It's a sad thing that Elder even had to go through the motions to explain all this. It's really just common sense. The "progressives" should have known all this stuff already, if they really were about putting forth intellectual effort to understand ideas different from theirs, rather than being all full of hubris.
Question: do "progressives" routinely ignore black conservatives such as Elder because "black conservative" simply doesn't compute for them and therefore they regard such things as an aberration or anomaly? If not, then what else would explain why "progressives" routinely ignore them?
[Addendum 9/2: The same group of leftists/"progs" who routinely ignore black conservatives are also typically the same group of folks who routinely and with much hubris and nastiness assume that philosophers don't take Rand seriously - in which case any philosopher who does can be treated as an aberration or anomaly. What other excuse do they have for routinely ignoring - indeed, seeming to bend over backwards to ignore - the professional philosophers who think there is value there in Rand? These professors go through years of training, publishing, etc., and then the "progs" take a dump all over them on the basis of nothing. I'd give these "progs" a lot more leeway and benefit of the doubt, character-wise, if it were not for all their hubris, which is one thing I cannot abide, especially when there are indisputable facts out there, not exactly unavailable to the curious, that refute their bold yet ignorant claims and assumptions. (They value pleasure over truth. In the past I, for one, have taken pleasure in bashing Marx and Marxism, but my experience with Rand-bashers tells me that maybe a lot of that Marx/ism-bashing is based in strawmen or other forms of intellectual laziness. And so I am extending the benefit of the doubt far enough to reserve further comment on Marx until I've gone through the Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx [which I anticipate, based on experience with the Handbooks, to be roughly on par with taking a graduate-level course]. (As philosophers go, it would appear that there are at least a dozen or so larger fish to fry, however; the likes of Aristotle, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant and Hegel seem to have greater impact on philosophers to the present day; see how many articles are devoted to the biggest names at the SEP, for instance. [Plato, Aristotle and Kant are the ones with at least a dozen articles there, making them solid candidates for biggest fish to fry.]) The closest thing to an Oxford Handbook on Rand right now would be the Blackwell Companion, in publication for 3.5 years now but - as I should have predicted back then, because the phenomenon here is like clockwork - no word yet from the bashers on what they think of it, since they have routinely bent over backwards to ignore the existence of such things. I don't think it's a matter of its current price, either; at least if they knew about it they would know it's priced highly. But they don't know about the other, non-pricey, secondary Rand literature listed in the bibliography of the Rand SEP entry, either, much less all the free courses at ARI Campus. The water is there and the horses refuse to drink and yet they still keep up with the bashing. (I've never encountered an honorable Rand-basher, nor do I expect to ever do so. It's just not where doing one's homework on Rand leads, as the body of secondary Rand literature makes plain. The bashers might routinely intimidate college freshmen on reddit who express an interest in Rand, but they're not going to make a dent in Salmieri et al.) It's not unlike bashing the idea of free will without knowing at least the controversies and subject matter one might encounter in the Oxford Handbook of Free Will [which I need to get to...], the bulk of the contributors to which are philosophy professors rather than neuroscientists [who qua such won't provide answers or methods that philosophers have the tools to deliver on this topic].) The fact that "progs" don't engage in any serious way with black conservatives, at the very time they scream and cry racism about everything in America, speaks volumes in itself. I'm not impressed with these creatures in the least, and they need philosophy boot camp ASAFP to clean up their acts. At least then they'd learn about the vice of hubris. Once again: if leftists/"progs" are so smart, why aren't they pushing philosophy education (for which there are numerous readily find-able and promising leads in this here blog]?]
[Addendum #2: Huemer takes the present-day 'SJW' culture to task for its rampant dishonesty, disregard for truth, etc. Hint: the dishonesty and disregard for truth is pervasive when it comes to pretty much any topic that crowd talks about these days, whether the subject is racial and gender equality, or whether it's capitalism, Trump, Rand, etc. What makes it particularly ugly is how academics/scholars, whose very job it is to combat such dishonesty, partake in large numbers in the dishonesty without remorse (as Huemer explains) and with the silent complicity of the other academics/scholars. How can the entire education system not be poisoned with this mentality when the kind of crap Huemer discusses occurs there so much and with such impunity?]
Question: do "progressives" routinely ignore black conservatives such as Elder because "black conservative" simply doesn't compute for them and therefore they regard such things as an aberration or anomaly? If not, then what else would explain why "progressives" routinely ignore them?
[Addendum 9/2: The same group of leftists/"progs" who routinely ignore black conservatives are also typically the same group of folks who routinely and with much hubris and nastiness assume that philosophers don't take Rand seriously - in which case any philosopher who does can be treated as an aberration or anomaly. What other excuse do they have for routinely ignoring - indeed, seeming to bend over backwards to ignore - the professional philosophers who think there is value there in Rand? These professors go through years of training, publishing, etc., and then the "progs" take a dump all over them on the basis of nothing. I'd give these "progs" a lot more leeway and benefit of the doubt, character-wise, if it were not for all their hubris, which is one thing I cannot abide, especially when there are indisputable facts out there, not exactly unavailable to the curious, that refute their bold yet ignorant claims and assumptions. (They value pleasure over truth. In the past I, for one, have taken pleasure in bashing Marx and Marxism, but my experience with Rand-bashers tells me that maybe a lot of that Marx/ism-bashing is based in strawmen or other forms of intellectual laziness. And so I am extending the benefit of the doubt far enough to reserve further comment on Marx until I've gone through the Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx [which I anticipate, based on experience with the Handbooks, to be roughly on par with taking a graduate-level course]. (As philosophers go, it would appear that there are at least a dozen or so larger fish to fry, however; the likes of Aristotle, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant and Hegel seem to have greater impact on philosophers to the present day; see how many articles are devoted to the biggest names at the SEP, for instance. [Plato, Aristotle and Kant are the ones with at least a dozen articles there, making them solid candidates for biggest fish to fry.]) The closest thing to an Oxford Handbook on Rand right now would be the Blackwell Companion, in publication for 3.5 years now but - as I should have predicted back then, because the phenomenon here is like clockwork - no word yet from the bashers on what they think of it, since they have routinely bent over backwards to ignore the existence of such things. I don't think it's a matter of its current price, either; at least if they knew about it they would know it's priced highly. But they don't know about the other, non-pricey, secondary Rand literature listed in the bibliography of the Rand SEP entry, either, much less all the free courses at ARI Campus. The water is there and the horses refuse to drink and yet they still keep up with the bashing. (I've never encountered an honorable Rand-basher, nor do I expect to ever do so. It's just not where doing one's homework on Rand leads, as the body of secondary Rand literature makes plain. The bashers might routinely intimidate college freshmen on reddit who express an interest in Rand, but they're not going to make a dent in Salmieri et al.) It's not unlike bashing the idea of free will without knowing at least the controversies and subject matter one might encounter in the Oxford Handbook of Free Will [which I need to get to...], the bulk of the contributors to which are philosophy professors rather than neuroscientists [who qua such won't provide answers or methods that philosophers have the tools to deliver on this topic].) The fact that "progs" don't engage in any serious way with black conservatives, at the very time they scream and cry racism about everything in America, speaks volumes in itself. I'm not impressed with these creatures in the least, and they need philosophy boot camp ASAFP to clean up their acts. At least then they'd learn about the vice of hubris. Once again: if leftists/"progs" are so smart, why aren't they pushing philosophy education (for which there are numerous readily find-able and promising leads in this here blog]?]
[Addendum #2: Huemer takes the present-day 'SJW' culture to task for its rampant dishonesty, disregard for truth, etc. Hint: the dishonesty and disregard for truth is pervasive when it comes to pretty much any topic that crowd talks about these days, whether the subject is racial and gender equality, or whether it's capitalism, Trump, Rand, etc. What makes it particularly ugly is how academics/scholars, whose very job it is to combat such dishonesty, partake in large numbers in the dishonesty without remorse (as Huemer explains) and with the silent complicity of the other academics/scholars. How can the entire education system not be poisoned with this mentality when the kind of crap Huemer discusses occurs there so much and with such impunity?]
