Reply to Richard's Reply
Reply to Richard's Reply
Richard, you went through a quantum seven-dimensional wormhole, and reappeared as a person on color television instead of on black and white. I.e., I could divide your two-letter string into two halves. The first half goes from the beginning of your first letter below and has finished fading into complete change by your "If only people didn't get after me so hard for 'playing the Nazi card'." Let me dwell on that first part a bit, because I pleasurably felt that the transition rippling and growing as your thoughts there developed signalled a favorable metamorphosis in our level of communication and perhaps consequently our concurrence too.
From your "Nazi card" dividing point onward the essays below flowed free from my stickiness, and I felt you answering me naturally and without any projected sense of constraint. I feel unconstrained now too. You made a slip early in your first letter: You were the one of us to introduce into our conversation together, the -10 -- +10 political scale. But of course that would be a natural frequently repeated discovery among analytically normal human specimens living in a post-Cartesian age. So in my initial old man's prickle I paranoically imagined patronization.
But all cues which my paranoia may have picked up from your note, after that point, certainly escaped my paranoid's sensors. I became nonparanoid about the time you digested my idea that a candidate "re-zeroes" the one-dimensional number lattice you and I were discussing; I believe this change took place at the precise point when you recognized that I had grasped your central hidden point. Thereafter your essay flowed, flew, independently of mine: You launched yourself into one of the loveliest specifications of fundamental political principle I have ever read. Your circle is of course the would-be-famous Nolan Chart's diamond shape a bit modified. To the Nolan Chart, which is two-dimensional, I prefer a chart in three dimensions, a sphere with latitude and longitude lines marked, on which the North Pole is the libertarian-anarchist position and on which the South Pole is the authoritarian-totalitarian position. But I am now indulging a bit overlong in the toy ideas of abstract masturbation, the mathematician's curse even when as a mathematician one may be a jerk.
The thunderous clarity of the essay in which your first post cascaded to its climax should be read by many people. It tells very succinctly what I consider the entire political tale which I would have that tale told.
Your second essay, following that marvel of a first essay, takes on again the more prosaic task of convincing me that it is desirable to vote for Bob Dole. That essay, while retaining the honesty of its predecessor, lacks some of its predecessor's high inspiration. But, it provides me a drum upon which I can beat, albeit perhaps dully, while I put myself back together after my shattering from your longer and earlier note to me.
Your second letter gives me a chance to catch my breath. I will answer it now. Find it far below what I am writing here. I treat the concerns you raise there. From this moment on, no further remarks of mine will appear until after the close, entitled "Thoughts?", of your second letter.
God bless you and your family.
