Quick Roundup 440

[Gus Van Horn blog]

By Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Wow!

Via HBL, I learned of a remarkable column by Joseph McHugh in The American Chronicle regarding William F. Buckley's unjust treatment of Ayn Rand.

McHugh starts out with comments about his son, Christopher's just-published memoir, but that is only a point of departure. The real strength of his article is that it considers the elder Buckley's long, ignominious record of unjustified, personal attacks on Rand on as well as what other intellectuals influenced by Rand have had to say about the matter. The piece ends:

Rand made the case against the welfare state root and branch. She was the first to make a secular case against Communism and Socialism, and the first to make a fully secular defense of American values. The fact that her ideas were shut out by Buckley hurt the entire cause of Americanism.

These days people are flocking to read

Atlas Shrugged

. They are not burning a hole in their wallets to buy

God and Man at Yale

.

And that's a good thing. [minor edits]

It is refreshing to see journalism like this, and frustrating at the same time, because (a) I wish I'd written it myself, and ( I want to quote the whole thing here, verbatim. McHugh says several things that have needed saying for a very long time.

I will indulge myself one more quote, though: "... Buckley made a career out of trashing Rand personally, not intellectually, and one cannot help but feel justice at his public bubble being burst."

Amen! (So to speak.)

Another Satisfied Customer

I am delighted to see that Paul Hsieh is enjoying his new Asus Eee PC 1000, and, owning one of the older models, find myself slightly jealous at the same time. Fortunately, thanks to an earlier post of his on the same subject, I can at least upgrade my operating system soon. I hadn't had time to look into that, and was reluctant to do so anyway while bouncing back and forth between cities so much over the past year.

Working from Home

I will be working from home for awhile once I return to Boston for good next week, so I found this post (and the ensuing comments) over at Noodlefood on the subject to be of interest. (I'd swear I have encountered the wonko.com post before, but I'd forgotten about it.)

Also, I am considering a career change to a type of work that, in a few years, I could make into an at-home occupation. A major issue with such a move is setting clear boundaries between work and leisure.

A History Primer for Barack Obama

Via Ron Pisaturo, I see that there is a nice refutation of Barack Obama's unjust praise of the Islam for the cultural achievements of the ancient Arab world over at The Charlotte Capitalist.

-- CAV

Cross-posted from Metablog