A Psuedo-Intellectual Understanding of Blogging

I find this statement from Tyler Cowen rather amusing;

Blogging makes us more oriented toward an intellectual bottom line, more interested in the directly empirical, more tolerant of human differences, more analytical in the course of daily life, more interested in people who are interesting, and less patient with Continental philosophy.

Amusing because of who Cowen is: a pro-globalization, libertarian,  economics professor who writes books about how to gut public arts funding and feel good about it. Amused because within that context, the phrase less patient with Continental philosophy does not mean

“I am not convinced of the value of using Lacanian psychoanalysis to explore time, subjectivity and inter-subjectivity, radical otherness, sexual difference, and deconstruction”

and instead means something much more akin to

“I am unwilling to listen to any bit of thinking, or have any conversation, that refuses to begin with the premise that the ‘free market’, as I define it, is the morally superior, obvious and natural answer to all questions of value and worth regardless of domain.”

Amusing because I fail to see how something can make one both “more tolerant of human differences” and “less patient with Continental philosophy”.

Amusing because “directly empirical” is as silly a construction as “ATM machine”.

Amusing because despite all of the obvious deficiencies and general silliness of the statement, the street-preachers of the libertarian gospels will be parroting it far and wide now.