Actually that’s not quite true — when I was in high school I bought and read the collection of the Ayn Rand Letter that had previews (actually quite different from the final versions) of chapters from the forthcoming Ominous Parallels.

What’s bad: Loopy interpretations of Kant and other major philosophers, monocausal theory of history and dismissal of other factors, uncritical reliance on Rauschning’s purported but now largely-doubted reminiscences of Hitler’s private remarks, insufficient attention to the details of Nazi economic policies.

What’s good: A handy collection, all in one place, of lots of info about and quotes from major Nazi thinkers. Until I read this book in college (I mean I was in college when I read it, not that it was assigned in college) I had no idea what the Nazis’ ideology actually was. Plus Peikoff makes a couple of good points against Arendt.

The philosophic monocausalism of Ominous Parallels and the economic monocausalism ofMises’ Omnipotent Government provide useful balance for one another — and they both have some good stuff, but both should be read with a critical eye (as of course should everything).

My biggest problem is if Kant is so congenial to Nazism, who are the Nazis that were supposedly influeced by Kant? Peikoff cites only Tirala (a minor figure that he probably first found in von Mises) and Eichmann (whom he misrepresents, at least according to Arendt’s book).

Also, how come Peikoff never tells his readers that most of the people he mentions as being irrationalists (such as Barth and Cassirer) were anti-Nazi?

I have tried to read Arendt on this and about two-thirds of the way through Origins I gave up – she is totally pedantic, and, I think, unoriginal. Peikoff’s book give me tremendous misgivings also for the simple reason that the Randroids have essentially created a totalitarian cult themselves – “excommunication” and “heresy” should not be words associated with sound intellectual movements.

The post was formerly a blog post over at the Mises blog, but Jeffrey Tucker said that he didn’t want the blog page turned into an area for debate. Per posted the reply to Klein in the comments, but it simply disappeared. The link above is to what was written.

In the comments to the blog entry there’s a predictable appearance by Stephan Kinsella. Predictable results follow from his predictable postings.