George, I may be jumping into the middle of this discussion without clearly understanding all the points you and Skipper are discussing--in fact I am absolutely sure of that--but something he said made sense to me, so I will try to explain it in another way.
I am not very philosophically oriented, and while I am intuitively attracted to rationalist and libertarian arguments--being a pagan and a free thinker--the way you are writing about it, always seeking logic and truth, is somehow a little dead for me (not a criticism of you, incidentally, just something I noticed about my reaction to the debate).
Anyway, I think what Skipper was saying is that something John Galt said made a lot of sense to him, and it is something he liked and remembered. That is the way I view all of this also--you can analyze it, take it apart, argue about epistemology or whatever, but what attracted me to the John Galt thread were some feelings, some poems, some glimmerings of intelligence, some sense of rationalism that I just "got", to use an old 1970's way of talking. Just some light shining through once in awhile, which made me excited. In other words, John evoked an emotional response in me, and that is where flashes of philosophical growth come from, for me. |
