If You Only Read Stuff You Know, You’ll Never Know Anything Else; or, A Summer Heavy Reading Roundup

Last spring I overdosed on true crime, thrillers, westerns, and other high-calorie, low-nourishment books. I reviewed some of them on this site. But I needed a break. Herewith some quick-hit reviews of my stouter fare from recent months, probably not to everyone’s taste.  But you never know -- something may strike a chord.  I was going to write a separate article about the Nussbaum book and probably should have, but once I got started  .  .  .  .   Anyway, here's some gruel for thought:

Truth: A Guide

Simon Blackburn

Every so often I read a book that’s way over my head, one I could never hope to understand in full. I do so deliberately, and I’ve done it ever since I was a little kid. Even though I slog through concepts that I couldn’t repeat back to you five minutes later, I’ve always felt that a little something sticks. More important, this exercise reminds me there is so much out there that I don’t know and don’t understand, but there are people out there who aren’t frauds who do understand it.  I even try to read a book about math or modern physics at least one a year.

Our first book here falls in this category of stuff I don’t really get but feel elevated by having read it. It is a survey of philosophical attitudes towards the concept of truth. Blackburn examines the relativist and the absolutist points of view and all shades in between and surrounding them. I was doing pretty well until the chapter on Nietzsche. Then my eyes glazed over and I had to switch into hope-some-of-this-sticks mode. Wittgenstein, Rorty, Kant, Hume, and many others stroll across the stage.  On the theory-of-truth scale, Blackburn is somewhere on the absolutist side of the dial but not all the way over, as am I.  Or at least I think I am -- books like this have the salutary effect of rattling one's certitude.

What did I learn? You’ll have to wait for my book.

Imagining the Future: Science and American Democracy
Yuval Levin

A slender book, but a rich one. Levin examines the relationship between the enterprise of scientific inquiry and ordered liberty. His point is that in general, science is engaged in a search for knowledge, and that it is aimed at improving our lot generally. That aim is one shared by elected politicians.

He accordingly suggests that government may have some role in how science is conducted. That sounds scarily repressive of free inquiry, but Levin seeks to show that we need not fear legislation on subjects such as stem cell research and the like.  (NOTE:  I am, in general, opposed to such legislation.)   Contrary to caricatures of Neanderthalic Tea Party types, Levin believes that the Left is generally less supportive of science than popularly believed, and the Right more so. It is a humane and careful analysis.

The Age of Wonder
Richard Holmes

This history of the “Second Scientific Revolution” in England that took place in the late 18th and early 19th centuries was an unalloyed pleasure. It focuses on a handful of the most prominent scientists and explorers, focusing on Joseph Banks, the South Pacific explorer who went on to become the head of the Royal Society and whose influence spans the period; William Herschel, the German immigrant who made astonishing astronomical discoveries with his self-designed telescopes, including a 50-inch (that’s the diameter of the concave mirror that collects and focuses the light) whopper that was 40 feet long, although he discovered Uranus with a much smaller one; and Humphry Davy, the brilliant chemist who, among other scientific advances, invented the Davy Lamp, which greatly reduced the threat of coal mine explosions. There is a fascinating chapter of Europe’s obsession with ballooning. Especially welcome is Holmes’s attention to the contribution of female scientists and patrons, especially Hershel’s long-suffering sister Caroline.  She was a prolific comet-finder and recognized then and now as an important scientist in her own right. 

I see in the Amazon reviews for this book that some readers have noted some scientific errors.  I found one myself, a use of "billions" when he should have said "millions."  Minor stuff.  It's a first-rate scientific history about a critical period in the intellectual development of the West.

Speaking of the West  .  .  .


A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900
Andrew Roberts

This one’s a bit of a cheat: I’m only about two-thirds through it, but it deserves a place here. The title hearkens back to Winston Churchill’s History of the English-Speaking Peoples, which ends at 1900. You will not read a lot of modern histories like it, as it is unapologetically friendly to the ascendance of Britain (and its dominions) and America.  Roberts also devotes attention to former British colonies like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.   These days you’ll seldom find a book of any genre, much less a scholarly work, that:

  -- has some kind words for colonialism;

  -- expresses some sympathy for the Treaty of Versailles;

  -- is decidedly unromantic about Ireland; and

  -- takes the position that not all civilizations are created equal, and that the civilization represented by the English-speaking peoples is mainly responsible for what progress and peace we find in the world today.

Amazing passages on the murder required to sustained communist regimes worldwide, the creation of the British welfare state, the loyalty and sacrifice of British commonwealth countries during both world wars (Ireland excepted), and the relative benignity of such repression and discrimination as is from time to time found in the English-speaking countries. Coming in for special condemnation is the liberal intellectual after World War II, whose blindness to (and sometimes, outright lying in support of) the horrors of Stalinism and Maoism, and contempt for political systems based on individual and economic liberty, makes you wonder what pathology could possibly be the source of such eloquent ignorance.

It’s lively, mixes anecdote and big-picture data-gathering, and is rather convincing. If you want a pretty hairy-chested view of world history during the Twentieth Century, this is your meat.  (Approx. 650 pages of text.)


Not for Profit
Martha Nussbaum

Your Cool Hot Center tries to identify the good and the bad about the Left and the Right. Professor Nussbaum holds some claim to being the world’s foremost feminist scholar, which is kind of like having the biggest . . . . nope, won’t go there. In fact, calling her a “feminist scholar” somewhat demeans her, as her academic and philosophical interests range far and wide, and she writes interestingly on many of them. She is also a fine prose stylist. I’ve read many of her articles with pleasure, but this is the first book I’ve tackled.

I agree entirely with her thesis that the decline of support for the humanities in our educational system from top to bottom – but especially in the universities – is deplorable. I also agree with her that a firm grounding in the universal human values examined in art, literature, and history promotes democratic values.  In fact, I believe she would agree with me that such an education nourishes the mindset necessary for informed, common-sense decsionmaking. She argues pretty convincingly that the humanities are being reduced at the expense of programs that purport to prepare students for the world of business and competition. Hence the title.

But there is something a bit odd about her argument. She doesn’t spend much time demonstrating the link between the humanities and a robust democracy – but I didn’t mind that, since I agree with her anyway. What struck me as odd is what she asserts the humanities are mainly good for.  I was cruising along nicely with her until this sentence stopped me:

“These abilities are associated with the humanities and the arts: the ability to think critically; the ability to transcend local loyalties and to approach world problems as a ‘citizen of the world’; and finally, the ability to imagine sympathetically the predicament of another person.” (At 19.)

Gosh, I guess I don’t disagree with any of those, and I even think I’d also give pride of place to “the ability to think critically,” but the rest – I dunno. Numbers 2 and 3 aren’t wrong, but I sure wouldn’t have put them in my top few benefits of studying the humanities.  "Transcend local loyalties" -- hmm, well, I suppose it isn't a strict necessity that a humanist believe in American exceptionalism, so OK.  But this odd little list is the first tip that she's up to something.

The reader isn’t puzzled for long. Professor Nussbaum gives up the game less than ten pages later when she writes sarcastically about what she calls “education for economic growth”:

“But care must be taken lest the historical and economic narrative lead to any serious critical thinking about class, about race and gender, about whether foreign investment is really good for the rural poor, about whether democracy can survive when huge inequalities in basic life chances obtain.” (At 28.)

This is what Professor Nussbaum means by the humanities as a requirement to a vigorous democracy. She means humanities that stress the ideology of victimization and redistribution (i.e., “equality”) over the primacy of the individual and political freedom.  (Really -- the humanities should spend some time on "critical thinking" on "whether foreign investment is really good for the rural poor"?  I would be interested in knowing whether Professor Nussbaum thinks that it is or isn't, and what important literature or art takes this as its theme.)   She’s not shy about this – she congratulates the American public on the election of Barack Obama as having “opted for a group committed to greater equality in health care and a greater degree of attention to issues of equal access to opportunity generally.” (I'm sure she'd like a clawback on that one, as it is now apparent that most of the Democratic Party and all of the Left (and a lot of Republicans, too) completely misunderstood Obama's victory.  She later bemoans Obama’s apparent support for growth-friendly educational programs.  The poor guy just can't stop disappointing his admirers.)

This leftish view of the value of the humanities to democracy may be the reason that Professor Nussbaum places sole blame for their decline on the ascendancy of more employment-friendly studies. While I do not disagree with her that this is a factor, I suggest that another reason, which is not mentioned in Professor Nussbaum’s analysis, is that way too many humanities departments have rendered themselves jokes by their politicized emphasis on exactly the issues she thinks crucial, those being race, class, and identity orientation generally.  Not to mention the Poststructuralist/Postmodernist/Deconstructionist rubbish (Derrida, Foucault, Rorty, that crowd) that is the tenure-enforced philosophy in so many humanities departments today.  Nobody with a lick of sense takes it seriously, but university humanities departments are shot through with it.  It is small wonder that such value-free university literature studies (in particular) are regarded as largely irrelevant both by students and those who interact with them after graduation.  You can call it "humanities" if you want, but very little of it connects up with what most humans perceive about their own condition.

So – a legitimate concern on the part of Professor Nussbaum, and a very interesting and readable book (her passages on her experiences with the Tagore school in India are fascinating).   But she exhibits the myopia about what ails modern humanities education that one sees too often from its most celebrated contemporary representatives, and her argument is undercut by her notion that democracy is best served by using instruction in the humanities to heighten race/class/gender/you-name-it awareness.

Yeah, like we need more of that.

Was the Vatican Soft on Nazism? An Exclusive Report on Some Intriguing New Evidence

It's the dream of every blogger to come up with something resembling a scoop, since we’re usually relegated to commenting on other people's news-gathering. But today, my Cool Hot Centrists, I have for you what amounts to something of a news flash. It will mainly engage persons interested in the history of the Roman Catholic Church in the twentieth century, the relationship of the RCC to the Nazis, the history of the Third Reich – and, of contemporary interest, the current campaign to declare Pope Pius XII a saint. It centers on a fascinating photograph recently discovered by an attorney looking for something else entirely, and his subsequent investigation into what he found.

Let me declare my interest. The attorney is Stephen H. Galebach, lately of Medford, Massachusetts. Steve was my college roommate for three years at Yale and a good friend in all the years since. He contacted me when he discovered this photo and asked me to comment critically on an essay he had written about it. I did so, extensively, and corresponded with Steve on my concerns with his text. I have sent him a few items I found online that relate to his research. His questions – and conclusions -- are entirely his own.

Galebach has discovered a photograph of the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Luis Copello, that purports (I use this cautionary verb for reasons I’ll get to) to show him blessing a Nazi flag during the Eucharistic Congress held in Buenos Aires in 1934.   The photo appeared in a Nazi newspaper in 1935. Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933.  Archbishop Copello was elevated to Cardinal in 1935.  Here is the link to Galebach's preliminary disclosure of this picture and his research into it.  I believe there will be more to come in scholarly publications.

Here is the photo:

Caption:  "An Archbishop Blesses the Swastika Banner"

You can examine a larger version by clicking on the image.

Galebach believes that the photograph may raise important questions about the attitude of one Eugenio Pacelli toward German National Socialism. At the time, Eugenio Pacelli was the Vatican Secretary of State. He was present in Buenos Aires at the Eucharistic Congress, the guest of Archbishop Copello, when this photo was allegedly taken.

That same Eugenio Pacelli became Pope Pius XII. Pius XII's attitude toward the Nazis is the subject of vast and bitter controversy into which I do not propose to delve. More importantly to Galebach’s inquiry, Pius XII is currently going through the Vatican's process to determine whether he should be declared a saint.

Eugenio Pacelli, Pope Pius XII

Now . . . my headline up there is a bit of a tease.  Galebach's initial disclosure on his website is not nearly so sensational, but instead reproduces the photograph and poses ten questions, to which he appends some (but by no means all) of the research he has conducted to date, modestly acknowledging that further research is needed. He saves to last this question: “How, in the final analysis, does this evidence reflect on Eugenio Pacelli [the future Pius XII] and the pope of the time, Pius XI?” To this question he appends no additional information or speculation.

Galebach is not anti-Catholic. Quite the opposite. He is an adult convert to Roman Catholicism who takes his devotion with utter seriousness. He served with prize-winning distinction in the Marine Corps (I personally witnessed Kingman Brewster, Jr., Yale's rather liberal President at the time, wincingly present Steve with something his roommates (Chuck Casper, Alan Ringel, and I) called the Grunt of the Year award for his Officer Candidate School achievements at Quantico). After Yale and the Marines he went to Harvard Law School and was an editor on the Harvard Law Review. He served as a policy advisor in the Reagan White House and Department of Justice and has been in private practice since then. Nor is Galebach a fundamentalist crazy – he discovered the photograph in question in the course of handling World War II restitution claims for American descendants of the Czech "shoe king" Jan Bata who was attacked in the Nazi press as a Jew.  He has written extensively on the abortion issue, and has proposed creative approaches to the prosecution of RCC pedophile priests. And, lest his Roman Catholic bona fides remain in doubt, he and his lovely wife Diane have ten children. QED.



My friend, Steve Galebach

(I am not Catholic and have no interest in whether Pius XII is declared a saint.  I have studied the history of the Third Reich but know almost nothing about the scholarship over whether the Vatican closed its eyes to Nazi atrocities.)

To the best of Galebach's ability to determine, no researcher – nobody at all – has ever noticed the existence of this photograph since its appearance in Germany in 1935. And here I must remark on the first important question raised by this photograph: Is it real? That is, is it a true representation of what it purports to be? Did the act it portrays take place? If so, then it is every bit as important as Galebach expects that it is, and it raises all of the other questions he presents. To his credit, the question of the photo’s authenticity is the first one he tackles.

Galebach found the photograph on page 5 of a microfilm version of a July 1935 issue of Der Stűrmer, the virulently anti-semitic Nazi newspaper published by the notorious Julius Streicher, eventually convicted of crimes against humanity at Nuremburg and hanged in 1946.  (His hanging was botched -- he suffered considerably before he was finally dispatched.)   Any resemblance between Der Stűrmer and a real newspaper is probably limited to its use of newsprint. It contained mainly anti-Jewish propaganda, incredibly lurid, and by no means a reliable source for any kind of information. So the begged question is critical: Did it really publish a photograph accurately portraying a Roman Catholic archbishop blessing a Nazi flag at an international conference in 1934? 

Der Stűrmer; Julius Streicher



Many questions spring to mind;

--   Is that really Archbishop Copello?  (Probably.)
--   Was the image manipulated to create a false image?
--   Why was this 1934 photo not published until 1935 (to anyone's current knowledge)?
--   Why did the Nazis make no other use of this photo (to anyone's current knowledge)?
--   Why didn't the Vatican or any of its German representatives take any notice of the photo or the event it purports to show (to anyone's current knowledge)?
--   Why did it only appear on page 5 of Der Stűrmer?
--   Why have no scholars noticed this photograph or reported on the event it purports to show (to Galebach's current knowledge)?

Galebach is a private citizen. Although trained as a scholar at Yale, he has neither the time nor the resources to travel the world checking original sources or poring through German or Argentine libraries.  (He is fluent in German, but not Spanish; he relies on one of his accomplished sons for the latter.)  He is accordingly required to reason from negative evidence – other than the facial appearance of the photo itself, he is limited to arguing that there is no reason to believe that it is inauthentic. He presents a fair number of arguments against inauthenticity, and some of them are provocative and even persuasive, but in the end it will probably be left to full-time investigators to determine whether this photograph appearing in a notorious Nazi propaganda organ portrays an event that actually took place, and whether the accompanying text in Der Stűrmer (which Galebach details) describes it accurately. I should add that Galebach has not had access to original newsprint copies of Der Stűrmer, so the preliminary question is whether the primary source is accurately reproduced in the microfilm copy Galebach examined. For what it’s worth, I lean about 55% toward authenticity. If I were going to fake a picture like this, I don’t think I would have put a kid at the edge of the frame; that unusual image gives the thing just the slightest whiff of legitimacy.  (That the figure on the far right is a child is clearer on the larger versions of the photo.  On the other hand, the other officials Der Stűrmer reported to be present at the event are not shown.)  It’s the threshold question, and you can bet that when Galebach’s find becomes generally known, lots of historians with a stake in Roman Catholic and Third Reich history -- and Pius XII’s legacy -- will be looking into this topic with considerable verve.

The photo is of interest even if it is fake.  At a minimum, it demonstrates the Nazi Party's interest in demonstrating that its legitimacy, and maybe even its publicly-known goals, were endorsed by the Vatican.

If the consensus is that the photo is the goods, then look out. A ceremony of this significance taking place while Archbishop Copello was hosting the most influential of Vatican officials, Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli, soon to become Pope Pius XII, during a Eucharistic Congress of enormous importance to Roman Catholics worldwide, will focus renewed attention on the question of Pius XII’s attitude toward the Third Reich during his papacy.   (Not to mention that of Pius XI, pope at the time of the photograph.)   And that, in turn, may influence the views of Roman Catholic churchmen on the current question before the house – is Pius XII a saint?

And folks, unless you know Steve Galebach – you read it here first.

Check out his site.  Here it is again.

*     *     *

Follow Your Cool Hot Center on Twitter: @CoolHotCenter



Sorry I've been away.  Will be up with a new article shortly, and hope to get back to the seamless flow of tasty observations soon. 

Victor Davis Hanson Explains it All for You

Here is a brilliantly compressed summary of why the Obama administration has fallen so far so fast.  It isn't talk radio, it isn't Tea Party demagoguery -- it has been a combination of pre-election snake oil and post-election misunderstanding of what the voters were saying and why.

And a not-tiny dose of old-fashioned pride, that of the variety that goeth before a fall.

VDH is one of the best, and this one's a pearl.

Memo to Democrats: Fox News Is Not Causing Your Problems

Matt Drudge is.

Yeah, that guy with the hat.

The Drudge Report is not entirely in the pocket of conservatives, or even of Republicans. The site conducted a widely-noted flirtation with Hillary Clinton when she was running for president, and was not a particular friend of the McCain campaign. In fact, the Clinton campaign leaked news items to Drudge, according to a report in The New York Times, if you can believe that.

However, since the election Mr. Drudge’s selection of news items to headline and highlight has been severely slanted against the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats.

Today provides an excellent example. He has chosen to highlight Stephen Colbert’s disastrous appearance before a House immigration subcommittee at the invitation of Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren (D.-Cal.). His leering visage appears above Drudge’s headline of the moment “THE COLBERT CONGRESS.” The upper left list of related links reads as follows:

       DEM CRACKUP: COMEDIAN ASKED TO LEAVE HILL HEARING...
       ...tries to enter images from his colonoscopy into congressional record
       Sarcastically Argues For Farm Workers...
       Makes 'Gay Iowans' Joke...
       VIDEO...
       Gets 7 Armed-Guard Escort...

       Shock: Even DC reporters declare Colbert to be out of line...

       'Mocking'...

Stephen Colbert testifying before Congress today

Appearing to confirm, as though confirmation were needed, the thoroughgoing unseriousness of the Democratic congress in considering serious issues.

But, you may say, surely Mr. Drudge, one guy who offers no opinions of his own and a website devoid of content, just a bunch of links, cannot be as influential as Fox News and its popular line-up throughout the day.  And it is true that there is only a very little original reportage on the site – less, it seems to me, than there used to be (during the Lewinsky scandal, for example).

Well, let’s take a look. Bearing in mind that I’m not a savvy interpreter of ratings or website hits, the raw numbers nevertheless strike me as extremely interesting.

The website TV by the Numbers keeps track of cable news ratings and viewership numbers. It reports that on Thursday, September 23, Fox News’s viewership looked like this:

       Daytime: 1,177,000
       Prime time: 2,285,000
       25-54 daytime: 299,000
       25-54 prime time: 574,000
       35-64 daytime: 555,000
       35-64 prime time: 1,070,000

While Fox News far, far outstrips each of CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, and HLN in viewers, if you add up the viewers of those demonstrably liberal outlets (with the possible exception of HLN, formerly CNN Headline News and CNN2) in the various categories, you will find that they are roughly equivalent to Fox News’s viewership. (So, as a stand-alone proposition, query whether Fox News has a disproportionate effect on the nation’s cable news viewers. A topic for another day.)

In any event, certainly a lot of folks watching conservative old Fox News.

Down in the far bottom right of The Drudge Report, where folks seldom venture, there is a list of statistics for visitors to the site. As I sit here composing, the number of visitors for the past 24 hours is:

       27,013,344

Or well over ten times Fox News’s primetime viewership, and, even assuming that the daytime and primetime viewers are entirely different people, almost eight times its total viewers.

Well yeah, you say, but TV news has a much greater impact than internet news.

That it might. And those 27 million includes clickers from all over the world, from places where Fox News does not appear. But I had a feeling that Drudge drives a lot of what cable news ends up highlighting during its broadcast day. I went in search of support, and I found the following fascinating series of quotes in an article by Matthew Felling appearing on October 23, 2007 on, of all places, the CBS News website. Here is a sample from several observers of political reportage:

"The most interesting part about Drudge's reach is how it speaks to the laziness of many reporters and cable television, in particular. You can rest assured that, once a story is linked to on Drudge, it will be on MSNBC, Fox, CNN and the rest."


"Drudge has an enormous effect on political media – primarily on the shallower variety, like cable TV and some daily newspapers. To some extent it's just because he (and his helpers) obsessively scan the wires and other media, plus he has a million tipsters, so he's often the first to have some good new story. So people check him a lot because he's often the first to bring something small but important to a larger audience and that's a valid service. But there's also some completely irrational way in which he's driven media coverage—again, especially cable TV—which I really think to some degree has to do with the psychological effect of his big screaming tabloid headlines."


"I think Matt Drudge has tremendous influence inside and outside the media. It's no secret that his site is monitored in network newsrooms. What he includes, how he writes his headlines, and the stories he links to, can affect what shows up on the air. And the campaigns know it. The strategists see the value of getting a story on Drudge, which can then end up on cable or broadcast news shows."


"I think Matt Drudge has tremendous influence inside and outside the media. It's no secret that his site is monitored in network newsrooms. What he includes, how he writes his headlines, and the stories he links to, can affect what shows up on the air. And the campaigns know it. The strategists see the value of getting a story on Drudge, which can then end up on cable or broadcast news shows."


"There is no doubt that Drudge has become a force in news-media decision-making. In my experience, many talk-show hosts – including Rush – often read from Drudge on the air, making it a national bulletin board. I'm guessing that media titans now see a story splashed across Drudge as a story that will be harder to ignore, a story that's going to be "water-cooler buzz," although few have water coolers they stand around. Stories that are 'blessed' by Drudge are more likely to be noticed by major media."

So, lefties, if you’re looking for a villain, don’t start with that crew on Fox & Friends in the morning, the succession of blond anchors during the day, or O’Reilly and Hannity at night.

Because -- putting aside your unmeritorious political positions -- your public relations troubles start with Matt Drudge.

Do Y'All Know How Bad Things Are in Greece?

Michael Lewis does. He’s the author of Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, and, most recently, a great book on the Wall Street meltdown awhile back, The Big Short. He’s got an article in the recent Vanity Fair on the destruction of the Greek economy called "Beware of Greeks Bearing Bonds."  

I recommend that you read the whole astounding article. Here is an excerpt:

In addition to its roughly $400 billion (and growing) of outstanding government debt, the Greek number crunchers had just figured out that their government owed another $800 billion or more in pensions. Add it all up and you got about $1.2 trillion, or more than a quarter-million dollars for every working Greek. Against $1.2 trillion in debts, a $145 billion bailout was clearly more of a gesture than a solution. And those were just the official numbers; the truth is surely worse. “Our people went in and couldn’t believe what they found,” a senior I.M.F. official told me, not long after he’d returned from the I.M.F.’s first Greek mission. “The way they were keeping track of their finances—they knew how much they had agreed to spend, but no one was keeping track of what he had actually spent. It wasn’t even what you would call an emerging economy. It was a Third World country.”


As it turned out, what the Greeks wanted to do, once the lights went out and they were alone in the dark with a pile of borrowed money, was turn their government into a piñata stuffed with fantastic sums and give as many citizens as possible a whack at it. In just the past decade the wage bill of the Greek public sector has doubled, in real terms—and that number doesn’t take into account the bribes collected by public officials. The average government job pays almost three times the average private-sector job. The national railroad has annual revenues of 100 million euros against an annual wage bill of 400 million, plus 300 million euros in other expenses. The average state railroad employee earns 65,000 euros a year. Twenty years ago a successful businessman turned minister of finance named Stefanos Manos pointed out that it would be cheaper to put all Greece’s rail passengers into taxicabs: it’s still true. “We have a railroad company which is bankrupt beyond comprehension,” Manos put it to me. “And yet there isn’t a single private company in Greece with that kind of average pay.” The Greek public-school system is the site of breathtaking inefficiency: one of the lowest-ranked systems in Europe, it nonetheless employs four times as many teachers per pupil as the highest-ranked, Finland’s. Greeks who send their children to public schools simply assume that they will need to hire private tutors to make sure they actually learn something. There are three government-owned defense companies: together they have billions of euros in debts, and mounting losses. The retirement age for Greek jobs classified as “arduous” is as early as 55 for men and 50 for women. As this is also the moment when the state begins to shovel out generous pensions, more than 600 Greek professions somehow managed to get themselves classified as arduous: hairdressers, radio announcers, waiters, musicians, and on and on and on. The Greek public health-care system spends far more on supplies than the European average—and it is not uncommon, several Greeks tell me, to see nurses and doctors leaving the job with their arms filled with paper towels and diapers and whatever else they can plunder from the supply closets.

The Trojan Horse -- beware of gifts bearing Greeks

I do not wish to suggest that the United States is likely to become like Greece anytime soon. I do suggest that democracies who wish to remain democracies pay some heed to the growth of the public sector. Which is set to explode under the policies of the current President. The last couple of Republican presidents didn’t do us any favors in this regard, either, so there is plenty of blame to go around.

I have nothing against the Greek. I thank him for much of what has become Western Civilization, which is really an excellent civilization. A first-rate civilization, and much of it started with the ancestors of this beautiful people.

But I am telling you, Cool Hot Centrists, there is something in the human condition that inspires its constituents to say to themselves, if we are promised something, we are entitled to it even if the keeping of that promise is devastating not only to our countrymen, but to the world into which our descendants will be born. You see it here in the demands of unions and all groups benefiting from the federal dole, which numbers are alarmingly large (although, thanks to a startlingly principled Republican Congress during the Clinton Administration, and Bill Clinton’s shrewd read of the American gestalt, is smaller than it could be).  You see it in the truly desperate condition of the California state government.

I don’t wish to be wearisome on the topic of our unsatisfactory President, I truly don’t. But Greece is the ultimate endpoint of the European Model of the role of government. It is a model that our President admires, at least if you take his advocacy of the present version – that is, the enacted version – of healthcare reform as evidence. The percentage of our economy accounted for by governmental activity – and that means persons employed by the federal government, and the taxes needed to support them and their benefits – is set to grow markedly under him.

The Democrats also seek to expand the influence of labor unions, as well as their ability to organize employees in businesses where their effect is unlikely to be any less baleful than their effect on the auto industry and local and state governments.

Florida Senate candidate Marco Rubio said this the other day:  "This election is nothing less than a referendum of our identity as a nation and as a people."  I have misgivings about the Tea Party, but this much they have absolutely right.

Think about it. Just think about it.

Do You Remember the Moment? No, Really, When Was It?

There are a lot of folks out there who still strongly support President Obama. There are also folks out there who thought him an irredeemable fraud from the moment of his nomination and before.

This article is not for them.

It’s for those who supported him and welcomed the Democratic hegemony that trailed him into office and now don’t like either one. It’s even for folks like me who didn’t vote for him but thought there was a fairish chance he would govern practically, somewhat like Bill Clinton; or folks (also a little like me) who found his stylish sophistication a welcome change that carried with the possibility for an enhanced American profile in the world. That, combined with bulletproof Democratic legislative majorities, guaranteed at a minimum that the era of extremely disappointing Republican rule was over.

My question for that rather large and growing cohort of Obama/Democrat apostates is – when did you know? What event finally convinced you that Obama and the Democrats (who were unanimously following his lead) had clearly broken faith with their promise and were not going to turn back to the center?

Here’s my example from the latest Bush administration. I’ll bet I share it with a lot of people who voted for G.W. a couple of times but gradually grew disgusted with his spending, his inattention to the military situation in the Middle East, and his failure to communicate clearly his . . . well, just about everything.

If there is one presidential gift that keeps on giving, it’s Supreme Court justice appointments. When Sandra Day O’Conner retired, President Bush’s base saw that rarest of opportunities to replace a mostly-unfriendly and at best unreliable vote with a much more solid jurist, an asset that could pay ideological dividends to the Republican core for years to come. There were many distinguished candidates, some of them women. But what did Bush do? He walked out of his office, spotted White House counsel Harriet Miers, said “you’ll do,” and walked right back in.

Harriet Miers and President Bush

It may not have been quite that casual – he might have run it by Karl Rove – but the decision couldn’t have been given much more care than that. It was a terrible pick. Miers and her views were unknown. She had crafted a successful but careful career as a Texas lawyer. Abortion, one of the most important issues to the base – no idea where she stood. No judicial experience. She was a woman for a “woman’s seat,” apparently her sole recommendation. Tokenism plus cronyism, sheesh. It was George W.’s equivalent to George H.W.’s reneging on his “read my lips – no new taxes” pledge. The Miers nomination pretty much proved to anyone still prepared to give Bush the benefit of the doubt that the man simply did not give a damn – or that if he did, he was giving altogether the wrong kind of damn.  The entire right and much of the Cool Hot Center revolted and Bush was humliated into withdrawing her nomination.  A far superior candidate (Samuel Alito) took her place.

Many pundits have speculated on the cause of President Obama’s breathtaking decline. (I hesitate to call it a “fall” – I’m not at all sure the guy won’t make a comeback, and sooner than anyone might think. He’s been formidable and can be again, especially if the Republicans continue their flirtation with Tea Party peckerwoods like Sarah Palin as serious presidential possibilities.) Amazingly, Obama is lazier than either Bush. But if he rallies, look out.) You hear a lot of chatter about the failure of the massive stimulus to create jobs, but I hold with those who believe the discontent runs much deeper – people feel defrauded generally, and they absolutely disbelieve the promises made for the President’s policies.

Yeah, but when did you know that the awfulness of O/Dems’ first year was only going to intensify? When did you know that they simply had to go?

I have a candidate.

I feel for President Obama just a little. (I mean, it’s really a tiny little feeling, itty bitty thing.) He put his legislative agenda in the hands of two of the least appealing political figures of our time: Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.  Pelosi is tough but not smart; Reid is – I don’t know, it just seems like the guy needs more sleep or maybe an adjustment to his spectacles prescription.

First Lady Michelle Obama demonstrates appropriate presidential obeisance to Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.)

It was Pelosi who gave us that crystallizing moment on March 9, 2010. Heavens, let’s not take it out of context:

"You’ve heard about the controversies within the bill, the process about the bill, one or the other. But I don’t know if you have heard that it is legislation for the future, not just about health care for America, but about a healthier America, where preventive care is not something that you have to pay a deductible for or out of pocket. Prevention, prevention, prevention—it’s about diet, not diabetes. It’s going to be very, very exciting.

"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy."

There it was, in one sentence, in one phrase. And this was not a casual misstatement or an offhand response to a reporter’s question. This appeared in remarks prepared for delivery to the Legislative Conference for National Association of Counties. Rep. Pelosi is proud of this statement.  She issued a press release and you can still find it on her website.  Now in fairness: If you read the whole statement, you might conclude that her intention here was to say that the blessings of healthcare reform will only be fully appreciated when it is enacted.

But recall that this statement was issued at a time when it had become apparent that legislators themselves in fact did not know what was in the healthcare bill, could not explain its operation, fled from questions about its contents, had to be bribed to vote for it (Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson's shocking abandonment of princple was only a couple of months old) and had not, in fact, even bothered to dip into its 2,409 pages to discover the monstrous new bureacracy that would have charge of a huge chunk of the U.S. economy.    (Source: Republican Congressman Kevin Brady’s staff. If the accuracy of this chart has been challenged, I haven’t been able to find it. Brady has said that this is only a partial chart containing only about a third of the plan’s Medusan entanglements. (Actually, he didn’t use the phrase “Medusan entanglements.” That was, uh, me.))

So when Rep. Pelosi said that we have to pass it to find out what’s in it – you know, “away from the fog of controversy” caused by people asking to know what’s in it – she broadcast O/Dems’ fundamental contempt for the deliberative process. It showed their arrogance and indeed, the arrogance of contemporary liberalism, which is no more attractive or justifiable than the arrogance of the right personified in the bad old days by the likes of Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove (who have in recent years somewhat repented of that attitude). It was disrespectful. And it was myopic – the O/Dems simply saw things wrong. They misread the results of the election. They misread the interest and attention span of the American public. The congressional Democrats misread the nature of Obama’s appeal (so did Obama). And they misread history and the experience of every country (and state – let’s not forget the failing Romneycare in MA) that has ever nationalized healthcare. And, of course, they didn’t even misread the law they passed – the horrors hidden in its labyrinthine prose (and folks, I know a little something about labyrinthine prose) are still being excavated, because they never read it at all.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.) (top); Reptilicus (political affiliation unknown)

That was the moment for me. The contempt, the arrogance, the misunderstanding, the regular-style ignorance, and the intentional ignorance – folks, this is how the entrenched political elite thinks. Some Republicans, too. 

Get out the brooms.  And keep them close at hand for 2012.

Nancy Pelosi, President Obama's deluded handmaiden, has done us the favor of explaining the Tea Party in seventeen words.

The Invasion of Mexico

Now that I have your attention . . .

(1) I do not favor the invasion of Mexico under the present circumstances or any that are likely to obtain in the next several years, at least.

(2) I like Mexico. I like and admire Mexicans and am very much attracted to Mexican-American culture (art, architecture, chow). I have great empathy for people who leave their native land and language at great risk to make a better life for themselves and their loved ones. I am hopeful that Americans can find a reasonable and fair way to solve the problems caused by illegal immigration and the illegals who are already here. I am not heartset against some form of legalization as part of a stern program to regulate our border, which may or may not include a English language requirement, a physical impediment to crossing, and a constitutional redefinition of citizenship. I’m open.

(3) You will not read anything in this article critical of President Obama. The problem to be considered here is not one for which he is responsible, and one he has only marginally worsened. (Oops.) Nor will this post express any views on Arizona's initiatives or those of some of its law enforcement officers.

Sunset on the Rio Grande

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, consider:

What should be the United States' response to the appearance of one or more hostile and aggressive Mexican states on its border?

I'm talking about drug crime. I’m talking about bordering Mexican political subdivisions effectively controlled by criminals whose explicit aim (and present activity) is the invasion of the United States – controlled, that is, by terrorists.

The slaughter in Mexico is horrific and escalating. The speculation surrounding the recent discovery of mass graves is that the victims were hopeful emigrants who refused to join the cartels' program of drug importation into the United States. But if the murder of Mexican citizens on Mexican soil were the only problem, the United States could have little to say about it.

Your Cool Hot Center's concern is the effective control of one or more of those Mexican states – Baja California Norte, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon (barely), and Tamaulipas, west to east -- by drug cartels. Unlike organized crime in the United States, the cartels kill and threaten local law enforcement officials and unfriendly politicians without fear of retribution. Corruption in local police departments and the army is rampant. Officers frequently switch sides and serve to enforce the cartels' control. Elections -- hard to believe the drug lords do not have a voice there as well. The cartels operate their own armies that are well-armed, disciplined, and vicious.  They already control large portions of the Mexican countryside.

I do not know what Mexico or its states are doing to combat the cartels. I believe it is safe to say it is not working.

So:  If it is not already here, the day may soon be upon us when the United States is bordered by Mexican states that are directly or effectively controlled by terrorist organizations against which the Mexican national government is impotent. The terror they practice is aimed at the uninterrupted flow of illegal drugs into the United States.  The national border will not inhibit their inclination to corrupt political subdivisions within the U.S. itself, and it is beyond doubt that they will import their more violent techniques along with the drugs. Hell, they already do so.

The threat is explicitly terroristic. It is not conventional crime, although abetted by murder, torture, and kidnapping. It extends beyond the immediate violence needed to maintain control (and to compete effectively with other cartels) to the sustaining of the American urban ghetto, whose hopelessness and resistance to change is fueled by drugs forced across our borders by the cartels.  It extends to the ruin of lives up and down the American social scale.

So ask yourself: In terms of the death they deal and continue to threaten, their political threat to America, and the effectiveness of their organizations in this quadrant of the globe, how would you rank: (a) al-Qaeda, and (b) Mexican drug cartels?  If you had to think about it, add this parameter:  Choice (b) operate at the largely unprotected border with the United States, and threaten to control the bordering states.

I do not minimize the of Islamist extremism here or worldwide. It is substantial and must be fought. I do feel that the immediate threat to the U.S. mainland represented by al-Qaeda since 9/11 has shown itself to be, in general, spasmodic, amateurish, and so far rather easily deflected. I merely suggest that an explicitly hostile political subdivision on our border engaged in active importation of crime to the United States, enforced by paramilitias, can scarcely be regarded as a lesser threat than an international conspiracy headquartered in the Middle East.  The cartels are effective, successful, and operate actively 24/7 against the United States. The cartels and the drugs they supply have been responsible for the deaths of many more American civilians than al-Qaeda, even counting 9/11, as well as for the massive societal cancers already mentioned.  We felt that the al-Qaeda threat in 2001 justified a massive invasion on the other side of the world. (Come on now, most of us, me included, applauded and continue to applaud the routing of the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, if not its admittedly more questionable extension into Iran.)   And speaking of al-Qaeda, what ideological principle would prevent an alliance between it and the cartels? 

And consider our continued ostracism of poor old ruined Cuba, 90 miles away, nowhere near the threat to the U.S. of the drug cartels.

How, then, should the United States respond to a hostile terrorist regime established directly on its border?

A guerrilla war fought by U.S. troops on Mexican soil -- probably at least partly in municipalities -- is unthinkable. U.S. public opinion; world opinion; nominally friendly U.S.-Mexico relations; the explosion in Mexican refugees; the threat to U.S. border residents; the impossibility of judging success and the resultant strong possibility of failure should the cartels simply retreat into the vastness of Mexico. This wouldn't be Black Jack Pershing commanding the 1916-17 Punitive Expedition into Mexico in search of Pancho Villa and his militia (who actually did attack Columbus, New Mexico; The Punitive Expedition, incidentally, failed). (Fun fact: During this period, approximately 140,000 U.S Army and National Guard troops patrolled the Mexican border.) The mind reels.

John J. Pershing and Pancho Villa in less fractious times, two years before the Punitive Expedition

I'd be interested, however, in other possibilities:

(1) Surgical air strikes, in and out. The targets would be drug-lord compounds and any identifiable locations of cartel militias. Cartels gots airplanes, but are bomber- and fighter-deficient. Probably not a lot of sophisticated anti-aircraft hardware. Any incursion of this type would require a widespread recognition of the threat among U.S. citizens nationwide, superb intelligence, and exquisitely nuanced diplomacy with Mexico, if not its government’s explicit endorsement and cooperation.

(2) Joint U.S.-Mexican military operations.

What about escalation and retaliation? Hey, I don't have all the answers. (None, in fact.) One can foresee, however, that even precision attacks aimed solely at drug operations and operators would devastate the Mexican tourism industry to the extent it relies on American travelers. And, of course, there are large numbers of Americans working and living in Mexico – not to mention American assets generally – that would be at a severely heightened risk.

Don’t care for a solution that includes military operations in Mexico? Can’t blame you.   But what should we do?  How have solutions worked for the last 50 years as this threat has grown? I’m not under any illusions that treating the drug cartels as a terrorist political threat to be dealt with militarily and diplomatically rather than as an unusually nasty organized criminal enterprise will end that threat. But somewhere along the line, surely this powerful nation will have to convey the message that a sustained attack by a secret or not-so-secret government on its borders is unacceptable. It might – and if anyone asks, you didn’t hear it from me – require us to take actions that would cause other countries to criticize us.

Can Mexico do a better job of fighting this threat within its borders? I’ve considered whether Italy, a country with which Mexico shares a strong Roman Catholic tradition of public morality, might be a useful model for our neighbor. Italy is still shot through with numerous organized crime families, but there is some feeling that the tide is turning there. Progress has come at the price of the assassination of fearless prosecutors like Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, both murdered at the order of now-imprisoned boss Salvatore "Toto" Riina. Public disgust at the authorities' corruption and inaction led to a massive crackdown, the positive results of which continue to date. A difference, of course, would be that the cartels do not share Italian organized crime's (admittedly selective) concept of "honor," which may somewhat limit the mafiosi’s willingness to slaughter civilians in large numbers. The unarmed Mexican populace is understandably cowed in a way that Italian citizens apparently are not. Still, if Mexico is to suppress what amounts to a criminal insurrection in large parts of the countryside – it cannot eradicate it, just as we have not eradicated organized crime in the U.S. – it must start with incorruptible and brave political and military leaders, legislators, prosecutors, judges, and juries. And I would think the Church might offer a few words in support.

The late Giovanni Falcone; Salvatore Riina

On our side of the Rio Grande, we must deal with the demand side -- America's hunger for illegal drugs. I have seen it written that the thing the drug lords fear the most is legalization. (The link goes to an article discussing legalization in Mexico, not the United States. The writer, Johann Hari, believes that Mexican legalization would put an end to the cartels, but does not consider how it would affect export to the United States.)  It is hard to imagine that this would be an acceptable solution in the U.S. I don't know the percentages of cartel profits accounted for by marijuana, cocaine, heroin, meth, and other chemicals. While the legalization of marijuana is a subject of debate here, legalization of the others is not.

That leaves enforcement and border patrols and fences and tough sheriffs and Arizona legislation and flaccid national political leadership for the past half century and here, gentle Centrists, I must leave you. I’ll throw this out: I ponder whether the current policy of prosecuting from the top down -- getting casual users and freshman criminals to give up the higher-ups -- is going about it wrong. If we start jailing more severely and imposing jumbo fines for even small-quantity possession and party use (and fining parents and legal guardians when Colin and Emily get busted with blow after prom) and putting the brakes on plea bargaining, I wonder whether we might see a withering of that demand and greater difficulty of the cartels in recruiting the foot soldiers in the drug invasion. (Might have to build a few dozen more prisons – Infrastructure! Jobs!)  Legislation more vigorously regulating the massive flow of legally-purchased U.S. arms to Mexico would also seem to be in order.  Don't forget all those little airfields that should immediately come under stricter federal control, and new ones forbidden.  And, of course, there's the border itself. If that isn't a national identifier worthy of federal military protection, then nothing is.

Perhaps the invasion of Mexico starts at home.

*     *     *

Follow Your Cool Hot Center on Twitter:  @CoolHotCenter



An Imposter in the Garden

The Memsahib and I have been delighted with the backyard paradise installed by Cutters Lawn and Landscape.  I've written about Leon, the Test Fish and my deep ambivalence over some pioneering water striders.

Today, the Mem and I were out back doing a fish count.  All were accounted for except Halloween, a tiny deep red fish with black fins.  (Dear, I've seen her since.)   We were remarking over our pleasure that our garden had become a favored destination of hoards of bumblebees.  We noted the handwringing that goes on over bees' lost of habitat in recent decades, and speculations over whether cell-phone towers and other wavy transmitters were disorienting those salutary insects.  We were pleased, as only homeowners who install fake habitats can be, that we have been able, in our modest way, to tip the balance back their way just a little.

I was watching the bumblebees clouding around our blue salvia, when I noticed one that looked a little different.  At first, I thought it was just a large bumblebee, but upon closer inspection I saw that if it was, it wasn't like any of the others.  It was identically black and yellow-gold, and its wings were completely invisible as it flew, but it had -- well, it had a hairy ass.

I realized after watching it for a few minutes that it wasn't a bee at all.  It had the coiled proboscis of a butterfly or moth.  Because it hovered and floated expertly, at first I thought it was a moth of the sphinx variety, but it had the stick-like club-end antennae of a butterfly. 

Of course, I had to know what it was.

I'd like to pause here to say a few words in praise of Google.  There has recently been some speculation that Google, and the Internet in general, is making us dumber, robbing us of the ability to engage in leisurely reading and thinking necessary for learning.  (See this recent article in The Atlantic.)  Maybe so.  I judge that it's making me smarter.  I know my insect and especially my butterfly-and-moth books inside and out and I've never seen anything like this.  Since I had no idea what I was looking for, I despaired of  devising search terms that would yield useful hits.  "moth black yellow" seemed pretty useless to me, and then I hit on it:  "bumblebee mimic moth." 

I had the answer in seconds:  It is a snowberry clearwing moth

Looking like this on our salvia:

It is indeed a variety of sphinx moth, perhaps better known as hummingbird moths, closely related to the moths (underwings and hawkmoths) that one sees only at night, looking like ghostly hummingbirds (and about the same size), especially favoring petunias and the like. 

I regret to report that their larva can be hell on tomatoes. 

Anyway, we welcome this fake bumblebee to our fake paradise, close on the banks of our fake pond.

Now, if I only knew what a snowberry is.

Farewell, AOL, But I Doubt It

I got my first and only personal email account somewhere a little less than 20 years ago -- LowWacker@aol.com, named for a parody band I had with Lou Nigra and Ed Kassel, Lower Wacker Overdrive, that took its name from Lower Wacker Drive that ran there by the Chicago River.  I even continue to pay the 23.90 per month so I can have dialup capability.

Over the years, AOL has improved its email.

With each successive improvement, normal email functionality has deteriorated.

With the latest major overhaul, it has finally become unbearable to use.

Perhaps you other few AOL email users have not had my experience.  Let's see, what has the lastest round of improvements given me:

   --   Addresses no longer autocomplete.

   --  When signing into email, it now always reads "0 New Messages," even though I may have a couple dozen.

   --   If you don't have your recipient's email memorized, you click "TO:" and after much too long a time, you get a list of every email address you have ever sent to.  You may click "TO," "CC," or "BCC."  And then click "send" and it will place the addresses in your email fields.  But it takes a long time.

   --   There does not appear to be any way to delete old or unused email addresses from this list.

   --   There is no way to go quickly in this list to emails beginning with a particular letter.

   --   When replying, the cursors skips between the text to the address box after a few seconds,  the result being that if you start typing your reply, you find that you are typing your message in front of the address of your recipient.  Absolutely no, zero, point to this function.  It alone renders the damned thing useless.  If you are replying, your addressee is already established.  There is seldom any reason at all to want your cursor to wander up to the address box.

   ---  You can no longer drag and drop emails into folders -- it's all check-the-box-and-go-to-the-menu-for-still-more-mouse-clicks.

Who thought all of these things were good ideas?  Did they try them out with people who are still using this crummy system?

So I say farewell, old email address, although I don't think you will.  The next round of improvements should eliminate the ability to send and receive emails via AOL altogether.

For blog-related items, my email remains CoolHotCenter@gmail.com.  Personal email should go to StevenJonLawson@gmail.com. 

Keep in touch.

Jack Horkheimer, RIP

I used to love it when "The Star Hustler" would pop up on PBS.  I have heard that he changed his brand to "The Star Gazer" in more recent years because when people would do internet searches for "star hustler" they would come up with mainly porn sites.

That bad hairpiece, the somewhat fey delivery, the cheesy special effects, all were insignificant distractions from the intense enthusiasm for the night sky Horkeimer conveyed in those five-minute shows.

Keep lookiing up, Jack.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JEMWN8SKJg

Jack Horkheimer, RIP

Six Paragraphs of Sheer Brilliance . . .

.  .  .  from my favorite leftist, Camille Paglia.  She calls for the "sweeping revalorization of the trades."  I'm not sure what trades will prepare practitioners for the balance of this century, or what the century requires.  But she's got the right idea on the deepening uselessness of a college education over the past few decades, arising largely from meaningless "post-structuralist" rubbish in the liberal arts and the neglected cultivation of habits of thought in those costly four-year nurseries.  Only take you a minute to read.

PART 2: President Obama, What We Mean by "Intelligence," and What He Means by "Hope"

In  Part 1 of this article, appearing a few posts ago, -- Your Cool Hot Center had hoped to persuade you that our very smart President's policymaking proceeds from abstract thinking, from the application of theory, not deductions from observations of the world as it is.  Put another way, he governs by deduction -- reasoning from the general (theory and ideology) to the particular (legislation, regulation, and policy) rather than by induction (observing facts and reasoning upwards to the theory or general belief, from which policy then proceeds). 

The theories from which the President proceeds are predominantly found in the writings of the academic left.  The theories are highly idealistic and prescriptive, even utopian; they arise mostly a priori from the ways that liberals would like the world to be.  Some of them are highly sophisticated and subtle and have gained a wide following among faculty and students.  A lot of those students are now stalwarts of this administration and the Democratic Party.  The influence of John Rawls's A Theory of Justice, about which I've briefly written before, is central. 

People who have the ability to think abstractly, and who do it well, are regarded as intelligent.  (I myself regard them in that way.)  In formulating his policies, President Obama has relied on academics who think this way and share the President's preference for abstraction. 

And that's the point I want to make here: "high intelligence" -- the ability to think abstractly and reason from creative a priori assumptions -- is a very valuable and, I think, a pretty rare thing.  It is a critical part, if not the beginning, of almost all scientific and cultural advance.  It can be inspired; it can be laboriously thought out.   But we only know if that smart brain work has reached the right result when reasoning from abstract assumptions is tested by experiment. Brilliant or difficult thoughts may turn out to be false when they're tested against actual observation.  

This is a great way to run science.   It's a great way to run a university where all that brainy work product can get debated and tested and exposed and tried and, with any luck, let loose only when it's ripe.

It's a damned bad way to run a country.  

Barack Obama is the first one to try it as his fundamental basis of governing.  An exception might be Franklin Roosevelt and his Keynesian spending on public employment, but Roosevelt faced crises that make those identified by today's political leaders (not just Dems) look ridiculous.  And it didn't work. (Keynes's General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money was not published until 1936, but his ideas were widely circulated -- including direct presentation to Roosevelt -- in years prior.) 

To President Obama, the United States is his laboratory. He's got a fistful of theories from the academics he admires and he's trying them out.   He has no particular reason to believe they'll work.  But that's what the theory says, that's what the smart guys believe should be tried to achieve social justice and world peace, so that's what he's going to do.

And if we lab rats don't like what it's doing to our health care, our bank accounts, our standing abroad, and our freedom generally -- well, we just don't understand the theory.  Too dumb.  You can feel the President's impatience, his dismissiveness, when challenged.  As though there's little point in dealing with present reality when his whole point is that he is the author of a new reality, arriving any day now.

That this smart guy is failing with these theories will, I think, somewhat change the way the public perceives "intelligence" generally.  It may still admire the brilliant men and women of the academy, business, the arts, but it will no longer think of their gift in quite the same way.  The IQ required for the creation of lovely theories and the corralling of abstract concepts into something understandable is not the kind of "intelligence" required to get a fractured, diverse, freedom-loving people all headed in the same direction, and in identifying and solving real problems.  Not the problems imagined by social theorists (and, regrettably, sometimes by agenda- and grant-driven scientists), but the ones that really exist for folks generally. 

That kind of leadership requires some empathy for one's constituents and some understanding of their real concerns, not the pretend crises ginned up by social scientists and promoted by the journalists who graduated from their liberal arts programs. 

Which is not to say that effective leaders are not smart.  They are.  But consider this list of modern-era presidents I believe most people would regard as effective, whether or not they agreed with the agenda:  .  Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson.    (So I'm excluding both Bushes, Carter, Obama, Kennedy (too short a tenure), and Nixon's on the bubble.)  You may think these guys were inspired, or you may think they were just politically crafty operators, or you may think they were lucky --  but a list of the top three virtues of any one of them would not include "unusually high intelligence."   Because we don't think of their particular gift of practical leadership in that way. 

Again, my point:  Obama changes this.  In the future we are going to be much more skeptical of the claims for intelligence of persons whose smarts appear mainly derived from book-larnin', and elevate our regard for the cerebral circuitry of men and women who have actually slugged it out, actually gotten a big batch of humans to change things, accomplish something.

*   *   *

One last thing.

When the Obama presidency is viewed as largely experimental, we gain a better understanding of what he means by "hope."  He has used that phrase a lot, most notably in the title of his (?) book, The Audacity of Hope.  Now, when he used that phrase, he was addressing a population that, by and large, did not feel itself in a "hopeless" condition.  (Oh, there were the Bush Derangement Syndrome people whose frantic loathing of the former president may have made them think they were without hope.  Those people don't count.)


So when he used that word, he could not have meant that he was offering hope where none existed.  I think he meant -- and I'm not making a joke here -- that he had in mind to try out all these pet theories of the academic left that no politician who cared about reelection would ever attempt, and hoped that the marvelous advantages that they predicted would come to pass.  (You may recall my theory that President Obama doesn't care so very much about re-election.)

We're Barack Obama's experiment.  He's "hoping" it will work.  (In fact, we'd all better "hope.")   That he's performing it on what is, for all its present problems, still the most successful and prosperous and free political system the world has ever seen -- that's the "audacity" part.

Intelligence is a wonderful thing and it is wonderful that we have a President who possesses it.   After I published Part 1 I heard from a several people who disagreed with my premise that Barack Obama is smart.   How could anybody so smart advance such dumb policies?    Well, again -- that's my point:   People we regard as intelligent have as a characteristic that they speculate  a lot -- there's a lot of what ifs  in their thinking.   Thinking that the President is dumb because his policies are having bad results or are poorly explained to the people they affect underestimates the guy and misidentifies the source of his problem. 

Barack Obama is a gifted, intelligent person steeped in the speculations of other intelligent people.   But we are now seeing the tragedy of his inexperience and, it must be said, his laziness.  His thinking is starved by his not knowing -- or, perhaps less charitably, by his willful ignoring.  (It's widely noted how prickly he gets when he's questioned about facts.)   He doesn't care.  The results of the leftist policies he has gotten the truly pathetic Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to bully through Congress will be the new facts, his experimental data.  He hopes his experiments give the results the people he admires have predicted.

Think back.  Remember your most arrogant and ideological (which is to say, theory-bound) professor.  Now imagine him or her as President.