MOSTLY READINGS ON THE AMERICAN WAR IN VIETNAM

"What did I learn from the experience in Vietnam? [Bob Innes] asked himself out loud, letting the silence formulate his next statement. "I learned that honor and integrity are personal qualities, not institutional ones, not ones we should expect the state to always have. If you don't like the policy tough. Bad things happen in this world. You do the best you can in your job, and let the crybabies write the books." Robert Kaplan, Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground (New York: Random House, 2005), at 27-28.

Bates, Milton J., et al. Advisory Board, Reporting Vietnam Part I: American Journalism, 1959-1969 (New York: Library of America, 1998) (From 'A "Very Real War" in Vietnam--and the Deep U.S. Commitment,' by Homer Bigart: "SAIGON, Feb. 24[1962]--The United States is involved in a war in Vietnam. American troops will stay until victory." "That is what Attorney General Robert Kennedy said here last week..." "Actually the United States has been deeply involved in the fate of Vietnam since 1949 when the decision was made to subsidize the continuation of French rule against the Communist Viet Minh rebellion. The first United States Military Advisory Group (M.A.A.G.) arrived in 1951 to supervise the distribution of supplies. Thereafter the United States played an increasingly important role. To use a favorite Washington term. aid was 'escalated' until today $2 billion has been sunk into Vietnam with no end to the outlay in slight." Id. at 26-27. From Joe McGinniss, 'The Selling of the President': "There was on the Nixon [1968 presidential campaign] staff an 'ethnic specialist' named Kevin Phillips, whose job it was to determine what specific appeals would work with specific nationalities and in specific parts of the country. He watched Vietnam and sent a quick and alarmed memo to Len Garment: 'This has a decidedly dovish impact as a result of the visual content and it does not seem suitable for use in the South and Southwest.'" "His reasoning was quite simple. A picture of a wounded soldier was a reminder that the people who fight wars get hurt. This, he felt, might cause resentment among those Americans who got a big kick out of cheering for wars from their legion halls and barrooms half a world away. So bury the dead in silence, Kevin Phillips said, before you blow North Carolina." Id. at 659. There is some very fine--and powerful--writing contained in this anthology of journalism.).

Bates, Milton J., et al. Advisory Board, Reporting Vietnam Part II: American Journalism, 1969-1975 (New York: Library of America, 1998).

Berman, Larry, Lyndon Johnson's War: The Road to Stalemate in Vietnam (New York & London: Norton, 1989) (This is a sequel to Planning a Tragedy (see next entry). "Lyndon Johnson's War focuses on the repercussions from President Johnson's failure to address the fundamental incompatibility between his political objectives at home and his military objectives in Vietnam." "Lyndon Johnson chose to Americanize the war in July 1965; he chose to accept General Westmoreland's attrition strategy; he chose not to mobilize his country for war; he chose and encouraged others to paint optimistic scenarios for the American public; he chose to hide the anticipated enemy buildup prior to Tet because, in an election year, he had hoped for a military miracle--perhaps Westmoreland would turn the tide when the enemy began it final desperate assault." "It was left to Clark Clifford as secretary of defense to convince Johnson that Vietnam had become a sinkhole. The irony was that Secretary McNamara had been banished from the administration for the same advocacy. George Ball had been listened to but not heard. Johnson's decision to remove himself from the renomination race represented the ultimate recognition that the Vietnam war had become interwoven with his personality and his presidency. 'I shall not accept' was the president's admission that Vietnam had become, against his every desire, Lyndon Johnson's war." Id. at 203. "The problem of defining what was and was not an enemy soldier was part of the problem of the war itself. Counting the size of the enemy force and the rate of infiltration was an inexact process. That's why an NIE [National Intelligence Estimate] is called an estimate! Estimating guerrilla forces was tantamount to 'trying to estimate roaches in your kitchen.' as General Westmoreland testified in the libel trial. While the CIA believed that every Vietnamese who stuck a pungi stake (a bamboo stake used as a booby trap) in the ground belonged on the Order of Battle, Westmoreland did not, even though two-percent of U.S. combat wounds occurred from these traps." "In retrospect, the intelligence process was corrupted from above by an excessively paranoid president." Id. at 113.).

Berman, Larry, No Peace, No Honor: Nixon, Kissinger, and Betrayal in Vietnam (New York: Free Press, 2001) ("This is the story of a peace negotiation that began with Lyndon Johnson in 1968 and ended with thee fall of South Vietnam in 1975. Many secret meetings were involved...." "Here, then, is the emerging story of what Nixon call 'peace with honor' but was, in fact, neither...." Id. at 10.).

Berman, Larry, Perfect Spy: The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An, Time Magazine Reporter and Vietnamese Communist Agent (New York: Smithsonian Books/Collins, 2007) ("The president, who a year earlier had promised to end American involvement in Vietnam, had expanded the war into neighboring Cambodia." "The day after Nixon's national address, [Pham Xuan] An sent Anson a package, providing him with an English translation of a captured Viet Cong enemy document. This was the type of document reporters had easy access to, but An provided additional commentary for his colleague, who had just returned to Saigon for the weekend. The document was a July 1969 'battle plan' captured in October 1969 in which the North Vietnamese predicted that with Vietnamization failing, Nixon would turn his attention to Cambodia. An circled one paragraph and underlined the last sentence, writing across the page, 'You damned Americans. You read, but you never learn.'" "Here is what An circled for Anson: 'If our attacks in all aspects are not sufficiently strong and if the Americans are able to temporarily overcome part of their difficulties, they will strive to prolong the war in South Vietnam for a certain period of time during which they will try to de-escalate from a strong position of one sort or another, and carry out the de-Americanization in a prolonged war contest before they must admit defeat and accept a political solution. In both these eventualities, especially in the case of a prolonged de-escalation, the Americans may, in certain circumstances, put pressure on us by threatening to broaden the war by expanding it into Cambodia.'" Id. at 33-34.).

Berman, Larry, Planning a Tragedy: The Americanization of the War in Vietnam (New York & London: Norton, 1982) ("This historical record illustrates how events can often shape the parameters of decisional choice; how situations can deny flexibility in response; how individual world view influences the definition of a situation; how official institutional rank can place advisors in quite unequal advocacy positions; how advisor role definitions can influence advocacy strategy; and most important, how no one decision can be studied in isolation from what preceded it." Id. at xiii. "Ball then returned to a familiar theme: 'No one has yet shown that American troops can win a jungle war against an invisible enemy.' Ball quoted extensively from the memoirs of Gen. Matthew Ridgway who in 1954 had urged Eisenhower not to intervene on behalf of the French at Dien Bien Phu: [] 'The land was a land of rice paddy and jungle--particularly adapted to the guerrilla-type warfare at which the Chinese soldier is a master. This meant that every little detachment, every individual, that tried to move about that country, would have to be protected by riflemen. Every telephone lineman, road repair party, every ambulance and every rear-area aid station would have to be under armed guard or they would be shot at around the clock.'" Id. at 87-88 (italics added). From rice paddy and jungle to desert, we did not learn. "Thirty thousand American troops died in Vietnam between July 28, 1965, and the inauguration of Richard Nixon in January 1969. 'How,' asked James C. Thomson, Jr., 'did men of superior ability, sound training and high ideals--American policymakers of the 1960s--create such a costly and divisive policy?'" [] "The cognitive error was not Johnson's alone. Six postwar presidents and their advisors refused to think critically about the changing nature of Asian communism. As the BDM study put it: [] 'Like leaders in any organization, presidents are not immune to confusing dissent with disloyalty. The Vietnam experience should point to some of the dangers in such confusion. Premises fail to receive the critical examination they require in formulating a sound policy that keeps pace with changes in a dynamic world." Id. at 130-131. "An important insight into how the advisory process operated within the White house is evidenced by a previously unavailable memo from McGeorge Bundy to the president regarding the position of various principals... Bundy them stated his own preferences to the president. The memo is perhaps one of the most significant to be released under recent declassifications: '.... I think you may want to have pretty tight and hard analysis of some disputed questions like the following: 1. What are the chances of our getting into a white man's war with all the brown men against us or apathetic?'" Id. at 93-94.).

Bird, Kai, The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy, Brothers in Arms: A Biography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998) ("Mac[George Bundy] finished his studies at Yale and graduated in June 1940. During his senior year he had written a thirty-page essay on the looming question of war. [] Mac's essay is an argument on behalf of intervention against European fascism." [] "Having staked out his position, Bundy then goes on to explain why he found himself in the minority. Why were so many of his peers skeptics? His answer is to recall 'somewhat painfully' the first American history book he read in grammar school. The text made all of America's history 'a series of triumphant victories,' from the revolution all the way down through the years when America went off in 1917 to 'make the world safe for democracy, and to take our rank as the richest, wisest, bravest, kindest, strongest and most civilized of nations on the earth.'" "America was indeed a great and astonishing country, but it was also a country, Bundy says, with 'imperfections' in its past. 'We are taught at an early age to salute the flag, to be patriotic, and to believe a lot of lies. It is therefore nor surprising that when our eyes are opened, we react rather strongly against the innocent credulity of our childhood.'" Id. at 66-67. Far too many Americans never get beyond their grammar school American history books. "Writing in George [] Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., wistfully noted that [MacGeorge] Bundy represented 'the last hurrah of the Northeast Establishment. He was the final executor of the grand tradition of Henry Stimson, Dean Acheson, Averell Harriman, Robert Lovett, John J. McCloy--patricians who, combining commitment to international responsibility with instinct for command and relish in power, served the republic pretty well in the global crises of the twentieth century.' On a personal level, Schlesinger remembered his friend as a man of 'sparkling personality, witty and elegant.' Bundy, he said, had displayed the courage to 'transcend the politics and the complaisancies of his class.' Born a privileged Republican, he had become a liberal Democrat. 'A single tragic error,' Schlesinger concluded, 'prevented him from achieving his full promise as a statesman.'" Id. at 408 (citations omitted).)

Dallek, Robert, Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Time, 1961-1973 (New York & Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 1998) ("Mac Bundy now urged consideration of sending in ground forces. American air operations alone, he counseled the President, would not stop Hanoi's aggression against the South. It was essential that the United States show the Communists that it was not a paper tiger. Moreover, with conservatives vocally warning against the abandonment of Vietnam, Bundy cynically declared: 'in terms of the U.S. politics[,] which is better' to 'lose' now or to 'lose' after committing 100,000 men? Tentative answer: the latter'" Id. at 255. This the second volume of Dallek's two-volume biography of President Lyndon B. Johnson. Though I don't consider this biography quite as good as the three-volume biography by Robert Caro, it is well worth the read. Dallek sums up the Johnson presidency and Johnson-the-man well. "His presidency was a story of great achievement and terrible failure, of lasting gains and unforgettable losses. Whatever impulse future historians may have to pigeonhole Johnson as a near great, average, or failed President, I am confident that a close review of his time in office will leave them reluctant to put any single stamp on his term. Some people loved the man and some despised him. Some remember him for great works and others for a legacy of excessive governance at home and defeat abroad. In a not so distant future, when coming generations have no direct experience of the man and the passions of the sixties are muted, Johnson will probably be remembered as a President who faithfully reflected the country's greatness and limitations--a man notable for his successes and failures, for his triumphs and tragedy." Id. at 628. Let me add, when the historians review the Johnson presidency it will be marked as flawed, but not as hubris and incompetent.)

Dallek, Robert, Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1908-1960 (New York & Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 1991) (see above).

Dallek, Robert, Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power (New York Harper Collins, 2007) (The book contains a lot of detail, but I don't think it contains much understanding of rich nuances of human nature.).

Dallek, Robert, An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917-1963 (Boston: Little, Brown, 2003) (Dallek seems to think that more facts, more information, etc., about someone necessarily leads to better insight into that person. Still, it is a valuable read in that it does serve to debunk many of the myths surrounding the Kennedy presidency. It has been a rather long time since anyone who studied the Kennedy presidency seriously has considered it a great presidency; the real question for debate is whether it had the potential for greatness. "In proposing to get out of Vietnam before it turned into a political liability in the United States, McNamara reflected the president's thinking. Kennedy wanted the lowest possible profile for U.S. involvement in the conflict. In May, he instructed that there be no 'unnecessary trips to Vietnam, especially by high ranking officers,' who might draw more attention to America's role in the fighting. In a meeting with congressional leaders, Kennedy made it clear that he did not want to announce increases in U.S. troops. The objective for JFK, Fulbright said, was to keep the United States from becoming 'formally involved.' The increase in advisers was less important than keeping things 'on an informal basis, because ... we couldn't withdraw if it gets too formal.' In October, Kennedy reluctantly agreed to let the military destroy crops in Viet Cong-controlled areas. It was a small concession to the Joint Chiefs, who were pressing him to use more muscle in Vietnam. 'His main train of thinking,' an NSC member told Bundy, 'was that you cannot say no to your military advisers all the time.' But he wanted to be sure that crop destruction did not become an embarrassment to the administration. 'What can we do about keeping it from becoming an American enterprise which would be surfaced with [or described as] poisoning food?' Kennedy asked his advisers." Id. at 527-528. That, no matter how you spin it, is not greatness. Dallek, like so many others, still place a gloss on the Kennedy presidency by talking about what might have been. "The sudden end to Kennedy's life and presidency has left us with tantalizing 'might have been's.' Yet even setting these aside and acknowledging some missed opportunities and false steps, it must be acknowledged that the Kennedy thousand days spoke to the country's better angels, inspired visions of a less divisive nation and world, and demonstrated that America was still the last best hope of mankind." Id. at 711. Did it really?).

Fall, Bernard B., Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu (Philadelphia & New York: Lippicott, 1967) ("On Saturday, April 3, 1954, eight senior legislators were called to the Department of State for a secret conference with Secretary [of State] Dulles, Admiral Radford, and some of their senior aides. The legislators were a bipartisan group including Senators Lyndon B. Johnson (then Minority Leader...." "Dulles stated that President Eisenhower himself had asked him to call the meeting and that the President wanted Congress to pass a joint resolution permitting him use of air and navel power in Indochina--in other words, a resolution granting him a far more restricted freedom of maneuver than that which President Lyndon B. Johnson was given in August, 1964. Radford then succinctly outlined the situation in Indochina and particularly the desperate straits of Dine Bien Phu, In language which was to be used against almost verbatim a decade later, Secretary Dulles warned that the fall of Indochina might well lead to the loss of all of Southeast Asia and that 'the United States might eventually be forced back to Hawaii.' He also added that failure by the United States to support the French and the local governments now might result in an abandonment of the war by the French.... Upon questioning, Radford allegedly stated that the action contemplated might put the United States 'in the war' and that, if the initial strike did not bring full relief to the fortress [at Dien Bien Phu], follow-up strikes were contemplated." "He hedged his reply as to the possibility of eventually committing American ground troops in the war and admitted that none of the other military staff chiefs agreed in full with his plan...." "According to Chalmers Roberts, Lyndon Johnson put the other key question in the form of a little speech.' The Senate Minority Leader stated that the Korean War had been financed and fought by the United States to an extent of ninety per cent and then asked Dulles whether any other allied nation (outside the French, who already were committed to the war) had been consulted as to whether they would join the United States in intervening in Viet-Nam." "Retrospectively, this seems to have been the key question and the key stumbling point. When Dulles acknowledged that, in view of the urgency of the situation, he had not yet consulted any other allies, the eight Congressional leaders flatly turned down the idea of a joint resolution..." Id. at 300-301. "Perhaps without realizing it, Lyndon B. Johnson, on April 3, 1954, had made his first crucial decision on Viet-Nam." Id. at 308.)

Fanon, Frantz, The Wretched of the Earth translated from the French by Richard Philcox (New York: Groves Press, 2004) (There are some who suggest the American War in Iraq is a 21st-century form of 'colonialism'. Here is not the place to argue the suggestion one way or the other. However, consider the following paragraph reading "colonialism" as "21st-century colonialism" or as what ever "-ism" you think more appropriate. "As long as colonialism remains in a state of anxiety, the national cause advances and becomes the cause of each and everyone. The struggle for liberation takes shape and already involves the entire country. During this period, spontaneity rules. Initiative rests with local areas. On every hilltop a government in miniature is formed and assumes power. In the valleys and in the forest, in the jungle and in the villages, everywhere, one encounters a national authority. The action of each and everyone substantiates the nation and undertakes to ensure its triumph locally. We are dealing with a strategy of immediacy which is both all-embracing and radical. The objective, the program of every spontaneously formed group is liberation at a local level. If the bastion is present everywhere, it must then be here. One step further and it is present only here. Tactics and strategy merge. The art of politics is quite simply transformed into the art of war. The militant becomes a fighter. To wage war and to engage in politics are one and the same thing." Id. at 83. Just food for thought. In the larger context, I don't see how any American law student interested in foreign relations, at least as it pertains to Africa, Asia, and South America, can ignore re-reading Fanon.)

Fitzgerald, Frances, Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press Book/Little, Brown, 1972) ("In 1970, two years after the start of the peace talks in Paris, the Vietnam War became the Indochina War with major battles in three countries. By 1971 the governments of Indochina had more than two million men under arms; the political and social geography of Laos, Cambodia, and South Vietnam had changed more radically than it has changed in all the years of the Johnson administration." "How was it possible? It was possible because the American government did not want to face the consequences of peace. It was, after all, one thing to wish for an end to the war and quite another to confront the issues upon which the war had begun. President Johnson had wanted to end the war; so, too, had President Kennedy. But to end the war and not to lose it: the distinction was crucial, and particularly crucial after all the American lives that had been spent and all the political rhetoric expended. Nixon, perhaps even more than his predecessors, felt that he could not take the responsibility for 'losing the war.' 'Johnson got us into the war quietly, now we are trying to get out of it quietly,' said Henry Kissinger. But the time for Senator Aiken's solution had long since passed: the issues were all too clearly formulated. To withdraw support from Saigon and allow the Thieu government to fall would be, by Nixon's definition, to 'lose the war.' There remained hope of winning it, and failing that, of not losing it until sometime after an American withdrawal from Vietnam." Id. at 404.).

Halberstam, David, The Best and the Brightest (New York: The Modern Library, 2001) ("[T]he Tet offensive caught the American mission, both military and civilian, largely by surprise and undermined the legitimacy of almost everything it was reporting about Vietnam, most particularly its relentless military optimism. What the American army at the highest levels lost in Vietnam, my close friend and colleague Charlie Mohr told me years later, in the best summation of that time, was its intellectual integrity." Id. at xv. "The commitment was already operative, burning with a special fuel of its own--bureaucratic momentum and individual ambition--men let loose in Saigon and Washington who never questioned whether that something was right or wrong, or whether it worked or not. In government it is always easier to go forward with a program that does not work than to stop it altogether and admit failure." Id. at 242. "Why did McNamara have such good figures? Why did McNamara have such good staff work and Ball such poor staff work? The next day Ball would angrily dispatch his staff to come up with figures, to find out how McNamara had gotten them, and the staff would burrow away and occasionally find that one of the reasons that Ball did not have comparable figures was that they did not always exist. McNamara had invented them, he dissembled even within the bureaucracy, though, of course, always for a good cause. It was part of his sense of service. He believed in what he did, and thus the morality of it was assured, and everything else fell into place. It was all right to lie and dissemble for the right causes. It was part of service, loyalty to the President, not to the nation, not to colleagues, it was a very special bureaucratic-corporate definition of integrity; you could do almost anything you wanted as long as it severed your superior." Id. at 661.).

Halberstam, David, The Making of a Quagmire (New York: Random House, 1964, 1965) ("The first lesson that an American adviser in Vietnam learned was that the enemy was good; if he stayed on a little longer, he learned that his was wrong: the enemy was very good. He learned that the Vietcong concentrated on a few things and that they did them well; that they made few mistakes; and that--in sharp contrast to the Government forces--they rarely made the same error twice. The American officers also learned that the enemy had a reason--political, psychological or military--for almost everything he did. Even when he appeared to be doing nothing, we learned belatedly that this did not mean he was inactive, only that he was content to appear inactive." "If they paid attention, Americans also learned that the enemy was absolutely sincere; he was willing to pay the price for the difficult task he had set for himself, and he had a far better sense of these difficulties than the authorities in Saigon. If he was underrated in Saigon, this was certainly not the case in the field; there it was widely known that we were fighting his war on his terms." "The Vietcong had no illusion about the type of war in which they were engaged. It was a war of revolution, and they knew the weaknesses of the Government as well as their own strengths The American military thought of them as men carrying weapons, but the fact was that they were most effective at night indoctrinating the peasants--when they carried no weapons and wore no uniforms. The misery of the people was their ally, and they played on it. Where Americans often parroted slogans about improving the world of the Vietnamese peasant, the Vietcong, who had risen from this misery themselves, knew that lip service was not enough. To them the war was entirely political; its military aspects were simply a means to permit them to practice their political techniques. They made every grievance theirs: long-standing historical antagonisms, whether against Asians or Caucasians, became their grievances, as were economic inequities, the division of land, the arbitrary system of tax collection--even the ravages of disease." Id. at 111-112.).

Johnson, Denis, Tree of Smoke: A Novel (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007) (From the jacket cover: "This is the story of William 'Skip' Sands, CIA--engaged in Psychological Operations against the Vietcong--and the disasters that befall him. This is also the story of the Houston brothers, Bill and James, young men who drift out of the Arizona desert and into a war where the line between disinformation and delusion has blurred away. In its vision of human folly, this is a story liking nothing in our literature.").

Khurana, Rakesh, From Higher Aims to Hired Hands: The Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management as a Profession (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2007)(I think this book may be of interest to those concerned about the current state and future state of legal education generally. It raises questions concerning what makes an MBA a professional education and MBA’s professionals, and what gives business schools their legitimacy. It argues, I think, that business schools are floundering and have misplaced their willingness or ability to self-regulate and, as a result, they find themselves responding to questionable external forces (i.e., marker pressures) for their legitimacy. The rate of growth in the number of U.S. law schools has not been as dramatic as the growth in U.S. MBA programs: 131 law schools in 1955-1956, to 195 in 2003-2004; 138 MBA programs in 1955-1956, to 955 in 2003-2004; and 73 MD programs in 1955-1956, to 118 in 2003-2004. So, law schools have not experienced the same market pressures/competition as business schools, but we all know that law schools have begun to feel such pressures and challenges to their legitimacy (e.g., some state legislators are considering abandoning the J.D. requirement for admission to the bar). Though the subject book is not about law schools, I think those who are concerned about the continued legitimacy of law schools—in a world where it is difficult to establish even the appropriate criteria for evaluating the quality and worth of a legal education--will find it of interest and enlightenment.).

Kissinger, Henry A., A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace 1812-22 (Cambridge: Houghton Mifflin, 1957) ("Those ages which in retrospect seem most peaceful were least in search of peace. Those whose quest for it seem unending appear least able to achieve tranquility. Whenever peace--conceived as the avoidance of war--has been the primary objective of a power or a group of powers, the international system has been at the mercy of the most ruthless members of the international community. Whenever the international order has acknowledged that certain principles could not be compromised even for the sake of peace, stability based on an equilibrium of forces was at least conceivable." "Stability, then, has commonly resulted not from a quest for peace but from a generally accepted legitimacy. 'Legitimacy'...implies the acceptance of the framework of the international order by all major powers, at least to the extent that no state is dissatisfied that, like Germany after the Treaty of Versailles, it expresses its dissatisfaction in a revolutionary foreign policy.... Diplomacy in the classic sense, the adjustment of differences through negotiation, is possible only in 'legitimate' international orders." "Whenever there exists a power which considers the international order or the manner of legitimizing it oppressive, relations between it and other powers will be revolutionary. In such cases, it is not the adjustment of differences within a given system which will be at issue, but the system itself. Adjustments are possible, but they will be conceived as tactical [maneuvers] to consolidate positions for the inevitable showdown, or as tools to undermine the morale of the antagonist.... But the distinguishing feature of a revolutionary power is not that it feels threatened...but that nothing can reassure it. Only absolute security--the neutralization of the opponent--is considered a sufficient guarantee, and thus the desire of one power for absolute security means absolute insecurity for all the others." "Diplomacy, the art of restraining the exercise of power, cannot function in such an environment...." "The defenders of the status quo therefore tend to begin by treating the revolutionary power as if its protestations were merely tactical; as if it really accepted the existing legitimacy but overstated its case for bargaining purposes; as if it were motivated by specific grievances to be assuaged by limited concessions... 'Appeasement', where it is not a device to gain time, is the result of an inability to come to grips with a policy of unlimited objectives." "But it is the essence of a revolutionary power that it possesses the courage of its convictions, that it is willing, indeed eager, to push its principles to the ultimate conclusion.... The characteristic of a stable order is its spontaneity; the essence of a revolutionary situation is its self-consciousness." Id. 1-3.).

McMaster, H. R., Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies that Led to Vietnam (New York: HarperCollins, 1997) ("Although it was not immediately apparent in Washington, the growing momentum behind the evolving strategy of graduated pressure would have profound consequences. Because the president and his key policy makers were preoccupied with the 1965 presidential] election and continued to regard the strategy of graduated pressure as a sensible way to prevent a wider war, they never considered alternatives to that ostensibly inexpensive policy, such as neutralization or diplomacy. Despite predictions that graduated pressure would fail and isolated calls for consideration of a negotiated settlement to extricate the United States from a commitment with little prospect for success, U.S. involvement in Vietnam continued, in the face of increasing governmental instability in Saigon. Instead of considering what deepening American involvement in Vietnam might ultimately cost or voicing individual doubts, the Joint Chiefs compromised, listed actions that would contribute to the war effort, and contented themselves with gaining incremental approval for them. Everyone--the president, his closest civilian advisers, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff--had taken the path of least resistance. As a result the most difficult questions about the nature of American involvement in Vietnam remained unanswered, and the assumptions that underlay the president's policy went unchallenged by the one formal body charged by law and tradition with advising the president of the United States about strategy and warfare." Id. at 177-178.).

MacPherson, Myra, Long Time Passing: Vietnam & the Haunted Generation (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984) ("Above all, Vietnam was a war that asked everything of a few and nothing of most in America. While the country turned its back on veterans for a decade after the defeat, the tendency today seems to be a swing back to a visceral dislike of the ones who didn't go. In a country that buys the myth of egalitarianism, residual loathing exists...." "But the blame rightly belongs with the misbegotten war itself and the politicians who cynically judged the self-interest that abides in everyone--particularly adolescents. The government made it easy to avoid the war with deferments and legal loopholes: there were so many men in that generation; why not give the most vocal an out? Nixon even more cynically knew that if he turned the draft into a lottery, many of those clamoring voices in universities would be stilled." Id. at 612. "I asked why John Binder devotes so much of his time to the memorial." "'I had a son who was there. He was wounded several times and survived--and I'm grateful for that. This is the least I can do.'" "He speaks to the larger, finally most important message of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial." "'It doesn't say whether the war was right or wrong. That's for everyone to decide on his own,' said Binder. 'It just says, "Here is the price we paid."'..." "I look back at the wall of names." "Here is the price." Id. at 622. More than 58,000 Americans were killed in the American War in Vietnam, compared to the less than 4,000 to-date in the American War in Iraq. It will be (sadly) interesting to see what 'price' American are prepared to pay in Iraq. Just as the lottery and draft deferment made it easier for many Americans to ignore the price tag during Vietnam, the all-volunteer military--and the private contracting--has made it even easier to ignore the price tag of Iraq. Each of us must decide whether the American War in Iraq is right or wrong, and whether the price asked is worth paying. Again, however, most of us are able to ignore all this as others pay the final price.).

Moore, Lt. Gen. Harold G (Ret.) and Joseph L. Galloway, We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young: Ia Drang: The Battle that Changed the War in Vietnam (New York: Random House, 1992) ("Finally--even though it took ten years, cost the lives of 58,000 young Americans and inflicted humiliating defeat on a nation that had never before lost a war--some of us learned that Clausewitz had it right 150 years earlier when he wrote these words: 'No one starts a war--or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so--without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it.' Id. at 345. "In the small, closed world of the military, great victories, great defeats, and great sacrifices are never forgotten. They are remembered with battle streamers attached to unit flags. Among the scores of streamers that billow and whirl around the flags of all the battalions of the 1st Cavalry Division thee is one deep-blue Presidential Unit Citation streamer that says simply" PLEIKU PROVINCE." "Schoolchildren no longer memorize the names and dates of great battles, and perhaps that is good; perhaps that is the first step on the road to a world where wars are no longer necessary. Perhaps. But we remember those days and our comrades, and long after we are gone that long blue streamer will still caress proud flags." Id. at 347.).

Moyar, Mark, Phoenix and the Birds of Prey: The CIA’s Secret Campaign to Destroy the Viet Cong (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1997) (This book is part of Vietnam War revisionist history. From the jacket cover: "Drawing on recently declassified documents and interviews with more than one hundred U.S., South Vietnamese, and North Vietnamese sources, [the author] dissects the various attempts to eradicate the Viet Cong infrastructure and analyzes the effectiveness of each. [H]e addresses serious misconceptions about these efforts and provides the most accurate and complete picture available of the allies' decapitation of the Viet Cong shadow government." I found the prose rather dry, and I thought the author was trying to hard to demonstrate that most thing we our own historians, political scientists, foreign policy analysts, etc., have told us about the war biased and wrong. Unfortunately the author comes off as writing a Vietnam War version of "Dances with Wolves." That is, he takes all the clichés about Americans in Vietnam and turns them on their head, as though if what we thought was true is false then the opposite of what we thought must be true. That, however, is a fallacy. I still think a definite history of the American War in Vietnam has yet to be written. I think it cannot be written until our grandchildren's grandchildren's grandchildren get the necessary distance from the rhetoric of that war. Many of the current generation of historians are apologists for their fathers, and you don't get truth when you fell obliged to defend the family honor. However, here is an observation worth noting in light of the American War in Iraq, at least to the extent one thinks that war is about bring democracy to Iraq. Remember this book was published in 1997, so the interview being quoted is several years before than. "The anguishes of the American failure did not leave Ed Brady alone for a long time. 'It took me ten years before I was willing to go to the Vietnam Memorial,' Brady confided." "Vietnam profoundly changed Brady's view on foreign policy and politics, as it did for many veterans: 'When I went to Vietnam I was a very idealistic, anti-communist, pro-democracy person who thought it was a very simple black-and-white issue, and I came back thinking it was a very gray and very difficult to decide what's right and what's wrong.' He also said, however, 'I thought the activities I was engaged in were good and useful things. Otherwise, I wouldn't have spent all that time in Vietnam.' He strongly criticized some U.S. policies in Vietnam but added, 'I think the Vietnamese bear a large part of the blame for why we failed. I don't think the we're mainly responsible. They were responsible for themselves. That took me fifteen years to figure out.' He still thinks that the United States should try to promote democracy in the world, but, like many Vietnam veterans, he does not think that the United States can change the behavior of stubborn people outside of its borders. 'If we went into the former Yugoslavia and stayed for twenty or thirty years, overtime things might gradually get better. But the idea that we can go there for a year and fix it up and come home is totally ridiculous. I have very little confidence and very little faith that the American public or the government has the stamina and the know how to carry out that sort of thing.'" Id. at 357-358.).

Moyar, Mark, Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965 (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 2006) (This is a first projected two volume revisionist history of the American War in Vietnam. "Like earlier scholarship ... the recent historical literature ... has been dominated by one major school of thought. Most of the new works are concerned primarily with American foreign policymaking in Washington and Saigon. Most of them come from what is known as the orthodox school, which generally sees America's involvement in the war as wrongheaded and unjust. The revisionist school, which sees the war as a noble but improperly executed enterprise, has published much less, primarily because it has few adherents in the academic world." Id. a xi. "In sum, South Vietnam was a vital interest of the United States during the period from 1954 to 1965. The aggressive expansion of North Vietnam and China threatened South Vietnam's existence, and by 1965 only strong American action could keep South Vietnam out of Communists hands. America's policy of defending South Vietnam was therefore sound. U. S. intervention in Vietnam was not an act of strategic buffoonery, nor was it a sinister, warmongering plot that should forever stand as a terrible blemish on America's soul. Neither was it an act of hubris in which the United States pursued objectives far beyond its means. Where the United States erred seriously was in formulating its strategies for protecting South Vietnam. The most terrible mistake was the inciting of the November 1963 coup, for Ngo Dinh Diem's overthrow forfeited the tremendous gains of the preceding nine years and plunged the country into an extended period of instability and weakness. The Johnson administration was handed the thorny tasks of handling the post-coup mess and defending South Vietnam against an increasingly ambitious enemy--and in neither case did the administration achieve good results. President Johnson has available several aggressive policy options that could have enable South Vietnam to continue the war either without the help of any American ground forces at all or with the employment of U.S. ground forces in advantageous positions outside South Vietnam. But Johnson ruled out these options and therefore, during the summer of 1965, he would have to fight a defensive war within South Vietnam's borders in order to avoid the dreadful international consequences of abandoning the country." Id. at xxii-xxiii. Interesting read, yet I remain unconvinced that the consequences would have been all that dreadful had we, and the French before us, abandoned South Vietnam. Moyar tells the tale of Vietnam from an Anti-New-Left perspective, and not from a neutral perspective whose analysis concludes that the New Left got in wrong about Vietnam. You cannot convince me that the other guy is necessarily wrong, and that you are necessarily right, merely by giving the reverse spin. You convince me the other guy is wrong and that you are right by proving the conclusions of the no spin analysis and, then, showing me that that no spin analysis requires me to reject the other guy's analysis and conclusions. So, I am not saying Moyar is wrong, only that I am not convinced yet. I think it may be still to early for anyone to write an objective history of the American involvement in Vietnam. That war, or at least the ideological aspects of it, is being fought inside too many American heads still.).

Nixon, Richard M., RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978) (I first read this memoir when a graduate student and in a period where I seem to find just about any excuse for not working on my doctoral dissertation. I thought it was good and interesting then. Now, with some distance and some history, I think that, as presidential memoirs go, it is very good and quite interesting. Flawed as he was as a man, a politician, and as a president, history will be quite kind to him. That so many hated him, and so few loved him, says less about Richard Nixon and more about ourselves. "A quarter of a million people came to Washington for the October 15 [1969] Moratorium. Despite widespread rumors that some of the more radical left-wing organizations would provoke violent confrontations with police, the demonstrations were generally peaceful." "Opinions within the administration was divided over how to respond...." "The Washington Post praised the protesters and said that the Moratorium was 'a deeply meaningful statement' of the anguish they felt about the war. Elsewhere, however, reservations were expressed. The Washington Star, for example, said, 'What counts is whether the demonstration, regardless of intention, dies in fact give encouragement to Hanoi and thereby presumably prolongs the war.' As if in answer to that point, the Vietcong Radio said that the Communists had gained 'strong encouragement' from the Moratorium." "The Vietnam Moratorium raised, for the first but by no means the last time in my administration, a basic and important question about the nature of leadership in a democracy: should the President or Congress or any responsible elected official let public demonstrations influence his decisions?" "I had strong opinions about this question, and I decided to address it head on. I asked that one letter be selected from all those we had received criticizing my press conference statement that I would not be affected by the protests and that a reply be prepared to it." "The letter the staff chose was from a student at Georgetown University. In it, he stated, 'It has been my impression that it is not unwise for the President of the United States to take note of the will of the people; after all, these people elected you, you are their President, and your office bears certain obligations. Might I respectfully suggest that the President reconsider his pre-judgment.'" "I replied, 'If a President--any President--allowed his course to be set by those who demonstrate, he would betray the trust of all the rest. Whatever the issue, to allow government policy to be made in the streets would destroy the democratic process. It would give the decision, not to the majority, and not to those with the strongest arguments, but to those with the loudest voices.... It would allow every group to test its strength not at the ballot box but through confrontation in the streets.'" Id. at 402-403. When most people think of Nixon they, quite understandably, think Vietnam, Watergate and the Resignation. What they should think about more are Opening China, US-USSR Detente, Racial Polarization in America, and The Four Supremes: Burger, Blackmon, Powell, and Rehnquist. "I consider my four appointment to the Supreme Court to have been among the most constructive and far-reaching of my presidency. Some critics have characterized my appointments as an effort to create a 'Nixon Court.' It is true that the men I appointed shared my conservative judicial philosophy and significantly affected the balances of power that had developed in the Warren Court. But as individuals they were each dedicated and able constitutional lawyers who often disagreed in major cases. When I appointed them, I told each that I would never try to influence his judgment and that his only loyalty should be to the law and not to me. Their decisions in cases that affected me politically or personally reflected the fact that they accepted my admonition." Id. at 424.).

Sheehan, Neil, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam (New York: Random House, 1988) ("Vietnam was Scanlon's first war too.... [H]e had been pushed into the military by the Korean War.... [T]he desire of the Army to build up its forces in Europe to meet the perceived Soviet challenge there had kept him from seeing any combat in Korea. He had stayed in because the life of an American officer in the 1950s, with its sense of mission and travel, was a lot more interesting and meaningful than his civilian life as a dividends clerk in a St. Louis brokerage. Scanlon was a paratrooper as well as a tanker, and he was flush with the faith of the U.S. Army that the best defense is an offense and that aggressiveness wins battles and wars. This faith was the reason he now found himself in a rice paddy with his .45 caliber service pistol in his hand and bullets from guerrilla weapons he could not see ricocheting off the M-113 beside him." Id. at 249. "The reflex of aggressive action and the virtue of firepower were so ingrained in Scanlon by his training that it was beyond him to think the best thing to do was to back off, analyze the situation, and come up with a more sensible solution than a bull-headed assault. He had always been taught that when you couldn't see the other fellow, the answer was to lock horns with him. In the jargon of the tactical instructors, the solution was to 'resolve the firefight.'" Id. at 250.).

Suri, Jeremi, Henry Kissinger and the American Century (Cambridge & London: Belknap/ Harvard U. Press, 2007) (This is an interesting, worthwhile read. "Citizens who believed they had a special, if still distant, relationship with God could not settle for what Kissinger called the 'paralysis' of a thermonuclear stalemate. He argued for a new strategy emphasizing creative initiatives, rather than reliance on massive retaliation against enemy threats: 'Simply because we are strongest in strategic striking power, we cannot base all our plans on the assumption that war, if it comes, will be inevitably all-out. We must strive for a strategic doctrine which gives our diplomacy the greatest freedom of action and which addresses itself to the question of whether the nuclear age presents only risks, or whether it does not also offer opportunities.'" "Freedom of action would come, according to Kissinger, from an effort to 'bring our power into balance with the issues for which we are most likely to contend.' This meant an emphasis on proportionality--the ability to calibrate force to serve specific and limited purposes. The large thermonuclear armaments that the United States had developed for an all-out war were blunt and cumbersome. They promised wide-scale destruction but offered few alternative. They were 'total war' weapons designed to deter a direct attack on the nation or its closest allies. The American arsenal of the 1950s emphasized intimidation through 'overkill' rather than discreet force. It neglected 'capacities for local defense.'" "The technical nature of thermonuclear weapons was not, however, the main source of U.S. rigidity. The fundamental problems, Kissinger wrote, emanated from failures of strategy. Throughout his career, Kissinger criticized American containment policy for refusing to mix limited force and energetic diplomacy more effectively." "The inflexibility of Washington's military doctrine, according to Kissinger, created grave shortcomings in deterrence, as evidence by the Soviet- and Chinese-sponsored attack on South Korea in June 1950. Thermonuclear forces were not credible as weapons of retaliation in this context. Neither America's adversaries nor most of its allies believed that it would risk its own destruction in a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union to protect Seoul, Taipei, or even Tokyo. The structure of American forces and the doctrines governing their use left few alternatives to mutual suicide or conventional desperation, as the early weeks of the Korean War demonstrated." Id. at 150-151. "Containment also contributed to what Kissinger described as the 'irresponsibility' of allies and the 'psychological' weakness of citizens living in democracies.... The tendencies toward the extremes of war and appeasement within the Western world were, for Kissinger, more threatening than the inherent qualities of Soviet power.... [H]e and many other strategists feared that liberal democracy would collapse when confronted by its external adversaries. 'It should not be forgotten, ' Kissinger inveighed, 'that the defense of the Free World is a problem not only of power but of will.'" "Containment undermined collective will because it promised all-or-nothing. In the case of enemy aggression, the United States would either initiate major war or it would accept a fait accompli.... Kissinger feared that this strategic no-win situation would breed hopelessness, alienation, and defeatism.... Only a more flexible policy, mixing military threats with promising diplomatic moves, could ensure what Kissinger called a favorable 'psychological climate' for consistent, effective, and limited action by the societies allied against communism." Id. at 152-153. There are lesson here for America's so-called 'War Against Terror'.).

United States Army, Instructions for American Servicemen in Iraq During World War II with a New Forward by Lieutenant Colonel John A. Nafl (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 1943 2007).

The U. S. Dept. of the Army, The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual: U.S. Army Field Manual No. 3-24: Marine Corps Warfighting Publication No 3-33.5 (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 2007) (From Introduction to the University of Chiago Press Edition: A Radical Field Manual, by Sarah Sewall. "This counterinsurgency field manual challenges much of what is holy about the American way of war. It demands significant change and sacrifice to fight today's enemies honorably. It is therefore both important and controversial. Those who fail to see the manual as radical probably don't understand it, or at least understand what it's up against." Id. at xxi. "7-36. Discrimination applies to the means by which combatants engage the enemy. The COIN environment requires counterinsurgents to not only determine the kinds of weapons to use and how to employ them but also establish whether lethal means are desired--or even permitted.... Soldiers and Marines require an innate understanding of the effects of their actions and weapons on all aspects of the operational environment. Leaders must consider not only the first-order, desired effects of a munition or action but also possible second- and third-order effects--including undesired ones. For example, bombs delivered by fixed-wing close air support may effectively destroy the source of small arms fire from a building in an urban area; however, direct-fire weapons may be more appropriate due to the risk of collateral damage to nearby buildings and noncombatants. The leader at the scene assesses the risks and makes the decision. Achieving the desired effects requires employing tactics and weapons appropriate to the situation. In some cases, this means avoiding the use of area munitions to minimize the potential harm inflicted on noncombatants located nearby. In situations where civil security exists, even tenuously, Soldiers and Marines should pursue nonlethal means first, using lethal force only when necessary." Id. at 248-249. "7-39. Mistreatment of noncombatants, including prisoners and detainees is illegal and immoral. It will not be condoned." Id. at 249. From the jacket: "'This is the definitive guide as to how the U. S., military plans to address what is likely to be the dominant form of warfare over the next decade.' Andrew Krepinevich." "'Surely a manual that's on the bedside table of the president, vice president, secretary of defense, 21 of 25 of the Senate Armed Services Committee and many others deserves a place at your bedside too.' General David Petraeus." Of course, curious minds want to ask, what is on the bedside table of those other 4 members of the Senate Armed Services Committee? Anyway, I thought this an interesting and eye-opening read.).


Who loves war for war's own sake
Is fool, or crazed or worse
Tennyson

PROFESSOR DAVID P. CURRIE

FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO LAW SCHOOL WEBPAGE:

News 10.15.2007
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David P. Currie, 1936-2007
Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law

David P. Currie, a constitutional scholar and professor at the University of Chicago Law School for 45 years, died October 15, 2007. The author of nineteen books and hundreds of articles, he was 71 years old. David Currie’s keen intellect and acumen were widely recognized. Turning scholarship into practice, he was also the author of the 1970 Illinois Environmental Protection Act and the first chair of the Illinois Pollution Control Board.

David Currie was born on May 29, 1936, in Macon, Georgia. He received a B.A. from the University of Chicago in 1957, and an LL.B. from Harvard Law School in 1960. Following his graduation from law school, David Currie was law clerk first to Court of Appeals Judge Henry J. Friendly and then to Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter. He joined the University of Chicago Law School faculty in 1962, becoming full Professor of Law in 1968. In 1977 he was appointed the Harry N. Wyatt Professor of Law and in 1991 was named Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law.

Professor Currie authored or co-authored three major casebooks on Federal Courts, Environmental Law, and Conflict of Laws. He is the author of numerous articles in legal periodicals as well as various books - including: The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany (1994) and Air Pollution: Federal Law and Analysis (1982).

Professor Currie is perhaps best known in academic circles for two series of books he wrote about constitutional history. The first, The Constitution in the Supreme Court, was published in two volumes (1985 and 1990), each about a century of the Court’s interaction with the Constitution. The second, The Constitution in Congress, appears in four volumes, The Federalist Period (1997), The Jeffersonians (2001), Democrats and Whigs (2005), and Descent into the Maelstrom (2005). He was working on the series at the time of his death.

Professor Currie also wrote a widely read book for non-lawyers entitled The Constitution of the United States: A Primer for the People, and in 2006 recorded a reading of the entire text of the Constitution as a gift to the graduating class of the Law School.

Professor Currie has taught at the Universities of Frankfort, Hanover, Heidelberg, and Tübingen and the European University Institute in Florence. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1985. He was a member of the editorial board and frequent contributor to The Green Bag 2d. Currie was a driving force in its creation.

Professor Currie received the Law School's Graduating Students Award for Teaching Excellence a record four times, most recently from the Class of 2006. During his more than four decades with the University of Chicago Law School, his courses spanned the gamut of the Law School curriculum, including Property and Civil Procedure to generations of first-year students. He was a beloved teacher, never known for easy classes, but as a demanding teacher for whom students rose to the occasion.

David Currie was also well known as an accomplished singing actor and director, most notably of the works of his beloved Gilbert and Sullivan. Currie was an active member of Chicago’s Gilbert and Sullivan Opera Company for more than 40 years, and it is said that he has played nearly every male role in the G&S canon. David put his dramatic talent to use in the classroom, to the delight as well as the edification of his students.

A familiar figure in Hyde Park, David Currie could be seen bicycling to the Law School, playing with his grandchildren on the lakefront, or watching migrating birds on the Wooded Island.

David Currie is survived by his wife, Barbara Flynn Currie, Majority Leader of the Illinois House of Representatives (D-Chicago), two children, Stephen and Margaret, four grandchildren (Nicholas and Irene Currie and Katherine and David Treskow), and by brother Elliott Park Currie and sister Carolyn Park Currie.

A memorial service for Professor Currie will be held on Saturday, October 27 at 11:00 am in the Weymouth Kirkland Auditorium of the University of Chicago Law School.

A List Without a Theme

Epstein, Richard A., Antitrust Consent Decress in Theory and Practice: Why Less Is More (New York: The AEI Press, 2007).

Friedlander, Saul, Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume 1: The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939 (New York: HarperCollins, 1997).

Friedlander, Saul, Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume 2: The Years of Extermination, 1939-1945 (New York: HarperCollins, 2007) (From among the few hundreds of thousands of Jews who had stayed in occupied Europe and survived, most struck roots in new surroundings, either by necessity or by choice; they built their lives, resolutely hid their scars, and experienced the common share of joys and sorrows dealt by everyday existence. For several decades, many evoked the past mainly among themselves, behind closed doors, so to speak; some became occasional witnesses, others opted for silence. Yet, whatever the path they chose, for all of them those years remained the most significant period of their lives. They were entrapped in it: Recurrently, it pulled them back into overwhelming terror and, throughout, notwithstanding the passage of time, it carried along with it the indelible memory of the dead.” Id. at 663.).

Larson, Edward J., A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America’s First Presidential Campaign (New York: Free Press, 2007).

Sunstein, Cass R., David Schkade, Lisa M. Ellman, and Andres Sawicki, Are Judges Political: An Empirical Analysis of the Federal Judiciary (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institute Press, 2006) (“In this book, [the authors] examine many different areas of the law, focusing on a number of controversial issues that seem especially likely to reveal divisions between Republican and Democractic appointees….” “[Their] initial goal is to examine three hypotheses: 1. Ideological voting. In ideological contested cases…a judge’s ideological tendency can be predicted by the party of the appointing president: Republican appointees vote differently from Democratic appointees.” 2. Ideological dampening. A Judge’s ideological tendency is likely to be dampened if she is sitting with two judges of a different political party…. 3. Ideological amplification. A judge’s ideological tendency, in ideologically contested cases, is likely to be amplified if she is sitting with two judges from the same political party….” “[The authors] find that in numerous areas of the law, all three hypotheses are strongly confirmed.” Id. at 8-9.) “[They] offer a number of other findings. [They] show that variations in panel composition lead to dramatically different outcomes, in a way that creates serious problems for the rule of law.” Id. at 11. Nothing terribly surprising here, but still worth the read and ponder.).

Tomz, Michael, Reputation and International Cooperation: Sovereign Debt Across Three Centuries (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2007 (This is a worthwhile read for those interested in international law, international trade, and international finance. “The literature on international relations offers two major perspectives about how credibility and cooperation can be sustained in an anarchical world. The first is repeat play, in which leaders cooperate today to ensure good relations in the future. The second is issue linkage, the process of connecting behavior in one area to the threat of sanctions in another. Both provide substantial insights into world politics, but neither—without amendment--adequately accounts for historical patterns of behavior in international finance. After noting the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches as applied to international debt, I propose a reputational theory that builds on models of repeat play but modifies them by conjoining two key features: incomplete information and political change. I then show, using three centuries of data from international capital markets, that this reputational theory offers new insights into relations between debtors and creditors.” Id. at 4.).

Walser, Robert, The Assistant translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky (New York: New Direction Paperback, 1978, 1985, 2007) (fiction).

Williams, John, Stoner introduction by John McGahern (New York: New York Review Books, 1965, 2003) (Fiction. “An occasional student who comes upon the name may wonder idly who William Stoner was, but he seldom pursues his curiosity beyond a casual question. Stoner's colleagues, who held him in no particular esteem when he was alive, speak of him rarely now; to the older ones, his name is a reminder of the end that awaits them all, and to the younger ones it is merely a sound which evokes no sense of the past and no identity with which they can associate themselves or their careers." Id. at 3-4.).

Wood, B. Dan, The Politics of Economic Leadership: The Causes and Consequences of Presidential Rhetoric (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2007) (“This book examines the causes and consequences of presidential efforts to lead the economy through words…. The impact of presidential words…is actually an empirical matter that can be addressed by scientific research.” Id. at xiii.).

David Brooks on Jack Kerouac and You and Us

This is an op-ed column worth finding and reading.

OPINION | October 2, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist: Sal Paradise at 50
By DAVID BROOKS
Over the past few weeks critics have taken another look at Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road,” and this time their descriptions of it are very different.

BOOKS WHICH COULD HAVE BEEN ON YESTERDAY'S LIST, YET DESERVE A SEPARATE POSTING

Appiah, Kwame Anthony, & Martin Bunzel, eds., Buying Freedom: The Ethics and Economics of Slave Redemption (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2007) (From the ‘Introduction’: “This volume has its origins in an unsolicited telemarketing call. One of us (MB) was asked for money to (purportedly) free a slave in Sudan and was intrigued enough to solicit views from a variety of human rights and international relief organizations. Struck by the near unanimous condemnation of the practice, the editors began an extended conversation with others about just what (if only under idealized circumstances) would make such a practice morally wrong….” “The results of the conversations prompted by the original practical question are represented in what follows.” Id. at xiii. From Chapter Three, Arnab K. Basu and Nancy H. Chau, An Exploration of the Worst Forms of Child Labor: Is Redemption a Viable Option?‘: “According to recent International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates, 211 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 are economically active, and of those, 186.3 million are child laborers. [‘According to ILO terminology, a child who worked for one hour or more the previous week is economically active. A child labourer is defined as a child between the ages of 5 and 11 who is economically active, or one aged 12-14 who does 14 or more hours of nonhazardous work pper week or 1 hour of haxardous work per week.’] In addition, 5.7 million children are in forced or bonded labor, 1.8 million in prostitution and 9.3 million in armed conflict.” Id. at 37. Of course, one might feel greater sorrow for the 18 year old college student described in Seth Schiesel’s NYT article today: “ Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, is the richest man on earth. [The student], a freshman at the University of Washington, said he would have 73 cents left in his bank account as of midnight. And that’s one reason Mr. Gates is likely to be the richest man on earth for quite a while. Both were at a Best Buy store in Bellevue, Wash., on Monday night as the third installment of Halo, Microsoft’s hit video game series, went on sale at 12:01 a.m. yesterday. Just before that moment, Mr. Gates was hand-shaking his way down the line of customers. Among them was [the student], 18, who said the 73 cents was all he would have left after buying the game.”).

Berg, Mary, The Diary of Mary Berg: Growing Up in the Warsaw Ghetto edited by S. L. Shneiderman, new edition prepared by Sausan Lee Pentlin (Oxford: Oneworld Book, 2007).

Grass, Gunter, Peeling the Onion: A Memoir translated from the German by Michael Henry Heim (New York: Harcourt, 2007).

Zamir, Tzachi, Ethics and the Beast: A Speciesist Argument for Animal Liberation (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2007) (I had been sitting in on an ‘Animal Rights Symposium’ beginning conducted at the law school. I am not yet sure where I will come down on the multitude of issues relating to human treatment of nonhuman animals. However, simply thinking about and struggling with those issues has been most intellectually–and morally--enlightening. Tzachi Zamir’s thoughtful book/essay provides additional food for thought.).

SOME BOOKS FOR THINKING PEOPLE

Battles, Matthew, Library: An Unquiet History (New York & London: Norton, 2003) (“Reading the library, we quickly come to an obvious conclusion: most books are bad, very bad in fact. Worst of all, they’re normal: they fail to rise above the contradictions and confusions of their times…. It’s understandable, then, that we spend so much energy ferreting out the exceptional books, the ones that shatter paradigms. But we shouldn’t forget that the unremarkable books have much to teach us about cultural history—ultimately more, perhaps, than our cherished Great Books.” Id. at 16-17. “In the ideal public library, we are all readers of the ‘middling sort.’ Reading whatever we will, we fulfill a public function, preserving the sacrosanct space of inner thought that is our birthright. Assaults on that birthright in the forms of legislation, surveillance, and censorship ultimately are precisely as dangerous as our acquiescence in them.” “What we face is not a loss of books but the loss of a world.” Id. at 213.).

Epictetus, The Discourses as Reported by Arrian, Books I-II with an English translation by W.A. Oldfather (Cambridge, Ma. and London, England: Harvard U. Press, 1925) ("What, then, does it mean to be getting an education? It means to be learning how to apply the natural preconceptions to particular cases, each to the other in conformity with nature, and, further, to make the distinction, that some things are under our control while others are not under our control. Under our control are moral purpose and and all the acts of moral purpose; but not under our control are the body, the parts of the body, possessions, parents, brothers, children, country--in a word, all that with which we associate." Id. at 143. "What is the beginning of philosophy?... The beginning of philosophy with those who take it up as they should, and enter in, as it were, by the gate, is a consciousness of a man's own weakness and impotence with reference to the things of real consequence in life." Id. at 277. "What is the first business of one who practises philosophy? To get rid of thinking that one knows; for it is impossible to get a man to begin to learn that which he thinks he knows. However, as we go to the philosophers we all babble hurly-burly about what ought to be done and what ought not, good and evil, fair and foul, and on these ground assign praise and blame, censure and reprehension, passing judgement on fair and foul practices, and discriminating between them. Bu what do we go the philosopher for? To learn what we do not think we know. And what is that? General principles. For some of us want to learn what the philosophers are saying, thinking it will be witty and shrewd, others, because they wish to profit thereby. But it is absurd to think that when a man wishes to learn one thing he will actually learn something else, or, in short, that a man will make progress in anything without learning it." Id. at 327-329. "Give me but one young man who has come to school with this purpose [i.e., learning first principles] in view, who has become an athlete in this activity, say, 'As for me, let everything else go; I am satisfied if I shall be free to live untrammeled and untroubled, to hold up my neck in the face of facts like a free man, and to look up to heaven as a friend of God, without fear of what may possibly happen.' Let one of you show me such a person, so that I can say to him: Enter, young man, into your own, for it is your destiny to adorn philosophy, yours are these possessions, yours these books, yours these discourses. Then, when he has worked his way through this first field of study and mastered it like an athlete, let him come to me again and say, 'I want, it is true, to be tranquil and free from turmoil, but I want also, as a god-fearing man, a philosopher, and a diligent student, to know what is my duty towards the gods, towards parents, towards brothers, towards my country, towards strangers.' Advance now to the second field of study, this also is yours. 'Yes, but I have already studied this second field. What I wanted was to be secure and unshaken, and that not merely in my waking hours, but also when asleep, and drunk, and melancholy-mad.' Man, you are a god, great are the designs you cherish!" Id. at 337.).

Epictetus, The Discourses as Reported by Arrian, Books III-IV; Fragments; Encheiridion with an English translation by W.A. Oldfather (Cambridge, Ma. and London, England: Harvard U. Press, 1928).

Godden, Richard, William Faulkner: An Economy of Complex Words (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2007) (Those well versed in Faulkner will find this an interesting read. From the jacket cover: “Godden traces how [Faulkner’s] late fiction echoes the economic and racial traumas of the South’s delayed modernization in the mid-twentieth century. As the New Deal rapidly accelerated the long-term shift from tenant farming to modern agriculture, many African Americans were driven from the land and forced to migrate north. At the same time, white landowners exchanged dependency on black labor for dependency on northern capital…. Godden shows how the novels’ literary complexities—from their narrative structure down to their smallest verbal expression—reflect and refract the period’s economic complexities. By demonstrating the interrelation of literary forms and economic systems, the book describes, in effect, the poetics of an economy.”).

Goldsmith, Jack, The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration (New York: Norton, 2007) (This is a perversely interesting read. It may cause those of you who are not lawyers to included as part of your daily mantra the Shakespeare line, 'First we kill all the lawyers.' It may cause a few of you who are lawyers to question whether, on net, lawyers play a positive role in contemporary American society. Do we have too much law and/or too many lawyers? I think this book will be most appreciated by those who know their American history, including American preseidential and constitutional history. "[Then Chief White House Counsel] Gonzales's memo has been criticized as a conspiracy to commit a war crime. A more charitable and realistic view is that the President's counselor was trying to help his client avoid the pitfalls of the post-Watergate criminalization of warfare. President Bush faced national security imperatives.... But for the first time ever, the president's ultimate obligation to do what it takes to protect the nation from devastating attack was checked by a hornet's nest of complex criminal restrictions on his traditional wartime discretionary powers--restrictions that the White House feared would later be construed uncharitably in our shifting polarized political culture. Many people think the Bush administration has been indifferent to wartime legal constraints. But the opposite is true: the administration has been strangled by law, and since September 11, 2001, the war has been lawyered to death. The administration has paid attention to law not necessarily because it wanted to, but rather because it had no choice." "It may be hard to believe that executive branch officials, many of whom risk their lives to protect the nation, really care much about criminal law, investigation, and possibly, jail. But they do care--a lot. In my two years of government, I witnessed top officials and bureaucrats in the White House and throughout the administration openly worry that investigators acting with the benefit of hindsight in a different political environment would impose criminal penalties on heat-of-battle judgments. These men and women did not believe they were breaking the law, and indeed they took extraordinary steps to ensure that they didn't. But they worried nonetheless because they would be judged in an atmosphere different from when they acted, because the criminal investigative process is mysterious and scary, because lawyers' fees can cause devastating financial losses, and because an investigation can produce reputation-ruining dishonor and possibly end one's career, even if you emerge 'innocent.'" "Why, then, do they even come close to the legal line? Why risk reputation, fortune, and perhaps liberty? Why not play it safe? Many counterterrorism officials did play it safe before 9/11, when the criminalization of war and intelligence contributed to the paralyzing risk aversion that pervaded the White House and the intelligence community. The 9/11 attacks, however, made playing it safe no longer feasible." Id. at 68-70. No longer playing it safe, but with what consequences? "The main problem was not that senior officials faced potential legal jeopardy...." "The main problem was the effect that the legalization of warfare and intelligence had on lover-level officials in the Defense Department, the CIA, and the National Security Agency. The White House couldn't execute its plans to check al Qaeda without the cooperation of the military and intelligence bureaucracy. But these bureaucracies--especially in the intelligence community--had in the 1980s and 1990s become institutionally disinclined to take risks...." "This mounting caution was reinforced by the swarm of lawyers that rose up in the military and intelligence establishment to interpret multiplying laws and provide cover for those asked to act close to the legal line. In the 1970s the CIA had only a handful of lawyers. But as legal restrictions on CIA activities grew, and despite huge personnel cuts in the 1990s, the number of CIA lawyers rose and rose, and today stands at well over one hundred. The number of lawyers in the Defense Department grew even more steeply during this period, and today stands at over ten thousand, not including reservists. As lawyers grew in number, they grew in influence. Commanding officers and intelligence operative seeking to avoid 'retroactive discipline' increasingly sought lawyers' permission before acting. If the lawyer said 'no,' the official had a perfect excuse for not acting. If the lawyer said 'yes,' the official was effectively immunized from legal liability, including jail. Seeking a lawyer's input this became a way to avoid both blame and jail." "Lawyers are by nature and training a cautious bunch, and as their power grew their caution spread." Id. at 91-92. "[P]rior to 9/11. intelligence officers spooked by cautious lawyers failed to take actions that might have prevented the 9/11 attacks. The CIA was, in the words of the 9/11 Commission Report, 'institutionally averse to risk,' and law and lawyers ere a big part of the problem. It didn't help that CIA leaders encouraged their officers to buy professional liability insurance for legal expenses to be incurred in the expected criminal and related investigations." Id. at 95. But the book is not about lawyers, though it is certainly about law. The book is about the Bush presidency. "Lincoln and Roosevelt understood that, as Schlesinger said, the 'truly strong President is not the one who relies on his power to command but the one who recognizes his responsibility, and opportunity, to enlighten and persuade.'" "We are unlikely to come to think of President Bush in this way, for he has not embraced Lincoln's and Roosevelt's tenets of democratic leadership in crisis. He has been almost entirely inattentive to the soft factors of legitimation--consultation, deliberation, the appearance of deference, and credible expression of public concern for constitutional and international values--in his dealing with Congress, the courts, and allies. He has instead relied on the hard power of prerogative. And he has seen his hard power diminished in many ways because he has failed to take the softer aspects of power seriously, This irony will likely be the Bush presidency's legacy for executive power." Id. at 215.).

Havazelett, Ehud, Bearing the Body: A Novel (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007) (“But here, the saddest most beautiful prayer I know: ‘Beauty is a pledge of the possible conformity between the soul and nature, and consequently a ground of faith in the supremacy of the good.’” “Try carrying that around without breaking your heart.” Id. at 289.).

Hirschman, Albert O., Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States (Cambridge & London: Harvard U. Press, 1970) (This remains a very important book. "The performance of a firm or an organization is assumed to be subject to deterioration for unspecified, random causes which are neither so compelling nor so durable as to prevent a return to previous performance levels, provided managers direct their attention and energy to that task.... Management then finds out about its failings via two alternative routes: (1) Some customers stop buying the firm's products or some members leave the organization: this is the exist option. As a result, revenues drop, membership declines, and management is impelled to search for ways and means to correct whatever faults have led to exist. (2) The firm's customers or the organization's members express their dissatisfaction directly to management or to some other authority to which management is subordinate or through general protest addressed to anyone who cares to listen: this is the voice option. As a result, management once again engages in a search for the causes and possible cures of customers' and members' dissatisfaction." Id. at 3-4. "The remainder of this book is largely devoted to the comparative analysis of these two options and to their interplay." Id. at 405. "[T]wo principal determinants of the readiness to resort to voice when exit is possible [are]: (1) the extent to which customer-members are willing to trade off certainty of exit against the uncertainties of an improvement in the deteriorated product; and (2) the estimate customer-members have of their ability to influence the organization." "Now the first factor is clearly related to that special attachment to an organization known as loyalty...." "As a rule, then, loyalty holds exist at bay and activates voice." Id. at 77-78.).

Klein, Naomi, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt, 2007 (This is a powerful book. However, though Klein connects the dots, it is not clear that she has shown that the various dots have a cause-effect relationship. A recent graduate of the law school recommended this book to me. I suspect that, at least in part, he did so because I am on record as a believer—though not necessarily a ‘true believer’—in the Chicago School of economics. So, it is not surprising that I am rather unconvinced by the ‘blame it on Milton Friedman and the Chicago School’ argument and narrative at the core of this book. That said, I very strongly recommend reading the book.).

Pagels, Elaine & Karen L. King, Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity (New York: Viking, 2007).

Saks, Elyn R., Refusing Care: Forced Treatment and the Rights of the Mentally Ill (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 2002).

Sunstein, Cass R., Republic.com 2.0 (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2007) (This is a thoughtful discussion of the relationship among democracy, free speech and the Internet.).

Weisman, Alan, The World Without Us (New York: Thomas Dunne Books/ St. Martin’s Press, 2007) (From the jacket cover: “[E]xplains how our massive infrastructure would collapse and finally vanish with human presence.”. Or, why all other life on this planet—excepting hair lice--would be better without us.).

Wisse, Ruth R., Jews and Power (Jewish Encounters) (New York: Shocken/ Nextbook, 2007) (“To this day, Jews figure more prominently in the study of religion than they do in the study of government or political theory. Political Science has shown little interest in a nation that doesn’t fit its paradigms.” “To address this deficiency as I see it, this book highlights the political aspect of Hewish experience. In particular, I want to see how the politics of Jews occasions the politics of anti-Jews. I look at the politics of Jews and anti-Jews in tandem because that is the way they coexist. Some readers may be concerned that such linkage would appear to hold Jews responsible for the aggression leveled against them. Rather, the tendency of Jews to seek fault in themselves is part of the harmful pattern I hope to expose. Psychologists do not demean their patients by inquiring into the patterns of abuse they have sustained, neither should our inquiry into the pattern of Jewish political strategy be mistaken for reproach.” Id. at xiv-xv.).

Yellin, Tamar, The Genizah at the House of Shepher (New Milford, Ct., & London: The Toby Press, 2005) (fiction).

TWO ITEMS FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES

I should like to refer you to the two items below.

BUSINESS | September 15, 2007
Ayn Rand's Literature of Capitalism
By HARRIET RUBIN
Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged,”a glorification of the right of individuals to live entirely for their own interest, influenced Alan Greenspan and others.

BOOKS / SUNDAY BOOK REVIEW | September 16, 2007
Essay: Revisiting the Canon Wars
By RACHEL DONADIO
Two decades after Allan Bloom’s “The Closing of the American Mind,” it’s generally agreed that his multiculturalist opponents won the canon wars.

TEACHING THE MEANING OF LIFE

This long essay on true purpose of a college eduation deserved it own posting to this blog. Though most readers of this blog are well pass college, as teachers and citizens it addresses something which should be of continuing concern for all of us.

Kronman, Anthony T., Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2007) (“By 1880, the world of the antebellum college had disappeared. For those teachers of the humanities who felt some loyalty to the traditions of the old regime and still believed they had a duty to guide their students in the search for an answer to the question of what ultimately matters in life and why, a new way of providing such guidance had to be found amidst the ruins of the old order, in a culture of skeptical pluralism that had not antecedent in American higher education.” “Those who took up the challenge agreed on two basic points: The first was that the tendency toward specialization must be resisted. The purpose of a college education is not, they said, merely or even mainly to prepare students for their careers by conveying to them the specialized knowledge they need for their work. More fundamentally, a college must equip its students for the comprehensive challenges of life by giving them what Alexander Meiklejohn called training in the general ‘art of living.’ A college’s first duty, he said, is to help its students acquire this art—not to equip them for the more limited responsibilities associated with a particular job.” “Second, there was a broad agreement that the humanities are the disciplines best suited to do this. Literary studies were though particularly important in this regard…. The study of literature, classical and modern, had become an important vehicle for training students in Meiklejohn’s art of living.” “The same was true of philosophy…. It had become a testing ground for the examination of competing philosophies of life and the arguments that support them…. The study of history, which supplies an organizing framework for the examination of man’s cultural achievements and helps bring these to bear in an orderly way on the central problems of life, seemed relevant to Meiklejohn’s goal as well. Among the many specialized fields of study that now had a place in the university, it was the humanities—literature, philosophy, history, and art—that still seemed most alive to the old, unspecialized question of how best to live.” Id. at 71-72. “Yet despite their variety, most of these programs rested on several important (and today controversial) assumptions that went beyond the general idea that a student’s education should be preparation for life and that the humanities are the disciplines best equipped to provide it. Together these assumptions defined a philosophy pf humanistic education. They defined its goal and the best means to reach it.” “I shall call this ideal ‘secular humanism.’ Others have used the name and given it different meanings. Some of these have implications I do not wish to endorse. But it is a good name nonetheless. For it underscores the single most important feature of the outlook I have in mind. This was the conviction that it is possible to explore the meaning of life in a deliberate and organized way even after its religious foundations have been called into doubt. In a culture of deepening skepticism, secular humanism offered modest but real grounds for hop to teachers of the humanities who wanted to believe they still had the competence to lead their students in a disciplined study of the human condition and to help them locate their own personal search for meaning within it. For the better part of a century, secular humanism remained a source of inspiration—sometimes noticed, often not—for teachers who wanted to do this and who recognized that their efforts had to be based on something other than man’s well-understood relation to God.” Id. at 74-75. “Today, this idea is not threatened by doubts. It is threatened by pious conviction. Its real enemy is the new faith which prescribes the orthodoxy to which so many students subscribe—the culture of political correctness that strangles serious debate, the careerism that distracts from life as a whole, the blind acceptance of science and technology that disguise and deny our human condition. It is these that now put the idea of an art of living at risk and undermine the authority of humanities teachers to teach it. But these same pieties make it essential that this authority to be reclaimed. The secular humanism that once saved us from our doubts must now save us from the forces that belittle and obscure it and restore the openness and wonder that will always accompany any authentic effort to ask it.” Id. at 258-259.).

WAR ON TERROR AMERICAN STYLE

In my capacity as just a citizen in a participatory democracy, and with a responsibility of being informed, I found reading and thinking through the law school casebook below quite an eye-opening and worthwhile experience.

Dycus, Stephen, William C. Banks & Peter Raven-Hansen, Counterterrorism Law (New York: Aspen Publishers/Wolters Kluwer Law & Business, 2007).

A thoughtful reading will require one to place aside all the emotional, political, and patriotic jargon and jingolism one encounters every day in the media. It will require one to constantly ask oneself three questions: (1) Will these policies be effective in countering terrorism?; (2) If effective, will these policies necessiate fundamental changes and compromises in important American values and ways of life?; and (3) If so, has terror won already? I do not propose to answer these questions for anyone else (I am not sure I can answer them for myself yet), and neither do the authors of the casebook. Yet, those are the important questions lurking in the shadow and for which thoughtful readers will not be allowed to hide behind the abstract and the general.

Were I to teach a course on counterterrorism (which I would not) I would want to supplement the casebook with some readings from America's political history. An appreciation of the The Red Scare of the earlier 20th century would, I think, provide a valuable point for comparision.

HAVING TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF THE LONG LABOR DAY WEEKEND...

Coetzee, J. M., Inner Workings: Literary Essays 2000-2005 (New York: Viking, 2007).

Frankfurt, Harry G., The Importance of What We Care About: Philosophical Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1988) (I had occasion, once again, to re-read this collection of essays. I want to bring to your attention one particular essay, 'Equality as a Moral Ideal.' "Economic egalitarianism is, as I shall construe it, the doctrine that it is desirable for everyone to have the same amounts of income and of wealth (for short, "money"). Hardly anyone would deny that there are situations in which it makes sense to tolerate deviations from this standard.... Nonetheless, many people believe that economic equality has considerable moral value in itself. For this reason they often urge that efforts to approach the egalitarian ideal should be accorded...a significant priority." "In my opinion, this is a mistake. Economic equality is not as such of particular moral importance. With respect to the distribution of economic assets, what is important from the point of view of morality is not that everyone should have the same but that each should have enough. If everyone had enough, it would be of no moral consequence whether some had more than others. I shall refer to this alternative to egalitarianism--namely, that what is moral important with respect to money is for everyone to have enough--as 'the doctrine of sufficiency'." "But despite the fact that an egalitarian distribution would not necessarily be objectionable, the error of believing that there are powerful moral reasons for caring about equality is far from innocuous. In fact, this belief tends to do significant harm." To the extent that people are preoccupied with equality for its own sake, their readiness to be satisfied with any particular level of income or wealth is guided not by their own interests and needs but just by the magnitude of the economic benefits that are at the disposal of others. In this way egalitarianism distracts people from measuring the requirements to which their individual natures and their personal circumstances give rise. It encourages them instead to insist upon a level of economic support that is determined by a calculation in which the particular features of their own lives are irrelevant.... A concern for economic equality, construed as desirable in itself, tends to divert a person's attention away from endeavoring to discover--within his experience of himself and of his life--what he himself really cares about and what will actually satisfy him, although this is the most basic and the most decisive task upon which an intelligent selection of economic goals depends. Exaggerating the moral importance of economic equality is harmful, in other words, because it is alienating." Id. at 134, 134-136.)

Hagen, George, Tom Bedlam: A Novel (New York: Random House, 2007).

Hobbs, Robert, Milton Avery: The Late Paintings (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2001).

Lawrence, D. H., Apocalypse (The Definitive Text from the Cambridge Edition) (New York: Viking, 1981) (From the jacket cover: "This essay] is a radical critique of religion and society and a testament to Lawrence's belief in the life-giving spiritual properties of the physical word.").

Patterson, Kevin, Consumption: A Novel (New York: Doubleday, 2007).

Sofer, Dalia, The September of Shiraz: A Novel (New York: Ecco, 2007).

Stott, Rebecca, Ghostwalk: A Novel (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2007).

THERE IS A LAW SCHOOL DOWN THE ROAD WHERE SOMEONE HAS THE TITLE 'DEPUTY DEAN FOR INTELLECTUAL LIFE'.

... I WANT THAT POSITION! IMAGINE SPENDING ONE'S DAYS FOSTERING AND SHEPHERDING INTELLECTUAL LIFE. MUST BE GREAT DAYS.

Clark, Gregory, A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2007) (This is both a very good and a very informative read. "The Industrial Revolution in England--the seemingly abrupt escape of this tiny island nation, within less than a generation, from millennia of pitifully slow economic progress--is one of history's great mysteries. Its apparent suddenness, in a society that was (and still is) noted for the evolutionary nature of all social change, poses a baffling challenge to those who would supply an economic explanation." Id. at 230. "...I argue that, contrary to appearances, the Industrial Revolution actually stretched back hundreds of years to its origins, and that it was a gradual and evolutionary development that affected other European economies almost as much as England. It was the product of the gradual progress of settled agrarian societies toward a moral rational, economically oriented mindset...." Id. at 231. "Within societies the forces set in motion by the Industrial Revolution have moved toward equality and social harmony. But across societies ... the Industrial Revolution led to a marked increase in income differences. Before the Industrial Revolution the rich and the poor were close neighbors. Now they are but distant cousins, gazing at each other across national borders and widening income gaps." Id. at 299. "[A]t the most general level, differences in efficiency are the ultimate explanation for most of the gap in incomes between rich and poor countries in the modern economy. Just as with growth over time, ... the proximate cause of differences in income per person across countries is about one-quarter the stocks of physical capital per person and three-quarters the efficiency of utilization of all inputs. [] In a world where capital flowed easily between economies, capital itself responded to differences in country efficiency levels. Inefficient countries ended up with small capital stocks and efficient ones large amounts of capital. And efficiency differences explain almost all variations between countries in income levels." Id. at 329. "[E]conomics has become more professional. Graduate programs have expanded, pouring out a flood of talented economists armed with an ever more sophisticated array of formal models and statistical methods. But since the Industrial Revolution we have entered a strange new world in which the rococo embellishments of economic theory helps little in understanding the pressing questions that the ordinary person asks of economics: Why are some rich and some poor? In the future will we all be among the lucky? In this book I have suggested ways in which the Malthusian era, through differential survivial of individuals, can predict success or failure for modern societies, and also predict a continuing future of economic growth?" Id. at 372. "History shows ... that the West has no model of economic development to offer the still-poor countries of the world. There is no simple economic medicine that will guarantee growth, and even complicated economic surgery offers no clear prospect of relief for societies afflicted with poverty. Even direct gifts of aid have proved ineffective in stimulating growth. In this context the only policy the West could pursue that will ensure gains for at least some of the poor of the Third World is to liberalize immigration from these countries.... Aid to the Third World may disappear into the pockets of Western Consultants and the corrupt rulers of these societies. But each extra migrant admitted to the emerald cities of the advanced world is one more person guaranteed a better material lifestyle." Id. at 373. "The association of income with happiness observed within societies might lead us to believe naively that another profound effect of the Industrial Revolution was to spread happiness and good cheer around the globe. Unfortunately there is little evidence of gains in happiness from gains in income, life expectancy, or health by societies as a whole." Id. at 374. "World economic history is thus full of counterintuitive effects, surprises, and puzzles. It is intertwined with who we are and how our culture was formed. No one can claim to be truly intellectually alive without having understood and wrestled, at least a little, with these mysteries--of how we arrived at our present affluence only after millennia in the wilderness, and of why it is so hard for many societies to join us in the material Promised Land." Id. at 377 (italic added). READ THIS BOOK!).

Coleman, Jon T., Vicious: Wolves and Men in America (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2004) (This book is very interesting, and important, at a number of levels. "Whether shot by a 7mm Ruger or brained by a log, wolves not only perished in great numbers throughout American history, but they did in some of the most atrocious ways imaginable. EuroAmericans colonists trapped wolves to protect livestock, expand markets, combat evil, and collect bounties. Some of their motives were comprehensible. But once they caught their animals foes, why did they beat, bait, torture, and humiliate them? What explains the pleasure so many found in wolf abuse?" Id. at 228.).

Gissurarson, Hannes H., Hayek’s Conservative Liberalism (New York: Garland Publishing, 1987) (This a the author's doctoral dissertation. It concludes "that Hayek's political theory, despite some flaws, is coherent, because from the same premises, man's inevitable ignorance, and the existence of the extended society, social conservatism and economic liberalism can both be seen to follow. [Hayek's political theory] remains recognizably liberalism, not conservatism, because it retains a belief that progress is possible and that every human being is, in principle, fit for freedom." Id. at 2. Though interesting, I found this work problematic. In an earlier essay, 'On Why I Am Not a Conservative' (1960:), Hayek himself had explained (a) the difference between conservatism and (classical) liberalism (or what is call 'libertarianism' in the United States), (b) why he was a liberal and not a conservative, (c) why classical liberals/libertarians may find themselves aligned with conservatives on certain issues, and, importantly, why classical liberals/libertarians will find themselves at odds conservatives on others. Classical Liberals ( or libertarians) have very different views about the role of government than do conservatives. Gissurarson would negate/minimize those differences so as to make Hayek a 'conservative,' only to rediscover those difference so Hayek may remain a (classical) liberal. This is a valiant effort at an unnecessary task.).

Gordon, Robert W., ed., The Legacy of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh U. Press, , 1992) ("There has been only one great American Legal thinker and it was Holmes," id. at 31 (Morton J. Horwitz, "The Place of Justice Homes in American Legal Thought".)).

Hayek, Friedrich A. von, The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek: Volume 1, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism edited by W. W. Bartley III (Routledge, England: U. Chicago Press, 1988) ("We have mentioned the capacity to learn by imitation as one of the prime benefits conferred during our long instinctual development. Indeed, perhaps the most important capacity with which the human individual is genetically endowed, beyond innate responses, is his ability to acquire skills by largely imitative learning. In view of this, it is important to avoid, right from the start, a notion that stems from what I call the 'fatal conceit': the idea that the ability to acquire skills stems from reason. For it is the other way around: our reason is as much the result of an evolutionary selection process as is our morality. It stems however from a somewhat separate development, so that one should never suppose that our reason is in the higher critical position and that only those moral rules are valid that reason endorses." Id. at 21 "The moment that barter is replaced by indirect exchange mediated by money, ready intelligibility ceases and abstract interpersonal processes begin that far transcend even the most enlightened individual perception." "Money, the very 'coin' of ordinary interaction, is hence of all things the least understood and--perhaps with sex--the object of greatest unreasoning fantasy; and like sex it simultaneously fascinates, puzzles and repels. The literature treating it is probably greater than that devoted to any other single subject; and browsing through it inclines one to sympathise with the writer who long ago declared that no other subject, not even love, has driven more men to madness. 'The love of money', the Bible declares, 'is the root of all evil' (I Timothy, 6:10). But ambivalence about it is perhaps even more common: money appears as at once the most powerful instrument of freedom and the most sinister tool of oppression. This most widely-accepted medium of exchange conjures up all the unease that people feel towards a process they cannot understand, that they both love and hate, and some of whose effects they desire passionately while detesting others that are inseparable from the first." Id. at 101-102.).

Hayek, Friedrich A. von, The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek: Volume 2, The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents--The Definitive Edition edited by Bruce Caldwell (Routledge, England: U. Chicago Press, 2007) (I try to read this every two years or so. It remains an important book ... and a even more important warning. "Nothing distinguishes more clearly conditions in a free country from those in a country under arbitrary government than the observance in the former of the great principles known as the Rule of Law. Stripped of all technicalities, this means that government in all its actions is bound by rules fixed and announced beforehand--rules which make it possible to foresee with fair certainty how the authority will use its coercive powers in given circumstances and to plan one's individual affairs on the basis of this knowledge. Though this ideal can never be perfectly achieved, since legislators as well as those to whom the administration of the law is entrusted are fallible men, the essential point, that the discretion left to the executive organs wielding coercive power should be reduced as much as possible, is clear enough. While every law restricts individual freedom to some extent by altering the means which people may use in the pursuit of their aims, under the Rule of Law the government is prevented from stultifying individual efforts by ad hoc action. Within the known rules of the game the individual is free to pursue his personal ends and desires, certain that the powers of government will not be used deliberately to frustrate his efforts." Id. at 112-113. It would not be an overstatement to suggest that, in America, the Rule of Law has been seriously compromised in recent years. Also, it is not even clear whether students at American law schools are even required to given serious thought to the concept, let alone the importance, of the Rule of Law. For most, it probably just a jingo.).

Hayek, Friedrich A. von, The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek: Volume 3, The Trend of Economic Thinking: Essays on Political Economists and Economic History edited by W. W. Bartley III and Stephen Kresge (Routledge, England: U. Chicago Press, 1991) (Students of law--which is not the same as law students-- should take note of the following passage, substituting "legal thinker"(?) for "economist", "law" for "economics," etc. From 'On Being an Economist': Before I pursue this subject of the effect of public opinion and political bias on the work of the economist I must for a moment pause to consider the various reasons and purposes which make us study economics. It is probably still true of most of us ... that we did not turn to economics for the fascination of the subject as such. Whatever may guide us later, few do ... turn to economics for that reason--simply because we usually don't quite know what economics is. Indeed I remember that when I first borrowed ... a textbook on economics I was strongly repelled by the dreariness of what I found, and my social enthusiasm was hardly sufficient to make me plod through the tome in which I hoped to find--and needles to say, did not find--the answer to the burning problem of how to build a juster society for which I really cared. But while the motives which have led most of us--and I hope most of you--to the study of economics are highly commendable, they are not very conducive to real advance of insight. The fact which we must face is that nearly all of us come to the study of economics with very strong views on subjects which we do not understand. And even if we make a show of being detached and ready to learn, I am afraid it is almost always with a mental reservation, with an inward determination to prove that our instincts were right and that nothing we learn can change our basic convictions. Though I am verging dangerously on preaching, let me nevertheless implore you to make a determined effort to achieve that intellectual humility which alone helps one to learn. Nothing is more pernicious to intellectual honesty than pride in not having changed one's opinions--particularly if, as is usually the case in our field, these are opinions which in the circles in which we move are regarded as 'progressive' or 'advanced' or just modern. You will soon enough discover that what you regard as specially advanced opinions are just the opinions dominant in your particular generation and that it requires much greater strength and independence of mind to take a critical view of what you have been taught to be progressive than merely to accept them." Id. at 35, 40-41.).

Hayek, Friedrich A. von, The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek: Volume 4, The Fortunes of Liberalism: Essays on Austrian Economics and the Ideals of Freedom edited by Peter G. Klein (Routledge, England: U. Chicago Press, 1992).

Hayek, Friedrich A. von, The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek: Volume 5, Good Money: Part I, The New World edited by Stephen Kresge (Routledge, England: U. Chicago Press, 1999).

Hayek, Friedrich A. von, The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek: Volume 6, Good Money: Part II, The Standard edited by Stephen Kresge (Routledge, England: U. Chicago Press, 1999).

Hayek, Friedrich A. von, The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek: Volume 9, Contra Keynes and Cambridge: Essays & Correspondence edited by Bruce Caldwell (Routledge, England: U. Chicago Press, 1995).

Hayek, Friedrich A. von, The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek: Volume 10, Socialism and War: Essays Documents Reviews edited by Bruce Caldwell (Routledge, England: U. Chicago Press, 1997) (From the essay 'Freedom and the Economic System': "Democratic government worked successfully as long as, by a widely accepted creed, the functions of the state were limited to fields where real agreement among a majority could be achieved. The price we have to pay for a democratic system is the restriction of state action to those fields where agreement can be obtained; and it is the great merit of the liberal creed [note: in American political jargon "libertarian creed" is the one most similar to the British "liberal creed"] that it reduces the necessity of agreement to a minimum compatible with the diversity of individual opinions which will exist in a free society. It is often said that democracy will not tolerate capitalism. If 'capitalism' here means a competitive society based on free disposal over private property, it is far more important to observe that only capitalism makes democracy possible. And if a democratic people comes under the sway of an anti-capitalistic creed. this means that democracy will inevitably destroy itself. Id. at 181, 205-206.).
Hayek, Friedrich A. von, The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek: Volume 12, The Pure Theory of Capital edited by Lawrence H. White (Chicago & London: U. Chicago Press, 2007) ("The Role of Foresight. The second point which now requires consideration is the significance attached to the foresight of the capitalist entrepreneurs in connection with the maintenance of capital. It will probably be obvious by now that the degree of mobility of capital, the extent to which it can be maintained in a changing world, will largely depend on the extent to which entrepreneurs correctly foresee impending changes. If we consider for a moment what would happen if entrepreneurs always acted as if things were going to remain forever as they are at present, and if they never altered their plains until after a change in final demand (or any other change) had actually occurred, we can easily see what would be the effect on general productivity. Every change would mean an enormous loss, or rather, the adoption of production to the change would be so expensive as to make it in many cases impossible. This is not because the loss on old investments would have to be regarded as a cost, but because the capital available for investment in new forms would be so scarce. How rich, on the other hand, should we now be if all past changes had been correctly foreseen from the beginning of things!" Id. at 305. In re-reading the preceding passage I found myself reading "capital" as "intellectual or human capital," and reading "entrepreneurs" and "intellectual entrepreneurs" or, more specifically, "education entrepreneurs." Academics, notwithstanding their press, are rather intellectually conservatives. They really are not much open to new ideas and new approaches to teaching. More importantly, collectively they are no very good at predicting future educational demands of students (and those students' potential employers). They are constantly 'innovating' to address a prior change, rather than innovating in anticipation of future change. The academic entrepreneurs with foresight are few and far between, and usually get silenced by the bureaucracy.).

Hayek, Friedrich A. von, The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: U. Chicago Press, 1960).

Hayek, Friedrich A. von, Economic Freedom (Cambridge: Basil, Blackwell, 1991).

Hayek, Friedrich A. von, Hayek on Hayek: An Autobiographical Dialogue edited by Stephen Kresge & Leif Wenar (Chicago: U. Chicago Press, 1994).

Hayek, Friedrich A. von, Individuals and Economic Order (Chicago: U. Chicago Press, 1948).

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, The Collected Works of Justice Holmes: Complete Public Writings and Selected Judicial Opinions of Oliver Wendell Holmes: Volume I-III edited by Sheldon M. Novick (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 1995) ("I said to a lady at dinner the other night that morals were a contrivance of man to take himself seriously, which means that the philosophers instead of making them merely one of the conveniences of living to be talked about no more than money, make them an end in themselves, an absolute matter, and so an excuse for their pretention to be on the ground floor and personal friends of God." Oliver Wendell Holmes to Alice Stopford Green, February 7, 1909, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Papers, Harvard Law School Library, B43 F12.).

Kellogg, Frederic R., Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Legal Theory, and Judicial Restraint (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 2007) ("I have a learned friend ...who though active in supporting conservative judicial nominees confides deep misgivings about the philosophical basis of contemporary judicial conservatism. For my part I have long had misgivings about contemporary legal philosophy, which I find to be illuminating, if not parallel, in regard to my friend's central concern, the basis for judicial restraint. In part, this book is an attempt to place this issue in a broader historical and theoretical context, I hope neither innately liberal nor conservative, as those terms are popularly understood." "More important, this is a book about Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and his contribution to legal theory. These subjects converge because, even while Holmes was engaged in refining a concept of law grounded in the philosophy of the common law, the intellectual landscape in England and America was changing. Holmes's classic treatise, The Common Law, has never been adequately understood as a reconceptualization of common law opposing the legal positivism of John Austin and Thomas Hobbes.... [Legal positivism] has come to dominate theories of law, both liberal and conservative. Now, with legal positivism at an impasse, a reconsideration of Holmes may be welcome." Id. at ix. Very nicely done!).

Kingsolver, Barbara, Steven L. Hopp & Camille Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (New York: HarperCollins, 2007).

Legrain, Phillippe, Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2006, 2007) (From the Preface: "[I]f you want to understand why immigration to the US is rising, seemingly inexorably, you need to look at the bigger, global picture. Those who conceive of America as an isolated citadel that is being stormed by foreign invaders have blinders on. In fact, in a globalising world where communications and travel are ever cheaper, people everywhere are increasingly on the move, just as products, money and information are. And while America's wealthy baby-boom generation is starting to retire, many poor countries are bulging with youngsters desperately looking for jobs. What's more, if you think abut it, a Mexican waiter offering his services in the US is no different from an American banker offering his services in London or Mexico City." Id. at xiv. Or, for that matter, an American lawyer offering his services in Paris or Baghdad. Anyway, regardless of which side of the immigration debate you fall, this is a balanced, worthwhile and nontechnical read.).

Saks, Elyn R., The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness (New York: Hyperion, 2007)(Given its content, this was a difficult book for me to read because I know--or knew, or thought I knew--the author. This is an important book to read, not because it provides insights into the probably lives of those suffering from mental illness, but because it provide insights into one very unique, possible life.).

Singer, Peter, Animal Liberation (New York: Ecco, 2002) (You will never look at the food on your plate the same way again.... and rightly so.).

Strand, Mark, Man and Camel: Poems (New York: Knopf, 2006).

Sunstein, Cass R. & Martha C. Nussbaum, eds., Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions (Oxford & New York: Oxford U. Press, 2004) (Interesting and worthwhile read, though some of the essays are better than others. Of note, James Rachels, 'Drawing Lines.').

Von Mises, Ludwig, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics, Volume 1-4 edited by Bettina Bien Greaves (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2007) ("A critical examination of the philosophical systems constructed by mankind's great thinkers has very often revealed fissures and flaws in the impressive structure of those seemingly consistent and coherent bodies of comprehensive thought." "There is no other means of preventing social design integration and of safeguarding the steady improvement of human conditions than those provided by reason. Men must try to think though all the problems involved up to the point beyond which a human mind cannot proceed further. They must never acquiesce in any solutions conveyed by older generations, they must always question anew every theory and every theorem., they must never relax in their endeavors to brush away fallacies and to find the best possible cognition. They must fight error by unmasking spurious doctrines and by expounding truth." "Man has only one tool to fight error: reason." Id. at 184-187. “It is often asserted that the poor man’s failure in the competition of the market is caused by his lack of education. Equality of opportunity, it is said, could be provided only by making education at every level accessible to all. There prevails today the tendency to reduce all differences among various peoples to their education and to deny the existence of inborn inequalities in intellect, will power, and character. It is not generally realized that education can never be more than indoctrination with theories and idea already developed. Education, whatever benefits it may confer, is transmission of traditional doctrines and valuations; it is by necessity conservative. It produces imitation and routine, not improvement and progress. Innovators and creative geniuses cannot be reared in schools. They are precisely the men who defy what the school has taught them.” Id. at 314. "Various schools of thought parading under the pompous names of philosophy of law and political science indulge in futile and empty brooding over the delimitation of the function of government. Starting from purely arbitrary assumptions concerning allegedly eternal and absolute values and perennial justice, they arrogate to themselves the office of supreme judge of earthly affairs. They misconstrue their own arbitrary value judgments derived from intuition as the choice of the Almighty or of the nature of things." "There is, however, no such thing as a perennial standard of what is just and what is unjust. Nature is alien to the idea of right and wrong. 'Thou shalt not kill' is certainly not part of natural law. The characteristic feature of natural conditions is that one animal is intent upon liking other animals and that many species cannot preserve their own life except by killing others. The notion of right and wrong is a human device, a utilitarian precept designed to make social cooperation under the division of labor possible. All moral rules and human laws are means for the realization of definite ends. There is no method available for the appreciation of their goodness or badness other than to scrutinize their usefulness for the attainment of the ends chosen and aimed at." Id. at 720.).

Williams, Juan, Enough: The Phoney Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America–and What We Can Do About It (New York: Crown 2006) (Though offering few ideas and conclusions I had not already reach two dacedes ago, I found the book a worthwhile (summing up) read. I am with Bill Cosby, as they say, one hundred and ten percent.).

Note: By coincidence, when about quarter-way through the Hayek readings (see above) I came across the cover article in the August 11th-17th edition of The Economist. The article is titled 'Is America turning left?'