Corrections -- Old, New, and Undeleted

I received an email from Craig Ceely with the following "Corrections and Updates." (I should pay more attention to detail, and I am delighted to have another blogger helping me out, so THANK YOU CRAIG!).

Craig writes as follows:

1) The Soviet Union 28 years ago thing is for Eugene and Sasha Volokh--THEY left the USSR 28 years ago yesterday. My parents brought me to America 43 years ago--from New York, where I was born.

2) On the altruism/fish thing--Ayn Rand died in 1982, not the late 1970s.

3) I blogged you again yesterday, adding more to the crucifixion discussion--for which, again, thanks for the initial idea, as well as for leaving comments on my blog.

Yours,

Craig

Corrections noted! I do appreciate them, too. Otherwise, how would I know when I'm wrong?

Craig is from New York, not the USSR. ("Don't know how lucky you are....")

I am particularly grateful for the additional information about Ayn Rand, and I am as intrigued as ever by the natural altruism issue.

This bibliography is a good starting point in determining what, if anything, Ayn Rand might have known about animal altruism, and when she might have found out about it. Behavioral research has been going on for some time, but the data on genetic altruism is quite recent, and ongoing in nature. Solid evidence of natural altruism had simply not appeared in irrefutable form in Ayn Rand's day, so it is difficult to speculate about what she might have thought. First of all, the scientific complexities of behavioral genetics were simply not within her area of expertise. Second, her refusal to believe that cigarettes caused cancer -- even when faced with by-then overwhelming scientific data -- evinces a strong contrarian streak. Being a contrarian myself, I love people who think that way, but I think it might have made her quite resistant to newly discovered evidence (even assuming that it existed at the time and was made available to her).

Still, I have long loved Ayn Rand, and I would rather give her the benefit of not knowing these things than shrilly insist that she refused to take into account scientific facts.

But no matter how I look at it, the fact of altruism's natural occurrence in everything from insects all the way up to man militates against the conclusion that altruism is either man-made, or a bad thing per se. My objection to what passes for altruism is that much of it is not altruism, and much more is imposed against a person's natural will -- either by the threat of force (commissars, taxing authorities, and the like), or by manipulating the fear of death (threats of eternal punishments, damnation of the soul, offers of sainthood, etc.).

I appreciated the email from Craig, and I welcome ideas or criticism. As I said before, I am not nearly as well versed in Objectivism as I would like to be, and I would enjoy hearing more about it.

So much for corrections. But what about the larger issue of blog correction in general? (i.e., who polices the police of the police?) It strikes me that this goes to the heart of the difference between blog publishing and the publishing of books or other printed materials. Blogging is always a work in progress, and if you spent too much time worrying about perfect, finished, fact-checked copy, things would take far longer, and you would not have a daily blog. Therefore, corrections must sometimes be made later. The fact that I did not know when Ayn Rand died, and thought it was in the mid 1970s, was good enough for my purposes (my argument being the same even though she died in 1982), but such a guess would never fly with a magazine article or a book. But even now, my correction is based on Craig's word; I assume he is right and I see no need to research the issue any further. Were this to appear in real print, that date would have to be checked, and maybe rechecked.

Still, what about Richard Goldstein's argument that blogging is unreliable because bloggers can simply erase anything they have written? Does he have a point?

Let's examine Goldstein's criticism of blogging (remember, he's Editor of the Village Voice):

This new form of online discourse allows anyone to be a pundit by linking to another piece and then dissecting it. What's more, bloggers can manage their own archives, making it possible for them to say the most outrageous things and then hit the delete key when the objections roll in. Unless you've downloaded the original blog, you can't prove it ever existed. It's gone to that great cookie in the sky.

Blogging has no enforceable rules, but I think there is nonetheless a very powerful, self-enforcing honor system. This is as roughly analogous to ebay, where there are few rules, but if you start to accumulate negative feedback, people will shy away from you. Blogging "feedback" is also built on trust, taking the form of links and comments; if you are a dishonest jerk or the type of person who says outrageous things and then deletes them, well, you'll end up with no takers. What I deeply admire about bloggers (I have already seen this quite often) is that many of them link to bloggers with whom they disagree wholeheartedly. Disagreement will not generally earn you a "negative."

I have no idea how to rank myself as a blogger, and because there really isn't an official blogger rating system I can point to (I rank pretty low -- at the "fish" level -- here), I can only remind everyone that I am new to blogging and extremely grateful for the links I have gotten so far, as well as the comments in discussions and emails.

But there is one "official" rating (of sorts) in my favor: I am not new to ebay. Here is my rating. Check me out. No negatives. (Nothing for sale right now, by the way -- unless you are looking for something I just listed as a joke.)

Nor am I new to sounding off on controversial and emotional issues, especially on issues that guys like Goldstein would consider "outrageous." I am a member of the NRA and the ACLU, a pagan Christian Buddhist libertarian Democrat Republican pit-bull breeding Deadhead SCUBA-diving, Ham-radio operating, licensed attorney who hates most lawyers and most litigation. Former nightclub owner, clean and sober for almost seven years (but UGH! how I hate using labels like that to describe myself). For nine years I tried to expose a historical fraud called "Watergate," and reverse what I perceive to be an injustice. For all those years I was almost completely ignored. While this involved Classical Values only in the general sense (and is not the subject of this blogsite), the experience was a major reason I started blogging. And, considering the magnitude of what was successfully covered up in a bipartisan manner, I will always be skeptical of "established history" -- even ancient history. If there is one thing I learned in nine years of trying, it is that you are a fool if you think you can correct history by writing letters.

And if you can't correct history by writing letters, you damned sure aren't going to end the Culture War or restore Classical Values that way either. If I reach only a half a dozen people by blogging, that is better than writing thousands of letters to people who will not listen, because the people I reach this way are neither passive members of the public, nor are they the people I am complaining about. They are bloggers. A few hundred of them made the New York Times come to terms with reality. Had these same few hundred people simply written letters, Howell Raines would still be there, cranking out whatever he deemed fit to print without any accountability. Jayson Blair might still be there, making up stories to his heart's content.

Some journalists say the most outrageous things! (And then they think they can hit the delete key when the objections roll in....)

Journalists don't want to hear about it when they're wrong.

Bloggers do.