Dave Friedman's Soul of Wit

In Which The Stupidity of the Academy is Laid Bare

Just finished a very interesting book, One Bullet Away, which is a memoir of a guy, approximately my age, who enlisted in the US Marines and fought in Afghanistan and Iraq before leaving in 2004 to return to graduate school. The author, Nathaniel Fick, graduated with honors from Dartmouth College in 1998, and by all rights, should have headed into investment banking or management consulting, as he readily admits.

For some reason, which is never really made clear to the reader, he decides to chart a different course and serve his country. Of course, this decision was made before 9/11 and the War on Terror, but one of the hallmarks of enlisting in the Armed Forces, I suppose, is that you don't know what the future holds, and, enlisting during a time of peace is no guarantee that your life will not be in danger.

He describes his time after leaving the Corps:

I drifted after leaving the Corps. At age twenty-six, I feared I had already lived the best years of my life. Never agian would I enjoy the sense of purpose and belonging that I had felt in the Marines. Alist, I realized that combat had nearly unhinged me....

After channeling all my energy into applying to graduate school, I got a phone call from an admissions officer: "Mr. Fick, we read your application and liked it very much. But a member of our committee read Evan Wright's story about you platoon in Rolling Stone. You're quoted as saying, 'The bad new is, we won't get much sleep tonight; the good news is, we get to kill people.'" She paused, as if waiting for me to disavow the quote. I was silent, and she went on. "We have a retired Army officer on our staff, and he warned me that there are people who enjoy killing, and they aren't nice to be around. Could you please explain you quote for me."

"No, I cannot."

"Well, do you really feel that way?" Her tone was earnest, almost pleading.

"You mean, will I climb your clock tower and pick people off with a hunting rifle?" [Ed: See here for an explanation.]

It was her turn to be silent.

"No I will not. Do I feel compelled to explain myself to you? I don't."

Now, this is probably the best demonstration of the stupidity and insularity with which academics conduct themselves. A couple of observations come to mind: (1) Marines are trained, primarily, to kill; (2) what one says in the heat of battle need not be indicative of what one will say or do in peace time, any more than a woman's ability to fend off a person trying to rape her is any indication of her strength when not threatened; (3) a person who cannot bring himself to say he looks forward to killing the enemy should not be a Marine, or, indeed, any officer of the Armed Forces.

So, here's a man who chose to serve his country at a time when his fellow classmates were working at those lucrative investment banking and management consulting jobs, and, yes, while those classmates were tearing up Manhattan, he, well, he launched a grenade at an Iraqi and blew the guy's head off. Says so right in the book. So, yes, he killed someone. But the killing he did is certainly as justifiable as the rape victim's incapacitation of her attacker.

We can either agree or disagree with the reasons why the US went to Iraq, and we can either support or disavow America's recent militarism. But to insinuate that this man is tantamount to a murderous thug for having chosen to serve his country instead of expatiating upon theoretical abstractions, as most of his demographic (including yours truly) are wont to do, well, that's repellent.

What I'm Reading

The Closing of the Western Mind, by Charles Feeman.

An obvious play on the title of Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind, Freeman's book explores the efforts by the early Christian Church to squelch empirical observance. Concomitant with this concerted effort, he argues, Europe descended into the Dark Ages, while math and science flourished in Arab lands. But for the Enlightenment, Europe would have been consigned to permanent ignorance.

Some will see the book as inherently anti-religious, or at the least, anti-Christian; however, I don't think Freeman is arguing that religion, or Christianity, specifically, is inherently bad. Rather, early Christianity was used by its officials to keep the masses ignorant, and therefore hold on to its political, legal, and military power and authority.

"There is more to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness than a faster car and an iPod nano."

The ardent and abject materialist in me would disagree with this statement, but there probably is a point to the idea that, beyond a certain point, more wealth provides little additional security and happiness. (Indeed, it may be argued that the very wealthy are less secure than are we plebeians; look at Edward Lampert's kidnapping, or the bodyguards Trump et al must hire for their kids.)

Anyway, the quote that serves as the title of this post comes from the Economist's review of Benjamin Friedman's new book The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth. (Friedman is no relation to me. Friedman is an economist at Harvard, and, so far as I am aware, is no relation to that other Friedman, Milton.)

Mr Friedman argues that conventional thinking about economic growth is too narrow: it neglects its moral and political benefits. “The value of a rising standard of living lies not just in the concrete improvements it brings to how individuals live but in how it shapes the social, political and ultimately the moral character of a people.” Growing prosperity, history suggests, makes people more tolerant, more willing to settle disputes peacefully, more inclined to favour democracy. Stagnation and economic decline are associated with intolerance, ethnic strife and dictatorship.

Friedman's faculty web page is here.

Malkin

I'm no fan of Michelle Malkin. I find her boring, tendentious, and pedestrian. Thus, I ignore her.

Not so her liberal adversaries. Here's a review on Amazon of her forthcoming book:

Unfortunately, Michelle Malkin is an American traitor and an enemy of this country. She doesn't realize that liberals have America's best interests at heart, while conservatives are selfish, and will lie, cheat, and destroy others to get ahead- witness Jack Abramoff, Ken Lay, Scooter Libby, and Tom DeLay. Malkin clearly needs therapy or needs to be confined to an asylum. She's a crazy nutjob conservative who gives aid and comfort to terrorists with anti-American rants like "Unhinged." If you buy this book, you hate America- just like Michelle Malkin, who wants to destroy everything that's great about this country.

Not a cogent thought in there. Instapundit links to this site, which has a good analysis of the irrational fervor with which liberals, especially Asian liberals (Malkin is Asian), hate her:

What is it about Michelle Malkin that so quickly works liberals into a frenzied state?

All it takes is a television appearance, published column or radio interview to enrage so-called "progressives". Why, reserved for her, these particular heapings of vitriol?

Certainly, ethnicity and gender must play a role, as liberal anti-Malkin hate closely resembles that of serial Condi-bashers. For non-conformity to leftist cultural expectations, both experience routine partisan media punishment.

And as can be imagined, some of the meanest attacks come from liberal Asian-Americans, who seem to feel there is some ethnic mandate to follow Democrats off the cliff's edge.

Silly, Bitter Liberals!

I blogged here about Barbara Boxer's must miss new novel, A Time to Run.

For shits and giggles, I decided to revisit the Amazon page for the novel and see what the half-wits were saying what about the novel. A bitter malcontent of a reviewer posts the following review:

I've exchanged e-mail with Senator Boxer over several issues in the time she's been my senator. Lauded her tough questioning of Condi in the Senate, blasted her for siding with Ahhhhhnold on gay marriage (along with Diane Feinstein). Many Californians were mystified by the ridiculous circus our home state political situation has become, recalling an okay governer and electing an a-hole action movie "actor" to the office. We all wondered "where are our Democratic leaders when we need them? Where is a voice who will stand up and say "this is just crazy." We wondered where our leaders were who would say "Do not invade Iraq, this is a bad, destructive idea." At least we now know the answer for Senator Boxer, she was writing a self-serving, nacissistic novel that I guess reimagines a fantasy life for herself. While an illegal, immoral war rages on, the budget of our state goes down the toilet, our state education goes to hell, and the democratic party lies in disarray, Boxer was writing a f***ing novel. This is good to know. In the L.A. Times she called herself "prescient" because the novel predicts a female conservative candidate for the supreme court. I have some prescient information for Senator Boxer: enjoy the next three years in the senate, because they will be your last. I'm a lifelong democrat who has voted for you since 1993, and that won't happen again either. I urge all Californians to oppose any sitting senator who has time to write a novel, regardless of party. I've never been so embarrassed to have voted for someone. Unless Boxer wants to admit she didn't actually write any of it, and that she merely gave ideas to her cowriter, who did the work, takes her name off it, gives the advance back and gets back to work, I urge California Democrats to oppose this woman's future political career. We live in frightening times in which right-wing christian fascists threaten our freedoms, and oligarchs rule the country. We needed Barbara Boxer to keep her eye on the ball, not curl up on airplanes with her iBook writing a trashy novel about herself. Damn I feel betrayed as a voter. I urge Californians not to buy this book and rethink their support of Senator Boxer.

A Time to Run for the Hills

Barbara Boxer wrote a novel, A Time to Run.

The Booklist description of the book, which Amazon provides, makes it sound rather awful:

On the eve of the nomination of an ultraconservative Hispanic female Supreme Court justice, liberal Senator Ellen Fischer of California is given the perfect weapon: sensitive documents that could wreck the nomination. With less than 24 hours to take action, Ellen is bombarded with advice from her aides. But she doesn't trust the source of the damning information, Greg Hunter, darling of the right-wing conservatives, a former lover, and a longtime friend of hers and her deceased husband, Joshua. It was Joshua's accidental death on the eve of his election to the U.S. Senate that propelled Ellen's reluctant career as a politician. Hunter's offer provokes memories of how the three became friends: Joshua and Greg were roommates at the University of California at Berkeley, destined for sterling careers in the law and journalism. She was a budding social activist for children's causes. They became fast friends until Josh's proposal redefined their relationships. The ensuing years brought challenges to youthful idealism and the lure of power and wealth as the three made lives and careers for themselves in the San Francisco Bay Area. Across the years and across the country, Ellen and Greg eventually come to a showdown in the nation's capital. Boxer, a U.S. senator, brings an insider's knowledge of politics to this compelling novel of friendship, idealism, and corruption and the behind-the-scenes machinations that go into political deals.

And then there's the LA Times' take on it, which I found via Reason:

It may come as a surprise to many of her constituents, but for seven years California Sen. Barbara Boxer has been moonlighting from what she calls her "day job" — as an elected official from the state that boasts the free world's fifth or sixth largest economy — to write a novel. "A Time to Run" is a for-whom-the-bell-tolls story of a liberal blue-state senator who braves the political mud wrestling in Washington for the sake of her ideals. It is, of course, co-written, with San Francisco author Mary-Rose Hayes.

In Boxer's fictional world, a liberal California senator with views very much like hers goes to bat to defeat the Supreme Court nomination of a woman whose most conspicuous qualification for the job seems to be her conservative credentials — a plot twist Boxer said she added a year and a half ago.

Ayn Rand is not a Great Writer

Apparently, Time has come out with a list of its hundred best English-language books, of which I've read perhaps three quarters.

(This is not as surprising as it sounds: I majored in English in college.)

In any event, Kip Esquire is of the opinion that Ayn Rand's Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged belong on the list; I disagree.

While these books are good for delineating the individualistic aesthetic and morality that is at the heart of libertarianism, they are nonetheless poorly wrought novels, suffering from the weight of their own stilted prose.

Harry Potter is Gay?

So says one Reverend Graham Taylor:

A British cleric turned top-selling author of supernatural children's novels was thrown out of a school where he was delivering a talk after he told pupils that Harry Potter was "gay."

Reverend Graham Taylor, who penned the novel "Shadowmancer" which, like the tales of the famous boy wizard created by J.K. Rowling, centers on witchcraft and battling evil, got his marching orders after teachers accused him of homophobia.

For a physicist's defense of homophobia, see here. Via Kip Esquire.

The odd thing about homophobes is they all seem so pre-occupied with the alleged immorality of homosexual sex. Makes you wonder if they are all in-the-closet gays ashamed of their own sexuality.

For more odd statements from religious people, check out this New York Times article about so-called "young Earth creationists," those bizarre religious people who interpret the Book of Genesis literally.

Question: Can one interpret something literally? Seems interpretation and literal understanding are antonymic concepts. Yet we hear of biblical literalists as interpreting literally.

...Because It's Advertising...

Ann Althouse says books are like web sites:

For years, I've been accustomed to the idea that websites have "pages" and blogs are "journals," and all the various manifestations of the metaphor of website as book. Yesterday, in the bookstore, I had the overwhelming sense that the books felt like websites. All those book covers were like the entry pages of websites, designed to get you to stop, hoping to draw you in and get you to spend some time inside. Were we really to buy these things and proceed through them front-to-back? Or do we pick them up and flip (click) around, with the most successful ones being sticky enough to get us to stay for an hour or so, and most of them, holding us for only a few seconds before we scan about for the next thing to give a instant's chance?

Well, let's see: book sales have been declining for years, mass media has learned to draw viewers in to whatever product they're peddling, and, well, book publishing, though romanticized as a noble undertaking, is, nonetheless, a business. And businesses have to sell stuff.

Ergo, advertising. Phenomenal concept, I know, but that's why book covers are designed, much like web sites, to draw one in. Ever heard of "judging a book by its cover?" That is the Platonic ideal to which the ad man aspires.

The comparison Ann draws between books and web pages is, while interesting, also obvious.

"Pyramidiocy"

Dispatches From the Culture Wars has a great post skewering Worldnetdaily's ("Worldnutdaily", in his derisive, but accurate, coinage) latest "review" of a "book."

The "book" in question is The Nephilim and the Pyramid of the Apocalypse, which, as Worldnetdaily notes, is tearing up the charts on Amazon (where it currently occupies number 10 on the bestseller list). The "book" claims to explain that the Egyptian pyramids were built not by the Egyptians, as we all had thought, but by Nephilim, a sort of humanoid giant apparently referred to in the Bible. Of course, that the book has reached number 10 on Amazon's best-seller list says nothing about its veracity or cogency; it only speaks to the large capacity for man to believe in that which is not scientific or empirical.

Choice quote from Dispatches From the Culture Wares:

This bit of pseudo-scientific bullshit comes from Patrick Heron, author of the book being pimped by this "article". It's pretty standard stuff, really, mostly recycled nonsense from Graham Hancock and Erich Von Daniken, but Heron wisely finds a way to link it to the bible. This kind of pyramidiocy usually only appeals to new age types who gaze in wonder at the stars and imagine the ancient Egyptians holding court with super-advanced alien races, but by linking it to the bible, Heron has opened up a whole new market of credulous people eager to lap up such nonsense with a spoon. Not only does Heron claim that the pyramids of Egypt, Mexico and Cambodia were built by the Nephilim - the giant offspring of divine fathers and human mothers that Heron claims were "a hybrid of demons and men" with "evil in their genes" - but also that the pyramids are a copy of the shape of heaven itself, the "city of Yawheh" from Revelations that appears in the sky.

The Ideological Right

Interesting discussion here by law professor Eric Muller on a new book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, published by the conservative publishing house Regnery Press. Regnery Press is the publisher of such books as The Abolition of Marriage: How We Destory Lating Love by the now-disgraced Maggie Gallagher, and Epidemic: How Teen Sex is Killing Our Kids.

Your reaction to these and other books published by this house will predictably depend upon your political leanings; I have read some books by this house and have found them lacking in substance, but sufficient in polemical zeal (though that is hardly a compliment). One overrated book of theirs which I recall reading is Bernard Goldberg's Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News. Now, I don't disagree with Goldberg's premise, which is that mainstream news organizations such as CBS have a liberal bias which infects their reporting, but the manner in which Goldberg wrote his book was so insubstantial and conversational as to yield no more insight than one would get from Joan Rivers doing the red carpet schtick at the Oscars. Which is to say he states that which is obvious but no more.

In any event, Muller's analysis is an interesting one, and deserves to be read, even if you do not subscribe to his admittedly liberal leanings (which I don't).

UPDATE: Instapundit has more to say. To toot my own horn, Instapundit writes:

As a political force, neo-Confederate sentiment is pretty trivial at the moment, even compared to the decaying remnants of Marxism. But that's no reason not to smack it down when it appears. That's particularly true because -- as Muller's discussion of Wood's belief that the War on Terror is the product of a Jewish conspiracy illustrates -- the overlap between crazy-left and crazy-right is getting more significant. (Indeed, there are people on the Left talking about secession, in terms that Woods might find congenial). And there's no place for either one, especially these days.

Way back when the term "idiotarian" was coined, it was quite explicitly aimed at the idiots of the Left and Right equally. The idiots of the Right have been somewhat quieter lately, but they're no less idiots for that.

I blogged here in response to an earlier post by Glenn Reynolds, in which I argued that the Right is no less full of idiots than is the Left.

Finally, Instapundit notes that Power Line has found bad reviews of the book on the right.

What Does the Future Hold?

Gregg Easterbrook reviews Jared Diamond's new book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed and comes away thinking Diamond's pessimism about population growth is at once too pessimistic and simplistic. Key quote:

Though Diamond endorses ''cautious optimism,'' ''Collapse'' comes to a wary view of the human prospect. Diamond fears our fate was set in motion in antiquity -- we're living off the soil and petroleum bequeathed by the far past, and unless there are profound changes in behavior, all may crash when legacy commodities run out. Oddly, for someone with a background in evolutionary theory, he seems not to consider society's evolutionary arc. He thinks backward 13,000 years, forward only a decade or two. What might human society be like 13,000 years from now? Above us in the Milky Way are essentially infinite resources and living space. If the phase of fossil-driven technology leads to discoveries that allow Homo sapiens to move into the galaxy, then resources, population pressure and other issues that worry Diamond will be forgotten. Most of the earth may even be returned to primordial stillness, and the whole thing would have happened in the blink of an eye by nature's standards.

A Book I Plan To Read

A book I plan to read.

When I have done so, I will put a review up here.

A Lament

I don't know about you, but when I read about a book that sounds interesting, one of the first things I do is go to Amazon to read customer reviews of the book. I find these interesting because, at least with the books I'm interested in, the reviews are, for the most part, well written. I'm always curious to hear other people's views on a book because one of my pet peeves is spending money on a book that turns out to be a waste of time.

I recently read about Barry Schwartz's book The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less which argues the compelling point that, as modern consumers, we are faced with entirely too much choice in our daily lives. Go to the grocery story and count how many different kinds of orange juice stare back at your pathetic soul, and you will get the point.

It's an interesting concept, and it sounds like the kind of book that I would find interesting. But then I find asinine reviews, such as this:

If Mr. Schwartz really believed what he writes, he wouldn't write. There are, by his depiction of things, too many choices. For example, there are far too many books. By writing another book, he aggravates the problem while pretending to solve it. In reality, we filter out most choices and focus on just a few. There are 6+ billion people, so we could marry any one of say, 3 billion. We select from a far smaller number and are not distressed about the billions we never met.

Of course, my faith in humanity is restored somewhat, because 0 out of 28 people found such a review helpful.