First, one comic note: I saw the word "confinement used with such frequency in this essay that I thought Europe was having a baby. In America, pregnancy used to be termed a woman's confinement.
I really loved this essay as it introduced me to divergent ideas, some of which I found wholly invalid -- but I thrive on the provocations of differing ideas.
I could not have disagreed more with JQ. He seems to think that quarantines (what he sometimes calls confinements) are despicable because they date back to the middle ages. With all due respect to JQ, his thinking violates fundamental rules of logic. Is beef stew bad because cooks were making it in the middle ages. His view is akin to the view that toilet paper is bad because Hitler used toilet paper. Aristotle called this the informal logical fallacy "argumentum ad hominum." The middle ages may have been terrible, but that does not mean that anything stemming from the middle ages in necessarily terrible. However, I should readily concede that politics is a sewer of logical fallacies. And not only politics. Almost no one in the liberal arts considers the logical validity of their remarks, and the finest journals teem with logical absurdities.
A quarantine of San Francisco's chinatown, in the beginning of the 20 th century, saved this country from the bubonic plague which could have developed into its horrific ancestor of the middle ages, pneumonic plague. A ship from China had landed in San Francisco and that ship harbored yersina pestis, the bacillus that causes bubonic and pneumonic plague.
Look at it like this: If someone is virulently violent and psychotic, we will lock him up because he may hurt others. When someone is seriously ill, his illness may hurt others.
Another thought: This piece shattered some of my illusions about the response to Covid, and in all frankness I liked those illusions. In America, trump supporters were most opposed to masks, social distancing, etc. This prompted me to believe that opposition to masks signified backwardness and reactionary tendencies and it made me feel superior because I religiously abide by the dictates of Anthony Faucci.
However, I liked this piece, even though JQ made me apoplectic, because I want to hear what other people have to say and love to feast on divergent views.
First, one comic note: I saw the word "confinement used with such frequency in this essay that I thought Europe was having a baby. In America, pregnancy used to be termed a woman's confinement.
I really loved this essay as it introduced me to divergent ideas, some of which I found wholly invalid -- but I thrive on the provocations of differing ideas.
I could not have disagreed more with JQ. He seems to think that quarantines (what he sometimes calls confinements) are despicable because they date back to the middle ages. With all due respect to JQ, his thinking violates fundamental rules of logic. Is beef stew bad because cooks were making it in the middle ages. His view is akin to the view that toilet paper is bad because Hitler used toilet paper. Aristotle called this the informal logical fallacy "argumentum ad hominum." The middle ages may have been terrible, but that does not mean that anything stemming from the middle ages in necessarily terrible. However, I should readily concede that politics is a sewer of logical fallacies. And not only politics. Almost no one in the liberal arts considers the logical validity of their remarks, and the finest journals teem with logical absurdities.
A quarantine of San Francisco's chinatown, in the beginning of the 20 th century, saved this country from the bubonic plague which could have developed into its horrific ancestor of the middle ages, pneumonic plague. A ship from China had landed in San Francisco and that ship harbored yersina pestis, the bacillus that causes bubonic and pneumonic plague.
Look at it like this: If someone is virulently violent and psychotic, we will lock him up because he may hurt others. When someone is seriously ill, his illness may hurt others.
Another thought: This piece shattered some of my illusions about the response to Covid, and in all frankness I liked those illusions. In America, trump supporters were most opposed to masks, social distancing, etc. This prompted me to believe that opposition to masks signified backwardness and reactionary tendencies and it made me feel superior because I religiously abide by the dictates of Anthony Faucci.
However, I liked this piece, even though JQ made me apoplectic, because I want to hear what other people have to say and love to feast on divergent views.
Articles from my buddy James are always the best.😁