At the request of the CBC, this post has been deleted. I have further details about this here.
Farewell to Ianism
Another blogger has hung up his keyboard. Ian of Ianism made his departure even more abrupt and final than Andrew at Bound by Gravity and I’m sad.
Before I ran into Ian, my dealings with libertarians were far less cordial. I should caution that my interaction with libertarians was (a) rare and (b) took place when I was far younger and far less level headed. Actually, my debates took place in the newsgroup misc.transport.urban-transit, wherein a self-professed libertarian (actually an objectivist deeply in love with Ayn Rand) parked himself there and called all users of public transit “welfare scum”. We had a few battles. He called me a communist, I called him heartless. It was all harsh and personal.
But when this individual actually got to talking about his beliefs, it became clear that there was intelligence there, and the internal consistency of libertarian thought was daunting to debate. I would still rather have debated that than gotten as down and dirty as we got, but my respect of the viewpoint remained.
Ian had that intelligence, that logical consistency, and he kept his debates from getting personal. On some issues we fought like cats. He could needle with the best of us, but much of the sting came from the intellectual strength of his positions. To all those who engaged him, he treated them with respect. His love for life, for winemaking and for his son also shone through in his writing. And now he’s gone. One more signal has been silenced in a whole lot of noise.
Good luck to all your endeavours, Ian. If you come back, please let us know. You’ll always be welcome in the Blogging Alliance of Non-Partisan Canadians.