Quote of the Day: Paging Mr. Oliver Cromwell

Oliver Cromwell

Putting aside his controversies for a moment, the below words Oliver Cromwell used during his address to the Long Parliament in 1653 feel appropriate for today:

"It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice. Ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money. Is there a single virtue now remaining among you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God. Which of you have not bartered your conscience for bribes? Is there a man among you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth? 

Ye sordid prostitutes, have you not defiled this sacred place and turned the Lords temple into a den of thieves by your immoral principles and wicked practices. Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation. You who were deputed by the people to get grievances redressed, are yourselves become the greatest grievance. Your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse this Augean stable, by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings in this House; and which by God`s help, and the strength he has given me, I am now come to do. 

I command ye therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place; go, get you out! Make haste! Ye venal slaves, be gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors. In the name of God, go!"

Are there any politicians out there today who can deliver similar words with conviction and credibility?

Video: Our Political and Economic Problems Are Fundamentally a Crisis in Virtue

Marcus Aurelius

George Friedman of STRATFOR gets to the heart of the current political and economic malaise in a brief and succinct video interview here.

He's spot on about the point that all the new regulation in the form of Dodd-Frank, Basel III, etc. do zero good without enforcement.

And why aren't both existing and new regulations being enforced? In Dr. Friedman's view, it comes down to a lack of virtue among our current elite.

The good news is that this is not an insolvable problem for two reasons: First, virtue, in my opinion, is unlike height, raw intelligence, or good looks, in the sense that it is not something that one is by-and-large born with. Virtue is both learned and cultivated over time.

But how much attention do we currently place on the development of virtue? The classics in the western world on this topic include the works by Marcus Aurelius, Benjamin Franklin, Adam Smith, Thomas Aquinas, Aristotle, among others. To perhaps unfairly single out two disciplines, what room is made for those works in our current economics and business curriculum? From my personal observations, zip.

The idea of a renaissance education has been steadily pushed aside through the years in favor of the poly-technical practicalness of the 1-minute manager MBA and quant-PhDs. Today's economic and political conundrum is arguably a by-product of this de-prioritization of the study and development of virtue.

The second reason I am optimistic we can solve this problem is that when our leaders first fail society in such an epic fashion, and then next fail a second time by not fixing the root-cause of the problem, then those of us in representative democracies often make change.

Here's to hoping we get the change right this time.

Playing it Safe, Losing it All

Two facts worth highlighting from Drew Westen's controversial NY Times piece titled 'What Happened to Obama':

1. Obama published nothing (except his autobiography) during his twelve years as a faculty member at the University of Chicago
2. Before joining the Senate he voted 'present' (instead of 'yea' or 'nay') 130 times

What is one to make of this?

I won't speculate on Obama's not publishing anything in an academic journal, but one thing presidential candidates are often attacked on is their voting record. During a heated political campaign a candidate's previous legislative votes are scrutinized and picked over for any possible controversy (see John Kerry). As an astute observer of political history and campaigns, Barrack Obama would be well aware of this.

Was his voting 'present' strategy all about playing it safe and as Westen puts it "dodging difficult issues"? Or is there another explanation all together?

From Westen:

Perhaps those of us who were so enthralled with the magnificent story he told in “Dreams From My Father” appended a chapter at the end that wasn’t there — the chapter in which he resolves his identity and comes to know who he is and what he believes in.

One of the hallmark qualities of Barrack Hussein Obama's rise to the presidency has been his exceptional risk aversion. That strategy worked well in the campaign but is not serving President Obama or the country well at a time when bold, visionary political leadership is needed.

Like many, I've been scratching my head trying to put my finger on what it is about Obama that just doesn't seem right. And then I remembered a comment made by fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld when he was asked to describe himself: "I don't want to be real in other people's minds. I want to be an apparition."

I completely agree with Westen that right now the U.S. desperately needs the gregarious optimism and energy of a Franklin Delano Roosevelt or Teddy Roosevelt type personality in the White House, and not the Lagerfeld-esque 'complete improvisation' we seem to have at present.

I will never wholly forgive and forget the missed opportunity in 2009 to conduct a perhaps once-in-a-century overhaul of the global financial system, along with Obama's decision to reappoint many of the same people who led us into the crisis - Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, and Greenspan protege Ben Bernanke.

With the way things are going at Bank of America and the Eurozone we may soon get a second bite at the financial system overhaul apple. Fighting to keep Timothy Geithner on as Secretary of the Treasury doesn't exactly instil in one a sense of optimism, but there is still time for President Obama to do what is necessary to restore American optimism.

The Xinjiang 13 and Chinese Appeasement

A disturbing report from Bloomberg about several elite U.S. universities not standing up to Chinese suppression of academic research freedom and free speech:

They call themselves the “Xinjiang 13.” They have been denied permission to enter China, prohibited from flying on a Chinese airline and pressured to adopt China- friendly views. To return to China, two wrote statements disavowing support for the independence movement in Xinjiang province. 

They aren’t exiled Chinese dissidents. They are American scholars from universities, such as Georgetown and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who have suffered a backlash from China unprecedented in academia since diplomatic relations resumed in 1979. Their offense was co-writing “Xinjiang: China’s Muslim Borderland,” a 484-page paperback published in 2004. 

“I wound up doing the stupidest thing, bringing all of the experts in the field into one room and having the Chinese take us all out,” said Justin Rudelson, a college friend of U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and former senior lecturer at Dartmouth College, who helped enlist contributors to the book and co-wrote one chapter.
The sanctions, which the scholars say were imposed by China’s security services, have hampered careers, personal relationships and American understanding of a large, mineral- rich province where China has suppressed separatist stirrings. Riots and attacks in Xinjiang in July left about 40 people dead.

In the race to embrace China's riches the leaders of elite U.S. academic institutions (who should know better) seem to have forgotten that China is run by a brutal, freedom-suppressing dictatorship. Yet Stanford, the University of Chicago, Duke and NYU have or are in the process of building branch campuses in mainland China. Have many of the U.S.'s best universities forgotten that history has not looked kindly on those who have cozied-up to regimes like China's current one?

The Xinjiang 13 incident also smacks of the same problem in academia which Oscar Winning Director Charles Ferguson documented in his must-watch film Inside Job. Has the academy not learned anything about the importance of professional ethics these past few years?

Full article on the Xinjiang 13 here.