Ginny

When I was haphazardly running my little business, a Kenny Rogers song would float through my mind uncomfortably often. The refrain of Don Schlitz’s “The Gambler” went:

“You got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em,
Know when to walk away and know when to run.
You never count your money when you’re sittin’ at the table.
There’ll be time enough for countin’ when the dealin’s done.”

Well, that’s like buy low, sell high. Not that it doesn’t work, but what the hell’s high, what the hell’s low?

It always comes down to an unknowable: we may distinguish a good hand from a bad one (though that is fairly hard); another decision is also important: is that stack at the middle of the table worth the risk? In America’s case, the people that are likely to spend the stack of chips aren’t as likely to be us and, while the short term risks of money and blood are ours, the greatest risks will also not be ours. (Well, now, we are beginning to suspect, in the long run attacks will eventually come our way. Still, a lot of other countries are likely to be bloodied on the way to get us–9/11 was preceded by 20 years of warfare often against us but mostly outside the U.S.) The choices are risky for us – and others. But, oh, the pot; the chips are no gilded base metals. This is the real thing–democracy, women’s rights, people’s rights.

I’m reminded of those worries, that particular mystery when I hear smug State Department types take a grim pleasure in critiquing Bush’s foreign policy; their Olympian self-satisfaction is hard to miss: Iraq is a debacle; not even one of us could undo this damage for a generation. Their dispassion implies the whole thing was merely a game; Bush made a move, we checkmate; let’s call it quits (and send him back to his dusty ranch)

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I would like to express appreciation for the comments on my earlier post prompted by Mr. Rummel’s post. This week Paul J. Cella writes “Mass Men” at Tech Central. Reading that and remembering how some comments moved into the utilitarian prompted the following remarks, which do little justice to either the comments or Cella but take the discussion in another direction.

I tend toward Cella’s argument – that the purpose of a good liberal arts education should not be utilitarian. My children are in the process of acquiring—as did their parents–some of the least utilitarian degrees out there and it would be unmotherly to disown them. But as the commentators might note and Newman argues, “though the useful is not always good, the good is always useful.” And the truth is the truth.

Often I am the most irritating of parents asking, What’s it good for? The problem, however, is that I suspect if force fed reality, academics might have to acknowledge the truth they are proselytizing isn’t true. The passions that move us are more complex, interesting, and various than they suppose. And their “truths”, the figures they see in the carpet of experience, are just not there. Other, more heroic and beautiful, more tragic and vulgar, ones are. Of course, in terms of economics, variants of socialism have not proved in the twentieth century to be a very attractive government for the “little people” (for whom the typical academic seems to think he speaks, while couching such discussions in tones that reek of condescension).

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Instapundit summarizes a wealth of information in his main post and more, including an e-mail from one of the staffers, on the reports from the 9/11 commission. The staffer suggests readers refer to the documents themselves.

These documents appear to argue we did not (or at least should not have) invaded Iraq thinking Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11. I didn’t think we did, but I may have missed something. My impression was that Cheney (the most outspoken) always used words like “connection” in a broader sense, not specifically related to 9/11. People have argued he was misleading, but when they cite quotes, his words have been qualified and clear. The fact that NPR viewers believe there was no connection may be countered by Fox’s viewers belief that there was. Isn’t the question what kind of connection if we are going to assess the savy of listeners? Neither or both can be right.

I would rather not reinforce Mr. Rummel’s opinion of the academic life; it sorely needs minds like his–willing to face facts and begin with experience. Still his argument on June 2 reminds me of a favorite anecdote.

Last spring, my husband read a paper to a group of colleagues. Influenced by Darwinian literary criticism he examined various expressions of “human nature” in a work he loves because of the interplay of individual character with social values. It was not theoretical, but assumptions of universality underlay his argument. In some ways the approach resembles old-fashioned character studies, since both begin with assumptions (pretty much a given a century ago) that there is a human nature. Recent books draw on evolutionary science to give ballast. Joseph Carroll in Literary Darwinism: Evolution, Human Nature, and Literature advocates its use in literary criticism, but the approach is most broadly defined in Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate.

That evening is recalled for Mr. Rummel’s example has the starkness of one of Pinker’s graphs (p. 57) in which “percentage of male deaths caused by warfare” is illustrated; in primitive societies it ranges from 10 to 60%, while in twentieth century Europe and North America, the percentage was miniscule (even in what many of us consider a bloody century). And such thoughts were in the back of my husband’s head as he wrote the paper.

That evening, my husband spoke of a poet who champions Victorian values, embodied in traditions that molded man’s competitive and aggressive nature to fit that century’s definition of strength and restraint, reinforced by their admiration for that “manliness”. We find such traits compelling and attractive (after all, they signal a man able to defend his wife, child, tribe) but potentially destructive.

After he finished, one of his colleagues (who earlier contended Rumsfeld was a war criminal) said, well, yes, man has become competitive and violent because of the rise of capitalism. He ignored my husband’s reference to Pinker’s chart, seeming to think it supported his interpretation. I’m not sure when he thought capitalism began to misshape man. He certainly ignored facts that throw a dark shadow on the twentieth century.

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Josh Chafetz on Oxblog links to his review of Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas? (published by Metropolitan Books). While his take is quite interesting (and I think true), Ken’s posting on Chicagoboyz on June 2 took specific aim at the economic thesis; he pragmatically points to variables Frank leaves out. These writers share a generousity of spirit lacking in Frank. I appreciate their assumptions that those of us in flyover country are rational; we make decisions based on real values even if they differ from those of Lewis Lapham—who published an article based on the book in the April 2004 Harper’s–and Thomas Frank. (I am inclined to say “real and so different from” but that is uncharitable.)

Since Ken’s posting, I’ve thought of some examples that argue against Frank’s thesis. This is probably from guilt and nostalgia – but I don’t think it ignores the tough core.

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