Flaming Arrogance
29 November 2007
Editor, Washington Post
1150 15th St., NW
Washington, DC 20071
Dear Editor:
Charles Lane exposes Hugo Chavez's tyrannical motive for building the new "socialist" city of Caribia ("Chavez"s Vision in the Hills," November 29). Mr. Lane also correctly notes that such brutal schemes often find legitimacy in allegedly deep ideas dreamed up by shallow western intellectuals. The (let us call it) shallow-"deep" idea in play here is "high modernism" which has, as Mr. Lane says, "an aesthetic sense that prefers straight lines and right angles to the crooked pathways and sprawling gardens of spontaneous rural development."
The famous critic of urban "sprawl" Lewis Mumford would applaud Caribia. Mumford was distressed that when he looked down upon cities such as London and New York from an airplane he saw only "sprawl and shapelessness." So for intellectuals such as Mumford, because the shapes of cities as seen from the clouds appear to be untidy and intellectually unsatisfying, these intellectuals assume that reality is faulty and must be corrected by grand, central plans. How childishly arrogant.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Editor, Washington Post
1150 15th St., NW
Washington, DC 20071
Dear Editor:
Charles Lane exposes Hugo Chavez's tyrannical motive for building the new "socialist" city of Caribia ("Chavez"s Vision in the Hills," November 29). Mr. Lane also correctly notes that such brutal schemes often find legitimacy in allegedly deep ideas dreamed up by shallow western intellectuals. The (let us call it) shallow-"deep" idea in play here is "high modernism" which has, as Mr. Lane says, "an aesthetic sense that prefers straight lines and right angles to the crooked pathways and sprawling gardens of spontaneous rural development."
The famous critic of urban "sprawl" Lewis Mumford would applaud Caribia. Mumford was distressed that when he looked down upon cities such as London and New York from an airplane he saw only "sprawl and shapelessness." So for intellectuals such as Mumford, because the shapes of cities as seen from the clouds appear to be untidy and intellectually unsatisfying, these intellectuals assume that reality is faulty and must be corrected by grand, central plans. How childishly arrogant.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Posted by Don Boudreaux on
Monday May 12, 2008 at 12:39pm