From brain pickings:
The drama of original choice is that it goes on moment by moment for an entire lifetime.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012 James Ament A fascinating piece—lessons of history?—from The New Criterion (hat tip Maggie’s Farm), with its many detractors bitching about it in the comments. A quote:
We Athenians, Pericles said, are “free and tolerant in our private lives; but in public affairs we keep to the law”—including, he added in an important proviso, “those unwritten laws,” like the lawlike commands of taste, manners, and morals—“which it is an acknowledged shame to break.” Freedom and tolerance, Pericles suggested, were blossoms supported by roots that reached deep into the soil of duty.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012 James Ament The linked essay is excepted from chapter 20 of the book Out of Step by Frank Chodorov:
We talk a lot about freedom these days. When you dig to the bottom of this talk you realize that, first, very few know what freedom is and, secondly, still fewer want it. The fact is that what is generally called freedom consists of increases in wages (or handouts), more profits (or subsidies) and a bottomless abundance of privileges. For such things we — particularly the more affluent among us — are ready to lay freedom on the line. The essence of freedom, which is an inflexible respect for oneself, is being bartered every day for such trifles.
Thoreau was not in that business….
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 James Ament Three pieces from The New York Times:
Friedrich A. Hayek, Big-Government Skeptic—May 8, 2011
Keynes vs. Hayek: A Rap Battle Renewed—April 28, 2011
Hayek: The Back Story—July 9, 2010
Then from the Encyclopedia Britannica Blog, Hayek’s Big Week, and the Hayek Century (May 9, 2011), via Frank Wilson.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 James Ament The biography, Eric Hoffer: An American Odyssey (1967) by Calvin Tomkins is, first of all, brief. The biography part is only sixty-eight pages long, including the introduction by CBS commentator, Eric Severeid. The balance of the book includes many of Hoffer’s aphorisms and photographs of him. A burly man, Hoffer, born July 25, 1902 died on May 21, 1983, writing eleven books during his lifetime. Two other books about Hoffer exist: One called Hoffer’s America by James D Koerner and the other Eric Hoffer by James Thomas Baker, both of which are difficult to find, but then the Tomkins book was difficult to locate. Given the content of his writing—his deep understanding of fanaticism, mass movements, and “change,” it’s a wonder that there hasn’t been a resurgence in interest in his work—it’s as applicable today as it was when he was popular in the ’60s.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 James Ament Play it as it Lays (1970) by Joan Didion
When I finished Play it as it Lays a fictional scene flashed through my mind: I was on an airplane—and since I spent half my working life traveling, this is an easy vision for me to have—sitting in first class, aisle seat, with a well dressed woman at the window. We hadn’t spoken for most of the flight. I finished Joan Didion’s book, set it down, and she casually said, “How did you like it?”
Me: “I thought it was quite good. She writes like a man.”
Slightly annoyed woman: “Oh, why do you say that?”
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 James Ament I am generally not sucked in by hype. I have no great need to see the latest movies as soon as they premier or view all the films nominated for best picture. I don’t have to read the hottest book on the market, right away, so I can talk about it, appearing “with it” to those into the latest books (particularly a book that our dear leader, Prince Fluffy Bunny, selected as something to read). Nonetheless, I was intrigued by the subject title—how freedom would be treated—and in recognition that Franzen has built a celebrated reputation in literary circles, I got into the queue at the public library, some 260 down on the list, and waited.
It was worth the wait…sort of.
Along with Mortimer Adler (and others), Robert Hutchins was responsible for the creation of The Great Books of the Western World. In the preface of book one, these two gentlemen wrote the following brilliant observation and plea for serious education, which is as true today as in 1951:
“We believe that the reduction of the citizen to an object of propaganda, private and public, is one of the greatest dangers to democracy. A prevalent notion is that the great mass of the people cannot understand and cannot form an independent judgment upon any matter; they cannot be educated, in the sense of developing their intellectual powers, but they can be bamboozled. The reiteration of slogans, the distortion of the news, the great storm of propaganda that beats upon the citizen twenty-four hours a day all his life long mean either that democracy must fall prey to the loudest and most persistent propagandists or that the people must save themselves by strengthening their minds so that they can appraise the issues for themselves.”—from the preface of “The Great Conversation,” book one of “The Great Books of the Western World,” edited by Robert M. Hutchins and Mortimer Adler, December 1, 1951
Below is the transcript of a Mike Wallace interview with Dr. Hutchins from July 1958, where he comments on the state of American education:
The Will of God, by Leslie D. Weatherhead (1893-1976), was written in 1944 and at only fifty-six pages long (my old publication), it remains a classic in helping to get one’s thinking right about this subject. The book is actually a series of five sermons given at a very difficult time in England, “relevant to these days of loss and sorrow,” yet also relevant to our current time of war and despicable world events.
Weatherhead says the phrase is used too loosely; often, after some horrible tragedy, someone will say, “It is the will of God.” Weatherhead then offers a logical thought process which in essence says that one should not identify the will of God as something for which a man would be locked up! He argues that there are three distinct kinds of will:
Sometime in the early ’90s, I was in a meeting with about twenty other people, and as an icebreaker, the leader asked everyone to name their favorite movie. One nice old gentlemen followed his wife in saying, The Sound of Music. I thought, “What? The Sound of Music? Because your wife said that? What are you, a man or a mouse?” (I was into clichés back then.) “Say The Dirty Dozen or something, but not The Sound of Music!” When my turn came, I said, Lonely Are the Brave (1962). Nobody there had ever heard of it.
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