[cross-posted at BHL]
Many Americans who voted for Barry Goldwater in the last election are justifiably concerned that our traditional liberties have been much eroded by the unwarranted growth of the federal government, and especially of the executive branch at the expense of the other branches. As a democrat I cannot help feeling the same deep concern. These libertarian conservatives see all too clearly an evil which those on the left very often fail to take adequate note of.
Why do I never manage to get these questions right? Why am I never even close? My first answer was going to be George McGovern, and my second was going to be Frank Church. Third, if I needed it, was gonna be J. William Fulbright.
I thought my answers were so clever. I guess they are, but dammit, none of them are right.
You were probably distracted by Rand’s description of Savio as “Son of Immanuel Kant.”
I was.
Incidentally, it’s a little known fact that Mario Savio was a specialist in Aristotelian logic. (Come to think of it, so was Kant. So maybe he was the son of Immanuel Kant after all.) When I worked for the Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, we got a paper by him (Savio, I mean, not Kant). I believe that the referee gave it a revise and resubmit verdict, but Savio passed away before the revisions were completed. NDJFL then had the paper revised posthumously and published it. That decision has always stood out for me as a case study in the ad hoc character of editorial decision-making at peer reviewed publications.
Anyway, here’s the Savio story “from the horse’s mouth,” so to speak:
http://projecteuclid.org/euclid.ndjfl/1039118872
It turns out to be a rather good paper, by the way.