I want to thank Leon Surette for his kind and generous remarks regarding my posts. Thanks also for giving me the name of your book. I am in full agreement with the thoughts put forward in the following paragraph, which sums up very nicely both the value of certain aspects of Pound's approach, and the essential problem: > Of course, all sorts of institutions and individuals ARE misleading >the >public all of the time--some unwittingly, some deliberately, some malignly, >some benignly. Noam Chomsky is eloquent on this topic in MANUFACTURING >CONSENT and many other works. Pound was neither crazy nor stupid to think >that people were being misled. But he was spectacularly wrong in >determining >who originated the lies, and whose lies were most malignant. And his >solutions--Social Credit and benelvolent dictatorship--are ones that are >erroneous and undesirable, respectively. That he thought Mussolini, Hitler, >and the Japanese oligarchy more benign than Churchill and Roosevelt--and he >did think so--is surely a spectacular error. But we should not forget that >many respected and moral individuals thought Stalin to be a benevolent >ruler >preferable to those same Western leaders. These expressions are very much to the point. I endorse them fully, and with no reservation. Leon Surette also said, >I also want to thank Carrol for his lucid posts on the Sophists. It is >an assessment I have encountered before, but never put with such brevity >and >clarity. It is something of which we need to be reminded. Yes. I agree with Carrol's analysis of the significance of the historical role of the Sophists. I wonder if he has read I.F. Stone's book, "The trial of Socrates", which lays out some very similar ideas. I assume he has, but if not, I would highly recommend it to him. As to the question of whether Pound was an ideologue, I understand much better now your conception, if we are speaking from a purely intellectual and philosophical viewpoint. However, if we factor in emotion, I would still maintain that Pound was constitutionally an ideologue (a person who sticks to a world view inspite of the facts and the evidence). In this the broad sense: Marx, Hegel, and Aquinas, I would say were not really entirely ideologues, inspite of the fact that ideologies have been erected upon or reinforced by their written works. But this is probably a source of a very minor disagreement in our overall evalution of Pound, which need not be elaborated here. You conclude by saying, > >The main line of >Pound scholarship since Kenner, of course, has been to deny that Pound >endorsed any evil. That position as not been tenable for a long >time--though >the intensity of the response to Wei's postings and articles suggests that >many people still adhere to it. > So you are saying that Pound deliberately endorsed evil, knowing that it was evil? Maybe. I am not sure what my reaction to that proposition would be. ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com