Print or Electronic? The New Debate

I liked this post, as it reflects my own ambiguity about the brave new world of reading options. I don't like the computer screen much, but the Kindle is very easy on the eyes, and therefore I do like mine. On the other hand, for me some books must be read and keptin print form. I think size & subject matter will have the most effect on the choice of medium. One thing that I do now is take any longer reading from the internet (say a longer blog post or book review), save it to Word, at the end of the week save it as a PDF, and then send to Kindle for conversion. I can then read at my leisure and with much less strain on my eyes.

Krugman: My Laugh of the Day on Puerile Wall Street & Atlas Shrugged

I love the quote with which Krugman concludes his blog entry today. He calls out Republican hypocrisy like no one else that I read (at least on a regular basis). He has his crap detector on 24-7. High praise, indeed, in my book.

Mark Lilla on Obama's Sales Problem; or The Passions

I found this a very interesting article. It follows my interest in persuasion, both as a professional concern (ever try to convince 8 or 12 strangers to come to a unanimous conclusion about some disputed point?) and personal (to paraphrase Sartre: hell is having no persuasive influence over people). I think Lilla is right about Obama; indeed, Obama has been poisoned, as are most persons who go through law school. We try to think all about rational argument. Nonsense! Oh, it's the icing on the cake, the flower of the plant, but only that. Persuasion is truly effective at much deeper levels. Obama should remember that he was elected by passion, misdirected or misunderstood as it may have been. For instance, Obama did not run as any kind of radical, at least in policy, although in person, as an African-American, he personally embodied huge change. But in policy? No, he has always been relatively centrist and conciliatory.

Anyway, the article, and the brief intellectual history are all worthwhile. How do you deal with Plato's triumvirate vying for power in each of us? Still, more than a couple of millenia on, a really key question.

Mark's Daily Apple: Great Source on Health & Nutrition

For no particular reason other than it popped up in my Google Reader, I want to give a shout-out to Sisson's site, which is an excellent source for health and nutrition information. Sisson is "primal", with loads of well considered and accessible information and advice. I'm gotten part way through his book The Primal Blueprint, which is a fun and interesting read. I'd be finished, but new books by Art De Vany & Tim Ferriss have created a reading backlog in the health and fitness category (all quite exciting). Anyway, this site is a good place to get a wide-ranging sample of Sisson's work. Enjoy. Health and fitness to you!

New START Treaty Passes; Grassley Disappoints

In a bit of uplifting political news, the New START treaty was ratified by the Senate today. Republicans--well, some of them--can act in the national interest and are not overtaken by thoughts of partisan political advantage and knee-jerk distrust of negotiated agreements (well, unless you want the Republican nomination for president). Sadly, one of my senators (Grassley) joined only 25 others in voting "no". I sent an email in reproach. I know that this is spitting in the wind, but I had to. My message below:

Dear Senator Grassley,

I was deeply disappointed to see that you voted against the New Start Treaty, while 1/3 of your fellow Republicans did support the treaty. I appreciate that the national interest can still come before partisan electoral posturing. Your position disturbs meet greatly because you ignored the recommendation of every living Secretary of State, Republican and Democrat, by voting against ratification. You also turned a deaf ear toward the recommendations of our military leaders. Your statement in opposition, while effectively echoing the talking points of the moment, fails to address the real underlying issues.

I hope that in the mean time, as a senator that voted in favor of the original START treaty, you will come back to the mainstream of arms control and not continue to support those who seem to oppose such efforts as a matter of habitually limited thinking.

Thank you for your attention to this.
Merry Christmas to you and your staff.
Steve Greenleaf

Tim Ferris on Practical Pessimism

This talk of < 6' by Tim Ferris highlights some salient points of Stoicism. It's worth watching, as Ferris has latched on to at least one important aspect of the Stoic ethic. More on Ferris to come, as I just finished his new book, which, like this short piece, is chuck-full of interesting ideas.

Incredible! Chinese Acrobats Do Swan Lake

Having had the privilege to see Chinese acrobats perform in Beijing, I know well the Chinese prowess in gymnastic feats. However, this clip may take the cake. Incredible! As someone who looks like he's just consumed a six-pack before attempting a simple tree pose in yoga class, I have nothing but shear awe for these performances. If the Chinese can do this, what else can they do when they set their minds to it? Food for thought!

Alfred McCoy on Dim American Futures

Somehow (one has a hard time retracing steps through the web) I came across this very interesting article. University of Wisconsin historian Alfred McCoy has given this subject some thought. Of course, like any prediction, it is uncertain. However, I do think that historians have a better perspective than most about how history may flow. I doubt that history has "laws", but it does follow patterns. We're all animals, and we love patterns. Culture, after all, is a pattern very widely accepted in a group. The culture of nations and how they interact also follows patterns. The pattern, can change, or there may be a choice of patterns. So, this is a "for what it's worth" piece, and I think it's worth something. It should lead us to think about our alternative futures. We, like Scrooge, have many ghosts of Christmas future in front of us. The way the U.S. electorate and political leadership are acting now, I'm not so optimistic. I hope I'm overly pessimistic. Anyway, McCoy provides some sobering thought.

Bill Gates vs. Matt Ridley

This is an interesting "debate" between Bill Gates of the Gates Foundation (and if you're from another planet, Microsoft) and Matt Ridley, the Rational Optimist, of whom I've posted before. The debate is a well-argued one, with each participant respecting the virtues of the other. Gates, like me, admires Ridley's work on history and his guiding metaphor of exchange--exchange of stuff and ideas--as a prime mover in human improvement. I agree with Gates, however, that Ridley sometimes seems to take an Alfred E. Newman (my choice, not Gates's) attitude ("What? Me worry?"). Gates rates risks with available knowledge, understanding that innovation could change the scene, but we can't count on it. I agree. In all, this is an intelligent exchange between two very capable and, I might add, well-mannered gentlemen.

Krugman on Bush Tax Cuts: Don't Cut a Deal!

I have given and want to continue to give the Obama Administration every benefit of the doubt on most issues. I appreciate that to get things done with Congress or foreign nations (not to mention family!), you sometimes have to make deals that are less than ideal. However, sometimes you have to just say NO! So I see the need to stand firm on several upcoming issues: the Bush tax cuts for the uber-wealthy, DADT repeal, and ratification of the new START treaty. On the tax cuts, the subject of the post today, Democrats, led by the President himself, should make it clear: Republicans would rather raise taxes on everyone than let the very richest suffer a modest tax increase. Republicans would let unemployment benefits expire for those hardest hit by their recession. I agree with Krugman, and I learned from Bill Clinton. On this, it's time to draw the line in the sand. BTW, I sent the following message this morning to Senator Harkin (Grassley, of course, is hopeless).

Dear Senator Harkin,
I strongly urge you to work to repeal the Bush tax cuts for highest tax brackets. I understand that the Administration and the Republicans are looking at a deal, but the deal is a bum one for U.S. fiscal policy, for deficit reduction, for the health of programs supporting those most in need, and for the soul and spine of the Democratic Party. I urge you to resist such a deal. Of course, Congress should extend unemployment benefits, but not at the price of Republican blackmail.

Thanks for your attention to this and for your work on our behalf.

Steve Greenleaf

10 Questions with NNT

Nassim Taleb answers 10 questions from readers of Time magazine in this brief video. It's a good, brief introduction to his "Black Swan" idea and to his current consideration of "anti-fragility". Also, it lacks the bombast that sometimes marks his talks.

Deirdre McCloskey: Explaining the Birth of the Modern Economy

This is an interesting interview because, I think, McCloskey has an interesting project: understanding the incredible change since about 1600 that allowed the modern world to emerge. McCloskey, at one time a faculty member at Iowa, really seems to have a very wide-angle perspective and a humanist sense of economics; i.e., of economics that really looks at it's roots in Hume, Smith, Mill, and others. For a sense of her take on this immense change, which is the subject of the Ian Morris book that I'm reading, as well as a forthcoming book by Niall Ferguson, I recommend this relatively brief interview. I've got her first book in this projected series on my reading list, and I'm look forward to following her investigation into this topic.

Work Productivity

Jason Fried tells some plain truths about the workplace. On the whole, I agree with his take on things. When I really have to get something thoughtful done, I will work at home. At the office, my "Do no disturb" light on the my phone is often on, although my staff usually knows when I want to talk to certain persons. In larger workplaces, I can imagine that problems only multiple.

Hans Rosling with Good News

Hans Rosling has given seven TED talks. His talks concern development issues, and he uses superb graphics. He's from Sweden, so his Swedish-tinged English also marks his talks. This talks celebrates the Millennium Development Goals and shows progress on child mortality in Africa and other developing areas. Some good news, indeed!

Carol Dweck on Two Different Mindsets

Just an interesting piece via Daniel Pink. I've heard of her work, and when you think about it at all, you say, "Of course!". However, a good graphic reminder never hurts.

Presentation Zen on Teaching

Presentation Zen is a great site for anyone who has to present on anything. For instance, I have trials, hearing, and appeals, and so I try to keep abreast of the best ideas in this field. But then, what field doesn't require some communicating & teaching? Anyway, this one is worth repeating. Garr (Mr. Presentation Zen) notes the excellent work of Sir Ken Robinson, and Dr. Tae. I watched the whole of Dr. Tae's presentation. He's a physics professor @ Northwestern. What he says about school really applies in a lot of areas of education, although in a humanities and social sciences curriculum you have a different way to engage in the classroom. Engagement and personal effort at understanding and learning are keys to any field. His demonstration of learning a new skate board move is fun to watch, including his responses to failures. Not your staid academic!

Wise or Crazy? Interesting Thoughts from Nassim Taleb

If nothing else--and I think he provides a lot of insight--NT gives us something to think about. In the brief written piece, he prognosticates, always a dangerous undertaking. Is he a hedgehog or fox (a la Phillip Tetlock)? In this taped interview also the The Economist, he talks about his new main idea: "anti-fragility". An interesting concept indeed.

Freeman Dyson & the Hubris of Humankind

I read this article with great interest, as I'd known of Dyson's skeptical attitude towards global climate change (or more accurately called, I think, "global weirding"), and I know of his genius. This article tries to make sense of his position. The header sets the tone of the article:

In the range of his genius, Freeman Dyson is heir to Einstein--a visionary who has reshaped thinking in fields from math to astrophysics o medicine, and who has conceived nuclear-propelled spaceships designed to transport human colonists to distant planets. And yet on the matter of global warming he is, as an outspoken skeptic dead wrong: wrong on the facts, wrong on the science. How could someone as smart as Dyson be so dumb about the environment? The answer lies in his almost religious faith in the power of man and science to bring nature to heel.

The author, Kenneth Brower, I might add, knows Dyson and has obvious admiration and appreciation of Dysons's skills and merits. This is not a hatchet job, but a carefully considered assessment of Dyson's peculiar attitude. In the end, Brower believes that Dyson is (almost literally) a man of the cosmos, and not a mere terrestrial being.

However, the article really caught my attention because, like my comments on Matt Ridley's The Rational Optimist, I'm skeptical of humankind's ability to tame Nature. In this perspective, I am a skeptic and conservative. I'm conservative in the Burkean sense, except that I'm less skeptical about social change than I am about environmental change (or better yet, I see social change as a species of environmental change). Burke didn't have to address the huge environmental changes that industrialization has wrought since his lifetime. To compare to a more contemporary figure, as far as the environment is concerned, I side more with the perspective of Nassim Taleb, who, I believe, shares a very cautious attitude toward the environment, as well as toward financial and economic systems. Also, Thomas Homer-Dixon has also written about what could be our Ingenuity Gap. As Brower writes, we have lots of technological schemes to address global climate change, and they're very pie-in-the-sky (or something in the sky or the ocean, etc.). We don't even have a public that thinks we have a problem, whether caused by humans or not.

This leads to my last thought: reading Morris's Why the West Rules--For Now, which goes back to the earliest humans, we have survived, but it often seems we did so despite ourselves. Since I'm listening to a Jack Kornfield recording currently, speaking of the Buddhist perspective of innate goodness, I want to believe that, and I do believe we have some grounds for this perspective. However, I also have my inner Calvinist (hey, my dad was a Presbyterian!). Frankly, the weight of the evidence is against us. Take Exhibit A, Dyson, a genius of incredible stature, seems really out to lunch on this crucial issue. If he's out to lunch, where are we mortals? Well, perhaps something less than genius intelligence--or a different array of multiple intelligences--is rather a good thing. Anyway, we fiddle while Earth burns. Are we the Nero species? How on earth (pun intended) can we change this? Advice welcome.

Ian Ayres: Short Attention Spans?

I found this an interesting blog post. I'd listened to his book Super Crunchers!, and he teaches what is probably the best law school currently in the U.S. Anyway, I do wonder about the electronic phenomena and how it may affect our ability to concentrate and focus. I know, I know, here I am making a short blog post, and I certainly read them. But still, we do have to be careful. Remember: you crap-detector must be on 24-7. Anyway, this post and the couple of others that he cites to are very thought provoking.

Check out this related post, and this one.

More Stephen Walt on American Foreign Policy: Too Much Security or Too Much Insecurity

Stephen Walt furthers an argument that I posted about the other day. He responds to a very thoughtful comment in The Economist that addresses neocon ideas (or as the article puts it, "magical thinking")about national security. The Economist article is very thoughtful as well. Walt says that they both have a point: we are too secure, but not nearly as secure as we think we are. I'd say our weaknesses aren't military, they're perceptual and long-term. If you follow foreign policy, these posts are very pertinent to things like the START treaty and Afghanistan.

Robert Wright on Afghanistan: Worse than Viet Nam

Robert Wright's article in the NYT today sets forth a distinct case against continued military operations in Afghanistan. I note that he cites the Afghan Study Group report in the postscript of his article, and I heard member Michael Hoh speak last week at the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council. I am becoming more and more pessimistic about this whole enterprise: a drain on lives, morale, and treasure--for what? I want to give President Obama the benefit of the doubt on all of this, but how long can we sit quietly? The big difference from Viet Nam, of course, is the lack of widespread resistance to the war at home. Since the sons and daughters of the middle class aren't going to war, we see no widespread protests. And, not wanting to repeat the shameful treatment given to many Viet Nam vets by the nation, we want to be very careful not to harm the brave men and women who serve. Be certain: the domestic resistance the Viet Nam war caused a great deal of havoc and really hurt the nation, as did the war itself. Cool heads don't prevail in times of war, which is one reason that war is poison for democracy. It may be a necessary poison, but it should be suffered only when absolutely necessary and in the very smallest possible dose.

We need to make some hard strategic decisions here. I think that it's time for me to write my congressional representatives. What do you think?

Niall Ferguson on the West & China: Past, Present, and Future

This article really deals with two topics. First, how "the West" came to such a great lead in development over Asia, and second, how that's now changing very quickly. The first question about the history of development is one that I'm reading about currently in Ian Morris's Why the West Rules--for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future , a very extensive history of human development from paleolithic times to the present and into the future. Very good, but more about it later. ( Ferguson gave it a shout out in this review in Foreign Affairs.) The second part of Ferguson's article deals with current developments. This, too, is fascinating, as we're seeing a new challenge to U.S. and Western leadership. How we address these issues will prove a real challenge to our leadership.

Thomas Barnett on the U.S. and China--Again

This was too good to pass up. Let me provide my executive summary of his key points (i.e., points that I find persuasive):

1. We act in a passive-aggressive manner toward China and many nations. Get over it.
2. We have overlapping interests with the Chinese, and, Oh, yeah!, the rest of the world. We have to work on these relationships. As someone who deals with negotiations and conflicting interests regularly, the need to negotiate relationships is fundamental. The sticking point is the audience (client, voters) whom you have to please, your clients, so to speak. But you have to cut a deal (if you can) even if its with potential (or actual) rivals. It's called leadership.
3. We must accept some "satisficing" (Herbert Simon). This is, we have to expect less-than-perfect outcomes. That's life as we know it. The enemy of the good is the best (or something like that).
4. The idea of a nuke-free world, as attractive as it is, overreaches, at least at present. We need to move to a nuclear-limited world. (See my prior entry for some sanity on that topic.)
5. Real politics involves "consensus building", but also deal-making. Sometimes you have to make deals with the devil (e.g., FDR & Churchill dealt with Stalin to defeat Hitler; Clinton cut deals with Newt Gingrich).
6. Strategic thinking involves a lot more than thinking about war. I suggest that it's all about energy. Not just oil, but money (fungible energy) and attention (human energy), but that's a whole different post.

 Barnett makes some important points here.

Walt: Too Secure? A Message to the Senate

I may just send this link to my U.S. senators, especially Senator Grassley, whom I fear may be playing the anything-to-defeat-Obama tune that many, if not most, Senate Republicans seem willing to play. How sad!

The Republican attitude here gives us an understanding of what "playing politics" means. First, it means trying to gain electoral advantage and ignoring the real work of political decision-making. Because most voters can be fooled by posturing, or really believe in the posture taken, Republicans can claim the need for a "strong defense", when in fact, as Walt argues, it goes the other way. Second, the "playing" in "playing politics" demonstrates a childishness in the actions taken. Of course, both sides do it on occasion, but we expect--or should expect--most to rise above it.* I don't have a problem with genuine differences of opinion and perception, but many instances we're seeing either intentional cynincism or group delusion at work.

*Play can be a good thing for adults, I should add. I play--volleyball, basketball, etc.--all the time. I go to "plays", but this is different.)

Nic Marks on The Happiness Index

C & I watched several TED Talks tonight, and I thought I'd share on this one. If you can't watch it, I'll give you the executive summary. Mr. Marks says that five factors govern happiness:
1. Connect with others
2. Keep active
3. Take notice of the world around you
4. Keep learning
5. Give

You can go to this website to learn more.

If you stop and think about these factors, they reflect a great deal of wisdom and they are factors well-represented in religious and wisdom traditions. Too often we forget them, especially in our race for wealth and consumer goods. A very worthwhile talk.

Walt & Colleagues: Cut Defense Budget

Stephen Walt and other foreign policy realists, among others, are saying the plainly obvious: we have to cut the defense budget in order to get our national fiscal house in order. When it seems the nation is completely daft on this issues, it's reassuring to see those who think most deeply on this topic speak some sense. One only hopes that the newly minted deficit hawk Republicans pay attention to this.

Krugman Trumps Brooks

I go with Krugman on this, and I think Brooks does have it backwards, although the tendency in general for economists to go overboard in their faith in models may cross the fresh water--salt water divide. I think that the economists who speak and write in languages primarily other than math will have the best perspectives. I take this position not because I'm anti-math (I'm not) nor because I'm not fluent in math (which is true: I'm not). No, I think that the danger arises from an inflated sense of certainty that the use of mathematical models may create. Keynes was a brilliant mathematician, but check out The General Theory: it's written in English. Ditto The Wealth of Nations. Also, the market (fresh water) economists seem most enamored by market models and models of rational man [sic]. No, I think that Brooks could write the same column even more accurately aimed at so-called conservative economists. For instance, those who predict the end of the world with QE2. No, I have to side with Krugman on this one, plus he has a well-honed argument that the stimulus simply wasn't large enough because Obama bowed too easily to Congressional skittishness.

Tyler Cowen's Best Books of the Year

Marginal Revolution has some interesting stuff, and Cowen is an eclectic and discerning reader. I can only claim to have read Winston's War by Max Hastings, which I found excellent. Some of the others I've read reviews of, and they sound very good. I love a good book list!

Spoiler Alert: Don' Spoil Your Two Hours on Morning Glory

To be blunt, Morning Glory was a waste of time. I can't say much good about it. If you've seen the trailer, you've seen anything that might constitute a high point.

However, let's give some thought to this film nevertheless. My thought arose from the premise of the film that the character played (really, over-played) by Harrison Ford should lighten up and get into the froth of morning TV. He is portrayed as a pompous former anchorman who wants to do "real" news. During the course of the film, our heroine, young, perky, and determined Rachel McAdams transforms by show by various antics: an anchor kissing a frog, the weatherman televised on a roller-coaster, and other inanities. And the only "real" news that occurs in this endless film comes when the sitting governor is confronted with criminal charges right before the cops show up to arrest him. This isn't news, it's a spectacle of humiliation (even if he is guilty, which no one is assumed to care about after viewing the bust). Television news becomes more and more of a wasteland all the time from what I can see (which is as little as possible beyond the Daily Show and the Colbert Report). But as much as one naturally pulls for Rachel McAdams to succeed, I kept thinking that success isn't worth it. What have you done? She gets the guy in the end, but by the end, your really don't care.

My review mixes two types of criticism, bad movie-making and bad journalism, but if you choose to go, you're forewarned.

David Frum: Good Conservative?

As a former Bush speechwriter, I never expected to like David Frum. I guess we all have our prejudices, and one of mine is George W. Bush. However, this article by Frum in the the NYT Magazine yesterday really struck me as some very good advice. He caught me with the opening truth of his first paragraph: the Democrats won in 2008 because of the economy, and the Republicans won in 2010 because of the economy. It's really that simple. Beyond that, he recognizes the value of the welfare state (picking a fine G.K. Chesterton saying along the way to makes his point); he talks about the need for Republicans (and Democrats) to take off their ideological blinders, and most importantly, he shared this insight about populism that I think really captures a great deal about our current (and much of our past) politics. About the populist divide, he writes:

American populism has almost always concentrated its anger against the educated rather than the wealthy. So much so that you might describe contemporary American politics as a class struggle between those with more education than money against those with more money than education: Jon Stewart’s America versus Bill O’Reilly’s, Barack Obama versus Sarah Palin.

Digging back in memory, this fits with theories of Richard Hofstadter and perhaps Robert Wiebe, whose works I read as an undergraduate, or shortly after. The Tea Party phenomena has been the most interesting and scary item to watch of late. Intellectually, it's incoherent, as Frum recognizes, but it captures feelings, and feelings are much, much stronger than ideas. In thinking about our recent Iowa Supreme Court election vote, I was struck by the attitude of resentment expressed more than the anti-gay aspect. VanderPlats didn't do any overt gay-bashing, he couched his argument in terms of "elites" and "activist judges" "re-writing the Constitution". This is the real problem. The problem of crowds, the uneducated, the demos, the mob, and so on. When do we move from a democracy to a tyranny of the many? The Greeks, like Aristotle and Plato, understood the downside of democracy, and as I learn more, I gain a greater appreciation of their concerns (although I still don't buy any alternative).

Getting back to Frum, it's a really thoughtful piece. Here! Here! to more conservatives like him.

Thomas Barnett on the U.S. and China

As I often find, Dr. Thomas Barnett has something interesting to say about the contemporary world. In this case, the growing rift between the U.S. and China. Each nation has its own particular needs, strengths, and weaknesses, and both need each other for continued peace and prosperity. I fear growing Chinese nationalism, but I also fear an increasingly confrontational attitude by the U.S. As Barnett notes, China has a rather unique demographic challenge, one that makes ours seem small. We have to work with their needs if they're going to work with ours. I hope that this and following administrations act out of our long-term interest toward China not out of domestic political expediency.

Ganga White: Yoga Beyond Belief

This is another book that I finished recently, and very different from the LeCarre. White is a long-time yoga practitioner (check out some of the 60's and 70's hair he used to have!). This book was really quite an excellent general introduction to the practice of the Hatha Yoga tradition. White addresses all manner of issues in a very accessible prose. It covers a wide variety of topics that any practitioner, new or experienced, will likely face. He also goes into some of he history of the discipline. If you're interested in learning more about yoga, this is a good place to begin.

John LeCarre's A Most Wanted Man

I finished this novel recently. I am very much a LeCarre fan, so the anticipation is always great. I'd rate this novel as good, but not great. It's an enjoyable read. The young lawyer dealing with the demands and aspirations of her profession, the aging banker, and the various Muslims living in Germany, all are characters that intrigue. Add in LeCarre's understanding of the world of espionage and police work--and all of the conflict and rivalry that you have in that milieu--and you get a very compelling tale. Not as complex or deep as some of his past efforts, but nonetheless compelling. If you enjoy a good, contemporary realistic novel that focuses on current events, then you can't do much better than this.

Dave Brooks on the Deficit Reduction Commission

Dave Brooks takes a look at this issue from the big picture, and he makes important points. While Krugman goes for the details, Brooks does a good job of trying to see the big picture. I wold hasten to note, however, the Krugman has expressed a very real appreciation of the danger of the deficit, and he's not moved by the fear of bond markets that Brooks, like Niall Ferguson,share. Both express a fear of market collapse. Nonetheless, I think Brooks joins the debate. In the end, to reduce this deficit, we're going to have to do some things differently. Cut defense spending significantly would be a great start. Maintaining slightly higher taxes on the wealthiest would also be fine by me. Ending breaks for economic interests that don't serve the general welfare would work for me. A higher retirement age for Social Security? Perhaps for some. Anyway, we should engage in a vigorous public debate on these issues and take steps to reduce the deficit, but not by hurting those at the lowest end of the economic spectrum.

Krugman on the Deficit Reduction Commission

This link is to Krugman's take on the deficit reduction commission. Krugman, as usual, cuts to the chase and criticizes aggressively where he thinks it's warranted. I really applaud this. We all have to serve as advocates for what we believe is right. N.B., this doesn't mean that we act like jerks toward one another, but neither must we cower at the prospect of conflict.

My next post is of Dave Brooks today: read and compare.

Robert Kaplan on Obama's Asian Tour & Strategic Balancing

This article by Kaplan in the NYT today is an interesting one. We are living through a period of rising new global powers, especially China, but also India, Turkey, and Brazil, among others. How the reigning hegemon, the U.S., reacts to these changes is a major challenge to U.S. leaders. Can we accommodate and reach a working understanding with the new players, or will we panic and try to spend all of them under the table? The latter was the Bush administration plan until 9/11 sent us scurrying off to Afghanistan and Iraq. It does seem that the rise of China poses many of the same challenges for the U.S. that the rise of Germany did for Great Britain at the beginning of this century. Let hope it all works out better than that relationship did.

Of course, one may ask if there is an alternative to all of this balancing of forces and such, and the answer is probably "no". However, as we pour lives and resources into Iraq and Afghanistan, can we afford an active role in all of this?

Be Afraid? Glen Beck on George Soros: Echos of the Past?

I don't know what to make of Glen Beck. I want to think of him as an ignorant, albeit malevolent, clown. However, this piece from The Daily Dish takes my wishful thinking to task. How do we, how should we, respond to what seems to be a real anti-Semitic tirade? Is he really so ignorant that he doesn't know that he's echoing the archetypes of anti-Semitic slander? Do we ignore him? And if not, how does one respond? One has to doubt the efficacy of rational argument in the face of such nonsense? Like the crazies from Kansas, I want to ignore them, I don't want to feed their hatred mixed with a need for attention; however, neither should such statements or prejudices go unchallenged. This is a real dilemma, certainly for anyone who considers oneself any kind of a liberal (at least as it relates to free speech).

Guess What? The Wealtier Live Longer

Well, if money can't buy you love, it certainly improves your chances for a longer life. Like a good deal of social science, this only makes sense when you stop and think about it. It's hardly counter-intuitive. The point Krugman wants to make is that making all workers wait longer for retirement penalizes those in the lower half of the income bracket. For lawyers, for instance, we should be able to work longer than coal miners or steel workers, and farmers for that matter (although I know farmers who pretty much died on the tractor).

Nick Morgan & Herbert Watzke on the Brain in Our Gut

Nick Morgan writes on public speaking and presentation, and I regularly read his blog. Besides his sound advice, he sometimes puts on examples, and TED Talks provide a fertile source. This talk is about research on the "gut" and how it works as a part of our nervous system. As C and I have both been reading on brain research for our respective professional reasons, I found it interesting. It's quite an enjoyable and informative presentation.

Some Good News (Maybe) About the American People

Stephen Walt points out that the American public aren't buying Bush. Walt points out that few watched Bush's big interview with Matt Lauer. I hope Walt's right. However, I did see that someone claimed to have a poll that showed Bush beating Obama in a mock presidential contest. Since this is not a real contest, maybe the respondents were just mocking the poll-takers and poll-readers. I hope so. Right now, I'm a bit down on the electorate (i.e., those who voted Republican). The other explanation is that instead of watching Bush most folks watched some other junk on TV. There's lots of competition for brain drain on the tube.

More Quotes from Loy's The World of Stories

The following are more quotes taken from the Loy book. I have yet to right a proper review of it, and I plan to do so. But I find the quotes intriguing as stand alone thought starters. Anyway, for your casual consideration:

Without a foundation in conventional truth,
The significance of the ultimate truth cannot be taught.
Without understanding the significance of the ultimate truth,
Liberation is not achieved.
--Nagarjuna

The literary language of the New Testament is not intended, like literature itself, simply to suspend judgment, but to convey a vision of spiritual life that continues to transform and expand our own. That is myths become, as purely literary myths cannot, myths to live by; its metaphors become, as purely literary metaphors cannot, metaphors to live in.
--Northrup Frye

Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.
--Simone Weil

Attentiveness is the natural prayer of the soul.
--Nicholas Malebranche

Let your mind come forth without fixing it anywhere.
--Diamond Sutra

There is no specifiable difference whatever
between nirvana and samsara.
The limit of nirvana is the limit of samsara.
There is not even the subtlest difference between the two.
--Nagarjuna

We make stories because we are story.
--Russell Hoban

The reality of cosmos becomes a story to be told by the man who participates responsively in the story told by the god.
--Eric Voegelin

The eye I see God with is the eye God sees me with; my and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing and one love.
--Meister Eckhart

The soul’s vision of its divine Lord is the vision which He has of the soul.
--Ibn ‘Arabi

Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the superman—a rope over an abyss. A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous trembling and halting.
--Nietzsche

Literature is the Imaginal in script.
--Northrup Frye

“I feel as if I was inside a song, if you get my meaning.”
--Sam Gamgee, in The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkein

The East emphasizes liberation from the human condition, while the Western spiritual traditions place special value on the human incarnation in its own right, and are more interesting in fulfilling the meaning of this incarnation than in going beyond it or in finding release from it . . . to bring these two together is an important evolutionary step.
--John Welwood

David Loy's The World is Made of Stories

This book by David Loy will get a fuller treatment later. It was a delight to read, and it requires further digestion. However, one thing makes it quite fun: its numerous quotes spread throughout the text. Delicious little bits of thought. I've written some of my favorites for your delectation. (However, don't let these substitute for reading the book!)

The universe is made of stories, not atoms.
Muriel Rukeheyser

The limits of my language are the limits of my world.
Ludwig Wittgenstein

The Greek polis was formed by warriors coming back from the Trojan Wars. They needed a place to tell their stories, because it was only in the stories that they achieved immortality. Democracy was created to make the world safe for stories.
Ernest Becker

Reality is what doesn’t go away when you stop believing in it.
Phillip K. Dick

No dharma has ever been taught by a buddha to anyone, anywhere.
Nagarjuna

Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent.
Ludwig Wittgenstein

To the native Irish, the literal representation of the country was less important than its poetic dimension. In traditional bardic culture, the terrain was studied, discussed, and referenced; every place had its legend and its own identity . . . . What endured was the mythic landscape, providing escape and inspiration.
R.K. Foster

Just as the flower is made of non-flower elements, the self is made only of non-self elements.
Thich Nhat Hanh

The sense of the world must be outside the world.
Ludwig Wittgenstein

Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.
Hannah Arendt

Myth is not entertainment, but rather the crystallization of experience, and far from being escapist literature, fantasy is an intensification of reality.
Alan Garner

What does our great historical hunger signify, our clutching about us of countless other cultures, our consuming desire for knowledge, if not the loss of myth, or a mythic home, the mythic womb?
Nietzsche

Theology is a branch of fantastic literature.
Jorge Luis Borges

Fantasy is true, of course. It isn’t factural, but it is true. Children know that. Adults know it too, and that is precisely why many of them are afraid of fantasy. They know that its truth challenges, even threatens, all that is phony, unnecessary, and trivial in the life they have let themselves be forced into living.
Ursula K. LeGuin

One does not refute symbols; one deciphers them.
Henri Corbin

She kept asking if the stories were true.
I kept asking her if it mattered.
We finally gave up.
She was looking for a place to stand
& I wanted a place to fly.
Brian Anderson

The only secure truth men have is that which they themselves create and dramatize; to live is to play at the meaning of life.
Ernest Becker

We accept reality easily, perhaps because we sense that nothing is real.
Jorge Luis Borges

Our truth consists of illusions that we have forgotten are illusions.
Nietzsche

I plan on more to come!

Statement from Ousted Iowa Supreme Court Justices

The following (except for the very last line)is the press release by the ousted Iowa Supreme Court justices. A very thoughtful and appropriate response that bears repeating:

November 3, 2010
The following public statement was issued by Justice David Baker, Justice Michael Streit and Chief Justice Marsha Ternus.

Des Moines, November 3, 2010— It has been our great privilege to serve the people of Iowa as justices on the Iowa Supreme Court. Throughout our judicial service, we have endeavored to fulfill our duty to Iowans by always adhering to the rule of law, making decisions fairly and impartially according to law, and faithfully upholding the constitution.

We thank all of the Iowans who voted to retain judges around the state for another term. Your support shows that many of our citizens value fair and impartial courts. We also want to acknowledge and thank all the Iowans, from across the political spectrum and from different walks of life, who worked tirelessly over the past few months to defend Iowa's high-caliber court system against an unprecedented attack funded by out-of-state special interest groups.
Iowa's merit selection system helps ensure that our judges base their decisions on the law and the Constitution and nothing else. Ultimately, however, the preservation of our fair and impartial courts will require more than the integrity and fortitude of individual judges; it will require the fervent and steadfast support of the people.

To which I say "Amen!"

Thoughts After the Election

The following are random thoughts on the election yesterday, which, for the most part, reflects my disappointment and despair, although not much in the way of surprise.

Iowa is a conservative state. Not a Republican state, but a conservative state. We don’t go easily for change. Only one incumbent, Democrat or Republican on the statewide or federal ticket, was defeated. The defeated incumbent, Chet Culver, was replaced by a man who previously served sixteen years in the job! Also, note that both U.S. senators, one an old school Republican and the other a liberal Democrat, have both held office nearly forever. The great exception to this, of course, is the defeat of our three Supreme Court justices who were selected at random to be (figuratively) executed as an example to other judges not to drag Iowans into the 21st century. They dragged Iowa into the future when they ruled that our fundamental law requires the state to extend the benefits of marriage to gays. I don’t take these results as especially homophobic (although in some measure this is certainly true), but it does reflect a deep-seated conservatism and resentment. The resentment is seen by comparing results from Johnson and other larger Iowa counties with the more rural and poorer western counties, where voters more likely supported the summary executions for their audacity.

The electorate, taken as a whole, seems more and more like a petulant child that stomps its foot when it doesn’t get what it wants when it wants it. In 2008 it went center-left (Obama is nothing if not a centrist), and now it wants to veer sharply to the right. This makes no sense. Clotaire Rapaille in The Culture Code suggests that the U.S. is an adolescent country, and I bristled a bit at that, but I think this election demonstrates the truth of his contention. People are unhappy because Obama and the Congress couldn’t deliver a miracle, because that’s what it would have taken to undo the Bush mess. Of course, this may be endemic to democracy. Look at the French, unhappy that they can’t keep early retirement. Sorry, folks, we’re living too long and have too many bills! So maybe this crazy inconsistency is attributable to democracy anywhere and not just in the U.S.

Democracy, as we practice it today, isn’t so great. I happened to read about Socrates and his death at the hands of an Athenian jury again this morning. It struck me: a democracy put to death a good man (and one we’d label a great man) because he questioned the local pieties and prejudices. Next to Jesus and perhaps St. Paul, Socrates holds the greatest sway over Western culture, yet he died at the hands of a democracy, at the direction of the popular will. There are much worse systems of government out there, all worse in some way, but let’s not think that our contemporary U.S. democracy is so great. It gets by. It does so despite degrading the level of public discourse. Consider many of the television commercials aired: they insult the intelligence; they either lie outright or seek to deceive. This goes for both parties, although I honestly think that Republicans are better at it and more comfortable with it. Are unflattering images and less than complete sentences what we should base our decisions upon?

The bad news is, in some view, good news. The fickle electorate will change likely. Remember 1994. Maureen Dowd’s column today serves as a reminder of how the more things change the more that they stay the same. One can only hope that Republicans will remain as foolish. Obama should not be finished. He just needs to play the game adeptly and aggressively. Clinton did and won despite his personal shortcomings. I just hope that not too much damage gets done in the mean time.

Garry Wills Outside Looking In: Adventures of an Outsider

Anyone who knows me knows that I've been a big fan of Garry Wills since 1976, when in one summer I read Bare Ruined Choirs (aloud with C) and Nixon Agonistes. Since then I have continued to enjoy a steady stream of books from Wills on a wide variety of topics: St. Augustine, Shakespeare's MacBeth, Jefferson, Henry Adams, John Wayne, Ronald Reagan, Lincoln, Venice, and so on. However, in this book, Wills, similar to a part of his earlier Confessions of a Conservative, brings himself directly into view. But not as the sole figure in a frame, but always with someone else. In some cases, we meet rather scheming and deluded preachers, in others, the opera star Beverly Sills and her family, and in others contemporary politicians like Hillary Clinton (whom Wills speaks fondly of). Wills has met this quite varied and interesting collection of persons by starting out as a "book worm". His father paid him not to read for a week and Wills took his winnings out and bought a new book. Perhaps the most interesting thing about Wills is that while he received a Jesuit education topped off by a Yale doctorate in classics, he got his real start writing for magazines, first National Review (he was "discovered" by William F. Buckley), and then Esquire. Mixing these two callings, academic and journalistic, made Wills a compelling writer and not just a brainy writer.

Wills's portraits of his friends Beverly Sills, Studs Terkel, and others can be quite touching. He is quite fair to Richard Nixon, whom he credits as the politician who provided the most interesting answer to his question about favorite books. But the two most interesting subjects are Bill Buckley and Wills’s wife Natalie. Buckley and Wills had a long falling out over the Viet Nam war, but they eventually reconciled through the good offices of one of Buckley’s sisters. Wills provides a respectful and fascinating portrait of Buckley. As for his wife Natalie, Wills struck up a conversation over a nerdy book he was reading (Bergson) on a flight to NYC to meet Buckley and on which she worked a stewardess. They have been together since then, with her serving as his first draft reader—lucky her. No, really, lucky her!

For me this was fun glance into the behind-the-scenes world of one of my favorite writers. For me, it was like hearing a special guest tell tales from an interesting life, and an interesting life it has been, and I hope will continue to be for some time, for this book worm Garry Wills.

Iowa Judicial System Under Attack

The following is a piece that I wrote for our local paper. They haven't seen fit to print it (yet?), but, hey, what's a blog for but to serve as our electronic street corner (and perhaps as effective, but if you've read this far . . . .). Anyway, my thoughts written earlier this month:

Failed Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Vander Plaats has turned his attention this fall from running for governor to leading a campaign to radically change our judicial system. In doing so, he’s enlisted the aid of Newt Gingrich and a couple of hundred thousand dollars in out-of-state money. The motive behind the movement spearheaded by Vander Plaats is the Iowa Supreme court’s unanimous decision in Varnum v. Brien. Varnum rules that denying the right of marriage to gays and lesbians in Iowa violates the equal protection clause of the Iowa Constitution. Vander Plaats and his supporters want to express their dissatisfaction and to intimidate any future court decisions that fail to support their agenda. The intend to accomplish this by voting against retaining the three Iowa Supreme Court justices who happen to be up for a retention vote this year.
Even if one disagrees with extending constitutional rights to gays and lesbians and wants to join Vander Plaats and his supporters in seeking to overturn the decision, there is a political remedy. Those seeking to overturn this right can work to convince the Iowa legislature and Iowa voters to amend our Constitution and adopt a provision that exempts gays and lesbians from equal protection of the laws governing marriage. To date, the Iowa legislature has refused to tamper with provisions governing this fundamental right.
If a majority votes against retaining the three Supreme Court justices on the ballot this fall, it will be the first time since our current system of judicial selection began in 1962 that a Supreme Court justice is removed from office by a vote. If voted out, the three up for a retention votes, Chief Justice Ternus and Justices Streit and Baker, will have been chosen at random for retribution, since all of the members of the Court joined in the Varnum v. Brien decision. These three justices just happen to be the ones on the ballot this fall by way of a regular rotation.
What will it mean for justice in Iowa if a majority of voters remove any of these justices from office? The first conclusion certain to be drawn is that social conservatives dominate Iowa politics. However, more worrisome will be the conclusion that out-of-state money can come to Iowa to buy elections and judges. Republican gubernatorial candidate Terry Branstad, who appointed two of the justices that voted in favor of the Varnum decision during his earlier tenure as governor, proposes a different fundamental change to our current system. Branstad now wants the power to appoint all judges directly with the approval of the state senate. Branstad’s proposal would take the initial screening of candidates out of the hands of the non-partisan judicial nominating committees that provide the governor with two or three names from which to choose to fill a judgeship. Whether a Republican or a Democrat sits in the governor’s office, under the Branstad plan, judicial appointments will more often reflect repayment of political favors and adherence to party doctrine, something that our current systems tends to avoid.
Having practiced in Iowa from 1979 (with a brief stint in Illinois), I can report that taken as a whole, our judicial system and judicial selection system works about as well as one can hope in our democracy. In this assessment I’m not alone, as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce rates Iowa as the fifth best judicial system in the Union. The system is not perfect, nor are our judges infallible (the proof being that they sometimes rule against me and my clients), but taken as a whole, the voters of Iowa would be making a terrible decision and setting a terrible precedent if they vote to remove the three Supreme Court justices who are up for retention this fall. The real issue isn’t the propriety of a single ruling, but the ability of the judicial system to stand outside the political tides and to make decisions that may not prove popular. We alter such a system only to the peril of our liberties.

Maurenn Dowd on Ignorance Chic

In her column today, Maureen Dowd, queen of reading the zeitgeist, goes after the cult of ignorance--yes, you read that correctly--exhibited by some running for office today. She juxtaposes this current attitude with that exhibited by none other than Marilyn Monroe, the blonde bombshell, the "dumb blonde". In fact, MM had aspirations and an apparent sense of depth that could lead her to despair. Do we see that today with some public figures? To say that some running for office today are vacuous seems kind. Anyway, as usual, Dowd's take on the culture of the day seems quite on point to me.

Winston's War by Max Hastings

I’ve completed listening to Winston’s War: Churchill 1940 to 1946 by Max Hastings (2010, 576 p.). I hesitated to start another book on Churchill, as I’ve read a great deal about him already. He is, I think, the most written-about figure in the 20th century. Indeed, when we cleaned out my mom’s house we found a montage of Churchill that I’d done in 6th grade. Can there be anything new under the sun? Well, in this case, yes.
Hastings has written a fascinating book. Indeed, there is a lot that I learned that I either never knew or appreciated. Hastings does all this with a very judicious eye about what is near craziness (WSC was impulsive) and what amounts to heroic leadership. Churchill faced a number of challenges upon taking the premiership in May 1940 through the time he was deposed by voters in July 1945. Dealing with the English people, dealing with the mutual suspicions of Americans and Brits toward one another, wooing FDR (only to have FDR later shun him so that FDR could woo Stalin), having meetings and decisions reported to Stalin by Soviet agents before meetings could even begin—these are just a few of the matters considered by Hastings. Add in the use of area bombing (of civilian centers such as Hamburg and Dresden), the use of local resistance fighters (probably not worth the toll on civilians), and various military misadventures, and you get a sense of all the complicated decisions that WSC faced (or chose not to face) during his time. The complicated history of WWII is seen through the actions of this one man and considered by this gifted historian makes for a terrific read. The brevity of my post here belies the terrific enthusiasm that I have for this book. Highly recommended.

Despair?

I read the following in Maureen Dowd's NYT column:

As Barack Obama struggles to rekindle the magic, one of the most pathetic headlines was the one on a CNN poll last week: “Was Bush Better President Than Obama?”

“Americans are divided over whether President Barack Obama or his predecessor has performed better in the White House,” the CNN article said.

This is one of the most distressing items that I've read in a long time. I can laugh (sometimes) at the likes of Glen Beck and crazy Tea Party types, hoping--really hoping--that they can't be serious, or taken seriously in any event. However, these poll numbers make me cringe to think about our electorate. Are they nuts? Incredibly short-sighted? Stupid? Harsh words, I know (and now you know that I'm never running for office). I have little doubt that Bush will go down as one of the worst presidents in our history. Obama should receive acclaim for not letting Bush's bus go off the cliff. Now, people complain because the trip is taking longer. Incredible. FDR had an advantage in that when he took over from Hoover the bus had gone off the cliff. In Obama's case, he got to the wheel in time to avoid the worst, but people now blame him for the detour. Incredible.

The Iowa Judicial System

The following is an email that I sent to the Iowa Justice Association list serve. This is the organization of plaintiff's lawyers in Iowa. The subject is the effort by Bob VanderPlats and lots of outside money to oust three Iowa Supreme Court justices this year on the retention vote because they joined in the unanimous Varnum decision that held the Iowa ban on gay marriage violated the equal protection clause. My thoughts in general on this issue and our method of judicial selection in Iowa.

Readers,
In thinking about our upcoming retention vote and the implicit--and perhaps explicit--decision that we have to make about our current judicial system, I think that we need to keep in mind some important points:
1. Judges, human beings that they are (well, for the most part), make mistakes and have numerous foibles, and I'm talking about the better ones. Yet, we must look at our judicial selection and retention system as Churchill looked at democracy: the worst form of government, except when compared to all of the others. Compared to others, we coming out looking very good.
2. Judges, like jurors, walk into their positions with loads of pre-existing ideas, political, legal, philosophical, etc. We try to persuade them, but that can be mighty tough sometimes if they walk in with an attitude on an issue. That's why, I think, that this group tends to rejoice more when someone with a plaintiff's background gets appointed to the bench than when experienced defense counsel goes up. Not always, but usually. So, yes, judges do have imperfections, idiosyncrasies, and beliefs that create a great variety of perspectives. Given this, one of the amazing aspects of Varnum was the unanimity of the decision.
3. Those who claim that decision like Varnum should have been made in the political sphere have a strong argument. As a supporter of the conclusion of Varnum, I would have preferred that it would have been made by the legislature and not the courts. However, sometimes the courts have to go against the tide; maybe you like it (desegregation, one man [sic], one vote, abortion rights) or sometimes you don't (due process cases, striking down the New Deal legislation, striking down campaign finance legislation)—all depending on your political point of view, of course. Whether one likes an "activist" court seems to go along with whether one likes the outcome. It's gone both ways over time, sometimes left, sometimes right. But the courts have to do what they have to do--if really forced to. (I have a hard time believing all of the Iowa Supreme Court wanted to get out front on an issue like Varnum, as I don't think that they're naive about the potential public response.)
4. If any of the current Supreme Court justices are voted out, it will have a chilling effect on all future court decisions and allow electoral politics--often at its most base--to infect our judicial system. Those who disapprove of the Varnum decision do have political remedies, and these they should pursue.
5. This really isn't about individual justices (as it should be), but it's about attempting to control the judiciary in a new & very harmful way. It's like picking three soldiers at random to be shot in order booster the morale of the troops. This motivational tool isn't one that we should take up. It's a crude tool even with politicians, but they know that it comes with the job; it shouldn't be so for judges.

Enough for now. I think that this is an important issue for all lawyers and all citizens in Iowa. Thanks for allowing me to share. And vote.

Richard Evans: In Defense of History

I completed Richard Evans's In Defense of History (1999, 272 p.). Evans writes on the topics that historians must always deal with, either up front and in the back of their minds: issues of causation, facts, sources, choice of topics, and the like. Much of this can seem mundane, but it can also become quite controversial. Evans treats it all with an even hand. His most significant contribution comes from his critique of more radical notions of post-modernism. He welcomes new ideas of perspective and topics, but he rejects the extreme relativism that some promote as a part of this movement. As does Ken Wilber, among others, he points to the performative contradiction at the heart of extreme relativism. Evans is persuasive about this, and I think he take history to a very solid philosophical (in the broadest sense) footing. A find book well considered, and a pleasure to read.

Friedman, Shiller, etc. Miscellaney

Tom Friedman provides a persuasive and succinct description of the Tea Party Movement as a political phenomena. The Tea Party strikes me as having no coherent set of ideas or platform, just a populist outpouring against the world as it is. I think that Obama has the ability and aspirations to reach out and accomplish what Friedman wants, and what he sees as the real problems behind the Tea Kettle party phenomena, but the body politic does seem to be really mired in limited--if not downright stupid--thinking.

In the NYT today, Friedman opens with a quote from Lewis Mumford. This alone merits a shout-out, as Mumford was a great American humanist (for lack of a more specific term), and long-time favorite of mine. In Friedman's article a quote from Mumford is taken from his impressionistic account of history, and more specifically, that of the declining Roman empire. I think that we have to be careful of the "we're the new Rome" stuff, but still, it's a thought-provoking piece, and it allows Friedman to trumpet an important message. Friedman floats the idea of a third-party, a tried and true perspective in American politics (and one that can influence events, but not since the Republican Lincoln, have none have gained power at the presidential level). The problem, as I see it, is that Obama gets criticized for acting too conciliatory and non-partisan. What perspectives or attitudes could a, for instance, Bloomberg add to the national dialogue? If anything, maybe Obama and the Democrats need to act more boldly and move more to the left. Anyway, thanks for quoting Mumford, Tom.

Robert Shiller in the NYT today takes about "animal spirits" (again) in describing how attitudes effect economic outlooks and performance. Yea, Keynes, who wrote in English (although he spoke mathematics very fluently) seems to have his pulse on our situation. Another instance of human behavior not following the guidelines that mainstream economics says that we should.

Finally, a quick note: an article in the NYT about an upcoming series on PBS on religion in America. You cannot understand America if you don't have some grasp of its religious history and its current manifestations in their incredible variety. Sounds promising.

Through the History of the Cold War: The Correspondence of George F. Kennan & John Lukacs

Through the History of the Cold War: The Correspondence of George F. Kennan & John Lukacs (2010, 276p.) proved a delight to read. The relationship began when Lukacs, then a nobody, wrote to Kennan, then ambassador to the Soviet Union and author of the "X" article, was a definite somebody (but soon to fall from favor). Their relationship grew over the years from a mutual interest in 19th and 20th century diplomatic history to a genuine affection for one another. In addition, we begin to get comments on some current events, different peoples, and insights into their writing projects (after leaving the Foreign Service, Kennan established a second career as a historian of diplomacy). Kennan, for instance, shares my concern that sometimes Lukacs allows his prose to become too dense, while at the same time, each sees in the other examples of fine writing and highly developed descriptive powers that enhances the work of both men. In sum, reading their letters to one another is like listening in to a very urbane and frank discussion between two highly literate and articulate men, who, because of their knowledge of history, have acute sensibilities of times and places that most of us don't perceive. From the quotidian to the grand, we get glimpses over a course of many years. As this is raw history, some of their judgments may seem harsh or ill-considered, but part of the charm of letters like this comes from their frankness and intimacy.

Of course, I think that the best testament that I can provide comes from quoting here and there, as I have in a couple of posts already, from their own words. Quite a joy, I must say. So I offer two quote for today, one on the more profound side, one on the lighter side:

Kennan:

We know that we cannot look at the sun with direct and naked eyes. It blinds us if we try it. Just so, there are things about the nature of God which we should not, and cannot, attempt to envisage and understand. To suppose that we would be capable of such a thing would resemble in itself a form of blasphemy. (253 11 February 2002)

Lukacs:

This president's (George W. Bush's) mind (and character) is that of a 15 year old American teenager who wants to remain the class president, a position the had got through mere luck. Commentators are wrong when they speculate that he wants to revenge what Saddam H. had planned for his father. No: George W. never liked is father; he wants to show that he can do even better then his father. We know the immortal warning of John Quincy Adams: "we do not go abroad in search for monsters to destroy." This puerile president is worse than that: he proclaims and pinpoints one monster for the sake of consolidating his and his party's popularity . . . ." (260, 5 March 2003).

New Start Treaty: Letter to Sen. Grassley

I recently heard Tad Daley, author of Apocalypse Never, speak about the continuing danger of nuclear weapons and the need for us to rid the world of them. I don't buy into quite that radical a project. I believe that the genie is out of the bottle, and that we can't force the genie back in. We have to contain the genie. As in the land of the blind, where the one-eyed man is king; so with nukes, in a world almost without them, the sole possessor would be in a very powerful position. Of course, the only nuclear attacks have been by the U.S., and for a few years, the U.S. did hold a nuclear monopoly. To say that our use of nuclear weapons was justified raises a difficult and perplexing moral issue. To argue that a permanent U.S. nuclear monopoly would have enhanced peace argues a point that can be challenged based on the analysis of strategy and the experience of history. For now, I favor a reduction of nuclear arms (we could probably get by with about 350 such weapons) as well as an aggressive non-proliferation policy. 

Daley mentioned the START treaty, which he believed a good move, although wholly inadequate. Accordingly, I wrote and mailed the following letter to Senator Grassley (believing Harkin doesn't need the prod--words with him if he does). I wrote:

September 28, 2010

Hon. Charles Grassley

United States Senate

135 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

Re: New START Treaty

Dear Senator Grassley,

I urge you to support Senate ratification of the new START treaty with Russia that the Senate Foreign Relations committee recently referred to the full Senate. This treaty furthers the security of the U.S. and of the world by reducing the risk of nuclear war. Reducing arsenals, limiting proliferation, and demonstrating our commitment to reducing nuclear tensions are extremely important goals that we should pursue with the utmost urgency. I was heartened to see that Senator Lugar and two of his Republican colleagues voted in favor of the treaty. I hope that you will help lead your Republican colleagues in pursuit of Senate approval. You know, and I hope that your colleagues realize, that we are already modernizing our arsenal, which appears to be a concern to some senators. You should also note that as a government, we can no more support excessive and unneeded nuclear weapons that we can justify any other wasteful government spending. We have a history of irrational and reckless spending and building when it comes to nuclear arms. Now is the time to stop this attitude. As a matter of fiscal sanity as well as defense policy, we have to get our house in order.

I hope that you will share this perspective with all of your fellow Senators. Thank you for your consideration of my letter, and I look forward to your support of the treaty.

Sincerely yours,

Stephen N. Greenleaf

Join me in supporting this effort if you agree.

Kennan on Life as Tragedy

Tragedy lies in the unavoidable conflict between man's animalistic, instinctive, primitively emotional and partially subconscious nature, on the one hand, and his capacity, on the other, for higher, more generous, less self-serving motives and impulses: for true love and friendship and charity--for a real nobility of spirit, in short. In this--in man's endlessly torn, self-conflicting nature, which the monastic orders have tried (but rarely succeeded, I suspect) to overcome, lies the first and probably the greatest sources of the tragedy. But another lies in the abundant injustice and frustration with which man is confronted at the hands of his natural environment, of the laws of chance, and of his own physical vulnerability, helplessness, and mortality. I am thinking here for example of the fact of bereavement--the fact that we do not normally die when those we love die, so that either we are left to mourn for them or they, as we know in advance, are left to struggle along without whatever help and support we might, if permitted to live, have given them. There is, again, the fact of our own mortality: not only the sadness and sometimes the agony of dying, but also the recognition that life, however successful, has never been more than partially fulfilled. And finally, if one has seen much of the human affairs, and particularly if one has been a historian, there is the recognition of the fleetingness, the impermanence, of all human undertakings and achievements.

 Kennan letter to Lukacs, July 8, 1984, from Through the Cold War.

For Teachers: Kennan to Lukacs

"The real rewards of the teacher always lie in the developments remote from the present and confused with a host of other origins, but that should not detract from the dignity of the profession or the satisfaction to be gained from it."

George Kennan to John Lukacs, November 18, 1953

I'm currently reading Through the History of the Cold War: The Correspondence of George F. Kennan and John Lukacs, ed. by John Lukacs (2010). The quote above comes from Kennan to Lukacs, as Lukacs, an immigrant to America from Hungary, seeks guidance from Kennan about his career choice. Expect more quotes from this wonderful book to appear in the near future.

Chris Anderson: How web video powers global innovation

This TED talk by curator Chris Anderson that Presentation Zen alerted me about provides a view into what TED hopes to accomplish. The participation by slum dwellers in Kenya (toward to end) shows how innovation through shared information by internet video can improve the lot of people throughout the globe. As a wordy guy, I’m skeptical of some aspects of video. Too often it can merely serve as a toy, a narcissistic tool, but this is true of words as well. An awfully lot of junk now fills the internet, but hidden in the midst of all of the junk, as Anderson points out, are some real diamonds.

Thoughtful Conservatism

Some who follow this blog or who know me might describe me as a liberal. In a broad sense, this is correct. However, I remain very reluctant to limit myself, and I flatter myself that I cannot be easily pigeon-holed politically. Nevertheless, in order to be fair to “conservatives”, I recommend that collective reading list from the great site, FiveBooks. Here they aggregate voting to come up with the 47 (?) best books on conservatism. Unlike the nonsense that we’re hearing out on the stump today, if you read these books, you will receive a very useful education. Hayek, the Federalist, Burke, Toqueville, Garry Wills (a heretic makes the list!), Mancur Olsen, Leo Strauss, and others represent some very serious and worthwhile thinking.

Krugman & Brooks on Great Britain

Here’s a blog post by Krugman referring to a Brooks column. Krugman’s addresses the issue of Great Britain’s relative decline by a reference to a remark by Robert Solow, but the Brooks article considers a more explicit hypothesis. Nothing too special, but for Anglophiles, they raise interesting questions. Also, I’m now listening to Winston’s War: Churchill 1940-1945 by Max Hastings, which addresses Great Britain’s situation as a great power during the war. (This is a really interesting and insightful book, of which I must write more later).

Paul Krugman & Manhattan Transfer

In this blog entry, Paul Krugman provides a reminder of why I really enjoy his blog: here he includes a clip from Manhattan Transfer performing “Boy from New York City”. No particular reason, other than Krugman was in the City for the weekend. In previous posts, he’s included Monty Python clips, clips from “Dr. Strangelove” and this clip from a 70’s pop hit. Now I ask you, what economist can match this sense of humor while remaining our best Cassandra?

A Great Year to Be Spanish!

This NYT article about Rafael Nadal winning the U.S. Open and thereby obtaining a career Grand Slam comments toward the end of the article about the year in sports for Spain. This year includes the World Cup championship, as well as Gausol for the Lakers and Cantatdor in the Tour de France. The article notes that Raffa went straight from Wimbledon to South Africa and was allowed into the Spanish locker room after the championship match, along with members of the Spanish royal family. He even got to bite the trophy! Well, anyway: Que bueno Raffa y Espana! (Or something like that.)

Newt Gingrich, Fox News, Dinesh D’Souza: Shockingly Outrageous

I don't know how I came across this report, but I hope that it's all wrong. I hope that I've fallen into the trap of believing some outrageous stuff from the internet, so outrageous I shouldn't even read it. Please, help me, tell me it ain't so! Gingrich, per this account, says that we understand Obama by understanding that he has a "Kenyan, anti-colonialist outlook". (Newt, the "thinker" and "intellectual" apparently having forgotten the U.S. has a long history of anti-colonialism. Hm, Newt, wonder why? My ancestors (well, some of them) were anti-colonialists, then called "patriots". But of course, all of this has nothing to do with Obama. Really, who buys this kind of slipshod B.S.? BTW, D'Souza is cited as the source of this "insight" in an article published in National Review. Really, can't we have some thoughtful, honest conservatives in this country?

This kind of nonsense, along with anti-Muslim attitudes and other growing attitudes, suggests a new era of McCarthyism? I wish—I hope—that such a thought is too extreme, but some of this stuff is genuinely shameful.

Stephen Walt on Obama’s Failures—Or Are They?

Stephen Walt sounds off in his Foreign Policy blog about the many complaints about Obama that come from various locations on the political spectrum. He argues that many forces are simply beyond Obama's—and implicitly—any president's control. A bloated military, foreign policy inertia, vested interests of elites, client states, and so on, make changing policy very difficult. The electorate wants to change policy and outcomes as quickly as a motor boat wheels around on a large quiet lake, while in reality, changing American policy is more like trying to guide the Titanic through North Atlantic waters—you just can't often make turns quickly enough.

The more I read Walt, the more that I like him. He seems to have his head on straight.

The Culture Code by Clotaire Rapaille

I finished this book recently. I read it on the recommendation of Karl Rove. Karl Rove! Well, yes, in a sense. I attended a seminar for plaintiffs' lawyers recently, and the speaker told how an Atlanta attorney discovered that his beach house neighbor was none other than the prince of darkness. Discussing tradecraft (did Rove know that he was talking to the enemy, a trial lawyer?), Rove revealed his admiration for the work of Rapaille. The trial lawyer looked at Rapaille's work, specifically, The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy as They Do
(2007, 224 p.). Rapaille has two main ideas that he works from:

1. The theory of the triune brain developed by Yale neuroscientist Paul Maclean, which postulates that humans have, in effect, three brains. The survival-oriented brain of the reptiles (eat, sleep, fight or flight, and sex); a limbic brain for emotions that we share with other mammals, and the neo-cortex, which provides our distinguishing reason. Rapaille believes that when fear is in the air, the reptile brain, motivated by fear, takes over and guides our actions, reason be damned.
   
2. Rapaille, who trained as an anthropologist and psychiatrist, has done a sophisticated form of group testing to discover deeply held attitudes toward food, sex, doctors, nurses, hospitals, health, cars, the nation, and so on. These are the "culture codes" that he says predominate in a society and that differ from one society to another.
   

The book makes a lot of sense and provides what I believe to be very insightful perspectives on group attitudes here in the U.S. (especially important for jury work), as well as differences between the cultures of different nations. This was a fun and interesting read. If you want to know more about the attitudes of your fellow citizens, as well as obtaining a sense of how we differ from others, I highly recommend this book.

Economist v. Historian

I found an interesting exchange in the Financial Times (London) about the role of economists vs. historians. I dissent from the argument to the extent that I see social science as frozen history. It may have some predictive value, but nature (including us) is always changing, sometimes imperceptively slowly, sometimes with obvious and dizzying speed. So economists can make models and test them against history (the past) and in the future. They are useful tools, but like all tools, limited by our own fallibility. History doesn't repeat itself (in any certain sense) and we can't predict the future (with a high degree of certainty in anything other than the trivial). We have to muddle through.

U.S. Senate Iowa 2010: Conlin vs. Grassley

If you're in doubt about who to support in the U.S. Senate contest in Iowa, you can get a good sense of the candidate's abilities, perspectives, and positions on issues from this joint appearance on Iowa Press. In case you don't' have time to watch it, I'll give you my take: my money (and Iowa Guru's) money and votes are going with great enthusiasm to Conlin. Senator Grassley is showing his age, but its worst manifestation is that he's become more of a right-wing Republican, sacrificing a sometimes pleasantly surprising independence that he used to show in the past (and his past goes back a long way!).

Grand Strategies: Literature, Statecraft, and World Order, by Charles Hill

This book has quite a title, and amazingly, it lives up the grandness of its title. Hill, a former Foreign Service officer, now teaches a course at Yale with John Lewis Gaddis and Paul Kennedy entitled "Grand Strategy". Based on this book, and the biography of Hill that I'm currently reading, that would be one heck of a course.

Simply put, this book tours the world, in time and place, and considers regimes, society, and international relations through the lens of great literature. In the Prologue he considers Cao Zueqin's The Dream of the Red Chamber, Dante's Comedia, and Conrad's The Rescue. From there, Hill takes us through the Classics (Homer, Thucydides, and on to Virgil, among others), and then into medieval, Renaissance, early modern, and Enlightenment authors. Nearer to our own time, he discusses Rushdie, Liu E, Ma Jian, and others. A truly amazing tour. (I throw in the Chinese authors of the benefit of 1HP, as I have only heard of them here.) Each of these works of literature, philosophy, and history reflects and molds the order of the society in which it was written. Hill makes the case for considering these works by relating a tale about Chairman Mao, who kept a copy of The Dream of the Red Chamber (among many other literary works) and claims to have read it five times. As Hill notes, this doesn't make Mao a humanitarian (far from it!), but it shows that he was a student. Hill also worked with long-time American diplomat Paul Nitze, and he reports that Nitze would be found reading Shakespeare on long flights across the Atlantic, where he traveled to negotiate arms control agreements with the Soviets.

Hill discusses these numerous texts, explicating their perspectives on society and statecraft. The scope and depth of his erudition is impressive. However, I'd say that this book isn't just for those interested in international relations. Indeed, I'd argue that relations between nations isn't so different than relations between individuals. (No agency problem—or is there?) In any event, even if you took this book as a reading list, you'd have years of great literature to read.

I'll write more about Hill after I've finished his biography, but if he's representative of the caliber of the men and women of the USFS, the we have some very capable persons there. A highly recommended book for anyone interested in literature or international relations.

Icarus Syndrome Review

An interesting review of Peter Beinert's The Icarus Syndrome, which I enjoyed very much. This is a thoughtful review by Yale political scientist Jim Sleeper. I think that Beinert, despite his youthful exuberance and errors, does the right thing by re-considering his position.

Ian Rankin: Naming the Dead

I finished listening to Ian Rankin's The Naming of the Dead, courtesy of ICPL. This is a one of a series about Edinburgh's police detective John Rebus. It's set during the G-8 summit of 2005 and at the time of the London train bombings, which play in the background. Like any good cop, Rebus is dedicated and hard-working, and like many a (fictional?) cop, tough and hard-drinking. Interestingly, like many a cop portrayed in fiction, for someone who must exude and represent authority ("the Man"), he tends to be very anti-authoritarian when it comes to his superiors. The performance was fine. It benefited especially from the Scottish brogue that the performer used (something that, say, a Steig Larrson book performance would not do well with—it would end up sounding like the Swedish chef on the Muppet Show). If you enjoy police procedurals mixed with a new and unique setting, this would prove an excellent selection. I have the sense that I'll meet up with DCI Rebus again.

John Lewis Gaddis: The Landscape of History

I today finished The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past (2003, 183 p.) by John Lewis Gaddis, professor of history at Yale. Gaddis wrote this in the tradition, and very much considering, the precedents of E. H. Carr's What is History?
and Marc Bloch's The Historian's Craft. Gaddis certainly does very well by himself while standing in the shadow of these and other illustrious predecessors. Gaddis updates our understanding of history by using complexity theory to help us appreciate how causes merge and meld into the unfolding of reality. Causes are like tributaries leading to the present, where they pause but for an instant, and then recede into the distance, from which point we try to map their course. Gaddis likens history to mapmaking or painting, which must of necessity attempt to make sense out of a present by abstracting those features that grab our attention and give meaning to us. Gaddis spends a good deal of time contrasting the aims of historians from those of social scientists. Social scientists, he says, hope to isolate variables with the ultimate intention of forecasting the future (something that I expect more and more social scientists have become more wary of attempting). Thus, whereas historians want to consider all of the causes worth noting that lead to an event or situation, social scientists want to isolate and abstract with the hope of obtaining structural knowledge, if not forecasting ability. Another interesting facet of Lewis's work is his consideration of history in comparison with the so-called "hard sciences". Lewis, who quotes and cites Stephen Gould almost as much as any historian, notes that the sciences have become more and more historical in their outlook. Some, like evolutionary biology, must perforce due so; however, this might also prove relevant to physics and chemistry, which do deal with change over time, although it's often on such a scale that it doesn't affect outcomes or actions. Historians, Gaddis argues, can't run lab tests to gauge the accuracy of their theories, but they can provide plausible explanations subject to peer review and criticism. He argues that the lab for historians lies in their minds and imaginations, much like geologists and paleontologists. Of course, both these scientists and historians diligently hunt and weigh the evidence of the past that they can identify, whether fossils or archive documents, but neither can, strictly speaking, re-run the past in order to test the accuracy of their understanding. Thus, replicability is replaced by virtual replicability as the standard of reference. Gaddis writes: "Imagination in history then, as in science, must be tethered to and disciplined by sources: that's what distinguishes it from the arts and all other methods of representing reality." (43).

I hope that the above offers some sense of Gaddis's take on these subjects, although this book is much richer than I can give it credit for in this brief report. In closing, I find that Gaddis seems to track with my thinking (greatly influenced by John Lukacs) that history is the master science in some sense. As Lukacs argues, all knowledge comes from the past. How it got here, like the path of evolution, determines what arrived. Like biological evolution, this path of travel may be so slow that we ignore that it represents change over time, nevertheless, this is how it all happens. Understanding and appreciating the interdependence of variables and complexity (and therefore uncertainty) of our world is a huge challenge; yet, understanding history through this lens will prove very fruitful, and it will continue the quest interminably into the future.

P.S. How does the "interdependency of variables" (the title of one of Gaddis's chapters) fit in with the Buddhist concept of co-origination and the like?

    

Stephen Walt on Jared Diamond & Decline

In his most recent FP post, "What I Learned from Jared Diamond", Stephen Walt considers the elements of decline that Diamond discusses in his book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Succeed or Fail. Walt gives a succinct account of the factors that Diamond catalogues in his book, and Walt considers current U.S. problems in light of those factors, such as groupthink, tragedy of the commons, failure to anticipate, failure to detect (e.g., climate change amidst fluctuations in the weather), etc. Walt's points are well taken. In summary, both as individuals and as societies, we have to have our crap-detectors on full blast 24-7. (Thanks, Neil Postman.)