"And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle" by Jon Meacham (2022)

The book’s moral is that it pays to have principles, even in politics. One may lose a score of elections because of principles, but in the end, should one ever be elected, it will be thanks to them principles. And if one is never elected, then at least one can console oneself with the thought that at least one has been true to one’s principles. Staying loyal to principles is the winning strategy—as long as one does not mind a chance of being slightly killed because of them.

Oddly, the book’s author constantly hedges, as if scared of being accused of complicity in Lincoln’s lack of clairvoyance or of being held accountable for Lincoln’s refusal to pander to the sensibilities of modern book-reading audiences.

Meacham purveys facts. He does not bring debates about ideas to life. In his narrative, ideas are dogmas. Some dogmas win, some lose. Thanks to Lincoln’s dogmatism, the deserving dogma has won.

"Streets of Gold: America's Untold Story of Immigrant Success" by Ran Abramitzky and Leah Boustan (2022)

The book first fleshes out a handful of immigration myths that some people purportedly hold only to debunk them by appealing to the authors' and their colleagues' academic research. One myth is that immigrants today are slow to assimilate. Another myth is that immigrants impoverish the communities that they join. The book's ambition is to engage with the political debates of the day; those interested in science, can read the papers. This ambition comes at the price of necessarily dating the book.

The book could have been shorter. It prides itself on not needing to rely on anecdotes in order to uncover general tendencies, and yet indulges in anecdotes galore. The book sets out not to weigh in on policy matters, and yet does not miss the opportunity to nudge the reader to accept open borders. At the same time, the book's provocative policy proposals also make the book memorable, raise bigger questions beyond the book's scope, and set the book apart from the presumably dry academic prose on which it is based.

Drácula

(26 October 2024, Un Teatro)

Power is not freedom. Power is the ability to affect change. The powerful unfree do not get to choose whether to affect change and, if so, which change to affect. One is powerful but unfree if one's passions or convictions leave one no choice but to act.

"Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways" in America by David Hackett Fischer (1989)

There is much to be admired about each of the four tribes that migrated to America. There is much to be admired about their mutual suspicion and incomprehension. There is much to be admired about their offspring's ability to eventually agree on building a new country together. A substantial degree of conflict is certainly a feature, not a bug, of American politics. 

“One is occasionally tempted to abandon the role of the historian and to frame what social scientists call a theory,” remarks David Hackett Fischer. And yet he does not succumb to this temptation. As a result, there is nothing to disagree with in the book. A fact is a fact.

Joker: Folie à Deux

In this instalment, the system takes revenge on freedom. 

Freedom is the plurality of stories: the human stories that run in parallel in society, the stories that one man is capable of living concurrently, and the stories that are capable of coexisting in one man's head. Identity is the inability to be free.

Am I Racist? (2024)

The theatrical release and the smashing commercial success (by documentary standards) of this motion picture are testaments to the fact that the fabric of American society is more intricate, and the society itself is more harmonious, than legacy media and common news aggregators would make one believe from a distance.

"Benjamin Franklin: An American Life" by Walter Isaacson (2004)

Many ways in which Benjamin Franklin is claimed to have set the tone for America is a reflection of the fact that America was already America and preset when Franlkin was coming of age. America was also setting the tone for him, a curious young man growing up in a society that was open to being free.

Franklin and his peers were the counterparts of today's tech entrepreneurs. Instead of shaping designing apps and ecosystems, Franklin's peers were designing societies and the Republic.

Isaacson observes that, among other things, Franklin was the father of this American trait that is self-deprecating humour. It is hard to tell what the counterfactual would have been. The bar seems low; Americans are not particularly known for self deprecation even post-Franklin. Franklin's far greater contribution to the American character is best captured by Edmund Burke's adage “Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.” 

It may be hard to re-assess the wisdom of the forefathers, for their wisdom has been stress-tested in the environment that is quite different from ours. The fact that the environment was different from ours does not mean it can never come to pass again. So, we should not discard the institutions of the ancients on a whim.