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« Saddam's Funniest Home Torture Videos | Main | Weekend Cogitation Announcement »
June 19, 2004

That's So Damn Smart-Sounding I Wish I Understood What the Hell it Meant

Doug, commenting upon something I said over at Allah's Paradise, actually attacks honesty as a virtue.

I'm always a big fan of 1) contrarianism 2) cynicism and 3) interesting writing generally. I don't know if I agree with any of the following, but damn, it sure sounds pretty smooth as you go through it.

"Again: Anger is his right. Dishonesty about that anger is not."

Nietzsche called honesty "the youngest virtue," which was his deft way of pointing out that it hadn't been considered a virtue for very long. Right, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor," so the prohibition against lying in court has been around for thousands of years. But all that praise of "honesty," "sincerity," or "authenticity" is rather new.

So I'm going to sit here and speak honestly and say that if clever deceit--not Sullivan's kind, the clever kind--isn't a virtue, then it's at least virtuoso, which is better. On the other hand, my honesty may be a moral virtue, but it surely isn't virtuoso; it's a weakness born of my malicious enjoyment of wounding the weak-minded with the truth. And still I indulge my vice of honesty.

Really, I hope we win the "War on Terror" with every strategem of deceit (and violence) and I don't care whether we have a right to be dishonest. There are occasions when it's just lovely to be dishonest and we're in the middle of one.

In case it needs to be made clear, THIS post isn't about Sullivan. It's about the wussiness of going on about honesty as if it were just the greatest thing.

Praising honesty and sincerity a wussy value! Well! I'll give Doug one thing-- that position is, if nothing else, a novel one.


posted by Ace at 02:40 AM
Comments



That sounds like it was written by Bill Clinton's lawyer.

Posted by: Sweet Jesus on June 19, 2004 10:10 AM

He's a Cynic in the most classical Greek sense. I thought that died with the Enlightenment.

Posted by: The Black Republican on June 19, 2004 10:30 AM

Ah, c'mon, Ace, that's not so new a stand. Machiavelli attacked virtue as a political failing hundreds of years ago. at least, and I'm sure he wasn't a new idea to him either. It's like saying "truth is for people who can't make up a good lie."

Maybe I'll go look up Greek Cynicism ...

Posted by: Dirge on June 19, 2004 11:17 AM

Ah, c'mon, Ace, that's not so new a stand. Machiavelli attacked virtue as a political failing hundreds of years ago. at least, and I'm sure he wasn't a new idea to him either. It's like saying "truth is for people who can't make up a good lie."

It might be old news to you. But not to me. I'm a moron.

But yeah, I realized it probably wasn't new. But it was new-ish to me. I hadn't read Nietzche's quote, for example.

Posted by: ace on June 19, 2004 12:16 PM

It seems like "Doug" or should I say "Douglas" likes to dance alone with his flowery prose, but would suffer, oh so brutishly, if there was no one there to watch.

Abu Ghraib You...."Doug"

Posted by: sonofnixon on June 20, 2004 01:28 AM

Hey, if you're a moron Ace, I'm twice the moron you'll ever be. You regularly post information here I've never heard, and analysis I wouldn't have come up with on my own. So there.

Posted by: Dirge on June 20, 2004 08:07 PM
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