A Note on Book Pedigree
Do you remember the first book you read that opened the door to one of the major interests in your life?
For me, it was hearing a young blonde lawyer on the telly call the Europeans a race of cowards which the fathers of the American risked life and limb by sea storm, by starvation, and by Red savages to flee, that first made me believe that politics in the abstract had an interesting real world application. Her name was Anne Coulter. Thanks to her, I started listening to G. Gordon Liddy read the news on the radio.
It was Ayn Rand who first got me interested in politics in the abstract, since it was she who first argued to my satisfaction that morality and economics and politics were interrelated manifestations of the same thing. Her novels interested me, at that time, less than her nonfiction essays.
It was Ludwig von Mises, not Adam Smith, who first got me interested in economics, since it was he who first convinced me that economics was a legitimate branch of philosophy, and a science that could be studied rigorously, not a mere mass of bafflegab and opinion, as, for example, Keynesian so called economics is.
A.E. van Vogt, in his novel WORLD OF NULL A first persuaded me to study philosophy, by making it seem like a superpower: the use of reason to learn not only the truths of the universe but the Truth about mankind, and about oneself!
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
