure to get up bright and early “to take a crap on Thanksgiving.” Now I’m writing a paean to gratitude. What a difference a year makes. Continue reading
Fatwa: Death to Facebook
It’s time for a jihad against Facebook. My friend Chris Sciabarra explains why. Just to be clear, Sciabarra is not calling for a jihad on Facebook; I am. But the time has come, O believers, to bring the wrath of Allah (subhana w’tala) on this social media platform of Satan. Continue reading
COVID-19 Narrative (2): Chris Matthew Sciabarra
This is the second in my series of COVID-19 Narratives, by my dear friend Chris Sciabarra, sheltering in place in Brooklyn, New York. Though the series is primarily about what I called the “supply side” of the health care equation during this crisis, I wanted to run some posts that described the “demand side” as well, that is, what it’s like to be a patient during the pandemic. Particularly valuable about Chris’s post is how it illustrates the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for people with serious medical conditions whose previously scheduled medical procedures have now been deemed “elective.” “Elective” in this context doesn’t mean “optional.” It means downgraded to second or third priority out of sheer, dire necessity: hospital beds, equipment, and personnel have to be left vacant or unused to absorb the overwhelming crush of COVID-19 patients we expect to see. And even at the center of the pandemic, we haven’t yet reached the peak of that crush. Continue reading
“Twin Towers, Twin Memories”
For the last eighteen years, Chris Sciabarra has been writing up a kind of blog-based micro-history of 9/11 as seen from the Gravesend section of Brooklyn, where he lives. Here’s a link to the whole archive, from September 2001 to September 2019, which I highly recommend.
I happened to be at Casa Sciabarra as Chris was putting the final touches on the most recent installment in the series, “Zack Fletcher: Twin Towers, Twin Memories“– about fraternal twins, Zackary and Andre Fletcher, both members of the FDNY, the New York City Fire Department. Sadly, Andre perished on duty as a result of the attack. The post consists of an interview with Zack, reflecting on the meaning of the day and the loss of his brother. If you read one thing about 9/11 today, I’d suggest reading this.
Chris Sciabarra on Objectivism and Disability
Here’s a must-read interview with Chris Sciabarra at Folks magazine, on Sciabarra’s lifelong struggle with Superior Mesenteric Artery Syndrome, along with his lifelong attachment to the work of Ayn Rand (and Nathaniel Branden).
One doesn’t usually think of Rand or Objectivism as offering much insight into the nature of disability, but Chris clearly does:
My famous friends: name-dropping without (much) shame
A couple of days ago, I wrote a post dedicated in part to discussing the work of people I either don’t know, or barely know at all. Today’s post is just the opposite: a name-dropping attempt to bask vicariously in the glory of others’ accomplishments, simply because they happen to be friends or relatives of mine. There’s no credit like unearned credit! I’m going to bold everyone’s name below, just to make this post look more like the gossip column that it is.
My friend William Dale is Associate Professor of Medicine at Pritzker School of Medicine at the University of Chicago. (He has a half dozen other titles, but never mind.) He seems to make it into The New York Times every other day for his work on geriatrics, but here’s the latest, about the connections between his work and the National Social, Life, Health, and Aging Project at Chicago. And yes, that’s him in the header photo of their page.
I’m not sure I know Jose Duarte well enough to call us “friends,” but we have hung out a bit, so I’ll gloss over the niceties. Jose has been creating waves for his research, with Jonathan Haidt, on the political biases of research in social psychology. Here’s a piece in The New Yorker about his most recent publication. And here’s a link to the paper itself, “Political Diversity Will Improve Social Psychological Research.”
My friend Stephen Hicks is celebrating the tenth anniversary of the publication of his 2004 book, Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault. It’s gone through God-knows-how-many printings, and at least five translations that I know of, with more on the way. (I’d like to put in a vote for an Urdu translation, by the way.) I’d like to think that I made some tiny contribution to the success of the book; as co-managing editor of Reason Papers, I happened to edit (all right, co-edit) one of the longer and more positive reviews of the book. But obviously, I couldn’t have done that unless Stephen had written the book (and Steven Sanders had written the review!) in the first place.
Finally, on the Famous Friend Front, my buddy Chris Sciabarra is featured in a piece on Ayn Rand in New York Magazine, improbably titled, “Ayn Rand, Girl Power Icon.” Amusingly, the piece opens with Chris’s professed puzzlement about the phenomenon, and only gets better from there.
I mentioned famous relatives. Did I tell you that my cousin Khawaja Saad Rafiq is the Minister of Railways for the Islamic Republic of Pakistan? I only mention that because here’s a piece featuring Saad bhai in the Pakistan Observer. In it, he takes issue with Jason Brennan’s thesis in The Ethics of Voting. According to Dr. Brennan, we have no duty to vote, but according to cousin Saad, the “Country Can Only Make Progress Thru the Power of Vote.” Well, Saad bhai doesn’t quite mention Dr. Brennan by name, but the implicit spirit of contention is there. I actually think that a conversation between Saad bhai and Dr. Brennan on voting would be a hilariously instructive affair for all parties. In fact, I offer in advance to serve as interpreter to overcome the language barrier* for the conversation. I rather doubt that the event will ever happen, but as a thought-experiment, I think it has a lot to recommend itself.
*PS, I kind of think that language would be the least of the barriers involved. Cf. Bernard Williams on real and notional confrontations, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, pp. 160ff.
Postscript, December 19, 2014: Amazingly, within a few weeks of my issuing a call for an Urdu translation of Explaining Postmodernism, Stephen Hicks has announced a forthcoming Hindi translation. Behold the power of PoT.
Policy of Truth 