Paul Krugman on fringe politics & Richard Hofstadter

More scary stuff from Krugman. To get a feel for what he's written, I highly recommend the book he cites by the great American historian, Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics. Why? Because, as Krugman notes, this styles is back. Like the Invasion of the Body Snatchers (best in the original 1956 production), it's taking over more and more minds, and it's creepier than ever.

Rick Perlstein and his version of "Still Crazy After All These Years"

Upon reading and listening to a good deal of Jon Haidt in the last couple of day and his appreciating his efforts to understand conservatives and liberals and to bridge some divides, we still have to deal with the reality that a lot of conservatives are really whackadoodle (a term that Perlstein uses). So I read with great interest this piece by the historian of the right-wing, Rick Perlstein. The nuttiness is not new. I know, I was there, especially in 1964 at the Republican National Convention that nominated Barry Goldwater. (Thank goodness, my Republican parents were moderate Republicans, not conspriricy-nut Republicans that seem to have the staying power of the zombies. Dead ideas but live mouths.

Yes, we have to understand what others want, but some others are just nuts. There were communists in our government (e.g., Alger Hiss), but not very many and not enough to justify the frightening megalomania and paranoia of Joseph McCarthy and his supporters.

So how do we deal with this?

P.S. Apologies to Paul Simon

Jon Haidt with Bill Moyers

This is an outstanding program & conversation. I read Haidt's The Happiness Hypothesis a few years ago and found it very persuasive. Now with his new book, The Righteous Mind, I think that I'm going to find him an even more important thinker. Moyers, as usual, does an outstanding job of engaging his guest in elucidating the guest's viewpoint. And this case, it's especially important and useful because Haidt argues that political conservatives in the U.S. understand more about moral psychology than do liberals. Overall, elections since the 1980's have born this out. Haidt adds a great deal of social science sophistication to understanding what's going on (and wrong) in our world today.

Moyers & Haidt touch on a number of topics: moral areas of concern (Haidt identifies five), reason & argumentation (Haidt seems to argue for the Sperber-Mercier view), sacralization of issues, and various other topics. There's a transcript @ the site, although I chose to listen, as Moyers usually carries on an enlightening conversation, and it's refreshing to experience it done well.

Michael Dowd about New Books on Evolution

This entry, courtesy of Jonathan Haidt (whose new book I'm eager to read) cites to an author that I haven't read, but he sounds interesting. Also, his discussion of the three books by Haidt, Wilson (E.O.) and another, piques my interest in them. Why? In short, the theory of evolution, much more than, say, the theory of relativity, provides a crucial understanding of our world. Einstein's theory is at the fringes of our reality; evolution goes to the heart of it. That is, as "big history" writers suggest, it applies not just to biology, but to human society. Interesting stuff, with some other good sites that I picked up upon.

Michael Erard, Babel No More: The Serach for the World's Most Extraordinary Language Learners

Our recent stop at Powell's in Portland landed this book in my bag. We heard Joshua Foer later that night speaking about his book Moonwalking with Einstein, and it reminded me about this book. Being the presence of much more accomplished language-learners than me, I bought. I can say with some certainty that I regret not having studied foreign languages more. Indeed, I can only claim four years of high school Spanish, which UI thought was enough. Well, it wasn't, but that's old history. The topic is still fascinating, and I'd already read some about one of the subjects of the book, Alexander Arguelles.

A book about extraordinary people is always fun, and what keeps you going (besides sheer wonder at their achievements) is how do they do it? Born geniuses, or certain keys to unlike the Tower of Babel? Well, read the book. It's easy and fun. Bon chance! Buen suerte, etc.!

John Lewis Gaddis, George Kennan: An American Life

This is a complete and fascinating biography of a man who lived a full, one-hundred-year plus life. Others more qualified than me have reviewed and praised this book, so there's not a lot that I can add. However, I will add this: Kennan was a complex and difficult character. He was often elitist and pessimistic. He seems to have been ridden with one illness or another (yet he lives, with his wits about him, to over 100!). But the one question that Gaddis doesn't answer or address as fully as I would like in this book: where did Kennan get his seemingly unique perspective of containment as a way to draw the line on Soviet expansion? Roosevelt and American liberals seem quite naive about Stalin and the Soviet system. But Kennan, writing from bed (ill again), sends his "Long Telegram" (later transformed into "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" by "X"). He alone seems to have articulated this very successful and insightful perspective about Soviet conduct and how to check it. Where did this come from? Well, he learned Russian as a young American diplomat He spent a good deal of time in the Soviet Union (two stints by the time he wrote his fame-producing article in 1946). And he read Gibbon while on a vacation. Gibbon helped form his sense that the Soviets would not be able to "digest" their land grab in Eastern Europe, Kennan thereby proved himself a prophet by about 1989. No, it doesn't appear that Kennan had a "grand theory" (a course Gaddis helps teach). It appears that Kennan developed his insights through patient observation and reading history. (I've failed to mention that Kennan seriously considered writing a biography of Chekhov.) Of course, after establishing the idea of containment, Kennan spent the next 40 years trying to keep it from misapplication as simply a crude military doctrine.

Quite a good book indeed, and quite a fascinating subject. At 698 pages of text, it's not a quick read. If you want a quicker sense of Kennan, turn to two works by his friend John Lukacs, their letters edited by Lukacs and Lukacs's biography. Both are briefer but insightful (and of course, Lukacs appreciates Kennan as both an actor and as a historian.)