On Being “Fair”

Karen:  Whenever any of my students tried using the word “fair” in urging their point of view, I responded that “we’re not going to use the four-letter ‘f-word’ in this class.  You must do better than this. If you think something is ‘fair’ or ‘unfair,’ explain your reasoning.  Don’t fall back on empty teen-ager justice.”  That this word has metastasized throughout our culture is a symptom of our intellectual emptiness. Or as Ayn Rand so well expressed it, when someone uses the word “fair,” “run like hell.”

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8:11 pm on October 13, 2015