Victor Davis Hanson blogs, writes for neocon magazines like Commentary, and, apparently, worries a lot about the state of America here at the end of 2009. At least, in this column , Hanson seems concerned that we're worse off under Obama than we were under George W. Bush. Calm, cool, competent, and charismatic - that's the W we all remember, right?
Glenn A Knight
In my study
Showing posts with label Commentary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Commentary. Show all posts
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Hanson's End of Year Assessment - or Is It the End of Civilization
Greetings, all. A happy Saturday to you, and I hope it's a good one.
Anyway, there's a catalog of woes here, and Mr. Hanson is right about one thing: If we don't see some of these things turning in a favorable direction by midsummer 2010, the Democrats and the Obama administration could be in real trouble. Everybody who wants Mitch McConnell to be the Senate's next Majority Leader raise your hands! I didn't think so.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Audiobooks: The Technology of Reading
The accompanying article by David Frum comes from the May 2009 issue of Commentary. Mr. Frum used to be a Canadian, then he became a speechwriter for George W. Bush. He is the author of Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again and the proprietor of FrumForum.com. Here's a link to that site.
As you may know by now, I not only read books, I listen to them. This is in part Dave Drake's fault. Years ago, in an act of great kindness, he gave me copies of the audiobook versions of his books Lord of the Isles and Queen of Demons. Since then I've listened to many, many books, sometimes in the car while driving, sometimes while jogging or exercising, sometimes while sitting my study, and sometimes while lying in bed. Overall, it's been a good experience, but there have been technical glitches. For one thing, the players tend to work up over one's belt or waistband, resulting in the player, and the tape, crashing to the ground. This is hard on players, and it's hard on the nerves having one's headphones suddenly yanked to one side.
Mr. Frum asserts that the iPod provides a superior audiobook experience. Listening is still best reserved for lighter reading. Multivolume histories, books of closely-reasoned logic, and scientific treatises may not be so suitable. I listen to a lot of mysteries and thrillers, and so, apparently, does Mr. Frum. In fact, having read his essay, I'm going to look up Alan Furst. Whether I have an iPod with which to listen to his books is in the hands of the gods. Or Santa Claus.
All of you addicted readers should find David Frum's essay of interest, and some of you will find his suggestions about the iPod and the selection of material useful. Of foremost importance, perhaps, is his point about the quality of the narrator. There are some terrific narrators out there, like Richard Ferrone, who does John Sandford's Prey novels. For one thing, he pronounces "Porsche" correctly.
As you may know by now, I not only read books, I listen to them. This is in part Dave Drake's fault. Years ago, in an act of great kindness, he gave me copies of the audiobook versions of his books Lord of the Isles and Queen of Demons. Since then I've listened to many, many books, sometimes in the car while driving, sometimes while jogging or exercising, sometimes while sitting my study, and sometimes while lying in bed. Overall, it's been a good experience, but there have been technical glitches. For one thing, the players tend to work up over one's belt or waistband, resulting in the player, and the tape, crashing to the ground. This is hard on players, and it's hard on the nerves having one's headphones suddenly yanked to one side.
Mr. Frum asserts that the iPod provides a superior audiobook experience. Listening is still best reserved for lighter reading. Multivolume histories, books of closely-reasoned logic, and scientific treatises may not be so suitable. I listen to a lot of mysteries and thrillers, and so, apparently, does Mr. Frum. In fact, having read his essay, I'm going to look up Alan Furst. Whether I have an iPod with which to listen to his books is in the hands of the gods. Or Santa Claus.
All of you addicted readers should find David Frum's essay of interest, and some of you will find his suggestions about the iPod and the selection of material useful. Of foremost importance, perhaps, is his point about the quality of the narrator. There are some terrific narrators out there, like Richard Ferrone, who does John Sandford's Prey novels. For one thing, he pronounces "Porsche" correctly.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
The Magazine Market
The attached column by Daniel Gross is about Conde Nast's decision to close several of their magazines. I'm sure that there are people who will miss Modern Bride, Elegant Bride, and Gourmet. None of those has broken into my list of periodical subscriptions, but Gourmet might have had a chance of the occasional supermarket purchase, now that Helen and I are devoted watchers of Top Chef.
I think Gross's key point, that the magazine market might already have bottomed out when Conde Nast woke up and smelled the coffee, is both important and quite possibly correct. As noted above, I receive a number of periodicals. Over the past couple of years, I saw page counts diminish dramatically. I see this as a result of two related forces. First, there are fewer advertising pages. Second, because the magazine is selling fewer ads, it is forced to cut back on content. Information Week, which ran around 60 pages an issue a couple of years ago, has been down in the 30s and 40s more recently. The Economist produced a lot of issues under 100 pages in 2008 and dipped into the low 80s a few times. Even Commentary slimmed down for a while.
Of course, the biggest change on my list was to U.S. News and World Report. The venerable weekly cut back to alternate weeks in early 2008 and then became a monthly. It also became thinner, and each issue has become a mini-book on a single issue: health, the economy, retirement, education, and so on. That a drop in advertising revenue would lead to cutbacks is obvious. A little more subtle is that by focussing each issue on a single topic, the magazine is trying to recruit a lot of advertisers interested in that topic.
So, in 2008 and early 2009 a lot of the magazines I see, from The Atlantic to Wild Bird put out thinner editions and made other changes to react to the economy. But that trend may be over. I'm now reading the October 3rd issue of The Economist, and it hits 122 pages, plus a lengthy special report on the world economy. So Gross may well be right, and the magazine trade may have hit bottom, or at least a bottom.
On the other hand, some publications may be in death spirals. Advertising has dropped, so they've cut content, so fewer people read the paper (in fact, some publications have set out deliberately to cut circulation), which limits advertising rates, so revenue falls even more, so there are more cuts, and so on to the ghastly end. Information Week may be in that boat and sinking fast. Our local newspaper, the Gazette, has shrunk to three sections, and it seems to be shrinking to invisibility. It is also becoming even more parochial than it has been. Even major sports stories have to have a local angle. I'll miss the Gazette a lot less than Gross misses Gourmet.
I think Gross's key point, that the magazine market might already have bottomed out when Conde Nast woke up and smelled the coffee, is both important and quite possibly correct. As noted above, I receive a number of periodicals. Over the past couple of years, I saw page counts diminish dramatically. I see this as a result of two related forces. First, there are fewer advertising pages. Second, because the magazine is selling fewer ads, it is forced to cut back on content. Information Week, which ran around 60 pages an issue a couple of years ago, has been down in the 30s and 40s more recently. The Economist produced a lot of issues under 100 pages in 2008 and dipped into the low 80s a few times. Even Commentary slimmed down for a while.
Of course, the biggest change on my list was to U.S. News and World Report. The venerable weekly cut back to alternate weeks in early 2008 and then became a monthly. It also became thinner, and each issue has become a mini-book on a single issue: health, the economy, retirement, education, and so on. That a drop in advertising revenue would lead to cutbacks is obvious. A little more subtle is that by focussing each issue on a single topic, the magazine is trying to recruit a lot of advertisers interested in that topic.
So, in 2008 and early 2009 a lot of the magazines I see, from The Atlantic to Wild Bird put out thinner editions and made other changes to react to the economy. But that trend may be over. I'm now reading the October 3rd issue of The Economist, and it hits 122 pages, plus a lengthy special report on the world economy. So Gross may well be right, and the magazine trade may have hit bottom, or at least a bottom.
On the other hand, some publications may be in death spirals. Advertising has dropped, so they've cut content, so fewer people read the paper (in fact, some publications have set out deliberately to cut circulation), which limits advertising rates, so revenue falls even more, so there are more cuts, and so on to the ghastly end. Information Week may be in that boat and sinking fast. Our local newspaper, the Gazette, has shrunk to three sections, and it seems to be shrinking to invisibility. It is also becoming even more parochial than it has been. Even major sports stories have to have a local angle. I'll miss the Gazette a lot less than Gross misses Gourmet.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Commentaries on Commentary: "Health Care in Three Acts"
Commentary is a magazine of strong, and sometimes unpalatable, views. It is, perhaps, most famous as a neoconservative magazine: Norman Podhoretz is Commentary's Editor-at-Large. Other prominent contributors in a conservative vein are Gabriel Schoenfeld, Joshua Muravchik, and Victor Hanson Davis. In addition to its political side, Commentary, provides criticism, book reviews, and a "Letters" department that prints the longest letters I have ever seen in a magazine. Even though I disagree with the contributors more often than not, I find Commentary fascinating because the articles are usually well thought out, well-written, and thought-provoking. On top of all that, Commentary provides insight into Jewish (and Israeli) culture and thought which is all terra incognita to this Gentile.
The tradition of commentaries is long and rich. I would imagine that most of my readers have read Machiavelli's Discourses on the First Ten Decades of Tito Livio. (If you haven't, run right out and get yourself a copy.) In the Discourses Machiavelli uses the stories in Livy's history of Rome since the founding of the city to generate and illustrate a variety of political and military lessons. Many of the essays of Montaigne are also based upon his reading in the classics.
I am not trying to establish the essays in Commentary as equal to Ab Urbe Condita. I am merely invoking the tradition of one author using the words of another as starting point for his own reflections. There are, of course, other sources upon which one may draw as an inspiration for one's essays. In any event, I plan to comment upon a number of articles from Commentary. Those who are interested in seeing the orginals are invited to visit commentarymagazine.com.
The February 2007 issue of Commentary, is rich in material. Joshua Muravchik leads off with "Our Worst Ex-President," attacking Jimmy Carter's Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid as the centerpiece in our 39th president's array of crimes of omission and commission. Two articles on Iraq: "Realists to the Rescue?" by Bret Stephens and "Is Israel the Problem?" by Amir Taheri follow. I can recommend the Taheri article, although the question posed in the title is somewhat disingenuous. It is interesting to compare Taheri to some of the articles and essays in Bernard Lewis From Babel to Dragomans, as a study in the tendency of the Arabs to displace the blame for their failures and shortcomings onto the Israelis, the British, and, naturally, the United States. Gabriel Schoenfeld weighs in with "Why Journalists Are Not Above the Law." Hillel Halkin contributes an essay about Tel Aviv: "The First Hebrew City." Terry Teachout, the regular music and art reviewer, has sent in "Hitchcock's Music Man", a nice piece for anyone who has seen North by Northwest recently enough to remember the way in which Bernard Herrmann's scoring helps to maintain the pace and tension of the film.
The books reviewed include Dangerous Nation, by Robert Kagan (a neoconservative himself); The Emperor's Children, by Claire Messud; Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War, by Robert L. Beisner; Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life, by Jon D. Levenson; and American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion, by Paul M. Barrett.
The particular article I would like to discuss here is by Eric Cohen and Yuval Levin, "Health Care in Three Acts." In the interests of full disclosure, let me note that one reason - the primary reason, I enjoyed this article is that I have an analytic bent. The original meaning of "analysis" goes back to the Greek for "breaking down" or "taking apart." I don't have any problem with big, sweeping measures to solve a lot of problems, but I think they should be based upon a process in which the problems are disassembled into their constituent parts and examined severally. This is what Cohen and Levin do in "Health Care in Three Acts." The key sentence comes near the end of the first page of the article (page 46 of this issue of Commentary, for those who are following along).
"In fact, America faces three fairly distinct predicaments, affecting three fairly distinct portions of the population - the poor, the middle class, and the elderly - and each of them calls for a distinct approach."
They go on to further analyze the problem of the poor, in which they break the 46 million uninsured Americans into:
- those who have lost insurance with their jobs
- those who are not American citizens
- those who are eligible for for Medicaid and similar programs
- those ("many of them young adults under 35") who could afford insurance but don't buy it.
The problem of the middle class, on the other hand, is "the uncertainty caused in part by the rigid link between insurance and employment and in part by the vicissitudes of health itself."
Finally, the elderly face different problems based on costs and end-of-life issues.
As Cohen and Levin note, such disparate problems are not susceptible of a single solution.
Let me note at this point that the portability of health insurance, with some means-tested subsidies, would take care of many people both the "poor" (i.e., the poor and the unemployed). There is a program now, COBRA, which allows people to retain their employers health insurance coverage, if they can pay the premiums. Take off the time limits, add a subsidy for those who can't afford the premiums, and allow coverage to continue if a new employer does not offer a health care plan, or if the employee has a pre-existing condition, and you would both eliminate many of the 46 million uninsured, and ease middle-class anxiety about the prospect of losing coverage. Add to that a campaign to educate poor people about the programs for which they are already eligible, and you narrow the numbers a lot. The big remaining question is: Do we, or do we not, want to provide health care coverage for illegal immigrants?
Cohen and Levin opine, and I find them persuasive, that the biggest problem we face, the one we've done least to solve, and the one that is going to be a killer, is how to manage health care for the elderly. Again, we can break this problem down into its constituent parts, but the big problem is that we are not facing the problem at all As Cohen and Levin say:
"Neither socialized medicine nor a pure market approach is suited to America's three health-care challenges, while the bipartisan conspiracy to ignore the looming crisis of Medicare in particular will return to haunt our children." (Page 52)
Let me give you their last paragraph, as they seek to balance practicality and compassion in a complex system:
"Even as we pursue practical options for reform, however, it behooves us to remember that health itself will always remain out of our ultimate control. Medicine works at the boundaries of life, and its limits remind us of our own. While our health-care system can be improved, our unease about health can never truly be quieted. And while reform will require hard decisions, solutions that would balance the books by treating the disabled and debilitated as unworthy of care are no solutions at all. In no small measure, America's future vitality and character will depend upon our ability to rise to this challenge with the right mix of creativity and sobriety."
The tradition of commentaries is long and rich. I would imagine that most of my readers have read Machiavelli's Discourses on the First Ten Decades of Tito Livio. (If you haven't, run right out and get yourself a copy.) In the Discourses Machiavelli uses the stories in Livy's history of Rome since the founding of the city to generate and illustrate a variety of political and military lessons. Many of the essays of Montaigne are also based upon his reading in the classics.
I am not trying to establish the essays in Commentary as equal to Ab Urbe Condita. I am merely invoking the tradition of one author using the words of another as starting point for his own reflections. There are, of course, other sources upon which one may draw as an inspiration for one's essays. In any event, I plan to comment upon a number of articles from Commentary. Those who are interested in seeing the orginals are invited to visit commentarymagazine.com.
The February 2007 issue of Commentary, is rich in material. Joshua Muravchik leads off with "Our Worst Ex-President," attacking Jimmy Carter's Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid as the centerpiece in our 39th president's array of crimes of omission and commission. Two articles on Iraq: "Realists to the Rescue?" by Bret Stephens and "Is Israel the Problem?" by Amir Taheri follow. I can recommend the Taheri article, although the question posed in the title is somewhat disingenuous. It is interesting to compare Taheri to some of the articles and essays in Bernard Lewis From Babel to Dragomans, as a study in the tendency of the Arabs to displace the blame for their failures and shortcomings onto the Israelis, the British, and, naturally, the United States. Gabriel Schoenfeld weighs in with "Why Journalists Are Not Above the Law." Hillel Halkin contributes an essay about Tel Aviv: "The First Hebrew City." Terry Teachout, the regular music and art reviewer, has sent in "Hitchcock's Music Man", a nice piece for anyone who has seen North by Northwest recently enough to remember the way in which Bernard Herrmann's scoring helps to maintain the pace and tension of the film.
The books reviewed include Dangerous Nation, by Robert Kagan (a neoconservative himself); The Emperor's Children, by Claire Messud; Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War, by Robert L. Beisner; Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life, by Jon D. Levenson; and American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion, by Paul M. Barrett.
The particular article I would like to discuss here is by Eric Cohen and Yuval Levin, "Health Care in Three Acts." In the interests of full disclosure, let me note that one reason - the primary reason, I enjoyed this article is that I have an analytic bent. The original meaning of "analysis" goes back to the Greek for "breaking down" or "taking apart." I don't have any problem with big, sweeping measures to solve a lot of problems, but I think they should be based upon a process in which the problems are disassembled into their constituent parts and examined severally. This is what Cohen and Levin do in "Health Care in Three Acts." The key sentence comes near the end of the first page of the article (page 46 of this issue of Commentary, for those who are following along).
"In fact, America faces three fairly distinct predicaments, affecting three fairly distinct portions of the population - the poor, the middle class, and the elderly - and each of them calls for a distinct approach."
They go on to further analyze the problem of the poor, in which they break the 46 million uninsured Americans into:
- those who have lost insurance with their jobs
- those who are not American citizens
- those who are eligible for for Medicaid and similar programs
- those ("many of them young adults under 35") who could afford insurance but don't buy it.
The problem of the middle class, on the other hand, is "the uncertainty caused in part by the rigid link between insurance and employment and in part by the vicissitudes of health itself."
Finally, the elderly face different problems based on costs and end-of-life issues.
As Cohen and Levin note, such disparate problems are not susceptible of a single solution.
Let me note at this point that the portability of health insurance, with some means-tested subsidies, would take care of many people both the "poor" (i.e., the poor and the unemployed). There is a program now, COBRA, which allows people to retain their employers health insurance coverage, if they can pay the premiums. Take off the time limits, add a subsidy for those who can't afford the premiums, and allow coverage to continue if a new employer does not offer a health care plan, or if the employee has a pre-existing condition, and you would both eliminate many of the 46 million uninsured, and ease middle-class anxiety about the prospect of losing coverage. Add to that a campaign to educate poor people about the programs for which they are already eligible, and you narrow the numbers a lot. The big remaining question is: Do we, or do we not, want to provide health care coverage for illegal immigrants?
Cohen and Levin opine, and I find them persuasive, that the biggest problem we face, the one we've done least to solve, and the one that is going to be a killer, is how to manage health care for the elderly. Again, we can break this problem down into its constituent parts, but the big problem is that we are not facing the problem at all As Cohen and Levin say:
"Neither socialized medicine nor a pure market approach is suited to America's three health-care challenges, while the bipartisan conspiracy to ignore the looming crisis of Medicare in particular will return to haunt our children." (Page 52)
Let me give you their last paragraph, as they seek to balance practicality and compassion in a complex system:
"Even as we pursue practical options for reform, however, it behooves us to remember that health itself will always remain out of our ultimate control. Medicine works at the boundaries of life, and its limits remind us of our own. While our health-care system can be improved, our unease about health can never truly be quieted. And while reform will require hard decisions, solutions that would balance the books by treating the disabled and debilitated as unworthy of care are no solutions at all. In no small measure, America's future vitality and character will depend upon our ability to rise to this challenge with the right mix of creativity and sobriety."
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