Monday, August 12, 2002

More on pseudonymity: Steven den Beste is suspicious of people who post under pseudonyms, such as Demosthenes or Publius. He particularly suspects that pseudonymous pundits may be too cowardly to take an unpopular stand, and take the rap for it, and may even be advocating views and policies which they don't wholly believe in themselves. As seems to have been true in the latter case, once the mask slipped off --- the primary Publius had deep reservations about what he was pseudonymously advocating (at one point saying "no man's ideas were more remote from the plan than [mine] were known to be"), but as Publius, he spoke for it nonetheless.

Den Beste also doesn't believe that a pseudonymous voice shouting into the wind is likely to have any meaningful influence on public debate.

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