Notebook Transcription 66
transcribed: July 20, 2008

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a society governed less by rule of conduct than by a rule of taste. >146 Sansom
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we are inclined to think that the more we govern the better we behave, though the truer proposition might be that the better we behave the less we need to be governed.
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little-known lower court judge John Sinca (Spelling?) who kept watergate going
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Defeated by an enemy who wins not by virtue of their strengths but by default. As a result of our weakness.
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Galbraith: "insecurity is something that is cherished only for others." >107
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A common fatal flaw shared by both classical liberals and marxists is that "capitalism would be crippled by efforts to civilize it." >113
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To some: It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought. >160
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The same process which makes the economy large makes large the private demands upon it and makes small what seemingly can be spared for public use. >178
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the liberal program up to the 1930s
1) progressive income tax
2) development of government services
3) protection of public resources from private appropriation
4) extensions of social security
5) aid to farmers or especially disadvantaged groups
6) strengthening of trade unions
7) regulation of corporations
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1936 John Maynard Keynes
In the Keynesian system the notion of an aggregate demand for the output of the economy which determines the total production of the economy was central. Depending on various factors, production might find its equilibrium at a high level or a low one. There was no immutable tendency for it to settle at the particular level where all willing workers had a chance for employment. And by manipulating the level of aggregate demand--the most obvious devices were to add to demand by government spending in excess of taxation, or to subtract from it by taxation in excess of spending--the government could influence the level of production. >188
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In the 30s the liberal program became increased production and reduced unemployment...won votes
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Few ideas are so immutable as the addiction of political groups to ideas by which they have once won office. >192
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The Puritan ethos (save now enjoy later) was not abandoned. It was merely overwhelmed by the massive power of modern merchandising. >200
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"Economics isn't about ethics. As the British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan once observed: "If people want morality, let them get it from their archbishops."
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The new master narrative--the way we think of our world--has abandoned the social for the economic. >Tony Judt
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In the early years of the French revolution the Marquis de Condorcet was dismayed at the prospect of commercial society that was opening before him the idea "that liberty will be no more, in the eyes of an avid nation, than a necessary condition for the security of financial operations."
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the local peasants expressed their patriotism in much the same way as nations: by denigrating their neighbors and celebrating their own nobility.
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It is at the very heart of Greene's creed of paradoxes that it is the impulse to help or save others that always condemns us, and that "innocence must die young if it isn't to kill the souls of men." >The heart of the matter
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What was taken by force must be regained by force. >Palestinian's on the unacceptability of nonviolence
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study actions and their effects. Be weary of those actions for which a reliable effect cannot be determined or predicted.
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look for full context, be weary of partial context
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It is not till it is discovered that high individual incomes will not purchase the mass of mankind immunity from cholera, typhus and ignorance, still less secure them positive advantages of educational opportunity and economic security, that slowly and reluctantly, amid prophecies of moral degeneration and economic disaster, society begins to make collective provision for needs which no ordinary individual, even if he works overtime all his life, can provide himself. >R.H. Tawney
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In one sense all private wants, where the individual can choose, are inherently superior to all public desires which must be paid for by taxation and which are an inevitable component of compulsion. >267 Galbraith
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men of high position are allowed, by a special act of grace, to accommodate their reasoning to the answer they need. Logic is only required in those of lesser rank.
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Why should life be intolerable to make things of small urgency? >288, on the problems of production
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the victim of inflation is the government and the poor.
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The economy is geared to the least urgent set of human wants. It would be far more secure if it were based on the whole range of need. >309
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The original condition of all civilization is that of respect to godhead: "they cannot establish an order without believing in its sanctity. >Eric Voegelin
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"History is a history in the process of revelation"...an open field where the divine and human meet, not a highway without exits. >Voegelin
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a view of democracy centered on: Swaraj (self-rule), in which control of one's inner life and respect for other people create self-aware and engaged rather than passive citizens. A Gandhian idea: "The thesis of this book is the Gandhian claim that the real struggle that democracy must wage is a struggle within the individual self, between the urge to dominate and defile the other and a willingness to live respectfully on terms of compassion and equality. >Nussbaum in preface to her book on Indian Democracy
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Traditional attitudes towards the natural environment make Indians, like the Japanese, more disposed than Americans to pursue happiness modestly. For democracy to flourish it must learn to cultivate the inner world of human beings, equipping each citizen to contend against the passion for domination and to accept the reality, and the equality, of others. >Nussbaum after Gandhi..."self-abnegation"
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the ethical vision of democracy
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leaving a barricade, one no longer knows what one has seen...Swept up in a battle of ideas endowed with human faces, one's head has been in the light of the future. There were corpses lying down, and phantoms standing up...Hands with blood on them. A horrific, deafening din. An atrocious silence...ONe seems to have touched the sinister perspiration of unknown depths. There is something red under one's finger nails. One remembers nothing. >Victor Hugo, Les Miserables VI8
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In Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge the population in 1975 was about 7 million; within 3 years 1.5 had been executed, starved to death, or died of exhaustion. No other country has lost so great a proportion of its population in a single politically inspired hecatomb brought on by its own leaders.
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law's complexity is largely responsible to variations under circumstances, rather than a device of lawyers to befuddle everyone else. >Kent Greenwalt
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"Life in exile broadens horizons, limits parochialism, further skepticism and impartiality." >David Asheri writing on Herodotus
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