"A Crock of ..."

If you have not seen the “Tango Scene” in “A Scent of a Woman,” take a minute to watch it – maybe the most romantic scene in all moviedom.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in5EPHVgcXg&feature=related

Pacino plays a blind former Army officer, who gives a young woman a tango lesson at The Oak Room, at the old Plaza Hotel in New York.

“…some people live a lifetime ‘in a minute’…would you mind if we kept you campany – just to keep the womanizers from bothering you…”

And while you are on You Tube, look at this great speech, in the same movie, when Al Pacino’s character (Colonel Frank Slade) exposes and demolishes the phony values of a “elite” New England prep school. In a great speech defending Charlie Simms from a vindictive headmaster, Pacino shows the headmaster to be a cowardly martinet, and accurately calls the school’s whole disciplinary proceeding “a crock of shit.”

See the speech at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scent_of_a_Woman and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKAxnB6Ap4o

This movie won Al Pacino the Best Actor award in 1992.

"The Forgotten Man"

"The Forgotten Man" by William Graham Sumner, and Amity Shlaes' book by that name.

Whole Sumner essay:
http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/Best/SumnerForgotten.htm

Excerpt:

“The type and formula of most schemes of philanthropy or humanitarianism is this: A and B put their heads together to decide what C shall be made to do for D. The radical vice of all these schemes, from a sociological point of view, is that C is not allowed a voice in the matter, and his position, character, and interests, as well as the ultimate effects on society through C's interests, are entirely overlooked. I call C the Forgotten Man…

“…(A and B) ignore entirely the source from which they must draw all the energy which they employ in their remedies, and they ignore all the effects on other members of society than the ones they have in view. They are always under the dominion of the superstition of government, and, forgetting that a government produces nothing at all, they leave out of sight the first fact to be remembered in all social discussion - that the State cannot get a cent for any man without taking it from some other man, and this latter must be a man who has produced and saved it. This latter is the Forgotten Man…

“…The fallacy of all prohibitory, sumptuary, and moral legislation is the same. A and B determine to be teetotalers, which is often a wise determination, and sometimes a necessary one. If A and B are moved by considerations which seem to them good, that is enough. But A and B put their heads together to get a law passed which shall force C to be a teetotaler for the sake of D, who is in danger of drinking too much. There is no pressure on A and B. They are having their own way, and they like it. There is rarely any pressure on D. He does not like it, and evades it. The pressure all comes on C. The question then arises, Who is C? He is the man who wants alcoholic liquors for any honest purpose whatsoever, who would use his liberty without abusing it, who would occasion no public question, and trouble nobody at all. He is the Forgotten Man again, and as soon as he is drawn from his obscurity we see that he is just what each one of us ought to be…”

The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression (Paperback)
by Amity Shlaes (Author)

http://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-Man-History-Great-Depression/dp/0060936428/ref%3Dpd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1226618565&sr=8-1

Blog posting:
3:13 PM PDT, October 12, 2008

Dear Readers, Emails have come in over the weekend asking about The Forgotten Man and other books to read as supplements. The Forgotten Man is a narrative book that tells the story of struggling policymakers to whom the usual happens: they go into government with ideals, compromise their ideas to get legislation, get blamed for the poor quality of the compromise, hate themselves, and have trouble in their marriage.

Or, it's about struggling businessmen and women in the same position making their way through the same kind of life, a mixture of farce, hope and tragedy. With the occasional joys. I.e., it's humans and events. I'm only being slightly flippant.

The supplements I recommend are more economic, texts to go along with the drama: Gene Smiley, Rethinking the Great Depression As I write this Gene is out of stock but my experience with amazon is that books arrive fast. Jim Powell's FDR's Folly. Lucid, to the point. Lee Ohanian's articles at UCLA are also excellent; he shows the nonmonetary ways in which government impeded recovery. The best book in the world on the absurdity of New Deal central planning is the out-of-print "Government Project" by Edward C. Banfield. The New Dealers' own Animal Farm.

What else? For being close to events, the late great Arthur Schlesinger, especially, The Crisis of the Old Order. I see Galbraith's volume on the Crash is selling well -- he provides the opposite view to TFM. Galbraith is a big favorite with me. My friend Prof Randall E. Parker is important; he's written around this topic quite a bit. An economist from the 1930s who saw it all for what it was: Benjamin Anderson of Chase. Economics and the Public Welfare is his book. Lawrence Reed of the Mackinac Center has some great shorter summaries of New Deal absurdities; his colleague Burt Folsom is at work on an important book.

Thank you again to readers.