Jul
6
2025

And I Keep Getting 1960s TV Advertising Jingles

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Jay Nordlinger describes ‘The Varied Carols I Hear’.

This morning, I wake up with music—music in my head. I think of Marilyn Horne singing “At the River,” that great hymn (Robert Lowry). (She sings it in the Copland arrangement.) I also think of her singing “Shenandoah.”

So many songs, we have.

You have to think of Gershwin, of course—here’s André Previn in Rhapsody in Blue. Here’s Bernstein in “Hoe-Down,” from Copland’s Rodeo.

And many more. Jay's lucky. Because, more often than I would like, what I get stuck in my head is something like…

Peter Pan, the hot dog
And the hamburger bun.
You'll never have a better
Or a tastier one.

Or…

Look what we did.
Look what we did.
Look what we went and did.
We put a brand new label
On the same great product.
At Roberts Dairyland, Roberts Dairyland,
Where all great milk products come from

I may not have the lyrics exactly right, but what do you want after sixty-some years?

But anyway, what I really wanted to point out about Jay's wonderfully meandering column was:

When it comes to looking at America, I’m from the “warts and all” school. Do not overlook the warts. At the same time, do not become so fixed on them that you forget the rest of the face.

Yes. One of my major problems with (say) the 1619 Project or (worse) the Zinn Education Project, besides the obvious leftist bias, is their "warts only" approach to history.

It's a story, sure. But it's far from the whole story.

Let me repost a quote from Michael Huemer's substack article Can Teaching the Truth Be Racist?

Suppose you learned that there was a school staffed mainly by right-leaning teachers and administrators. And at this school, an oddly large number of lessons touch upon, or perhaps center on, bad things that have been done by Jews throughout history. None of the lessons are factually false – all the incidents related are things that genuinely happened and all were actually done by Jewish people. For example, murders that Jews committed, times when Jews started wars, times when Jews robbed or exploited people. (I assume that you know that it’s possible to fill up quite a lot of lessons with bad things done by members of whatever ethnic group you pick.) The lessons for some reason omit or downplay good things done by Jews, and omit bad things done by other (non-Jewish) people. What would you think about this school?

I'm sure you have already answered Michael's question, but you can click through to see his answer.

Also of note:

  • And that's a good thing. A letter in the WSJ adds on to the op-ed I mentioned the other day. Max Raskin tells us Why We Should Thank Friedrich Hayek for AI.

    Gary Saul Morson and Julio M. Ottino are right that Friedrich Hayek would likely be skeptical of the use of artificial intelligence for centrally planning an economy (“What Would Hayek Think of AI?,” op-ed, July 1). But they miss an opportunity to point out the overlooked role the economist’s thought played in the development of neural networks and, therefore, the modern AI revolution. Hayek considered his contribution central to his thought and was disappointed that his psychological theories didn’t receive wider attention.

    In “The Sensory Order” (1952), he proposed a theory of mind that relies on neurons firing and wiring together in response to external stimuli. A deterministic explanation of how those wirings form a beautiful mind is an inscrutable mystery, but instead of trying to understand it, the founders of modern AI took Hayek’s model as a given and started firing artificial neurons together. His work was cited by Frank Rosenblatt, who created the world’s first neural network, and was also an inspiration to Jimmy Wales, who co-founded Wikipedia.

    What would Hayek think of the technology? Among many things, that people should give him more credit for it. After all, we’re living in his world.

    I've started following Max on Twitter, because in plugging his LTE, he comments:

    Most people think The Sensory Order was written by his cousin Salma. But it wasn't.

  • It's an Ism like no other. Francis Menton makes a point I'll try to keep in mind: Its Defenders Need To Understand That "Capitalism" Is Not An "Ism"

    Think about it. In every instance other than the word “capitalism,” the suffix “ism” is used to designate something as a system of beliefs. The implication of the “ism” suffix is that there are adherents who have adopted these beliefs, and who think that these beliefs are the correct and moral ones that should be adopted by everybody. Such, they think, is the way to a better world. Thus religions are clearly all “isms”: Catholicism, Protestantism, Mohammedism, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, even Paganism. In the political realm, most any organized system of beliefs with advocates on its behalf gets the “ism” suffix: not just socialism and communism, but fascism, anarchism, liberalism, conservatism, environmentalism, and plenty more. Even sets of policy prescriptions associated with a particular politician can become an “ism”: think Reaganism, Obamaism, or Trumpism.

    But “capitalism”? It’s just a fundamentally different thing. Capitalism is not a belief system. Nobody “believes” in capitalism per se. The word “capitalism” is better understood as a descriptive term for the natural order that arises in the presence of private property and free exchange. The natural order is full of warts and flaws, as are all human institutions. The combination of private property and free exchange could perhaps make a good case for being designated an “ism,” but it turns out that we don’t have that concept in a single word.

  • "I would like… to feed your fingertips… to the wolverines." At Liberty Unyielding, Hans Bader has news you probably can't use: Wolverines make a comeback in Finland.

    Wolverines are making a comeback in southern Finland, where they were wiped out in the 19th century.

    (Classic headline reference you probably don't need.)


Last Modified 2025-07-06 9:48 AM EDT