Over the years I’ve been called many things.
This week, in response to some critical comments I made about proposed paper, I learned that I “argue like a socialist” or an “Austrian” (earlier, my correspondent had informed me that Austrian economists are evil).
If I ignore past insults about my capabilities as a philosopher — “idiot,” “fool,” “embarrassment,” and others — and recall only the labeling of the content of my views, then according to various critics I am a:
* “Marxist”
* “Jew-lover”
* “anti-Objectivist to the core”
* “amoral Existentialist”
* “sellout to the religious right”
* “weird kind of Nietzschean”
The labels do come from critics all over the intellectual map. But it is fun to imagine that they are all correct, which would make me an
amoral Marxist Jew-loving anti-Objectivist Nietzschean Existentialist who has sold out to the religious right and socialism.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. So I must be doing something right.