One of the joys of summer is catching up on your reading. I just completed “The Arsenal of Democracy,” an under-appreciated 2014 narrative of World War II by A.J. Baime. It is highly recommended for students of history, as well as students of dysfunctional families. For students of history, accustomed to war stories of blood & guts, this book instead traces the “battle of production”…
One of my favorite philosophers has always been Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a leading Swiss philosopher who died in 1778. (I actually visited his grave in Geneva in 1992.) He is best known for the Social Contract, published in 1762, reasoning that people are little more than a product of their environment. The notion is that kids from good parents of affluent means in a wealthy zip…
Having spent many years in Texas, I am familiar with Juneteenth and the deep emotions it arouses. Now, we have a national holiday to remember that day, when word of the Emancipation Proclamation reached Galveston, freeing the enslaved Americans. Now, start remembering . . . !! First, there is a cost to national holidays. Whatever the value of all those government workers doing a day’s…
You know the world is upside-down when Fox News agrees with Bill Maher. He is a longtime comedy star on HBO, better known for his blistering takedowns of conservatives. This week, they applauded Maher’s rant that liberal Democrats and/or Progressives don’t know how to “high-five” and take a victory lap. Maher called it “progressophobia”, which is a “brain disorder that strikes liberals and makes them…
“Inflation Jumps to 13-year High” blared the front-page headline on The Wall Street Journal. Although alarmist, it is something Wall Street is paying close attention to . . . or is it? According the Monetarist school of economics, inflation results when you have too much money chasing too few goods. Alternatively, goods available for sale will absorb the money available to buy them, generally speaking. Our…
During my school years, math and science were important to me. I appreciated the clarity of thinking and crispness of conclusions. It was science or “hard” power! English and government were also important to me. I appreciated the wide, leisurely thinking, complete with fuzzy nuances. It was art or “soft” power! However, Latin and French just sucked! There were no new concepts nor original thinking. …