Opinion columns

[Spano]

A month ago, I began writing a weekly opnion column for my college newspaper. This has been pretty interesting thus far, especially seeing the reactions and feedback I get from people. Obviously, because I write from an Objectivist perspective, I get a lot of critics, although there are a few who are in agreement.

My main purpose for writing is to get the the ideas of Ayn Rand out there for people to see, many for the first time. I would like to post links to the columns here, so that I might get some feedback or suggestions as to how to make the columns more effective.

One thing I am attempting to figure out is how much to take as implicit in my arguments. I've read The Art of Nonfiction, which suggests that one must take a philosophical framework as implicit and write within that. I have found that this is difficult to do, since many readers have no familiarity with my premises and so find the arguments difficult to swallow. On the other hand, if I dedicate too much time to explaining the concepts of invidual rights, capitalism, reason, etc, I have no room left for the subject.

Anyway, here they are, comments welcome .

Global Warming

Israel releases prisoners

Wal-Mart

Affirmative action

[Richard Roark]

Man I love Ice Hockey, maybe an ice age wouldn't be so bad All joking aside. I found your articles to be very well written, the reasoning sound and your points well made, or at least as good as the limited amount of space you have for your column. I am taking a guess that this is roughly around a thousand words for each article. I also applaud you for your attempt to tackle this at your school, since all college campus' the world over are product of left wing liberal thinkers. Anyway, I also read through some of the comments made by your readers and found them to be pretty amusing to say the least. There is one man who is trying to discredit you every step of the way. I like how people like to point out to you about not having any "facts" to any of your articles, or say hard facts, and then a man posts a link to a website. Umm, if he doesn't notice you can't very well link a website in a newspaper article. Who knows maybe this can be an article in the future something about writing and of itself. Of course I am not sure of the Freedom you have in what you are allowed to write about. I just got done going through the Affirmative action article and i dont' see any of your naysayers responding to this article. Curious...Now back to Ice hockey I know somebody who would be happy about this turn of events

Edited March 12, 2005 by Richard Roark

[BurgessLau]

One thing I am attempting to figure out is how much to take as implicit in my arguments.  I've read The Art of Nonfiction, which suggests that one must take a philosophical framework as implicit and write within that.  I have found that this is difficult to do, since many readers have no familiarity with my premises and so find the arguments difficult to swallow.  On the other hand, if I dedicate too much time to explaining the concepts of invidual rights, capitalism, reason, etc, I have no room left for the subject.

Did you have this problem in the global warming article? If so, it doesn't show.

As you know from studying The Art of Nonfiction, the writer of an essay must ruthlessly delimit both his subject and his theme. I have found that approach to be the best way of preventing problems with what to make explicit and what to leave implicit.

If I find myself thinking I need to explain more than one or two concepts in an essay, then I know I have not properly defined my subject and theme. Of course, if you were writing a book, such as Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, then you would have the room to explain a lot of new ideas.

Beyond that, for essay writing, I have one more suggestion. If you do believe at some point that a concept needs to be made explicit, always remember that you don't need to say a lot to make it explicit. The right kind of reader will immediately pick up even a sketchy description. For example, if you want to make sure your kind of reader knows what you mean by "selfishness," then a simple phrase -- "that is, long-term, rational self-interest" -- should be enough to help your reader keep moving along toward the theme of your essay.

Readers don't need to be omniscient to understand the one point that your theme makes. Likewise you don't need to be "omniscribent" -- that is, you shouldn't expect yourself to explain everything in what you write -- in order to make your one theme point clear.

P. S. -- Congratulations on your writing. You are at the beginning of your chosen career. If you continue to make as much progress as you have so far, think of how much you will know in another 20 or 30 years.