I'm constantly stunned by the media's misrepresentation of economic facts. Consider the oft-repeated claim that the US manufacturing sector is "ailing", "hard hit", "dying", and all the rest. Why you'd think it was the Roman republic! Well, it is--strong and healthy, but terribly misunderstood.
Here are the real statisticsabout U.S. manufacturing in 2006:
Thought you might enjoy a photo I took while in Rome this summer. Note the focal point: the Roman Senate building, still standing while the Basilica Julii is in ruins. Yes!
So far Ron Paul strikes me as the most Catonian of US Presidential contenders. Though he's much, much older than the historical MPC (who was John Edwards' age when he died at Utica), Paul's opposition to fruitless military adventures, his principled constitutionalism, and his general philosophical outlook would certainly piss off any modern-day Caesar (or Livia).
Here's Ron Paul on The Daily Show.
Ron Paul, the libertarian presidential candidate who bears some resemblance to the historical Cato, has apparently eclipsed John McCain in the fundraising effort, according to this ABC news story.
I'm wondering who a good Roman analog for John McCain might be. Regulus, perhaps, the war hero tortured by the Carthaginians? Nominations welcome.
I blogged earlier about the robust health of U.S. Manufacturing, so I was miffed to read that the word hadn't gotten out to the Washington Post, where Harold Meyerson recycles the same old myths in his critique of NAFTA.
The amazing thing about the free-traders' arguments is that they never change. Today's free-trade commentaries make the same points as the pro-NAFTA editorials of 1993-94. Now, as then, bilateral trade is a win-win proposition for the peoples of both signatory nations. It r
In a speech here in Columbus, Barack Obama posed an unusual challenge to McCain's independence: "He hasn't been a maverick. He's been a sidekick. He's like Cato to the Green Lantern."
Don't they teach anything at Harvard Law School? For the record, it's Green Hornet, not Green Lantern.
HERE the NYT reports that former classics student Boris Johnson stands a chance of beating Red Ken for mayor of London. Can anyone across the pond tell me, What do Brits think of Boris?
I mentioned in a thread on the Gracchan grain dole that the distribution of income is typically best described by a power function (sort of like an exponential/logarithmic curve). You probably have some inking of this distribution if you've ever heard a politician or professor complaining bitterly about the fact the top 1% owns 50% of the wealth (or whatever it is in your local area).
However, economists have been pointing out for some time that this power law of income distribution really
I admit to be a congenital contrarian. I choose Cato over Caesar, Macs over PCs, ancient history over modern, and so on. As John Tierney puts it, "Just because everybody believes something doesn't make it wrong, but that's a good working hypothesis."
Given this penchant, it's probably no surprise that I've been highly skeptical about the CO2 theory of climate change since I first heard about it in 1990, a particularly hot summer in the US. Although I wrote my very first research paper on t
Great review in the NY Times. I don't know what is more disheartening: (1) how violently totalitarian Communists--like the lackeys of Stalin--celebrate their resistance to local authoritarian fascists--like the thugs of Franco, or (2) how naively Western liberals buy into #1.
"We are all Greeks," Shelley once wrote, rather exuberantly. It's easy to see why he'd say that. As Rabbi Michael Lerner observed, "Along with Greek science and military prowess came a whole culture that celebrated beauty both in art and in the human body, presented the world with the triumph of rational thought in the works of Plato and Aristotle, and rejoiced in the complexities of life presented in the theater of Aeschylus, Euripides and Aristophanes."
Only Lerner wasn't giving Hellenism
Although Google has been rightly taken to task for capitulating to Chinese demands to assist in censoring dissidents on the internet, rival Yahoo has been doing vastly worse--actually assisting Chinese authorities in tracking down and imprisoning dissidents. More in today's New York Times. What a shame--now I'm going to have to abandon Yahoo entirely.
Does anybody have a suggestion for a good MyYahoo alternative?
Marius is infamous (perhaps to a degree that is unwarranted) for opening up the ranks of the Roman legions to the landless, propertyless "head-count" of Rome. The result: an army that unquestioningly obeyed its commanding officers, even when the officers threatened to topple the republic (and finally did).
The widely-vaunted alternative to this ever-present threat--in the US, most recently revived by Douglas MacArthur; elsewhere, seen in military coups from Venezuela to Pakistan--is "civili
Apparently the daughter of John F. Kennedy wants to be a senator. Having held no previous political office, which seems to have been both a necessary and a sufficient condition to be a senator in the Roman republic, her ambition is remarkable for a number of reasons. But what is says about political culture in the US and Rome is what has me fascinated.
One of the trickier Latin political terms is nobile. The root of our word, "noble," it connotes royalty and aristocracy. But the Latin term
American religious broadcaster and all-around wacko Pat Robertson was talking to God recently (or at least stopped taking his meds), when Robertson learned that Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon's stroke was caused by the Vengeance of God. Apparently God is none-too-pleased about the Likud-founder/bolting prime minister
"dividing God's land" .
No word from Robertson yet about why God was OK with Saladin and his little capture of Jerusalem. Maybe God just likes turbans. Or maybe Pat Rober
First, Yahoo! cravenly handed over user records to Chinese auhoritarians authorities. Then, "Don't be Evil" Google promptly complied with Chinese demands to censor results from web searches. What next? The censorship of No-MSG recipes on Epicurious.com? Will the whole internet be forced to kowtow to the brownshirts in Beijing?
Not on Jimbo Wales' watch! Wikipedia, the ultimate source of truthiness on the internet, will not yield to Chinese demands to censor their content. Read the whole s
Today's NYT has an interesting report that claims that the Virginia Tech killer's history of mental illness made his gun purchase illegal. The report is interesting because (1) it challenges the assumption that more gun control laws are needed to prevent future VT-type massacres, (2) it demonstrates the difficulties in enforcing existing legislation, and also (3) it illustrates how small differences in the implementation of federal law at the state level can have devastating repercussions. Fro
Left-wing Gauls are in an uproar that the leader of the Republic is...jogging. "Le running" is apparently too individualistic and too (say it with disgust) American for some. I guess they'll just have to replace their favorite term of abuse, "creeping Americanism", with "jogging Americanism"!
There's a great response to this fashionable idiocy by that Cato of perfidious Albion, fellow jogger Boris Johnson. (Of course, Cato didn't actually jog, but as a good Stoic, he did walk a lot -- and
