Quoting Case <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > [Case] > > OK, I actually spelled it wrong thinking that typos were not confusing > > enough. > > > > William James Sidis. > > > > Remember him? > > One line about one article by one man does not a convincing case make > for Indian influence on the Founding Fathers. Of course, if you start > off with a premise like that you can usually find support for your argument. > That's pretty much how we think, evidenced by what goes on at this site. > > [Case] > Well, Pirsig says other wise! > > "It looked as though way back in the thirties Sidis had been on exactly the > same thesis about Indians. He was trying to tell people some of the most > important things that could be said about their country and they were > rewarding him by publicly calling him a 'fool' and failing to publish what > he had written. There didn't even seem to be any way to find out what Sidis > had said." > -Lila
Here's actually what Pirsig said about Sidis and the influence of Indians: "Mahony has spent the last ten years looking into Sidis's work. In one dusty attic, he found a bulky manuscript called The Tribes and the States in which Sidis argues persuasively that the New England political system was profoundly influenced by the democratic federation of the Penacook Indians." Note first that whatever influence Sidis claimed the Indians had was on the New England political system, not the Founding Fathers. Note second that he ascribed such influence to the Penacook, not the Iroquois, as many here have claimed. Finally, note that the reference to Indian influence on the political system in one region of the country only consists of one sentence in several paragraphs referring to Sidis in Pirsig's book, hardly a major point of the MOQ. > This is unbelievable I thought I would never get a chance to use it. So let > me see if I can put this as you would: > > Pirsig said it. > I believe it. > That settles it! I am arguing just the opposite. Just because Pirsig says the Indians influenced the Founding Fathers (although he actually didn't say that) I don't believe it and I don't think that settles it by a long shot. ------------------------------------------------- This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/ moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
