As a student of the 19th Century, I am naturally into our 16th President and the Civil War. I have read many books on Lincoln and expect to read many more.
You can make the case that Lincoln was a white supremacist. Frederick Douglass said that Lincoln always thought of the white race first, and that blacks were only his step-children. Since we can't read Lincoln's mind, there is no way to prove the opposite.
Lincoln was certainly a conservative. He was not any kind of liberal in any way, shape, or form.
He was always anti-slavery, but never an abolitionist, and he was silent on slavery until 1854 when the Kansas-Nebraska bill revived his political fortunes. He spoke out against the expansion of slavery (he was Ok with leaving it alone in the states where it already existed) only when it became politically benefical to do so.
He was a Henry Clay Whig to the end and like Clay, he favored colonization of blacks. As late as December of 1862 he spoke publicly (for the last time) favoring colonization. Did he ever really give up on colonization as unpractical as it was? We will never know for sure. Lincoln's advocacy of colonization should not endear him to anyone in the 21st century.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Sunday, March 29, 2009
The Pun
I say the pun is the highest form of intellectual humor. The clever use of language ranks highest on my list of types of humor, right next to The Three Stooges and Lewis Grizzard.
By JOSEPH TARTAKOVSKY
Published: March 28, 2009
THE inglorious pun! Dryden called it the “lowest and most groveling kind of wit.” To Ambrose Bierce it was a “form of wit to which wise men stoop and fools aspire.” Universal experience confirms the adage that puns don’t make us laugh, but groan. It is said that Caligula ordered an actor to be roasted alive for a bad pun. (Some believe he was inclined to extremes.)
Addison defined the pun as a “conceit arising from the use of two words that agree in the sound, but differ in the sense.” “Energizer Bunny Arrested! Charged with Battery.” No laugh? Q.E.D.
Puns are the feeblest species of humor because they are ephemeral: whatever comic force they possess never outlasts the split second it takes to resolve the semantic confusion. Most resemble mathematical formulas: clever, perhaps, but hardly occasion for knee-slapping. The worst smack of tawdriness, even indecency, which is why puns, like off-color jokes, are often followed by apologies. Odds are that a restaurant with a punning name — Snacks Fifth Avenue, General Custard’s Last Stand — hasn’t acquired its first Michelin star.
How have the great comic writers regarded puns? Jane Austen puns once, in “Mansfield Park,” and it serves to impeach the moral character of the offender. Mark Twain’s first book, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” enamored reviewers with its punlessness. There are “no contortions of words,” said a London paper. “His fun is entirely dependent upon the inherent humor in his writings.” The 20th century’s finest humorist, P. G. Wodehouse, doesn’t use them.
Shakespeare, however, does. Many are bawdy: puns operate, after all, on double entendre. Yet the poet is guilty less of punning than wordplay, which Elizabethan taste considered more a sign of literary refinement than humor; hence “puns” in seemingly inappropriate places, like a dying Mercutio’s “Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man.”
The true punster’s mind cycles through homophones in search of a quip the way small children delight in rhymes or experiment babblingly with language. Accordingly, the least intolerable puns are those that avoid the pun’s essential puerility. Richard Whately, Archbishop of Dublin, was a specialist. He could effortlessly execute the double pun: Noah’s Ark was made of gopher-wood, he would say, but Joan of Arc was maid of Orleans. Some Whately-isms are so complex that they nearly amount to honest jokes: “Why can a man never starve in the Great Desert? Because he can eat the sand which is there. But what brought the sandwiches there? Why, Noah sent Ham, and his descendants mustered and bred.”
Whately shows us that it is the punner himself who gives his art a bad name, by so frequently reaching for the obvious. Nothing vexes so much as a pun on a name, for instance. Yet even these can rise to wit if turned with finesse. Jean Harlow, the platinum-blond star of the 1930s, on being introduced to Lady Margot Asquith, mispronounced her given name to rhyme with “rot.” “My dear, the ‘t’ is silent,” said Asquith, “as in Harlow.” The writer Andrew Lang asked his friend Israel Zangwill if he would take a stand on an issue. Zangwill wrote back: “If you, Lang, will, I. Zangwill.”
Why do puns offend? Charles Lamb, a notorious punster, explained that the pun is “a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect.” Surely puns silence conversation before they animate it. Some stricken with pun-lust sink so far into their infirmity that their minds become trained to lie in wait for words on which to work their wickedness. They are the scourge of dinner tables and the despised prolongers of office meetings, some letting fly as instinctively as dogs bark and frogs croak, no longer concerned even with drawing applause; they simply can’t help themselves.
I asked a friend of mine, an inveterate punster, whether he punned while on dates. “Sure, I pun on dates,” he replied. “On prunes and figs, too.” And well he might, considering the similitude between puns and fruit flies, both of which die practically the instant they are born, but not before breeding others.
But low as puns may be, they have been known to appeal to the loftiest minds. Samuel Johnson hated puns, but his friend Edmund Burke, whose intellectual powers daunted even Johnson, was notorious for pun-making (e.g., “What is [m]ajest[y], when stripped of its externals, but a jest?”)
Still, Burke was conscious of his sin, revealed in an incident recorded in a friend’s journal: “Lord Mulgrave called to Burke one day at our table with a ‘so, Burke, you riot in puns now Johnson’s away.’ This made good sport for my lord and for the company, but Burke changed color and looked like Death.”
With Burkean contrition, I confess that in a Thai restaurant not long ago, following my company’s attempt to order three curry dishes, I suggested that we not get “curried away.” Punning, it seems, like every non-deadly sin, is easier to excuse than to resist.
Joseph Tartakovsky is a student at Fordham Law School.
By JOSEPH TARTAKOVSKY
Published: March 28, 2009
THE inglorious pun! Dryden called it the “lowest and most groveling kind of wit.” To Ambrose Bierce it was a “form of wit to which wise men stoop and fools aspire.” Universal experience confirms the adage that puns don’t make us laugh, but groan. It is said that Caligula ordered an actor to be roasted alive for a bad pun. (Some believe he was inclined to extremes.)
Addison defined the pun as a “conceit arising from the use of two words that agree in the sound, but differ in the sense.” “Energizer Bunny Arrested! Charged with Battery.” No laugh? Q.E.D.
Puns are the feeblest species of humor because they are ephemeral: whatever comic force they possess never outlasts the split second it takes to resolve the semantic confusion. Most resemble mathematical formulas: clever, perhaps, but hardly occasion for knee-slapping. The worst smack of tawdriness, even indecency, which is why puns, like off-color jokes, are often followed by apologies. Odds are that a restaurant with a punning name — Snacks Fifth Avenue, General Custard’s Last Stand — hasn’t acquired its first Michelin star.
How have the great comic writers regarded puns? Jane Austen puns once, in “Mansfield Park,” and it serves to impeach the moral character of the offender. Mark Twain’s first book, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” enamored reviewers with its punlessness. There are “no contortions of words,” said a London paper. “His fun is entirely dependent upon the inherent humor in his writings.” The 20th century’s finest humorist, P. G. Wodehouse, doesn’t use them.
Shakespeare, however, does. Many are bawdy: puns operate, after all, on double entendre. Yet the poet is guilty less of punning than wordplay, which Elizabethan taste considered more a sign of literary refinement than humor; hence “puns” in seemingly inappropriate places, like a dying Mercutio’s “Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man.”
The true punster’s mind cycles through homophones in search of a quip the way small children delight in rhymes or experiment babblingly with language. Accordingly, the least intolerable puns are those that avoid the pun’s essential puerility. Richard Whately, Archbishop of Dublin, was a specialist. He could effortlessly execute the double pun: Noah’s Ark was made of gopher-wood, he would say, but Joan of Arc was maid of Orleans. Some Whately-isms are so complex that they nearly amount to honest jokes: “Why can a man never starve in the Great Desert? Because he can eat the sand which is there. But what brought the sandwiches there? Why, Noah sent Ham, and his descendants mustered and bred.”
Whately shows us that it is the punner himself who gives his art a bad name, by so frequently reaching for the obvious. Nothing vexes so much as a pun on a name, for instance. Yet even these can rise to wit if turned with finesse. Jean Harlow, the platinum-blond star of the 1930s, on being introduced to Lady Margot Asquith, mispronounced her given name to rhyme with “rot.” “My dear, the ‘t’ is silent,” said Asquith, “as in Harlow.” The writer Andrew Lang asked his friend Israel Zangwill if he would take a stand on an issue. Zangwill wrote back: “If you, Lang, will, I. Zangwill.”
Why do puns offend? Charles Lamb, a notorious punster, explained that the pun is “a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect.” Surely puns silence conversation before they animate it. Some stricken with pun-lust sink so far into their infirmity that their minds become trained to lie in wait for words on which to work their wickedness. They are the scourge of dinner tables and the despised prolongers of office meetings, some letting fly as instinctively as dogs bark and frogs croak, no longer concerned even with drawing applause; they simply can’t help themselves.
I asked a friend of mine, an inveterate punster, whether he punned while on dates. “Sure, I pun on dates,” he replied. “On prunes and figs, too.” And well he might, considering the similitude between puns and fruit flies, both of which die practically the instant they are born, but not before breeding others.
But low as puns may be, they have been known to appeal to the loftiest minds. Samuel Johnson hated puns, but his friend Edmund Burke, whose intellectual powers daunted even Johnson, was notorious for pun-making (e.g., “What is [m]ajest[y], when stripped of its externals, but a jest?”)
Still, Burke was conscious of his sin, revealed in an incident recorded in a friend’s journal: “Lord Mulgrave called to Burke one day at our table with a ‘so, Burke, you riot in puns now Johnson’s away.’ This made good sport for my lord and for the company, but Burke changed color and looked like Death.”
With Burkean contrition, I confess that in a Thai restaurant not long ago, following my company’s attempt to order three curry dishes, I suggested that we not get “curried away.” Punning, it seems, like every non-deadly sin, is easier to excuse than to resist.
Joseph Tartakovsky is a student at Fordham Law School.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Questions
Senator Jeff Sessions will be on campus April 15 to discuss the economy. This event is open to all students, and there will be an opportunity to ask him questions. I might go. If you have any suggestions for questions I could ask Sessions, please comment here.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Sean Penn as Larry?
While driving thru Montgomery this morning I was listening to FM 96.1. They play oldies and they have a morning DJ I like. He did a riff on how impossible it would be for Sean Penn to play Larry in the forthcoming 3 Stooges movie. I like Sean Penn! What's wrong with him playing Larry. The DJ said Jim Carrey might play Curley. Why not?
Friday, March 20, 2009
I am Guilty!
The article below from Nicholas Kristoff is most provacative. I have marginalized myself into a progressive enclave as I have tuned out discordant (conservative) voices. Rarely do I peruse a right-wing website anymore. I find the WSJ, the Weekly Standard, the National Review, etc. so repulsive that I seldom anymore read them for balance. How anyone can tolerate for a minute Limbaugh and O'Reilly is totally beyond me. I do not want balance. I want reinforcement of my own progressive views. I no longer engage conservatives because I do not agree with them and see no point in arguing or even discussing so I ignore them. I only wish to converse with like-minded people. The internet allows us to be our own editor. The demise of print makes this situation worse. I would prefer to be entirely amongst like-minded people and avoid the rest. This is not good (I suppose), but it's how I feel.
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: March 18, 2009
Some of the obituaries these days aren’t in the newspapers but are for the newspapers. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is the latest to pass away, save for a remnant that will exist only in cyberspace, and the public is increasingly seeking its news not from mainstream television networks or ink-on-dead-trees but from grazing online.
When we go online, each of us is our own editor, our own gatekeeper. We select the kind of news and opinions that we care most about.
Nicholas Negroponte of M.I.T. has called this emerging news product The Daily Me. And if that’s the trend, God save us from ourselves.
That’s because there’s pretty good evidence that we generally don’t truly want good information — but rather information that confirms our prejudices. We may believe intellectually in the clash of opinions, but in practice we like to embed ourselves in the reassuring womb of an echo chamber.
One classic study sent mailings to Republicans and Democrats, offering them various kinds of political research, ostensibly from a neutral source. Both groups were most eager to receive intelligent arguments that strongly corroborated their pre-existing views.
There was also modest interest in receiving manifestly silly arguments for the other party’s views (we feel good when we can caricature the other guys as dunces). But there was little interest in encountering solid arguments that might undermine one’s own position.
That general finding has been replicated repeatedly, as the essayist and author Farhad Manjoo noted in his terrific book last year: “True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society.”
Let me get one thing out of the way: I’m sometimes guilty myself of selective truth-seeking on the Web. The blog I turn to for insight into Middle East news is often Professor Juan Cole’s, because he’s smart, well-informed and sensible — in other words, I often agree with his take. I’m less likely to peruse the blog of Daniel Pipes, another Middle East expert who is smart and well-informed — but who strikes me as less sensible, partly because I often disagree with him.
The effect of The Daily Me would be to insulate us further in our own hermetically sealed political chambers. One of last year’s more fascinating books was Bill Bishop’s “The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart.” He argues that Americans increasingly are segregating themselves into communities, clubs and churches where they are surrounded by people who think the way they do.
Almost half of Americans now live in counties that vote in landslides either for Democrats or for Republicans, he said. In the 1960s and 1970s, in similarly competitive national elections, only about one-third lived in landslide counties.
“The nation grows more politically segregated — and the benefit that ought to come with having a variety of opinions is lost to the righteousness that is the special entitlement of homogeneous groups,” Mr. Bishop writes.
One 12-nation study found Americans the least likely to discuss politics with people of different views, and this was particularly true of the well educated. High school dropouts had the most diverse group of discussion-mates, while college graduates managed to shelter themselves from uncomfortable perspectives.
The result is polarization and intolerance. Cass Sunstein, a Harvard law professor now working for President Obama, has conducted research showing that when liberals or conservatives discuss issues such as affirmative action or climate change with like-minded people, their views quickly become more homogeneous and more extreme than before the discussion. For example, some liberals in one study initially worried that action on climate change might hurt the poor, while some conservatives were sympathetic to affirmative action. But after discussing the issue with like-minded people for only 15 minutes, liberals became more liberal and conservatives more conservative.
The decline of traditional news media will accelerate the rise of The Daily Me, and we’ll be irritated less by what we read and find our wisdom confirmed more often. The danger is that this self-selected “news” acts as a narcotic, lulling us into a self-confident stupor through which we will perceive in blacks and whites a world that typically unfolds in grays.
So what’s the solution? Tax breaks for liberals who watch Bill O’Reilly or conservatives who watch Keith Olbermann? No, until President Obama brings us universal health care, we can’t risk the surge in heart attacks.
So perhaps the only way forward is for each of us to struggle on our own to work out intellectually with sparring partners whose views we deplore. Think of it as a daily mental workout analogous to a trip to the gym; if you don’t work up a sweat, it doesn’t count.
Now excuse me while I go and read The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page.
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: March 18, 2009
Some of the obituaries these days aren’t in the newspapers but are for the newspapers. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is the latest to pass away, save for a remnant that will exist only in cyberspace, and the public is increasingly seeking its news not from mainstream television networks or ink-on-dead-trees but from grazing online.
When we go online, each of us is our own editor, our own gatekeeper. We select the kind of news and opinions that we care most about.
Nicholas Negroponte of M.I.T. has called this emerging news product The Daily Me. And if that’s the trend, God save us from ourselves.
That’s because there’s pretty good evidence that we generally don’t truly want good information — but rather information that confirms our prejudices. We may believe intellectually in the clash of opinions, but in practice we like to embed ourselves in the reassuring womb of an echo chamber.
One classic study sent mailings to Republicans and Democrats, offering them various kinds of political research, ostensibly from a neutral source. Both groups were most eager to receive intelligent arguments that strongly corroborated their pre-existing views.
There was also modest interest in receiving manifestly silly arguments for the other party’s views (we feel good when we can caricature the other guys as dunces). But there was little interest in encountering solid arguments that might undermine one’s own position.
That general finding has been replicated repeatedly, as the essayist and author Farhad Manjoo noted in his terrific book last year: “True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society.”
Let me get one thing out of the way: I’m sometimes guilty myself of selective truth-seeking on the Web. The blog I turn to for insight into Middle East news is often Professor Juan Cole’s, because he’s smart, well-informed and sensible — in other words, I often agree with his take. I’m less likely to peruse the blog of Daniel Pipes, another Middle East expert who is smart and well-informed — but who strikes me as less sensible, partly because I often disagree with him.
The effect of The Daily Me would be to insulate us further in our own hermetically sealed political chambers. One of last year’s more fascinating books was Bill Bishop’s “The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart.” He argues that Americans increasingly are segregating themselves into communities, clubs and churches where they are surrounded by people who think the way they do.
Almost half of Americans now live in counties that vote in landslides either for Democrats or for Republicans, he said. In the 1960s and 1970s, in similarly competitive national elections, only about one-third lived in landslide counties.
“The nation grows more politically segregated — and the benefit that ought to come with having a variety of opinions is lost to the righteousness that is the special entitlement of homogeneous groups,” Mr. Bishop writes.
One 12-nation study found Americans the least likely to discuss politics with people of different views, and this was particularly true of the well educated. High school dropouts had the most diverse group of discussion-mates, while college graduates managed to shelter themselves from uncomfortable perspectives.
The result is polarization and intolerance. Cass Sunstein, a Harvard law professor now working for President Obama, has conducted research showing that when liberals or conservatives discuss issues such as affirmative action or climate change with like-minded people, their views quickly become more homogeneous and more extreme than before the discussion. For example, some liberals in one study initially worried that action on climate change might hurt the poor, while some conservatives were sympathetic to affirmative action. But after discussing the issue with like-minded people for only 15 minutes, liberals became more liberal and conservatives more conservative.
The decline of traditional news media will accelerate the rise of The Daily Me, and we’ll be irritated less by what we read and find our wisdom confirmed more often. The danger is that this self-selected “news” acts as a narcotic, lulling us into a self-confident stupor through which we will perceive in blacks and whites a world that typically unfolds in grays.
So what’s the solution? Tax breaks for liberals who watch Bill O’Reilly or conservatives who watch Keith Olbermann? No, until President Obama brings us universal health care, we can’t risk the surge in heart attacks.
So perhaps the only way forward is for each of us to struggle on our own to work out intellectually with sparring partners whose views we deplore. Think of it as a daily mental workout analogous to a trip to the gym; if you don’t work up a sweat, it doesn’t count.
Now excuse me while I go and read The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
Finally, I finished this book.
While there is much worth discussing, my previous comments concerning the movie mostly suffice. I have only a few more points to mention:
If I were to name my literary interests, I would say that I am fascinated by studying how the body is portrayed in literature. In the case of this novel, I suggest that it depicts the beginnings of the modern transformation of masculinity into its current feminized state. In other words, men today are said to be feminized; I wonder if such effeminate masculinity began to take shape in the 1950s.
Frank describes his experiences in war as invigorating, a time in which he saw the Truth. If masculinity once was about force, power, and decisiveness - the word I think fits best is "brute" - then what better exercise of such masculinity than in war? However, once the war ended, culture expected him to be content with settling into the routine of home, wife, and kids. In other words, he traded in brute masculinity for a new kind of masclinity - an office job with a desk, dinner parties, community plays, and banal conversations with neighbors. For someone used to something entirely different, fitting this new mold was difficult.
After all, when I picture the 1950s, I see the happy family sitting around the black and white television after father comes home from a day at work, something reminiscent of Leave it to Beaver. I cannot, however, envision this kind of setting anytime before WWII.
This is the kind of masculinity Frank was expected to conform to. Thus, for me, part of the crux of Frank's crisis is his inability to adjust to these beginnings of modern masculinity upon returning from WWII.
Indeed, John Givings, who is by far the most insightful character, says that Frank did not want to move to Paris because he wanted to prove his manhood. Even Frank himself says "that my masculinity'd been threatened."
The other point I want to make is Flannery O'Connor thought that politeness and tact was what held society together. I think this book is an irrevocable refutation of that belief. The characters are wholly nice to each other, creepily so in fact; yet, none are happy. They strive to keep up appearances and not let on to their inner turmoil, but that pretext is the very thing that hastens their downfall. In other words, adopting some ideal masked as happiness only robs us of our real, true selves.
While there is much worth discussing, my previous comments concerning the movie mostly suffice. I have only a few more points to mention:
If I were to name my literary interests, I would say that I am fascinated by studying how the body is portrayed in literature. In the case of this novel, I suggest that it depicts the beginnings of the modern transformation of masculinity into its current feminized state. In other words, men today are said to be feminized; I wonder if such effeminate masculinity began to take shape in the 1950s.
Frank describes his experiences in war as invigorating, a time in which he saw the Truth. If masculinity once was about force, power, and decisiveness - the word I think fits best is "brute" - then what better exercise of such masculinity than in war? However, once the war ended, culture expected him to be content with settling into the routine of home, wife, and kids. In other words, he traded in brute masculinity for a new kind of masclinity - an office job with a desk, dinner parties, community plays, and banal conversations with neighbors. For someone used to something entirely different, fitting this new mold was difficult.
After all, when I picture the 1950s, I see the happy family sitting around the black and white television after father comes home from a day at work, something reminiscent of Leave it to Beaver. I cannot, however, envision this kind of setting anytime before WWII.
This is the kind of masculinity Frank was expected to conform to. Thus, for me, part of the crux of Frank's crisis is his inability to adjust to these beginnings of modern masculinity upon returning from WWII.
Indeed, John Givings, who is by far the most insightful character, says that Frank did not want to move to Paris because he wanted to prove his manhood. Even Frank himself says "that my masculinity'd been threatened."
The other point I want to make is Flannery O'Connor thought that politeness and tact was what held society together. I think this book is an irrevocable refutation of that belief. The characters are wholly nice to each other, creepily so in fact; yet, none are happy. They strive to keep up appearances and not let on to their inner turmoil, but that pretext is the very thing that hastens their downfall. In other words, adopting some ideal masked as happiness only robs us of our real, true selves.
Losing my Marbles
It is probably certain that over the years Fred Hudson has figuratively lost his marbles many times. It is absolutely certain that once Fred Hudson did lose his marbles---literally, twice.
Growing up the 50’s but mainly the 60’s, I remember some of the fads of the time. There was the hula-hoop, the mercy cross, the yo-yo craze of the early 60’s, Beatle Mania, and probably others that I don’t remember.
Then there was marble shooting. It was in the spring of ’59 when I was 9 years old that it started. The boy sport was that two or more parties put an equal number of marbles in the center of a circle drawn in the dirt and the parties took turns trying to shoot the marbles out of the circle by projecting your “taw’ (your shooting marble) from the edge of the circle into the marbles in the circle. If you shot a marble out of the circle, it was yours.
It was all in the wrist and finger action. I would walk around practicing flipping my thumb against my index finger trying to strengthen my dexterity.
I remember asking Nita B, my long-time girlfriend growing up, if she wanted to shoot marbles. She said, “What’s that?” I explained and she just scoffed and exclaimed, “How stupid!” That’s when I realized shooting marbles was a guy thing. Sorry, girls.
The mistake I made that led to losing my marbles was in playing with a boy in the neighborhood named Lemmy. Lemmy was older than me, around 13 or 14, and so he was stronger with the fingers and the wrist action and he could project his taw faster and harder than mine. Why I played with him I’ll never know given the strength difference.
We start playing and all of a sudden I had only 5 marbles left to my name. At least I had the sense to quit then. I had those 5 marbles in a small plastic case and I remember walking back to the house looking at those precious 5 marbles. I rolled them around in the case just to hear them clack. I fondled them. I wondered if I would ever be able to replenish my stock.
In life’s retrospective, less is often more. The more of less from youth and/or poverty is only understood in time’s perspective. At the time it’s horrible. Unfortunately we have to wait for the proper passage of time to understand. This is the great example of my life.
The next thing I remember I lost my marbles. Where were they? I couldn’t find them anywhere. I remember asking my Daddy, “Have you seen my marble case?” He grunted and looked away. My Daddy had more important things on his mind like earning a living and dealing with my Mother than to be concerned by the location of my marbles.
Or so I thought. A day or two later, my Daddy handed a bag of new marbles, the most beautiful marbles I had ever seen in my life. He bought them at the “dime store.” They were “cat’s eye” marbles, which I had never seen before. All of a sudden I had a dozen new, breath-taking marbles. I wasn’t about to lose these marbles. Of all the things my parents gave me over the years, I remember most fondly that bag of new marbles from my father.
I kept those cat’s eye marbles for years and years. I retired from shooting marbles in order to keep these wonderful things. Then one day I couldn’t find them. The cat’s eye marbles vanished like the case of five. I never did find them and neither did I ever find those 5 marbles in the plastic case.
I still think about and miss those marbles. But I know they’re gone forever except in my memory---when I literally lost my marbles.
Growing up the 50’s but mainly the 60’s, I remember some of the fads of the time. There was the hula-hoop, the mercy cross, the yo-yo craze of the early 60’s, Beatle Mania, and probably others that I don’t remember.
Then there was marble shooting. It was in the spring of ’59 when I was 9 years old that it started. The boy sport was that two or more parties put an equal number of marbles in the center of a circle drawn in the dirt and the parties took turns trying to shoot the marbles out of the circle by projecting your “taw’ (your shooting marble) from the edge of the circle into the marbles in the circle. If you shot a marble out of the circle, it was yours.
It was all in the wrist and finger action. I would walk around practicing flipping my thumb against my index finger trying to strengthen my dexterity.
I remember asking Nita B, my long-time girlfriend growing up, if she wanted to shoot marbles. She said, “What’s that?” I explained and she just scoffed and exclaimed, “How stupid!” That’s when I realized shooting marbles was a guy thing. Sorry, girls.
The mistake I made that led to losing my marbles was in playing with a boy in the neighborhood named Lemmy. Lemmy was older than me, around 13 or 14, and so he was stronger with the fingers and the wrist action and he could project his taw faster and harder than mine. Why I played with him I’ll never know given the strength difference.
We start playing and all of a sudden I had only 5 marbles left to my name. At least I had the sense to quit then. I had those 5 marbles in a small plastic case and I remember walking back to the house looking at those precious 5 marbles. I rolled them around in the case just to hear them clack. I fondled them. I wondered if I would ever be able to replenish my stock.
In life’s retrospective, less is often more. The more of less from youth and/or poverty is only understood in time’s perspective. At the time it’s horrible. Unfortunately we have to wait for the proper passage of time to understand. This is the great example of my life.
The next thing I remember I lost my marbles. Where were they? I couldn’t find them anywhere. I remember asking my Daddy, “Have you seen my marble case?” He grunted and looked away. My Daddy had more important things on his mind like earning a living and dealing with my Mother than to be concerned by the location of my marbles.
Or so I thought. A day or two later, my Daddy handed a bag of new marbles, the most beautiful marbles I had ever seen in my life. He bought them at the “dime store.” They were “cat’s eye” marbles, which I had never seen before. All of a sudden I had a dozen new, breath-taking marbles. I wasn’t about to lose these marbles. Of all the things my parents gave me over the years, I remember most fondly that bag of new marbles from my father.
I kept those cat’s eye marbles for years and years. I retired from shooting marbles in order to keep these wonderful things. Then one day I couldn’t find them. The cat’s eye marbles vanished like the case of five. I never did find them and neither did I ever find those 5 marbles in the plastic case.
I still think about and miss those marbles. But I know they’re gone forever except in my memory---when I literally lost my marbles.
Monday, March 16, 2009
News from Alabama
The Guvnuh of the state of Alabama has officially declared next Tuesday as “Squirrel Day” in Alabama. With big federal stem-uh-lous money coming, the Guvnuh plans on spending millions to develop the squirrel industry in his state.
“It’s about time we recognized this valuable little animal in our state,” the Guvnuh says.
He goes on to say that “the squirrel is such a delicacy in Alabama. We love our squirrel meat in Alabama!”
The Guvnuh’s proclamation mentions in particular The Squirrel House Restaurant in Irondale where they serve squirrel 40 different ways.
Bertha Blue, the owner, says proudly, “We serve it grilled, boiled, fried, sauteed, you name it. When it comes to good squirrel meat, we got it!” Laughing, Bertha says, “We even serve it with mushrooms and tofu for you visitors from California. But do know that at our restaurant our only sides are loaf bread and tater chips. What more do you need with squirrel?!”
The Guvnuh notes that there is an abundance of squirrels in the state.
“Since it’s always squirrel season in Alabama, do your part to control the squirrel population. If you see one those buggers crossing the highway where you live, run him over! After all, road-kill squirrel is the best kind. If you’ve ever tried to get a squirrel out of your attic, you’ll understand the mentality involved here. And by all means, you crazy people who keep squirrels for pets—although I don’t know why anyone would deny themselves good squirrel meat for a pet---have your squirrels spayed or neutered.”
The Guvnuh points out that squirrel farming is slowly and quietly becoming big business in Alabama. “It’ll never be as big as poultry farming---after all, for as good as squirrel is it’ll never beat fried chicken on Sunday in the South---but the economy of the state is at stake and every little bit helps. Some of our farm workers will need to be retrained from chicken to squirrel farming, but we’ll set up training centers in our junior colleges. Every state representative and senator will get his own training center. With the stem-uh-lous money coming, there will be lots of state money to pass around to train our workers,” the Guvnuh adds.
“There is a saying in this state that what happens in Alabama should stay in Alabama. Most of you Yankees probably still believe that. Well, I don’t believe that for a minute. It’s time we Alabamians shared with the rest of the country what we love here. After all, we’re the state that gave the country Talladega, Bear Bryant, and George Wallace. The squirrel is next!”
“It’s about time we recognized this valuable little animal in our state,” the Guvnuh says.
He goes on to say that “the squirrel is such a delicacy in Alabama. We love our squirrel meat in Alabama!”
The Guvnuh’s proclamation mentions in particular The Squirrel House Restaurant in Irondale where they serve squirrel 40 different ways.
Bertha Blue, the owner, says proudly, “We serve it grilled, boiled, fried, sauteed, you name it. When it comes to good squirrel meat, we got it!” Laughing, Bertha says, “We even serve it with mushrooms and tofu for you visitors from California. But do know that at our restaurant our only sides are loaf bread and tater chips. What more do you need with squirrel?!”
The Guvnuh notes that there is an abundance of squirrels in the state.
“Since it’s always squirrel season in Alabama, do your part to control the squirrel population. If you see one those buggers crossing the highway where you live, run him over! After all, road-kill squirrel is the best kind. If you’ve ever tried to get a squirrel out of your attic, you’ll understand the mentality involved here. And by all means, you crazy people who keep squirrels for pets—although I don’t know why anyone would deny themselves good squirrel meat for a pet---have your squirrels spayed or neutered.”
The Guvnuh points out that squirrel farming is slowly and quietly becoming big business in Alabama. “It’ll never be as big as poultry farming---after all, for as good as squirrel is it’ll never beat fried chicken on Sunday in the South---but the economy of the state is at stake and every little bit helps. Some of our farm workers will need to be retrained from chicken to squirrel farming, but we’ll set up training centers in our junior colleges. Every state representative and senator will get his own training center. With the stem-uh-lous money coming, there will be lots of state money to pass around to train our workers,” the Guvnuh adds.
“There is a saying in this state that what happens in Alabama should stay in Alabama. Most of you Yankees probably still believe that. Well, I don’t believe that for a minute. It’s time we Alabamians shared with the rest of the country what we love here. After all, we’re the state that gave the country Talladega, Bear Bryant, and George Wallace. The squirrel is next!”
Sunday, March 15, 2009
"Big Government" and "Socialism"
It always amuses me to hear right-wingers bring up "big government" and "socialism," both of which they say they are opposed to. It reminds of the 60's when everything they were opposed to was referred to as "communism." My sneaking suspicion is that most of these people have no idea what they are talking about.
Are these simple souls opposed to interstate highways? The interstate highway system is the product of big government if anything is. If you're opposed to "big government" then you shouldn't be driving on our interstates.
Are these simple souls opposed to government regulation and inspection of the safety of our foods? FDA testing of our prescription drugs? Social security? Medicare? Safety in the workplace?
If you're opposed to "big government" then you should be opposed to these things plus many more things we take for granted in our American life.
Do I have any "big government" haters on board with this or are all of you hypocrites (as I suspect you are)?
Are these simple souls opposed to interstate highways? The interstate highway system is the product of big government if anything is. If you're opposed to "big government" then you shouldn't be driving on our interstates.
Are these simple souls opposed to government regulation and inspection of the safety of our foods? FDA testing of our prescription drugs? Social security? Medicare? Safety in the workplace?
If you're opposed to "big government" then you should be opposed to these things plus many more things we take for granted in our American life.
Do I have any "big government" haters on board with this or are all of you hypocrites (as I suspect you are)?
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Shut Up, Republicans (and Sen. Shelby)
HOME / chatterbox: Gossip, speculation, and scuttlebutt about politics.
Why the GOP Should Shut UpSix out of the top 10 Senate earmark hogs are Republicans.By Timothy NoahPosted Thursday, March 12, 2009, at 5:49 PM ET
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnellSenate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., wants you to know that he voted against the $410 billion spending bill President Obama signed into law on March 11. His fellow Republicans "tried to cut the bill's cost. Our ideas would have saved billions of taxpayer dollars. Unfortunately, every one was turned aside." Well, not every one. According to this spreadsheet prepared by Taxpayers for Common Sense, the spending bill incorporates 53 ideas put forth by McConnell himself in the form of legislative earmarks. Far from lowering the spending bill's cost, they increased it by $76 million.
Compared with his fellow Republicans, McConnell is a relative piker. Here is a list of the Senate's 10 biggest earmark hogs, based on dollar amounts in the spending bill:
1. Thad Cochran, R-Miss.: $474 million2. Roger Wicker, R-Miss.: $391 million3. Mary Landrieu, D-La.: $332 million4. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa: $292 million5. David Vitter, R-La.: $249 million6. Christopher Bond, R-Mo.: $248 million7. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.: $235 million8. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii: $225 million9. Richard Shelby, R-Ala.: $219 million10. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa: $199 million
Why the GOP Should Shut UpSix out of the top 10 Senate earmark hogs are Republicans.By Timothy NoahPosted Thursday, March 12, 2009, at 5:49 PM ET
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnellSenate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., wants you to know that he voted against the $410 billion spending bill President Obama signed into law on March 11. His fellow Republicans "tried to cut the bill's cost. Our ideas would have saved billions of taxpayer dollars. Unfortunately, every one was turned aside." Well, not every one. According to this spreadsheet prepared by Taxpayers for Common Sense, the spending bill incorporates 53 ideas put forth by McConnell himself in the form of legislative earmarks. Far from lowering the spending bill's cost, they increased it by $76 million.
Compared with his fellow Republicans, McConnell is a relative piker. Here is a list of the Senate's 10 biggest earmark hogs, based on dollar amounts in the spending bill:
1. Thad Cochran, R-Miss.: $474 million2. Roger Wicker, R-Miss.: $391 million3. Mary Landrieu, D-La.: $332 million4. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa: $292 million5. David Vitter, R-La.: $249 million6. Christopher Bond, R-Mo.: $248 million7. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.: $235 million8. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii: $225 million9. Richard Shelby, R-Ala.: $219 million10. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa: $199 million
Friday, March 13, 2009
The Right FAMILY Won the Election
The breakup of Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston underscores the fact that the electorate sent the right FAMILY to Washington. In the South we would call the Palins trailer trash. I don't know what they call them up there. In the South we would call the Obamas an example of exemplary family values. And the Republican Party likes to think it's the party of family values? Pul-leeze!
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Reading Update
What I'm reading now: NOTHING TO FEAR by Adam Cohen---an exciting history of the first 100 days of FDR's first administration.
Literary Term of the Week
DILETTANTE
1)One who follows an art for the love of it rather than as a serious profession.
2)Usually applied to one who reads and talks books and writers from hearsay and a careless reading, perhaps of reviews, as opposed to the student who makes a careful and critical study of a writer, period, movement, or book.
3)A dabbler.
-Taken from A HANDBOOK TO LITERATURE by William Flint Thrall & Addison Hibbard
(Fred Hudson admits to being a dilettante)
1)One who follows an art for the love of it rather than as a serious profession.
2)Usually applied to one who reads and talks books and writers from hearsay and a careless reading, perhaps of reviews, as opposed to the student who makes a careful and critical study of a writer, period, movement, or book.
3)A dabbler.
-Taken from A HANDBOOK TO LITERATURE by William Flint Thrall & Addison Hibbard
(Fred Hudson admits to being a dilettante)
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Spring Rush
Democrats are not slowing down their efforts to try and tie the Republican Party to Rush Limbaugh.
On Tuesday, the Democratic National Committee released the five finalists for the slogan that will adorn a billboard in the talk show host's hometown. From the contest launched last week, which, aides say, attracted 56,000 submissions, came this::
* "Americans didn't vote for a Rush to failure" * "Hope and change cannot be Rush'd" * "Failure is not an option for America's future" * "We can fix America, just don't Rush it" * "Rush: Say yes to America"
On Tuesday, the Democratic National Committee released the five finalists for the slogan that will adorn a billboard in the talk show host's hometown. From the contest launched last week, which, aides say, attracted 56,000 submissions, came this::
* "Americans didn't vote for a Rush to failure" * "Hope and change cannot be Rush'd" * "Failure is not an option for America's future" * "We can fix America, just don't Rush it" * "Rush: Say yes to America"
The Cartoon GOP
Commentary: GOP becoming a cartoon
Story Highlights
Jack Cafferty: Jindal, Palin, Steele have had embarrassing moments
He says the Republicans had an opportunity to change course after Bush
Cafferty: They're blowing their chance by obstructing Obama's change plans
He says the GOP isn't trusted by Americans to lead U.S. out of recession
Editor's note: Jack Cafferty is the author of a new book, "Now or Never: Getting Down to the Business of Saving Our American Dream," to be published in March. He provides commentary on CNN's "The Situation Room" daily from 4 to 7 p.m. ET. You can also visit Jack's Cafferty File blog.
Jack Cafferty says Republicans are missing a golden opportunity to redeem themselves.
NEW YORK (CNN) -- The Republican Party is becoming a cartoon.
Where to start?
Bobby Jindal: "I'm certainly not nearly as good of a speaker as Obama." Good OF a speaker? How about not as good at eighth-grade grammar either. It's embarrassing.
Sarah Palin? Billing the taxpayers for her kids to travel to official events the children weren't even invited to? She finally agreed to pay back the state for that money she took.
Her per diem charges to the state in the amount of $17,000 while she was living at home instead of in the governor's mansion? She has now agreed to pay the taxes owed on that money. Another tawdry grab at a few dollars that didn't belong to her.
Michael Steele, the newly elected chairman of the Republican National Committee, down on his knees apologizing to the helium-filled poster boy of the conservative right? Pathetic.
If the Republicans are ever to emerge from the long dark night they have created for themselves it will have to be without pandering to the right wing nuts that comprise Rush Limbaugh's radio audience. Didn't they learn anything in the last election?
All of which is to say the GOP is blowing it big time. They were handed a golden opportunity to redeem themselves with the election of Barack Obama -- a chance to line up and in unison condemn the evil their party put in the White House the previous eight years.
The country had had a bellyful of George Bush, Dick Cheney, and the rest of the messengers of darkness in Washington who had sold out the principles of the Republican Party in favor of huge deficits, a doubling of the national debt, and a growing intrusion of the federal government into people's private lives.
But instead of getting on board the change train and recognizing the incredible amount of damage their people had done to the country, Republicans go blithely along as though nothing has happened. They're busy obstructing Obama's programs and criticizing the Democrats' spending plans that are aimed at trying to bring the country out of a horrible recession.
I hate to break it to them, but a lot has happened. And they're not going to like any of it.
The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows the Republican Party's favorability rating at an all-time low. President Obama's is at an all-time high. The same poll shows that Republicans are getting most of the blame for the partisanship that hinders governmental progress. And perhaps most telling, when asked which party is best equipped to lead the country out of recession, the Republicans trail the Democrats by a stunning 30 points.
And while all this is going on, the GOP ran a straw poll on who the party's nominee should be for president in 2012. Ready?
Mitt Romney finished first followed by Bobby Jindal, Ron Paul and Sarah Palin.
The Republican Party is marching double-time down the road to irrelevance and they don't even know it.
Story Highlights
Jack Cafferty: Jindal, Palin, Steele have had embarrassing moments
He says the Republicans had an opportunity to change course after Bush
Cafferty: They're blowing their chance by obstructing Obama's change plans
He says the GOP isn't trusted by Americans to lead U.S. out of recession
Editor's note: Jack Cafferty is the author of a new book, "Now or Never: Getting Down to the Business of Saving Our American Dream," to be published in March. He provides commentary on CNN's "The Situation Room" daily from 4 to 7 p.m. ET. You can also visit Jack's Cafferty File blog.
Jack Cafferty says Republicans are missing a golden opportunity to redeem themselves.
NEW YORK (CNN) -- The Republican Party is becoming a cartoon.
Where to start?
Bobby Jindal: "I'm certainly not nearly as good of a speaker as Obama." Good OF a speaker? How about not as good at eighth-grade grammar either. It's embarrassing.
Sarah Palin? Billing the taxpayers for her kids to travel to official events the children weren't even invited to? She finally agreed to pay back the state for that money she took.
Her per diem charges to the state in the amount of $17,000 while she was living at home instead of in the governor's mansion? She has now agreed to pay the taxes owed on that money. Another tawdry grab at a few dollars that didn't belong to her.
Michael Steele, the newly elected chairman of the Republican National Committee, down on his knees apologizing to the helium-filled poster boy of the conservative right? Pathetic.
If the Republicans are ever to emerge from the long dark night they have created for themselves it will have to be without pandering to the right wing nuts that comprise Rush Limbaugh's radio audience. Didn't they learn anything in the last election?
All of which is to say the GOP is blowing it big time. They were handed a golden opportunity to redeem themselves with the election of Barack Obama -- a chance to line up and in unison condemn the evil their party put in the White House the previous eight years.
The country had had a bellyful of George Bush, Dick Cheney, and the rest of the messengers of darkness in Washington who had sold out the principles of the Republican Party in favor of huge deficits, a doubling of the national debt, and a growing intrusion of the federal government into people's private lives.
But instead of getting on board the change train and recognizing the incredible amount of damage their people had done to the country, Republicans go blithely along as though nothing has happened. They're busy obstructing Obama's programs and criticizing the Democrats' spending plans that are aimed at trying to bring the country out of a horrible recession.
I hate to break it to them, but a lot has happened. And they're not going to like any of it.
The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows the Republican Party's favorability rating at an all-time low. President Obama's is at an all-time high. The same poll shows that Republicans are getting most of the blame for the partisanship that hinders governmental progress. And perhaps most telling, when asked which party is best equipped to lead the country out of recession, the Republicans trail the Democrats by a stunning 30 points.
And while all this is going on, the GOP ran a straw poll on who the party's nominee should be for president in 2012. Ready?
Mitt Romney finished first followed by Bobby Jindal, Ron Paul and Sarah Palin.
The Republican Party is marching double-time down the road to irrelevance and they don't even know it.
Conservatism in Disarray
by Alan Wolfe from The New Republic
09.03.2009
Conservatism in the Age of Wurzelbacher
We can take it from some pieces posting by David Frum and Andrew Sullivan that conservatives are in deep trouble if Rush Limbaugh is their leading intellectual light. But dissing Rush as a thinker is all too easy. The difficult question is which conservatives deserve to be called the breakthrough thinkers that the man from talk radio clearly is not.
One reader of Sullivan's blog nominates some candidates. "What attracted me to conservatism as a young person in the early 1980s," this person writes, "was its challenge to engage and understand some real thinkers - Hayek, von Mises, Kirk, Buckley, Friedman, Chambers. You didn't have to be an intellectual, but you needed to understand them. Reagan did. Now, instead of intellectuals, we have clowns like Joe the Plumber and Limbaugh getting all the attention." Sullivan adds his own candidates: "Orwell, Solzhenitsyn, Amalryk, Hayek, Lewis, Bernard Levin, and eventually, as I grew old enough to understand them, Oakeshott and Strauss."
I certainly have no problem with Orwell, although he was, after all, a socialist. Strauss and Oakeshott clearly ought to be in the conservative canon of great thinkers, even if the former's views did not always translate into wise public policies by his self-proclaimed followers, and the latter's sense caution led him to distrust big ideas as well as big plans. But the others? If this is the best conservatives can come up, there's a problem somewhere.
No need for me to comment again on Kirk; I wrote a long piece about him for TNR some time ago. Von Mises is a second-rate Hayek, as if two Austrians saying by and large the same thing were better than one. Hayek's Road to Serfdom, first published in 1944, treated Nazism not primarily as a question of race hatred but as the logical extension of socialism and claimed that those who disagree with his analysis "work at the same time for ideas whose realization would lead straight to the abhorred tyranny," thereby anticipating the thesis of Liberal Fascism. Milton Friedman certainly contributed to a revolution in economic thinking but his political views were as predictable as they come. Buckley was a terrific journalist and lively entertainer. Bernard Levin, for whatever reason, will be best remembered for not marrying Arianna Huffington, with whom he was romantically involved for nine years. Bernard Lewis managed to get the only subject he studied, Islam, wrong, at least in Iraq (where it mattered). Sam Tanenhaus is persuasive that we ought to take Chambers seriously, but whether he was a great thinker is surely open to question. I'll take a pass on the Russians.
I can certainly understand why conservatism in the age of Wurzelbacher would want to look back to better days. This country has had its share: Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, John C. Calhoun, Orestes Brownson, T. S. Eliot. Along with Garry Wills, I've long had a fascination with Yale's Wilmoore Kendall. The Southern Agrarians who wrote I'll Take My Stand produced a book still worth reading, despite its implicit racism. I don't particularly like the ideas of any of them. But I would be the first to acknowledge that they all had ideas.
I wonder why these people are so rarely cited when conservatives name their all-stars. It may be the libertarian impulse, which leans toward free-marketers rather than conservative communitarians. Or it could just be that conservatives, like so many other Americans, are too present-minded to reach back to the eighteenth and nineteenth century. In either case, however, searching for yesterday's conservatives tells us something about today's. As an intellectual movement conservatism is weak because it has a hard time remembering what it wants to conserve.
Posted: Monday, March 09, 2009 3:09 PM with 5 comment(s)
09.03.2009
Conservatism in the Age of Wurzelbacher
We can take it from some pieces posting by David Frum and Andrew Sullivan that conservatives are in deep trouble if Rush Limbaugh is their leading intellectual light. But dissing Rush as a thinker is all too easy. The difficult question is which conservatives deserve to be called the breakthrough thinkers that the man from talk radio clearly is not.
One reader of Sullivan's blog nominates some candidates. "What attracted me to conservatism as a young person in the early 1980s," this person writes, "was its challenge to engage and understand some real thinkers - Hayek, von Mises, Kirk, Buckley, Friedman, Chambers. You didn't have to be an intellectual, but you needed to understand them. Reagan did. Now, instead of intellectuals, we have clowns like Joe the Plumber and Limbaugh getting all the attention." Sullivan adds his own candidates: "Orwell, Solzhenitsyn, Amalryk, Hayek, Lewis, Bernard Levin, and eventually, as I grew old enough to understand them, Oakeshott and Strauss."
I certainly have no problem with Orwell, although he was, after all, a socialist. Strauss and Oakeshott clearly ought to be in the conservative canon of great thinkers, even if the former's views did not always translate into wise public policies by his self-proclaimed followers, and the latter's sense caution led him to distrust big ideas as well as big plans. But the others? If this is the best conservatives can come up, there's a problem somewhere.
No need for me to comment again on Kirk; I wrote a long piece about him for TNR some time ago. Von Mises is a second-rate Hayek, as if two Austrians saying by and large the same thing were better than one. Hayek's Road to Serfdom, first published in 1944, treated Nazism not primarily as a question of race hatred but as the logical extension of socialism and claimed that those who disagree with his analysis "work at the same time for ideas whose realization would lead straight to the abhorred tyranny," thereby anticipating the thesis of Liberal Fascism. Milton Friedman certainly contributed to a revolution in economic thinking but his political views were as predictable as they come. Buckley was a terrific journalist and lively entertainer. Bernard Levin, for whatever reason, will be best remembered for not marrying Arianna Huffington, with whom he was romantically involved for nine years. Bernard Lewis managed to get the only subject he studied, Islam, wrong, at least in Iraq (where it mattered). Sam Tanenhaus is persuasive that we ought to take Chambers seriously, but whether he was a great thinker is surely open to question. I'll take a pass on the Russians.
I can certainly understand why conservatism in the age of Wurzelbacher would want to look back to better days. This country has had its share: Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, John C. Calhoun, Orestes Brownson, T. S. Eliot. Along with Garry Wills, I've long had a fascination with Yale's Wilmoore Kendall. The Southern Agrarians who wrote I'll Take My Stand produced a book still worth reading, despite its implicit racism. I don't particularly like the ideas of any of them. But I would be the first to acknowledge that they all had ideas.
I wonder why these people are so rarely cited when conservatives name their all-stars. It may be the libertarian impulse, which leans toward free-marketers rather than conservative communitarians. Or it could just be that conservatives, like so many other Americans, are too present-minded to reach back to the eighteenth and nineteenth century. In either case, however, searching for yesterday's conservatives tells us something about today's. As an intellectual movement conservatism is weak because it has a hard time remembering what it wants to conserve.
Posted: Monday, March 09, 2009 3:09 PM with 5 comment(s)
David Brooks Lectures Fellow Republicans
David Brooks, Republican columnist for the NY Times, lectures fellow Republicans on how to respond to the economic crisis. He admits that so far the Republicans are clueless.
Op-Ed Columnist
Taking a Depression Seriously
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: March 9, 2009
The Democratic response to the economic crisis has its problems, but let’s face it, the current Republican response is totally misguided. The House minority leader, John Boehner, has called for a federal spending freeze for the rest of the year. In other words, after a decade of profligacy, the Republicans have decided to demand a rigid fiscal straitjacket at the one moment in the past 70 years when it is completely inappropriate.
The G.O.P. leaders have adopted a posture that allows the Democrats to make all the proposals while all the Republicans can say is “no.” They’ve apparently decided that it’s easier to repeat the familiar talking points than actually think through a response to the extraordinary crisis at hand.
If the Republicans wanted to do the country some good, they’d embrace an entirely different approach.
First, they’d take the current economic crisis more seriously than the Democrats. The Obama budget projects that the recession will be mild this year and the economy will come surging back in 2010. Democrats apparently think that dealing with the crisis is a part-time job, which leaves the afternoons free to work on long-range plans to reform education, health care, energy and a dozen smaller things. Democrats are counting on a quick recovery to help pay for these long-term projects.
Republicans could point out that this crisis is not just an opportunity to do other things. It’s a bloomin’ emergency. Robert Barro of Harvard estimates that there is a 30 percent chance of a depression. Warren Buffett says economic activity “has fallen off a cliff” and is not coming back soon.
Stock market declines are destroying $23 trillion in wealth, according to Lawrence Lindsey. Auto production is down by two-thirds since 2005. In China, 20 million migrant laborers have lost their jobs. Investment in developing countries has dropped from $929 billion in 2007 to $165 billion this year. Pension systems are fragile. Household balance sheets are still a wreck.
Republicans could argue that it’s Nero-esque for Democrats to be plotting extensive renovations when the house is on fire. They could point out that history will judge this president harshly if he’s off chasing distant visions while the markets see a void where his banking policy should be.
Second, Republicans could admit that they don’t know what the future holds, and they’re not going to try to make long-range plans based on assumptions that will be obsolete by summer. Unlike the Democrats, they’re not for making trillions of dollars in long-term spending commitments until they know where things stand.
Instead, they’re going to focus obsessively on restoring equilibrium first, and they’re going to understand that there is a sharp distinction between crisis policy-making and noncrisis policy-making. In times like these, you’d do things you would never do normally. When it’s over, we can go back to our regularly scheduled debates.
Third, Republicans could offer the public a realistic appraisal of the health of capitalism. Global capitalism is an innovative force, they could argue, but we have been reminded of its shortcomings. When exogenous forces like the rise of China and a flood of easy money hit the global marketplace, they can throw the entire system of out of whack, leading to a cascade of imbalances: higher debt, a grossly enlarged financial sector and unsustainable bubbles.
If the free market party doesn’t offer the public an honest appraisal of capitalism’s weaknesses, the public will never trust it to address them. Power will inevitably slide over to those who believe this crisis is a repudiation of global capitalism as a whole.
Fourth, Republicans could get out in front of this crisis for once. That would mean being out front with ideas to support the wealth-creating parts of the economy rather than merely propping up the fading parts. That would mean supporting President Obama’s plan for global stimulus coordination, because right now most of the world is free-riding off our expenditures. That would mean eliminating all this populist talk about letting Citigroup fail, because a cascade of insolvency would inevitably lead to full-scale nationalization. It would mean coming up with a bold banking plan, rather than just whining about whatever the Democrats have on offer.
Finally, Republicans could make it clear that that the emergency has to be followed by an era of balance. This crisis was fueled by financial decadence, and public debt could be 80 percent of G.D.P. by the time it’s over. Republicans should be the party of restoring fiscal balance — whatever it takes — not trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see.
If Republicans were to treat this like a genuine emergency, with initiative-grabbing approaches, they may not get their plans enacted, but voters would at least give them another look. Do I expect them to shift course in this manner? Not really.
Op-Ed Columnist
Taking a Depression Seriously
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: March 9, 2009
The Democratic response to the economic crisis has its problems, but let’s face it, the current Republican response is totally misguided. The House minority leader, John Boehner, has called for a federal spending freeze for the rest of the year. In other words, after a decade of profligacy, the Republicans have decided to demand a rigid fiscal straitjacket at the one moment in the past 70 years when it is completely inappropriate.
The G.O.P. leaders have adopted a posture that allows the Democrats to make all the proposals while all the Republicans can say is “no.” They’ve apparently decided that it’s easier to repeat the familiar talking points than actually think through a response to the extraordinary crisis at hand.
If the Republicans wanted to do the country some good, they’d embrace an entirely different approach.
First, they’d take the current economic crisis more seriously than the Democrats. The Obama budget projects that the recession will be mild this year and the economy will come surging back in 2010. Democrats apparently think that dealing with the crisis is a part-time job, which leaves the afternoons free to work on long-range plans to reform education, health care, energy and a dozen smaller things. Democrats are counting on a quick recovery to help pay for these long-term projects.
Republicans could point out that this crisis is not just an opportunity to do other things. It’s a bloomin’ emergency. Robert Barro of Harvard estimates that there is a 30 percent chance of a depression. Warren Buffett says economic activity “has fallen off a cliff” and is not coming back soon.
Stock market declines are destroying $23 trillion in wealth, according to Lawrence Lindsey. Auto production is down by two-thirds since 2005. In China, 20 million migrant laborers have lost their jobs. Investment in developing countries has dropped from $929 billion in 2007 to $165 billion this year. Pension systems are fragile. Household balance sheets are still a wreck.
Republicans could argue that it’s Nero-esque for Democrats to be plotting extensive renovations when the house is on fire. They could point out that history will judge this president harshly if he’s off chasing distant visions while the markets see a void where his banking policy should be.
Second, Republicans could admit that they don’t know what the future holds, and they’re not going to try to make long-range plans based on assumptions that will be obsolete by summer. Unlike the Democrats, they’re not for making trillions of dollars in long-term spending commitments until they know where things stand.
Instead, they’re going to focus obsessively on restoring equilibrium first, and they’re going to understand that there is a sharp distinction between crisis policy-making and noncrisis policy-making. In times like these, you’d do things you would never do normally. When it’s over, we can go back to our regularly scheduled debates.
Third, Republicans could offer the public a realistic appraisal of the health of capitalism. Global capitalism is an innovative force, they could argue, but we have been reminded of its shortcomings. When exogenous forces like the rise of China and a flood of easy money hit the global marketplace, they can throw the entire system of out of whack, leading to a cascade of imbalances: higher debt, a grossly enlarged financial sector and unsustainable bubbles.
If the free market party doesn’t offer the public an honest appraisal of capitalism’s weaknesses, the public will never trust it to address them. Power will inevitably slide over to those who believe this crisis is a repudiation of global capitalism as a whole.
Fourth, Republicans could get out in front of this crisis for once. That would mean being out front with ideas to support the wealth-creating parts of the economy rather than merely propping up the fading parts. That would mean supporting President Obama’s plan for global stimulus coordination, because right now most of the world is free-riding off our expenditures. That would mean eliminating all this populist talk about letting Citigroup fail, because a cascade of insolvency would inevitably lead to full-scale nationalization. It would mean coming up with a bold banking plan, rather than just whining about whatever the Democrats have on offer.
Finally, Republicans could make it clear that that the emergency has to be followed by an era of balance. This crisis was fueled by financial decadence, and public debt could be 80 percent of G.D.P. by the time it’s over. Republicans should be the party of restoring fiscal balance — whatever it takes — not trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see.
If Republicans were to treat this like a genuine emergency, with initiative-grabbing approaches, they may not get their plans enacted, but voters would at least give them another look. Do I expect them to shift course in this manner? Not really.
Krugman
From Paul Krugman: the stimulus may not be enough!
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: March 8, 2009
President Obama’s plan to stimulate the economy was “massive,” “giant,” “enormous.” So the American people were told, especially by TV news, during the run-up to the stimulus vote. Watching the news, you might have thought that the only question was whether the plan was too big, too ambitious.
Yet many economists, myself included, actually argued that the plan was too small and too cautious. The latest data confirm those worries — and suggest that the Obama administration’s economic policies are already falling behind the curve.
To see how bad the numbers are, consider this: The administration’s budget proposals, released less than two weeks ago, assumed an average unemployment rate of 8.1 percent for the whole of this year. In reality, unemployment hit that level in February — and it’s rising fast.
Employment has already fallen more in this recession than in the 1981-82 slump, considered the worst since the Great Depression. As a result, Mr. Obama’s promise that his plan will create or save 3.5 million jobs by the end of 2010 looks underwhelming, to say the least. It’s a credible promise — his economists used solidly mainstream estimates of the impacts of tax and spending policies. But 3.5 million jobs almost two years from now isn’t enough in the face of an economy that has already lost 4.4 million jobs, and is losing 600,000 more each month.
There are now three big questions about economic policy. First, does the administration realize that it isn’t doing enough? Second, is it prepared to do more? Third, will Congress go along with stronger policies?
On the first two questions, I found Mr. Obama’s latest interview with The Times anything but reassuring.
“Our belief and expectation is that we will get all the pillars in place for recovery this year,” the president declared — a belief and expectation that isn’t backed by any data or model I’m aware of. To be sure, leaders are supposed to sound calm and in control. But in the face of the dismal data, this remark sounded out of touch.
And there was no hint in the interview of readiness to do more.
A real fix for the troubles of the banking system might help make up for the inadequate size of the stimulus plan, so it was good to hear that Mr. Obama spends at least an hour each day with his economic advisors, “talking through how we are approaching the financial markets.” But he went on to dismiss calls for decisive action as coming from “blogs” (actually, they’re coming from many other places, including at least one president of a Federal Reserve bank), and suggested that critics want to “nationalize all the banks” (something nobody is proposing).
As I read it, this dismissal — together with the continuing failure to announce any broad plans for bank restructuring — means that the White House has decided to muddle through on the financial front, relying on economic recovery to rescue the banks rather than the other way around. And with the stimulus plan too small to deliver an economic recovery ... well, you get the picture.
Sooner or later the administration will realize that more must be done. But when it comes back for more money, will Congress go along?
Republicans are now firmly committed to the view that we should do nothing to respond to the economic crisis, except cut taxes — which they always want to do regardless of circumstances. If Mr. Obama comes back for a second round of stimulus, they’ll respond not by being helpful, but by claiming that his policies have failed.
The broader public, by contrast, favors strong action. According to a recent Newsweek poll, a majority of voters supports the stimulus, and, more surprisingly, a plurality believes that additional spending will be necessary. But will that support still be there, say, six months from now?
Also, an overwhelming majority believes that the government is spending too much to help large financial institutions. This suggests that the administration’s money-for-nothing financial policy will eventually deplete its political capital.
So here’s the picture that scares me: It’s September 2009, the unemployment rate has passed 9 percent, and despite the early round of stimulus spending it’s still headed up. Mr. Obama finally concedes that a bigger stimulus is needed.
But he can’t get his new plan through Congress because approval for his economic policies has plummeted, partly because his policies are seen to have failed, partly because job-creation policies are conflated in the public mind with deeply unpopular bank bailouts. And as a result, the recession rages on, unchecked.
O.K., that’s a warning, not a prediction. But economic policy is falling behind the curve, and there’s a real, growing danger that it will never catch up.
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: March 8, 2009
President Obama’s plan to stimulate the economy was “massive,” “giant,” “enormous.” So the American people were told, especially by TV news, during the run-up to the stimulus vote. Watching the news, you might have thought that the only question was whether the plan was too big, too ambitious.
Yet many economists, myself included, actually argued that the plan was too small and too cautious. The latest data confirm those worries — and suggest that the Obama administration’s economic policies are already falling behind the curve.
To see how bad the numbers are, consider this: The administration’s budget proposals, released less than two weeks ago, assumed an average unemployment rate of 8.1 percent for the whole of this year. In reality, unemployment hit that level in February — and it’s rising fast.
Employment has already fallen more in this recession than in the 1981-82 slump, considered the worst since the Great Depression. As a result, Mr. Obama’s promise that his plan will create or save 3.5 million jobs by the end of 2010 looks underwhelming, to say the least. It’s a credible promise — his economists used solidly mainstream estimates of the impacts of tax and spending policies. But 3.5 million jobs almost two years from now isn’t enough in the face of an economy that has already lost 4.4 million jobs, and is losing 600,000 more each month.
There are now three big questions about economic policy. First, does the administration realize that it isn’t doing enough? Second, is it prepared to do more? Third, will Congress go along with stronger policies?
On the first two questions, I found Mr. Obama’s latest interview with The Times anything but reassuring.
“Our belief and expectation is that we will get all the pillars in place for recovery this year,” the president declared — a belief and expectation that isn’t backed by any data or model I’m aware of. To be sure, leaders are supposed to sound calm and in control. But in the face of the dismal data, this remark sounded out of touch.
And there was no hint in the interview of readiness to do more.
A real fix for the troubles of the banking system might help make up for the inadequate size of the stimulus plan, so it was good to hear that Mr. Obama spends at least an hour each day with his economic advisors, “talking through how we are approaching the financial markets.” But he went on to dismiss calls for decisive action as coming from “blogs” (actually, they’re coming from many other places, including at least one president of a Federal Reserve bank), and suggested that critics want to “nationalize all the banks” (something nobody is proposing).
As I read it, this dismissal — together with the continuing failure to announce any broad plans for bank restructuring — means that the White House has decided to muddle through on the financial front, relying on economic recovery to rescue the banks rather than the other way around. And with the stimulus plan too small to deliver an economic recovery ... well, you get the picture.
Sooner or later the administration will realize that more must be done. But when it comes back for more money, will Congress go along?
Republicans are now firmly committed to the view that we should do nothing to respond to the economic crisis, except cut taxes — which they always want to do regardless of circumstances. If Mr. Obama comes back for a second round of stimulus, they’ll respond not by being helpful, but by claiming that his policies have failed.
The broader public, by contrast, favors strong action. According to a recent Newsweek poll, a majority of voters supports the stimulus, and, more surprisingly, a plurality believes that additional spending will be necessary. But will that support still be there, say, six months from now?
Also, an overwhelming majority believes that the government is spending too much to help large financial institutions. This suggests that the administration’s money-for-nothing financial policy will eventually deplete its political capital.
So here’s the picture that scares me: It’s September 2009, the unemployment rate has passed 9 percent, and despite the early round of stimulus spending it’s still headed up. Mr. Obama finally concedes that a bigger stimulus is needed.
But he can’t get his new plan through Congress because approval for his economic policies has plummeted, partly because his policies are seen to have failed, partly because job-creation policies are conflated in the public mind with deeply unpopular bank bailouts. And as a result, the recession rages on, unchecked.
O.K., that’s a warning, not a prediction. But economic policy is falling behind the curve, and there’s a real, growing danger that it will never catch up.
Monday, March 9, 2009
The Political Prosecution of Don Siegelman
The more I hear about the Republican political prosecution of former Gov. don Siegelman, the more my blood boils. I heard Siegelman interviewed on my satellite radio CNN this afternoon, and the implication is obvious. His prosecution was directed by Karl Rove. At least Rove finally stopped evading the law and will testify before a Congressional commitee. He should go to prison for the rest of his life.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
My Reading Style
I want to offer my own answers to the following questionnaire posed by Fred. I think there are stark differences between us.
1. Do you dog-ear pages?
Yes.
2. What about book marks?
I care nothing for bookmarks. A scrap piece of toilet paper stuck to my shoe would serve just as well.
3. Do you read footnotes as you proceed, or do you read them all at the end?
Neither. I do not read footnotes. They annoy me. Nor do I read captions, graphs, or illustrations.
4. Do you go on reading binges---particular authors, particular subjects?
No. Variety is the spice of life.
5. Do you prefer hardbacks or paperbacks?
Hardbacks are nicer, but more expensive. I own many more paperbacks.
6. Do you ever feel guilty about what you've read if, say, you read a mass market book or something considered "trashy?"
No. I usually don't enjoy reading popular fiction. The stories and reading experience are never as satisfying. As a consequence, YA and popular fiction are generally foreign worlds to me. I hear people discussing certain authors or books, and I almost always have never heard of them. However, I don't care because such genres hold little sway with me.
7. Do you read in long sessions or short spurts?
Intermittent spurts.
1. Do you dog-ear pages?
Yes.
2. What about book marks?
I care nothing for bookmarks. A scrap piece of toilet paper stuck to my shoe would serve just as well.
3. Do you read footnotes as you proceed, or do you read them all at the end?
Neither. I do not read footnotes. They annoy me. Nor do I read captions, graphs, or illustrations.
4. Do you go on reading binges---particular authors, particular subjects?
No. Variety is the spice of life.
5. Do you prefer hardbacks or paperbacks?
Hardbacks are nicer, but more expensive. I own many more paperbacks.
6. Do you ever feel guilty about what you've read if, say, you read a mass market book or something considered "trashy?"
No. I usually don't enjoy reading popular fiction. The stories and reading experience are never as satisfying. As a consequence, YA and popular fiction are generally foreign worlds to me. I hear people discussing certain authors or books, and I almost always have never heard of them. However, I don't care because such genres hold little sway with me.
7. Do you read in long sessions or short spurts?
Intermittent spurts.
Idiotic Conservatives (Republicans)
This article raises a serious point. How far to the right will the conservatives go? Their rantings and ravings, completely divorced from reality, is amazing. Note the paragraph below from Andrew Sullivan, himself a conservative, which SUMMARIZES THE BUSH 8 YEARS DESTRUCTION. People that we thought were intelligent have turned out to be fools pure and simple--their ideological madness is mind-boggling.
06.03.2009
The Meltdown of the Conservative Mind
Roger Kimball has been a strident, highly polemical right-winger for a long time. But he's also very smart and highly literate. He writes with authority about art and philosophy, literature and politics. He knows a lot about history. And the quarterly he co-edits with Hilton Kramer (The New Criterion) has published erudite commentary and criticism on culture and the arts for more than a quarter century.
What, then, are we supposed to make of this astonishing post? Not only does Kimball endorse the view, expressed repeatedly by right-wingers over the past couple of weeks, that Obama deserves the blame for a stock-market collapse that began and accelerated months before Election Day 2008. And Kimball does not merely suggest, like many other (so-called) conservatives, that we can already, fewer than six weeks (!) after Inauguration Day, judge Obama to be an incompetent president. No, Kimball goes much further than these comparatively level-headed expressions of dissent to suggest something far more sinister. Yes, it's true: Roger Kimball -- accomplished intellectual and cultural critic -- believes that Barack Obama is a Leninist.
Now in fairness to Kimball, I should note that he's merely endorsing a tirade by that paragon of political and economic good sense, financial guru and CNBC loudmouth Jim Cramer. But Kimball not only endorses Cramer's vulgar and philistine analysis (I mean: "analysis"); he also provides readers of his blog with an informative quote from Lenin himself on the need for a dictatorship of the proletariat to impose "a series of restrictions on the freedom of the oppressors, the exploiters, the capitalists." You know, just like Obama! It's perfectly fitting, then, for Kimball to conclude his post by quoting Article II, Section IV of the Constitution on the requirements for impeaching the president and by calling on "some clever legal talent to show how deliberately sabotaging the United States economy [sic] counts as Treason, a high Crime, or at least a Misdemeanor."
Here is Andrew Sullivan's incredulous response to Kimball's suggestion:
Obama's predecessor secretly invoked the power to suspend the First and Fourth Amendments for seven years, authorized the seizure and torture of American citizens, launched two decade-long wars of attrition, doubled the national debt, presided over the worst financial bubble since the 1930s, provided the weakest level of economic growth in decades, and left the US in the grip of the steepest depression since the 1930s. But after five weeks, it's Obama who should be impeached?
Well put. But I think something more needs to be said in response to Kimball. Something more needs to be said because Kimball's post raises important questions about just how far the American right is going to go in marginalizing itself during the Obama era. Are its leading intellectuals going to engage in constructive, thoughtful, informed debate about the policies proposed by the president? Or are they going to become indistinguishable from populist rabble-rousers like Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin -- men who routinely confuse venomous, paranoid ranting with thinking? Because here's the thing: If Roger Kimball really believes that Barack Obama is a Leninist who deserves to be impeached for deliberately sabotaging the American economy (presumably as a prelude to imposing communism), then he has definitively demonstrated that he has a reckless, irresponsible mind and a temperament ill-suited to serious intellectual engagement in our public life.
The right can certainly afford to have a few cranks running around. (The left certainly has its share.) But how many is too many? When will sensible citizens conclude that the right simply should not be trusted with political power -- not because its policies diverge from what the American majority prefers, but rather because the right is in the grip of a form of ideological madness that renders it incapable of governing -- or even thinking -- responsibly? Five-and-a-half weeks into the Obama administration, I fear we might not have to wait very long for an answer.
06.03.2009
The Meltdown of the Conservative Mind
Roger Kimball has been a strident, highly polemical right-winger for a long time. But he's also very smart and highly literate. He writes with authority about art and philosophy, literature and politics. He knows a lot about history. And the quarterly he co-edits with Hilton Kramer (The New Criterion) has published erudite commentary and criticism on culture and the arts for more than a quarter century.
What, then, are we supposed to make of this astonishing post? Not only does Kimball endorse the view, expressed repeatedly by right-wingers over the past couple of weeks, that Obama deserves the blame for a stock-market collapse that began and accelerated months before Election Day 2008. And Kimball does not merely suggest, like many other (so-called) conservatives, that we can already, fewer than six weeks (!) after Inauguration Day, judge Obama to be an incompetent president. No, Kimball goes much further than these comparatively level-headed expressions of dissent to suggest something far more sinister. Yes, it's true: Roger Kimball -- accomplished intellectual and cultural critic -- believes that Barack Obama is a Leninist.
Now in fairness to Kimball, I should note that he's merely endorsing a tirade by that paragon of political and economic good sense, financial guru and CNBC loudmouth Jim Cramer. But Kimball not only endorses Cramer's vulgar and philistine analysis (I mean: "analysis"); he also provides readers of his blog with an informative quote from Lenin himself on the need for a dictatorship of the proletariat to impose "a series of restrictions on the freedom of the oppressors, the exploiters, the capitalists." You know, just like Obama! It's perfectly fitting, then, for Kimball to conclude his post by quoting Article II, Section IV of the Constitution on the requirements for impeaching the president and by calling on "some clever legal talent to show how deliberately sabotaging the United States economy [sic] counts as Treason, a high Crime, or at least a Misdemeanor."
Here is Andrew Sullivan's incredulous response to Kimball's suggestion:
Obama's predecessor secretly invoked the power to suspend the First and Fourth Amendments for seven years, authorized the seizure and torture of American citizens, launched two decade-long wars of attrition, doubled the national debt, presided over the worst financial bubble since the 1930s, provided the weakest level of economic growth in decades, and left the US in the grip of the steepest depression since the 1930s. But after five weeks, it's Obama who should be impeached?
Well put. But I think something more needs to be said in response to Kimball. Something more needs to be said because Kimball's post raises important questions about just how far the American right is going to go in marginalizing itself during the Obama era. Are its leading intellectuals going to engage in constructive, thoughtful, informed debate about the policies proposed by the president? Or are they going to become indistinguishable from populist rabble-rousers like Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin -- men who routinely confuse venomous, paranoid ranting with thinking? Because here's the thing: If Roger Kimball really believes that Barack Obama is a Leninist who deserves to be impeached for deliberately sabotaging the American economy (presumably as a prelude to imposing communism), then he has definitively demonstrated that he has a reckless, irresponsible mind and a temperament ill-suited to serious intellectual engagement in our public life.
The right can certainly afford to have a few cranks running around. (The left certainly has its share.) But how many is too many? When will sensible citizens conclude that the right simply should not be trusted with political power -- not because its policies diverge from what the American majority prefers, but rather because the right is in the grip of a form of ideological madness that renders it incapable of governing -- or even thinking -- responsibly? Five-and-a-half weeks into the Obama administration, I fear we might not have to wait very long for an answer.
My Reading Style
In which a reader named Fred Hudson asks himself some questions in order to elucidate his reading style.
1. Do you dog-ear pages?
No, I do not. The practice is repulsive to me.
2. What about book marks?
Yes, I love book marks. I have a drawer full of them and always place one where l left off the last time.
3. Do you read footnotes as you proceed, or do you read them all at the end?
I've done it both ways but prefer to read them as I go. If necessary, I'll have two book marks going, one for the footnotes if they are at the back of the book.
4. Do you go on reading binges---particular authors, particular subjects?
Yes, occasionally, but they usually don't last too long. Two books typically temporarily extinguishes my binge.
5. Do you prefer hardbacks or paperbacks?
It really doesn't matter to me.
6. Do you ever feel guilty about what you've read if, say, you read a mass market book or something considered "trashy?"
No, because I make it a point to never read anything I would feel guilty about.
7. Do you read in long sessions or short spurts?
Most typically short spurts.
(To be continued)
1. Do you dog-ear pages?
No, I do not. The practice is repulsive to me.
2. What about book marks?
Yes, I love book marks. I have a drawer full of them and always place one where l left off the last time.
3. Do you read footnotes as you proceed, or do you read them all at the end?
I've done it both ways but prefer to read them as I go. If necessary, I'll have two book marks going, one for the footnotes if they are at the back of the book.
4. Do you go on reading binges---particular authors, particular subjects?
Yes, occasionally, but they usually don't last too long. Two books typically temporarily extinguishes my binge.
5. Do you prefer hardbacks or paperbacks?
It really doesn't matter to me.
6. Do you ever feel guilty about what you've read if, say, you read a mass market book or something considered "trashy?"
No, because I make it a point to never read anything I would feel guilty about.
7. Do you read in long sessions or short spurts?
Most typically short spurts.
(To be continued)
Krugman Says
As usual, Paul Krugman is on target.
March 6, 2009, 6:15 pm — Updated: 6:15 pm -->
Party of uh-huh-huh-huh
I’m as cynical as they come. Even so, I’m shocked by the total intellectual collapse of the Republican Party in the face of this economic crisis.
I suggested a little while ago that the GOP has become the party of Beavis and Butthead, reduced to snickering at line items in legislation that sound funny. And we’re not just talking about the usual crazies: we’re taking about Saint John McCain, cracking jokes about “Mormon crickets” and “beaver management” when a minute or two on Google reveals that these are, in fact, serious issues.
But it’s getting truly serious when the House minority leader — essentially, the nation’s second-ranking Republican (after Rush Limbaugh) — declares that the answer to the economy’s downward spiral is a spending freeze. That’s not a retrogression to Herbert Hoover; even Hoover knew better than that.
I’d really like to see some genuine bipartisanship in America. But that can’t happen until we start having at least somewhat sane partisans
March 6, 2009, 6:15 pm — Updated: 6:15 pm -->
Party of uh-huh-huh-huh
I’m as cynical as they come. Even so, I’m shocked by the total intellectual collapse of the Republican Party in the face of this economic crisis.
I suggested a little while ago that the GOP has become the party of Beavis and Butthead, reduced to snickering at line items in legislation that sound funny. And we’re not just talking about the usual crazies: we’re taking about Saint John McCain, cracking jokes about “Mormon crickets” and “beaver management” when a minute or two on Google reveals that these are, in fact, serious issues.
But it’s getting truly serious when the House minority leader — essentially, the nation’s second-ranking Republican (after Rush Limbaugh) — declares that the answer to the economy’s downward spiral is a spending freeze. That’s not a retrogression to Herbert Hoover; even Hoover knew better than that.
I’d really like to see some genuine bipartisanship in America. But that can’t happen until we start having at least somewhat sane partisans
The Self-Destruction of Rush Limbaugh
With great pleasure I watch the self-immolation of Rush Limbaugh. Anybody who supports this cretin is a cretin themselves.
Comments
On his radio show Friday, Rush Limbaugh suggested that Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) would be dead by the time health care reform legislation passes. "Before it's all over, it'll be called the Ted Kennedy memorial health care bill," the talk show host says. He says President Obama has moved on to health care because he can't solve the economic crisis. Listen, via Media Matters:
Kennedy was at the Senate Thursday for President Obama's health care summit, where he made an impassioned plea for universal coverage.
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Executive Director Brian Wolff released a statement in response:
"Rush Limbaugh's reprehensible remark that, ' before it's all over, it'll be called the Ted Kennedy Memorial Health Care bill' is truly outrageous.
"Leader Limbaugh minimizes the struggle of hardworking Americans without access to affordable health care and demonizes a patriotic Senator who has spent his life fighting so that every person has the opportunity to live the American dream.
"Leader Limbaugh crossed the line. National Republicans must stand up to their leader, Rush Limbaugh, and tell him that enough is enough."
The Democratic campaign arm has also launched a petition, asking Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele to denounce Rush Limbaugh "once and for all" in light of his latest comments.
Comments
On his radio show Friday, Rush Limbaugh suggested that Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) would be dead by the time health care reform legislation passes. "Before it's all over, it'll be called the Ted Kennedy memorial health care bill," the talk show host says. He says President Obama has moved on to health care because he can't solve the economic crisis. Listen, via Media Matters:
Kennedy was at the Senate Thursday for President Obama's health care summit, where he made an impassioned plea for universal coverage.
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Executive Director Brian Wolff released a statement in response:
"Rush Limbaugh's reprehensible remark that, ' before it's all over, it'll be called the Ted Kennedy Memorial Health Care bill' is truly outrageous.
"Leader Limbaugh minimizes the struggle of hardworking Americans without access to affordable health care and demonizes a patriotic Senator who has spent his life fighting so that every person has the opportunity to live the American dream.
"Leader Limbaugh crossed the line. National Republicans must stand up to their leader, Rush Limbaugh, and tell him that enough is enough."
The Democratic campaign arm has also launched a petition, asking Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele to denounce Rush Limbaugh "once and for all" in light of his latest comments.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Book Links
Here is a list of ten book sites that you might enjoy. They are similar to Shelfari and LibraryThing.
http://oedb.org/blogs/ilibrarian/2009/10-websites-for-book-lovers/
http://oedb.org/blogs/ilibrarian/2009/10-websites-for-book-lovers/
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Toward a Definition of "Pragmatism" (2)
A practical approach to problems and affairs. An American movement in philosophy founded by C.S. Peirce and William James and marked by the doctrine that the meaning on conceptions is to be sought in their practical bearings, that the function of thought is to guide action, and that truth is preeminently to be tested by the practical consequences of belief.
From Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary
From Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary
Monday, March 2, 2009
Franklin Delano Obama
I like to read the columns of Nicholas D. Kristof from the New York Times. Here is his most recent:
Most presidents are tacticians, but President Obama is a strategist. His budget suggests that he aspires to be an echo of Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, harnessing his charisma, vision and political capital to transport America to a different place.
The best measure of that is Mr. Obama’s “down payment” to move closer to universal health coverage from womb to tomb. That is something that Roosevelt also sought, a lifetime ago.
The absurd system of health coverage we now have is a historical accident from World War II. Because of wage controls, employers competed for workers by offering health insurance as a fringe benefit — and so we’re stuck today with a system in which the loss of a job is compounded by the loss of health insurance.
Titanic ambitions encounter titanic opposition, and opponents of health reform are already rehearsing the arguments that they successfully used in the past:
We have the best health care in the world, and you want to create a socialized bureaucracy? You want to wait months for a necessary operation, as in Canada? And you really want higher taxes to pay for this, stifling the economy and undermining our long-term competitiveness?
So let’s examine those arguments.
It’s true that the existing system offers top-line medical care. The top five American hospitals conduct more clinical trials than all the hospitals put together in any other country in the O.E.C.D., the club of industrialized nations.
Yet over all, it is preposterous to argue that we have the best medical care in the world. Partly because so many Americans fall through the cracks and don’t have insurance, life expectancy is higher in most of Europe than in the United States. Even the people of Cyprus live longer than Americans, according to United Nations figures.
Meanwhile, American children are twice as likely to die by the age of 5 as children in Portugal, Spain or Slovenia. And the World Health Organization found that an American woman’s lifetime risk of dying in childbirth is more than three times that of a woman in Greece, Spain or Germany.
Meanwhile, Americans spend $6,800 per person to get these second-rate results, about double what is paid in Canada or much of Europe.
It’s true that Canadians and Britons wait longer for non-urgent medical procedures than we do. But we have to wait a bit longer than Germans do.
McKinsey Global Institute found that the United States spends about $650 billion more on health care each year than one would expect for a country at its income level. That’s $2,100 per American, and it’s one gauge of the waste of our existing system.
Repairing the system is thus not only a moral imperative but also an economic one. American businesses are at a competitive disadvantage when they have to pay for health care and foreign companies don’t. Among General Motors’ burdens is that it has to pay health costs equivalent to $1,500 for each car it sells.
Sometimes the financial incentives for aggressive care even lead to excessive treatment. One study found that Medicare patients admitted to high-spending hospitals were up to 6 percent more likely to die than patients admitted to lower-spending hospitals.
So if our health system is broken, is it really so awful that we increase taxes for the wealthiest Americans to make repairs? In 1980, the top-earning 1 percent of Americans accounted for 8 percent of the total income pie; by 2006, they grabbed nearly 23 percent.
Think of the way the system treated Michelle Morse, a full-time student at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire. Michelle was found to have colon cancer in 2003, and her physician recommended that she take a leave of absence for chemotherapy.
But if she took a leave, she would lose her insurance. Michelle stayed in school and underwent her treatments, while campaigning bravely for a law (eventually passed nationally last year) to let students remain on their parents’ health insurance while on medical leave from college. The law came too late for her: she died in 2005.
Would it have made a difference if Michelle had been able to take a leave and focus on treatment? “We’ll never know,” said her mother, AnnMarie Morse.
“It was horrible,” she said of her dealings with the insurance companies. She said that when one executive told her indignantly that the company had already paid out a lot of money for Michelle, she responded, “I would give my life for you not to have to pay one cent for my daughter.”
Not surprisingly, Mrs. Morse fervently hopes that Mr. Obama will be able to move the country toward a national health care system. If he can lead us there, even gradually, he has a chance to join the pantheon of truly great presidents like F.D.R. himself.
Most presidents are tacticians, but President Obama is a strategist. His budget suggests that he aspires to be an echo of Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, harnessing his charisma, vision and political capital to transport America to a different place.
The best measure of that is Mr. Obama’s “down payment” to move closer to universal health coverage from womb to tomb. That is something that Roosevelt also sought, a lifetime ago.
The absurd system of health coverage we now have is a historical accident from World War II. Because of wage controls, employers competed for workers by offering health insurance as a fringe benefit — and so we’re stuck today with a system in which the loss of a job is compounded by the loss of health insurance.
Titanic ambitions encounter titanic opposition, and opponents of health reform are already rehearsing the arguments that they successfully used in the past:
We have the best health care in the world, and you want to create a socialized bureaucracy? You want to wait months for a necessary operation, as in Canada? And you really want higher taxes to pay for this, stifling the economy and undermining our long-term competitiveness?
So let’s examine those arguments.
It’s true that the existing system offers top-line medical care. The top five American hospitals conduct more clinical trials than all the hospitals put together in any other country in the O.E.C.D., the club of industrialized nations.
Yet over all, it is preposterous to argue that we have the best medical care in the world. Partly because so many Americans fall through the cracks and don’t have insurance, life expectancy is higher in most of Europe than in the United States. Even the people of Cyprus live longer than Americans, according to United Nations figures.
Meanwhile, American children are twice as likely to die by the age of 5 as children in Portugal, Spain or Slovenia. And the World Health Organization found that an American woman’s lifetime risk of dying in childbirth is more than three times that of a woman in Greece, Spain or Germany.
Meanwhile, Americans spend $6,800 per person to get these second-rate results, about double what is paid in Canada or much of Europe.
It’s true that Canadians and Britons wait longer for non-urgent medical procedures than we do. But we have to wait a bit longer than Germans do.
McKinsey Global Institute found that the United States spends about $650 billion more on health care each year than one would expect for a country at its income level. That’s $2,100 per American, and it’s one gauge of the waste of our existing system.
Repairing the system is thus not only a moral imperative but also an economic one. American businesses are at a competitive disadvantage when they have to pay for health care and foreign companies don’t. Among General Motors’ burdens is that it has to pay health costs equivalent to $1,500 for each car it sells.
Sometimes the financial incentives for aggressive care even lead to excessive treatment. One study found that Medicare patients admitted to high-spending hospitals were up to 6 percent more likely to die than patients admitted to lower-spending hospitals.
So if our health system is broken, is it really so awful that we increase taxes for the wealthiest Americans to make repairs? In 1980, the top-earning 1 percent of Americans accounted for 8 percent of the total income pie; by 2006, they grabbed nearly 23 percent.
Think of the way the system treated Michelle Morse, a full-time student at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire. Michelle was found to have colon cancer in 2003, and her physician recommended that she take a leave of absence for chemotherapy.
But if she took a leave, she would lose her insurance. Michelle stayed in school and underwent her treatments, while campaigning bravely for a law (eventually passed nationally last year) to let students remain on their parents’ health insurance while on medical leave from college. The law came too late for her: she died in 2005.
Would it have made a difference if Michelle had been able to take a leave and focus on treatment? “We’ll never know,” said her mother, AnnMarie Morse.
“It was horrible,” she said of her dealings with the insurance companies. She said that when one executive told her indignantly that the company had already paid out a lot of money for Michelle, she responded, “I would give my life for you not to have to pay one cent for my daughter.”
Not surprisingly, Mrs. Morse fervently hopes that Mr. Obama will be able to move the country toward a national health care system. If he can lead us there, even gradually, he has a chance to join the pantheon of truly great presidents like F.D.R. himself.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Toward a Definition of "Pragmatism"
Pragmatism - A label for a doctrine about meaning first made a philosophical term in 1878 by C.S. Peirce. "Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conceptions to have. Then our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object." The term was soon borrowed by William James, F.C.S. Schiller, and John Dewey, who all in their different ways made pragmatism a their of truth. Thus in his PRAGMATISM James said, "Ideas become true just so far as they help get us into satisfactory relations with other parts of our experience."
From A DICTIONARY OF PHILOSOPHY by Antony Flew
From A DICTIONARY OF PHILOSOPHY by Antony Flew
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