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.

Mamet & Human Nature

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2nd Update:   (If anyone’s reading this far down).   Tom Stoppard on ’68.  

 The idea of the autonomy of the individual is echoed, I realise, all over the place in my writing. In The Coast of Utopia I was using 19th-century Russian philosopher Alexander Herzen’s own words about the English in the 19th century: “They don’t give asylum out of respect for the asylum seekers, but out of respect for themselves. They invented personal liberty without having any theories about it. They value liberty because it’s liberty.”

Update:  Henniger on Mamet’s essay (WSJ  video).  

Original post:   David Mamet

began reading not only the economics of Thomas Sowell (our greatest contemporary philosopher) but Milton Friedman, Paul Johnson, and Shelby Steele, and a host of conservative writers, and found that I agreed with them: a free-market understanding of the world meshes more perfectly with my experience than that idealistic vision I called liberalism.

He describes his conversion in the Village Voice. His picture of Bush still has elements of BDS, but he has begun to examine his experience and finds the best keys to understanding it seem to lie on the right. As some (some critical) commentors note, his work indicated he might be moving that way. (Certainly a television series about the professional & home life of a special forces unit might indicate that.) And certainly a playwright worth his salt might be interested in how character actually acts – an inadequacy that some of the more ideological playwrights of our time demonstrate rather nicely. But it was life that had forced him to look again at his beliefs.

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The Anti-Brian Lambs

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At WSJ we see what a free market of ideas is – and what it isn’t. There, too, Strassel describes an elitist (sentimental, self-righteous) press which quickly bought the argument of yet another politician that he (and he alone) is “for the people” (“for the children” and “for the poor” are of course versions of this); that this populist argument leads inexorably to power-grabbing hubris should be clear by now. Self-righteousness is a dangerous drug because it so easily quiets not just others’ doubts but our own. Spitzer is an argument, of course, for checks and balances applied by a free press. But we might also remember that any call to our baser instinct to covet another’s success should be suspect.

Update:        Gay Patriot    suggests  three offices often  obviously  motivated by something other than justice:   Spitzer,  Nifong and Ronnie Earle, who began earliest and remains in office.   That may say something about Austin and I’m not sure it is good.  

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Naive Observations Prompted by Foster

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A) Business schools are difficult to get into – for freshman and those who finish core courses. When our students transfer they are told the average required for business is 3.8 or 3.9 (liberal arts is around 3, some engineering are lower than that, education is always low). The courses for engineering are, however, much more demanding. My daughter found the meeting for incoming liberal arts students at a 4-year school dominated by the majority who wanted to strategize getting into business. This emphasis on grade point means business attracts smart, competent majors; it may, however, discourage risk takers and people who want to take challenging classes.

B) When I was advising I found many students were pushed by their parents who ran businesses and thought that major would bring an acumen they lacked. I wonder if horticulture would help a florist or greenhouse business, construction science a home builder, etc. more. (Not that basic courses in accounting, management law, etc. wouldn’t be useful.)

C) In papers we typed, bound, etc., management techniques seemed “proved” in a soft science way. With my background in Henry James, I soon realized it takes an idiot to lose money in oil companies during boom years & a genius to make it during rough ones. Their examples were from boom years and seldom acknowledged the problems with such a cyclic industry. When I began in 1979, typing was a decent part of our business; when I sold it in 1992, papers had become a smaller – if much easier – part. Now, few make a living typing student papers. Such changes in technology are not always addressed in pure management models.

D) On the other hand, the business that bought me out was run by guys coming through business school. They were young and energetic when I was getting tired, but they also knew what they were doing. They are still making a good profit.

Two Memes I Doubt Our Readers Buy

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Some here may be interested in the task Cafe Hayek sets its readers:

a contest to find examples from the web or the media that make the claim that our standard of living is stagnant or that the middle class can’t get ahead and so on. Or better yet that the middle class is falling behind. Or that all the gains of the last x years have gone to the top 1% or the top 20%.

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