[moldbug]

Oh, that's lovely. I'm sure Professor Skrbina is also pen pals with Eric Rudolph, the abortion bomber:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Rudolph

Every other week, he teaches his adoring young undergrads to understand Rudolph's subtle, nuanced position on the sanctity of human life... not.

FWIW, both Kaczynski's and Rudolph's philosophical opinions are worthy of debate. Their persons, however, are icky. Icky rubs off - even if you're a professor.

[gruseom]

You seem to be saying something, but I can never figure out just what it is.

[moldbug]

What I'm saying is that it's immoral to play kissy-face, even intellectual kissy-face, with murderers.

Somehow this is controversial. But you can see it easily if you flip the political polarities. Hence, Eric Rudolph.

Something obvious you can't see is called a "blind spot." Is there anything else in your blind spot?

[philwelch]

I disagree with both their motives and actions but I still don't "see it easily". OK, it's the right thing to do to lock these people away for the rest of their lives. But if there's some intellectual profit to be gained in corresponding with them, I see no harm in doing so. Your conception of "icky" is reminiscent of that of a five-year-old, and has all the intellectual and moral sophistication of the same.

[moldbug]

You don't think you're proving the point of my Eric Rudolph analogy?

Ie: you don't feel perfectly fair, rational, and justified in applying the "icky," simplistic, five-year-old algorithm to Eric Rudolph?

If not: you don't agree that this remarkable tolerance for violent right-wing extremism is unusual among your social and intellectual peers?

This applies to everyone who responded below. Good luck in composing an answer that evades the questionnaire...

[philwelch]

> If not: you don't agree that this remarkable tolerance for violent right-wing extremism is unusual among your social and intellectual peers?

I don't worry about being unusual, I worry about being right. Lots of people are intellectual and emotional five-year-olds. That's not my problem, but whether I'm one of them is my problem.

[defen]

> If not: you don't agree that this remarkable tolerance for violent right-wing extremism is unusual among your social and intellectual peers?

That's an interesting point - could you expound on it? I have a few theories myself, and I'm curious what you think the reason is.

[moldbug]

It's pretty simple - Anglophone North America is a left-wing polity and always has been, its deviant and extinct Confederate branch aside. You won't find a single leftist trope that isn't repeated over and over again in the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. As Earl Browder put it, "Communism is 20th-century Americanism."

This is why we're all supposed to be all nuanced and shit when it comes to Communist atrocities, but when it's time for the Fascist atrocities everyone has to stand up and yell HITLER HITLER HITLER. Precisely like a five-year-old.

It's just a sort of national lookin' after #1. We naturally ignore the sins closest to us and focus on those of others. Left is "self" and right is "other." Otherwise, we would need to express genuine collective guilt rather than dime-a-dozen collective contempt.

[keithpeter]

I'm assuming you refer to the teacher's ongoing correspondence with Kaczynski which one imagines means a lot to the prisoner, and could be seen as some form of 'comfort'.

Do you see the need to examine the arguments at all? Would it be ok for the teacher to discuss the manifesto as a text without the dialogue with Kaczynski?

[knieveltech]

Define "murderers". Depending on how widely you spread that blanket you could cover every government employee in the world. Include "or through inaction" as a modifier to your definition and you and I are just as guilty.

[NoPiece]

Murder almost always is defined to include premeditation (malice aforethought). So you're in the clear, along with most every government employee in the world.

[asciilifeform]

As far as I can tell, there is a simple and elegant explanation for the discrepancy: Rudolph (and Breivik, and most of the present crop of right-wing terrorists) is an intellectual zero while Kaczynski is not.

If Jack the Ripper or Jeffrey Dahmer had left behind something like Kaczynski's manifesto (and later prison essays), some respectable intellectuals would pinch their noses and study them.