THE announcement of Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson’s findings against Microsoft was marked by an unprecendented coincidence: Janet Reno and I were both wreathed in smiles. How could it be? I’m a right-winger who favors capitalism and laissez-faire government, and she’s a left-winger who favors socialism and meddling government. Somebody was being illogical, and it wasn’t Janet Reno.
Conservatives are big on logic, ever conscious of our duty to be rational and objective, quick to pounce on those who lead with their hearts instead of their heads, and unforgiving of anyone who “personalizes” an argument. Nobody has defended logic more rigorously than yours truly. I’ve held the fort with lofty terms like post hoc, ergo propter hoc and Aristotelian discourses on the “feminization” of reason, but when the Microsoft news broke I went slumming in the ghetto of subjectivity, there to learn how the other half lives and appreciate their satisfactions.
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