J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 343

John Quiggin: Shibboleths: "I was reminded of... 2011, ab...

John Quiggin: Shibboleths: "I was reminded of... 2011, about when the baton was being passed from Palin to Trump...

...There���s very little in Trump���s consistent denial of reality that wasn���t evident back in 2011. Trump���s change has been to make obvious what could previously be ignored. The eagerness with which virtually all Republicans (including Republican-voting ���independents���) have embraced Trump refutes my suggestion that they will ultimately be turned off by this stuff. It���s striking that around the same time, Jonathan Haidt was getting lots of praise for The Righteous Mind. By taking conservatives��� self-descriptions as accurate, and ignoring evidence like the prevalence of birtherism, Haidt concluded that liberals had a caricatured view of conservatives, and their values of ���Loyalty, Authority and Sanctity���. Now, it���s obvious that, for practical purposes, the caricature is the reality...

#shouldread

IIRC, back when I first read Robert Nozick's Anarchy, Sta...

IIRC, back when I first read Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia, I thought it was a joke: He spent all this space ranting about how nobody is allowed to make consequentialist arguments, and then makes the consequentialist argument that Lockeian appropriation of pieces of the global commons as private property is fine because it has the consequence of making the world richer? And then there was this: using the Cambridge Rent Control Board to break his contract���his self-actualization as a promise-making autonomous moral being���to extort 30,000 dollars from Eric Segal: Anarchy, State, and Rent Control.

I now think that Anarchy, State, and Utopia was a joke that turned into a grift. Cf.: Robert Bork, who after a lifetime of calling for "tort reform" files a slip-and-fall lawsuit against the Yale Club of Manhattan...

Tim Noah (2007): Has Jonah Goldberg gone soft on Hillary?: Hoisted from the Internet from Eleven Years Ago/Weekend Reading

Timothy Noah (2007): Has Jonah Goldberg gone soft on Hillary?: "Her name's been removed from his forthcoming book's subtitle...

Three months ago, I speculated that Jonah Goldberg's forthcoming book, then titled Liberal Fascism: The Totalitarian Temptation From Mussolini to Hillary Clinton, was the victim of a swift and violent paradigm shift. The 2006 elections and the right's critical drubbing of Dinesh D'Souza's The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11--which proposed a strategic alliance between Muslim theocrats and the American right against the degenerate American left���had rendered conservatism's lunatic fringe suddenly unfashionable. This couldn't, I thought, be good news for a book that portrayed Hillary Clinton as a goose-stepping brownshirt.

One hint that Doubleday might be feeling nervous was that the book's publication date, originally planned for 2005, had been delayed repeatedly, and had just been delayed once more, to Dec. 26, 2007. Goldberg's publisher, Adam Bellow, insisted that the book's delays were attributable entirely to the extreme care being taken to get the history just right, and Goldberg himself, after stating on National Review's online chat-fest "The Corner" that he found me to be "a bore and a fairly nasty and humorless fellow," said the book was delayed only because "it's not done yet." My "assertion that the book's delayed for marketing reasons would be a flat-out lie if it weren't flat-out conjecture," Goldberg thundered.

What Bellow and Goldberg said didn't strike me as necessarily inconsistent with what I'd written. I could well envision that the extreme care to which Bellow referred might include frantic tweaking of tone to make Goldberg sound less like Ann Coulter and more like David Brooks. But whatever the reason for the delay, the marketing plan for Goldberg's book has been altered since I last wrote, and the direction has been away from Coulterism. A book's subtitle is part of a book's marketing, is it not? Ladies and gentlemen, the subtitle has been changed. Gone is The Totalitarian Temptation From Mussolini to Hillary Clinton. Now the subtitle is The Totalitarian Temptation From Hegel to Whole Foods. This is undeniably kinder, gentler, and less political. But it isn't necessarily more truthful.

As liberal blogger Ezra Klein points out, John Mackey, founder and chief executive of Whole Foods, is a libertarian. In a recent speech, Mackey said, "The Left's goal remains either to cripple or to destroy capitalism." That doesn't sound very liberal to me. Perhaps Goldberg has found a way to write around Mackey's inconvenient politics. Or perhaps he'll have to go back to the drawing board. One option might be for Goldberg to change the title to The Road to Serfdom, which is what F.A. Hayek called this book when he published it 50-odd years ago. Goldberg should know, though, that a cartoon version of Hayek's most famous work is already in circulation.

Wikipedia: FLOPS: #shouldread

Wikipedia: FLOPS:

#shouldread

I missed this when it first came through: Lessons from sp...

I missed this when it first came through: Lessons from special elections, especially PA-18: Josh Barro: Why Pennsylvania special-election result should terrify Republicans: "Should Democrats seek to build a coalition of college-educated suburbanites plus white urbanites and minorities, or should they try to win back blue-collar white voters...

...The likely winner Democrat Conor Lamb showed Democrats don't have to choose. He managed to do three things at once.... Consider, for example, Mt. Lebanon, an affluent and highly educated Pittsburgh suburb that is included in the 18th. Obama took 54% of the two-party vote there in 2012.... Clinton improved strongly on Obama's performance in Mt. Lebanon.... She got 64% of the two-party vote. On Tuesday, Conor Lamb got 72%.

Now consider Franklin Township in the rural Greene County, where the median family income is less than half what it is in Mt. Lebanon.... Recent Democratic presidential nominees have done poorly here. Obama got 34% of the two-party vote, and Clinton got just 28%. Conor Lamb managed 43% on Tuesday. That is, he did better than Clinton where Clinton did better than Obama, and better than Obama where Obama did better than Clinton....

This is just one election result, though it's in line with many other special-election results.... But it's one that should make Republicans feel bad about their odds in November ��� and one that should make Democrats reconsider how much they really need to fight among themselves about the future direction of the Democratic coalition...

Kevin Drum: Which Party Has Been Better for the White Working Class?: "Sean Illing interviews Robert Wuthnow...

...Why, Illing asks, do small-town folks think that Washington is threatening their way of life? According to Wuthnow, it���s not because of economic stagnation:

WUTHNOW: A lot of it is just scapegoating. And that���s why you see more xenophobia and racism in these communities. There���s a sense that things are going badly, and the impulse is to blame ���others.������ They recognize that the federal government controls vast resources, and they feel threatened if they perceive Washington���s interest being directed more toward urban areas than rural areas, or toward immigrants more than non-immigrants, or toward minority populations instead of the traditional white Anglo population.

ILLING: But that���s just racism and cultural resentment, and calling it a manifestation of some deeper anxiety doesn���t alter that fact.

WUTHNOW: I don���t disagree with that. I���m just explaining what I heard from people on the ground in these communities. This is what they believe, what they say, not what I believe.

This is a political problem for Democrats: if small-town residents were driven by economic concerns, there might be something they could do to help.... Ronald Reagan crushed Jimmy Carter in the 1980 election.... The Reagan Democrats who helped put him in office got nothing in return. Since then, two Democratic presidents have delivered good wage growth for blue-collar workers, while a Republican president delivered an enormous recession. And yet, many white���and only white���working-class voters continue to be loyal Republicans. Democrats have been pretty good for these folks, but it hasn���t translated into reliable votes. This suggests that Wuthnow is right. But if the real problem among the white working class is anxiety over blacks and immigrants and changing cultural mores, that���s no better. These are core principles that liberals just aren���t willing to compromise about. Either way, Democrats have a big problem...

Steve M.: IT WILL NEVER BE MORNING IN AMERICA FOR TRUMP VOTERS: "Democrat Conor Lamb leads his Republican opponent, Rick Saccone, by 641 votes...

...The GOP... largely abandoned what we've been told will be the party's main talking point in this year's elections:

Republicans backed away from their signature tax-cut law.... Since the beginning of March, tax ads have been essentially nonexistent.

Greg Sargent adds:

In the race���s final days, much of the GOP���s messaging appears focused not so much on the Trump/GOP tax cuts, or even on Trump���s tariffs, but rather on immigration, crime and Nancy Pelosi.... Dave Weigel and Josh Kraushaar both reported that Republicans had previously aired ads touting the tax cuts but cycled them out of the messaging, because, as Kraushaar put it, they were ���barely moving the needle in the district���s working-class confines���....

I think Republican voters are so conditioned by the fearmongering of Fox News and the rest of the right-wing media that they can no longer respond to positive messaging. What matters to them is "owning the libs" and finding new enemies to smite. (Or even finding old enemies).... The right-wing media message is echoed by the president, who boasts about his accomplishments but really rouses the crowds when he attacks kneeling football players or Chuck Todd or Hillary Clinton, or when he promises a wall to keep out rampaging hordes of gangsters and a flood of drugs. Never mind how the rest of us feel about the state of America today���Republican voters are said to be pleased with the president's performance in office. And yet it's unimaginable that they'd ever respond to a modern "Morning in America" ad...

Abigail Adams, Polly Jefferson, Sally Hemings, etc....

Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams, 21 December 1786: "PARIS.... My friends write me that they will send my little daughter to me by a Vessel which sails in May for England. I have taken the liberty to tell them that you will be so good as to take her under your wing till I can have notice to send for her, which I shall do express in the moment of my knowing she is arrived. She is about 8. years old, and will be in the care of her nurse, a black woman, to whom she is confided with safety. I knew your goodness too well to scruple the giving this direction before I had asked your permission..."

 

Abigail Smith Adams to Thomas Jefferson, 26 June 1787: "LONDON.... I have to congratulate you upon the safe arrival of your Little Daughter, whom I have only a few moments ago received. She is in fine Health and a Lovely little Girl I am sure from her countanance, but at present every thing is strange to her, and she was very loth to try New Friends for old.

"She was so much attachd to the Captain and he to her, that it was with no small regret that I seperated her from him, but I dare say I shall reconcile her in a day or two. I tell her that I did not see her sister cry once. She replies that her sister was older and ought to do better, besides she had her pappa with her. I shew her your picture. She says she cannot know it, how should she when she should not know you. A few hours acquaintance and we shall be quite Friends I dare say. I hope we may expect the pleasure of an other visit from you now I have so strong an inducement to tempt you. If you could bring Miss Jefferson with you, it would reconcile her little Sister to the thoughts of taking a journey.

"It would be proper that some person should be accustomed to her. The old Nurse whom you expected to have attended her, was sick and unable to come. She has a Girl about 15 or 16 with her, the Sister of the Servant you have with you. As I presume you have but just returnd from your late excursion, you will not put yourself to any inconvenience or Hurry in comeing or sending for her. You may rely upon every attention towards her and every care in my power. I have just endeavourd to amuse her by telling her that I would carry her to Sadlers Wells. After describing the amusement to her with an honest simplicity, I had rather says she see captain Ramsey one moment, than all the fun in the World.

"I have only time before the post goes, to present my compliments to Mr. Short. Mr. Adams and Mrs. Smith desire to be rememberd to you. Captain Ramsey has brought a Number of Letters. As they may be of importance to you to receive them we have forwarded them by the post. Miss Polly sends her duty to you and Love to her Sister and says she will try to be good and not cry. So she has wiped her eyes and layd down to sleep."

 

To Thomas Jefferson from Abigail Adams, 27 June 1787: "LONDON... I had the Honour of addressing you yesterday and informing you of the safe arrival of your daughter. She was but just come when I sent of my letter by the post, and the poor little Girl was very unhappy being wholy left to strangers. This however lasted only a few Hours, and Miss is as contented to day as she was misirable yesterday. She is indeed a fine child. I have taken her out to day and purchased her a few articles which she could not well do without and I hope they will meet your approbation.

"The Girl who is with her is quite a child, and Captain Ramsey is of opinion will be of so little Service that he had better carry her back with him. But of this you will be a judge. She seems fond of the child and appears good naturd.

"I sent by yesterdays post a Number of Letters which Captain Ramsey brought with him not knowing of any private hand, but Mr. Trumble has just calld to let me know that a Gentleman sets off for paris tomorrow morning. I have deliverd him two Letters this afternoon received, and requested him to wait that I might inform you how successfull a rival I have been to Captain Ramsey, and you will find it I imagine as difficult to seperate Miss Polly from me as I did to get her from the Captain. She stands by me while I write and asks if I write every day to her pappa? But as I have never had so interesting a subject to him to write upon [���] I hope he will excuse the hasty scrips for the [scanty?] intelligence they contain..."

 

Abigail Adams to Thomas Jefferson, 6 July 1787: "LONDON.... If I had thought you would so soon have sent for your dear little Girl, I should have been tempted to have kept her arrival here, from you a secret. I am really loth to part with her, and she last evening upon Petit���s arrival, was thrown into all her former distresses, and bursting into Tears, told me it would be as hard to leave me as it was her Aunt Epps.

"She has been so often deceived that she will not quit me a moment least she should be carried away. Nor can I scarcly prevail upon her to see Petit. Tho she says she does not remember you, yet she has been taught to consider you with affection and fondness, and depended upon your comeing for her. She told me this morning, that as she had left all her Friends in virginia to come over the ocean to see you, she did think you would have taken the pains to have come here for her, and not have sent a man whom she cannot understand. I express her own words.

"I expostulated with her upon the long journey you had been, and the difficulty you had to come and upon the care kindness and attention of Petit, whom I so well knew. But she cannot yet hear me. She is a child of the quickest sensibility, and the maturest understanding, that I have ever met with for her years.

"She had been 5 weeks at sea, and with men only, so that on the first day of her arrival, she was as rough as a little sailor, and then she been decoyed from the ship, which made her very angry, and no one having any Authority over her; I was apprehensive I should meet with some trouble. But where there are such materials to work upon as I have found in her, there is no danger. She listend to my admonitions, and attended to my advice and in two days, was restored to the amiable lovely Child which her Aunt had formed her. In short she is the favorite of every creature in the House, and I cannot but feel Sir, how many pleasures you must lose by committing her to a convent.

"Yet situated as you are, you cannot keep her with you. The Girl she has with her, wants more care than the child, and is wholy incapable of looking properly after her, without some superiour to direct her.

"As both Miss Jefferson and the maid had cloaths only proper for the sea, I have purchased and made up for them, such things as I should have done had they been my own, to the amount of Eleven or 12 Guineys. The particulars I will send by Petit.

"Captain Ramsey has said that he would accompany your daughter to Paris provided she would not go without him, but this would be putting you to an expence that may perhaps be avoided by Petits staying a few days longer. The greatest difficulty in familiarizing her to him, is on account of the language. I have not the Heart to force her into a Carriage against her will and send her from me almost in a Frenzy; as I know will be the case, unless I can reconcile her to the thoughts of going and I have given her my word that Petit shall stay untill I can hear again from you.

"Books are her delight, and I have furnished her out a little library, and she reads to me by the hour with great distinctness, and comments on what she reads with much propriety."

 

Abigail Adams to Mary Smith Cranch, 16 July 1787: "If as the poet says, expectation makes the blessing sweet, your last Letter was peculiarly so, as you conjectured I was not a little anxious that neither Captain Barnard or Davis brought me a line. I was apprehensive that Something was the matter some imminent danger threatning some Friend, of which my Friends chose not to inform me untill thir fate was decided.

"I sent on board the Ship, the Solitary Box of meal was searchd throughout. What not one line, from my dear sister Cranch, she who has never before faild me, can it be possible, uncle Smith did not as usual say in his Letter that all Friends were well. Dr Tufts for the first time omitted mentioning my children, that might be because they thought that they had written, thus was my mind agitated untill Captain Scotts arrival who brought me your kind Letter of May the 20th, but none from either of my Neices or Children those dear Lads do not write so often as I wish them to, because they have nothing more to say than that they are well, not considering how important that intelligence is to an affectionate parent.

"mr J Cranch wrote me soon after Barnards arrival and sent me an extract of a Letter from miss B Palmer with a particular account of the performances in April at Cambridge, in which your son & mine bore a part. These Young Gentlemen are much indebted to her for her partiality, and the very flattering manner in which she describes them. I hope they will continue to deserve the esteem of all good judges and do honour to themselves and their Country.

"the account you give me of the Health of JQA, is no more than I expected to hear. I warnd him frequently before he left me, and have been writing him ever since. I hope he will take warning before it is too late. it gives me great satisfaction to learn that he has past through the university with so much reputation, and that his fellow Students are attached to him. I have never once regreeted the resolution he took of quitting Europe, and placing himself upon the Theatre of his own Country, where if his Life is spaired, I presume he will neither be an Idle or a useless Spectator.

"Heaven grant that he may not have more distressing scenes before him, and a Gloomier stage to tread than those on which his Father has acted for 12 years past, but the curtain rises before him, and instead of peace waving her olive branch, or Liberty seated in a triumphal car or commerce Agriculture and plenty pouring forth their Stores, Sedition hisses Treason roars, Rebellion Nashes his Teeth. Mercy Suspends the justly merited blow, but justice Striks the Guilty victim. here may the Scene close and brighter prospects open before us in future. I hope the political machine will move with more safety and security this year than the last, and that the New Head may be endowed with wisdom sufficient to direct it.

"there are Some good Spokes in the Wheels, tho the Master workmen have been unskilfull in discarding some of the best, and chusing others not sufficiently Seasond, but the crooked & cross graind will soon break to peices, tho this may do much mischief in the midst of a jouney, and shatter the vehicle, yet an other year may repair the Damages, but to quit Allegory, or you will think I have been reading Johnny Bunyan.

"The conduct of a certain Gentleman is rather curious. I really think him an honest Man, but ambition is a very wild passion, and there are some Characters that never can be pleasd unless they have the intire direction of all publick affairs, and when they are unemployd, they are continually blaming those in office, and accusing them of Ignorance or incapacity, and Spreading allarms that the Country is ruined and undone, but put them into office, and it is more than probable they will persue the same conduct, which they had before condemned, but no Man is fit to be trusted who is not diffident of himself Such is the frailty of humane Nature, & so great a flatterer is Self Love, that it presents false appearences, & deceives it votaries.

"The comedy writer has been drawing his own Character and an other Gentlemans I fancy. strange Man, would he act as well as he can write, he might have been an ornament to Society, but what signifies a Head, without a Heart, what is knowledge but an extensive power to do evil, without principal to direct and govern it? ���unstable as water, thou shalt not excell��� I have often quoted to him. I look upon him as a lost Man. I pity his folly, and am sorry he is making himself so conspicuous.

"I think Sir John Temple was the writer of the Letter from Newyork giving an account of the Play, Birds of a Feather���

"The House at Braintree which you mention I would not fail of having, & am sorry the dr did not bargan for it without waiting to hear from us. We have written him twice upon the subject, as to building we shall never be able to do that, if the dr should purchase it. I wish you would look it over and let us know what repairs are necessary. I shall not be able to write much by Captain Barnard, as we are prepairing for a long jouney. I have been so very unwell through the Spring and winter that the dr Says a journey and change of air is absolutly necessary for me our intention is to visit Devenshire & to go as far as plimouth which is about 200 & 30 miles. as we take the Baby and a Nursery maid, Esther a footman & coachman we shall make a large calvacade and be absent a month or 5 weeks.

"Col Smith we do not expect back till September. we hear from him by every post.

"I am distrest for Sister Shaw & her children the disorder is of the most infectious Nature, and a House, linen, & every thing & person requires as much cleansing as with the Small pox, of which I fear people are not sufficently aware. When Mr Copley about a year & half ago lost two fine children with it, the doctors advised to these precautions, & gave large doses of the bark to the attendance. I think Sister Shaw would have done well to have sent both her children out of Haverhill. I pray Heaven preserve them��� I did not get a line from her by either of the vessels.

"I have had with me for a fortnight a little daughter of mr Jeffersons, who arrived here with a young Negro Girl her Servant from Virginia. mr Jefferson wrote me some months ago that he expected them & desired me to receive them. I did so and was amply repaid for my trouble a finer child of her age I never saw, so mature an understanding, so womanly a behaviour and so much sensibility united is rarely to be met with. I grew so fond of her, & she was so attached to me, that when mr Jefferson sent for her, they were obliged to force the little creature away.

"She is but 8 years old. She would Set some times and discribe to me the parting with her Aunt who brought her up, the obligations she was under to her & the Love she had for her little cousins, till the Tears would stream down her cheeks, and now I had been her Friend and she loved me, her pappa would break her Heart by making her go again. she clung round me so that I could not help sheding a tear at parting with her. she was the favorite of every one in the House.

"I regreet that Such fine spirits must be spent in the walls of a convent. She is a beautifull Girl too.

"My little Boy grows finely and is as playfull as a Lamb, is the Healthest child I ever saw, and pretty enough. his Mamma I think looks the better for being a Nurse. he is very content with being twice a day supplied by her, feeds the rest, and never misses being twice a day carried out to walk in the air when it is fair weather You see what a mere Grandmama I am that can fill up half a page in writing of the child.

"this I presume is commencment week. I dare say the young folks feel anxious. I dont know whether I should venture to be a hearer if I was in America I should have as many pertubations as the Speakers. I hope they will acquit themselves with honour. mr Adams desires me to tell cousin Cranch that any of his Books are at his service I believe we must send some of these Young Men to settle at Vermont. can they get their Bread in Massachussets? but the World is all before them, may providence be their Guide.

"I send my dear sisters each a tea urn, which must prove comfortable in a hot summers day I have orderd them put up in a Box together and addrest to uncle Smith. the Heater, & the Iron which you put it in with, is to be packed in the Box by the Side of them. whilst your water is boiling, you heat the Iron & put it in to the little tin inclosure always minding that the water is first put in. this keeps it hot as long as you want to use it.���

"how are English Goods now? cheeper I suppose than I can buy them here, and India much lower, in the article of Spice could you credit it if I was to tell you that I give 2 pound Eleaven Shillings sterling pr pound for Nutmegs���and other Spice in proportion yet tis really so��� I cannot write my Neices now, but hope my journey will furnish materials���my Love to them.

"who owns Germantown now, is mr Palmers family in any way of Buisness? how is miss payne, & where is she?��� Mrs Parkers arrival will be an acquisitions to our American acquaintance. she appears an agreeable woman we have a General Stuart & Lady here Philadelphians, lately from Ireland. I knew him when I first came here. he went to Ireland and has been there with her two years, they spend the winter here.

"Mrs Gardner has never visited me untill yesterday, tho she has been here a Year concequently I have never Seen her, for it is an invariable rule with me to receive the first visit.

"I have formed a very agreeable acquaintance with a Sir George Stanton & Lady. I know not a warmer American. he cultivats their acquaintance, and is a very sensible learned Man. Lady Staunton is an amiable woman and we visit upon very social and Friendly terms. I must however add that Sir George is an Irishman by birth & I have invariably found in every Irish Gentleman, a Friend to America. it is an old observation that mutual Sufferings begets Friendships.

"Lady Effingham is just returnd to Town after an absence of a 12 Month. her Ladyship drank tea with me on Sunday, & I Supd & spent the Evening with her the week after. She has traveld much in Russia Sweeden Denmark Holland France Ireland, and has a most Sprightly lively fancy: joind to a volubility of Tongue which united with good sense & a knowledge of the World renders her a pleasing companion, but She like all the rest of the English Ladies, with whom I have any acquaintance is destitute of that Softness & those feminine graces which appear so lovely in the females of America. I attribute this in a great measure to their constant intercourse at publick places. I will see how they are in the Country.

"I have been gratified however in finding that all Foreigners who have any acquaintance with American Ladies give the preference to them, but john Bull thinks nothing equal to himself and his Country; you would be Surprizd to see & hear the uncivil things Said against France, and all its productions I have never found so much illiberality in any Nation as this, but there are many Worthy & amiable Characters here whom I shall ever respect, and for whose Sakes this Country is preserved from total Ruin & destruction.

"but I am running on at a Strange rate. adieu my dear sister, remember me to my Worthy Mother Brothers & all my Nephews Neices & Neighbours, and believe me at all times your affectionate / Sister....

PS having sent you a Lamp I now Send you something to Light it with the directions are with it. I have given these into the care of a mrs Wentworth who came here last Spring in persuit of an estate which I have no doubt belongs to her, but for want of Money She cannot come at it. She is a virtuous well behaved deserving woman. she has been I believe as much as a month at different times in my family, and can tell you more about us than perhaps 20 Letters. Dr Bulfinch recommended her to us, when she came. I tried to get her some employ but could not succeed, and she is now obliged to return much poorer than when she came, and without any prospect of Success. when you go to Town, if you send for her to uncle Smiths, She will come and see you as I have desired her.��� Inclosed you find a Louis d���or."

 

John Adams to Charles Adams, 2 January 1794: "PHILADELPHIA.... The Letter you mention was written in a careless haste intended for no Eye but yours and I fear not fit for any but a partial one��� but if you think it will do any good, you may give an Extract, without any name or hint that can turn the Attention to me. if you do, cutt it out of the Paper and inclose it to me, for I have forgotten almost all about it and have no Copy.

"have all the five Numbers of Columbus been printed in the N. York Papers? I have not seen any one.

"I have Seen and detested the Libel on the President and observed the Proceedings in Consequence of it. Between you and me, if Virtues descend not by Inheritance, the Printer in Question is a Proof that an ill temper sometimes does. I am sorry however for I feel a regard for the Race who have good Qualities tho obscured by a little ill Nature.

"Mr Jefferson resigned his Office at the End of the Year and Yesterday was nominated and this day appointed Mr Randolph in his Stead. Mr Jefferson is going to Montecello to Spend his Days in Retirement, in Rural Amusements and Philosophical Meditations��� Untill the President dies or resigns, when I suppose he is to be invited from his Conversations with Egeria in the Groves, to take the Reins of the State, and conduct it forty Years in Piety and Peace. Amen.

"He goes out with a blaze of Glory about his head, at least in Southern Eyes for his astonishing Negotiations with Hammond Genet and Viar. I cannot Say however that I am pleased with his Resignation. He might have worn off his sharp Points and become a wiser Minister than he has been sometimes. His Abilities are good���his Pen is very good���and for what I know the other Ministers might be the better for being watched by him. They will however be watched by other Centinels in sufficient Numbers. I dont dislike a Precedent of Resignation, for I sometimes feel as if it would one day be my own Case and I should be glad to have an Example to quote.

"The Reasonings of Columbus, I am informed have carried Conviction to multitudes whose opinions were very different for Want of Information. It is indeed a luminous Production. The Writer had better mind his office, there are quantum meruits there. but none in Politicks, for an independent Man.

"My Regards where due.

"Fennos Paper is now a daily Advertising Paper, and whether it will be better than others I dont yet see. You have all in your N. York Papers that appears here and more. Not one Printer in this City has had the sense, Taste or Spirit to reprint a Line of Columbus; an habetude unpardonable.

"You must be very discreet with my Letters��� I shall write to you in Confidence Things not fit to be seen by others, as not sufficiently guarded & reserved."

 

John Adams to John Quincy Adams, 3 January 1793: "PHILADELPHIA....The Public Papers will inform you that Mr Jefferson has resigned and that Mr Randolph is appointed Secretary of State. The Attorney General is not yet nominated. Mr Lewis Mr Lawrence Mr Benson Mr Gore, Mr Potts &c have been mentioned in Conversation.

"The Motives to Mr Jeffersons Resignation are not assigned, and are left open to the Conjectures of a Speculating World. I also am a Speculator in the Principles and Motives of Mens Actions and may guess as well as others

Mr Jefferson has an habit as well as a disposition to expensive Living, and as his Salary was not Adequate to his Luxury, he could not Subdue his Pride and Vanity as I have done, and proportion his Style of Life to his Revenue.
Mr Jefferson is in debt as I have heard to an amount of Seven thousand Pounds before the War, so that I Suppose he cannot afford to Spend his private income in the Public service.
Mr Jefferson has been obliged to lower his Note in Politicks. Pains Principles when adopted by Genet, were not found so convenient for a Secretary of State.
He could not rule the Roast in the Ministry. He was often in a Minority.
Ambition is the Subtlest Beast of the Intellectual and Moral Field. It is wonderfully adroit in concealing itself from its owner, I had almost said from itself. Jefferson thinks he shall by this step get a Reputation of an humble, modest, meek Man, wholly without ambition or Vanity. He may even have deceived himself into this Belief. But if a Prospect opens, The World will see and he will feel, that he is as ambitious as Oliver Cromwell though no soldier.
At other Moments he may meditate the gratification of his Ambition; Numa was called from the Forrests to be King of Rome. And if Jefferson, after the Death or Resignation of the President should be summoned from the familiar Society of Egeria, to govern the Country forty Years in Peace and Piety, So be it.
The Tide of popular sentiment in Virginia runs not so rapidly in favour of Jacobinical feelings as it did��� though the Party were a Majority and carried every Member at the last Election, there are Symptoms of increasing foederalism in Virginia. a Wise Man like Jefferson foreseeth the Evil and hideth himself���

"But after all I am not very anxious what were his Motives.��� Tho his Desertion may be a Loss to Us, of some Talents I am not sorry for it on the whole, because his soul is poisoned with Ambition and his Temper imbittered against the Constitution and Administration as I think.

"all this is confidential."

Since the mid-1990s we have been, once again, living in a...

Since the mid-1990s we have been, once again, living in a world in which John Maynard Keynes is the most relevant economist to understanding our situation. Robert Skidelsky knows Keynes better than Keynes knew himself. Thus this is likely to be the most valuable economics book you read this year: Robert Skidelsky (2018): Money and Government: The Past and Future of Economics (New Haven: Yale University Press: 0300240325) https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0300240325

#shouldread
#books
#macroeconomics
#keynes

From Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, 16 June 1792

Thomas Jefferson (1792): To Lafayette, 16 June 1792: "Philadelphia June 16. 1792. Behold you then, my dear friend, at the head of a great army, establishing the liberties of your country against a foreign enemy. May heaven favor your cause, and make you the channel thro��� which it may pour it���s favors...

...While you are exterminating the monster aristocracy, and pulling out the teeth and fangs of it���s associate monarchy, a contrary tendency is discovered in some here. A sect has shewn itself among us, who declare they espoused our new constitution, not as a good and sufficient thing itself, but only as a step to an English constitution, the only thing good and sufficient in itself, in their eye. It is happy for us that these are preachers without followers, and that our people are firm and constant in their republican purity.

You will wonder to be told that it is from the Eastward chiefly that these champions for a king, lords and commons come. They get some important associates from New York, and are puffed off by a tribe of Agioteurs which have been hatched in a bed of corruption made up after the model of their beloved England. Too many of these stock jobbers and King-jobbers have come into our legislature, or rather too many of our legislature have become stock jobbers and king-jobbers. However the voice of the people is beginning to make itself heard, and will probably cleanse their seats at the ensuing election.

���The machinations of our old enemies are such as to keep us still at bay with our Indian neighbors.

���What are you doing for your colonies? They will be lost if not more effectually succoured. Indeed no future efforts you can make will ever be able to reduce the blacks. All that can be done in my opinion will be to compound with them as has been done formerly in Jamaica. We have been less zealous in aiding them, lest your government should feel any jealousy on our account. But in truth we as sincerely wish their restoration, and their connection with you, as you do yourselves. We are satisfied that neither your justice nor their distresses will ever again permit their being forced to seek at dear and distant markets those first necessaries of life which they may have at cheaper markets placed by nature at their door, and formed by her for their support:

���What is become of Mde. de Tessy and Mde. de Tott? I have not heard of them since they went to Switzerland. I think they would have done better to have come and reposed under the Poplars of Virginia. Pour into their bosoms the warmest effusions of my friendship and tell them they will be warm and constant unto death. Accept of them also for Mde. de la Fayette and your dear children���but I am forgetting that you are in the feilds of war and they I hope in those of peace.

Adieu my dear friend! God bless you all. Your���s affectionately

#weekendreading
#thomasjefferson

Jefferson, Adams, Malone, and the French Revolution: Weekend Reading

https://www.icloud.com/keynote/0Uxk8rt4DCJ1QcuwjVSsxI2yg | http://www.bradford-delong.com/2018/07/jefferson-adams-malone-and-the-french-revolution-weekend-reading.html

Thomas Jefferson was a great man and a small man. We know the great man well. Biographers like Dumas Malone however, try hard to keep us from knowing the small man: the one who was too approving of the Jacobins and the Terror; the funder of the first Journalistic Slime Machine; the owner of the sex-slave Sally Hemings:

Dumas Malone (1962): Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty (New York: Little, Brown), pp. 45 ff.: "Early in the year, Jefferson, writing a private letter to William Short [TJ to Short, Jan 3, 1793; Ford, VI, 153-7], now at The Hague...

...in the paternal tone which he had not yet laid aside, chided his former secretary for the "extreme warmth" with which the latter had censured the proceedings of the Jacobins in recent letters. He did this at the injunction of the President [Washington], he said, expressing the fear that if Short's criticisms became known they would injure him at home as well as abroad, since they would not be relished by his countrymen. This private letter contains as fervid comments as Jefferson ever made on the French Revolution, and it has been widely quoted by later writers for just that reason.

Jefferson's proneness to express himself more vehemently in private letters and memoranda than in public papers and official pronouncements does not make him unique among human beings. Other responsible officers besides him have let themselves go in private while weighing their public words, though the reverse has often been the case with campaign orators���of whom he was never one. Whether the measured judgments of a responsible statesman or the unrestrained private language of the same man should be regarded as the better index of his true sentiments is perhaps an unanswerable question, and both must be taken into account by anyone seeking to arrive at truth. A statesman must be judged at last by his public policies and official acts, which represent the results of his sober deliberation, but private language affords an important clue to the state of his own mind and emotions.

The contrast was unusually sharp in the case of Jefferson, who imposed extraordinary restraint on himself as a public man.... To hostile interpreters this apparent contradiction has lent color to the charge of duplicity... [but] his friends could not have been unaware of his proneness to exaggeration when blowing off steam in private; and the persons most aware of it should have been his young friends [like Short]....

No saying can be fully understood out of its specific setting, and some of the most vivid of Jefferson's were pedagogical in purpose.... This letter to Short is a case in point. The essential and abiding truth embedded in it is that all human progress is costly, especially progress toward liberty and democracy; but much of its imagery is such as poets would use���not mathematicians or coldly calculating statesmen

Jefferson's defense of the Jacobins... need not detain us.... [H]is information... could not be up to date... To him the Jacobins were merely the republican element in the old party of the Patriots, and the Feuillants... the monarchical. His friend Lafayette had belonged to the latter group, and he himself had been far from unsympathetic....

But in the year 1793... he was convinced that the "expunging" of the King had become an absolute necessity....

[...]

Short needed comfort, however, more than logic. The personal cost of the revolution was mounting, and the human toll was being taken among the very people whom he and Jefferson had valued most during the latter's stay in France. Lafayette... in custody, and the liberal-minded Duc de la Rouchefoucauld... snatched from his carriage and killed before the eyes of his old mother and young wife... [this] affected Short the most... embitter[ed] him. Jefferson... was well aware of the general trend when he sought to bring philosophy to bear on these fearful developments:

In the struggle which was necessary, many guilty persons fell without the forms of trial, and with them some innocent. These I deplore as much as anybody, and shall deplore some of them to the day of my death. But I deplore them as I should have done had they fallen in battle.... The liberty of the whole earth was depending on the issue of the contest, and was ever such a prize won with so little innocent blood? My own affections have been deeply wounded by some of the martyrs to the cause, but rather than it should have failed, I would have seen half the earth desolated. Were there but an Adam and an Eve left in every country, and left free, it would be better than as it now is...

In the last two sentences Jefferson indulged in hyperbole.... The record of Jefferson's reasoned and disciplined life gives every ground to suppose that he himself would have recoiled from [their literal application].... He would certainly have said no such thing in public, and he could hardly have been expected to anticipate that private words of his would be quoted to schoolboys in later generations, seized upon by political partisans, or exploited by reckless demagogues.

In writing to one he regarded as a son he let his poetic imagery run away with him.... He was saying that despotism had been overthrown in France... would eventually be overcome everywhere... in the light of this vast triumph for... human liberty the losses must be regarded as slight. He afterwards had to revise the casualty lists upward, but he was prepared for that... the abiding significance of his reflections lies in his frank recognition that the cost of liberty may be and frequently is exceedingly high...

John Adams (1813): To Thomas Jefferson, 13 July 1813: "The first time that you and I differed in opinion on any material question was after your arrival from Europe; and that point was the French Revolution...

...You was well persuaded in your own mind that the nation would succeed in establishing a free republican government; I was as well persuaded, in mine, that a project of such a government over five and twenty millions of people, when four and twenty millions and five hundred thousands of them could neither write nor read, was as unnatural, irrational, and impracticable as it would be over the elephants, lions, tigers, panthers, wolves, and bears in the Royal Managerie at Versailles���.

When Lafayette harangued you and me and John Quincy Adams through a whole evening in your hotel in the cul de sac at Paris and developed the plans then in operation to reform France, though I was as silent as you was��� I was astonished at the grossness of his ignorance of government and history, as I had been for years before at that of Turgot, Rochefaucault, Condorcet, and Franklin. This gross Ideology of them all first suggested to me the thought and the inclination which I afterwards hinted to you in London of writing something upon aristocracy. I was restrained for years by many fearful considerations.��� I should make enemies of all the French Patriots, the Dutch Patriots, the English Republicans, Dissenters, Reformers, call them what you will; and, what came nearer home to my bosom than all the rest, I knew I should give offense to many if not all of my best friends in America and very probably destroy all the little popularity I ever had in a country where popularity had more omnipotence than the British Parliament assumed���.

But when the French Assembly of Notables met and I saw that Turgot���s ���Government in one center and that center the nation���--a sentence as mysterious or as contradictory as the Athanasian Creed--was about to take place; and when I saw that Shays���s Rebellion was breaking out in Massachusetts; and when I saw that even my obscure name was often quoted in France as an advocate for simple democracy; when I saw that the sympathies in America had caught the French flame: I was determined to wash my own hands as clean as I could of all this foulness. I had then strong forebodings that I was sacrificing all the honors and emoluments of this life; and so it has happened, but not in so great a degree as I apprehended.

In truth, my Defence of the Constitutions and ���Discourses on Davila��� laid the foundation of that immense unpopularity which fell like the Tower of Siloam upon me. Your steady defense of democratical principles and your invariable favorable opinion of the French Revolution laid the foundation of your unbounded popularity.

Sic transit gloria mundi���

Thomas Jefferson to William Short, 3 January 1793: Weekend Reading

Thomas Jefferson: To William Short, 3 January 1793: "Philadelphia Jan. 3. 1793. Dear Sir...

...My last private letter to you was of Oct. 16. since which I have recieved your No. 103. 107. 108. 109. 110. 112. 113. and 114. and yesterday your private one of Sep. 15. came to hand.

The tone of your letters had for some time given me pain, on account of the extreme warmth with which they censured the proceedings of the Jacobins of France. I considered that sect as the same with the Republican patriots, and the Feuillants as the Monarchical patriots, well known in the early part of the revolution, and but little distant in their views, both having in object the establishment of a free constitution, and differing only on the question whether their chief Executive should be hereditary or not.

The Jacobins (as since called) yeilded to the Feuillants and tried the experiment of retaining their hereditary Executive. The experiment failed completely, and would have brought on the reestablishment of despotism had it been pursued. The Jacobins saw this, and that the expunging that officer was of absolute necessity, and the Nation was with them in opinion, for however they might have been formerly for the constitution framed by the first assembly, they were come over from their hope in it, and were now generally Jacobins.

In the struggle which was necessary, many guilty persons fell without the forms of trial, and with them some innocent. These I deplore as much as any body, and shall deplore some of them to the day of my death. But I deplore them as I should have done had they fallen in battle. It was necessary to use the arm of the people, a machine not quite so blind as balls and bombs, but blind to a certain degree. A few of their cordial friends met at their hands the fate of enemies. But time and truth will rescue and embalm their memories, while their posterity will be enjoying that very liberty for which they would never have hesitated to offer up their lives.

The liberty of the whole earth was depending on the issue of the contest, and was ever such a prize won with so little innocent blood?

My own affections have been deeply wounded by some of the martyrs to this cause, but rather than it should have failed, I would have seen half the earth desolated. Were there but an Adam and an Eve left in every country, and left free, it would be better than as it now is.

I have expressed to you my sentiments, because they are really those of 99 in an hundred of our citizens. The universal feasts, and rejoicings which have lately been had on account of the successes of the French shewed the genuine effusions of their hearts. You have been wounded by the sufferings of your friends, and have by this circumstance been hurried into a temper of mind which would be extremely disrelished if known to your countrymen. The reserve of the Prest. of the U.S. had never permitted me to discover the light in which he viewed it, and as I was more anxious that you should satisfy him than me, I had still avoided explanations with you on the subject. But your 113. induced him to break silence and to notice the extreme acrimony of your expressions. He added that he had been informed the sentiments you expressed in your conversations were equally offensive to our allies, and that you should consider yourself as the representative of your country and that what you say might be imputed to your constituents.

He desired me therefore to write to you on this subject.

He added that he considered France as the sheet anchor of this country and its friendship as a first object. There are in the U.S. some characters of opposite principles; some of them are high in office, others possessing great wealth, and all of them hostile to France and fondly looking to England as the staff of their hope. These I named to you on a former occasion. Their prospects have certainly not brightened. Excepting them, this country is entirely republican, friends to the constitution, anxious to preserve it and to have it administered according to it���s own republican principles.

The little party above mentioned have espoused it only as a stepping stone to monarchy, and have endeavored to approximate it to that in it���s administration, in order to render it���s final transition more easy. The successes of republicanism in France have given the coup de grace to their prospects, and I hope to their projects.

���I have developed to you faithfully the sentiments of your country, that you may govern yourself accordingly. I know your republicanism to be pure, and that it is no decay of that which has embittered you against it���s votaries in France, but too great a sensibility at the partial evil by which it���s object has been accomplished there. I have written to you in the stile to which I have been always accustomed with you, and which perhaps it is time I should lay aside. But while old men feel sensibly enough their own advance in years, they do not sufficiently recollect it in those whom they have seen young. In writing too the last private letter which will probably be written under present circumstances, in contemplating that your correspondence will shortly be turned over to I know not whom, but certainly to some one not in the habit of considering your interests with the same fostering anxieties I do, I have presented things without reserve, satisfied you will ascribe what I have said to it���s true motive, use it for your own best interest, and in that fulfill completely what I had in view.

With respect to the subject of your letter of Sep. 15. you will be sensible that many considerations would prevent my undertaking the reformation of a system of which I am so soon to take leave. It is but common decency to leave to my successor the moulding of his own business.

���Not knowing how otherwise to convey this letter to you with certainty, I shall appeal to the friendship and honour of the Spanish commissioners here, to give it the protection of their cover, as a letter of private nature altogether. We have no remarkeable event here lately, but the death of Dr. Lee: nor have I any thing new to communicate to you of your friends or affairs. I am with unalterable affection & wishes for your prosperity, my dear Sir, your sincere friend and servant.

P.S. Jan. 15. Your Nos. 116. 117. and Private of Nov. 2 are received. ���Congress have before them a statement of the paiments to France. It appears none were made from Dec. till Aug. nine. This long previous suspension and paiment the day before the tenth August begot suspicions on Gov. Morrise. Hamilton cleared him and leaves it on you by denying that Morris had any thing to do with it, and he clear[s]11 himself by saying that you had no order[s] from hence either for the suspension or paiment. Contrive to convey to me the truth of this and I will have it so used for your justification as to clear you with all and injure you with none

#weekendreading
#thomasjefferson