That abovementioned quote from Ambrose Bierce is an admonishment worth keeping in mind when reading the works below ... and as a principle for approaching life.
Amis, Martin, The Second Plane: September 11: Terror and Boredom (New York: Knopf, 2008) ("The current ideology, known to us by the wearying clunk of its initials, is bottom-up, working through the mass and not away from it. There is a vague feeling that PC, having made its gains in the restriction of the sayable, is now in modest retreat. And it is true that the expansionist phase, with its denunciations, its invigilation, its organized execrations, seems to have run its course. On the other hand, PC now occupies the preferred territory of all ideologies: it is among schoolchildren. The language and literature papers in our national exams are becoming implicit invitations to ideological conformity; and everyone knows that there are few marks to be had for bucking the earnest line on, say Maya Angelou. The weaker pupils will take the false comfort of belonging to a consensus; the stronger will simply receive early training in the practice of hypocritical piety." "We recognize this mental atmosphere, and its name is anti-intellectualism." Id. at 17-18. "The age of terror, I suspect, will also be remembered as the age of boredom. Not the kind of boredom that afflicts the blasé and the effete, but a superboredom, rounding out and complementing the superterror of suicide--mass murder. And although we will eventually prevail in the war against terror, or will reduce it, as Mailer says, to 'a tolerable level'..., we haven't a chance in the war against boredom. Because boredom is something that the enemy doesn't feel. To be clear: the opposite of religious belief is not atheism or secularism or humanism. It is not an ism: it is independence of mind--that's all. When I refer to the age of boredom, I am not thinking of airport queues and subway searches. I mean the global confrontation with the dependent mind." Id. at 76.)).
Connelly, Matthew, Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population (Cambridge & London: Belknap/Harvard U. Press, 2008) (“As I went from archive to archive, pored through thousands of documents, and interviewed some of the people who made this history, I began to realize that much more is at stake than how we might redefine national security. This is a story of how some people have tried to control others without having to answer to anyone. They could be ruthless and manipulative in ways that were, and are, shocking. Perhaps we would expect no less of nativists or eugenicists, who assumed that people unlike themselves must be ‘beaten men from beaten races.’ Yet many more actually had the best of intentions, hoping to reduce poverty and prevent conflict…. The people I write about…were facing something utterly unprecedented in human history: world population was doubling and doubling again at an accelerating rate.” “”When contemplating the seemingly inexorable rise in human numbers, the most thoughtful observers have eventually asked themselves: ‘What are people for?’ One cannot read the debates that ensued without starting to take them personally, because they ultimately concern the meaning and purpose of life itself. This book will not try to settle existential question. But a work of history can at least show what happens when some people believe they can answer on behalf of others because they think they know best. In effect, they diagnosed political problems as pathologies that has a biological basis. At its most extreme, this logic has led to sterilization of the ‘unfit or ethnic cleansing. But even family planning could be a form of population control when proponents aimed to plan other people’s families, demeaning those ‘targeted’ as ‘acceptor,’ including tens of millions of poor people who were paid money to agree to sterilization. No less manipulative were those who denied hundreds of millions more people access to contraceptives and abortions because they wanted them to have more babies.” “This book is about the most ambitious population control schemes of all, which aimed to remake humanity by controlling the population of the world, typically by reducing the fertility of poor people and poor countries. But all population control projects shared the premise that societies should consciously reproduce themselves by design, even if that meant controlling how people disposed of their own bodies. And all looked at human beings not as individuals but as populations that could be shaped through the combined force of faith or manipulative forms of ‘family planning’ share a common history, one that helps us understand how they developed, how they diverged, and how the cause of reproductive rights was finally redeemed.” Id. at xi-xii.).
Howe, Daniel Walker, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (The Oxford History of the United States (New York & Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 2007) ("The most common name for the years this book treats is 'Jacksonian America.' I avoid the term because it suggests that Jacksonian describes Americans as a whole, whereas in fact Andrew Jackson was a controversial figure and his political movement bitterly divided the American people. Even more difficulties arise from the familiar expression 'Jacksonian Democracy.' Our own age finds the limitations on the democracy of that period glaring: the enslavement of African Americans, the abuse of native Americans, the exclusion of women and most nonwhites from the suffrage and equality before the law. The Jacksonian movement in politics, although it took the name of the Democratic Party, fought so hard in favor of slavery and white supremacy, and opposed the inclusion of nonwhites and women within the American civil polity so resolutely, that it makes the term 'Jacksonian Democracy' all the more inappropriate as a characterization of the years between 1815 and 1848. Nor did Andrew Jackson's presidential campaigns constitute a nationwide struggle on behalf of universal white manhood enfranchisement. In most states, white male suffrage evolved naturally and with comparatively little controversy. The consequences of white male democracy, rather than its achievement, shaped the political life of this period." "Another term that has sometimes been applied to this period--more by historian than by the general public--is 'the market revolution.' I avoid this expression also. Those historians who used it have argued that a drastic change occurred during these years, from farm families raising food for their own use to producing it for distant markets, However, more and more evidence has accumulated in recent years that a market economy already existed in the eighteenth-century American colonies...." "Accordingly provide an alternative interpretation of the early nineteenth century as a time of a 'communications revolution.' This, rather than the continued growth of the market economy, impressed contemporary Americans as a startling innovation. During the thirty-three years that began in 1815, there would be greater strides in the improvement of communication than had taken place in all previous centuries. This revolution, with its attendant political and economic consequences, would be a driving force in the history of the era." Id. at 4-5. It is dreadful the number of Americans who do not know American history. Significant narrative histories, such as this one, could go a long way in reducing that number.).
Manguel, Alberto, The Library at Night (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2008) (“In order to find ways to cope with volume growth (though not always concerned with gaining quality), readers have resorted to all manner of painful devices: pruning their treasures, double-shelving, divesting themselves of certain subjects, giving away their paperbacks, even moving out and leaving their house to their books. Sometimes none of these options seems endurable. Shortly after Christmas 2003, a forty-three-year-old New York man, Patrice Moore, had to be rescued by firefighters from his apartment after spending two days trapped under an avalanche of journals, magazines and books that he had stubbornly accumulated for over a decade. Neighbors heard him moaning and mumbling through the door, which had been blocked by all the paper. Not until the lock was broken with a crowbar and rescuers began digging into the entombing piles of publications was Moore found, in a tiny corner of his apartment, literally buried in books. It took over an hour to extricate him; fifty bags of printed material had to be hauled out before this constant reader could be reached.” Id. at 71, citing Robert D. McFadden, ‘Recluse buried by paper avalanche,’ in The International Herald Tribune (Paris, 31 December, 2003)).
Manjoo, Farhad, True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society (Hoboken: Wiley, 2008) (This is an interesting, and non-technical, summary and commentary on the fragmentation of American society. We do not share the same reality. "[T]his book...explore[s] how modern communications technology has shifted our understanding of the truth. [T]hat new information tools haven't merely given us faster and easier access to news, but that they've altered our very grasp on reality. The pulsing medium fosters divergent perceptions about what's actually happening in the world--that is, it lets each of us hold on to different versions of reality." It argu[es] that deception is on the rise--that there are more and better liars today because lying is simply easier. Now, it's true that social trust in the United States has been falling since long before the advent of the Internet, since before even cable TV, so these new things certainly didn't set the slide in motion. But they'll make the picture worse; a medium that makes lying easier, of course, won't foster trust. And although there are examples of trust flourishing online--eBay, for instance--the broad measures of American trust (plummeting through the 1990s) bears out the idea that new communication tools at least haven't revitalized trust (an idea that, in the early days of the Internet, held many adherents." The author's "theory that the new medium will contribute to an even greater fall in trust depends on a factor that people who study social capital call particularized trust. Whereas generalized trust has to do with what we think of strangers, particularized trust describes how we feel about people who are like us--in our families, in our ethnic groups, in people at our company, or in other groups we may belong to...." "[R]esearchers do know where particularized trust pops up often: small towns, for instance...." "Particularized trust destroys generalized trust. The more that people trust those who are like themselves--the more they trust people in their own town, say--the more they distrust strangers. And when particularized trust far outweighs generalized trust, loathsome things happen.... [T]hink of the Ku Klux Klan or street gangs or any criminal conspiracy.... [T]hese groups rely on very high levels of trust; as soon as members of the a band of thieves stop trusting one another, the jig is up. But their trust is particularized--it's with the group and comes at the the expense of trust in strangers. The Klan is,, after all, a secret conspiracy; people in the Klan don't even trust outsiders enough to allow them to know who's in and who's out." Id. at 225-226. "What arises form all this, finally, is the condition Stephen Colbert diagnosed as 'truthiness.' Truthiness means you choose, But you're not just deciding a reality; you're also deciding to trust that reality--which means deciding to distrust the others. Whenever you choose, you're making a decision to form a particularized trust. This is the essence of the new medium. Navigating it requires forming bonds with those who are going the same way you are and rejecting those who've decided to see things differently." Id. at 229-230.).
Motion, Andrew, ed., Anne Stevenson: Selected Poems (American Poets Project) (New York: Library of America, 2008) ( "A Marraige": "When my mother knew why her treatment wasn't working, / She said to my father, trying not to detonate her news, / 'Steve, you must marry again. When I'm gone, who's going / To tell you to put trousers on before your shoes?' // My father opened his mouth to--couldn't--refuse. / Instead, he threw her a look; a man just shot / Gazing at the arm or leg he was about to lose. / His cigarette burned him, but he didn't stub it out. // Later, on the porch, alive in the dark together, / How solid the house must have felt, how sanely familiar / The night-lit leaves, their shadows patterning the street. / The house is still there. The elms and the people, not. // It was now, and it never was now. Like every experience / Of being entirely here, yet really not being. / They couldn't imagine the future that I am seeing, / For all his philosophy and all her common sense." Id. at 86.).
Phillips, Kevin, Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism (New York: Viking, 2008) ("Many people today think that today's finance is too complicated for ordinary citizens to fathom or handle, Bubbles aside, other financial terms used by the media--credit derivatives, securitization, and even current account deficit--do not lend themselves to conversations in neighborhood bars or beauty parlors. Americans are excusing themselves accordingly. still, if the farmers of more than a century ago could study and understand Sherman Silver Purchase Act provisions and details of the nationwide currency shrinkage--and many studied and somehow managed--can't we expect as much today? Alas, probably not." Id. at 52-53. "Recent polls in the United States by Zogby/New Global Initiatives show an unprecedented 1.5 million Americans having already decided to leave the United States and another 1.8 million calling themselves likely to leave. Emigration was also pronounced from declining Spain (to Spanish colonial America), from eighteenth-century Holland (to Dutch colonies, and by professional and skilled workers to Britain and Sweden), and from declining rural and industrial areas of Britain in the first half of the twentieth century (to the colonies, the dominions, and the United States)." Id. at 208.).
Rauch, Jonathan, Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America (New York: Times Books, 2004) ("I fully expect same-sex marriage to have many subtle ramifications, good, bad, and indifferent. I do not expect social science to sort them all out. But the fact that the world is complicated is the very reason to run the experiment, not to ban it....Indeed, we never know for sure what the effects of any public policy will be, and so we do a limited experiment if possible and decide on the basis pf necessarily imperfect information." "And--an important point--who decides? Conservative intellectuals? Left-wing activists? Washington bureaucrats? University experts? You? Me? None of the above. Where marriage is concerned, the sovereign right to deem a policy successful or failed belongs to the people of the states. It is for them to judge whether same-sex marriage is an experiment worth trying, whether it has worked in their state, and whether it deserves adoption or recognition." Id. at 188-189.).
Sullivan, Andrew, Love Undectable: Notes on Friendship, Sex, and Survival (New York: Knopf, 1999) ("Liberals, in true Augustinian fashion, are suspicious of particular loyalties and seek to embrace universal values and egalitarian politics. Theirs is the politics of caritas. Conservatives, in contrast, prefer particulars to universals, and amicitia to love. They see more virtue in one person's actual regard for another than in, say, a welfare system which reflects a more consistent but more distant moral order. And they are also more likely to prefer nationalism to internationalism, and to support voluntary over political associations, Theirs is the politics of philia." "But just as modern politics finds a natural, if constantly shifting, balance between the political claims of universalism and particularism, so there might seem to be a moral via media as well, a plausible path between the Kierkegaardian either-or, one that manages to preserve the virtue of friendship while not denying the moral demands of love. Id. at 244.).
Sullivan, Andrew, Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality (New York: Knopf, 1995) ("[A] liberal society cannot engage someone who bases his views of homosexuality on religious authority alone. Like unreasoned emotion, unanswerable religious authority is, well, unanswerable. The only legitimate responses are belief and unbelief.... In fact, dialogue of any kind is impossible. In the same way, a democratic society can forbid--as the constitution of the United States forbids--the state's coercion of people into unwilling obedience to religious authority; and it can fiercely delimit the scope of that authority's secular power. But it cannot truly engage religious authority on its own terms without undermining its own identity." "This is not to say that the political is prior to the religious, or that the faithless have nothing to learn from the faithful. It is simply to say that one of the first principles of liberal societies, as they have emerged from the theocracies and dictatorships of the past, is that the religious is not the same as the political; that its very discourse is different; and that the separation of the two is as much for the possibility of vibrant faith as it is for the possibility of a civil polity. So there is no argument here either against a religious conviction that doesn't respect or understand a separate, if related, political sphere." Id. at 24.).
Wikan, Unni, In Honor of Fadime: Murder and Shame translated from the Norwegian by Anna Paterson (Chicago & London: U. Chicago Press, 2008) (This is an important book, one which I hope will be read widely. "What drives a man to murder his child--for honor's sake?" "What makes a mother testify in favor of a man who has murdered their child--for honor's sake?" Id. at 1. "'Respect for culture' has been a central tenet of the integration policy of most Western societies--so central that you risk being branded 'racist' if you do not show respect for the culture of others. The intention is good: to support equality among groups and avoid stigmatization. Ethnic minorities should not be assimilated and feel pressure to 'become' Swedes or Norwegians. Everyone should be allowed to keep their identity, their culture, within certain limits. There must be respect for law and order. Respect for a culture is secondary to respect for the law." "In theory, this is straightforward. In practice, it causes problems...." "The rights of ethnic minorities to sustain their identity and preserve their culture may come into head-on conflict with the individual's right to self-determination. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights emphasizes the individual's right to leave a group--the right to exit. Respect for culture is on the other hand often based on an opposing principle: that people have a duty to belong, that they have been given to the group to own. Fadime rebelled against this principle...." Id. at 251-252.).
May 1, 2008
April 21, 2008
READINGS FOR THOSE BELIEVING IN THE VALUE OF IDEAS
Arieli, Yehoshua, Individualism and Nationalism in American Ideology (Cambridge: Harvard U. Press, 1964) (The Civil War played an important role in the growth of an integral American nationalism. Yet from the beginning this nationalism crystallized around social and moral, rather than political, concepts. The question involved in the sectional conflict were not the rights of the existing states but the fate of the national domain and the nature of the social structure of the United States. The slaveholding and the free states each charged the other side with an attempt to rule the Union in its own interest through an undue extension of federal power and a conscious misinterpretation of the Constitution. The militant North interpreted the Fugitive Slave Act, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the endorsement of the Lecompton Constitution, and the Dred Scott decision as a conspiracy to impose slavocracy upon the whole Union. Secession was defended on the grounds that a house divided against itself could not stand. It thus involved a nationalism so identified with social ideology that both sides preferred dismemberment of the Union to concession. The northern emphasis on the maintenance of the Union by all means was expressed only after it had won control of the federal government and faced the factual session of the South.” “This fusion of social ideals with group loyalty, fanaticism, the will to political power, and the maintenance of the Union, created a new type of nationalism on the eve of the Civil War. It became the primary function of the federal government to suppress the southern threat to destroy the social system of democracy through secession and war. The appeal to patriotism and national loyalty in defence of the Union was at the same time an appeal to maintain democracy and the institutions of a free society. This changed the traditional relationship between state and society. The paramount duty of the state was to maintain in the world that form of government whose leading object it was to elevate the condition of men.” “The antagonism toward centralized power, latent in the Jeffersonian tradition, disappeared during the Civil War, at least for those actively engaged in defending the Union side. The government, having become identified with a definite social philosophy, became the trustee of its realization, and through it the focus of loyalty, the expression of the general will of the nation.” “The heighten consciousness of the uniqueness of American society which emerged with nationalism during the War needed a term adequately to define and explain its character. The term supplied by the New England intellectuals was individualism. This concept ‘of the singleness of man, individualism,’ described, according to Whitman, the dynamic and progressive motive force of modern history and explained the aspiration of the American nation.” Id. at 320-321. “Increasingly, after the Civil War, this concept described the character of the American commonwealth and its ideals, its institution and behavior pattern. The same concept was implicit in most of the writings of American intellectuals in the latter half of the nineteenth century and inspired most of the legislative, political, and judicial actions of the several branches of the federal Republic. Id. at 322.).
Dionne, E. J., Jr., Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2008) (“My view…is unapologetically Clintonian: yes, there is a culture war, and no, there isn’t. It depends on what the meaning of ‘culture war’ is.” “If so looks primarily at the extremes of opinions (and I use ‘extremes’ descriptively, not pejoratively), of course there is a deep cultural conflict in the United States. It is waged between the 15 to 20 percent of the country that is largely religious and staunchly conservative and the 15 to 20 percent that is largely secular and staunchly liberal. One can quibble about the exact numbers at each end; religious conservatives probably outnumber secular liberals, though the secular group is growing. But there is no doubt that these two groups exist, have very strong feelings, and on the whole can’t stand each other. They regularly toss epithets across their divide. The godly attack the ungodly. The tolerant attack the intolerant. The cosmopolitan attack the parochial. The rooted attack the rootless. Moralists attack the permissive.” “But whatever the numbers, those most ardently engaged on both sides of this fight, taken together, do not constitute a majority of Americans. I would reckon (and much social-science evidence supports this) that 60 to 70 percent of us fall at some middle point.” Id. at 47-48.).
Fischer, David Hackett, Growing Old in America (The Bland-Lee Lectures Delivered at Clark University) (New York: Oxford U. Press, 1977) (“Finally, there is a third change which must be made—not economic, or social, but cultural in its nature. It is a question of ethics.—of our deepest social values….” “Today, the work ethic is still widely defended and deeply believed. For many people it is a good and healthy discipline—a useful and happy way of organizing their lives. It probably remains meaningful for more Americans today than any single ethical alternative. But today it is no longer necessary, as it was in the past, to secure both growth and stability in American society. In fact, it might be argued that in a nation which has the power to produce more than it consumes, in a society which is constantly plagued by problems of excess production, in an economy which is beginning to run up against its environmental limits, the work ethic becomes a source of weakness rather than strength.. Any ethic which drives people endlessly to produce more goods and more services, to increase productivity, is increasingly dysfunctional to the maintenance of social cohesion in an America which has begun to face the problem of ‘overgrowth,’ as it is called.” “The work ethic will always remain important in the lives of individual Americans, but as a way of organizing American society itself, its time has surely passed. There are many other life ethics in the world, In a free society, a person should be able to choose from a broad variety of ethical beliefs. Cultural pluralism requires a plurality of ethical structures which might coexist in an open system.” Id. at 216-217. When I read a book such as this wonderful and insightful work of social history I cannot help but rage at how unsophisticated the typical law graduate—including many of those who occupy law faculty positions—are, and how arrogant they (we) are in thinking that they (we) can understand law without studying and appreciating history. How can they (we) be truly learned in American law lacking not only an understanding of legal history, but also American intellectual, political, social and economic history? If one were to do a national ‘exit interviews’ of American law students as they leave their 2008 law school graduation ceremonies, how many would be able to answer the following questions in the affirmative? Have you read Blackstone’s Commentary on the Laws of England? Did you take any course in American legal history during law school? Do you know who Joseph Story is? Have you read any of his writings? If they are not able to answer in the affirmative, then there is a real sense in which the responsibility must be laid at the feet of the members of the legal academy for transforming legal education from an intellectually rigorous endeavor to professional endeavor to trade endeavor. Then again, each student is ultimately responsible for his or her own education and can make the choice to fill or not fill the gaps in their education. An education is what one gets from burning the midnight oil, from studying in the wee hours.)
Goldwater, Barry, The Conscience of a Conservative (The James Madison Library in American Politics) edited by CC Goldwater, with a new forward by George F. Will, and a new afterword by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2007) (From Kennedy’s Afterword: “It is a different world from the one where Teddy’s brother, President Kennedy, could imagine debating Barry Goldwater, head-to-head, around the country, on genuine matters of principle—as rivals but also as friends, with profound differences of principle which did not preclude mutual respect. The hijacking of Goldwater’s rational conservatism by the New Right radicals has brought us to this sad and perilous pass. Reading Goldwater’s manifesto today may not bring agreement on all or even most of his views. But it is a reminder of a political age we have lost—and of a conservatism lost as well.” Id. at 137.).
Kammen, Michael, People of Paradox: The Inquiry Concerning the Origins of the American Civilization (New York: Knopf, 1972) (“Since the Civil War we have vacillated between self-praise for being a ‘nation of immigrants’ and self-hate for the stations of restless locomotion through which we daily pass….” “Clearly then, the political phenomenon of many states and one union balancing their sovereignties—the problem of legitimacy again—has been paralleled by the phenomenon of uneasy socio-political pluralism. The nation has simultaneously managed to develop both a multi-culture and the unifying characteristics of a mono-culture.” “Because of our conformist diversity, our style may perhaps be located less in specific characteristics than in a common condition of compromise, or hybridization. There is certainly a quality of heterogeneity-within-homogeneity in modern America. Our political and ideological affiliations are conditioned by a host of secondary social differences reflecting the wide range of regional, occupational. And cultural variations found in the United States. The pressures on a system of competing coalitions comprised of diverse groups compel them all to behave in certain compromising ways….” Id. at 76-77. “Collective individualism. What dualism in the American experience is more central to an understanding of our nature? Some of the most awkward contradictions in American civilization during the nineteenth century certainly derived from men’s desire to retain a family brotherhood within a social framework based upon freedom of contract. They needed to strike a balance between the absence of restraint and the ability to belong. One result was that being ‘anti,’ or against something, often brought membership or belonging: in the Anti-Masons, the Know-Nothings, or the Klan, for example. Anti-party men in the 1820’s who were frustrated by the Republicans organized an anti-party party, a party to end all parties.” “Similarly, the communitarians experiments of the 1840’s and after were essentially anti-institutional institutions; and they veered erratically between extremes of anarchism and collectivism as they sought some way to eliminate social friction without coercion….” Id. at 269.).
Kluger, Richard, Seizing Destiny: How America Grew from Sea to Shining Sea (New York: Knopf, 2007) (“This greatness—of size, wealth, and power—did not, of course, spring forth full-blown; it had to be planted, fertilized, tended to, gathered up, and processed, all obstacles be damned and, if need be, demolished. Although self-justifying throughout the process, those early generations of Americans had no exclusive call on heaven’s blessing for their venture. They were simply all too human in confusing opportunity with entitlement and mistaking the abundance of liberty doled to them by history and geography for a license to have their way. Those Americans given to blind chauvinism would do well to consider the darker side of the tale as well.” Id. at xviii.).
Meyerson, Michael I., Liberty’s Blueprint: How Madison and Hamilton Wrote the Federalist Papers, Defined the Constitution, and Made Democracy Safe in the World (New York: Basic Books, 2008) (This book is aimed at the general readers; it should be of interest to first-year law students upon their first foray in to constitutional law and history. The book is written in the hope that it will motivate more people to actually read the Federalist Papers. “The first goal of Liberty’s Footprint is to present the most important teachings of The Federalist to a modern audience.” Id. at xi.).
Overstreet, H. A., The Mature Mind (New York: Norton, 1949) (“Cosmopolitan man will, in contrast to provincial man, be man with a greater chance to mature; man with a larger area in which he can exercise his faculty for fairness and reasonableness without coming up against fixed loyalty-barriers that bid him to stop.… Maturity is achieved where conditions favorable to maturity exist; that is the clue.” Id. at 31-31. “The characteristic of the mature person is that he affirms life. To affirm life he must be involved, heart and soul, in the process of living. Neither the person who feels himself a failure nor the person who consciously or unconsciously resents what life has done to him can feel his heart and soul engaged in the process of living. That experience is reserved for the person whose full powers are enlisted. This, then, is what this fourth insight signified: to mature, the individual must know what his powers are and must make them competent for life. Know thyself, said Socrates. Know you aptitudes, say these modern Socratics.” Id. at 35. “Whether or not old dogs can learn new tricks, old human beings can—and must—learn new facts and insights as long as they live.” Id. at 38. “Those philosophies that ask a high level of maturity command a smaller following than do those that accept adult immaturity as good enough…. [O]ne major strain in our tradition—that of intellectual and social liberalism—urges us to grow up into our full psychological stature. This tradition is rendered all the lip-service it could ask, but little enough behavior-service. For among the philosophies that compete with it are at least two that demand less effort and give quicker rewards: the strain of religious and political authoritarianism, and the strain of material and antirationalism. Each of these presents a much easier way of life than the philosophy that asks us to make efforts to grow up.” Id. at 141,).
Rostow, Eugene V., Planning for Freedom: The Public Law of American Capitalism (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 1959) (Tthe subject matter of these talks is the legal control of the economy. Dealing with issues in different areas of specialized study—law and economics, in this instance—invariably raises the question of fixing an appropriate level of discourse.… I have not yet come upon a book that explains the operation of the economy in terms which meet the needs of the lawyer or law student, nor have I found one about the legal setting of economic life which answers the kind of questions businessmen and economist habitually ask. The Intelligent Common Reader’s guides to economics never quite reach the complicated problems of public policy which are of acute daily concern to lawyers and law students. And the advanced books on economics take for granted a working knowledge of basic ideas, techniques of analysis, and institutions, knowledge which is not yet part of the intellectual universe of that mythical creature, the liberally educated man. The literature about law presents the same difficulty for economists and other laymen. Most elementary books about law are too elementary to be interesting; the interesting work presupposes a framework or reference usually available only within the guild.” Id. at vii-viii. Since Rostow, a former Dean of the Yale Law School and a former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs in the U.S. Department of State, wrote those lines the subdiscipline ‘law and economics’ has mushroomed and there are many authors, books, and readers occupying what may have seemed an excluded middle. Still, I think one of his points remains true: only a very small percentage of lawyers and law students have adequate understanding of economics to engage in meaningful policy analysis of legal issues. “For ‘full’ employment, or ‘reasonably full’ employment, or ‘high levels’ of employment—however the goal should properly be defined—is not the only end to be served by the legal system for directing the economy. An adequate program for the public control of business requires the government to formulae a series of economic policy objectives, and not merely to achieve full employment.” Such a program should include at least these elements, in addition to employment stabilization: 1. The rate of growth…. 2. Efficiency and economy in the short-run and the long run use of resources…. 3. Equity…. 4. The level of prices….” Id. at 25-27. “[C]ompetitive capitalism is a characteristic expression of the American culture. In all its arrangements, American society manifests a preoccupation with the problem of power. Persistently, almost instinctively, its policy is always to avoid concentrations of authority as a threat to the possibility of freedom. Capitalism stands with federalism, the separation of powers, the disestablishment of religion, the antitrust tradition, the autonomy of educational bodies, and the other major articles of the American creed, in expressing a deep suspicion of authority. Americans are commented pluralists, if not quite anarchists, in their social attitudes, willing to concede to Caesar only as much power as circumstance may require.” Id. at 43. “The American standard of living is not nearly so high as our national penchant for self-congratulation makes it out to be. If certain components of the standard of living not usually included in the indices are taken into account, it may not even be the highest in the world. Education is a matter of vital concern to every family. Neither the cost nor the quality of public education is reflected in statistics of per capita expenditures for consumption, or most other measures of the standard of living. The American people are beginning to realize that their public education is provided on a mass scale, but that its average quality is below that offered in many other countries. Similarly, if, in measuring standards of living, one counted the low quality of much American housing, the chaos of most American cities, the quality and organization of American health services, and the spotty character of our social insurance, the result might be a wholesome shock to American pride. We do not, of course, measure economic performance in such sensible ways.”… As Kenneth Galbraith has recently pointed out….the statistics solemnly assume that consumer expenditures on tobacco, liquor, and patent medicines have the same social utility, dollar for dollar, as expenditures for essential housing, food, education, or health. They make no distinction between money spent for food or bad housing, for shoddy merchandise, or for overpriced or even harmful commodities or services….” Id. at 44.).
Rostow, W. W., The Stages of Economic Growth (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1960) (This book is a bit dated, still it provides food for thought as concerns present day concerns. “As a matter of historical fact a reactive nationalism—reacting against intrusion from more advanced nations—has been a most important and powerful motive force in the transition from traditional to modern societies, at least as important as the profit motive. Men holding effective authority or influence have been willing to uproot traditional societies not, primarily, to make money by because traditional society failed—or threatened to fail—to protect them from humiliation by foreigners.” Id. at 26-27. One point of view being articulated through the present period of economic uncertainty purportedly resulting from subprime lending, mortgage defaults, stock market value loss, etc., is the United States may cease to be the lead economy, and the dollar not the prefer currency. Retailers in New York City placed signs in their window stating that they take Euros. Is nationalism—a feeling of national economic humiliation—required to get Americans to reinvent their economy for the 21st-century world?).
Thaler, Richard H., & Cass R. Sunstein, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2008) (This is book is a good, through rather light, read. My favorite passage is this: "As we shall see, small and apparently insignificant details can have major impacts on people's behavior. A good rule of thumb is to assume that 'everything matters.' In many cases, the power of these small details comes from focusing the attention of users in a particular direction. A wonderful example of this principle comes from, of all places, the men's room at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. There the authorities have etched the image of a black housefly into each urinal. It seems that men usually do not pay much attention to where they aim, which can create a bit of a mess, but if they see a target, attention and therefore accuracy are much increased. According to the man who came up with the idea, it works wonders. 'It improves the aim, says Aad Kieboom. 'If a man sees a fly, he aims at it.' Kieboom, an economist, directs Schiphol's building expansion. His staff conducted fly-in-urinal trial and found that etching reduce spillage by 80 percent." Id. at 3-4. It goes to two things most women, I think, suspect about men. First, that men never really grow up. And, second, that with men just about everything is ultimately reducible to some form of pissing contest.).
Vonnegut, Kurt, Jr., Armageddon in Retrospect and Other New and Unpublished Writings on War and Peace with an introduction by Mark Vonnegut (New York: Putnam, 2008) ("Where do I get my ideas from?... I was goofing around like everybody else in Indiana, and all of a sudden stuff came gushing out. It was disgust with civilization." Id. at 233.).
Wilentz. Sean, Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850 (Twentieth-Anniversary Edition) (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 1984, 2004) (“This is an extended historical essay on capitalism and democracy in the United States. Between the American Revolution and the completion of the emancipation in 1965, this country experienced a series of profound social changes, among them the emergence of a working class. In New York City—then consisting only of what we know today as lower Manhattan—these changes occurred with unusual force and rapidity: more than a decade before the Civil War, the working-class presence was established in the American metropolis. Like the rise of the city itself, the rise of an American working class in New York raised fundamental questions about the character of the democratic Republic—questions that would be asked again, across the nation, over the rest of the nineteenth century. Id. at vii. “I sympathize with Mayer’s argument—that America has long been a lower-middle-class nation that lives by spurious middle-class myths and visions….” Id. at 11, fn. 16. Also see, Arno J. Mayer, ‘The Lower Middle Class as Historical Problem," Journal of Modern History 47 (1975), at 422.).
Dionne, E. J., Jr., Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2008) (“My view…is unapologetically Clintonian: yes, there is a culture war, and no, there isn’t. It depends on what the meaning of ‘culture war’ is.” “If so looks primarily at the extremes of opinions (and I use ‘extremes’ descriptively, not pejoratively), of course there is a deep cultural conflict in the United States. It is waged between the 15 to 20 percent of the country that is largely religious and staunchly conservative and the 15 to 20 percent that is largely secular and staunchly liberal. One can quibble about the exact numbers at each end; religious conservatives probably outnumber secular liberals, though the secular group is growing. But there is no doubt that these two groups exist, have very strong feelings, and on the whole can’t stand each other. They regularly toss epithets across their divide. The godly attack the ungodly. The tolerant attack the intolerant. The cosmopolitan attack the parochial. The rooted attack the rootless. Moralists attack the permissive.” “But whatever the numbers, those most ardently engaged on both sides of this fight, taken together, do not constitute a majority of Americans. I would reckon (and much social-science evidence supports this) that 60 to 70 percent of us fall at some middle point.” Id. at 47-48.).
Fischer, David Hackett, Growing Old in America (The Bland-Lee Lectures Delivered at Clark University) (New York: Oxford U. Press, 1977) (“Finally, there is a third change which must be made—not economic, or social, but cultural in its nature. It is a question of ethics.—of our deepest social values….” “Today, the work ethic is still widely defended and deeply believed. For many people it is a good and healthy discipline—a useful and happy way of organizing their lives. It probably remains meaningful for more Americans today than any single ethical alternative. But today it is no longer necessary, as it was in the past, to secure both growth and stability in American society. In fact, it might be argued that in a nation which has the power to produce more than it consumes, in a society which is constantly plagued by problems of excess production, in an economy which is beginning to run up against its environmental limits, the work ethic becomes a source of weakness rather than strength.. Any ethic which drives people endlessly to produce more goods and more services, to increase productivity, is increasingly dysfunctional to the maintenance of social cohesion in an America which has begun to face the problem of ‘overgrowth,’ as it is called.” “The work ethic will always remain important in the lives of individual Americans, but as a way of organizing American society itself, its time has surely passed. There are many other life ethics in the world, In a free society, a person should be able to choose from a broad variety of ethical beliefs. Cultural pluralism requires a plurality of ethical structures which might coexist in an open system.” Id. at 216-217. When I read a book such as this wonderful and insightful work of social history I cannot help but rage at how unsophisticated the typical law graduate—including many of those who occupy law faculty positions—are, and how arrogant they (we) are in thinking that they (we) can understand law without studying and appreciating history. How can they (we) be truly learned in American law lacking not only an understanding of legal history, but also American intellectual, political, social and economic history? If one were to do a national ‘exit interviews’ of American law students as they leave their 2008 law school graduation ceremonies, how many would be able to answer the following questions in the affirmative? Have you read Blackstone’s Commentary on the Laws of England? Did you take any course in American legal history during law school? Do you know who Joseph Story is? Have you read any of his writings? If they are not able to answer in the affirmative, then there is a real sense in which the responsibility must be laid at the feet of the members of the legal academy for transforming legal education from an intellectually rigorous endeavor to professional endeavor to trade endeavor. Then again, each student is ultimately responsible for his or her own education and can make the choice to fill or not fill the gaps in their education. An education is what one gets from burning the midnight oil, from studying in the wee hours.)
Goldwater, Barry, The Conscience of a Conservative (The James Madison Library in American Politics) edited by CC Goldwater, with a new forward by George F. Will, and a new afterword by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2007) (From Kennedy’s Afterword: “It is a different world from the one where Teddy’s brother, President Kennedy, could imagine debating Barry Goldwater, head-to-head, around the country, on genuine matters of principle—as rivals but also as friends, with profound differences of principle which did not preclude mutual respect. The hijacking of Goldwater’s rational conservatism by the New Right radicals has brought us to this sad and perilous pass. Reading Goldwater’s manifesto today may not bring agreement on all or even most of his views. But it is a reminder of a political age we have lost—and of a conservatism lost as well.” Id. at 137.).
Kammen, Michael, People of Paradox: The Inquiry Concerning the Origins of the American Civilization (New York: Knopf, 1972) (“Since the Civil War we have vacillated between self-praise for being a ‘nation of immigrants’ and self-hate for the stations of restless locomotion through which we daily pass….” “Clearly then, the political phenomenon of many states and one union balancing their sovereignties—the problem of legitimacy again—has been paralleled by the phenomenon of uneasy socio-political pluralism. The nation has simultaneously managed to develop both a multi-culture and the unifying characteristics of a mono-culture.” “Because of our conformist diversity, our style may perhaps be located less in specific characteristics than in a common condition of compromise, or hybridization. There is certainly a quality of heterogeneity-within-homogeneity in modern America. Our political and ideological affiliations are conditioned by a host of secondary social differences reflecting the wide range of regional, occupational. And cultural variations found in the United States. The pressures on a system of competing coalitions comprised of diverse groups compel them all to behave in certain compromising ways….” Id. at 76-77. “Collective individualism. What dualism in the American experience is more central to an understanding of our nature? Some of the most awkward contradictions in American civilization during the nineteenth century certainly derived from men’s desire to retain a family brotherhood within a social framework based upon freedom of contract. They needed to strike a balance between the absence of restraint and the ability to belong. One result was that being ‘anti,’ or against something, often brought membership or belonging: in the Anti-Masons, the Know-Nothings, or the Klan, for example. Anti-party men in the 1820’s who were frustrated by the Republicans organized an anti-party party, a party to end all parties.” “Similarly, the communitarians experiments of the 1840’s and after were essentially anti-institutional institutions; and they veered erratically between extremes of anarchism and collectivism as they sought some way to eliminate social friction without coercion….” Id. at 269.).
Kluger, Richard, Seizing Destiny: How America Grew from Sea to Shining Sea (New York: Knopf, 2007) (“This greatness—of size, wealth, and power—did not, of course, spring forth full-blown; it had to be planted, fertilized, tended to, gathered up, and processed, all obstacles be damned and, if need be, demolished. Although self-justifying throughout the process, those early generations of Americans had no exclusive call on heaven’s blessing for their venture. They were simply all too human in confusing opportunity with entitlement and mistaking the abundance of liberty doled to them by history and geography for a license to have their way. Those Americans given to blind chauvinism would do well to consider the darker side of the tale as well.” Id. at xviii.).
Meyerson, Michael I., Liberty’s Blueprint: How Madison and Hamilton Wrote the Federalist Papers, Defined the Constitution, and Made Democracy Safe in the World (New York: Basic Books, 2008) (This book is aimed at the general readers; it should be of interest to first-year law students upon their first foray in to constitutional law and history. The book is written in the hope that it will motivate more people to actually read the Federalist Papers. “The first goal of Liberty’s Footprint is to present the most important teachings of The Federalist to a modern audience.” Id. at xi.).
Overstreet, H. A., The Mature Mind (New York: Norton, 1949) (“Cosmopolitan man will, in contrast to provincial man, be man with a greater chance to mature; man with a larger area in which he can exercise his faculty for fairness and reasonableness without coming up against fixed loyalty-barriers that bid him to stop.… Maturity is achieved where conditions favorable to maturity exist; that is the clue.” Id. at 31-31. “The characteristic of the mature person is that he affirms life. To affirm life he must be involved, heart and soul, in the process of living. Neither the person who feels himself a failure nor the person who consciously or unconsciously resents what life has done to him can feel his heart and soul engaged in the process of living. That experience is reserved for the person whose full powers are enlisted. This, then, is what this fourth insight signified: to mature, the individual must know what his powers are and must make them competent for life. Know thyself, said Socrates. Know you aptitudes, say these modern Socratics.” Id. at 35. “Whether or not old dogs can learn new tricks, old human beings can—and must—learn new facts and insights as long as they live.” Id. at 38. “Those philosophies that ask a high level of maturity command a smaller following than do those that accept adult immaturity as good enough…. [O]ne major strain in our tradition—that of intellectual and social liberalism—urges us to grow up into our full psychological stature. This tradition is rendered all the lip-service it could ask, but little enough behavior-service. For among the philosophies that compete with it are at least two that demand less effort and give quicker rewards: the strain of religious and political authoritarianism, and the strain of material and antirationalism. Each of these presents a much easier way of life than the philosophy that asks us to make efforts to grow up.” Id. at 141,).
Rostow, Eugene V., Planning for Freedom: The Public Law of American Capitalism (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 1959) (Tthe subject matter of these talks is the legal control of the economy. Dealing with issues in different areas of specialized study—law and economics, in this instance—invariably raises the question of fixing an appropriate level of discourse.… I have not yet come upon a book that explains the operation of the economy in terms which meet the needs of the lawyer or law student, nor have I found one about the legal setting of economic life which answers the kind of questions businessmen and economist habitually ask. The Intelligent Common Reader’s guides to economics never quite reach the complicated problems of public policy which are of acute daily concern to lawyers and law students. And the advanced books on economics take for granted a working knowledge of basic ideas, techniques of analysis, and institutions, knowledge which is not yet part of the intellectual universe of that mythical creature, the liberally educated man. The literature about law presents the same difficulty for economists and other laymen. Most elementary books about law are too elementary to be interesting; the interesting work presupposes a framework or reference usually available only within the guild.” Id. at vii-viii. Since Rostow, a former Dean of the Yale Law School and a former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs in the U.S. Department of State, wrote those lines the subdiscipline ‘law and economics’ has mushroomed and there are many authors, books, and readers occupying what may have seemed an excluded middle. Still, I think one of his points remains true: only a very small percentage of lawyers and law students have adequate understanding of economics to engage in meaningful policy analysis of legal issues. “For ‘full’ employment, or ‘reasonably full’ employment, or ‘high levels’ of employment—however the goal should properly be defined—is not the only end to be served by the legal system for directing the economy. An adequate program for the public control of business requires the government to formulae a series of economic policy objectives, and not merely to achieve full employment.” Such a program should include at least these elements, in addition to employment stabilization: 1. The rate of growth…. 2. Efficiency and economy in the short-run and the long run use of resources…. 3. Equity…. 4. The level of prices….” Id. at 25-27. “[C]ompetitive capitalism is a characteristic expression of the American culture. In all its arrangements, American society manifests a preoccupation with the problem of power. Persistently, almost instinctively, its policy is always to avoid concentrations of authority as a threat to the possibility of freedom. Capitalism stands with federalism, the separation of powers, the disestablishment of religion, the antitrust tradition, the autonomy of educational bodies, and the other major articles of the American creed, in expressing a deep suspicion of authority. Americans are commented pluralists, if not quite anarchists, in their social attitudes, willing to concede to Caesar only as much power as circumstance may require.” Id. at 43. “The American standard of living is not nearly so high as our national penchant for self-congratulation makes it out to be. If certain components of the standard of living not usually included in the indices are taken into account, it may not even be the highest in the world. Education is a matter of vital concern to every family. Neither the cost nor the quality of public education is reflected in statistics of per capita expenditures for consumption, or most other measures of the standard of living. The American people are beginning to realize that their public education is provided on a mass scale, but that its average quality is below that offered in many other countries. Similarly, if, in measuring standards of living, one counted the low quality of much American housing, the chaos of most American cities, the quality and organization of American health services, and the spotty character of our social insurance, the result might be a wholesome shock to American pride. We do not, of course, measure economic performance in such sensible ways.”… As Kenneth Galbraith has recently pointed out….the statistics solemnly assume that consumer expenditures on tobacco, liquor, and patent medicines have the same social utility, dollar for dollar, as expenditures for essential housing, food, education, or health. They make no distinction between money spent for food or bad housing, for shoddy merchandise, or for overpriced or even harmful commodities or services….” Id. at 44.).
Rostow, W. W., The Stages of Economic Growth (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1960) (This book is a bit dated, still it provides food for thought as concerns present day concerns. “As a matter of historical fact a reactive nationalism—reacting against intrusion from more advanced nations—has been a most important and powerful motive force in the transition from traditional to modern societies, at least as important as the profit motive. Men holding effective authority or influence have been willing to uproot traditional societies not, primarily, to make money by because traditional society failed—or threatened to fail—to protect them from humiliation by foreigners.” Id. at 26-27. One point of view being articulated through the present period of economic uncertainty purportedly resulting from subprime lending, mortgage defaults, stock market value loss, etc., is the United States may cease to be the lead economy, and the dollar not the prefer currency. Retailers in New York City placed signs in their window stating that they take Euros. Is nationalism—a feeling of national economic humiliation—required to get Americans to reinvent their economy for the 21st-century world?).
Thaler, Richard H., & Cass R. Sunstein, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2008) (This is book is a good, through rather light, read. My favorite passage is this: "As we shall see, small and apparently insignificant details can have major impacts on people's behavior. A good rule of thumb is to assume that 'everything matters.' In many cases, the power of these small details comes from focusing the attention of users in a particular direction. A wonderful example of this principle comes from, of all places, the men's room at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. There the authorities have etched the image of a black housefly into each urinal. It seems that men usually do not pay much attention to where they aim, which can create a bit of a mess, but if they see a target, attention and therefore accuracy are much increased. According to the man who came up with the idea, it works wonders. 'It improves the aim, says Aad Kieboom. 'If a man sees a fly, he aims at it.' Kieboom, an economist, directs Schiphol's building expansion. His staff conducted fly-in-urinal trial and found that etching reduce spillage by 80 percent." Id. at 3-4. It goes to two things most women, I think, suspect about men. First, that men never really grow up. And, second, that with men just about everything is ultimately reducible to some form of pissing contest.).
Vonnegut, Kurt, Jr., Armageddon in Retrospect and Other New and Unpublished Writings on War and Peace with an introduction by Mark Vonnegut (New York: Putnam, 2008) ("Where do I get my ideas from?... I was goofing around like everybody else in Indiana, and all of a sudden stuff came gushing out. It was disgust with civilization." Id. at 233.).
Wilentz. Sean, Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850 (Twentieth-Anniversary Edition) (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 1984, 2004) (“This is an extended historical essay on capitalism and democracy in the United States. Between the American Revolution and the completion of the emancipation in 1965, this country experienced a series of profound social changes, among them the emergence of a working class. In New York City—then consisting only of what we know today as lower Manhattan—these changes occurred with unusual force and rapidity: more than a decade before the Civil War, the working-class presence was established in the American metropolis. Like the rise of the city itself, the rise of an American working class in New York raised fundamental questions about the character of the democratic Republic—questions that would be asked again, across the nation, over the rest of the nineteenth century. Id. at vii. “I sympathize with Mayer’s argument—that America has long been a lower-middle-class nation that lives by spurious middle-class myths and visions….” Id. at 11, fn. 16. Also see, Arno J. Mayer, ‘The Lower Middle Class as Historical Problem," Journal of Modern History 47 (1975), at 422.).
April 4, 2008
CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL AND POLITICAL ISSUES . . . WHICH ARE REALLY UNRESOLVED OLD ISSUES
Ariely, Dan, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions (New York: Harper, 2008) (This is a very nice, little read, offering numerous insights on everyday life--and on public policy--from behavioral economics in nontechnical jargon. When I teach Law and Economics next academic year, this book will be on the 'recommended readings' list and will be incorporated into the class presentations.).
Baker, Nicholson, Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008) (From the jacket cover: Human Smoke delivers a closely textured, deeply moving indictment of the treasured myths that have romanticized much of the 1930s and ’40s. Incorporating meticulous research and well-documented sources—including newspaper and magazine articles, radio speeches, memoirs, and diaries—the book juxtaposes hundreds of interrelated moments of decision, brutality, suffering, and mercy. Vivid glimpses of political leaders and their dissenters illuminate and examine the gradual, horrifying advance toward overt global war and Holocaust.” From the ‘Afterword’: “I dedicate this book to the memory of Clarence Pickett and other American and British pacifists. They’ve never really gotten their due. They tried to save Jewish refugees, feed Europe, reconcile the United States and Japan, and stop the war from happening. They failed, but they were right.” Id. at 474.).
Bernstein, Peter L,. Capital Ideas Evolving (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2007) (The only thing I will say is this: this informative book on innovation in theory and application in capital markets may require an ‘Afterwards’ to account for the subprime debacle.).
Bookstaber, Richard, A Demon of Our Own Design: Markets, Hedge Funds, and the Perils of Financial Innovation (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2007) (“The question posed by this book, simply put, is: Why can’t financial markets seem to get their act together? Why, is spite of reduced risk in the underlying economy, in spite of the march of innovation and the contributions of financial engineering, do we not enjoy reductions in financial risk that we find in other areas of our lives? Why are markets actually becoming more crisis-prone?” Id. at 155.).
Buckley, William F., Jr., Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription: Notes & Asides from National Review (New York: Basic Books, 2007).
Epstein, Richard A., Supreme Neglect: How to revive Constitutional Protection for Private Property (Oxford & New York: Oxford U. Press, 2008) (A nice, very thoughtful, and provocative read. “The most evident feature of the modern period is the sharp divergence between the private law of private property, which has developed with marvelous sophistication, and the crude and dismissive treatment private property receives in modern American constitutional law. It is as though there were two sets of books, with little in common between them. The private law of private property seeks to wring as much benefit out of all resources as is humanly possible. It leaves nothing to waste when it protects all sticks in the common-law bundle of rights, which includes exclusive rights of possession, use, and disposition. The private law is sensitive to the exploitation of property by furnishing its owners with effective systems of recordation and transfer. And it builds in key limitations on the rights of one property owner to protect the like interests of his neighbor. The modern constitutional law does not seek to protect the full panoply of private rights, but tends, mistakenly, to extend a high level of protection solely to the right to exclude. It is as though the holder of an orange is entitle to exclusive possession of the rind, but needs government permission to use or dispose of the fruit that lies within.” “This truncation of property rights is of no little consequence. If the private law governing private property is correct, then the public law, as developed in the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on the subject, is not. If, moreover, the private law works to maximize overall social welfare, then the current constitutional doctrines, by yielding too much power to state regulation, will decrease social wealth and social welfare by increasing the scope for factional politics that produce short-term advantages for some at the cost of long-term dislocation for society as a whole.” “My purpose in writing this book is to show why, above all, private property is a sound social institution, and not just an excuse for private selfishness and greed.” Id. at xvi-xvii.).
Greenspan, Alan, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World (New York: The Penguin Press, 2007) (In a chapter titled, ‘The Making of an Economist,” Greenspan describes his relationship with Ayn Rand. “It did not go without notice that Ayn Rand stood beside me as I took the oath of office in the presence of President Ford in the Oval Office. Ayn Rand and I remained close until she died in 1982, and I’m grateful for the influence she had on my life. I was intellectually limited until I met her. All of my work had been empirical and numbers-based, never values-oriented. I was a talented technician, but that was all. My logical positivism had discounted history and literature—if you’d asked me whether Chaucer was worth reading, I’d have said, ‘Don’t bother.’ Rand persuaded me to look at human beings, their values, how they work, what they do and why they do it, and how they think and why they think. This broadened by horizons far beyond the models of economics I’d learned. I began to study how societies form and how cultures behave, and to realize that economics and forecasting depends on such knowledge—different cultures grow and create material wealth in profoundly different ways. All of this started for me with Ayn Rand. She introduced me to a vast realm from which I’d shut myself off.” Id. at 52-53. I provide this quote because the typical law student is in his or her early twenties, and Greenspan was roughly 26 or 27 when he met Ayn Rand. So, his intellectual life began to change and expand at his mid-twenties. The point: It is not too late for a law student to get beyond the technical aspects of law and explore the humanities: literature, philosophy, history, art, etc. Don’t be just a lawyer. How will the chapter of your life, titled ‘The Making of a Lawyer,’ read? On a completely different point, perhaps the following provides insights as to why the United States is slipping into a second-rate economy: the lack of trust we have in others, and the lack of trust we have in the quality of the goods and services we purchase from each other. “Another important requirement for the proper functioning of market capitalism is also not often, if ever, covered in lists of factors contributing to economic growth and standards of living: trust in the word of others. Where the rule of law prevails, despite everyone’s right to legal redress of a perceived grievance, if there is more than a small fraction of outstanding contracts that require adjudication, court systems would be overwhelmed, as would society’s ability to be governed by the rule of law.” “This implies that in a free society governed by the rights and responsibilities of its citizens, the vast majority of transactions must be voluntary, which, of necessity, presupposes trust in the word of those with whom we do business—in almost all cases, strangers. It is remarkable that … larger numbers of contracts, especially in financial markets, are initially oral, confirmed by a written document only at a later time, even after much price movement. It is remarkable how much trust we have in the pharmacist who fills the prescription ordered by our physician. Or the trust we grant to automakers that their motor vehicles will run as certified. We are not fools. We bank on the self-interest of our counterparties in trade. Just contemplate how little business would get done if that were not the prevailing culture in which we lived. The division of labor so essential to our standard of living would not exist.” Id. at 255-256. Thus, perhaps, the explanation of the subprime meltdown.).
Hachigian, Nina and Mona Sutphen, The Next American Century: How the U.S. Can Thrive as Other Powers Rise (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008) (This is a worthwhile, nontechnical read. "For now, it is China, Europe, India, Japan, and Russia [Note: the authors refer to these as the 'pivotal powers'], though all very different from each other, whether democratic or authoritarian, developed or developing, allies, or rivals (or both), which have the most pivotal role to play in making the world a better place or not, supporting the United States or frustrating its plans." Id. at 11. "America needs to move away from its current amalgam of ad hoc reactive, and inconsistent policies, and toward pragmatic cooperation with the pivotal powers, working with them and not against them. If we don't, we could awaken from our Iraq nightmare to a world not organized in our best interests.... [T]his shift will not be easy because America's political culture encourages our politicians to find foreign scapegoats for our problems. It can promote rejection of international cooperation, even though decade after decade, polling reveals that Americans are inclined to multilateralism, Much of the media, loving a fight because their viewers and readers do, does not tend to contribute to a reasoned discourse about the rise of nations. If we are not careful, these factors, especially combined with a recession, could easily push Americans into unwarranted, extreme hostility directed at China or the next power du jour. Some Americans are already there." Id. at 21.).
Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962 (New York: New York Review of Books, 1977, 2006) (Here is Thomas E. Ricks’s blurb on the back cover which prompted me to read this book: “Alistair Horne’s A Savage War of Peace, had been an underground bestseller among U.S. military officers over the last three years.... Indeed, ‘Algeria’ has become almost a codeword among U.S. counterinsurgency specialists–a shorthand for the depth and complexity of the mess we face in Iraq... Anyone interested in Iraq should read this book immediately.”).
Jacoby, Susan, The Age of American Unreason (New York: Pantheon, 2008) (This book is well worth reading! “[I]t is difficult to suppress the fear that the scales of American history have shifted heavily against the vibrant and varied intellectual life so essential to functional democracy. During the past four decades, America’s endemic anti-intellectual tendencies have been grievously exacerbated by a new species of semiconscious anti-rationalism, feeding on and fed by an ignorant popular culture of video images and unremitting noise that leave no room for contemplation or logic.” Id. at xi-xii. “It remains to be seen, as the current presidential campaign unfolds, whether Americans are willing to consider what the flight from reason has cost us as a people and whether any candidate has the will or the courage to talk about ignorance as a political issue affecting everything from scientific research to decisions about war and peace.” Id. at xvii. “Regardless of political reversals of position, two critical ingredients of American anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism have remained largely unchanged since the 1890s. The first is the belief of a significant minority of Americans that intellectualism and secular higher learning are implacable enemies of their faith. The second is the toxin of pseudoscience, which Americans on both the left and the right continue to imbibe as a means of rendering their social theories impervious to evidence-based challenges.” Id. at 81. “There is a school of thought that applauds the Internet as the Messiah come to save print culture, but this hope of salvation rests on a fundamental confusion between the availability of texts and real reading and writing. The Internet surely does offer a text as well as video highway, open to anyone who can use Google, but text and intellectually substantive reading matter are hardly identical.” Id. at 262. Query: Law review articles and court cases are readily available on the Internet, but how often do those who access these online engage in ‘intellectually substantive reading’?).
Levine, Susan, School Lunch Politics: The Surprising History of America’s Favorite Welfare Program (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2008) (“While policy makers and legislators alike boasted that the National School Lunch Program was intended to protect the nutritional health of all children, no one was willing to appropriate the funds it would take to actually carry out that goal. The competing agendas that have shaped school lunchrooms over the past half-century reflect larger fissures and tensions within American public policy. Like American welfare programs more generally, school lunchrooms have suffered from conservative distrust of federal programs and reluctance to ask taxpayers to pay for public services and from a liberal reluctance to confront the structural causes of economics and racial inequalities.” Id. at 191. This is a worthwhile read. For those so inclined to think about the various so-called “universal healthcare” proposals currently being suggested, this book may provide several important insights as to the political challenges and realities for enacting, implementing, and managing such programs.).
Plumb, J. H., The Death of the Past (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970) (“Education at long last is becoming squarely based on the needs and practices of the modern scientific world in which the West now has to dwell. But it is a movement from education for society, for government, for authority, to education in techniques. This is not all gain, for these has been a loss of a unifying ideology of social attitude which was implicit in an educational world dominated by the past. There is an immense difference between a discussion of Old Cato as the embodiment of civic virtue and one on the sociology of consent. One haunts the imagination, the other quickly fades. And in this period of vast and rapid transition there is great danger of a failure to secure an ideology of social attitude that can be taught and acceptably transmitted from generation to generation.” Id. at 57. “The skills by which men and women earn their bread can no longer be learned at home. They cannot be handed down from generation to generation. Nowadays they are taught that they may, throughout their lives, have to discard much of their learning and re-learn their craft time and time again. Think but of radio sets or of motor-cars [No, think of computers, telephones, MP3 players] and how they have changed in less than a generation. So men and women today are not conditioned in their daily lives to a world that is tied to an impartibly changing past, in which the patterns of work, the relationship between fathers and children, or even between the social classes, possess the sanctity of tradition. Life is change, uncertainty, and only the present can have validity and that, maybe, not for long. The consequence, of course, is to accept a similar attitude in ideas of conduct, in the concepts of social structure or family life, They can be judged by what they do, but lack validity because they have been. So we are witnessing the dissolution of the conditions which tied man to his past and gave him his Janus face.” Id. at 58-59. “And here lies the greatest contribution that the historian can make. History can teach all who are literate about the nature of social change; even to tell the mere story of social change would be a valuable educational process in itself and help fulfil a need in present society of which we are all aware…. We need to teach people to think historically about social change, to make them alert to the cunning of history which…always contains a quality of surprise. We must add the depth of time to studies which so singularly lack it.” Id. at 143-144.).
Power, Samantha, Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira De Mello and the Fight to Save the World (New York: The Penguin Press, 2008) ("The biography of Sergio Vieira de Mello is also the biography of a dangerous world whose ills are too big to ignore but too complex to manage quickly or cheaply. Although the types of conflict--and the loci of Western attention--have shifted over the last four decades, every generation has had to deal with broken lives and broken societies. Because of the terrible costs of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, Americans today seem torn between two impulses. The first is to retreat from global engagement altogether. We do not feel sure that our government or we ourselves know what we a doing. The second is to go abroad to stamp out threats in the hopes of achieving full security. Vieira de Mello's life reminds us of the impossibility of either course. The United States can no more pack up and turn away from today's global threats than it can remake the world to its own liking. Vieira de Mello understood that just because he couldn't cure all ills didn't mean he should not do what he could to ameliorate some." Id. at 11.).
Power, Samantha, “A Problem From Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 2002).
Rejali, Darius, Torture and Democracy (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2007) (“I hope I have written a story that makes us take a second look at ourselves as we enter a new century primed to treat our enemies inhumanely. This book has five aims: (1) to offer a history of the technology of torture around the globe over the past century and use it to engage historical, philosophical, and anthropological claims about modern torture, (2) to raise provocative questions and hypotheses about the historical pattern of torture technology and the factors that shape it, relating the development of this technology to elements not normally considered connected to it, namely, democracy and international monitoring, (3) to change public debate, (4) to offer a riposte to those who defend the use of torture, and (5) to provide a reliable sourcebook for human rights organizations, policymakers, and politicians, drawing extensively on sources hitherto unavailable in English or so scattered and obscure as to be almost inaccessible.” Id. at xvii.).
Scully, Matthew, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002).
Stiglitz, Joseph E. & Linda J. Bilmes, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict (New York: Norton, 2008) (“Going to war is not to be undertaken lightly. It is an act that should be undertaken with greater sobriety, greater solemnity, greater care, and greater reserve than any other. Stripped of the relentless media and government fanfare, the nationalist flagwaving, the reckless bravado, war is about men and women brutally killing and maiming other men and women. The costs live on long after the last shot has been fired.” Id. at 206).
Wood, Gordon S., The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on The Uses of History (New York: The Penguin Press, 2008) (“We have heard a lot over the past several decades about the cultural construction of reality: the so-called postmodern sense that the world is made by us. Historians have little quarrel with this notion of the cultural construction of reality—as long as this is understood as the historical construction of reality. Too often postmodernists think that by demonstrating the cultural construction of reality, they have made it easier for men and women to change that reality at will. If culture and society are made by us, they can be remade to suit our present needs, or so it seems. But anyone with a historical sense knows differently, knows that things are more complicated than that. History, experience, custom—developments through time—give whatever strength and solidity the conventions and values by which we live our lives have. These conventions and values, however humanly created, are not easily manipulated or transformed. They, of course, have changed and will continue to change, but not necessarily in ways that we intend or want.” “Take, for example, our debates over the meaning of the Constitution…. Historians know that the meaning of the Constitution has changed and will continue to change through time. But they also know that no one is free today to give whatever meaning he or she wants to give to it. In our choice of interpretations we are limited by history: by the conventions, values, and meanings we have inherited from the past. Those who fear that abandoning a timeless absolute standard for interpreting the Constitution will lead to moral and intellectual chaos are wrong. History, experience, and custom are powerful restraints on what we can think and do. We are not as free from the past as we think we are. Knowing this is to have a historical sense.” Id. at 12-13.).
AND SOME THOUGHTFUL FICTION...
Baxter, Charles, The Soul Thief (New York: Pantheon, 2008).
Bock, Charles, Beautiful Children: A Novel (New York: Random House, 2008) (flawed, but well worth a careful read).
Caputo, Philip, Acts of Faith: A Novel (New York: Knopf, 2005).
Hamilton, Patrick, Twenty Thousand Street Under the Sky: A London Trilogy (New York: New York Review Books, 1987, 2007).
Jin, Ha, A Free Life: A Novel (New York: Pantheon, 2007).
Megged, Aharon, Foiglman translated from the Hebrew by Marganit Weinberger-Rotman (New Milford, Ct.: The Toby Press, 1987, 2003).
Baker, Nicholson, Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008) (From the jacket cover: Human Smoke delivers a closely textured, deeply moving indictment of the treasured myths that have romanticized much of the 1930s and ’40s. Incorporating meticulous research and well-documented sources—including newspaper and magazine articles, radio speeches, memoirs, and diaries—the book juxtaposes hundreds of interrelated moments of decision, brutality, suffering, and mercy. Vivid glimpses of political leaders and their dissenters illuminate and examine the gradual, horrifying advance toward overt global war and Holocaust.” From the ‘Afterword’: “I dedicate this book to the memory of Clarence Pickett and other American and British pacifists. They’ve never really gotten their due. They tried to save Jewish refugees, feed Europe, reconcile the United States and Japan, and stop the war from happening. They failed, but they were right.” Id. at 474.).
Bernstein, Peter L,. Capital Ideas Evolving (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2007) (The only thing I will say is this: this informative book on innovation in theory and application in capital markets may require an ‘Afterwards’ to account for the subprime debacle.).
Bookstaber, Richard, A Demon of Our Own Design: Markets, Hedge Funds, and the Perils of Financial Innovation (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2007) (“The question posed by this book, simply put, is: Why can’t financial markets seem to get their act together? Why, is spite of reduced risk in the underlying economy, in spite of the march of innovation and the contributions of financial engineering, do we not enjoy reductions in financial risk that we find in other areas of our lives? Why are markets actually becoming more crisis-prone?” Id. at 155.).
Buckley, William F., Jr., Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription: Notes & Asides from National Review (New York: Basic Books, 2007).
Epstein, Richard A., Supreme Neglect: How to revive Constitutional Protection for Private Property (Oxford & New York: Oxford U. Press, 2008) (A nice, very thoughtful, and provocative read. “The most evident feature of the modern period is the sharp divergence between the private law of private property, which has developed with marvelous sophistication, and the crude and dismissive treatment private property receives in modern American constitutional law. It is as though there were two sets of books, with little in common between them. The private law of private property seeks to wring as much benefit out of all resources as is humanly possible. It leaves nothing to waste when it protects all sticks in the common-law bundle of rights, which includes exclusive rights of possession, use, and disposition. The private law is sensitive to the exploitation of property by furnishing its owners with effective systems of recordation and transfer. And it builds in key limitations on the rights of one property owner to protect the like interests of his neighbor. The modern constitutional law does not seek to protect the full panoply of private rights, but tends, mistakenly, to extend a high level of protection solely to the right to exclude. It is as though the holder of an orange is entitle to exclusive possession of the rind, but needs government permission to use or dispose of the fruit that lies within.” “This truncation of property rights is of no little consequence. If the private law governing private property is correct, then the public law, as developed in the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on the subject, is not. If, moreover, the private law works to maximize overall social welfare, then the current constitutional doctrines, by yielding too much power to state regulation, will decrease social wealth and social welfare by increasing the scope for factional politics that produce short-term advantages for some at the cost of long-term dislocation for society as a whole.” “My purpose in writing this book is to show why, above all, private property is a sound social institution, and not just an excuse for private selfishness and greed.” Id. at xvi-xvii.).
Greenspan, Alan, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World (New York: The Penguin Press, 2007) (In a chapter titled, ‘The Making of an Economist,” Greenspan describes his relationship with Ayn Rand. “It did not go without notice that Ayn Rand stood beside me as I took the oath of office in the presence of President Ford in the Oval Office. Ayn Rand and I remained close until she died in 1982, and I’m grateful for the influence she had on my life. I was intellectually limited until I met her. All of my work had been empirical and numbers-based, never values-oriented. I was a talented technician, but that was all. My logical positivism had discounted history and literature—if you’d asked me whether Chaucer was worth reading, I’d have said, ‘Don’t bother.’ Rand persuaded me to look at human beings, their values, how they work, what they do and why they do it, and how they think and why they think. This broadened by horizons far beyond the models of economics I’d learned. I began to study how societies form and how cultures behave, and to realize that economics and forecasting depends on such knowledge—different cultures grow and create material wealth in profoundly different ways. All of this started for me with Ayn Rand. She introduced me to a vast realm from which I’d shut myself off.” Id. at 52-53. I provide this quote because the typical law student is in his or her early twenties, and Greenspan was roughly 26 or 27 when he met Ayn Rand. So, his intellectual life began to change and expand at his mid-twenties. The point: It is not too late for a law student to get beyond the technical aspects of law and explore the humanities: literature, philosophy, history, art, etc. Don’t be just a lawyer. How will the chapter of your life, titled ‘The Making of a Lawyer,’ read? On a completely different point, perhaps the following provides insights as to why the United States is slipping into a second-rate economy: the lack of trust we have in others, and the lack of trust we have in the quality of the goods and services we purchase from each other. “Another important requirement for the proper functioning of market capitalism is also not often, if ever, covered in lists of factors contributing to economic growth and standards of living: trust in the word of others. Where the rule of law prevails, despite everyone’s right to legal redress of a perceived grievance, if there is more than a small fraction of outstanding contracts that require adjudication, court systems would be overwhelmed, as would society’s ability to be governed by the rule of law.” “This implies that in a free society governed by the rights and responsibilities of its citizens, the vast majority of transactions must be voluntary, which, of necessity, presupposes trust in the word of those with whom we do business—in almost all cases, strangers. It is remarkable that … larger numbers of contracts, especially in financial markets, are initially oral, confirmed by a written document only at a later time, even after much price movement. It is remarkable how much trust we have in the pharmacist who fills the prescription ordered by our physician. Or the trust we grant to automakers that their motor vehicles will run as certified. We are not fools. We bank on the self-interest of our counterparties in trade. Just contemplate how little business would get done if that were not the prevailing culture in which we lived. The division of labor so essential to our standard of living would not exist.” Id. at 255-256. Thus, perhaps, the explanation of the subprime meltdown.).
Hachigian, Nina and Mona Sutphen, The Next American Century: How the U.S. Can Thrive as Other Powers Rise (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008) (This is a worthwhile, nontechnical read. "For now, it is China, Europe, India, Japan, and Russia [Note: the authors refer to these as the 'pivotal powers'], though all very different from each other, whether democratic or authoritarian, developed or developing, allies, or rivals (or both), which have the most pivotal role to play in making the world a better place or not, supporting the United States or frustrating its plans." Id. at 11. "America needs to move away from its current amalgam of ad hoc reactive, and inconsistent policies, and toward pragmatic cooperation with the pivotal powers, working with them and not against them. If we don't, we could awaken from our Iraq nightmare to a world not organized in our best interests.... [T]his shift will not be easy because America's political culture encourages our politicians to find foreign scapegoats for our problems. It can promote rejection of international cooperation, even though decade after decade, polling reveals that Americans are inclined to multilateralism, Much of the media, loving a fight because their viewers and readers do, does not tend to contribute to a reasoned discourse about the rise of nations. If we are not careful, these factors, especially combined with a recession, could easily push Americans into unwarranted, extreme hostility directed at China or the next power du jour. Some Americans are already there." Id. at 21.).
Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962 (New York: New York Review of Books, 1977, 2006) (Here is Thomas E. Ricks’s blurb on the back cover which prompted me to read this book: “Alistair Horne’s A Savage War of Peace, had been an underground bestseller among U.S. military officers over the last three years.... Indeed, ‘Algeria’ has become almost a codeword among U.S. counterinsurgency specialists–a shorthand for the depth and complexity of the mess we face in Iraq... Anyone interested in Iraq should read this book immediately.”).
Jacoby, Susan, The Age of American Unreason (New York: Pantheon, 2008) (This book is well worth reading! “[I]t is difficult to suppress the fear that the scales of American history have shifted heavily against the vibrant and varied intellectual life so essential to functional democracy. During the past four decades, America’s endemic anti-intellectual tendencies have been grievously exacerbated by a new species of semiconscious anti-rationalism, feeding on and fed by an ignorant popular culture of video images and unremitting noise that leave no room for contemplation or logic.” Id. at xi-xii. “It remains to be seen, as the current presidential campaign unfolds, whether Americans are willing to consider what the flight from reason has cost us as a people and whether any candidate has the will or the courage to talk about ignorance as a political issue affecting everything from scientific research to decisions about war and peace.” Id. at xvii. “Regardless of political reversals of position, two critical ingredients of American anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism have remained largely unchanged since the 1890s. The first is the belief of a significant minority of Americans that intellectualism and secular higher learning are implacable enemies of their faith. The second is the toxin of pseudoscience, which Americans on both the left and the right continue to imbibe as a means of rendering their social theories impervious to evidence-based challenges.” Id. at 81. “There is a school of thought that applauds the Internet as the Messiah come to save print culture, but this hope of salvation rests on a fundamental confusion between the availability of texts and real reading and writing. The Internet surely does offer a text as well as video highway, open to anyone who can use Google, but text and intellectually substantive reading matter are hardly identical.” Id. at 262. Query: Law review articles and court cases are readily available on the Internet, but how often do those who access these online engage in ‘intellectually substantive reading’?).
Levine, Susan, School Lunch Politics: The Surprising History of America’s Favorite Welfare Program (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2008) (“While policy makers and legislators alike boasted that the National School Lunch Program was intended to protect the nutritional health of all children, no one was willing to appropriate the funds it would take to actually carry out that goal. The competing agendas that have shaped school lunchrooms over the past half-century reflect larger fissures and tensions within American public policy. Like American welfare programs more generally, school lunchrooms have suffered from conservative distrust of federal programs and reluctance to ask taxpayers to pay for public services and from a liberal reluctance to confront the structural causes of economics and racial inequalities.” Id. at 191. This is a worthwhile read. For those so inclined to think about the various so-called “universal healthcare” proposals currently being suggested, this book may provide several important insights as to the political challenges and realities for enacting, implementing, and managing such programs.).
Plumb, J. H., The Death of the Past (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970) (“Education at long last is becoming squarely based on the needs and practices of the modern scientific world in which the West now has to dwell. But it is a movement from education for society, for government, for authority, to education in techniques. This is not all gain, for these has been a loss of a unifying ideology of social attitude which was implicit in an educational world dominated by the past. There is an immense difference between a discussion of Old Cato as the embodiment of civic virtue and one on the sociology of consent. One haunts the imagination, the other quickly fades. And in this period of vast and rapid transition there is great danger of a failure to secure an ideology of social attitude that can be taught and acceptably transmitted from generation to generation.” Id. at 57. “The skills by which men and women earn their bread can no longer be learned at home. They cannot be handed down from generation to generation. Nowadays they are taught that they may, throughout their lives, have to discard much of their learning and re-learn their craft time and time again. Think but of radio sets or of motor-cars [No, think of computers, telephones, MP3 players] and how they have changed in less than a generation. So men and women today are not conditioned in their daily lives to a world that is tied to an impartibly changing past, in which the patterns of work, the relationship between fathers and children, or even between the social classes, possess the sanctity of tradition. Life is change, uncertainty, and only the present can have validity and that, maybe, not for long. The consequence, of course, is to accept a similar attitude in ideas of conduct, in the concepts of social structure or family life, They can be judged by what they do, but lack validity because they have been. So we are witnessing the dissolution of the conditions which tied man to his past and gave him his Janus face.” Id. at 58-59. “And here lies the greatest contribution that the historian can make. History can teach all who are literate about the nature of social change; even to tell the mere story of social change would be a valuable educational process in itself and help fulfil a need in present society of which we are all aware…. We need to teach people to think historically about social change, to make them alert to the cunning of history which…always contains a quality of surprise. We must add the depth of time to studies which so singularly lack it.” Id. at 143-144.).
Power, Samantha, Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira De Mello and the Fight to Save the World (New York: The Penguin Press, 2008) ("The biography of Sergio Vieira de Mello is also the biography of a dangerous world whose ills are too big to ignore but too complex to manage quickly or cheaply. Although the types of conflict--and the loci of Western attention--have shifted over the last four decades, every generation has had to deal with broken lives and broken societies. Because of the terrible costs of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, Americans today seem torn between two impulses. The first is to retreat from global engagement altogether. We do not feel sure that our government or we ourselves know what we a doing. The second is to go abroad to stamp out threats in the hopes of achieving full security. Vieira de Mello's life reminds us of the impossibility of either course. The United States can no more pack up and turn away from today's global threats than it can remake the world to its own liking. Vieira de Mello understood that just because he couldn't cure all ills didn't mean he should not do what he could to ameliorate some." Id. at 11.).
Power, Samantha, “A Problem From Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 2002).
Rejali, Darius, Torture and Democracy (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2007) (“I hope I have written a story that makes us take a second look at ourselves as we enter a new century primed to treat our enemies inhumanely. This book has five aims: (1) to offer a history of the technology of torture around the globe over the past century and use it to engage historical, philosophical, and anthropological claims about modern torture, (2) to raise provocative questions and hypotheses about the historical pattern of torture technology and the factors that shape it, relating the development of this technology to elements not normally considered connected to it, namely, democracy and international monitoring, (3) to change public debate, (4) to offer a riposte to those who defend the use of torture, and (5) to provide a reliable sourcebook for human rights organizations, policymakers, and politicians, drawing extensively on sources hitherto unavailable in English or so scattered and obscure as to be almost inaccessible.” Id. at xvii.).
Scully, Matthew, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002).
Stiglitz, Joseph E. & Linda J. Bilmes, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict (New York: Norton, 2008) (“Going to war is not to be undertaken lightly. It is an act that should be undertaken with greater sobriety, greater solemnity, greater care, and greater reserve than any other. Stripped of the relentless media and government fanfare, the nationalist flagwaving, the reckless bravado, war is about men and women brutally killing and maiming other men and women. The costs live on long after the last shot has been fired.” Id. at 206).
Wood, Gordon S., The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on The Uses of History (New York: The Penguin Press, 2008) (“We have heard a lot over the past several decades about the cultural construction of reality: the so-called postmodern sense that the world is made by us. Historians have little quarrel with this notion of the cultural construction of reality—as long as this is understood as the historical construction of reality. Too often postmodernists think that by demonstrating the cultural construction of reality, they have made it easier for men and women to change that reality at will. If culture and society are made by us, they can be remade to suit our present needs, or so it seems. But anyone with a historical sense knows differently, knows that things are more complicated than that. History, experience, custom—developments through time—give whatever strength and solidity the conventions and values by which we live our lives have. These conventions and values, however humanly created, are not easily manipulated or transformed. They, of course, have changed and will continue to change, but not necessarily in ways that we intend or want.” “Take, for example, our debates over the meaning of the Constitution…. Historians know that the meaning of the Constitution has changed and will continue to change through time. But they also know that no one is free today to give whatever meaning he or she wants to give to it. In our choice of interpretations we are limited by history: by the conventions, values, and meanings we have inherited from the past. Those who fear that abandoning a timeless absolute standard for interpreting the Constitution will lead to moral and intellectual chaos are wrong. History, experience, and custom are powerful restraints on what we can think and do. We are not as free from the past as we think we are. Knowing this is to have a historical sense.” Id. at 12-13.).
AND SOME THOUGHTFUL FICTION...
Baxter, Charles, The Soul Thief (New York: Pantheon, 2008).
Bock, Charles, Beautiful Children: A Novel (New York: Random House, 2008) (flawed, but well worth a careful read).
Caputo, Philip, Acts of Faith: A Novel (New York: Knopf, 2005).
Hamilton, Patrick, Twenty Thousand Street Under the Sky: A London Trilogy (New York: New York Review Books, 1987, 2007).
Jin, Ha, A Free Life: A Novel (New York: Pantheon, 2007).
Megged, Aharon, Foiglman translated from the Hebrew by Marganit Weinberger-Rotman (New Milford, Ct.: The Toby Press, 1987, 2003).
March 16, 2008
SPRING BREAK READINGS
Fredrickson, George M., Big Enough to Be Inconsistent: Abraham Lincoln Confronts Slavery and Race ( Cambridge, Ma. & London: Harvard U. Press, 2008) (“The strategic aim of this book is to find a middle ground between the hagiographers, who view Lincoln as a consistent and effective opponent of slavery and a sincere, if sometime politically covert, champion of racial equality, and the debunkers, who are fixated on what they take to be Lincoln’s dyed-in-the-wool racism.” “[I]f this book provides any advance over the reams of previous writing about Lincoln, it is because of its attempt to demonstrate the full complexity and ambiguity of Lincoln’s encounter with the great national questions of slavery and race. In some ways,, as W. E. B. DuBois suggested, Lincoln’s greatness and the fact that he was sometimes uncertain or confused about what he should do or think are not incompatible: he was ‘big enough to be inconsistent.’” Id. at x-xi.).
Halberstam, David, The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War (New York: Hyperion, 2007) (An alternative title for this wonderful book is ‘The Politics of War: American and the Korean War.’ Also, does not an undated version of this have a familiar ring? "For it was not just Douglas MacArthur who thought that he could fight the North Koreans with a limited number of troops, it was much of the top military and political establishment, and regrettably altogether too many of the troops themselves." Id. at 139.).
Lewis, Anthony, Freedom For the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment (New York: Basic Books, 2008) (a nice little summary of 1st amendment history).
Mihm, Stephen, A Nation of Counterfeiters: Capitalists, Con Men, and the Making of the United States (Cambridge & London: Harvard U. Press, 2007) ("Value, then, was not something inert, something inherent in the note itself, the way that gold in a coin was thought to have an intrinsic value. Far from it: value was something that materialized and became tangible when the note was exchanged, when one person put confidence in the note of another. Only then, at that instant, would an intrinsically worthless piece of paper come to mean something more." "Counterfeiters grasped this essential truth, which applied not only to bank notes, but also to the emergent market economy as a whole. Confidence was the engine of economic growth, the mysterious sentiment that permitted a country poor in specie but rich in promises to create something from nothing.... Counterfeiters, arguably the most ubiquitous and sophisticated of all confidence men, likewise understood that confidence was fragile, incapable of withstanding close scrutiny. Anyone who looked too carefully at what stood behind a bill would destroy it, just like the farmer in the fairy tale who, in trying to find out how the goose laid golden eggs, killed the priceless bird. Bills could function whether counterfeit or not, so long as they entered into circulation with enough trust on the part of the person receiving them. At it core, capitalism was little more that a confidence game. As long as confidence flourished, even the most far-fletched speculation could get off the ground, wealth would increase, and bank notes--the very pieces of paper that made it all possible--would circulate." Id. at 10-11).
Miller, William Lee, President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman (New York: Knopf, 2008).
Richards, Leonard L., The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War (New York: Knopf, 2007) (From the jacket cover" "Richards explains how Southerners envisioned California as a new market for slaves and saw themselves importing their own slaves to dig for gold, only to be frustrated by California's passage of a state constitution that prohibited slavery. Still, they schemed to tie California to the South with a southern-routed transcontinental railroad and worked to split off the southern half as a separate slave state. We see how the Gold Rush influenced the squabbling over the Gadsden Purchase, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and various attempts to take Cuba and Nicaragua...." "When war did break out, efforts were made to push California to secede, but there was little general enthusiasm for secession, and many prominent Southerners went off to join the Confederate Army while others tried desperately to keep California gold from getting to the North and underwriting Lincoln's war machine.").
Teles, Steven M., The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement: The Battle for Control of the Law (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2008) (“Perhaps one of the most common mistakes that have been made by those who have attempted to learn from the conservative legal movement has been the tendency to confuse direct organizational goals and the desired by-products of activities with other ends. The [Henry] Manne programs in the 1970s and 1980s and the lectures and conventions of the Federalist Society, for example, contributed mightily to the development of academic and professional networks. These networks spurred intellectual productivity, improved the information that conservatives could access in government, and assisted in identifying ideological sympathizers when staffing the federal judiciary and administrative agencies. As import as these outputs were, however, they were by-products, or external benefits, of activities and organizations that worked because they were not aimed directly at these goals. Professors and judges attended Manne’s seminars because they were deeply intellectually stimulating, and, despite the unquestioned presence of opportunists within its ranks, such stimulation remains the main force drawing lawyers and law students to Federal Society meetings. Strong networks of the kind that come from these programs developed because of the emotional and intellectual intensity that come from an activity that knots people together and not because the organizations serve instrumental goals for their members. Even when the objective of organizational mobilization is narrowly political, therefore, it may be more effectively pursued through means that are broader and more indirect.” Id. at 280.).
Wilford, Hugh, The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America (Cambridge, MA, & London: Harvard U. Press, 2008) (“This book … has two main aims. One is to provide the first comprehensive account of the CIA’s covert network from its creation in the late 1940s to its exposure twenty years later, encompassing all the main American citizen groups involved in front operations, not just in Europe by in the Third World as well. The other is to portray the relationship between the CIA and its client organizations in as complete and rounded a manner as possible, combining intelligence history with the specific social history or histories of the groups concerned. My hope is that, by telling both sides of the story, the groups’ as well as the CIA’s, I will shed new light not only on the U.S. government’s conduct of the Cold War, but also on American society and culture in the mid-twentieth century.” Id. at 10.).
Wilson, Eric G., Against Happiness (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008).
Halberstam, David, The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War (New York: Hyperion, 2007) (An alternative title for this wonderful book is ‘The Politics of War: American and the Korean War.’ Also, does not an undated version of this have a familiar ring? "For it was not just Douglas MacArthur who thought that he could fight the North Koreans with a limited number of troops, it was much of the top military and political establishment, and regrettably altogether too many of the troops themselves." Id. at 139.).
Lewis, Anthony, Freedom For the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment (New York: Basic Books, 2008) (a nice little summary of 1st amendment history).
Mihm, Stephen, A Nation of Counterfeiters: Capitalists, Con Men, and the Making of the United States (Cambridge & London: Harvard U. Press, 2007) ("Value, then, was not something inert, something inherent in the note itself, the way that gold in a coin was thought to have an intrinsic value. Far from it: value was something that materialized and became tangible when the note was exchanged, when one person put confidence in the note of another. Only then, at that instant, would an intrinsically worthless piece of paper come to mean something more." "Counterfeiters grasped this essential truth, which applied not only to bank notes, but also to the emergent market economy as a whole. Confidence was the engine of economic growth, the mysterious sentiment that permitted a country poor in specie but rich in promises to create something from nothing.... Counterfeiters, arguably the most ubiquitous and sophisticated of all confidence men, likewise understood that confidence was fragile, incapable of withstanding close scrutiny. Anyone who looked too carefully at what stood behind a bill would destroy it, just like the farmer in the fairy tale who, in trying to find out how the goose laid golden eggs, killed the priceless bird. Bills could function whether counterfeit or not, so long as they entered into circulation with enough trust on the part of the person receiving them. At it core, capitalism was little more that a confidence game. As long as confidence flourished, even the most far-fletched speculation could get off the ground, wealth would increase, and bank notes--the very pieces of paper that made it all possible--would circulate." Id. at 10-11).
Miller, William Lee, President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman (New York: Knopf, 2008).
Richards, Leonard L., The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War (New York: Knopf, 2007) (From the jacket cover" "Richards explains how Southerners envisioned California as a new market for slaves and saw themselves importing their own slaves to dig for gold, only to be frustrated by California's passage of a state constitution that prohibited slavery. Still, they schemed to tie California to the South with a southern-routed transcontinental railroad and worked to split off the southern half as a separate slave state. We see how the Gold Rush influenced the squabbling over the Gadsden Purchase, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and various attempts to take Cuba and Nicaragua...." "When war did break out, efforts were made to push California to secede, but there was little general enthusiasm for secession, and many prominent Southerners went off to join the Confederate Army while others tried desperately to keep California gold from getting to the North and underwriting Lincoln's war machine.").
Teles, Steven M., The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement: The Battle for Control of the Law (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2008) (“Perhaps one of the most common mistakes that have been made by those who have attempted to learn from the conservative legal movement has been the tendency to confuse direct organizational goals and the desired by-products of activities with other ends. The [Henry] Manne programs in the 1970s and 1980s and the lectures and conventions of the Federalist Society, for example, contributed mightily to the development of academic and professional networks. These networks spurred intellectual productivity, improved the information that conservatives could access in government, and assisted in identifying ideological sympathizers when staffing the federal judiciary and administrative agencies. As import as these outputs were, however, they were by-products, or external benefits, of activities and organizations that worked because they were not aimed directly at these goals. Professors and judges attended Manne’s seminars because they were deeply intellectually stimulating, and, despite the unquestioned presence of opportunists within its ranks, such stimulation remains the main force drawing lawyers and law students to Federal Society meetings. Strong networks of the kind that come from these programs developed because of the emotional and intellectual intensity that come from an activity that knots people together and not because the organizations serve instrumental goals for their members. Even when the objective of organizational mobilization is narrowly political, therefore, it may be more effectively pursued through means that are broader and more indirect.” Id. at 280.).
Wilford, Hugh, The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America (Cambridge, MA, & London: Harvard U. Press, 2008) (“This book … has two main aims. One is to provide the first comprehensive account of the CIA’s covert network from its creation in the late 1940s to its exposure twenty years later, encompassing all the main American citizen groups involved in front operations, not just in Europe by in the Third World as well. The other is to portray the relationship between the CIA and its client organizations in as complete and rounded a manner as possible, combining intelligence history with the specific social history or histories of the groups concerned. My hope is that, by telling both sides of the story, the groups’ as well as the CIA’s, I will shed new light not only on the U.S. government’s conduct of the Cold War, but also on American society and culture in the mid-twentieth century.” Id. at 10.).
Wilson, Eric G., Against Happiness (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008).
March 5, 2008
“HUMAN HISTORY BECOMES MORE AND MORE A RACE BETWEEN EDUCATION AND CATASTROPHE.” H. G. Wells.
Bell, Duncan, The Idea of Greater Britain: Empire and the Future of World Order, 1860-1900 (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2007) (“The history of modern political thought is partly the history of the attempt to confront increasingly global interdependence and competition. The Idea of Greater Britain focuses on an important but neglected aspect of this chronicle: the debate over the potential union of the United Kingdom with its so-called settler colonies—the lands we know now as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, as well as parts of South Africa—during the later Victorian age. Straddling oceans and spanning continents, this polity was to act, so its advocates proclaimed, as a guarantor of British strength and of a just and stable world. I explore the languages employed in imagining the settler empire as a single transcontinental political community, even as a global federal state…. I seek to shed light on the ways in which the future of world order—the configuration and dynamics of economics and geopolitical power, and the normative architecture justifying this a patterning—was perceived in an age of vital importance for the development of politics in the twentieth century and beyond.” “The quest for Greater Britain was both a reaction to and a product of the complex evolution of nineteenth-century international politics. The turbulent economic and political conditions of the era engendered profound anxiety, leading to the belief that a colossal polity was indispensable for preserving strength in a world in flux. In this sense it was reactive. But it was a product in the sense that communications technologies facilitating increasing levels of economic interdependence also generated the cognitive shift that was necessary for people to conceive of the scattered elements of the colonial empire as a coherent and unified political unit, and even as a state.” Id. at 1-2.).
Ben Jelloun, Tahar, This Blinding Absence of Light translated from the French by Linda Coverdale (New York: The New Press, 2001, 2002) (Fiction. From the jacket cover: “Ben Jelloun crafts a horrific real-life narrative into fiction to tell the appalling story of the desert concentration camps in which Kling Hassan II of Morocco held his political enemies under the most harrowing conditions. Not until September 1991, under international pressure, was Hassan’s regime forced to open these desert hellholes. A handful of survivors—living cadavers who had shrunk by over a foot in height—emerged from the six-by-three-foot cells in which they had been held underground for decades.”).
Blanning, Tim, The Pursuit of Glory: Europe, 1648-1815 (New York: Viking, 2007).
Eichengreen, Barry, The European Economy Since 1945: Coordinated Capitalism and Beyond (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2007) (Nice synthesis and summary of European postwar economic history. I would think this a worthwhile background read for law students interested in international trade and business transaction, at least as such pertains to Europe. There is an ongoing debate as to whether, as between the United States and Europe, the United States model and European model will integrate and, if so, which will dominate, if either. This book provides an overview of the European model. On a political note, one of the (many) failures of the Democratic Party in the United States is its failure to articulate a coherent alternative, let alone viable alternative, to the Republican Party and, more important, the status quo with respect to economics, business, and social welfare. Case in point, Senator Clinton’s proposal for ‘universal health care’ which (if I understand it correctly) will be paid for largely by employers. That immediately places employers in political opposition, thereby increasing the prospects that it is dead on arrival or will survive in some much watered down and far from universal form. Coordination requires cooperation, and establish Democrats and Republicans both have mislaid the ability to cooperate with their opposition. Perhaps this book provides a sense of how such coordination and cooperation might look. I am not saying that Europe gets it right, they don’t.).
Elliott, Michael A., Custerology: The Enduring Legacy of the Indian Wars and George Armstrong Custer (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 2007).
Guha, Ramachandra, India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy (New York: Ecco, 2007) (One should read this book for a number of reasons: (1) because most Americans are very ignorant of world history; (2) because India is—or will be—an important player in international politics and economics; (3) because, as the subtitle indicates, India is the world’s largest democracy (thus United States does not have a monopoly on it or on how it should function). Yet, I fear, that the following passage still captures the prevailing American attitude towards India and Indians. “Americans, for their part, had their own prejudices about India. They admired Gandhi and his struggle for national independence, but their knowledge of the country itself was scant. As Harold Isaac once point out, for Americans in the postwar years there were really only four kinds of Indians: (1) fabulous Indians, the maharajas and magicians coupled with equally exotic animals like tigers and elephants; (2) mystical Indians, a people who were ‘deep, contemplative, tranquil, profound’, (3) benighted Indians, who worshipped animals and many-headed gods and lived in a country that was even more heathen than China; and (4) pathetic Indians, plagued by poverty and crippled by disease—‘children with fly-encircled wyes, with swollen stomachs, child dying in the streets, rivers choked with bodies.’ Of course these images perhaps the last two predominated. It was no accident that the book on the subcontinent best know in America was Katherine Mayo’s Mother India, which Gandhi had described as a ‘drain inspector’s report.’” Id. at 165 (citation omitted). Of course, today, many Americans would now add, and unfairly blame, a fifth kind of Indian: the Indian whom they think has taken their outsourced job. What is the appropriate label for those Indian who have made themselves competitive in the global economy, while America have simply made themselves global consumers? Still, most importantly, “[t]he history of independent India has amended and modified of democracy based on the experience of the West. However, it has even more frontally challenged ideas of nationalism emanating from the western experience.” Id. at 738.).
Harvey, Robert, The War of Wars: The Great European Conflict 1793-1815 (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2006) ("One of the book's central themes is that the war [i.e., the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars] was a clash of national interests, not merely the whim of one man, Napoleon...." "This books seeks above all to portray the intensity of the struggle between Britain and France during this period--the first between a constitutional and a modern totalitarian power--while also covering the immense continental conflict, which determined the fate of Europe and indeed much of the world for the next century. This book also tries to evaluate the extent to which the French Revolution's and Napoleon's ideals transformed Europe in spite of his eventual defeat." Id. at xi-xii.).
Kershaw, Ian, Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions that Changed the World, 1940-1941 (New York: The Penguin Press, 2007) (“Events in Europe seemed far away and of little direct relevance to most Americans, preoccupied with making ends meet and coping with the travails of daily life as the country struggled along the path of economic recovery. The Atlantic appeared to pose a large enough cushion to protect Americans from the dangers against threatening the incorrigibly warlike continent of Europe. But they wanted to take no chances. Seven out of ten Americans believed in autumn 1937 that Congress should have the approval of the population in a referendum before issuing a declaration of war. A constitutional amendment to that effect, tying the President down, not just to a decision of Congress, but to the result of a popular referendum, was only narrowly defeated in the House of Representatives.” Id. at 191. As they say, times have changed in more ways than one. Yet, one thing true them that remains true today is the fact of bad decision making. “Yet another impersonal force operated within each governmental system. Bureaucratic planning and evaluation of policy proposals contributed to the ‘re-packaging’ of decisions, often as the outcome of in-fighting for influence and resources with organizations.” Id. at 480.).
Lewis, David Levering, God’s Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215 (New York: Norton, 2008).
Schlink, Bernhard, Homecoming: A Novel translated from the German by Michael Henry Heim (New York: Pantheon, 2008) (“He had written his dissertation on the Nazi interpretation of the Civil Code and saw parallels with the socialist interpretation. He maintained that the cowardice of the judges and law professors in the Third Reich willing to twist the law for their careers’ sake was the same as the cowardice of the judges and law professors in East Germany, that it had been possible to show courage and put up resistance under both systems. ‘We must never make the mistake our parents made,’ he said, laying his hand on my arm. ‘If history hasn’t taught us the lesson of resistance, then history is nothing but one long aimless, senseless bloodbath.’ He squeezed my arm. ‘That is our historical mission. That is why we are here.’” Id. at 147-148. “He smiled at me again. ‘Our friend here is wondering what point there is in all this talk about evil. Are not the great scoundrels dead? Have not the evil empires crumbled or been destroyed? Are not freedom, democracy, and the market spreading over all the earth? Has not peace eternal supplanted the Cold War? Will not the century of good succeed the century of evil within a decade?’” “The class was over…. De Baur waited until the first few [students] reached the door, then started in again. They stopped and turned. ‘Be suspicious. Trust neither the coming decade nor the coming century. Trust neither the good nor the normal. Truth first reveals itself in the face of evil and in the moment of crisis.’” Id. at 212.).
Perez-Reverte, Arturo, The Painter of Battles: A Novel translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden (New York: Random House, 2008).
Robb, Graham, The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography from the Revolution to the First World War (New York: Norton, 2007).
Sowell, Thomas, Economic Facts and Fallacies (New York: Basic Books, 2008) (a nice little read).
Vollmann, William T., Riding Toward Everywhere (New York: Ecco, 2008) (“[My father] taught his students without fear or favor, never missing a lecture in all the decades of his career. He worked hard, lived the life he chose, and said precisely what he thought. On his desk lay a paperweight engraved with his favorite motto: BULLSHIT BAFFLES BRAINS.” Id. at 2. So true!).
Ben Jelloun, Tahar, This Blinding Absence of Light translated from the French by Linda Coverdale (New York: The New Press, 2001, 2002) (Fiction. From the jacket cover: “Ben Jelloun crafts a horrific real-life narrative into fiction to tell the appalling story of the desert concentration camps in which Kling Hassan II of Morocco held his political enemies under the most harrowing conditions. Not until September 1991, under international pressure, was Hassan’s regime forced to open these desert hellholes. A handful of survivors—living cadavers who had shrunk by over a foot in height—emerged from the six-by-three-foot cells in which they had been held underground for decades.”).
Blanning, Tim, The Pursuit of Glory: Europe, 1648-1815 (New York: Viking, 2007).
Eichengreen, Barry, The European Economy Since 1945: Coordinated Capitalism and Beyond (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2007) (Nice synthesis and summary of European postwar economic history. I would think this a worthwhile background read for law students interested in international trade and business transaction, at least as such pertains to Europe. There is an ongoing debate as to whether, as between the United States and Europe, the United States model and European model will integrate and, if so, which will dominate, if either. This book provides an overview of the European model. On a political note, one of the (many) failures of the Democratic Party in the United States is its failure to articulate a coherent alternative, let alone viable alternative, to the Republican Party and, more important, the status quo with respect to economics, business, and social welfare. Case in point, Senator Clinton’s proposal for ‘universal health care’ which (if I understand it correctly) will be paid for largely by employers. That immediately places employers in political opposition, thereby increasing the prospects that it is dead on arrival or will survive in some much watered down and far from universal form. Coordination requires cooperation, and establish Democrats and Republicans both have mislaid the ability to cooperate with their opposition. Perhaps this book provides a sense of how such coordination and cooperation might look. I am not saying that Europe gets it right, they don’t.).
Elliott, Michael A., Custerology: The Enduring Legacy of the Indian Wars and George Armstrong Custer (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 2007).
Guha, Ramachandra, India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy (New York: Ecco, 2007) (One should read this book for a number of reasons: (1) because most Americans are very ignorant of world history; (2) because India is—or will be—an important player in international politics and economics; (3) because, as the subtitle indicates, India is the world’s largest democracy (thus United States does not have a monopoly on it or on how it should function). Yet, I fear, that the following passage still captures the prevailing American attitude towards India and Indians. “Americans, for their part, had their own prejudices about India. They admired Gandhi and his struggle for national independence, but their knowledge of the country itself was scant. As Harold Isaac once point out, for Americans in the postwar years there were really only four kinds of Indians: (1) fabulous Indians, the maharajas and magicians coupled with equally exotic animals like tigers and elephants; (2) mystical Indians, a people who were ‘deep, contemplative, tranquil, profound’, (3) benighted Indians, who worshipped animals and many-headed gods and lived in a country that was even more heathen than China; and (4) pathetic Indians, plagued by poverty and crippled by disease—‘children with fly-encircled wyes, with swollen stomachs, child dying in the streets, rivers choked with bodies.’ Of course these images perhaps the last two predominated. It was no accident that the book on the subcontinent best know in America was Katherine Mayo’s Mother India, which Gandhi had described as a ‘drain inspector’s report.’” Id. at 165 (citation omitted). Of course, today, many Americans would now add, and unfairly blame, a fifth kind of Indian: the Indian whom they think has taken their outsourced job. What is the appropriate label for those Indian who have made themselves competitive in the global economy, while America have simply made themselves global consumers? Still, most importantly, “[t]he history of independent India has amended and modified of democracy based on the experience of the West. However, it has even more frontally challenged ideas of nationalism emanating from the western experience.” Id. at 738.).
Harvey, Robert, The War of Wars: The Great European Conflict 1793-1815 (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2006) ("One of the book's central themes is that the war [i.e., the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars] was a clash of national interests, not merely the whim of one man, Napoleon...." "This books seeks above all to portray the intensity of the struggle between Britain and France during this period--the first between a constitutional and a modern totalitarian power--while also covering the immense continental conflict, which determined the fate of Europe and indeed much of the world for the next century. This book also tries to evaluate the extent to which the French Revolution's and Napoleon's ideals transformed Europe in spite of his eventual defeat." Id. at xi-xii.).
Kershaw, Ian, Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions that Changed the World, 1940-1941 (New York: The Penguin Press, 2007) (“Events in Europe seemed far away and of little direct relevance to most Americans, preoccupied with making ends meet and coping with the travails of daily life as the country struggled along the path of economic recovery. The Atlantic appeared to pose a large enough cushion to protect Americans from the dangers against threatening the incorrigibly warlike continent of Europe. But they wanted to take no chances. Seven out of ten Americans believed in autumn 1937 that Congress should have the approval of the population in a referendum before issuing a declaration of war. A constitutional amendment to that effect, tying the President down, not just to a decision of Congress, but to the result of a popular referendum, was only narrowly defeated in the House of Representatives.” Id. at 191. As they say, times have changed in more ways than one. Yet, one thing true them that remains true today is the fact of bad decision making. “Yet another impersonal force operated within each governmental system. Bureaucratic planning and evaluation of policy proposals contributed to the ‘re-packaging’ of decisions, often as the outcome of in-fighting for influence and resources with organizations.” Id. at 480.).
Lewis, David Levering, God’s Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215 (New York: Norton, 2008).
Schlink, Bernhard, Homecoming: A Novel translated from the German by Michael Henry Heim (New York: Pantheon, 2008) (“He had written his dissertation on the Nazi interpretation of the Civil Code and saw parallels with the socialist interpretation. He maintained that the cowardice of the judges and law professors in the Third Reich willing to twist the law for their careers’ sake was the same as the cowardice of the judges and law professors in East Germany, that it had been possible to show courage and put up resistance under both systems. ‘We must never make the mistake our parents made,’ he said, laying his hand on my arm. ‘If history hasn’t taught us the lesson of resistance, then history is nothing but one long aimless, senseless bloodbath.’ He squeezed my arm. ‘That is our historical mission. That is why we are here.’” Id. at 147-148. “He smiled at me again. ‘Our friend here is wondering what point there is in all this talk about evil. Are not the great scoundrels dead? Have not the evil empires crumbled or been destroyed? Are not freedom, democracy, and the market spreading over all the earth? Has not peace eternal supplanted the Cold War? Will not the century of good succeed the century of evil within a decade?’” “The class was over…. De Baur waited until the first few [students] reached the door, then started in again. They stopped and turned. ‘Be suspicious. Trust neither the coming decade nor the coming century. Trust neither the good nor the normal. Truth first reveals itself in the face of evil and in the moment of crisis.’” Id. at 212.).
Perez-Reverte, Arturo, The Painter of Battles: A Novel translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden (New York: Random House, 2008).
Robb, Graham, The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography from the Revolution to the First World War (New York: Norton, 2007).
Sowell, Thomas, Economic Facts and Fallacies (New York: Basic Books, 2008) (a nice little read).
Vollmann, William T., Riding Toward Everywhere (New York: Ecco, 2008) (“[My father] taught his students without fear or favor, never missing a lecture in all the decades of his career. He worked hard, lived the life he chose, and said precisely what he thought. On his desk lay a paperweight engraved with his favorite motto: BULLSHIT BAFFLES BRAINS.” Id. at 2. So true!).
February 21, 2008
THREE, NOT COMPATIBLE, TAKES ON THE UNEASY RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CHURCH AND STATE IN AMERICA.
Hamburger, Philip, Separation of Church and State (Cambridge: Harvard U. Press, 2002).
Nussbaum, Martha C., Liberty of Conscience: In Defense of America’s Tradition of Religious Equality (New York: Basic Books, 2008).
Wills, Garry, Head and Heart: American Christianities (New York: The Penguin Press, 2007).
Nussbaum, Martha C., Liberty of Conscience: In Defense of America’s Tradition of Religious Equality (New York: Basic Books, 2008).
Wills, Garry, Head and Heart: American Christianities (New York: The Penguin Press, 2007).
February 18, 2008
POINTS, COUNTERPOINTS, CONTRAPOINTS ON THE POLITICS OF RACE IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICA …PLUS ONE HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
Ford, Richard Thompson, The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008).
Kennedy, Randall, Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal (New York: Pantheon, 2008).
Steele, Shelby, A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can’t Win (New York: Free Press, 2008).
Oakes, James, The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders (New York: Knopf, 1982) ("How did the slaveholding class, which was molded by the same forces that shaped the nation, which fought America's wars and helped inspire its Revolution, a class which boasted of its patriotism, its devotion to freedom, its adherence to the major tenets of liberalism--how did such a class justify its continuing commitment to slavery and remain so steadfast in that commitment that it willingly separated from the Union it had helped create? In short, how could the slaveholders' ideology prove so malleable as to reinforce simultaneously their devotion to black slavery and to democratic freedom? It is here, in the triumph of the slaveholders' liberalism, that the legacy of slavery becomes a truly American dilemma." Id. at x-xi.).
Kennedy, Randall, Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal (New York: Pantheon, 2008).
Steele, Shelby, A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can’t Win (New York: Free Press, 2008).
Oakes, James, The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders (New York: Knopf, 1982) ("How did the slaveholding class, which was molded by the same forces that shaped the nation, which fought America's wars and helped inspire its Revolution, a class which boasted of its patriotism, its devotion to freedom, its adherence to the major tenets of liberalism--how did such a class justify its continuing commitment to slavery and remain so steadfast in that commitment that it willingly separated from the Union it had helped create? In short, how could the slaveholders' ideology prove so malleable as to reinforce simultaneously their devotion to black slavery and to democratic freedom? It is here, in the triumph of the slaveholders' liberalism, that the legacy of slavery becomes a truly American dilemma." Id. at x-xi.).
February 14, 2008
THREE RECENT BOOKS FOR THOUGHTFUL LAW STUDENTS … AND OTHERS.
I want to preface this short list of suggested reading by noting what, I hope, is a promising trend. Almost every week someone mentions to me, in person or via email, that he or she reads The Comopolite Lawyer and, more important, is motivated to purchase and read some of the book listed. This is especially heartening when the person is a law student who, notwithstanding the many demands and times constraints imposed by the pursuit of a legal education, makes the time to read beyond their required course assingments and beyond the four corner of law.
Appiah, Kwame Anthony, Experiments in Ethics (Cambridge, Ma. & London: Harvard U. Press, 2008) (“This little book is an attempt to relate the business of philosophical ethics…to the work of scholars in a number of other fields and to the concerns of the ordinary, thoughtful person, trying to live a decent life. There are philosophers aplenty in these pages; but there are, as well, many other practitioners of what used to be called the moral sciences—psychologists, economists, anthropologists, and sociologist.” Id. at 1. I stop here to note what should be obvious: that law is not included within the moral sciences. I am not sure what law is, but I know it is not a science of any sort and, in its current state, certainly not a moral anything. “The relevance of the social sciences to our ordinary lives is fairly straightforward. Since what we should do depends on how the world is, our everyday decisions can draw on knowledge from any sphere. It is less obvious that empirical research could have any bearing on our specifically moral judgments. Yet in making our choices we must sometimes start with a vision, however, inchoate, of what it is for human life to go well. That was one of Aristotle’s central insights. It is my argument that we should be free to avail ourselves of the resources of many disciplines to define that vision; and that in bringing them together we are being faithful to a long tradition. In the humanities, I think, we are always engaged in illuminating the present by drawing on the past; it is the only way to make a future worth hoping for.” Id. at 1-2. This a worthwhile read for those with a serious bent toward philosophical ethics.).
Elhauge, Einer, Statutory Default Rules: How to Interpret Unclear Legislation (Cambridge, Ma. & London: Harvard U. Press, 2008) (“In short, whether or not judicial judgment is desirable, it is widely viewed to be a proposition of logic that unclear legislative instructions require shifting from an honest agent model to exercises of judicial judgment.” “Must the honest agent model be put aside once legislative instructions are unclear? My first task in this book will be to convince you that the answer is no. One can instead extend the honest agent model to cases of statutory uncertainty by adopting a set of statutory default rules that maximizes political satisfaction. My honest agent approach does not regard judges as robots that mechanically execute clear legislative instructions, nor as psychics who can always divine legislative intent. But it also rejects the view that judges are partners in lawmaking, or free to maximize their own ideological preferences where statutes are unclear. Instead, an honest interpretive agent should, when statutory meaning is unclear, adopt statutory default rules that probabilistically tend to maximize political satisfaction. Given the uncertainty left by unclear statutory language, no system of interpretation can ever be hopeful to always correctly ascertain political preferences, but the right set of default rules can minimize the expected political dissatisfaction.” “ My second task will be to show which set of statutory default rules would fulfill this goal. If I can accomplish those two task, I would be more than happy. But I am going to bet a bit greedy and also try to demonstrate two more things: that current interpretative practices actually embody those default rules, and that this approach to statutory interpretation is better than relying on judicial judgment.” Id. at 4-5. This book merits a close and careful read.).
Sunstein, Cass R., Worst-Case Scenarios (Cambridge, Ma. & London: Harvard U. Press, 2007) (“How do human beings and their governments approach worst-case scenarios? Do they tend to neglect them or do they give them excessive weight? Whatever we actually do, how should we deal with unlikely risks of catastrophe?” “For especially horrific outcomes, it is tempting to think that a 1 percent chance should be treated as a certainty. In so suggesting, Vice President Cheney took the same position as many people who are confronting a low probability of disaster. No less than environmentalists who focus on species loss, climate change, and genetic modification of food, Vice President Cheney urged that governments should identify, and attempt to prevent, the worst-case scenario.” Id. at 1. “More contentiously, I have argued that assigning monetary values to the key variables is essential in thinking about worst-case scenarios. Without being systematic about the costs and benefits of eliminating bad outcomes, progress can be difficult. To be sure, we need not be terribly enthusiastic about Richard Posner’s effort to come up with a monetary figure for the extinction of the human race…. For serious risks of 1/10,000 or 1/100,000, we can build on existing evidence to generate plausible figures for many bad outcomes. Few of us would be willing to pay $100,000, or $50,000. Or even $10,000 to eliminate a risk of 1/100,000. If we want to respect individual autonomy or to protect social welfare, we might well start with people’s actual practices when thinking about how, and how much, to reduce social risks. Id. at 281-282.).
February 8, 2008
REFLECTIONS ON OUR INCREASINGLY ILLIBERAL TIMES.
Bolano, Roberto, Nazi Literature in The Americas translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews (New York: New Directions Books, 2008) (Fiction. From the jacket cover: “Composed of short biographies of imaginary pan-American authors...Nazi Literature describes…the writers’ lives, politics, and literary works. It includes bibliographies, cross-references, and an epilogue (‘For Monsters’). Although the writers are invented, they are all carefully and credibly situated in real literary worlds…. Bolano does not simply use his fascist writers for target practice: he manages to sketch character portraits that are often pathetically funny, sometimes surprisingly moving, and, on occasion, authentically chilling.”).
Coetzee, J .M., Diary of a Bad Year (New York: Viking, 2007) (Fiction (??). “It was always a bit of a lie that universities were self-governing institutions. Nevertheless, what universities suffered during the 1980s and 1990s was pretty shameful, as under threat of having their funding cut they allowed themselves to be turned into business enterprises, in which professors who had previously carried on their enquires in sovereign freedom were transformed into harried employees required to fulfil quotas under the scrutiny of professional managers. Whether the old powers of the professoriat will ever be restored is much to be doubted.” Id. at 35.).
Goldberg, Jonah, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning (New York: Doubleday, 2007) (The basic thesis of this book is "that fascism, properly understood, is not a phenomenon of the right at all. Instead, it is, and always has been, a phenomenon of the left." Id. at at 7. Though the author makes some good points and even though, perhaps, his rather thin thesis is correct, the fact is that this is a very poorly argued book. It is not really worth reading, except that I am quite certain we will be hearing, in some form or another, many of the weak arguments and attacks on American liberals for some time to come and especially during the 2008 presidential election. Placing the side that 'liberals' and 'leftist,' etc., are more or less lumped together in this book, liberals have opened themselves up to some of the attacks presented here because the have trivialized the distinction between the private and public spheres. If everything is in the public sphere, then everything is open to public, governmental, or social regulation. And, the author is certainly correct in pointing out the overuse and misuse of the label 'fascist' by liberal against any idea or anyone holding a position to the right of liberalism. Calling a position fascism probably does not move the argument or discussion forward. No, not even when, turning the tables, one speaks of 'liberal fascism'. One of the dangerous traps thinking people must actively work to avoid is the trap of only reading, listening to, or talking with those whose point of view they accept, and failing to read, listen to, or talk with those with whom they disagree. In this new cyperspace world, it is far too easy to get oneself locked in a cyperspace community where everyone there is a virtual clone of everyone else. Read widely; and especially read those with whom one disagrees.).
O’Neil, Robert, Academic Freedom in the Wired World: Political Extermism, Corporate Power, and The University (Cambridge: Harvard U. Press, 2008) (I would think all members of the academic community would find reading this worthwhile. Then again… “I have discovered three elusive truths that have helped materially to shape this book: First, that most university professors are relatively indifferent to academic freedom threats, which they typically view as someone else’s problem; second, that the defense and survival of academic freedom depends most upon the commitment of those faculty members who are least likely to need its protection for their own careers; and third, that academic freedom is most severely tested by outspoken colleagues with whom most mainstream scholars would not normally or willingly associate. All of that makes academic freedom a curious concept, not easily defined and poorly understood beyond (and even within) the collegiate community.” Id. at viii. Thus those few who value ideas, especially new and unorthodox ideas, or who think universities should be incubators for such ideas, should read this book. It contain worthwhile analysis and synthesis.)
Coetzee, J .M., Diary of a Bad Year (New York: Viking, 2007) (Fiction (??). “It was always a bit of a lie that universities were self-governing institutions. Nevertheless, what universities suffered during the 1980s and 1990s was pretty shameful, as under threat of having their funding cut they allowed themselves to be turned into business enterprises, in which professors who had previously carried on their enquires in sovereign freedom were transformed into harried employees required to fulfil quotas under the scrutiny of professional managers. Whether the old powers of the professoriat will ever be restored is much to be doubted.” Id. at 35.).
Goldberg, Jonah, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning (New York: Doubleday, 2007) (The basic thesis of this book is "that fascism, properly understood, is not a phenomenon of the right at all. Instead, it is, and always has been, a phenomenon of the left." Id. at at 7. Though the author makes some good points and even though, perhaps, his rather thin thesis is correct, the fact is that this is a very poorly argued book. It is not really worth reading, except that I am quite certain we will be hearing, in some form or another, many of the weak arguments and attacks on American liberals for some time to come and especially during the 2008 presidential election. Placing the side that 'liberals' and 'leftist,' etc., are more or less lumped together in this book, liberals have opened themselves up to some of the attacks presented here because the have trivialized the distinction between the private and public spheres. If everything is in the public sphere, then everything is open to public, governmental, or social regulation. And, the author is certainly correct in pointing out the overuse and misuse of the label 'fascist' by liberal against any idea or anyone holding a position to the right of liberalism. Calling a position fascism probably does not move the argument or discussion forward. No, not even when, turning the tables, one speaks of 'liberal fascism'. One of the dangerous traps thinking people must actively work to avoid is the trap of only reading, listening to, or talking with those whose point of view they accept, and failing to read, listen to, or talk with those with whom they disagree. In this new cyperspace world, it is far too easy to get oneself locked in a cyperspace community where everyone there is a virtual clone of everyone else. Read widely; and especially read those with whom one disagrees.).
O’Neil, Robert, Academic Freedom in the Wired World: Political Extermism, Corporate Power, and The University (Cambridge: Harvard U. Press, 2008) (I would think all members of the academic community would find reading this worthwhile. Then again… “I have discovered three elusive truths that have helped materially to shape this book: First, that most university professors are relatively indifferent to academic freedom threats, which they typically view as someone else’s problem; second, that the defense and survival of academic freedom depends most upon the commitment of those faculty members who are least likely to need its protection for their own careers; and third, that academic freedom is most severely tested by outspoken colleagues with whom most mainstream scholars would not normally or willingly associate. All of that makes academic freedom a curious concept, not easily defined and poorly understood beyond (and even within) the collegiate community.” Id. at viii. Thus those few who value ideas, especially new and unorthodox ideas, or who think universities should be incubators for such ideas, should read this book. It contain worthwhile analysis and synthesis.)
February 4, 2008
TWO BOOKS—EACH QUITE DIFFERENT FROM THE OTHER--FOR THOSE WHO APPRECIATE POLITICAL HISTORY.
Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr., Journals 1952-2000 edited by Andrew Schlesinger and Stephen Schlesinger (New York: The Penguin Press, 2007) (Does this entry from April 27, 1967, not sound familiar and current? "We are reaching some sort of crisis on Vietnam. LBJ has evidently decided on a quick and brutal escalation of the war. It was clear in February that he did not wish negotiation until the existing military balance could be turned considerably in our favor; and his clear intention now is to bomb North Vietnam until Hanoi is prepared to sue for peace on terms which will meet Rusk's idea of a satisfactory settlement. More than that, the administration is apparently determined to advance the proposition that dissent is unpatriotic, and has brought General Westmoreland back for this purpose." "The irony is that all of us for years have been defending the presidential prerogative and regarding the Congress as a drag on policy. It is evident now that this delight in a strong presidency was based on the fact that, up to now, all strong Presidents in American history have pursued policies of which one has approved. We are now confronted by the anomaly of a strong President using these arguments to pursue a course which, so far as I can see, can lead only to disaster. It is not hard to assert a congressional role; but, given the structure of the American system, it is very hard to see how the Congress can restrain the presidential drive toward enlargement of the war. Voting against military appropriations is both humanly and politically self-defeating. The only hope is to organize a broad political movement; and even this cannot take effect until, at the very earliest, the 1968 primaries, which may be too late." Id. at 269. My favorite--because I know its truth--entry is from April 4, 1981. "The historians with whom I feel instant sympathy are those like George Bancroft and Henry Adams who abandoned academic life for the world of affairs. I tried during the discussion at the Library [of Congress Council of Scholars in Washington] to define my feelings about pure academic--what is it?--the sense they give of collective unreality? collective complacency? collective pomposity? collective futility? and their jokes are so bad!.... Why does the academic environment, as distinct from the academic discipline, seem t bring out the worst in otherwise decent individuals." Id. at 516.).
Weiner, Tim, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (New York: Doubleday, 2007) (This is a very interesting, and worthwhile, read. Two passages provide a sense of the core challenges facing American intelligence gathering going forward: “Over the years, the CIA had become less and less willing to hire ‘people that are a little different, people who are eccentric, people who don’t look good in a suit and tie, people who don’t play well in the sandbox with others,’ Bob Gates said. ‘The kinds of tests that we make people pass, psychological, and everything else, make it very hard for somebody who may be brilliant or have extraordinary talents and unique capabilities to get into the agency.’ As a consequence of its cultural myopia, the CIA misread the world. Very few of its officers could read or speak Chinese, Korean, Arabic, Hindi, Urdu, or Farsi—the languages of three billion people, half the planet’s population. Far too few had ever haggled in an Arab bazaar or walked through an African village. The agency was unable to dispatch ‘an Asian-American into North Korea without him being identified as some kid who just walked out of Kansas, or African-Americans to work around the world, or Arab-Americans,’ Gates said.” “In 1982, when Gates was director of central intelligence, he wanted to hire an American citizen raised in Azerbaijan. ‘He spoke Azeri fluently, but he didn’t write English very well,’ he recalled. ‘And so he was rejected because he didn’t pass our English test. And when I was told this, I just went crazy. I said: ‘I’ve got thousands of people here who can write English, but I don’t have anybody here who can speak Azeri. What have you done?’’” Id. at 471-472. “For sixty years tens of thousands of clandestine service officers have gathered only the barest threads of truly important intelligence—and that is the CIA’s deepest secret. Their mission is extraordinarily hard. But we Americans still do not understand the people and the political forces we seek to contain and control. The CIA has yet to become what its creators hoped it would be.” “… Perhaps a decade from now the agency will rise from the ashes, infused with many billions of dollars, inspired by new leadership, invigorated by a new generation. Analysts may see the world clearly. American spies may become capable of espionage against America’s enemies. The CIA someday may serve as its founders intended. We must depend on it. For the war in which we are now engaged may last as long as the cold war, and we will win or lose by virtue of our intelligence.” Id. at 514. Again, an important read which, unfortunately, few American will read.).
Weiner, Tim, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (New York: Doubleday, 2007) (This is a very interesting, and worthwhile, read. Two passages provide a sense of the core challenges facing American intelligence gathering going forward: “Over the years, the CIA had become less and less willing to hire ‘people that are a little different, people who are eccentric, people who don’t look good in a suit and tie, people who don’t play well in the sandbox with others,’ Bob Gates said. ‘The kinds of tests that we make people pass, psychological, and everything else, make it very hard for somebody who may be brilliant or have extraordinary talents and unique capabilities to get into the agency.’ As a consequence of its cultural myopia, the CIA misread the world. Very few of its officers could read or speak Chinese, Korean, Arabic, Hindi, Urdu, or Farsi—the languages of three billion people, half the planet’s population. Far too few had ever haggled in an Arab bazaar or walked through an African village. The agency was unable to dispatch ‘an Asian-American into North Korea without him being identified as some kid who just walked out of Kansas, or African-Americans to work around the world, or Arab-Americans,’ Gates said.” “In 1982, when Gates was director of central intelligence, he wanted to hire an American citizen raised in Azerbaijan. ‘He spoke Azeri fluently, but he didn’t write English very well,’ he recalled. ‘And so he was rejected because he didn’t pass our English test. And when I was told this, I just went crazy. I said: ‘I’ve got thousands of people here who can write English, but I don’t have anybody here who can speak Azeri. What have you done?’’” Id. at 471-472. “For sixty years tens of thousands of clandestine service officers have gathered only the barest threads of truly important intelligence—and that is the CIA’s deepest secret. Their mission is extraordinarily hard. But we Americans still do not understand the people and the political forces we seek to contain and control. The CIA has yet to become what its creators hoped it would be.” “… Perhaps a decade from now the agency will rise from the ashes, infused with many billions of dollars, inspired by new leadership, invigorated by a new generation. Analysts may see the world clearly. American spies may become capable of espionage against America’s enemies. The CIA someday may serve as its founders intended. We must depend on it. For the war in which we are now engaged may last as long as the cold war, and we will win or lose by virtue of our intelligence.” Id. at 514. Again, an important read which, unfortunately, few American will read.).
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