The moral race to the bottom

Morally bankrupt ideologies go through three stages before reaching their full offensive maturity in our political culture.

What begin as recognized evils become justifiable or necessary evils before at last transmuting into positive virtues that brook no argument.

War of 1812 in paper (how quaint)

The paperback edition of my book Perilous Fight, about the of War of 1812 at sea, is being released today.

“A rousing story . . . Budiansky writes with sure and vivid command.”

—Evan Thomas, Washington Post

More . . .

You're fired!

Energized with their newfound enthusiasm for class warfare (you can always tell an amateur), the Republican candidates were making much of Romney's "gaffe" yesterday in which, speaking of the supposed need for more competition in health insurance, he displayed his solidarity with the working classes by saying, "I like being able to fire people who provide services to me."

You know something really strange is going on when Ron Paul is out there denouncing capitalists who take money from the middle class to enrich themselves.

But what left me marveling was not Romney's cluelessly echoing the very charges against his performance at Bain Capital, but rather his obliviousness to the fact that any firing that goes on in the health insurance business is done by the insurance companies, not consumers. After all, everyone wants to fire their health insurance company, usually while listening to the same Kenny G number for the 132nd time on hold waiting to have someone in Bombay swear they have no record of their claim. That's hardly the point when the insurers hold all the cards.

You can be a historian, too

Professor Gingrich was at it again last week flashing his Official Historian's Membership Badge, this time to explain why President Historian Gingrich, "just like Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and FDR,"  would "take on the judiciary."

Before examining the professor's historical analogies, could I point out that unlike, say, being a chemist, physician, lawyer, engineer, accountant, plumber, tree surgeon, piano tuner, or barber, being a "historian" means absolutely nothing in terms of professional qualifications or special expertise?

The cartoon professor

The ignoramus wing of the Republican Party has for some time now been purveying a caricature of the intellectual as someone who is elitist, arrogant, smugly certain, impractical, and out of touch with the common man if not with reality itself.

The dim ages

I used to think that science education would make people more rational and scientific. Now, in the fullness of age and experience, I can see that all it has done is to offer new arenas for people to apply the same magical thinking, self-serving illogic, and rhetorical fallacies that used to drive the ancient Greek philosophers to despair over the human race, too.