What if a Democratic candidate for VP cited Karl Marx as a huge influence?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Karl Marx is the antithesis of Adam Smith, whose ideas are the foundation of America. Consequently, adherence to Marx is about as anti-American as you can get.

Well that's unbelievably stupid.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I consider that it's high time that America move away from its fetishistic, mordant obsession with the specifics of Enlightenment liberalism, an in many ways extraordinarily naive worldview (producing, for instance, the flagrantly and disgustingly hypocritical and self-serving John Locke and Thomas Jefferson) that is of the same time period as the Jacobite Risings, the kokugaku movement, and the Zemene Mesafint. Understand that I say this not to articulate a falsely 'progressive' teleology of history, but different times are different--sometimes richer, sometimes poorer, sometimes sadder but no wiser--and currently 'The America of the Founding Fathers' is somewhere in the same territory as 'The Ireland That We Dreamed Of' in terms of its actual relevance to anything (and frankly 'The Ireland That We Dreamed Of' presents an in some ways nicer, though less realistic image). There's absolutely nothing save historical accident and admittedly long-standing cultural affinity to distinguish the importance of Adam Smith and Karl Marx to the world as it currently is.

There's also a HUGE difference between Adam Smith or even David Ricardo and Ayn Rand. Smith was by most accounts a benign and well-liked individual.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I am not disagreeing that there is a big difference between Ayn Rand and Adam Smith, but there is also a big difference between citing Rand as an influence versus Marx. Rand is largely a pop phenomenon who, when it comes to matters of economics, largely ripped off Smith's ideas, making them edgier and more controversial in the process (a businesswoman at heart, she did well marketing her pop products). In contrast to Rand, the ideas of Smith and Marx have impacted the world more than any other individuals of the past 250 years. Smith has brought the world greater prosperity and peace; Marx has brought the world greater oppression and war. One who states they were influenced by Marx would be the polar opposite of one who states they were influenced by Smith, not Rand.

What I'm disagreeing with is primarily that there's such a thing as a 'polar opposite' in the social sciences. Or any discipline, really, other than grammar and mathematics.

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The quasi-religious significance attributed to economic forces is one of the aspects of the Enlightenment worldview that I think is most damaging, honestly. I'm willing to accept that risk.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Well, I've thought it out, and I will concede that voiced and voiceless phonemes are also an example of 'polar opposites'. Add phonotactics to grammar and math. Also particle physics.

It's still not a social science.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Well, I've thought it out, and I will concede that voiced and voiceless phonemes are also an example of 'polar opposites'. Add phonotactics to grammar and math. Also particle physics.

It's still not a social science.

But didn't Hegel tell us that thought moves through a cycle of thesis/antithesis/synthesis, where the synthesis takes elements of each of the preceding notions, in something akin to the following manner?  And did not Karl Marx dictate that, in addition to ideas, entire social and economic classes can and do operate in the same fashion, and that that is the base of history?

Thesis: Obnoxious Obama Hacks
Antithesis: Obnoxious Romney Hacks
Synthesis: 2012 Board

Simple dialectical materialism, the science of history.

I like using the dialectic a lot in certain circumstances, such as in some although not all of my academic work, but I think that it's a huge mistake to confuse 'antithesis' in the dialectical sense with some sort of ontological 'polar opposite', mainly because I think that one of Hegel's (and, by extension, Marx's) blind spots is a failure to recognize that a thesis can have more than one antithesis and hence more than one synthesis can develop. An antithesis is that which contradicts and/or negates a thesis; it does not have to be an opposite. Obnoxious Johnson, Stein, and Goode Hacks could, conceivably, be antitheses to Obnoxious Obama Hacks, for example.