Philosophy and Literature Blog

     Sandel points out that instead of producing real public debate about the role of markets in society, the financial crisis produced the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street Protests, largely aimed at the bailout(which was necessary to avoid a depression).   Note that the Occupy Wall Street movement made for good presentations of unshaven, smelly teenagers that served the interests of the right while the Tea Party gained just enough strength in congress to threaten even the pro-industry 'Obamacare' package, much less a more reasonable single-payer system. To borrow a phrase from Vonnegut, 'so it goes'.  Chomsky et al would probably argue that the reason there was no coverage of substantive debate of the place of markets is that media corporations, which rely upon advertising, themselves depend upon the expansion of markets into more and more sections of our lives.  Thus, no real debate about limiting the reach of markets can reach into the mass medi...

     OK, well, I got distracted and read through a really nice book called Symmetry and the Standard Model, which is one of the best books I've seen introducing QFT etc...  But I decided I'm too lazy to do a lot of math typesetting on this blog, so I'm going to start this book by Michael Sandel.  Sandel is a philosophy prof at Harvard.  He is very open and accessible.  He puts a premium on public discussion.  Some lectures of his at Harvard on Ethics are available free online.  This book is once again an easy read.  So, rather than do a lot of fancy mathy stuff I'm going to start the Sandel book.

Just to note, unless you think I'm being too hard on Lincoln, he did tell his supporters to go to another antislavery candidate in the 1850s to ensure an antislavery candidate won eventhough it cost him that election.

     The second book on Lincoln is bringing into reality a little bit more.  As a young lawyer he defended a slaveowner against the suit of one of his slaves claiming they should be freed.  As Foner said, there's no excuse for this.  Foner's approach has so far been balanced.  Lincoln's maturation seems to occur in fits and starts, with occasional steps back.  He seemed to be enamored of new industrialization, PROGRESS, etc.. that swept across America at this time.  This led him to think in terms of city-dwelling and market places rather than the farm.  It is also implied that his internal convictions were occasionally at odds with his ambition and sometimes he chose his ambition.  This last point is an interesting one to consider.  Could a more devoted abolitionist have been elected President in 1860?  If so, could they have held the border states in the Union, including Missouri, Kentucky(which were cruc...

     So I just finished reading a 678 page biography of Lincoln by White.  I'm starting a book by Foner on Lincoln and Slavery.  When I started the book I had the usual questions about Lincoln and Slavery and the causes of the Civil War etc...  I still have some of those questions because I don't like to take one writer's word for things.  I know these are still sensitive issues, but I think I should air my thoughts as I go along. 1.  White is a huge Abraham Lincoln admirer.  Before reading this biography I started, but didn't finish, a huge biography of Hitler.  The author of the Hitler biography went out of his way to attribute mental illnesses and serious character flaws to Hitler.  Well, one can understand this.  I got to the point in the Hitler biography where he had basically taken over the Nazi party and then I gave up reading.  Frankly, reading a biography of Hitler is not a positive experience.  It was...