30 October 2008
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Published on October 30th, 2008 @ 04:33:29 pm, using 234 words, 54 views
Just ran across a C-Span book, Abraham Lincoln: Great American Historians on Our Sixteenth President, edited by Brian Lamb (the crewcut guy) and Susan Swain. What they’ve done is make sections of C-Span interviews that featured books about or featuring Lincoln into essays from the writers of the books discussed in the old Booknotes series and, I guess, other shows. Most of the authors are worth reading, although “in fairness” they include a couple of dipsh-ts who couldn’t hold Lincoln’s jock (did they have those then? were they wood?). Even those who appreciate Lincoln aren’t always on solid ground, but the book does a good job with the cross-section of samples, covering virtually every topic in Abe’s life that has received attention in recent times. What’s best about them is their length, from a couple of pages to at most a dozen, easily read in bathroom breaks if that’s your wont. They’ve also included copies of his most important speeches from A House Divided in 1858 to his last address in 1865 (no, not the Second Inaugural, although that’s there, too). So, if you’ve been interested in Abe but haven’t had time for either the books and reviews of books we review here or the recent readings we’ve highlighted here and here, this might be what you need, perfect for quick hits, nature calls, driving to work, whatever. Check it out and see what you think.
25 October 2008
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Published on October 25th, 2008 @ 07:58:34 am, using 299 words, 56 views
What’s that you say? You want to find out more about Abe as his bicentennial birthday comes up in February. But you don’t have time to read all the new books? Any book? Well, fortunately for you, there are books of readings, separate articles covering a range of Lincoln topics, some of them directly from those longer books. And so, we’re doing a couple of posts just to let you know about a few of those readers, not trying to do reviews of every article but telling you what’s there. You can find the first post here if you missed it. Here are another couple of good ones, both edited by one of the top Lincoln scholars out there and the one with the coolest name, Gabor Boritt. Not as recent but still out there if you look hard enough. And that look will be worth your time. Enjoy.
The Lincoln Enigma: The Changing Faces of an American Icon, edited by Gabor Boritt
“Did He Dream of a Lily-White America? The Voyage to Linconia–Boritt
“Young Man Lincoln"–Wilson
“Mary and Abraham–A Marriage"–Baker
“Military Fantasies"–Prokopowicz
“Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis as Commanders in Chief"–Donald
“Apple of Gold in a Picture of Silver: The Constitution and Liberty"–Guelzo
“Toward Appomattox, Toward Unconditional Surrender?"–Harris
“The Riddle of Death"–Bruce
“Epilog: Lincoln in ‘Modern’ Art"–Holzer and Boritt
Lincoln the War President: The Gettysburg Lectures, edited by Gabor Boritt
“The Shadow of a Coming War"–Bruce
“Lincoln and the Strategy of Unconditional Surrender"–McPherson
“The Emancipation Moment"–Davis
“One Among Many: The United States and National Unification"–Degler
“One Alone? The United States and National Self-determination"–Stampp
“War and the Constitution: Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt"–Schlesinger
“War Opponent and War President"–Boritt
19 October 2008
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Published on October 19th, 2008 @ 06:29:16 pm, using 374 words, 64 views
What’s that you say? You want to find out more about Abe as his bicentennial birthday comes up in February. But you don’t have time to read all the new books? Any book? Well, fortunately for you, some of the new books are books of readings, separate articles covering a range of Lincoln topics, some of them directly from those longer books. And so, we’ll do a couple of posts just to let you know about a few of those readers, not trying to do reviews of every article but telling you what’s there. What you choose to do about them is up to you. It’s a free country. Sorta.
Lincoln Revisited, Edited by John Y. Simon, Harold Holzer, and Dawn Vogel
“Lincoln’s Political Faith in the Peoria Address"–Fornieri
“Lincoln’s Political Religion and Religious Politics"–Morel
“Lincoln, Douglas, and Popular Sovereignty: The Mormon Dimension"–Simon
“The Campaign of 1860: Cooper Union, Mathew Brady, and the Campaign of Words and Images"–Holzer
“‘I See the President’: Abraham Lincoln and the Soldiers’ Home"–Pinsker
“Varieties of Religious Experience: Abraham and Mary Lincoln"–Baker
“The Poet and the President: Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman"–Epstein
“1862–A Year of Decision for President Lincoln and General Halleck"–Marszalek
“‘I Felt It to Be My Duty to Refuse’: The President and the Slave Trader"–Miller
“Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant"–Smith
“Motivating Men: Lincoln, Grant, MacArthur, and Kennedy"–Perret
“Lincoln and His Admirals"–Symonds
“After Emancipation: Abraham Lincoln’s Black Dream"–Vorenberg
“The Second Inaugural Address–The Spoken Words"–White
“Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties: Then and Now"–Williams
“After Lincoln’s Reelection: Foreign Complications"–Harris
“Henry Adams on Lincoln"–Wills
“Lincoln’s Assassination and John Wilkes Booth’s Confederate Connection"–Steers
Our Lincoln: New Perspectives on Lincoln and His World, Edited by Eric Foner
“A. Lincoln, Commander in Chief"–McPherson
“The Constitution and Civil Liberties Under Lincoln"–Neely
“Abraham Lincoln and Jacksonian Democracy"–Holzer
“Natural Rights, Citizenship Rights, States’ Rights, and Black Rights: Another Look at Lincoln and Race"–Oakes
“Lincoln and Colonization"–Foner
“Allies for Emancipation?: Lincoln and Black Abolitionists"–Sinha
“Lincoln’s Sacramental Language"–Delbanco
“Lincoln’s Religion"–Carwardine
“Abraham Lincoln: The Family That Made Him, the Family He Made"–Clinton
“The Theft of Lincoln in Scholarship, Politics, and Public Memory"–Blight
15 October 2008
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Published on October 15th, 2008 @ 07:00:07 pm, using 890 words, 69 views
As we’ve noted, there’s a tendency for people to find whatever they want in Abe and to cherrypick his words and life to find the proof that, amazingly, he was exactly what they want to see. One of the more common views of Lincoln his admirers are able to find is that he was really more religious than those who called him an infidel in his lifetime believed. Some of the more creative ones are able to tie what they see as his deep religious beliefs to his deep beliefs about the nation and its legacy and future. One of the more interesting efforts along this line came from Joseph R. Fornieri in his Abraham Lincoln’s Political Faith, described here in this review:
This book is a work of political theory rather than of history. From Lincoln’s life and writing, Fornieri seeks to elucidate a set of doctrines or teachings. “Despite the voluminous literature on Lincoln,” writes Fornieri, “few works have offered a sustained exploration of the philosophical coherence of his combination of reason and revelation” (34). From this, Fornieri presses a current political argument: “A presentation of Lincoln’s biblical republicanism will show that a nonsectarian interpretation of the Bible, one concordant with unassisted human reason, may be viewed as publicly authoritative within the context of the separation of church and state” (10). Working within a relatively conservative tradition of scholarship, Fornieri sees in Lincoln an antidote to the moral relativism that, according to this school of thought, threatens American life (8). “Without shared consensus,” he declares, “amoral pluralism may lead to anarchy and balkanization” (174).
As the reviewer makes clear, the result is claiming Lincoln for the conservatives, complete with their overwhelming fear of chaos and relativism. Fornieri’s is an ambitious attempt to weave his own view of what the world should be like by claiming that it’s really Abe’s approach. The problem is that Abe was more pragmatic than idealistic, more humanistic (he used and loved Shakespeare, the theater, coarse humor as much as the Bible) than sacred. Yes, he had a strong strain of Determinism learned from backwood churches that filled him with quotes for the rest of his life, a strain he also clearly rebelled against when young and incorporated into a stronger philosophy when older as life events impressed his humanity on himself. He was left a complex man with many threads on which to pull to make your own coat. We’ve pointed out other efforts by conservatives to make this devotee of the Declaration and opponent of entrenched society their patron saint. I can’t help but believe that the guy I’ve read dozens of books about now would be more than a little uncomfortable with this crew, and have some pretty pithy tales to tell in their presence. This review, while respectful of the effort, is also skeptical.
. . . In spite of Fornieri’s convincing argument that Lincoln argued from “natural reason,” more of Augustine and less of Aquinas, more self-critique and less self-congratulatory moralizing accurately characterize Lincoln’s position. As a nation, if we say we are without sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. There may be an urgent twenty-first-century lesson in this after all.
I find this pattern with startling consistency. In order to avoid anything like “amoral pluralism” (174), neo-conservatives take great pains to postulate unity. Everyone “great” must be brought into essential agreement with our now early-twenty-first-century “conservative” moral outlook. But do we seriously think society will come unhinged if we acknowledge that our “great thinkers” disagreed profoundly on the most important questions? Must we therefore deny the rich diversity of our own past and shut off any honest engagement with history? To the detriment of historical inquiry, Fornieri means to suggest that the answers to moral questions are obvious.
All too predictably, we are now asked to fold Lincoln into the resulting biblical, “Judeo-Christian"/Augusto-Thomistic-Puritan/ Natural Law/Jeffersonian/Founding Father/Heritage Foundation mush. This is unfortunate because one of Lincoln’s most attractive traits was his ability to remain at home in a world of honestly and carefully nuanced disagreement. Lincoln often articulated the positions of his opponents better than those opponents themselves. Without losing his sense of moral direction or his sense of humor, Lincoln generally, though not always, remained fully at home in a twilight world of self-scrutiny and long moral shadows. We might strive to do the same.
Exactly. I’ve made this point before. If Lincoln had been truly Biblical and “revelation” the way Fornieri and others claim, they have to explain why it wasn’t the centerpoint of his actions and words, why Christ wasn’t front and center, or at least more Moses and David and the crew, in an age where that would have won him points rather than the isolated and limited incidents that get recycled over and over and misuse of the Second Inaugural which served many purposes beyond an expression of profound mystery at God’s purposes. Spiritual? Undoubtedly. A view of God and humans that more of us should share? Absolutely. Religious? Not as religious was considered then or now. Remarkable in pulling all his threads into a tapestry that none of us will ever fully understand but still blinding us with its brilliance?
Well, that’s why all of us are spending all these words on him right now as we await his Bicentennial, isn’t it?
11 October 2008
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Published on October 11th, 2008 @ 08:14:58 am, using 1438 words, 85 views
I’m not sure what it is about Andrew Bacevich’s The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalismthat makes even sympathetic and appreciative reviewers go into Reader’s Digest mode or worse. I’ve already noted one truly sad review which, while recommending the book, made ridiculous comments about how Bacevich hadn’t provided any directions out of the hellhole he documents that we’ve made for ourselves and our nation. He only prescribed (from my assau . . . review of the reviewer), “Getting us to live within means, be more modest in our foreign policy, abolish nukes, and stop or slow global warming.” Little things with only minor impact, you know. Of course, to Beltway types quicksanded in their Conventional Wisdom, this probably made sense. On Planet Reality, it was just one more example of Beltway vacuity.
I thought that would be the worst of the oversight-filled reviews, and actually it is, but here’s yet another positive review that manages to leave a gaping hole. Like I say, it does the basic “review” job, hitting some points that you need to know, like:
Since World War II, Bacevich writes, national leaders have asserted without challenge that superior military power would guarantee US security. The American people assented, as long as they were free to embark on a “relentless personal quest to acquire, to consume, to indulge.” The not-surprising result was skyrocketing personal debt, increased reliance on imported oil, and a mushrooming trade deficit, all of which made America more dependent on outsiders and, ultimately, more vulnerable.
When President Jimmy Carter suggested that Americans tended “to worship self-indulgence and consumption,” he was ridiculed. His successor, Ronald Reagan, slashed taxes, increased military spending, ran up the federal deficit and, Bacevich writes, “gave moral sanction to the empire of consumption.” Like Reagan, the current President Bush also hiked military spending, cut taxes and, after 9/11, told the American people to “get down to Disney World.”
and
For decades Washington has embraced four core convictions, Bacevich writes: History is an epic struggle between oppression and freedom; the United States is freedom’s chief advocate; it’s America’s God-given task to ensure freedom’s triumph; and for the American way of life to endure, freedom must prevail everywhere.
That hubristic thinking led directly to Afghanistan and Iraq. Each was sold as a quick and necessary foray after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but years later the United States is spending $3 billion a week in Iraq alone in a war seemingly without end.
but then he ends with this:
In the end, the thoughtful Bacevich does not offer readers much hope. The United States will continue to believe it is “unique among history’s great powers” and will believe, despite abundant evidence to the contrary, that overwhelming military power will always ensure victory.
Well, again, on Planet Reality, directing us to a path of “Getting us to live within means, be more modest in our foreign policy, abolish nukes, and stop or slow global warming” might actually be seen as offering readers more than “not much” hope. Granted, the odds might be poor on Planet Reality, but that’s not the author’s fault. The fault of the reviewer is that, unlike his colleague in weak reviewing above, he doesn’t even bother to mention these directions to you. But that’s not the worst. Oh, no, my friends.
Just like the other reviewer, this reviewer fails to note the major influence Bacevich admits has guided his book–the noted and needed (now more than ever, Bacevich’s major point) Reinhold Niebuhr, the realist theologian, the admirer of Lincoln, a model for King and Carter, the mirror of a nation that has required but not gotten since Carter a reminder of its dark side and a warning against the hubris and self-absorption that has engulfed us since “Morning in America.” Which is, again, the theme of Bacevich’s history of the last few decades of our foreign policy.
How could you miss that when Bacevich is constantly quoting Niebuhr and pointing out how words for realism decades ago still apply, even more so today??? Well, here’s the one review I’ve seen (from the Beltway!!!! so it CAN be done, you honkers) that gets the book and Niebuhr’s role in it right. Go check it out and then check out the one(s) above and see just what good and half-assed book reviewing are about. Here are a few tempters:
In this book Bacevich treats the writings of theologian and philosopher Reinhold Niebuhr as a kind of scripture. He calls Niebuhr, who died in 1971 at age 78, a “towering presence in American intellectual life from the 1930s through the 1960s” who “warned that what he called ‘our dreams of managing history’ – born of a peculiar combination of arrogance and narcissism – posed a potentially mortal threat to the United States.” Repeatedly, Bacevich uses quotations from Niebuhr to remind us of the dangers of American hubris.
Bacevich describes an America beset by three crises: a crisis of profligacy, a crisis in politics and a crisis in the military. The profligacy is easily described: What was, even in the author’s youth several decades ago, a thrifty society whose exports far outdistanced its imports has become a nation of debtors by every measure. Consumption has become the great American preoccupation, and consumption of imported oil the great chink in our national armor. When on Sept. 11, 2001, the United States suffered the most serious attack on its soil since 1812, our government responded by cutting taxes and urging citizens onward to more consumption. Bacevich quotes President Bush: “I encourage you all to go shopping more.”
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Bacevich’s political crisis involves more than just George W. Bush’s failed presidency, though “his policies have done untold damage.” Bacevich argues that the government the Founders envisaged no longer exists, replaced by an imperial presidency and a passive, incompetent Congress. “No one today seriously believes that the actions of the legislative branch are informed by a collective determination to promote the common good,” he writes. “The chief . . . function of Congress is to ensure the reelection of its members.”
In Bacevich’s view, the modern American government is dominated by an “ideology of national security” that perverts the Constitution and common sense. It is based on presumptions about the universal appeal of democracy and America’s role as democracy’s great defender and promoter that just aren’t true. And we ignore the ideology whenever it suits the government of the day, by supporting anti-democratic tyrants in important countries like Pakistan and Egypt, for example. The ideology “imposes no specific obligations” nor “mandates action in support of the ideals it celebrates,” but can be used by an American president “to legitimate the exercise of American power.”
Today politicians of all persuasions embrace this ideology. Bacevich quotes Sen. Barack Obama echoing “the Washington consensus” in a campaign speech that defined America’s purposes “in cosmic terms” by endorsing a U.S. commitment to “the security and well-being of those who live beyond our borders” regardless of the circumstances.
Maybe this is the reason the other reviewers have had such a hard time with the book:
The Limits of Power is a dense book but gracefully written and easy to read. It is chockablock with provocative ideas and stern judgments. Bacevich’s brand of intellectual assuredness is rare in today’s public debates. Many of our talking heads and commentators are cocksure, of course, but few combine confidence with knowledge and deep thought the way Bacevich does here.
And here’s why Bacevich deserves your attention. He’s paid the price of our foolishness and fears and mirror worship and is trying to warn us all how high that can be:
Bacevich is argumentative, and his case is not proven beyond a reasonable doubt, but at the end of this book, a serious reader has a difficult choice: to embrace Bacevich’s general view or to construct a genuinely persuasive alternative. For many years our leaders have failed to do either. The price of their failure has been high and could go much higher. Bacevich knows a lot about the costs himself; his only son, Andrew John Bacevich, a first lieutenant in the Army, was killed in Iraq last year.
Candidates for office owe the voters their take on the big argument here: Do they think military power remains a tool of choice to help the United States make its way through the perils of the modern world? If so, can they explain why?
This is one of the most important books you can read right now. And it will introduce you to someone even more important for you and this nation to get to know again. Name’s Niebuhr. Once in a great while, you may hear about him.
09 October 2008
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Published on October 9th, 2008 @ 07:52:29 pm, using 184 words, 55 views
In case you didn’t click on the first comment on the post below, we’re moving it up here to its own post. I think the most important Abe books may be the kids’ ones. I know that in fourth grade I read that one with a young Abe on the cover with an ax, won a Caldicott, he walked a hundred miles to give change back to a customer, you know, that one. Never forgot the feeling and impression it left me with, even if maybe I’ve screwed up the details here. Give the child at 7 and I’ll give you back the man? Well, give them all Abe at 7 and how could that turn out bad? Good luck to the commenter. We need more of this. Help her out at the checkout line.
I read your comments on the McPherson book with interest. Yes, there will be an onslaught of new Abe Lincoln books. I, myself, am contributing to this onslaught with a book on Abraham Lincoln’s relationships with animals (for children). I’ll check out the article
Ellen Jackson, author
ABE LINCOLN LOVED ANIMALS
07 October 2008
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Published on October 7th, 2008 @ 05:24:27 pm, using 277 words, 61 views
USA Today has a story right now, ostensibly a notice of yet another Lincoln book not out there yet, James McPherson’s Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief, but really a good excuse to talk about some more of the books coming out with Abe’s bicentennial birthday next Feb. Not much profound in the article, but it’s in one of the big national papers, so that’s a good thing for the general audience. Go over and check out this book and the others mentioned, as well as more homage for Abe not as our national Jesus but as a talented and complex man who succeeded in ways other presidents couldn’t even hope to luck into. As a tempt, here’s McPherson’s judgment of the war skills of some of those other presidents and wannabes which is worth your reading:
James Madison during the Battle of 1812 gets a thumbs-down. Woodrow Wilson left World War I to Gen. John Pershing. Never a good idea, McPherson says.
He praises Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his ability to work with leaders such as Winston Churchill. And he says George H.W. Bush was effective during the Gulf War.
McPherson is less positive about the current president. “It was a terrible decision to invade Iraq in the first place,” he says.
And John McCain’s military experience does not give him an edge over Barack Obama, in McPherson’s opinion.
“Look at Jefferson Davis,” he says, referring to the Confederate president who graduated from West Point, fought in the Mexican War, served as U.S. Secretary of War from 1853 to 1857 and yet couldn’t match Lincoln’s wartime prowess.
Nice data point for future decisions, huh?
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Published on October 7th, 2008 @ 05:13:36 pm, using 236 words, 49 views
Interesting discussion at the John Templeton Foundation on the topic “Does the free market corrode moral character?” Of course the econ religionists are the major absolutists on “no” (in great company with former PA tool, I mean, Senator, Santorum, which tells you all you need to know about morality). But the overall discussion has some light, even if the commenters are drunk on the kool-aid for the most part. The key thing I noted was how so few of any of the participants or commenters have any realistic sense of the way the organizational structures we’re part of structure us and what counts as morality, the major point of Moral Mazes, the great book on business and the immoral imperatives that drive it if any immoral competitor starts having an edge, that we reviewed here. For a more realistic overview of the theme, if not directly related, go here. Of course, this post is by an org theory guy who deals with and understands reality far more than the typical economist who rejects any structural guidance to our individual capacity to shape our “self-interest.” It’s a shame we’ve invested so much money in a perverse and demented discipline like economics when org theory and soc psych have always had so much more to contribute. Maybe the only silver lining to the current finance holocaust will be putting the economists where they belong. They’ll be very warm.
06 October 2008
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Published on October 6th, 2008 @ 06:33:03 pm, using 747 words, 56 views
We’re so good here at SMILT that we can get you reviews for books that haven’t even been published yet. Well, okay, anyone linking to The New Yorker right now can get this review of the Kunhardt family’s Looking for Lincoln: The Making of an American Icon. It’s a look at the aftermath of Lincoln’s death, apparently focusing primarily on his really pretty sad son (in a couple of ways) Robert but also dealing with the dedication of the Memorial and the way the Lincoln iconography got built, for good and bad. I’ll give you a little preview, but go read the whole thing and get excited about the prospects. Sounds like a really good one.
The memorial’s designers were at odds with the man they were enshrining. For all his mystical, even bloody-minded, devotion to the Union’s preservation, Lincoln, the reluctant and strategic abolitionist, came to understand emancipation as his chief claim to immortality. A mental breakdown, in 1841, witnessed by his friend Joshua Speed, might have ended in suicide but for Lincoln’s realization, confided to Speed at the time, that if he were to die now he “had done nothing to make any human being remember that he had lived.” When Speed visited the White House in 1863, Lincoln went out of his way to recall this confidence and to declare, “with earnest emphasis,” according to his reliable friend, that the Emancipation Proclamation had fulfilled his long-ago self-willed resurrection from depression.
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What the authors call the “safeguarding” of Lincoln’s emancipation legacy fell to African-Americans themselves. If any figure rivals Robert for centrality in “Looking for Lincoln,” it is Frederick Douglass, who until his death, in 1895, continued to tell the story of how Lincoln had sought his reaction to the Second Inaugural Address during a White House reception from which policemen had tried to hustle him away. More significant, Douglass offered active rhetorical resistance to the chess-set version of the Civil War that was becoming ever more favored by sentimentalists and reënactors. “There was a right side and a wrong side,” Douglass insisted, a plain truth that could not be smothered by placing flowers “alike and lovingly, on rebel and on loyal graves.”
The authors draw attention to W. E. B. Du Bois as Douglass’s even more aggressive heir, but they don’t seem fully to recognize the way in which Du Bois’s controversial assessment of Lincoln in 1922 is a kind of linchpin for their own enterprise: “I revere him the more because up out of his contradictions and inconsistencies he fought his way to the pinnacle of earth,” Du Bois wrote. “I care more for Lincoln’s great toe than for the whole body of the perfect George Washington, of spotless ancestry, who ‘never told a lie’ and never did anything else interesting.” Du Bois grasped the instinctive appeal of Lincoln’s wounded interior, entry to which seemed visible in the crags of his much photographed face. If Andrew Jackson was the first President with a personality, one that was recognizable to the electorate of his own day, Lincoln can be considered the first with a psychology, a delicate mental makeup that suggested itself to anyone who saw his picture in a newspaper, let alone heard him on a platform. (His sometimes high, even squeaky, voice is the one physical attribute our modern imagination still wants to deny.) Jackson may have been ready to fight any number of duels defending his wife’s honor, but, in the long run, how much more compelling is Lincoln’s patient handling of his wife’s mental fluctuations.
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In the nineteen-twenties, despite the crush of Republicans on the speakers’ platform at the memorial, Lincoln was slipping from the grasp of the party he had helped to establish. New Dealers, thirties radicals (the Abraham Lincoln Brigade), and marchers in the postwar civil-rights movement all soon had their time with him, but while specific moments of counterintuitive convenience have permitted, say, Reagan to appropriate Franklin Roosevelt—or even Bill Clinton to praise Reagan—Lincoln now presides over the Republic inside such a diffuse and deified glow that political invocations of him usually feel meaningless. Even as Americans annex the memorial to big causes, they seem mostly to need Lincoln—and respond to him—in a psychological and spiritual way. If we are indeed a Christian nation, he is the Christ, and politicians risk looking silly when they mention him in connection with their little quadrennial concerns.
05 October 2008
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Published on October 5th, 2008 @ 09:13:12 am, using 1056 words, 44 views
In its Ideas section this morning the Boston Globe has a nice piece looking at the reliability of “experts” and how they’re rarely better than flipping a coin. They rightly tie the piece to Philip Tetlock’s work on experiments with “expert” prediction, complete with an interview with him in an accompanying piece. Tetlock, as you loyal readers will recall, was the subject of the first book review done on SMILT, his Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?, first because it just might be the most important book in your remaining existence as a citizen in a democracy [sic]. To refresh your mind, his basic conclusion was that experts really aren’t, but those who don’t fixate on a “my way” or “one way” approach to understanding the world usually do best on predictions (except when the one wayers accidentally glom on to the best way, which is almost always pure chance even if they don’t recognize it).
But what does that have to do with Abe? Well, read these parts of the overall essay, then read the whole thing (which actually uses Abe as an example, unfortunately relying on Doris Kearns Goodwin, known well as we’ve noted for recycling what others have said, sometimes literally), then read the Tetlock interview. If you still flunk the quiz after that and don’t recognize the basic thesis of what we’ve been saying here in this series of Lincoln reviews, then I’ll have to ask what language you speak.
. . . it has also become clear that listening to your instincts is just a part of making good decisions. The crucial skill, scientists are now saying, is the ability to think about your own thinking, or metacognition, as it is known. Unless people vigilantly reflect on how they are making an important decision, they won’t be able to properly use their instincts, or know when their gut should be ignored. Indeed, according to this emerging new vision of decision-making, the best predictor of good judgment isn’t intuition or experience or intelligence. Rather, it’s the willingness to engage in introspection, to cultivate what Philip Tetlock, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, calls “the art of self-overhearing.”
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Given the distinct talents of these different types of thought - the brain is like a Swiss army knife, stuffed full of tools - scientists argue that it’s imperative for powerful decision-makers to constantly reflect on their own thought process. The best decisions occur when people take the time to study their decision-making process, and not just the decision itself. In other words, don’t simply focus on the alternatives - reflect on how those alternatives are being considered. The end result is decisions that are more likely to be made in the right frame of mind.
One of the best ways for a president to maintain control of the decision-making process is to surround himself with advisers willing to criticize his decisions. “Psychologists spend a lot of time focusing on individual abilities,” says Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia. “But what’s even more important is the type of environment that’s set up around a president. A leader who encourages a diversity of viewpoints” - and Haidt argues that presidents should fill the cabinet with advisers from both parties - “is going to make much more effective decisions.”
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Unfortunately, some scientists worry that the act of running for president discourages politicians from developing these metacognitive skills. On the campaign trail, a confession of doubt or admission of error is often instant fodder for an attack ad; equivocation has become a faux pas. As a result, politicians tend to lapse into the easy language of certainty.
“If I were a campaign adviser, of course I’d be sure to tell my candidate to always look sure of himself,” says Tetlock. “But that same pose can actually be counterproductive. We should see self-awareness and even self-doubt as a sign of strength, not as a sign of weakness.”
The ideal president, then, won’t conform to the current cliches of presidential decision-making. He’ll exude confidence in public, but behind the scenes he’ll accept his fallibility and seek out those who disagree with him. He won’t fixate on rational deliberation - or worship the power of his intuition. The brain is not a hammer, and not every problem is a nail.
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Unfortunately, some scientists worry that the act of running for president discourages politicians from developing these metacognitive skills. On the campaign trail, a confession of doubt or admission of error is often instant fodder for an attack ad; equivocation has become a faux pas. As a result, politicians tend to lapse into the easy language of certainty.
“If I were a campaign adviser, of course I’d be sure to tell my candidate to always look sure of himself,” says Tetlock. “But that same pose can actually be counterproductive. We should see self-awareness and even self-doubt as a sign of strength, not as a sign of weakness.”
The ideal president, then, won’t conform to the current cliches of presidential decision-making. He’ll exude confidence in public, but behind the scenes he’ll accept his fallibility and seek out those who disagree with him. He won’t fixate on rational deliberation - or worship the power of his intuition. The brain is not a hammer, and not every problem is a nail.
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Unfortunately, some scientists worry that the act of running for president discourages politicians from developing these metacognitive skills. On the campaign trail, a confession of doubt or admission of error is often instant fodder for an attack ad; equivocation has become a faux pas. As a result, politicians tend to lapse into the easy language of certainty.
“If I were a campaign adviser, of course I’d be sure to tell my candidate to always look sure of himself,” says Tetlock. “But that same pose can actually be counterproductive. We should see self-awareness and even self-doubt as a sign of strength, not as a sign of weakness.”
The ideal president, then, won’t conform to the current cliches of presidential decision-making. He’ll exude confidence in public, but behind the scenes he’ll accept his fallibility and seek out those who disagree with him. He won’t fixate on rational deliberation - or worship the power of his intuition. The brain is not a hammer, and not every problem is a nail.
We do speak the same language, right?
02 October 2008
Written by
mdconnelly (
)
Published on October 2nd, 2008 @ 05:42:35 pm, using 1114 words, 66 views
Admit it. The question has crossed your mind, hasn’t it? Now and again for years, more and more lately, right? It will happen someday. Why should we be different? Every great nation has ceased to be so great. The life cycle is well known and always denied by the brighter lights of every great nation until it was made painfully clear one way or another that it had ceased to be so great. When you’re a nation with the global scope of the United States, with military bases everywhere, cultural and economic dominance everywhere (until the Chinese stop lending, anyway), the comparisons aren’t just with other great nations (which include the Dutch and Spanish and Venecians, remember) but with the one that still holds the imagination of everyone–Rome.
A lot of people invoke Rome without knowing much about it, just a few incidents or emperors, the stories of Jesus, its fall with your choice of all kinds of proposed causes. In fact, one proof of the ignorance of Rome despite its invocation is the realization that the Roman Empire went on for centuries after the fall of Rome and historians really can’t pinpoint any specific moment when, like a light switching off, life changed even for those in the lost western portion of the empire.
These are the sorts of things you can learn when you read the new works comparing Rome to the U.S., works like Cullen Murphy’s Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America which came out last year. Murphy’s task is to explain how Rome went from a powerful republic to its transformation into an empire to its eventual (and IMO inevitable) decay. And then to relate that to our present day. The common elements are conspicuous: the degenerate and self-impressed and insulated capitals, the degraded and trivial public life, the vagarities and porosity of borders, the community-eroding results of over-hyped privatization, the truly monumental ignorance and stupidity regarding the rest of the world and how we’re networked in it, the pure corruption of the government. You’ll learn a lot from this journalist/historian even if you’re familiar with the histories of the two countries; you’ll feel like the smartest guy on earth if you knew nothing beforehand.
After this thorough review, comparison, and analysis of the situations of the two empires, here are some of the lessons of Rome he says are relevant to us today:
There is, to begin with, a psycholological tendency that is nearly impossible to shed. The idea that you should preserve everything you already have, exactly the way it is, exerts a powerful grip, even when logic suggests that only adaptation can preserve what is essential and worthwhile. . . .
Then there is a simple fact of life: the status quo never stays that way. Thucydides observed that empires start to decline when they cease to expand. You can’t read an account of Rome in the third, fourth, or fifth century, when expansion is over and emperors are trying desperately to hold things together, without marveling at the blizzard of variables in play. Every Roman action to address one urgent problem . . . creates unintended new problems. . . .
And from this comes, finally an unhappy generalization: large systems are inherently unstable. . . .
For a long time Rome was able to organize the world according to its own convenience–until there came a point when doing so became difficult, then impossible. . . .
Deja vu, huh? And from that, here’s what Murphy recommends as the best course for US to avoid following down that same path:
First, instill an appreciation of the wider world. Start teaching it round instead of flat. Immigration helps us here. The influx of foreign students does too. . . . To drive home the idea that “we are not alone,” there is no substitute for fluency in another language. . . . Americans have their priorities backward. They worry needlessly about . . . whether the immigrants will ever learn English. They should be worrying about . . . : whether the elites will ever speak anything else.
Second, stop treating government as a necessary evil, and instead rely on it proudly for the big things it can do well. Privatization has its uses, and farming out government functions has its place–but the loss of civic engagement and loyalty across the board is a very real threat. . . . Besides, government can be held accountable in ways that the private sector can’t. Yes, it takes some imagination to see how corrosive privatized government will prove to be many decades down the road–and that’s another thing: start thinking in centuries.
Third, fortify the institutions that promote assimilation. . . .
Fourth, take some weight off the military. . . .
Like the odds of any of this? Me either. Especially with the stupid and corrupt bailout being given to us by our leaders [sic], sponsored by the likely next President, this week. That’s not the only thing ultimately demoralizing about Murphy’s book. He concludes by pinning his hopes on what he sees as the American tendency to believe in possible improvement as compared to Rome’s “it doesn’t get any better than this.” But the people he quotes as evidence of this trait, Jefferson, Lincoln, Eisenhower, are all part of an older value-system now overrun by triviality and unseriousness. Do I really need to list examples? Is Barbara Walters still on tv? Oprah? Paris?
This nation’s station as leading power in the world, whether we gratuitously argue over whether we’re an empire or not, will vanish one day. Maybe from China calling in its notes, maybe from other sudden economic shocks, maybe from just the arteroschlerosis that Murphy describes for Rome. Maybe we’ll have to complete the transformation from republic to the imperial government that the current administration has been institutionalizing from the early designs of Nixon, Reagan, and the first Bush and then have the world gang up on us to put us back in our place. I know we’ve been through these belches of authoritarian excess here before and racheted back somewhat each time. But I also look at the tendency of resource scarcity to require authoritarian regimes and we’re coming up on the Mother of All Resource Scarcities, and I look at determined ignorance of a critical mass willing to give away freedom and democracy in the name of protection from boogey men, and I wonder if our resilency will hold through my lifetime. Some generation had to be the one to suffer for its nation’s decline and fall. It’s always hard to believe it could be yours, but Murphy makes clear it will happen to someone. Why not you? But I’ve only got a couple or three decades left. I may get lucky.
I really am sorry, sonny.
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