Marty Manley on economics, politics, technology, and culture

History

Remembering Sacrifice

Writing on a difficult Memorial Day in today’s Wall Street Journal, Peter Collier strikes a note that is resonating on Main Street and on line. Once we knew who and what to honor on Memorial Day: Those who had given all their tomorrows, as was said of the men who stormed the beaches of Normandy, [...]

Mother's Day

Mother’s Day began in Greece — and it may end there, too. To the ancient Greeks, fertility was life. They worshiped mothers with a festival to Cybele, the mother of all gods. Modern Greeks worship motherhood, but they also avoid it. The average woman in Greece gives birth to 1.3 children. Over a generation or [...]

BDS Spreads as Blair Prepares to Step Down

Timothy Garton Ash, one of Europe’s most astute political observers, recently described the extreme reaction of dinner guests to unpopular political leaders. …The sole duty of any self-respecting commentator is to interrogate and then indict Blair – as if he were a cross between Radovan Karadzic, Augusto Pinochet and Adolf Eichmann…As at many a London [...]

Protect Income, not Industries, Companies, or Jobs

Suppose we tried to improve our economic security and well-being by making it illegal for any employer to fire any employee for any reason. Over time, our strategy would backfire. We would become less secure because we would be less competitive as our companies lost out to foreign businesses with more flexible cost structures. As [...]

"Rather Be Miserable With Than Without It"

"Rich man he say he would guessMoney can’t buy happinessPoor man he say he don’t doubt itBut he’d rather be miserable with than without it." — traditional Calypso ditty Michael Spence is a ridiculously accomplished scholar. Some years back, he won the Clark award given to the nation’s best economist under 40. After serving as [...]

A Byrd in the Hand…

…and a hand from Bush. Is it me, or is this photo showing the President helping 89 year old Senator Robert Byrd, oddly touching? It captures two politicians from opposite parties in a very human moment. Only one newspaper ran the photo — probably because most Americans, like me, don’t much care for either of [...]

The Immortal Game

During the summer of 1972, I worked as a cook in a small resort in New York’s Hudson Valley. It was a small, family-run place patronized entirely by elderly Jews from New York city that hired me, a goyem from southern California, sight unseen. I passed as Jewish well enough — my hair was curly, [...]

Triumph of the Philoperisterons

Every now and again someone comes along and makes me change my mind. They assault my prejudices with facts, challenge my beliefs with evidence, and even cause me to reinterpret certain life experiences. I could defend the old ways of course, but why bother? The other guy is right and I have been wrong. Time [...]

Work hard. Be nice.

In today’s New York Times Magazine, Paul Tough summarizes the findings of a lengthy investigation into the theory and practice of charter schools for poor and often black kids. "What it Takes to Make a Student" is an outstanding report that sheds light on one of America’s persistent problems: our schools do not give poor [...]

Do Guns Increase Violent Crimes or Prevent Them?

Gun advocates have long claimed that crime is caused by criminals and is reduced by NRA-trained citizens packing a convenient sidearm. Gun controllers look at the mayhem of inner cities and figure that reducing weapons can only help reduce crime. On gun control as with many other issues, where you stand depends on where you [...]

Oriana Fallaci

The lioness is dead. She didn’t die as a teenage resistance fighter when, as a member of the Tuscan anti-fascist underground, she carried messages and explosives in Nazi Florence. She did not die at the execution wall in Mexico City in 1968, although she was shot and left for dead. She didn’t die reporting from [...]

Honor Labor Day

If your teacher was like mine, she told you that Labor Day is our how we honor the American worker. True enough, but it is also a holiday that commemorates the failure of communism to take root in the American labor movement. Unlike any other holiday, Labor Day celebrates something that didn’t happen. You can [...]

Fiasco by Thomas Ricks

On vacation, couldn’t wait to get to Thomas Ricks Fiasco, acclaimed by many as the best writing to date on the Iraq war. Ricks is the Pentagon correspondent for the Washington Post and the author of an account of Marine Corps boot camp, Making the Corps. He is not an anti-war writer and is not [...]

How the US Absorbs Unskilled Immigrants — Make Them Customers as Well as Workers

The New York Times ran an excellent article answering this question last weekend. They framed the article as a debate between Harvard’s Cuban born Economist George Borjas and Berkeley’s Canadian-born David Card. Pretty much all economists support skilled worker immigration — and very few argue that unskilled immigration helps the earnings of unskilled native workers. [...]

" Never Join Forces with a French Company"

I wonder which team General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner will cheer for in tomorrow’s World Cup final? Perhaps the Italians. After all, GM just purchased Fiat. Or maybe not, since GM purchased Fiat then paid $2 billion last year to get out of the deal. This in a a year when GM lost $10.6 billion [...]

Ayaan Hirsi Ali Brings Down the Dutch Government

First voting in Kuwait and now Ayaan Hirsi Ali brings down the Dutch government! An excellent day for Islamic women! This is horn-honking, TERRIFIC news. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is the Muslim Somalia-born refugee who arrived in Holland, learned Dutch, was elected to Parliament, spoke out against fascist Islam, and collaborated with Theo Van Gogh to [...]

Tomorrow Never Knows

"turn off your mind, relax, float downstream" – Timothy Leary, as appropriated by John Lennon Did you catch the Sunday New York Times review by Luc Sante of the Robert Greenfield biography of Timothy Leary? For a cultural icon, Leary always seemed odd and ill at ease — he gave the impression of having done [...]

Populist Nationalists vs Global Elitists?

David Brooks nails the fast-changing terrain of American politics: If American politics could start with a clean slate today, the main argument wouldn’t be between liberalism and conservatism, words that have become labels without coherent philosophies. The main fight would pit populist nationalism against progressive globalism. The populist nationalist party would be liberal on economics, [...]

Sexism, the Subsidy

My mom was a teacher. Her mom was a teacher who married the son of a teacher — a guy whose sisters were mostly teachers. I married the daughter of a teacher. Today however, nobody in the family — least of all the women — is a teacher (my wife is a college dean — [...]

"The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army" George Washington, July 2, 1776

I was fortunate to speak recently with David McCullough, author of 1776, John Adams, Truman, a wonderful volume of essays called Brave Companions, and other well rendered bits of US history. McCullough began writing for USIA in Washington, DC when it was run by Edward R. Murrow. He is now the father or grandfather of [...]