My point was that Nozick didn't defend libertarian ideas very well at all in my opinion. I suppose I didn't make that clear.
Are you seriously trying to find fault with the late, great Robert Nozick on a bitcoin msg board completely full of info-anarchist and cyber-libertarian types?
OH NO YOU DIDN"T!!! Nozick was a professional logician and philosopher. His Ultimate Defense of Liberty (a book called Anarchy, State, and Utopia) won the Book of the Year award. How many vastly-influential bestsellers have you put out. My guess would be 'zero.'
How long have you been a tenured Harvard professor? Oh that's right you don't even teach at the local podunk junior community college.
Yet, you disrespect the accomplishments of your superiors, via appeal to your own glorious Jesus-drenched personal opinion. If you intended to persuade anyone besides yourself that your opinion is more than a gnat compared to Nozick's elephant, citing something besides your knee-jerk reaction would be advisable.
You keep name-checking Nozick and claiming to have understood his argument, while seeing through its fatal flaws with your monotheist death-god annointed vision. But there's no reference to anything that Nozick wrote, only to his name and your amazing secret discovery of his hidden weaknesses.
And you wrap your inordinate self-regard in Christian superstitions, which you proudly display on your electronic sleeve. How typical.
I've had enough of ignorant Fundy hicks insulting great men of mind such as Prof. Nozick. It's time to push the personal criticism squarely back, onto both the mouthy, semi-educated liberal polisci hacks and the blue-nosed bumpkins who, while normally enemies, waste no time when uniting to disparate and attack brilliant thinkers like Nozick and libertarianism in general.
How often are you called upon to defend individual freedoms from hideous, terrible statist monsters like the incomprehensible John Rawls? Probably never, because you're simply not up to the task.
"Anarchy, State, and Utopia" is one of the best books ever written. That's why it's required reading for so many university classes (unlike anything you have or ever will have produced in your entire life).
With immense clarity and articulation, Nozick laid out and rigorously examines the case for the minimal night-watchman state with the practiced, orderly precision of a sushi chef.
Then he proceeds to gut, fillet, and serve both stinking anarchist and Holier-than-though do gooders, like the mating pair of poisonous pufferfish they are.
When you try to tear down a great historical figure like Nozick, who is so much more respected and beloved than you're entire family tree will ever be, using only negative feelings and emotional poo-pooing, it tells us far more about you than him.
I'd love to see you spend just ten minutes struggling as you try and read one his more technical books on the perennial mysteries, such as "Philosophical Explanations."
Your simplistic, fable-filled head would explode on contact which such a dense tome of critical thinking. All you would know is that you can always one-up anyone by saying "Well I put God on top of that."
But whatever, not everyone is cut out to live "The Examined Life" of a philosopher. That's why the superstitious version of religion (you know, the one that makes dumb asses feel qualified by mere Falwellian faaaaayyyyth to disregard anything beyond their limited comprehension as 'unconvincing') is so popular.
You an me, we certainly don't agree about politics, but I did enjoy that^.
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So I can only slowly mine them and hope over the course of time before the bubble bursts I have enough to pay off my mortgage, then I'll do so and show my wife how awesome they are, and hope she'll change her ways.
