Paul Craig Roberts - Official Homepage

Counter-intuitive it may seem, that a co-founder of Reaganomics and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan, Paul Craig Roberts, is the clearest, loudest and most eloquent Voice of Reason and Spokesman of Truth in the world today.  His opinions, published in political essays of  Caesarian  polish, pith and gravity, on current affairs, economics and civil liberties are, as our First President would have said, inarguable.  Explanation for the apparent paradox  that such wisdom might grow from so narrow a base is to be found in Roberts' upright, honest and candid humility--which is that of a man not afraid to admit that he has been wrong, when he has been wrong:  [Roberts] has voiced regret that he ever worked for [the Republican Party], avowing that, had he known what it would become, he would never have contributed to the 'Reagan Revolution.'

 Paul Craig Roberts - Official Homepage


Post Scriptum (I've been wondering where I was going to stick this):

Talking to my friend Richard on the phone last fortnight, he earnestly recommended the writings of one Peter Matthiessen, recently deceased, a celebrated author, Zen Roshi, etc., about whom I knew (as is my wont with celebrated, prolific authors who are virtually popes of the Buddhist sect [Zen] that I personally adhere to) zilch.  So, while still talking with Richard on the phone, I got online and Googled Peter Matthiessen Roshi--"Uh, Richard.  Matthiessen was CIA.  He set up the Paris Review as a cover for his CIA activities in Paris during the 1950's."

Then (It was like the wire was going dead)--there was either too much or too little to tell Richard, and besides, he really wasn't interested in talking about Matthiessen any more...He just mumbled something about how I had to read The Snow Leopard...and silence.

So I dug out a few more facts about Matthiessen's CIA involvement; specifically, what he said about it later--enough to convince me that he was not an innocent, that he did get dirty, that he might very well have murdered the people whom he later said he had just been "keeping tabs" on.  And, of course, that he lied about it.  So, armed, I checked a couple of volumes of Matthiessen's award-winning short stories out of the library--and found them essentially unreadable, morally insane, disgusting.  Do I still have to read the goddamned Snow Leopard?