The latest New Individualist has an article entitled "Huck Finn and the Nuremberg Rally", by Bruce S. Thornton.
He praises Huck Finn as a symbol of American individualism. Against contemporary communitarians, he argues that community solidarity of the European sort is actually a dangerous thing.
"After all, you'd never get 200,000 Huck Finns to goose-step and 'Seig Heil' with the mindless, robotic fervor of those Germans in Triumph of the Will."
Try to imagine
Huck Finn
Fitting in
With all those marching Germans.
Which is truly
The triumph of the will?
A troop of hollow
Followers?
Or that unruly,
Laughing boy
Rafting down the river...
The issue I'm talking about had giant ants on the cover. The issue before that had a parody of a Hollywood gossip magazine on its cover. The issue before that had the Muhammad cartoon.
ReplyDeleteIn all cases the material insided was more serious than the covers might be taken suggest. Under Bidinotto's editorship the magazine has taken a turn toward high readability. I actually read all the articles, 2 months in a row now, just because they looked interesting.
The articles seem to be concerned with culture and politics mostly. I know they are trying to produce a magazine they can place on newsstands. Hence the eye-catching covers and readable articles.
It does not compete, in my view, with Ayn Rand's own publications, The Objectivist and The Ayn Rand Letter. She managed to combine cultural discourse with original and deep philosophy.