Posted on by rjonakait

Hamilton, Morgan, and Adam Smith

Our 250th anniversary has been used by various individuals and organizations to promote ideas and policies other than the celebration of our founding. For example, a recent piece in the Financial Times points out that since Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations was also published in 1776, this is time to honor Smith’s ideas. Michael Strain, the author of “On America’s 250th, remember your Adam Smith,” maintains that both the Declaration of Independence and Wealth “prioritise liberty. In the Declaration,” he writes, “Jefferson argues that individual liberty is an inalienable right. Smith argues that prosperity is advanced when market activity is free and not unnecessarily constrained by big government, powerful monopolies, trade barriers or other limits on market competition.” Both, he asserts, have profoundly influenced the United States. “The ideas animating those documents — the importance of free people and free markets to human flourishing — have profoundly shaped America and the modern world.” The author is concerned that commitment to these ideas is now under “direct assault” in America.

The author misleads. While the Declaration has been a grand, aspirational document, Adam Smith’s ideas of free markets and the “invisible hand,” while often given token obeisance, have never been the driving force of the economy or of freedom in this country.

At the country’s inception, Alexander Hamilton laid out his economic ideas in his 1791 Report on Manufactures. His proposals, not Smith’s, became the driving economic philosophy for the United States both in the Eighteenth Century and well beyond the Civil War.

Hamilton was familiar with Adam Smith’s notions of free markets and the invisible hand, but Hamilton rejected them, at least for America. Smith encouraged free international trade. Hamilton, on the other hand, sought tariffs to raise government revenue but also to protect infant American industry. Hamilton also diverged from Smith by advocating government subsidies to industry. In addition, Hamilton encouraged what were then called “internal improvements,” what today would be labeled government spending on infrastructure. Hamilton favored not lesser government but a more powerful national state that would operate to give as much favoritism to businesses as it could.

In the Nineteenth Century, Hamilton’s ideas were incorporated into Henry Clay’s “American system,” although Clay sought even higher protective tariffs than Hamilton did. Abraham Lincoln admired and followed Clay, and Clay’s principles became founding principles of the Republican party. Its 1860 platform, in addition to opposing the extension of slavery, promised to increase tariffs, pass homestead laws (which, in effect, gave away federal land), and build a transcontinental railroad that depended on federal subsidies. These were not consistent with the ideas of Adam Smith.

More crucial to the country’s early economic growth than free markets were the internal improvements of the government. The prime early example was the Erie Canal, which transformed the American economic landscape. The goods and produce of heartland America now had an international outlet through the port of New York, making New York City the economic center of the country. triumphing over Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Charleston. The canal, of course, was not the product of free enterprise, but of government, in this case New York State government. Railroads later became an economic engine, but the tracks for the intercontinental road, a product of Lincoln’s presidency, and other train routes were laid with federal government subsidies. After the Civil War, many tariffs increased to protect American industries, despite what Adam Smith wrote as desirable in Wealth of Nations.

The federal government interfered with free markets in another significant way in the decades before and after the turn of the Twentieth Century. Adam Smith believed that there should be a free market in labor. Whether that was achievable in his day is not clear, but it became increasingly difficult in the Gilded Age with the rise of massive corporations. These companies did not have to bargain with workers; they could dictate wages and working conditions — well, they could at least until the rise of labor unions, which put labor on a more equal bargaining footing with management. However, time and again, in a part of our history seldom taught, the government interfered in these “free” markets with military force suppressing unions and strikes.

A hundred years after Hamilton, another American economic giant rejected Adam Smith, the invisible hand, and free markets. Smith wrote before the industrial revolution. He posited that while companies would try to make more money than their rivals, competition would ensure that firms would level out and none would dominate the market. His ideas were formed when comparatively little capital was needed to enter a market, but his model of perfect competition did not exist with the rise of large-scale, capital-intensive enterprises after the Civil War. Then it became possible for a few giant firms to overcome competitive restraints and control significant portions of their markets. As Jean Strouse indicates in her massive and masterful biography Morgan: American Financier, J.P. Morgan, who helped shepherd the United States through several severe economic crises, saw competitive markets as inefficient and wasteful driving down the profits needed for necessary capital formation. In a process that came to be known as “morganisation,” Morgan eliminated “ruinous” price wars by combining rival companies into monopolies or cartels that controlled both prices, which could be increased, and wages, which could be reduced. Morgan insisted that the result produced greater industrial efficiency which led to greater national prosperity while leading–by coincidence, of course–to vast wealth for Morgan and other plutocrats. (Adam Smith did not foresee the vast power of the trusts and monopolies, but he did acknowledge, “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”)

Any Smithian idea of a small government was destroyed in the Twentieth and Twenty-First centuries as the American state grew and then grew some more. And the notion that free markets unencumbered by government have been our primary economic driving force is indefensible. There are legions of examples, but it is clear, for example, that special tax provisions for oil and real estate industries alone, but also for many other enterprises, have tilted capital markets. Many corporate and personal fortunes have been made or increased by government contracts in “markets” that would not exist without the large, modern state. And so on, and so on.

Indeed, it is striking that it is not Adam Smith but Alexander Hamilton who is again being invoked by present conservatives. J.D. Vance recently said, “American economic policy on the right is now much more Alexnder Hamilton that it is Milton Friedman.” Axios translates this to mean that “Vance believes the GOP’s intellectual center of gravity is shifting away from free markets to a more interventionist government that promotes domestic industry.” Welcome back Hamilton

Our 250th anniversary is not a time to bring back Adam Smith. Adam Smith has never been here.

Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

I eat a lot of corn on the cob during the summer season, but I am confused about how to cook it. Every day I seem to get a computer feed announcing the best way to cook corn. Unfortunately, the advisors, always definitive sounding, do not agree. I should roast it in the oven with the husk on. I should roast it in the oven with husk off but brushed with olive oil. I should grill it wrapped in foil. I should grill it with the husk on. I should grill it with the husk off. I should boil it for four, eight, ten minutes. I should steam it for six, eight, ten minutes. I should drop the corn into a half inch of boiling water, bring it back to a boil, and cover it for two or three minutes. Whatever method I choose, many “experts” will say, it’s wrong.

A friend sent me a cartoon with an “updated” picture of Mt. Rushmore. It was now four presidents with the fifth image an equine patootie. That reminded me of an unpleasant experience last week. I was in my local Pennsylvania bar in a county that is split 50-50 red and blue. I was nursing my Barley Creek Summer Ale when Trump appeared on one of the four TVs above the square bar. I muttered, but not quietly enough, “That horse’s ass.” The guy next to me, whom I did not know, spun me slightly towards him, hauled off, and punched me in the nose. I did not go down, but my nose spouted blood and ran down my face and shirt onto the bar. My fellow patron stormed out. As I was wadding up paper napkins to shove up my nose, the bartender came over and started mopping up blood. I said, “I’m sorry. I should have realized that there would be Trump supporters in here.” “No, he is not a Trump backer,” the barkeep replied. “He’s a horse lover.”

As conservatives have done many times in our history, they are labeling opponents “communists.” Trump has been saying that candidates and officials on the Democratic side are communists who will destroy the country. Apparently, the country will self-destruct if the mayor of New York City gets his way, and New York owns a grocery store. Really??? If a city selling canned peas and red (not communist) potatoes is tantamount to destroying the country, we are incredibly weak, and perhaps we should change our national leadership posthaste. Instead, we should realize that municipalities have widely engaged in “socialism” without the republic collapsing. For example, in the Pennsylvania county where I spend part of the year, private companies handle the trash, supply the water, and furnish the electricity to many of the boroughs and towns. Free enterprise at work, perhaps. On the other hand, in the small town where I grew up, garbage was collected by city workers, and the water company was part of the municipal government. Both private companies and municipal entities provided electricity. I guess that in today’s terms my hometown would be labeled “communist,” but the city was in Wisconsin in the days of Wisconsinite Joe McCarthy, who had no trouble finding communists in closets, bedding, and conference rooms everywhere. Even so, Tailgunner Joe did not label Sheboygan communist. And even if he had, the country has survived this brand of socialism and similar ones in towns and cities across the country. Some people even think that servicing the populace is one of the roles of government! I take no stand on whether Mamdani’s grocery store is a good idea, but, no; I don’t think it jeopardizes the stability of the country.

Stephen Kinzer reports in The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War (2013) that Secretary of State Foster Dulles, who considered himself a devout Presbyterian, said, “There are two kinds of people in the world. There are those who are Christians and support free enterprise, and there are the others.”

Posted on by rjonakait

First Sentences

“I grew up on gangster stories.” Rich Cohen, The Last Pirate of New York: A Ghost Ship, a Killer, and the Birth of a Gangster Nation (2019).

“The headquarters of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, occupies an imposing edifice of concrete and green glass on the south bank of the River Thames, in London.” Patrick Radden Keefe, London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth (2026).

“’The English language,’ observed Ralph Waldo Emerson, ‘is the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven.’” Robert McCrum, William Cran, and Robert MacNeill, The Story of English (1986).

“Some Buddhists might say that to write a biography of Siddhatta Gotoma is a very un-Buddhist thing to do.” Karen Armstrong, Buddha (2001).

“As a child, I had a number of strong religious beliefs but little faith in God.” Karen Armstrong, A History of God: The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam (1994).

“It seemed an unlikely choice, this large establishment in the financial district, so I stood outside and checked the address, the name of the restaurant, I wondered if I had made a mistake.” Katie Kitamura, Audition (2025).

“’The Jew is being legislated out of Russia,’ Mark Twain wrote in Harper’s Magazine in 1898.” Daniel Gordis, Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn (2016).

“Old Lanscombe moved totteringly from room to room pulling up the blinds.” Agatha Christie, After the Funeral (1953).

“The economy is the grandest collaborative project in human history.” Alex Mayyasi, Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life (2026).

“Sometimes a flare goes up and you get to see exactly where everyone is standing.” Douglas Murray, On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization (2025).

“Evel Knievel was never a very skilled daredevil, but that was part of his charm.” Jeffrey Toobin, The Pardon: The Politics of Presidential Mercy.

“Fascism was the major political innovation of the twentieth century, and the source of much of its pain.” Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism.

“They came for her in late August, on the island of Corsica.” Daniel Silva, The English Girl (2013).

“Just months after being paroled from Massachusetts state prison, where he had recently finished serving a seventeen-year sentence for kidnapping and attempted extortion, Louis Royce, now well into his seventies, walks easily through the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.” Stephen Kurkjian, Master Thieves: The Boston Gangsters Who Pulled Off the World’s Greatest Art Heist

Posted on by rjonakait

Whither NIH and Life Expectancy?

My latest copy of Imprimis, a publication of the beloved-by-conservatives Hillsdale College, has the essay “Launching a Second Scientific Revolution” by Jay Bhattacharya, Director of the National Institutes of Health. He explains how he is reshaping the NIH to address what he says are three great problems that science now faces.

First, he notes that many published scientific results turn out not to be true (how many, he doesn’t say). Bhattacharya states that this problem can be addressed if NIH funds more replication research. This, he says, will make it easier to find whether scientific ideas have validity.

Second, he wants to address “scientific stagnation.” He maintains that present scientific research does not advance the ball as far as it once did: “For every dollar we spend on science, we get far less scientific advancement than we did over the past five decades. Another way of looking at this is that for every additional research paper in biomedicine, there are fewer improvements in health per paper.” He maintains that NIH funds “old ideas” too often and does not give enough grants to young scientists who are more likely to have new ideas. “The NIH needs to start funding ideas on the bleeding edge of science—ideas that may not work but that offer the greatest chance of advancing science.” [By the way, there has always been a category of grants funded under a heading something like “High Risk, High Payoff.”]

Finally, he believes that NIH funding is too concentrated in a small number of institutions. Good scientists at other places often have difficulty in competing for grants, and he seeks to change that by separating funding that goes to the researcher from funding that goes to institutions for equipment and other costs.

These are concerns worth addressing, but there are other problems at NIH that Bhattacharya apparently does not want to discuss. Thus, as the spouse wrote in the recent post of June 11 “Whither Biomedical Science?”, “Beginning in February 2025 the Trump administration terminated 2,300 ongoing research grants, amounting to cuts of almost $4 billion.” These cuts were made without any evidence that the grantees were failing to do the kind of good science that Bhattacharya claims to want. Nature Briefing reports today that grants that have passed peer review and are set for funding are being held up as they are scrutinized for terms such as “racism,” “fossil fuel,” or “sexual minority,” inclusion of which makes a grant “not clean.” What is the Director’s position on the administration’s slashing of scientific budgets and withholding grant funding on grounds that are different from Bhattacharya’s goals of replication and bleeding edge science?

The Director also suggests that science has moved backwards. He states that the scientific revolution took away from ecclesiastical authorities the power to decide scientific questions and placed scientific questions with a lot of smart scientists.  “Unfortunately,” he continues, “we find ourselves back in a situation today, as demonstrated a few years ago by the Covid lockdowns, mask mandates, and vaccination requirements, where a relatively small number of people—directors of government agencies like the National Institutes of Health, heads of international agencies like the World Health Organization, and editors of prestigious journals—have the power to say what is true or false in science.” At a minimum, this statement is ironical but more likely hypocritical.

As the June 11 post by the spouse makes clear, scientists no longer will control what scientific research will be undertaken. This time it is not an ecclesiastical authority in charge but a nonscientific, secular one. A Trump executive order requires that “discretionary awards must…demonstrably advance the President’s policy priorities.” The Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which has the task of implementing Executive Orders, has recently promulgated new rules that will apply to the funding of scientific grants. These prohibit money going to recipients that facilitate DEI. As the spouse said, “Technically, awards are granted to institutions, not to individuals. This means that even if a scientific study has nothing to do with DEI, funding can be withheld if the formal recipient of the grant (e.g., a university) engages in something that is determined to be in violation of the administration’s DEI policies. This appears to be designed to punish institutions that are in presumed non-compliance at the expense of what might be relevant and meritorious science.”

Furthermore, “and more insidiously, the OMB regulations would give final approval authority not to a scientific advisory council, but rather to a political appointee whose job it will be to ensure that grant applications are consistent with administrative priorities, do not espouse ‘anti-American’ (undefined) ideas, and are in the ‘national interest’ (undefined). This can and will lead to decisions based on political considerations (undefined), not scientific merit.” What should we make of a Director of the NIH who is outraged at vaccination mandates urged by scientists and health professionals during a pandemic that killed millions but who now serves a system that gives the final approval for scientific research to nonscientist political appointees using vague guidelines that are not scientific?

Bhattacharya also praised the NIH. “Almost every modern advance in biomedicine has, at its root, an NIH investment. NIH is, by far, the single largest public funder of biomedical research in the world, providing 85 percent of funding in every single area of biomedicine.” That’s great, but, of course, that may not be true in the future as the administration seeks to cut scientific budgets. After praising medical advances stemming from NIH activities, he, however, sounds a note of warning: “But when we look at life expectancy in the United States since 2010—and this is not the case in most European countries—we find that there has been no improvement despite the huge investments we have made in medical research.” He presents a graph comparing life expectancy in Sweden and the United States. People on average live nearly eight years longer in Sweden, which has shown a steady increase in that expectancy. The U.S. has had major dips in life expectancy starting in 2018 and again in 2025. (Bhattacharya does not mention who was president when those decreases occurred.) He goes on to state: “We have huge chronic disease problems. We can solve them—but we can only solve them if we fix science.”

The notion, however, that inadequate science is the reason for the difference in life expectancy rates between Sweden and the United States is balderpiffle. The results of NIH and other scientific research are published and available to all. It is not some sort of science available to Swedes but not Americans that allows the Swedish to live longer. If Bhattacharya wants to understand the differences in Swedish and American life expectancies, he should examine other aspects of Swedish government and society.

Swedes do not have to worry about paying doctors. The healthcare system is government funded. Swedes do not have to worry about going bankrupt if sick. Incapacitated Swedes continue to get wages if certified ill by a doctor.

Sweden provides for paid parental leave up to sixteen months. Sweden provides for cash benefits to families with children under sixteen as well as housing allowances for families. It provides public daycare for children under seven. These are some of the reasons that the infant mortality rate in Sweden is about one-third of America’s.

Education is free from preschool through university. Swedes don’t suffer from the stress of educational debt.

Poverty is lower and less entrenched than in the United States. Swedes have shorter working hours with generous vacations and holidays. They are eligible for old age social security at sixty-one. All this correlates with longer life expectancies.

Sweden does have one of the highest tax rates in the world, but it has led to more than longer life expectancies. Surveys of the happiest people always have the Scandinavian countries, including Sweden, with their high tax rates at the top of the list, far outranking the United States.

If Bhattacharya wants longer American life expectancies, he should be looking first to reforming our healthcare, welfare, education, and social support systems. But, of course, people in this conservative administration will not last long if they advocate reforms to make us more like Sweden, even if we would be healthier and live longer.

Instead, we have cut the budget for SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which helps people with lower incomes to buy groceries essential for health and nutrition. The One Big Beautiful Bill has cuts of up to $1 trillion to Medicaid with millions of our poorest neighbors projected to lose coverage. Medicare changes will increase costs or reduce access for many. Subsidies for health insurance have been cut causing many to abandon health insurance altogether. And unless changes are made to the program, social security benefits will see a reduction as early as 2032. These “reforms” are not the kind that will decrease our life expectancy gap with civilized nations but will only increase the divide.

Posted on by rjonakait · 1 Comment

To Vaccinate or Not To Vaccinate. Lessons from Lackland

Flu has recently swept through the Lackland Air Base. About 160 troops training there have been sick. This outbreak comes only two months after Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, ended the longstanding requirement that American troops have flu vaccinations. He stated that it was an “absurd, overreaching” mandate that had served to “weaken our warfighting capabilities.” The flu vaccine is now voluntary in the military. Hegseth again: “Under the disastrous Biden administration, this Pentagon waged an unrelenting war on our warriors on many fronts, including when it came to denying them simple medical autonomy and the freedom to express their religious convictions.”

Perhaps peer pressure tells trainees that it is unwarriorlike to get vaccinated. (The notion that “real” warriors don’t get vaccinations does not seem to be undercut by Trump’s having had flu and Covid shots.) Perhaps the trainees think diarrhea, vomiting, and fevers are manly. Whatever the reason, only 40% of trainees had the flu shot. Well, that was true before an exception to the voluntary vaccine policy was imposed at Lackland. Flu vaccinations are now required.

Hegseth did not explain how mandatory flu shots weakened our warfighting capabilities, but I assume that is because about 8,700 armed forces personnel quit or were discharged when they refused to get vaccinated when it was mandated. (Now they can be reinstated, but only thirteen have sought reinstatement.) That loss, however, only harms fighting prowess if those who quit could not be replaced with vaccinated warriors, and nothing indicates they weren’t. Instead, Trump boasts that our recruitments have never been better. Sorry, Mr. Hegseth, but vaccinated warriors lead to military strength. It is hard to fight effectively with diarrhea, vomiting, and fevers. Removing the vaccination requirement does the opposite of strengthening our military forces.

Hegseth gave medical autonomy as a reason for rescinding the vaccine mandate, but, of course, autonomy has limits. For example, the decision whether to have an abortion is one of medical autonomy, but that autonomy is lacking in much of this country. Moreover, vaccinations are not simply questions of personal medical autonomy. Flu vaccines reduce the likelihood of getting sick, but they do not totally prevent the illness. If I get the flu, others in contact with me are more likely to get the flu, too. My decision whether to get vaccinated affects the people around me, and that would seem to be especially so when I sleep in barracks and eat communally. Those others require consideration.

I own a quarter acre in Pennsylvania. Often in the autumn when it has been dry, the county bans open burning. The government is telling me what I can’t do on my property, which seemingly infringes my rights. (The Constitution has explicit provisions protecting property. It does not have any provisions for medical autonomy.) The ban protects me from myself, just as a vaccine mandate does. I am less likely to burn my property if I don’t openly burn in the dry spell. But the burn ban also protects my neighbors as well. Other properties are also less likely to be destroyed if I don’t openly burn. With an open burn ban, more than my property rights should, and are, considered. With a vaccination requirement, more than an individual’s medical autonomy should be weighed.

Hegseth also said that the military should have “freedom to express their religious convictions.” These stem from the scripture that says, “The Lord said, ‘Verily, do not permit your holy body to be jabbed so as to prevent liquid bowels, upchucking, and chills and sweats. The path to the Lord is an uncomfortable one that should not be lessened.’” Oh, wait. There is no such passage.

Even so, religious objections to vaccinations have existed for hundreds of years. Puritan Minister Cotton Mather learned about smallpox vaccinations from his West African slave Onesimus and employed the technique in the 1720s when Boston suffered a smallpox outbreak. Objections to the inoculations were strong. Although Cotton Mather was hardly lax on the religiosity front, the method was said to be ungodly because it was not mentioned in the Bible. Furthermore, it affronted God’s right to determine who was to die and how and when they should meet their Maker. But experience showed that the vaccinations prevented deaths from smallpox, which, surprise, surprise, both the godly and the ungodly wanted. The practice spread in colonial America, and in 1775 George Washington required the vaccination of the Continental Army. It soon gained general acceptance in the larger cities and towns of the United States.

The practice, however, did have dangers, but those were lessened when Dr. Edward Jenner learned a safer way to vaccinate. Mandatory vaccinations ensued. Boston was the first American city to require school children to be vaccinated against smallpox, and other states and cities adopted the policy and added similar requirements as other vaccines were developed. Over a century after Jenner’s discovery, Cambridge, Massachusetts, in response to an outbreak and pursuant to a state law, required adults to get smallpox vaccinations.

Henning Jacobson said that forcing him to be vaccinated violated the liberty guaranteed by the Constitution and that no one should be subjected to the law if they objected to vaccination no matter what their reason. The issue made its way to the United States Supreme Court. In 1905 Jacobson v. Massachusetts held that individual liberty could be restrained by reasonable laws for the safety of the general public and that “real liberty for all could not exist under the operation of a principle which recognizes the right of each individual person to use his own liberty, whether in respect of his person or property, regardless of the injury that may be done to others.” The mandatory vaccination requirement for adults was upheld.

 In 1922 the Supreme Court extended its Jacobson ruling. Zucht v. King upheld the San Antonio, Texas, school district’s rule that excluded children from both public and private schools if they did not have a smallpox vaccination. Since then lower courts have found many different vaccination requirements to be constitutional.

Since the development of the smallpox vaccine, other vaccines have prevented much human misery, but in spite of what the Supreme Court held more than a century ago, many claim they have a constitutional right to refuse a mandated vaccination. Today the assertions often conflate a personal belief with a religious one. Many people seem to feel that their strong belief must be ordained by their God. Since the Covid pandemic, we have seen an increasing number of claims that mandatory vaccinations violate people’s religious convictions when the belief really seems to come from anti-government feeling or their own misinformed views of vaccine’s dangers.

Whether the anti-vax belief is truly religious and should be an accepted form of relief from mandated vaccinations is a topic for another day. Today, though, we can focus on the simple lesson from the outbreak at Lackland: Ending the vaccine mandate undercut the readiness of our armed forces. Sick soldiers are not the best warriors. Hegseth has harmed, not strengthened, our military.

Posted on by rjonakait

The PHG

It was not the promised unconditional surrender. Instead, we placed some (minor) conditions on our capitulation. Once again, we should realize that no matter how strong our military, we are limited in what we can accomplish through such might. Richard Nixon found that out.

Nixon, like the current president, promised to easily end wars. Nixon’s presidential campaign said that he had a secret plan to end the Vietnam War. Apparently that meant that two years later he would have the United States secretly invade Cambodia. When this became public knowledge, a huge backlash emerged. Perhaps surprising to the modern observer, outrage came from both sides of the congressional aisle. Congress then still performed some of its checks-and-balance function, and the invasion became a catalyst for the War Powers Resolution, which has been ignored by our present legislature.

Nixon addressed the nation on April 30, 1970, to justify the new or broader war and said that the United States would become a “pitiful, helpless giant” if it failed to use its military might abroad in furtherance of freedom: “If, when the chips are down, the world’s most powerful nation, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world.”

Nixon missed the point. If we were a PHG, it was not because we refrained from the use of our power. We had a half million troops in Vietnam, and we had bombed the bejesus out of that country and were now going for Cambodia. We had bombed Laos even more and even longer, but these actions had not, and did not, produce the desired results. If we were a pitiful, helpless giant, it was because our widespread use of military force could not defeat our foes. When his physical strength does not cow his target, the bully becomes helpless. We were helpless in Nixon’s time not because of military restraint but because we knew nothing but military force and did not understand its limits.

That lesson has not carried over to today. Our military might has been overwhelming in Iran, but reliance on such force without an understanding of our target has again made us seem like a pitiful, helpless giant. More bombs are not always the answer.

Posted on by rjonakait

The Golf Teacher

I don’t know how the father learned to play golf. I knew that when he was young, he played baseball, basketball, and ran track, but these, I expect, came naturally out of schoolyard play. He surely did not learn golf from his father or mother; his parents showed no interest in any sport. There certainly was no money in their family for golf lessons or new sets of clubs. This was a working-class family where the father’s father sweated for his pay on a factory floor. I never heard the father talk about being a caddie, an activity through which many blue-collar kids learned to play golf. Still, even though I can’t really imagine how he learned it, my father knew golf.

And he was quite good at it. Not great, but, by my standards, very good. Often when he left to play, he would say, “I’m going to break 80 today.” I don’t know how often he did, but it was not regularly. Still, his scores were usually in the low 80s. He didn’t keep a handicap, but my guess is it would have been a ten or twelve.

He could not afford the local country club even if he had been accepted there. He did not even play at the local public course that attracted some of the “best” people in town. Instead, he drove a half-hour to a tiny village to go to Quit-Qui-Oc, which, when he started playing there, had only nine holes.

 Although he knew some people at the golf course, he did not have golfing buddies. Instead, golf was a family affair. He had taught the mother to play, and she could hit a good ball. I think she enjoyed the game, but it was also her way of getting sun. On the holes far from the clubhouse where she assumed no one could see her, she often stripped off her blouse and played in a halter top.

At an early age the brother and I would go to the course, too. At the beginning, I did not play but walked along, for walk we did. There were no motorized golf carts in those days, and when they started to be employed, the father voiced nothing but disdain for them. Golf meant walking.

There were no caddies, but the parents did not carry their clubs. Instead, they pulled little wheeled carts designed to hold a golf bag. (Until recently, I often played golf alone, and I walked pulling the same kind of cart my parents used. I still can feel the father’s influence. It is not really golf if you ride. A few years back at a golfing event, the pro announced that “real golf” was going to be played. I said to myself, “Oh, we are going to walk.” This seemed unlikely because we were sitting in motorized carts at the time. Instead, the pro meant that the players could not move the balls in the fairway to get a better lie. My first drive came to rest in a fairway divot. But I digress.)

I usually walked in the rough as the parents went from tee to green. I was looking for lost golf balls, and I felt a little excitement every time I found one. More than a half century later, I still get a little thrill in finding a ball in the rough that I can keep. The son and I used to do that, and he felt something similar. Maybe that’s why Easter egg hunts are such fun.

Soon, however, the father started to teach the brother and me to play the game. This was done in our backyard, which was quite large for our modest home, but it really did not have to be very large for our lessons. He gave us golf-ball sized whiffle balls to practice with. These objects with more holes than plastic did not travel far no matter how well struck. I don’t know how sophisticated the lessons might have become if I had stuck with the game, but at this point there were two goals: Keeping the head down so that I would not top (or even miss) the ball and swinging inside out so the ball went to the right. (I still struggle with both those things.) The father assured us that a real golf ball starting to the right after an inside-out swing would curve back to the left, and every golfer preferred a hook or a draw to a ball that sliced to the right.

After the father’s teaching had given me a modicum of backyard golfing proficiency, the brother and I often joined the parents on the golf course—a family foursome. I did not have a full set of clubs, but, even so, I got some pleasure in playing, mostly in seeing how far I could hit a drive. Soon, however, I got to the stage where I was as good as I was going to get from merely playing. If I wanted to eliminate some of the frustrations from golf, I was going to have to practice, and not just drives. I was going to have to work on all those components of the game that require “touch”– pitching and chipping and putting. I tried this practicing bit for a while, but I hated it. I was willing to practice other games. I could shag flyballs countless times a day, day after day; I could spend hours skating around a rink. I could practice those activities, but golf? No.

Golf was just not active enough. I wanted to be running and jumping and sweating. I loved coming home at the end of a day, stripping off clothes, and finding my ankles caked in that special red dirt of the baseball infield. I liked hitting a baseball hard and then running to first or beyond. Hitting a golf ball solidly and then walking up to it was not the same.

And perhaps there was something more. I played golf only with the parents and the brother. Nothing wrong with that, but I was not a very social kid. My interactions with others my age outside of school were on playing fields, courts, or rinks. I wasn’t aware of missing that when playing golf, but perhaps I did. So, in my teens, I stopped golfing.

I understand why I stopped, but sometimes I regret it. I regretted it when I returned to golf forty years later. Starting the game again when I was fifty-five assured that I would not be very good at it. (At least that is the explanation I give myself for my lack of skill.) But I still remember much of what the father said about the game and what he tried to teach me. A half-century later, what he tried to impart is still correct.

 I absorbed some, but not all, of his golf clothing style. He never owned, nor would he have worn, any of those ridiculous pants and belts many men wore playing golf. I follow him in this, but he never wore shorts on the golf course or anywhere else, even when he lived in Florida. I am fairly confident that in his circles he was not an outlier in eschewing shorts. I don’t remember seeing any of his working-class contemporaries in shorts. I am not sure when men of his age higher on the economic scale wore them. I don’t remember seeing adult male knees as a Midwestern kid, but I do remember being a bit surprised at seeing bare calves on grown men when I arrived at my eastern college. I, on the other hand, wear shorts playing golf, generally limiting myself to boring solid colors. (I wear shorts on many other occasions as well. On a recent trip to Machu Picchu, I was the only man on the van in shorts. One of my new friends said that he had been to an outing where Tim Allen talked. Allen had said that no man over forty should wear shorts. The new friend said this as if he were imparting some useful lesson to me. I replied that Tim Allen makes lots of money saying many silly things. But I digress.)

I also regret having given up the game because I, without thinking about it, was giving up the activity that I might have continued doing with the father. I have now learned that sometimes you can learn a lot about someone when you play golf together. Perhaps if I had played golf with him when I was an adult, I would have learned more about him, and he would have learned more about me. At least, maybe, I would have learned how he had learned to play the game.

Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

Some religions prohibit saying the sacred Name of God. What if it turned out to be Chip or Baxter? Or Henrietta?

He “never acknowledge[ed] that the general culture is often stupid or evil and would vote out God in favor of the devil if he fed them back their hate and fear in a way that made them feel righteous.” Charles Frazier, Varina.

Irony is dead, or at least it is in certain conservative circles. Some conservatives find the troubled past of Graham Platner disturbing. But they don’t have a similar concern with Ken Paxton’s history. Or that Trump has been adjudicated a sexual abuser. And is a convicted felon. Of course, there are many examples that irony is dead in certain conservative circles. We could make a list.

Many friends and the spouse recommended it. It was in the house. I finally read the first chapter. It was good. I only have 101 more chapters to go in Lonesome Dove.

On a friend’s recommendation I watched Ford v Ferrari. It was good. I recognized many of the race car driver names from that era, but the one that most resonated was Phil Hill. In my memory, he won a sports car race on the roads around Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, that I saw when I was kid. My parents took me to it. I was mostly bored. I saw a tiny fraction of the course with unidentifiable cars whipping past. There was no way to tell who was first or last. But Phil Hill won the race, so I must have seen him. However, after watching the movie, I wondered if my memory was correct. I googled and found that Phil Hill did, indeed, win the race at Elkhart Lake when I was seven. My memory might be correct. I told the spouse about this, applauding myself for having such a memory. She, the neuroscientist, told me that the real issue is short-term memory.

Sports are funny. In the New York Knicks’ incredible comeback win in the fourth game of the finals, their star missed an open shot to go ahead with two seconds left. That won’t be remembered because of the teammate’s game-winning tip-in.

World Cup announcers talk about getting the ball into the back of the net, but isn’t the point to get the ball into the back of the goal which is the front of the net?

When I want to feel special, I tell myself that I am one of the few people who knows that Tarzan lived in Wisconsin.

She was in an Off-Broadway musical. I said that I might go to it if I could find discount tickets. Even though I had just met her, she got offended and said that since she had paid full price for her music degree, I should pay full price to hear her. I never heard her sing.

“If one attitude can be said to characterize America’s regard for immigration over the past two hundred years, it is the belief that while immigration was unquestionably a wise and prescient thing in the case of one’s parents or grandparents, it really ought to stop now.” Bill Bryson, Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States.

Posted on by rjonakait · 1 Comment

Whither Biomedical Science? (Guest Post by the Spouse)

Starting out as a small federally-funded Laboratory of Hygiene in 1887, the National Institutes of Health (the NIH) has become the largest and, arguably, the most prestigious biomedical institution in the world. It has fueled virtually all of the advancements in the treatment of heart disease, cancer, stroke, multiple sclerosis, AIDS, other infectious diseases, and much more. It can be considered the jewel in the crown of scientific excellence. It funds a cadre of in-house scientists as well as academic scientists across the United States and around the world. Explain to me, then, why the Trump administration is trying to hobble it…no, destroy it.

Beginning in February 2025 the administration terminated 2,300 ongoing research grants, amounting to cuts of almost $4 billion. Most of the cuts were at medical schools and hospitals, but they reached into other institutions — mostly universities — as well. More than 60% of these terminations were aimed at research and development, but an alarming 38% targeted research training and career development. Most of these were Post-doctoral Individual National Service Awards. Is this a problem? Yes. Emphatically, yes.

Training to become a scientist is time-consuming and expensive. It usually begins (in the U.S. at least) at the 4-year undergraduate level. Graduate training (course work and hands-on laboratory experience) can consume another 4-6 years. A written thesis and its defense are required for completion of the doctorate. Attainment of the PhD, however, is only the beginning of the ending point. It’s followed by another 2-4 years of post-doctoral training. When one finally takes her place as an assistant professor with a research lab of her own, she needs microscopes, centrifuges, PCR machines, supplies (glassware, chemicals, paper towels, for heaven’s sake), computers, animals, and a helping hand to get things underway. NIH often provides a good deal of the funding for this extensive training. Moreover, those recipients of NIH training grants at the graduate and post-doctoral level provide established laboratories with essential intelligent labor. Experiments that would not get done without trainees get done with them. Explain to me, then, why the Trump administration is cutting the very training that leads to the health of a scientific future.

One answer is a sad one. Over the years it had become clear that the scientific work force was almost exclusively white and male. Surely there were women and minorities out there who could be recruited to this important enterprise, and it just might be in the national interest to find them. So the NIH (and other scientific agencies) began to actively recruit from these populations, and sometimes, even to insist on the inclusion of them.

Then came Executive Order 14281, issued in April 2025 just months after Trump took office. It was the opening salvo of the Trump administration’s assault on Civil Rights legislation. This EO direct all agencies (not just scientific ones) to “deprioritize” enforcement of statutes and regulations imposing “disparate impact liability.” In everyday language this meant that agencies could not take into account the fact that certain groups had been discriminated against, and that they should not give priority to these so-called “underrepresented minorities.”

This injunction was elaborated more specifically for scientific grant funding in EO14332 later that year. “Discretionary awards” it states, “must…demonstrably advance the President’s policy priorities.” One has to assume that some of those policy priorities were enumerated in EO14281. So, in short, no priority is to be given to minority groups.

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is given the task of implementing Executive Orders, and it has recently promulgated its new rules that will apply to scientific grants funding. It includes the language of EO14332, but goes further: A “federal award is not to be used to fund, promote, encourage, subsidize, or facilitate ‘diversity, equity or inclusion’ (DEI)….This includes racial preferences or other forms of racial discrimination used by the recipient”[Emphasis added]. Technically, awards are granted to institutions, not to individuals. This means that even if a scientific study has nothing to do with DEI, funding can be withheld if the formal recipient of the grant (e.g., a university) engages in something that is determined to be in violation of the administration’s DEI policies. This appears to be designed to punish institutions that are in presumed non-compliance at the expense of what might be relevant and meritorious science.

Moreover, and more insidiously, the OMB regulations would give final approval authority not to a scientific advisory council, but rather to a political appointee whose job it will be to ensure that grant applications are consistent with administrative priorities, do not espouse “anti-American” (undefined) ideas, and are in the “national interest” (undefined). This can and will lead to decisions based on political considerations (undefined), not scientific merit. It is ironic that the EO14281 is entitled “Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy.”

Another provision of EO14332, the order underpinning these new OMB rules, is that funded grants must not “compromise public safety.” This, too, is ironic. Because some of the current administration policies are demonstrably anti-intellectual and anti-scientific (anti-vaccine rhetoric that has undermined public confidence in vaccines that have been in use for decades, quashing anti-mRNA research, decimating the Centers for Disease Control, removing the U.S. from the World Health Organization, canceling studies examining effects of global warming, etc., etc., etc.), the administration itself poses threats to national safety thereby violating its own prohibition. Political appointees of this administration cannot be considered qualified to determine what is a threat to national safety.

There are other egregious aspects to the new OMB regulations (they log in at 238 pages of single-spaced type). Many of them handicap researchers sometimes to maintain accountability (not necessarily a bad thing), but often to punish them and their institutions for perceived grievances — grievances defined by political appointees, not scientists. The most troubling rules allow an authoritarian overreach that can have a chilling effect on creative and necessary scientific endeavor. These proposed regulations taken together do not advance the scientific enterprise. American scientific know-how and ingenuity used to be the envy of the world. The Trump administration is rapidly darkening that sparkling reputation.