Sunday, June 25, 2006

'Reading Leo Strauss,' by Steven B. Smith - New York Times: "Throughout his writings," Smith concludes, "Strauss remained deeply skeptical of whether political theory had any substantive advice or direction to offer statesmen." This view was shaped by his wary observation of the systems of totalitarianism that dominated two major European nations in the 1930's, Nazism in Germany and Communism in the Soviet Union. As a result, he strenuously resisted the notion that politics could have a redemptive effect by radically transforming human existence. Such thinking could scarcely be further from the vision of neoconservative policy intellectuals that the global projection of American power can effect radical democratic change. "The idea," Smith contends, "that political or military action can be used to eradicate evil from the human landscape is closer to the utopian and idealistic visions of Marxism and the radical Enlightenment than anything found in the writings of Strauss."

...The Jewish-theological side of Strauss certainly had no perceptible effect on his American disciples, most of them Jews and all of them, as far as I know, secular. In these concerns, Strauss was thoroughly the intellectual product of 1920's German Jewry. Like others of that period, including Walter Benjamin, he approached the idea of revealed religion with the utmost seriousness. It does not appear that he remained a believing Jew, yet he was not prepared simply to dismiss the claims of Jerusalem against Athens.

On the contrary, the sweeping agenda of reformist or revolutionary reason first put forth in the Enlightenment worried him deeply, and he saw religion, with its assertion of a different source of truth, as a necessary counterweight to the certitudes of the 18th century. His vision of reality was, to use a term favored by both Scholem and Benjamin, 'dialectic.' Why some of his most prominent students missed this essential feature of his thought, and why they turned to the right, remains one of the mysteries of his intellectual legacy."

'Timothy Leary: A Biography,' by Robert Greenfield - The New York Times Book Review - New York Times: "In part because of Leary, however, ideals and delusions were encouraged to interbreed, their living progeny being avid consumerism and toothless dissent."

Friday, June 16, 2006

going through the Stanford libraries' fair use website, i found this interesting snippet of an influential copyright court case from "Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Moral Majority, Inc." (1985).

Stanford Copyright & Fair Use - Summaries of Fair Use Cases: "Fair use. Publisher Larry Flynt made disparaging statements about the Reverend Jerry Falwell on one page of Hustler magazine. Rev. Falwell made several hundred thousand copies of the page and distributed them as part of a fund-raising effort. Important factors: Rev. Falwell's copying did not diminish the sales of the magazine (since it was already off the market) and would not adversely affect the marketability of back issues. (Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Moral Majority, Inc., 606 F. Supp. 1526 (C.D. Cal. 1985).)"
going through the Stanford libraries' fair use website, i found this interesting snippet of an influential copyright court case from "Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Moral Majority, Inc." (1985).

Stanford Copyright & Fair Use - Summaries of Fair Use Cases: "Fair use. Publisher Larry Flynt made disparaging statements about the Reverend Jerry Falwell on one page of Hustler magazine. Rev. Falwell made several hundred thousand copies of the page and distributed them as part of a fund-raising effort. Important factors: Rev. Falwell's copying did not diminish the sales of the magazine (since it was already off the market) and would not adversely affect the marketability of back issues. (Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Moral Majority, Inc., 606 F. Supp. 1526 (C.D. Cal. 1985).)"

Friday, June 02, 2006

Freakoutonomics - New York Times: "Before the Civil War, America was perhaps the most egalitarian society in the world. But the unbridled entrepreneurialism of the 1870's gave rise to the robber barons. Even if ordinary people were doing better in the 1870's, the yawning gap between the very rich and everybody else fanned resentments. Interestingly, wealth inequality in today's America is roughly the same as in the Gilded Age.

The sharply increased social and geographic mobility of the 1870's set people adrift from traditional sources of security in families and villages. In our own day, the destruction of employer-employee relationships, the erosion of pension protection and employee health insurance may be creating a similar loss of moorings.

If one counts only the size of houses and cars, and the numbers of electronic gadgets stuffed into rec rooms, Americans are probably better off than ever before. But as the 1870's suggest, economic well-being doesn't come just from piling up toys. An economy has psychological or, if you will, spiritual, dimensions. A conviction of fairness, a feeling of not being totally on one's own, a sense of reasonable stability and predictability are all essential components of good economic performance. When they were missing in the 1870's, in the midst of a boom, the populace was brought to the brink of revolt."

Thursday, June 01, 2006

Support Your Local Banker - New York Times: "Mr. Nagin and his fellow Gulf Coast political leaders lack a vital resource that their predecessors of even a decade ago had: strong and engaged local bankers.

One example, from Amarillo, Tex., would be Donald E. Powell, President Bush's coordinator for Gulf Coast rebuilding. Mr. Powell built a career the old-fashioned way: starting out as loan officer at a savings and loan in his hometown, jumping to the biggest bank in town and working his way to the top. By 1987, he was the chief executive of First National Bank of Amarillo and, in time, he wore every civic badge worth wearing: chairman of the chamber of commerce, member of the city housing authority, patron of the local boys' ranch, trustee of High Plains Baptist Hospital. Had disaster struck Amarillo in the mid-1990's, Mr. Powell could have stood at the front of the room and told federal officials every project worth supporting and every politician to avoid.

Bankers rarely lead cities that way anymore, and their exit from the stage speaks to how communities have changed — and why it may be harder to mend them when disasters strike.

And today? In most cities, the chief executives of the largest banks are no more involved in civic work than the branch managers of I.B.M. That's because, since the 1980's, bank-holding restrictions have eased, local banks have been bought by out-of-state companies and the people who run the banks have become branch managers.


Bank presidents have become corporate nomads. A few years ago, I calculated how long bank executives from First Union Bank (now part of Wachovia Bank) stayed in Atlanta. From June 1994 to September 2000, there were three regional chief executives. With gaps, as one left and the next arrived, the average tenure was 20 months, barely time to attend a few chamber of commerce meetings, much less to lead the organization."