Jon Meacham Quotes
If generations past could get things so badly wrong, then we are forever vulnerable as well, and the moral utility of history may well lie in its capacity to remind ourselves that we qre always at risk of falling short in the unendng search to perfect the union.
Meacham, Jon. The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels. Random House, 2018, p. 14.
Mises observes the classic philosophical quandary of business and commerce. If we cannot leave everything to the market place and the capitalists and entrepreneurs because they are morally and ethically fallible, will not the government people who regulate and control them be equally moral and fallible? Mises critics point out that Mises misses the difference in a democracy, that if fallible businessmen err, all can suffer and their personal vested interests do not necessarily coincide with the interests of the majority in general. If the government representative of the majority are fallible and err, the majority can correct them and if the majority does not, the people have undone themselves and have not been the victims of the foibles of a few privileged people in the society. Mises argues that it is the minority who, if left alone, would produce the best standard of living for the majority who should exercise they right to regulation only by their acts as consumers.
Koestler, a Hungarian Jew, lived and worked in England for most of his life. He was not only a great writer, but was an amateur scientist.
Commenting on the then unratified U. S. Constitution:
The Russians had just tested a what was almost an atomic bomb and a nuclear weapon was only months away. Eisenhower was advised to initiate an all out nuclear attack before the Russians would have a nuclear weapon with which to retaliate. If Eisenhower did not take advantage of this window, there would be no more opportunity and the Russians would also become a nuclear power. The situation was similar to that facing the Americans and Israelis with Iran in the early years of the 21st century,
Jon Ellis Meacham is an American writer, reviewer, historian and presidential biographer. A former Executive Editor and Executive Vice President at Random House, he is a contributing writer to The New York Times Book Review, a contributing editor to Time magazine, and a former Editor-in-Chief of Newsweek. He is the author of several books. He won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography for American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House. He holds the Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Endowed Chair in American Presidency at Vanderbilt University.
