I always new my Dad was smart.

I always knew my Dad was smart. He could sit down with a book after lunch and finish it before supper. I just didn’t know that he was brilliant. His inability to pronounce words masked his aptitude. He’d say, “Listen to this, Cora Lee,” and read a passage that had stirred his imagination. I’d pretend to understand and then take the book and read it for myself. He was a sight reader, having been largely self-taught, quitting school and taking over the family farm. His father died when he was 12.
As a side note, I often though it odd that my sisters don’t remember spending time with my father, while my childhood memories are flooded with such images. Recently I have arrived at a conclusion as to why that would be true. I think I cried a lot and my mother had Dad take me off her hands. A conversation I had with Mrs. Holen, a woman who at one point was our housekeeper, suggested that. She told me she felt bad for me because I always wanted my mother and could not be consoled. My father probably relieved her of the burden, so I remember golden times, going to town with him, riding on the hay stack while he hauled it to the barn, “helping” build a new “shit house”; and in the course of those adventures overhearing bits and pieces of conversation, references to acronyms that made no sense but clearly communicated his disdain for FDR.
So, when Newt Gingrich said that the president he admired most was FDR, I was confused. According to my father, FDR was an arrogant man who thought government could use its unlimited power to create a more perfect world. He was a man who knew nothing about running a business, but who thought he could manage the entire economy, a man who knew nothing about farming, but who thought he could save those small ignorant farmers by forcing them onto communal farms where he and the members of his brain trust could show them how it should be done.
Needless to say, the more I read about Theodore and Franklin and that era of American history, the more I read Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams and Charles Payne, the more respect I have for my father. They all understand what unintended consequences are in store for us as a result of politicians who take pity on us. A recent article in Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College (Get it. It’s free and most informative.) reinforced that respect (“The Rules of the game for Economic Recovery,” by Amity Shlaes).
I am sure the members of the brain trust were smart, and that was their tragic flaw, hubris, men who thought they could play God and manage the world. Ms. Shlaes tells one story about the way FDR managed the price of gold which made me laugh. He decided on what the price of gold should be each morning as he awoke in his bed. One morning he raised the price 21 cents. When he was asked why 21 cents he told Morgenthau, his advisor, that it was because 3 and 7 were lucky numbers.
It’s hard for me to believe that those in power aren’t totally aware of the unintended consequences of their manipulations. The market crashes of the 1919 and 1987 were just as severe but the sitting presidents rode it out and both crashes ended in a decade of economic boom. Fight a rip tide and you drown.

PBS stands for Public Bulls____.Station.

I listened to the PBS interview of Dana Milbank about his new "expose" of Glenn Beck, Tears of a Clown. According to him Beck is a very dangerous man who is influencing middle America with distortions of history. Beck supposedly said that the Dark Ages ended in the 17th century and that we bought Alaska in 1950. Now I often watch Beck and have never heard him say either, but even if he had, it would hardly be considered a "dangerous recasting" of history. The other thing Milbank says Beck lied about was his accusing a great American, Woodrow Wilson of supporting eugenics. Milbank is either lying or he knows little of US History. It is common knowledge that Wilson supported Eugenics. When he was governor of New Jersey he signed a brutal sterilization act designed to prevent defectives including simply poor children from procreating. He wrote of the need to improve “racial qualities.” Hitler sent members of his inner circle to America to learn more about how racial purity might be advanced through eugenics. The most outrageous accusation, thought, was that Beck was inciting violence, calling conservatives to arm themselves for a great revolution. Beck is, of course, totally committed to the Gandhi and King camp. You may not like Fox News, but always air both points of view. Not PBS and our tax dollars support their distribution of crap.