After-Christmas Reading - How the World Works

Thomas Sowell's reading list: Dick Morris is the man who helped rescue Bill Clinton's presidency from a situation similar to Obama's situation now. He may not always be correct in his prognostications, and he may be annoying sometimes, but he knows how Washington works.

The Character of Nations sounds interesting.

The very title of “The Character of Nations” is a challenge to the prevailing ideology that denies or downplays underlying differences among individuals, groups and nations. There are many examples of these differences. For example, Professor Codevilla says: “While it is unimaginable to do business in China without paying bribes, to offer one in Japan is the greatest faux pas.”

He sees the things that are valued differently in different cultures as the key to everything from economic progress to personal freedom.

But these values are not set in stone— which means that countries which currently benefit from a given set of values can lose those benefits when those values get lost.

Codevilla says: “The reason why inhabitants of the First World should keep the Third world in mind is that habits prevalent in the countries that became known as the Third World are a set of human possibilities that any people anywhere can adopt at any time. As Argentina showed in the twentieth Century, falling from the First World to the Third can be easy and quick.”

I'm not in the market for a college right now. But Sowell's own books on the housing boom and bust and Applied Economics are timely. The first is said by reviewers not to spare any involved segment of society from criticism. The second is recommended for people planning new social programs, or voting for people who create new social prgrams. So that those programs don't end up hurting more than helping.

Here's a post by someone I don't know much about for people who think that there's such a thing as laissez-faire capitalism in the United States.

The current state and the current banking sector require one another; neither can exist without the other. They are so reciprocally intertwined that each is an extension of the other.

Remember this point the next time somebody tells you that "free market madmen" caused the current financial crisis that is threatening to undermine the economy. There is no free market. There is no "laissez-faire capitalism." The government has been deeply involved in setting the parameters for market relations for eons; in fact, genuine "laissez-faire capitalism" has never existed.

Guess I'm going to have to break down and read something by Hayek. Update: Former lefty radical Roger L. Simon recommends The Road to Serfdom, which he just finished reading, as a way to improve your understanding of world events today, ("Hayek had a lot of this figured out in 1944.") and a commenter recommends The Fatal Conceit. I've also been thinking that I should read something by Gramsci or Lakoff, to help me understand the post-Stalin thinking and actions of the Left.

From New Ledger, an interview with the author of "The End of Secularism" - by which he means the end of the idea that secularism is a neutral position to which everyone should default when in public. Interesting. And a list of other books, heavy on world history.

For science fiction (or movie) buffs, there's a Michael Crichton retrospective. Videos from his educational activities here and here.

Comic relief for grumpy people: Compilatation of Florence King's columns in her Misanthrope's Corner.

Classic children's literature available here.