We're pleased to announce that the Ben and Joel Podcast is becoming the City Journal Books Podcast! Although our name and home base may be changing, the content of the program will remain the same. We'll continue to offer 21st-century conversations for listeners with 19th-century attention spans with authors of books we think are interesting, enlightening, and particularly relevant to the public discourse.
Charles R. Kesler
In this episode, City Journal associate editor Ben Boychuk and Joel Mathis, a national affairs columnist for Philadelphia Magazine's The Philly Post, talk to Charles R. Kesler about his new book, I Am the Change: Barack Obama and the Crisis of Liberalism. Kesler is the Dengler-Dykema Distinguished Professor of Government at Claremont-McKenna College, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, and editor of the Claremont Review of Books.

Among the questions we discuss:
• What ideas motivate Barack Obama?
• Who's the audience for this book? How should a liberal engage this book?
• Do conservatives know more about liberals' political history than liberals do?
• How did Woodrow Wilson's "New Freedom" reshape American politics?
• How did Franklin Roosevelt inexorably tie liberalism to the Democratic Party?
• How did Lyndon Johnson outdo FDR and Wilson?
• Does Obama represent a "fourth wave" of liberalism?
• What do American progressives owe to the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel?
• Did history end for American conservatives in 1787?
• Do conservatives unknowingly accept liberal premises?
• And much, much more!

Please visit and "like" Ben and Joel and City Journal on Facebook to comment on this interview, as well as to receive regular updates about the podcast and links to our weekly syndicated column with ScrippsHoward News Service. You'll be glad you did!

Programming note: Let's call this one the last episode of "The Ben and Joel Podcast" and the inaugural episode of the "City Journal Books Podcast." Upcoming guests include: Stephen Knott, Greg Lukianoff, and Richard H. Immermann.

Jonah Goldberg, American Enterprise Institute fellow and editor-at-large at National Review Online, joins Ben Boychuk to discuss his latest book, The Tyranny of Clichés: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas.

Joel Mathis received a last-minute offer he couldn’t refuse and couldn't join us for this episode—which was a shame, because Ben and Jonah were looking forward to the sparring contest. But Joel's presence is made known around 13 and a half minutes into the podcast, when Ben reads a couple of questions he had written shortly before we recorded.

Among the questions we discuss:
• What's so great about ideology?
• Why aren't liberals more willing to embrace their ideological history?
• Is the problem with liberals today that they're "bookless"?
• Do conservative arguments based supposedly on "first principles" obscure the practical effects of conservative policies?
• Who doesn't support progress?
• If he had to do it all over again, would Goldberg have written a completely different book?
• How has Goldberg's style evolved since the old days of the original G-File on NRO?
• And much, much more!

Music heard in this podcast:
• "The Ritual/Ancient Battle/2nd Kroykah," Gerald Fried (from "Star Trek: Original Television Soundtrack," Vol. 2)
• "Days Are Forgotten," Kasabian
• "Logical Song," Supertramp
• "The Trees," Rush
• "My Way," Sid Vicious
• "Jessica," The Allman Brothers
• "Epilogue (original version)—End Title," James Horner (from "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan—Expanded Edition")

Please visit and "like" the Ben and Joel page on Facebook to comment on this interview, as well as to receive regular updates about the podcast and links to our weekly syndicated column with ScrippsHoward News Service. You'll be glad you did!

Programming note: This episode of "The Ben and Joel Podcast" is Vol. 5, No. 12 for 2012, and was recorded in June. Unfortunately, editing took quite a bit longer than usual because of a technical glitch. Joel Mathis was on assignment when we recorded this one.

Jim Manzi, the founder and chairman of Applied Predictive Technologies and a senior fellow with the Manhattan Institute, joins Ben Boychuk and Joel Mathis to discuss his new book, Uncontrolled: The Surprising Payoff of Trial-and-Error for Business, Politics, and Society (Basic/City Journal).

Among the questions we discuss:
• What do we know?
• Do we know enough to make sweeping social policies?
• What's wrong with experimenting with reforms? What kind of experiments should we be conducting?
• Can scientific research overcome political forces?
• Do top-down reforms ever work?
• Have the education reforms of the past 20 years made a difference?
• Can liberty and technocracy co-exist?
• What's Manzi's problem with Mark Levin?
• And much more!

Music heard in this podcast:
• "Natural Science," Rush
• "She Blinded Me With Science," Thomas Dolby
• "Political Science," Randy Newman
• "Science is Real," They Might Be Giants
• "What's the Matter Here?," 10,000 Maniacs
• "I Don't Know," The Lounge Brigade

Please visit and "like" the Ben and Joel page on Facebook to comment, as well as for updates about the podcast and links to our weekly syndicated column with ScrippsHoward News Service.

Programming note: This episode of "The Ben and Joel Podcast" is Vol. 5, No. 10 for 2012. Once again, Skype behaved strangely. So if you're wondering why Joel sounds like he's speaking in an empty auditorium, that's why.

William VoegeliWith this edition of the podcast, Ben and Joel launch the first of an ongoing series on inequality in the United States. Over the next several months, Ben and Joel will discuss the problem of income and social inequality with some of the nation's leading thinkers, economists, political scientists and journalists.

(Read Joel's companion blog series on inequality at Cup o' Joel.)

Kicking off the series with Ben and Joel is William Voegeli, a senior editor at the Claremont Review of Books and author of "Never Enough: America's Limitless Welfare State" (Encounter Books).

Among the questions we discuss:

• Is it true that America's welfare state is really limitless? Do the protests in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and elsewhere suggest that there are limits?
• How much government are Americans willing to pay for?
• What is liberalism's guiding principal, if any? Is liberalism an "ad hoc-racy"?
• How does conservatism identify and solve social problems?
• Is true income equality possible? Is it desirable?
• Is there a way to "turn the social policy dials" to correct social ills?
• Does California prove the limits of the "welfare state"? Can Jerry Brown save it?
• And much, much more!

Music heard in this podcast:

• "I'm Payin' Taxes, What Am I Buyin'?," Fred Wesley & The J.B.s
• "I'd Love to Change the World," Ten Years After
• "Bring It Home," The Bamboos
• "The Trees," Rush
• "New World Man," Rush
• "Damn Right, I Am Somebody," The J.B.s

Programming note: We've changed the way we identify the episodes. This episode of "The Ben and Joel Podcast" is Vol. 4, No. 3. You might be wondering, where is Vol. 4, No. 1? We're still editing it. Next ep! Promise!

Hadley P. Arkes is Edward Ney Professor of Jurisprudence and American Institutions at Amherst College.

The podcast returns with a vengeance, as Ben and Joel explore the mysteries of natural law and constitutional interpretation with Hadley P. Arkes, the Edward Ney Professor of Jurisprudence at Amherst College and author most recently of "Constitutional Illusions and Anchoring Truths" (Cambridge University Press). Ben and Joel asked Prof. Arkes to discuss the Supreme Court's decision last week in Snyder v. Phelps, the military funerals case involving the "Rev." Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church congregation. But in order to get to the Phelps case, we needed to establish a few first principles.Hadley P. Arkes

Arkes writes about the Phelps case at First Things on Wednesday. His discussion with us is a spirited elaboration on the subject. (And for earlier commentary by Ben and Joel, see here, here and here.) If you know nothing about natural law, this interview is for you. If you think you understand the current scholarship on natural law, you really should listen. And if you're already a fan of Hadley Arkes' writing, this interview will be a treat.

Among the questions we discuss:

• What are some constitutional illusions and what are the anchoring truths from which judges have become unmoored?
• Should the natural law have any bearing on our understanding of the Constitution?
• Is natural law just a secular gloss on a theistic understanding of the world?
• Would the natural law condone homosexual marriage in 50 years?
• What did the Supreme Court get wrong in the Snyder v. Phelps case?
• How should Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire inform our understanding of the Phelps case? (For a different take, listen to Ben and Joel's interview with University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey Stone.)
• Should the law ban offensive language?
• What do Fred Phelps and Mark Steyn have in common? (The answer may surprise you!)
• And much more!

Music heard in this podcast:

• "Natural Science," Rush
• "Freewill," Rush
• "Also Sprach Zarathustra," Shawn Lee
• "The Rev. Fred Phelps is a Horrible Person," HedCas
• "Witch Hunt," Rush

Programming note: We're changing the way we identify the episodes. This episode of "The Ben and Joel Podcast" is Vol. 4, No. 2. You might be wondering, where is Vol. 4, No. 1? We haven't posted it yet.

In this, the second part of what may or may not become an ongoing series of interrogations, Ben Boychuk and Joel Mathis ask Robb Leatherwood (a.k.a. Monkey Robb) what it means to be a libertarian... or an anarcho-libertarian... or an anarcho-capitalist/paleolibertarian. You really need to listen to find out.

(Part one, with Joel, is here. Part three, with Ben, will appear in a couple of weeks.)

Among the questions we discuss:

• How would Robb describe his political philosophy? Libertarian? Anarchist? What?
• What's the matter with nation-states?
• What's the matter with the Constitution?
• What do anarchism and Christianity have in common?
• Why is smaller better? Is it always?
• When is authority permissible? And how does it coexist with consent?
• Is universal consent required?
• Is there anywhere in the world freer than the United States?
• Is Robb more or less libertarian than he was 20 years ago?
• How much has marriage and family shaped his outlook?

Music heard in this podcast:

• Don't Tread on Me, Metallica
• Anthem, Rush
• Know Your Rights, The Clash
• We Do What We're Told, Peter Gabriel
• Freedom, Jimi Hendrix

Joel Mathis and I tackle the question of whether a multi-million dollar judgment against the contemptible Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church is an affront to the First Amendment. Joel elaborates on this post, in which he sides with Phelps and flatly asserts: "Either you believe in the First Amendment... or you don't." And Joel worries that "silencing Fred Phelps might be a step down the slippery slope to silencing us all."

This is simply hyperbole, I'm afraid. It's not a matter of merely "believing in" the First Amendment, because nothing is ever that simple. And while we should be ever mindful of slippery slopes, we should take care to avoid slippery slope fallacies.

But it's certainly fair to say Joel's position is shared by the American Civil Liberties Union, UCLA libertarian law prof Eugene Volokh, University of Chicago liberal law prof (and two-time podcast guest) Geoffrey Stone, the Cato Institute's Ilya Shapiro, and the editorial pages of most major newspapers, including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal -- a lot of smart people who just happen to be wrong.

"Hard cases make bad law," Joel writes in the column. "Albert Snyder deserves our sympathy. But his hard case shouldn't lead the Supreme Court to make bad law for the rest of us."

Here's my take:

This isn't a hard case at all.

Fred Phelps and his congregation have the right to believe anything they please. They have a right to assemble peaceably and exercise their religious beliefs freely. They have a right publish newspapers and weblogs preaching against homosexuality. But the Westboro Baptist Church has no right to impose itself on a private funeral.

Context is crucial. When a group of people stands outside a military funeral -- even if it is 1,000 feet away -- holding signs saying "Thank God for Dead Soldiers" and worse, you needn't be an Ivy League constitutional scholar to get the point.

As Sean Summers, Snyder's lawyer, explained: "(Phelps and family) turn funerals into a circus. They send out fliers in advance. There were... state, local, county police. There were ambulances. There were fire trucks. There was a SWAT team." Police even rerouted the funeral procession so the Snyders wouldn't see the protest.

In short, Phelps turned a private event into a massive public nuisance.

Phelps's broader message may be a sinful and unrepentant nation brings such calamities upon itself. But if you're the grieving family of a dead Marine, why should you have to entertain that idea for even one moment? What makes the case "hard" is the amazing logical contortions the Supreme Court has performed over the decades in the realm of First Amendment law. Fact is, the freedom of speech is not unlimited. We make exceptions for libel, slander, and "fighting words," for instance.

When free speech collides with the right to privacy, privacy should prevail. Phelps has a right to be "outrageous." But his outrageous speech in this particular context -- the context of a family privately mourning the death of a son -- is a breach of the peace, an assault.

Barring the Phelps circus from future funerals does no harm to the First Amendment whatsoever.

Given the space constraints of the column, some elaboration is in order here. (Click "Read More" below the icons.)

The unexamined life is not worth living. Yet most people don't think too deeply about their opinions, their fundamental beliefs, or their votes. Ben and Joel are joined by Monkey Robb in the first of a series of podcasts exploring why we believe what we believe. In part one, Ben and Robb ask Joel what makes him a liberal.

Among the questions we discuss:
Liberal

• Joel calls himself a liberal. What exactly does that mean?
• Why is Joel not a socialist?
• What does Joel think is the proper role of government?
• Where does Joel think rights come from?
• Under what circumstances does Joel think government coercion is legitimate?
• To what extent is Joel's political outlook shaped by his reaction to conservatism?
• Why is Joel disappointed with Barack Obama's administration?
• How would Joel reform health care?
• Who is the liberal politician Joel most admires?
• Is Joel far gone in utopian speculation?

Music heard in this podcast:

• "The Logical Song," Supertramp
• "Bloody Well Right," Supertramp
• "Tension," Ursula 1000
• "Hey Mr. President," The Electric Prunes
• "Peace Sells," Megadeth

The Ben and Joel Podcast makes its third (or is it fourth?) triumphant return for Constitution Day. Returning to the podcast is University of Chicago Law professor Geoffrey Stone, who will appear on a National Constitution Center panel on September 20 to discuss the upcoming Supreme Court term. Stone, who is the former dean of U. of Chicago's Law School, may have the distinction of being the man in United States history to have hired a future U.S. president and the future associate Supreme Court justice the same president appointed.

Among the questions we discuss:

• Could Elena Kagan move the Supreme Court to the right?
• What do Obama's judicial nominees tell us about his judicial philosophy?
• How ideological is Elena Kagan?
• Will the Supreme Court let states restrict minors' access to violent video games?
• What's wrong with an absolutist interpretation of the First Amendment?
• Does the "fighting words" doctrine apply to book burning?
• Does the "fighting words" doctrine apply to protests at military funerals?
• What do the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Rev. Fred Phelps have in common?
• If the Supreme Court found state sodomy laws unconstitutional, there is no way the justices would find bans on same-sex marriage constitutional? Right? Right?!?
• Could the government forbid preachers from condemning homosexuality?
• When are the courts "political" and when are they political?
•...and more!

Music heard in this podcast:

• "Take the Time," Dream Theater
• "Mystery Boogie," Fleetwood Mac
• "The Fighting Side of Me," Merle Haggard
• "Burn the Flag," The Starkweathers
• "Ramble Tamble," Creedence Clearwater Revival
• "My Cup Runneth Over," Ed Ames

Deborah L. Rhode, a Stanford University law professor and author of "The Beauty Bias: The Injustice of Appearance in Life and Law," reminds us what's old -- really, really old -- is new again:

Appearance-related bias... exacerbates disadvantages based on gender, race, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation and class. Prevailing beauty standards penalize people who lack the time and money to invest in their appearance. And weight discrimination, in particular, imposes special costs on people who live in communities with shortages of healthy food options and exercise facilities.

So why not simply ban discrimination based on appearance?

Yes, why not? A beautiful idea. What could possibly go wrong?

(Via John Miller at The Corner.)

Joseph Wesley Postell, assistant director of the Heritage Foundation's Center for American Studies, has a pretty good piece in the Washington Times today on the decline of constitutionalism and the rise of the administrative state:

The Founders confronted a basic problem: How to vest government with sufficient power to get things done without giving it the instruments to exercise tyrannical control? To protect individual liberty and rights, they established (among others) two basic principles at the center of our constitutional order: representation and the separation of powers. To assure that government operated by consent, they provided that those responsible for making laws would be held accountable through elections. Moreover, legislative, executive and judicial power would be separated so those who made the laws were not in charge of executing and applying them.

Our modern administrative state violates these principles. That also is by design, courtesy of the progressives - the original architects of the administrative state. Progressives such as Woodrow Wilson disdained the idea of government "by the people" and sought to replace it with government by the experts. Wilson complained of America's "besetting error of ... trying to do too much by vote." "Self-government does not consist in having a hand in everything," he argued.

Postell argues, in brief, that conservatives need to do a better job explaining to the public the evils of the administrative state and develop a roadmap for restoring representative government and separation of powers, rightly understood.

"The question is not necessarily how to make government smaller," Postell writes, "but how to get it back under popular control and accountability."

(Hat tip: Julie Ponzi at No Left Turns.)

(Cross-posted at Freedom Pub.)

After a hiatus, the podcast returns at the tail-end of tax season and tea party mania. Ben Boychuk and Robb Leatherwood last month interviewed John O'Hara, author of A New American Tea Party: The Counterrevolution Against Bailouts, Handouts, Reckless Spending, and More Taxes. We very much wanted to post this sooner, but paying work got in the way. Our apologies to O'Hara, who gave a great interview here.

Among the questions we explore:

• Who's running these tea parties?
• Are the tea parties really creatures of the Republican Party?
• Is there a coherent tea party platform?
• Aren't tea parties really just astroturf?
• Can the tea party movement move beyond street protests to shape political reform?

Music heard in this podcast:

• "Anarchy X," Queensryche
• "Gun Battle," (From the "Billy the Kid" Ballet Suite), Aaron Copland/London Symphony Orchestra
• "New Avengers-Raw Deal Mix," Snowboy
• "Tax Free," Jimi Hendrix
• "Traitors (Verräter)," Peter Thomas
• "Always Tomorrow," The Shazam
• "Eyes of a Stranger," Queensryche

My friend and colleague, Zack Christenson, has produced a great video for The Heartland Institute about the Tea Party movement. Not only is it packed with historical references, it's also very well-produced.

I expect this essay in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal will have people animated. Here's the crux:

A historic figure making history, this is emerging as an over-arching theme—if not obsession—in the Obama presidency. In Iowa, a day after signing health care into law, he put himself into competition with history. If history shapes men, "We still have the power to shape history." But this adds up to one thing: He is likely to be the most liberal president in American history. And, oddly, he may be a more effective liberal precisely because his liberalism is something he uses more than he believes in. As the far left constantly reminds us, he is not really a true believer. Rather liberalism is his ticket to grandiosity and to historical significance.

Of the two great societal goals—freedom and "the good"—freedom requires a conservatism, a discipline of principles over the good, limited government, and so on. No way to grandiosity here. But today's liberalism is focused on "the good" more than on freedom. And ideas of "the good" are often a license to transgress democratic principles in order to reach social justice or to achieve more equality or to lessen suffering. The great political advantage of modern liberalism is its offer of license on the one hand and moral innocence—if not superiority—on the other. Liberalism lets you force people to buy health insurance and feel morally superior as you do it. Power and innocence at the same time.

It's not just about Obama, then. It's about what Obama's America will look like after the man is out of office. Is freedom really in tension with the "good" society? Or is this a narrow understanding of what is "good" and just?

The legal challenges to ObamaCare are sure to come, on many grounds. It is not wise for opponents of this monstrous usurpation of liberty to get their hopes up — though I find it interesting that the list of state Attorneys General lining up to challenge the mandate to purchase health insurance continues to rise.

However, Ed Morrissey over at HotAir has unearthed an interesting memo that the sacrosanct Congressional Budget Office issued in 1994, the last time government-run health care was a hot political topic:

A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action. The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States. An individual mandate would have two features that, in combination, would make it unique. First, it would impose a duty on individuals as members of society. Second, it would require people to purchase a specific service that would be heavily regulated by the federal government.

Federal mandates typically apply to people as parties to economic transactions, rather than as members of society. For example, the section of the Americans with Disabilities Act that requires restaurants to make their facilities accessible to persons with disabilities applies to people who own restaurants. The Federal Labor Standards Act prohibits employers from paying less than the federal minimum wage. This prohibition pertains to individuals who employ others. Federal environmental statutes and regulations that require firms to meet pollution control standards and use specific technologies apply to companies that engage in specific lines of business or use particular production processes. Federal mandates that apply to individuals as members of society are extremely rare. One example is the requirement that draft-age men register with the Selective Service System. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is not aware of any others imposed by current federal law.

Note the CBO said a mandate on conditions of citizenship, such as what ObamaCare would impose, are "extremely rare," not unprecedented. Yet other than Selective Service registration, the CBO cites no other examples. If they are so rare, one would also think them memorable, and perhaps another example or two would have come up in the evaluation. Interesting. And, of course, one difference between the Selective Service registration and the forced purchase of health insurance is that the former is cost-free.

Yes, I've anticipated the argument that American citizens are forced to pay income taxes — with the targets of the tax and the amount dictated by ever-changing statute. And I'm sure that will be a counter-argument we'll hear in court from ObamaCare defenders. But one may note that the income tax itself was not instituted by mere statute, but by a constitutional amendment. So the people, in a manner enormously more difficult than the way ObamaCare was rammed through, approvingly validated the income tax by making submission to the tax a constitutional requirement of citizenship.

Alas, that was a different time, when even the progressives understood that epochal proposals remaking America and the relationship between the citizen and the state required overwhelming public validation. Today's progressives are of a different breed.

(HT: Daniel Foster)

More fallout from President Obama's denunciation of the Supreme Court during Wednesday's State of the Union. The Wall Street Journal's editors "unpack the falsehoods" the president managed to load into three sentences:

The Court didn't reverse "a century of law," but merely two more recent precedents, one from 1990 and part of another from 2003. Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce in 1990 had set the Court in a markedly new direction in limiting independent corporate campaign expenditures. This is the outlier case that needed to be overturned.

Mr. Obama is also a sudden convert to stare decisis. Does he now believe that all Court precedents of a certain duration are sacrosanct, such as Plessy v. Ferguson (separate but equal, 1896), which was overturned by Brown v. Board (1954)? Or Bowers v. Hardwick (a ban on sodomy, 1986), which was overturned by Lawrence v. Texas (2003)?

The President's claim about "foreign entities" bankrolling U.S. political campaigns is also false, since the Court did not overrule laws limiting such contributions. His use of "foreign" was a conscious attempt to inflame public and Congressional opinion against the Court. Coming from a President who fancies himself a citizen of the world, and who has gone so far as foreswear American exceptionalism, this leap into talk-show nativism is certainly illuminating. What will they think of that one in the cafes of Berlin?

I think the last point is arguable, but the bottom line is strong.

Meantime, on the opposite page, Randy Barnett expands his criticism of Obama's demagogic assault on the judiciary:

Judge not the words themselves, but their effect on the audience. The president fully expected that his hundreds of supporters in the legislative branch would stand and cheer, while the justices remained seated and silent, unable to respond even afterward. Moreover, the president's speech was only released about 30 minutes before the event, after the justices were already present. In short, the head of the executive branch ambushed six members of the judiciary, and called upon the legislative branch to deride them publicly. If you missed it, check the YouTube video. No one could reasonably believe in their heart that this was respectful behavior.

Then there is the substance of the remark itself. It was factually wrong. The Court's ruling in Citizens United concerned the right of labor unions and domestic corporations, including nonprofits, to express their views about candidates in media such as books, films and TV within 60 days of an election. In short, it concerned freedom of speech; in particular, an independent film critical of Hillary Clinton funded by a nonprofit corporation.

While the Court reversed a 1990 decision allowing such a ban, it left standing current restrictions on foreign nationals and "entities." Also untouched was a 100-year-old ban on domestic corporate contributions to political campaigns to which the president was presumably referring erroneously.

That is a whole lot to get wrong in 72 sanctimonious words.

Ouch. Just imagine what would happen if Barnett turned his attention to the other 7,100.

Finally, I can scarcely believe I agree with everything Jonathan Chait writes here. But I do!

Hillsdale College's Kirby Center in Washington D.C. sponsors an excellent monthly speakers' series called "First Principles on First Fridays," in which Hillsdale academics or friends of the college discuss Big Questions. All of the talks are online and available for download as podcasts. I'm currently listening to Larry Arnn's November talk on The Crisis of American Constitutionalism. Good stuff.

Menifee's absurd dictionary ban made me reach for my own copy of Webster's -- I don't actually have the "controversial" Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary Tenth Edition in my library, but I do have a copy of Webster's II New College Dictionary. And therein lies a short story.

The dictionary was a gift from my late friend Chris Warden, on the occasion of the birth of my son Benjamin. Chris loved the language; he knew I did, too; and so he expected I would impart that love to my first-born. Lord knows I'm trying.

Truth is, I had forgotten where this dictionary came from. And so I forgot what Chris wrote on the flyleaf. Here it is:

To combat consternation
Consider contemplation
Calm, cool cerebration
Conquers conflagration

A concatenation of confusion
Conspires with chaos, a constant collusion
Yet a conservative confluence
of candor and comprehension
Will compel composure, commute contention

Cherish freedom
Collect the truth
Claim your faults
Celebrate youth.

A happy accident... and a charming, bittersweet reminder of Chris's wit and wisdom.

Mark Helprin has a new piece in Friday's Wall Street Journal warning against repeating the mistakes of the past while reacquiring some old habits as the country emerges from the Great Recession:

How things will turn out is anyone's guess, but it would be nice if, as in the quiet during and after a snow storm, Manhattan would reappear to be appreciated in tranquility; if cops, firemen, nurses, and teachers did not have to live in New Jersey; if students, waitress-actresses, waiter-painters, and dish-washer-writers did not have to board nine to a room or like beagles in their parents' condominia; if the traffic on Park Avenue (as I can personally attest it was in the late 1940s) were sufficiently sparse that you could hear insects in the flower beds; if to balance the frenetic getting and spending, the qualities of reserve and equanimity would retake their once honored places; if celebrity were to be ignored, media switched off, and the stories of ordinary men and women assume their deserved precedence; and if for everyone, like health returning after a long illness, a life of one's own would emerge from an era tragically addicted to quantity and speed.

Rethinking “Rethinking Mathematics”

A Review of A Zany, Fun Approach to Mathematics Education!

As 2009 winds down its tumultuous track and heads into 2010, let us begin the next year in a Spirit of Cooperation & Unity. After that, well. Who knows? But we can at least begin by all agreeing that this is a travesty on ice.

The supplemental textbook Rethinking Mathematics is part of the all-devouring “Rethinking Schools” project, and goes wrong pretty much at the subtitle:

Rethinking Mathematics: Teaching Social Justice by the Numbers

Let’s let the project’s proponents speak for the text:

“This unique collection of more than 30 articles shows teachers how to weave social-justice principles throughout the math curriculum…”

“Rethinking Mathematics will help teachers develop students' understanding of society and prepare them to be critical, active participants in a democracy.”

"I thought math was just a subject they implanted on us just because they felt like it, but now I realize that you could use math to defend your rights and realize the injustices around you..."[9th grade student]

And my favorite:

“With clarity and insight, this book shows how teachers who are dedicated to social justice can act on their commitments in a subject that has, for too long, been seen as simply a technical area."

Huzzah! We can finally inject social justice propaganda into one a' them “technical” areas of study! Because, you know, there’s really no such thing as objective truths, technical studies, or subjects that parents can rely on to be agenda-free!

Click "Read More" to read the whole painful thing.

The case of three Navy SEALs facing court martial for striking a terrorist captive in custody is the latest story of U.S. servicemen who may have gone too far in the course of fighting America's war against jihadists. But Americans have done much worse than that, Warren Kozak writes in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal:

You don't have to dig too deep to understand that war brings out behavior in people that they would never demonstrate in normal life. In Paul Fussell's moving memoir, "The Boys' Crusade," the former infantryman relates a story about the liberation of Dachau. There were about 120 SS guards who had been captured by the Americans. Even though the Germans were being held at gunpoint, they still had the arrogance—or epic stupidity—to continue to heap verbal abuse and threats on the inmates. Their American guards, thoroughly disgusted by what they had already witnessed in the camp, had seen enough and opened fire on the SS. Some of the remaining SS guards were handed over to the inmates who tore them limb from limb. Another war crime? No doubt. Justified? It depends on your point of view. But before you weigh in, realize that you didn't walk through the camp. You didn't smell it. You didn't witness the obscene horror of the Nazis.

Earlier, Kozak recounts a similar story about German and American POWs during the Battle of the Bulge. "Was the U.S. a lesser country because these GIs weren't arrested? Was the Constitution jeopardized?" he asks. "Somehow it survived."

Perhaps. But no worse for wear?

Men have struggled over the centuries to find a "permanent peace." The League of Nations even made a treaty once. Abolishing war is a folly. But maybe the greater folly is the effort to civilize it.

I'm probably not the best test case for this question based on many of my posts and comments around here, but an article in Science magazine posits that conservatives are "happier" than liberals. Or, at least, residents of "red" states feel happier than residents of "blue" states. The New York Times, riffing in a story about the study, says of to its home-state readers:

It’s rather dismal. If there were a National Happy League, we’d be the New Jersey Nets. We’re No. 51 out of 51 [Ed note: The District of Columbia was polled to get the list to 51].

This is an enormous generalization, but I've long thought that was true — that liberals are grumpier (or at least have less mirth and joy in their lives) than liberals conservatives — based on anecdotal evidence, my observations of political discourse over many years spanning all sorts of varieties of who is "in power," personal experience, and other reasons I won't get into here ... at least not at this late hour. But, it appears that the polling data says says so, too, when it gauges "Gross National Happiness." As John J. Miller at The Corner says:

One snap conclusion, from scanning the list: Red states are happy, blue states are sad (relatively speaking). Make of this what you will.

And I suspect that we might make something of that conclusion around here. That all said and shared, I'm sure Joel and Khabalox will disagree with that study — and, in fact, insist that the opposite is true — yet still have a joyous Christmas. At least I hope so, because I wish it upon them.

George Will is dripping with contempt for Barack Obama's "successes" in Copenhagen and with health care "reform" in his Tuesday column: "It was serendipitous to have almost simultaneous climaxes in Copenhagen and Congress. The former's accomplishment was indiscernible, the latter's was unsightly."

And that's just the lede!

Its students are disloyal and subhuman.

(Click "read more" below for shocking photographic evidence.)

Looking for a comprehensive round-up of news links on climate change skepticism? I just discovered, perusing our referral logs, Tom Nelson's blog. Nelson kindly linked to my snarky little post last night about China's reluctance to sign on to any economy-killing agreements at Copenhagen.

One good turn deserves another, so I encourage you to pay Nelson's site a visit.

That's a trick question. "Contrary to conventional wisdom," writes Chris Woolston at a site called MyOnlineWellness, "there's no surge in suicides around the holidays."

But if there were a spike in people killing themselves in the days leading up to December 25, I submit that stories such as this one in the Telegraph would help explain why:

Dr. Nathan Grills from Monash University in Australia said the idea of a fat Father Christmas gorging on brandy and mince pies as he drove his sleigh around the world delivering presents was not the best way to promote a healthy and safe lifestyle among the young.

Writing on bmj.com, Dr Grills said: "Santa only needs to affect health by 0.1 per cent to damage millions of lives."

He said the image of a healthier Santa could be very effective in promoting a positive message about diet and lifestyle to the young.

Chad the Elder quips: "The first thing we do, let's kill all the public health experts."

Oh, I dunno. I bet with just a little digging, we'd learn that Dr. Grills could be buried under the mountain of coal that Santa has left in his Christmas stocking over the years. Good grief, what a killjoy.