re: #85 The Sanity Inspector

Which is at best a most uninformed thing to say.

Context is always important. I remember years ago having a discussion in which Marx was brought up and I started discussing his economic theories in the context of the time in which they were informed.

I was immediately flamed by several people as a Marxist because apparently the only proper opinion of Karl Marx that one should hold was “evil bad evil man.”

Marx’s theories were developed in direct response to severe wealth and ownership inequities in 19th-century Europe that did not exist in America. As a result, they simply would not have worked here. That’s what I said, in a nutshell, that drew so much outrage. In no way, shape or form am I even remotely a Marxist, lol.

So if someone says their “favorite philosopher” is Mao, I’d certainly be interested in knowing why. I certainly wouldn’t automatically presume they were a Maoist.