I don’t read much lately, but my more libertarian daughter listens to Hoover & Cato podcasts. She mentioned one on The Not So Wild, Wild West: Property Rights on the Frontier So I ordered the book. I don’t know much about economics but have come to admire economists because they so aptly describe human nature, and often give arguments for wise institutions. The authors argue that “entrepreneurs of institutions” helped make life relatively orderly on the frontier. For instance, one maximized the profits and minimized the costs by ensuring Abilene was railhead, where the cowboys ended their long contracts of driving the cattle and the railroads took them east. But often it wasn’t a “middleman” as much as the consensus of a group, as they set out in wagon trains or obtained mining rights.
Ginny
Reflections on Victimhood becoming Entitlement – The Tenth Commandment
I like both Haidt and Foster’s remarks. This is a comment that got out of hand.
I would observe that it isn’t like we didn’t know that we hadn’t been warned. Victimization is of course, more common in a culture of feelings than of thought, of sentimentality than sense. It is old in close knit communities where others can be expected to sympathize (think of the power of the younger, weaker child over an older, stronger sibling in making a case to a parent). I suspect that in the past it has more often characterized a small, closely knit group and the wielders of the power were probably more often women (think especially mothers). The boldness with which women project the claim today probably comes from an assurance that counters the value of the claim itself; we are out of the closet in terms of competitive will but we’ve lost the skill to wield it subtly. As a comment observes, this 21st century feminization of American culture enriches Oprah. But on the founders’ ships, embarking on an adventure in itself signaling virtue, it might have been more powerful if the leaders hadn’t been so aware of human nature and condemned it so clearly.
Going Over Past Territory
Thanks to Jonathan’s earlier post of Kristol’s conversations; whether Kass on education or Kagan on human nature or Gerlenter on art, these are consistently interesting. Here is Valentine’s Day with Petraeus (there’s another with Keene).
Merging Memories – NPR, Fox & the memories they create
Our family has trouble with memories, mine is beginning. I figured Trump had exaggerated (as usual) but I, too, remembered, celebrations (it was all foggy – I couldn’t remember if it was New York or New Jersey – they are all east). Apparently, my memory has failed- probably merging reports of alleged “tailgate parties” with film from Palestine, as some have suggested he did, Carson did. But I do remember listening to NPR in my office, leaving to teach and coming back to hear more of what had happened.
Man Will Not Merely Endure: He Will Prevail
A friend takes joy in the heroic finding it near home (her father-in-law’s willingness to volunteer his medical service to cities beset by polio in the fifties and in a Viet Nam hospital twenty years later) and farther. She cheers me. Her take is stoic, but toughness nurtures unsentimental appreciation – foregrounding the half-full glass amidst chaos. For instance, last week she described admiration for the curator and archivist Khaled al-Asaad http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/18/isis-beheads-archaeologist-syria, who, at 82, withstood a month’s interrogation by ISIS, ending in his beheading.