1. A review copy of The Mystery of the Invisible Hand, by “Marshall Jevons.” A didactic novel, better than I expected, but not as good as The Price of Everything. I did finish it. My favorite passage, though, is when the author quotes Carl Christ.
Some people think that economists care only about money. I have heard an unkind critic say that an economist is someone who would sell his grandmother to the highest bidder. This is quite wrong. An economist, or at least a good economist, would not sell his grandmother to the highest bidder unless the highest bid was enough to compensate him for the loss of his grandmother.
2. How Civilizations Die, by David P. Goldman, who writes columns as “Spengler.” Very anti-Islam, very pro-Jewish and pro-Christian, very heavy on the civilization-barbarism axis. Not a book you turn to for even-handedness or diplomacy. One representative sample:
Wherever Muslim countries have invested heavily in secondary and university education, they have wrenched their young people out of the constraints of traditional society without, however, providing them with the skills to succeed in modernity. An entire generation of young Muslims has lost its traditional roots without finding new roots in the modern world. The main consequence of more education appears to be a plunge in fertility rates within a single generation, from the very large families associated with traditional society to the depopulation levels observed in Western Europe. Suspended between the traditional world and modernity, impoverished and humiliated, the mass of educated young Muslims have little to hope for and every reason to be enraged.
I think that recent events will lead people to give more consideration to such darker outlooks. If Presidents Bush and Obama had something in common, it is that they both believed that the process of political modernization among Arab Muslims would prove simpler than it has. Bush was overly optimistic about Iraq, and Obama was overly optimistic about the revolutions in Egypt, Libya, and Syria.
For a different take from the civilization-barbarism axis that is too long to excerpt but interesting, see Forfare Davis.
By the way, my Facebook feed has changed radically in recent months, with much less political snark and a surfeit of cute animal videos. Part of me wonders if something like that happened in Britain when Hitler took power in 1933. Was politics just too unpleasant to contemplate at that point?
“Bush was overly optimistic about Iraq, and Obama was overly optimistic about the revolutions in Egypt, Libya, and Syria.”
Well, they were optimistic that they could use the US government’s power to engineer these things to their likings. That’s quite distinct from being optimistic about them in their own rights, and – heaven forbid – allowing the people and authorities of those countries to shape their own politics.
I decided upon getting onto Facebook in 2008 that I was largely going to leave poliitcal snark off of there, preferring to keep it my place mostly to Snoopy-dance. I’ve mostly held to that. Not worth the agita.
Something that continues to bother me greatly is the never-ending reference to our efforts in Iraq as a failure.
Granted there were many missteps and the, yes, failure by those in charge to anticipate the degree of difficulty in keeping peace there is a lesson for the ages. However, I respectfully suggest that Iraq does not represent a failed effort prior to January 2009, when we had the election of a president who campaigned on a promise of withdrawing our troops and “ending the war,” and who then followed through (which may be the only campaign promise he’s truly kept.)
Just as we will never know how Vietnam might have concluded had Congress continued to financially support the ARVN, we do not know what the status of Iraq may have been today had Obama supported a continuing & adequate troop presence in Iraq.