here.
2. Are you the Gus Van Horn I went to school with?
No. This is my pseudonym. See also question 12.
3. Neat! You're the guy from that pot luck dinner/party!
I may or may not be. See question 5.
4. Ooh! You sound just like _______ !
If you're about to guess who I am, please refrain from doing so publicly. Aside from the fact that this is my choice, I write
under a pseudonym for some very good personal and professional reasons. And no, I do not feel free to elaborate upon them here.
Thank you in advance for not speculating publicly on my identity.
If you wish, you may email me with your speculation, but I will not necessarily tell you that you are correct
or incorrect. Do not take this personally. I am simply taking the following warning to heart: "Loose lips sink ships."
5. What is the "Gus Van Horn Circle of Trust?"
This is a secret society consisting of all people who know my real name and the fact that I write under this pseudonym.
Of course, I ripped this term off from Meet the Parents, one of my favorite comedies. Robert De Niro's character reminds
me a little of what I might be like if I were getting ready to marry off a daughter!
6. How do I join?
Well, the club is not actively seeking members, but there are two ways. (I deliberately keep this group small to protect my
anonymity from innocent slips of the tongue.)
(1) From time to time, I may decide to admit people, but I am very circumspect about such things. Part of this stems
from my own absent-mindedness. I see myself getting ready to sign an email with my actual name and not "Gus" frequently enough
without multiplying the odds by sharing the information.
(2) There is enough biographical information scattered about here for someone who knows me well to figure out who I am.
But since you had to read this material to figure that out, you have automatically become a member whether you want to be or not!
What a deal! Please see question 5 if you skipped to this.
7. That sounds burdensome! What are the benefits?
You get to help keep one of my favorite running jokes going indefinitely. You will also earn my gratitude for keeping your mouth
shut. This is a secret society!
8. Why would I join?
Beats me.
9. How did you come up with your pseudonym?
Most of the story is explained in my first post. I
don't know how we came up with "Gus." We all thought it a funny-sounding name. (My real first name is funnier!) The "Van Horn" comes
from a mental association of mine. Since I'm a supposed to be a "trial lawyer from West Texas," an image from an atlas map of West
Texas once showed up in my mind's eye.
As you can see from the above image, which I scanned from that map, there is a town called "Van Horn" off of I-10 out there and
that name was in the center of this mental image, but as a county name. (The county in
which the name appeared was actually Jeff Davis, though. In defense of my oddball recollection, the town of Van Horn is at
least close to that county!) So that became the last name.
10. Do you have a photographic memory?
Nope. Just a fascination with maps.
11. Why do you sign all your posts "CAV?" Aren't your initials "GVH?"
It's for Caesar Augustus Van Horn, of which "Van Horn" is a last name. See the link in question 9 above. But since I use "Gus," which is short for "Augustus," other
people often end up using "GVH." My real name is somewhat quirky, but it isn't that hard
to deal with. Leave it to me to come up with a pseudonym that is even more cumbersome than my real name!
12. Why don't you write under your real name?
I started out with some ambivalence about becoming a blogger and an opinion writer and decided that using
a pen name would give me an easy way to back out. Over time, I have learned that there are other benefits to the cloak of anonymity
I had not thought of. The main one is that with the ease of searching the Internet, it would be extremely easy for people I don't
necessarily want reading my blog to find it. (See also, question 4.)
Mainly, though, as N.Z. Bear points out: Once I reveal my actual name,
there's
no going back.
13. What's with the occasional submarine post?
I was once a submariner. I was an officer aboard a Los Angeles class nuclear submarine.
14. One day, you're attacking the religious right and the next, you're ripping the Democrats a new "deal."
Why are you so inconsistent?
I am actually quite consistent. It is the Republicans, who want you to keep your money, but forfeit your mind to religion, who
are inconsistent. And the Democrats, who want you to have a few personal liberties, but no property, and very little else.
15. Oh! So you're a Libertarian?
Not with a capital L. That party is hardly a friend of liberty, given that their lack of a coherent philosophical approach makes
them unable even to define the term. Peter Schwartz wrote a devastating critique of Libertarianism in a tract called
Libertarianism: the Perversion of Liberty some time ago. As far as I can tell, the article is unavailable from the
Internet, except for purchase.
I'd like to recommend it as it does a good job of showing the practical consequences of what the Libertarians try to do. In
essence, the Libertarians pretend that a concept as sophisticated and controversial as freedom is whatever anyone, no matter how
mindless, wants it to be.
I discuss this problem in some detail here. But the
Schwartz critique is far more exhaustive and devastating.
16. What are you, then?
As I explain in this disclaimer, I consider myself, philosophically,
to be an Objectivist, but have no official connection with the Ayn Rand Institute. I start by
describing my
philosophy because my politics develop from this philosophy.
Ayn Rand, the author of this philosophy, summarized her basic positions very well once when she was asked whether she could describe it while standing on one foot.
She summarized Objectivism as taking the following positions in each of its four branches: metaphysics:
objective reality, epistemology: reason, ethics: self-interest, and politics: capitalism.
In the past, during normal conversation, I've variously described my politics with the following imperfect shorthand terms:
small-L libertarian, secular Republican, fiscal conservative/social liberal, and laissez-faire capitalist.
None of the above shorthand descriptions is satisfying since each introduces confusion of its own. I have recently decided to
say something like, "I am a radical capitalist," before using any of these, affording me the opportunity to explain what
capitalism
actually is. Then, when I get "Oh, so you're a Libertarian?" or whatever else I get because they associate something else with
capitalism, I can proceed to demolish that misconception. Haven't gotten to try this yet, though.
17. What right have you to mock the Houston Atheist Society or insult a nice
man like Michael Medved?
Freedom of speech.
On a less flippant note, I will not hesitate to point out major philosophical errors that threaten to cloud further the already
muddied waters of intellectual discourse. In the case of the HAS, we have an organization that holds itself out as pro-secularist, but undercuts the
cause by (1) running an unprofessional web site that potentially insults random Christians who might actually favor separation of
church and state, and (2) advocates all kinds of positions that really have nothing to do with keeping our government out of
religious affairs.
In the case of Michael Medved, he not only insulted atheists by implying that they all agree with Michael Moore,
he did the truth a disservice in doing so. If man is, as Aristotle says, the "rational animal" and Medved argues as if he has been
lobotomized, then he surely deserves the scare quotes I used in this post. Truth and justice demanded
them, too.
18. Why do you use the antiquated spelling "Moslem?"
Because I'm old enough to remember when this was the "correct" spelling. I also remember when we bombed Tripoli and there
were at least eight spellings of "Qaddafi." These are both Arabic terms and are merely transliterations of a language that can't
keep track of its own vowels anyway! And, to top it off, "Muslim" strikes me as political correctness, especially when I hear some
condescending, sanctimonious, and very American-looking apologist for Islamofascism on Fox News hypercorrectly beating me over the
head with "Moooossleem" every five seconds. Since his religion says I should be summarily executed anyway, I'll spell it how I damn
well please.
When they stop insisting I convert, submit, or die, I'll revisit this Earth-shattering issue.
For that matter, it will be a cold day in Hell before I use the term "African-American" for "black", "BCE" for "BC", "god" for
"God", or "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas," although that phrase is just fine if it includes Christmas and New
Year's or
Boxing Day, or whatever else.
Oh yeah. And I'm part American Indian, unlike Ward "Cherokee" Churchill. I vastly prefer the terms "Indian" and
"Amerindian"
to "Native American", an annoying word pairing that describes anyone born here anyway. Even if I weren't part Indian, I'd refuse to
use "Native American" and encourage the same of anyone else.
I oppose multiculturalism and I find attempts to dictate how I speak and write repugnant, so I ignore them. This movement
opposes Western civilization, which I value. The fight back starts with preserving the integrity of my native tongue. Hence, I use
proper English grammar, which includes the use of masculine pronouns generically, among other things.
19. What are your blog policies?
I have them, but choose not to list them in any great detail. I have found that people who are possessed of class and common
courtesy really don't need to be told what I expect. Conversely, it is generally the people who have to be told about such issues
who will ignore what I have to say or deliberately flout it anyway. So why give them ideas?
I will mention here that I do not necessarily endorse products that advertise here or vouch for other web sites linked from
here. See also the next question and my link policy.
20. Why do you link to so-and-so?
Because I find the link interesting, important, or worth keeping an eye on for some
other reason. Links to other web pages do not necessarily constitute endorsements.
21. What's that green thing in your blog's address bar?
Thank you for asking. That favicon is a picture of my blog's mascot, Mohammed. Feel free to call him "Mo" for short.
22. Do you really do all this work yourself?
Yes, but I do retain the services of my cat, Jerome, as my official fact-checker. I blame all inaccuracies that occur here, not to
mention certain other missteps on my part on and away from the web, on him.
23. What is that a picture of next to your comments?
That is my blog's gravatar, showing an image of a ship being torpedoed as seen through the crosshairs of a periscope. More
details, including a larger image and its source, are here.
24. Is that sketch on your blog's masthead supposed to be you?
It is as close to a picture of me as you're going to get here any time soon. Here's the story behind it.
I was blogging late one night when my wife interrupted me to ask a question. When I get going good, I can sometimes be
quite testy when interrupted. She left the room after the interruption and came back grinning awhile later with a drawing titled,
"The Bitchy Blogger". I liked it so much I decided to scan it in and use it for my new masthead.
It worked out very
nicely for me, too, that I like the color combination of blue and yellow.
25. You used to quote Robert Tracinski quite a bit. What is your position on his "What Went Right"
series?
On to more serious matters....
Based on my reading of his still-unifinished series regarding how philosophical ideas affect history, I do not think
Tracinski
has correctly represented the
Objectivist position on this subject, properly described the role of implicitly-held ideas in affecting history, or showed a
full appreciation of the need for the spread of a more explicitly rational philosophy in the modern world.
This is all I will say on the matter for the moment.
26. You're pretty bloody prolific. What is your favorite post of all time?
Hands down, the one I wrote about my Dad on
Father's Day in 2005.
