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| Pondering # 7 PATRIOTIC GORE "On the right, many who speak with patriotic urgency to support new defense spending recoil at even the mention of trade protection for national industries. On the left, economc nationalism is usually more popular than the military kind. This is not a case of patriotism being the last refuge of scoundrels. It is a commentary on patriotism's ambiguities. "The paradox is that national sovereignty almost certainly can't be protected unless nations act in concert and, thereby, give up some of their sovereignty. A country that stays out of cross-national organizations lacks any control over the decisions those bodies make, and yet those decisions can powerfully affect members and non-members alike. But international organizations do not naturally command loyalty."—E.J. Dionne, The WashingtonPost, July 3rd. Submitted by A.E.K., Takoma Park, Md. Pondering # 6 IT'S ALL CHEMISTRY "Unstable compound. My working hypothesis is that the center left is like a strong but unstable chemical compound. When the atoms bond together, it is very powerful indeed. But when the attraction between the atoms weakens, the whole thing can fly apart. Something like that happened momentarily during Britain's gasoline crisis last September, when motorists were unable to get fuel and the government seemed paralyzed. Blair's party even dipped below the Conservatives in a few polls. That moment quickly passed. But something like it may happen again."— Michael Barone, U.S. News & World Report, June 23rd. Submitted by John L. LeMoyne, California. Pondering # 5 WHAT THE P.M. TOLD ME "Margaret Thatcher, whom I know very slightly and admire greatly, once told me a wonderful thing. She told that the way she saw it, part of England's purpose, part of its historic mission, had been to stop the bad ideas of Europe from jumping quickly and completely across the Atlantic. The little island to the west of the Continent was the last stopping point for Europe's unfortunate affection for communism, for full-fledged socialism, and England had slowed " 'It stopped Europe's bad ideas!' she said."—Peggy Noonan, the Wall Street Journal, June 8th. Submitted by J.T.S., Austin, Texas Pondering # 4 TAKE TWO PAGES OF PROUST AND CALL IN THE MORNING "I think it was Cervantes's translator who said that all men should read the story of the Don three times: in youth, in middle age and toward the end. That's true for any book with the power to change the way we feel about life. But 18 months ago my foothold was not on the sheer cliff of senectitude but upon that plateau that Proust himself might have called "entre deux âges." Too soon! Yet there I stood, like a sleepwalker, that first volume, all 1,040 pages of it, heavy in my hand. "I compensated for the impulsiveness of my project with the deliberation with which I intended to carry it out. I would read through the three volumes two pages at a time, not more, not less; and I would do so the last thing each night. The trouble with Proust of course is that you are always losing your way: the parentheses don't close, the verb can't be found, and the key pronoun crouches in the proliferating subordinate clauses." — Leslie Epstein, the New York Times, June 4th. Submitted by Byron Lillet, Truro, MA
Pondering # 3 GERGEN URGES THE STANDARD OF "WHAT''S RIGHT'" "Give up the slavish obediance to popular opinion so embedded in politics today, and take up the standard of what’s right, even when it threatens one’s political survival. Many today think [Ford] was wrong to let Mr. Nixon off the hook. I happen to think he was right (though he might have stage-managed the decision more adroitly, signalling to the nation in advance where he was heading). But even those who disagree with his pardon should agree that it took real political courage." — David Gergen, New York Times, May 13th, 2001. Submitted by K.T., Lexington, KY
Pondering #2 WILL PRAISES "LARGE DEEDS" OF THE REAGAN ERA "The large deeds of Reagan's first term -- principally his tax cuts, but also the firing of the air traffic controllers, which, significantly, required no congressional role -- were done by August of his first year. Similarly, even before Jeffords jumped ship, much of the business of Bush's first-term agenda was done. He had achieved about 95 percent of his first priority, the tax cut. Missile defense had been affirmed and now awaits the maturation of the requisite technology. About the education bill, conservatives are disappointed. However, the bill, which substantially increases education spending and which passed the House 384 to 45, makes ludicrous Jeffords's lament that Bush ignores the middle while appeasing the right." — George Will., May 28th, 2001. Submitted by Lois G., San Luis Obispo, California
Pondering #1 "SHRILL POLARIZATION" OF POLITICS IS BEMOANED "The gulf between the public's tolerant centrism and Congress's shrill polarization is probably one of the explanations for declining voter turnout and trust in government. If this were the end of the story, it might be hard to say which effect is bigger: party cohesion, which strengthens democracy by reducing gridlock and promoting accountability; or party polarization, which tends in the opposite direction. But here's where a quirk of postwar politics enters the picture. That quirk is divided government. In the first half of this century, the president's party controlled both chambers of Congress 85 percent of the time. Since 1955, however, this pattern has held for only one-third of the time, and more recently, the White House has nearly always been at loggerheads with at least one chamber of Congress. This trend toward divided government greatly dilutes the benefit of coherent parties. During brief periods of unified government, the ruling party can pass important legislation and be held accountable for it: Think of Clinton's 1993 deficit-reduction package, passed without the vote of a single Republican, or of the remarkably quick passage of the Bush tax cut. But most of the time government is divided, so party cohesion does not dissolve gridlock or promote accountability. It merely intensifies fighting between White House and Congress. — Sebastian Mallaby, the Washington Post, May 28th, 2001. Submitted by G. Wilson, Chevy Chase, Md." "The Columnist" is a novel by Jeffrey Frank. Click here to purchase it.
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