| | For the same reason Robert Winefield gives, I need to "weigh in" also, just for the sake of having a clear conscience.
Over-specialisation is a form of enslavement and orchestrated disability. More commonly we associate deformity with people in wheelchairs, crippled limbs, prosthetic body parts, blind eyes, deaf ears. People with speech impediments, people who are diabetics or epileptics or whatever- these are easily thought of as the disabled and unhealthy among us. But this is nothing! There is a far worse deformity and it is one of which Jim Peron partakes and for which he is being punished.
The worst condition anybody can be in is not having a diseased and under-developed part of themselves but rather a grotesquely over-developed one at the expense of all others. If you want to pity a man, better not to pity one who has lost their hand, better to pity a man who has lost themselves in the pursuit of perfecting that hand, or that voice or that throwing arm or writing-style. You should pity modern Olympic athletes who have subordinated their social, economic, educational, family and spiritual values to their grueling and consuming training in the ability to throw a ball farther or to run their legs faster. This is the worst crime, turning away from exploring all the rich potentialities of life to pursue just one specialisation. The good life is a well-rounded life, not a quest to be the best scientist or cricketer or capitalism advocate. To the extent that Jim Peron has disabled himself this way he is a monument to American stupidity.
I know Jim, and consider myself qualified to say this about him. Jim has made it his specialty to learn about freedom and spread it into the world- it is his goal in life, his educational background, his workplace, his source of income, his ego, his conscience...it's just everything. This may not be fair, and he may not agree with me. However, when I asked him about the homosexual library in his Aristotle's bookshop or even about the cat he rescued ("Tequila") he related it back to his "classical liberalism". Knowing this much, there isn't a great deal more to tell about the fellow except that he takes criticism too seriously and too personally and his response style is snarky, bitter and very very lengthy. He does himself a disservice that, even among Kiwis, who are the most understanding breed in the world, his character is a trator to his good intentions.
If I were to go on further I would mention a few of the many times Jim encouraged and supported both education and activism in the course of Objectivism and classical liberalism. He was always ready, always interested in things at times when the Libertarianz party were taking the customary sleep between election years. When we first had our Libertarianz On Campus meetings in his bookshop I was a bit concerned that he would interject. He was in the room and you know damn well he had decades worth of strong opinions and contributions bursting to be made to everything our university group discussed- but true to his word he never made a peep, just left us to it. The shop was a port of call for all sorts of liberal-minded folk, I met all sorts of people there- friends, celebrities, polititians.
Everything Julian P has said above about Lindsay Perigo is perfectly right, I would add nothing to that. I'm entirely sure Perigo would rather never hear of Peron again than persue such involvement! I don't like the way Peter Cresswell keeps fighting dirty, slinging mud at Peron over and over as if he's mortally threatened and I especially don't like the way your Winefield-types keep doing the same by way of paying homage to the demigods of power. Luke and Ms Kat seem to be doing that too, which would be a disgusting prostitution of your own powers of discrimination. Jim is just 'a character', like so many of the rest of us are too. He can be bitter, pathetic, annoying, wrong, long-winded and childish, and hated for it, but Adam Reed is right- this doesn't warrant the treatment Peron is being dealt; Neither the hearsay mudslinging nor the Winston Peters/Chief Censor state team-up against an innocent man. Yes, you hate Jim Peron. Given more time I might do too! But this is what the statue of 'blind justice' represents, the blindfold is supposed to shade the bias, leaving us only disinterested persuit of justice.
State exile is not a thing of the past, usually one thinks of a Thomas Payne or a Jean-Jacques Rousseau not a New Zealander in 2005. But it has never been a thing taken lightly. So before you judge please consider what you know about him. You don't have any proof, only hearsays and opinion about a set of values Jim is supposed to have and that a Chief Censor Commisar doesn't approve of his character (this is a bad thing?). But there are facts about the good work Jim has done and for what it's worth I put my own opinion of him opposed to all the rest. I had never heard of these matters before and I for one am not going to make up my mind based on the adhesive properties of mud. He's a friend to me and the worst crime that he's ever done, to the cost of his character, is over-specialising in the politics of freedom.
Rick.
|
|
