Ginny

Age: 77 Place: Originally Nebraska, now Texas Family: Husband, 3 daughters, 3 sons-in-law, 3 grandchildren Occupation: Retired Education: BA, MA Nebraska; Ph.D. UT-Austin Work On hhe Double (1979-1992); taught: ta Austin, Blinn Jr. College (1993-20015), Kelly Girls intermittently.

R.I.P. from Brooks

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David Brooks pays tribute to Public Interest and its founders, whose interest in public policy led them to the blended idealism and tragic vision of the neocons. Archives. Early in Bush’s presidency, Moynihan stood on the White House lawn, just appointed co-chair of the committee to reform Social Security. Watching, on the treadmill, I thought more cheerfully of growing old & hoped with Bush ambitious bipartisanship was in the making. Well, the tough guys at Vegas don’t need to worry about my predictions.

Brooks notes how their reading of literature affected their understanding of human nature &, therefore, proposed policies. Excerpt below.

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We’re All In This Together

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Surfing the net, I happened upon the “Ward Churchill is a Fraud” site. But what I found was lovely rather than angry. The academy’s narrow partisanship and emphasis upon factionalism chills, but this warms. The specifics were original, the generous sentiment not:

To know the response of Indian country to the 9/11 tragedies is to reflect on the humanitarianism shown by Eastern Native communities: from the Mohawk to the Oneida, the Pequot, Mohegan and many others who immediately put their people – ironworkers, ferry-boat crews and medical personnel – into the rescue and recovery operations, to the California Indian nations that expressed their solidarity with America and donated generously to the rescue efforts, to the Lakota families who brought their Sacred Pipe to pray at the site, leaving their quiet offerings early one dawn.

This is always the preferred way of human beings – to understand the kind of empathy required to belong to the human race is essential in all political and economic discourse.

This sense of the universal and acts of a generous spirit are not created by education, but a wise heart. However, appreciating our relation to others – separated by time and space but bonded by our common humanity – is the purpose of the disciplines that today have most betrayed that tradition. That study (as Newman noted) doesn’t give us a kind heart but does help us understand it. And our art – the art that lasts – celebrates the universal, the human. That is why they are very, very important. But also why they are strong – they will survive the petty betrayals of our time.

Ward Churchill as Trophy Wife

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Belmont Club, commenting on a debate about war between Victor Davis Hanson and Ronald Edsforth, argues:

The possibility of heaven is purchased at the risk of hell and the gift of fire balanced by the danger that we should set ourselves ablaze. The Leftist impulse is at heart a longing to be rid of the burden of freedom. What was the dreamed-of Worker’s Paradise except the same old places repopulated by the New Soviet Man?

Wretchard, with his usual wit, notes the tragic nature of man; with that we see both diminished options and enlarged heroism.

The desire for a cocoon – the fear of challenge– is perhaps most characteristic of the modern academic world. And, thus, it is not a surprise that such professors have been moved to find answers in Arthur Miller rather than Sophocles, in Foucault rather than Shakespeare. They view courses in the great books with suspicion (note Foster’s point below.) But Sophocles’ tragic vision energizes us. Responsibility and risk-taking (when necessary and it costs us, not merely because we can) exercise the muscles of maturity. Without these we have no authority, even over our own lives. Challenges make us conscious of what it is to be human.

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Is Germany Flat-lining?

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Came across a Kate Connolly article in the News Telegraph,
“Ailing Germany Slides Down Economic League”. (Noted by Powerline.) She argues that Germany’s per capita purchasing power parity has remained static since 1995 and is projected to do so to 2015. I am curious and wonder if the wise men of our blog can tell me how accurately this chart reflects reality. On the one hand, I’m constantly surprised by the quantities of time each year Germans find to vacation. While this seems a quite pleasant lifestyle, it doesn’t seem a productive one. On the other hand, unless I’m missing it (and it’s late and I may have), I don’t see any indication that the rather massive costs of its reunification with a not quite modernized East Germany made any differences. Surely that affected all these stats in important ways, ways in which the last ten years might not so successfully predict the next ten?