Why all modern men, insofar as they are modern men, are hollow men

A reader thanks me for my 2005 analysis of John Roberts’s always-“open” mind, which helps the reader understand a friend of his. His friend, he says,

is the dispassionate type who will refrain with studious rigor from having an opinion about a given subject, perhaps something in an article I’ve sent him on a contemporary event. He is rational and has a very good mind for science and is extremely intelligent, but seems to fail to see that the scientific method does not apply to the humanities…. I don’t need to tell you how frustrating it can be to try to have a meaningful argument with someone who will not (or cannot) assign meaningfulness to the subject at hand or its underlying principles.

Both Roberts and the reader’s friend are modern men, for whom the only truth is technical truth.

However, this reminds me that exactly the same can be said of the presumptive Republican nominee, the man we are hoping will save us from the nightmarish bureaucratic tyranny into which Roberts has delivered us.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 02, 2012 02:42 PM | Send