The Claremont Conservative

Jaffa Reviews New Aristotle Book

2011-07-04T16:42:00.000-07:00

Aristotle and the Higher Good

By HARRY V. JAFFA

ARISTOTLE’S NICOMACHEAN ETHICS

Translated By Robert C. Bartlett And Susan D. Collins

339 pp. The University of Chicago Press. $35.

Some time in the 1920s, the Conservative statesman F. E. Smith — Lord Birkenhead — gave a copy of the “Nicomachean Ethics” to his close friend Winston Churchill. He did so saying there were those who thought this was the greatest book of all time. Churchill returned it some weeks later, saying it was all very interesting, but he had already thought most of it out for himself. But it is the very genius of Aristotle — as it is of every great teacher — to make you think he is uncovering your own thought in his. In Churchill’s case, it is also probable that the classical tradition informed more of his upbringing, at home and at school, than he realized.

In 1946, in a letter to the philosopher Karl Löwith, Leo Strauss mentioned how difficult it had been for him to understand Aristotle’s account of magnanimity, greatness of soul, in Book 4 of the “Ethics.”

The difficulty was resolved when he came to realize that Churchill was a perfect example of that virtue. So Churchill helped Leo Strauss understand Aristotle! That is perfectly consistent with Aristotle’s telling us it does not matter whether one describes a virtue or someone characterized by that virtue. Where the “Ethics” stands among the greatest of all great books perhaps no one can say. That Aristotle’s text, which explores the basis of the best way of human life, belongs on any list of such books is indisputable.

In his great essay “On Classical Political Philosophy,” Strauss emphasizes the continuity between pre-philosophic political speech and its refinement by classical political philosophy. It is part of the order of nature (and of nature’s God) that pre-philosophic speech supply the matter, and philosophic speech the form, of perfected political speech, much as the chisel of the sculptor uncovers the form of the statue within the block of marble. Before the “Ethics” men knew that courage was a virtue, and that it meant overcoming fear in the face of danger. Aristotle says nothing different from this, but he also distinguishes true virtue from its specious simulacra. The false appearance of courage may result, for instance, from overconfidence in one’s skill or strength, or from one’s failure to recognize the skill or strength of his opponents. The accurate assessment of one’s own superiority of strength or skill, which means one really has no reason to fear an approaching conflict, is another false appearance of courage. A false courage may also result from a passion that blinds someone to the reality of the danger he faces. In short, the appearance of courage may be mistaken for actual courage whenever the rational component of virtue is lacking.

The existence of politics before political philosophy is what makes political philosophy possible. Politics is inherently controversial because human beings are passionately attached to their opinions by interests that have nothing to do with the truth. But because philosophers — properly so called — have no interest other than the truth, they alone can bring to bear the canon of reason that will transform the conflict of opinion that otherwise dominates the political world.

Unfortunately, what has been called philosophy for more than a century has virtually destroyed any belief in the possibility of objective truth, and with it the possibility of philosophy. Our chaotic politics reflects this chaos of the mind. No enterprise to replace this chaos with the cosmos of reason could be more welcome. The volume before us is much more than a translation. The translators, Robert C. Bartlett, who teaches Hellenic politics at Boston College, and Susan D. Collins, a political scientist at the University of Houston, have provided helpful aids. Many Greek words cannot be easily translated into single English equivalents — for example, the Greek wordtechne, which appears in the first sentence of the “Ethics.” It is here translated as “art,” as it usually is. But the Greeks made no distinction, as we do, between the useful arts and the fine arts. The most precise rendering is probably “know-how,” but that does not seem tonally right. The best solution is to use an approximation like “art” and supplement it with notes. This is what the translators have done, in this case and others, with considerable thoroughness.

They have also supplied an informative introduction, as well as “A Note on the Translation,” a bibliography and an outline of the work. All this precedes the main text. Afterward comes a brief “Overview of the Moral Virtues and Vices,” a very extensive and invaluable glossary, a list of “Key Greek Terms,” an index of proper names and at last a detailed “general index.” Together these bring the original text within the compass of every intelligent reader.

Thomas Aquinas, writing in the 13th century, believed that in the “Ethics” Aristotle had said everything needful for happiness in this life. Thus Aquinas did not write his own book on ethics, but instead wrote a commentary on Aristotle. This tradition was extended by the greatest political philosopher of the 20th century, Leo Strauss, who wrote that all his work had no other purpose than to address “the crisis of the West.”

But what is the West? And what is its crisis? According to Strauss (and many others), the West is the civilization constituted at its core by the coming together of classical philosophy and biblical revelation. The vitality of Western civilization results from the interplay of these alternative principles, though each contains within itself what claims to be exclusive and irrefutable authority. Symbolic of this authority are Athens and Jerusalem. In “The Second World War,” Churchill remarks that everything valuable in modern life and thought is an inheritance from these ancient cities. The debunking both of Socratic skepticism (“the unexamined life is not worth living”) and of biblical faith (“Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”) has led to the crisis of the West, a chaos of moral relativism and philosophic nihilism in which every lifestyle, no matter how corrupt or degenerate, can be said to be as good as any other.

In their brilliant and highly readable “Interpretive Essay” Bartlett and Collins suggest, without positively asserting, that Aristotle offers a solution to the problem, or crisis, of human well-being. But they seem to doubt whether it can meet the challenge of the God of Abraham. But these two principles are not adversarial in all respects. Indeed, much of Strauss’s work is a radical attack — made with the greatest intellectual competence — against the latter-day enemies of both the Bible and a Socratic Aristotle. Strauss maintained that Athens and Jerusalem, while disagreeing on the ultimate good, disagree very little, if at all, on what constitutes a morality both good in itself and the pathway to a higher good.

Aristotle’s greatness of soul (magnanimity) may seem to resemble pride, the greatest of sins described in the biblical canon. But Thomas Aquinas’s interpretation of the “Ethics” offers proof against theological negativism. And in the “Summa Contra Gentiles,”Thomas made the case for sacred doctrine on the basis of Aristotelian premises. It is an assumption of Aristotle’s philosophy of nature that the highest good of each species is accessible to all, or nearly all, its members. For man the highest good is wisdom. But since few if any human beings attain it, Aristotle’s nature requires a supernatural correlate: the afterlife. Whatever one thinks of this argument, it points to a dialectical friendship between Athens and Jerusalem. All the more reason for them to join forces in the desperate struggle, still going on, between civilization and barbarism.

Harry V. Jaffa is a distinguished fellow of the Claremont Institute. His books include“Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates” and “Thomism and Aristotelianism: A Study of the Commentary by Thomas Aquinas on the Nicomachean Ethics.”

James Wolfensohn, Our Commencement Speaker, And His Insufficient Pro-Palestinian Street Cred

2011-06-26T19:55:00.000-07:00

James Wolfensohn, our commencement speaker, was recently mentioned in The Weekly Standard blog.

It turns out that the dear Mr. Wolfensohn was rejected by the American University of Beirut for his supposed insufficient love of the Palestinian cause even though he was awarded for promoting the Palestinian cause.

If Sir James Wolfensohn, the cofounder of Edward Said’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, doesn’t deserve to be honored at the American University of Beirut (AUB), then who does? Recently, the former World Bank chief found himself in the midst of controversy after AUB had announced that he would receive an honorary doctorate and deliver the June commencement address. Faculty members and students signed a petition in protest, arguing that honoring Wolfensohn “undermines AUB’s legacy in the struggle for social justice and its historical connection to Beirut, to Palestine and beyond.”

The Ramallah-based Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PCACBI) was part of the campaign, as was Al Akhbar, a Hezbollah-affiliated newspaper where the anti-Wolfensohn crowd was given free rein to vent against the university for daring to honor him. On the other hand, another Beirut newspaper, the Daily Star, which has no ties to Hezbollah, was much more circumspect in its criticism of the boycott. One AUB professor, who felt compelled to comment without attribution, dismissed the campaign “as an ‘illusion of victory’ for the Palestinian cause, given what he termed the 'moderate' position on Israel often espoused by Wolfensohn.

In a statement, an embarrassed AUB president Peter Dorman argued that Wolfensohn was “on record” for having “criticized Israeli military operations in the Palestinian territories,” and had extensive pro-Palestinian credentials. For instance, Wolfensohn resigned his position as quartet chief after the international boycott of the Hamas government in Gaza, and in 2007 he was rewarded with the Palestinian Authority's prize for excellence and creativity. Apparently AUB agitators have tougher standards than the PA.

Richard Rodner, Wikipedia-Censor, is Leaving CMC at the End of June

2011-06-17T15:46:00.000-07:00

You remember Richard Rodner, don't you, dear reader? He's the PR flack that censored and sanitized Bassam Frangieh's Wikipedia page. Today, he was probably let go or possibly fired. (It doesn't say he's retiring or going to a new company, so that's what I'm left to speculate.)

Anyways, I'm very pleased and I hope you are, too. He mismanaged CMC's PR for far too long.

Here's to hoping for a speedy transition.

Oh, and thanks for the help with the story that won me the Breindel award.

From: "Montez-Rose, Christina" <Christina.Montez-Rose@ClaremontMcKenna.edu>

Date: June 17, 2011 2:02:16 PM PDT

Subject: Announcement

Memorandum

Date: June 17, 2011

To: CMC Faculty & Staff

From: Ernie Iseminger, VP of Development & External Relations

This is to announce that Richard Rodner, Associate Vice President for Public Affairs and Communications will be leaving CMC at the end of June. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Richard for his leadership of our Office of Public Affairs and Communications, and for his dedication to the college.

Initiatives launched under his leadership include CMC’s new visual identity, the newly launched CMC Web site, CMCIQ, the new CUC collaborative satellite uplink broadcast studio, and the new look and editorial style of the award-winning CMC Magazine which continues to strengthen alumni, parent, and community engagement with our campus. Through these and other efforts, Richard helped to increase the visibility of our campus, promote the accomplishments and contributions of our faculty, students, staff, and alumni and enhance Claremont McKenna College’s image and stature.

We are grateful for Richard's contributions to our campus over the past two and half years. We wish him and his wife, Marcy, the very best in all that lies ahead.

My Total Vindication: On Winning the Breindel, the Bartley, and the Novak Awards

2011-06-10T18:31:00.000-07:00

Permit me to brag a little, having now won the $10,000 Eric Breindel Collegiate Award, the Robert F. Bartley Fellowship, and the Phillips Foundation's Robert Novak Fellowship.

I was called all manner of wicked things for daring to expose Bassam Frangieh's pro-Hezbollah, pro-Hamas views and Richard Rodner, Dean Gregory Hess, and President Gann's feeble attempts to cover them up and slander me and my reputation.

Thank you to everyone who supported me throughout. We won. They lost.

BigPeace.com contributor Charles C. Johnson has won the Eric Breindel Collegiate Journalism Award for a series of articles uncovering the radical views of Claremont McKenna College professor Bassam Frangieh.

Johnson exposed Frangieh’s support for the terror groups Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as Frangieh’s dislike of the United States. His articles ran in the Claremont Independent, and Johnson also wrote a separate series of posts on the same subject for BigPeace.com. The research Johnson conducted included extensive translations of interviews that Frangieh had originally conducted in Arabic, which Johnson arranged at his own expense.

The administration at Claremont McKenna circled the wagons, and the faculty passed a resolution behind closed doors supporting Frangieh on the basis of his contribution to diversity of “race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion and cultures, geographic and national origin (both U.S. and international), socio-economics, life experiences, and intellectual viewpoints.” Johnson persisted in the face of that stiff, and at times intimidating, opposition.

Johnson, contacted for comment about his award, said: “I would never have won this great award without the help of Andrew Breitbart and the people at BigPeace.com believing in me and my work.”

The award includes “a cash prize of $10,000, as well as a paid internship…at either Fox News Channel, The Wall Street Journal, or the New York Post.” Johnson, who graduated from Claremont McKenna this spring, is already working at the Wall Street Journal this summer after winning another, separate award.

BigPeace.com editor Peter Schweizer congratulated Johnson: “He’s a superb contributor. Fearless and committed to the truth. We applaud him and congratulate him for his fine work.

Adam Kokesh CMC '06 Civilly Disobeys at Jefferson Memorial... And Gets Body Slammed

2011-05-29T22:22:00.000-07:00

As per usual, Kokesh figures out a way to get into the national news. Good on him. Be safe, Adam, and remember civil disobedience is still disobedience.

WSJ's Bret Stephens Asks Kissinger About Minxin Pei And Finds Out that Kissinger Has Never Heard of Him

2011-05-29T20:35:00.000-07:00

In this weekend's interview for The Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens interviews Henry Kissinger. Here's the relevant exchange.

I ask him if he has thoughts about the argument advanced by Carnegie Endowment scholar Minxin Pei in his widely acclaimed book, "China's Trapped Transition," which contends that an autocratic China will never fulfill the promises of genuine economic reform. Mr. Kissinger has heard of neither the author nor the book, so I summarize the argument.

Mr. Kissinger resorts to generalities. "In the next phase," he says, "[the Chinese] will have to align their political reality with what has been happening in the last 20 years under the impact of reform." I try to pursue this line of questioning by asking what he makes of evidence that Beijing has been backsliding on economic reform, using the case of Google as an example. He says, "the issue of reform, of political reform, will have to be substantially up to the next group of leaders."

Kissinger was pretty cagey in the interview, but it was otherwise fairly interesting.

I have to say that I'm in the Pei camp when it comes to skepticism about the Chinese overtaking America, though I have to wonder how genuinely he believes it himself. It seemed from my few months in his class that he was controversial for its own sake as if bucking the conventional wisdom were the only means by which he could distinguish himself from the clamoring, teeming Chinese experts out there.

Perhaps the class got a bit more interesting after I dropped it but I don't know. I ultimately dropped the class. I was more interested in working at The Claremont Review of Books and other work than the class itself, which struck me as a bit more pedestrian than anything else. If one regurgitated the readings, one did better than if one did not. For example: if you disagreed with the received wisdom that China's currency was too low or that income inequality is truly a problem in China or (anywhere for that matter), you were criticized in the class.

I guess that's I.R. classes for you. Anyways, I've always enjoyed reading Pei's academic work but I'm not so convinced he was the greatest teacher. Sorry to ramble, but my advice would be read his stuff, think about it, and go about your way.

Seeing My Grandparents in D.C.

2011-05-20T18:17:00.000-07:00

Bernadette and I went to D.C. this past week. It was a lot of fun. She had never been to D.C. before. My favorite part was when she got to meet my grandparents. They weren't the most communicative and it was tough to find them, given that there were a lot of people around them, but we managed to find them OK.

We made sure to send the pictures to my father. After all, without them, my father wouldn't be around and so I wouldn't be around.

I hope I get to see them again and maybe next time have a conversation.

What My Ordeal Can Teach Male Students Accused of Harassment by the College

2011-05-20T16:49:00.000-07:00

I have become convinced that Claremont McKenna needs to reform its investigation procedures in light of the witch hunt against me by my ex-girlfriend, Tina Nguyen CMC '11 (Thien-Nga Nguyen) and the college's unapologetic support of it.

Tina called me on May 18th. It was a strange number so I picked it up. I heard who it was when she spoke and then immediately hung up. She called back and left a voice mail on my machine.

In the message she admitted that she made up the whole thing because she "just didn't know how to get [me] to take it down." (She was referring to the blog post where I criticized her decision to make stuff up about me from high school and give it to a Twitter account.) She also admitted to cheating on me, which she had initially denied. She said she was a different person now. But how different could you be when you lie about accusations against a student? She said, "no matter what I tried to do, I never tried to get you expelled. You can ask Dean Spellman about that."

Right... which is why she falsely accused me of harassment and defamation and derailed the final semester of my academic career. If Tina is serious about being sorry, she could do the following: Apologize to me, write a letter which I will post online here admitting she lied, and ask the college to change its policies so that the accused can defend himself against false charges. Accusing a male student falsely about harassment is morally reprehensible -- and needs to stop before another student has to suffer the indignity and fear of having his life uprooted. It is especially unfair to the real victims of harassment, some of which have been my friends. Harassment is a very serious charge and it now seems obvious that the college is ill equipped to play judge, jury, and executioner in arbitrating disputes of this nature. I have heard of other students who have been harmed by the college's wanton disrespect of due process.

My parents worried that I wouldn't graduate -- Dean Spellman threatened me with not being able to graduate until the matter was resolved, even though I begged her to drop the investigation -- and I was seriously affected. I spent over 40 hours talking with lawyers, preparing letters, explaining to my scared girlfriend, friends, and family that I was totally innocent. I cringe to think what would have happened had I given in with all the pressure building up against me.

My grades suffered as a result and I am petitioning Dean Hess on Monday to have a few more days to resubmit my papers. (My professors and academic advisors have all OKed it.) If Tina really is sorry, she should write him a letter in my favor.

Remarks at the Phillips Foundation Dinner on May 17

2011-05-20T14:55:00.000-07:00

I won a fellowship from the Phillips Foundation in D.C. for $7500. The title of my project is "Enemies, Domestic: An Investigation into Appeasement of Evil by America's Colleges." Bernadette and I visited the National Press Club where I gave the last -- and by far the shortest -- speech there to some approval. Here is its text:

I know I'm the last one, so I'll be brief.

I know better than to get between people and the exit -- but I would be remiss if I did not thank the beneficence of Mr. Phillips, the help of Mr. Farley, the patience of Ms. Henderson, and the support of everyone at the Phillips Foundation. I would also like to thank my boss -- and my friend -- Brian Kennedy of the Claremont Institute, who is also in attendance. Together, we are part of a team that publishes the Claremont Review of Books, one of the best quarterlies in the country. I can say that more honestly now that I am off to The Wall Street Journal. Of course I am also very grateful to my fellow fellows, especially fellows past, who I understand contributed some $7500 to make my project possible.

My project is not about our friends, but about our enemies -- radical Islam.... and American higher education. The nexus between the two is a problem for those who love liberty. We can talk about it later, but over drinks because if there is one thing that unites the two especially it is their disdain of conservatives having a good time.

Atheism 101: Pitzer Embraces "Secularism Studies"

2011-05-20T10:31:00.001-07:00

I am pretty much of the view that anything with the word "studies" appended to it isn't really serious. Observe: "Gender Studies," "Black Studies," "Chicano/a Studies," and on we go.

Still I can't quite wrap my head around it.

Truth be told, I'm not really sure what my faith is. I believe in God, but that's about it.

It seems just another media stunt on the part of Pitzer to get itself more attention, sort of like the YouTube class it offers. If that is indeed the case, well done, because Pitzer certainly has gotten quite a bit of it. My favorite has been yesterday's op-ed, titled "A Bachelor's Degree in Atheism," by Alan Jacobs. A simple graff:

The sociologist behind the new Pitzer department, Phil Zuckerman, clearly isn't telling a narrative of decline: "There are hundreds of millions of people who are nonreligious," he told the New York Times. "I want to know who they are, what they believe, why they are nonreligious."

Certainly this phenomenon has not been sufficiently studied. Secularization—a long-term decline in religious belief, at least in the form we know it in the West—doesn't have a clear precedent in human history. And if scholars give sociological, political and cultural explanations for the presence of religious belief, should we not expect them to treat belief's absence in the same way?

The Perks and Pitfalls of Wolfensohn’s Global Life

2011-05-17T09:00:00.000-07:00

Below please find my op-ed for The Claremont Independent written before this weekend's commencement ceremony, which, in all honesty, was mercifully brief.

The Perks and Pitfalls of Wolfensohn’s Global Life
By Charles C. Johnson

You can tell a lot about our college’s hopes for its students by the president’s choice of commencement speakers. This year’s is a should-have been CMCer and we are could-be James Wolfensohns.

The “banker to the poor” was no Mother Theresa. He took no oath of poverty and amassed a $350 million fortune as consultant, bureaucrat, think tanker, and above all, banker. He all but coined the term “too big to fail” when he plotted to bail out Chrysler in the 1980s. He went on to become a worldly World Bank bureaucrat, who, not content with his own millions, misspent billions on liberal good works to make poverty history. It persists, despite him, or perhaps, to spite him. No matter. He got rich countries to write off $42 billion of debt incurred by poor nations assuring his place as “the Elvis of Economics,” as Bono, another past CMC guest, called him. He demands the U.S. government to spend, spend, spend on microfinance, foreign aid, debt relief, etc., etc. You might even say he’s nothing but a hound dog for liberal causes du jour.

After the World Bank, Wolfensohn turned to the Middle East, where his special talents made him “special envoy” to direct Gaza’s economy. He might have reasoned that with his knack for networking he could stop the Palestinians from murdering Israelis. When all else fails, name dropping beats bomb dropping, as Churchill might have said. Alas Wolfensohn’s bore offensive didn’t take because, as he told the Jerusalem Post in 2006, matters were “above my pay grade.” Initially blaming Hamas for murdering Israelis next door and even doubting whether America would take kindly to similar acts, he soon recanted and got right with diplo-speak by blaming Bush for not taking the peace process seriously enough. Bush’s real offense, though, is not taking Wolfensohn seriously enough.

If that weren’t enough to assure his seat at the world wonk table, he set about badmouthing America. America, he tells us, spends far too much on her own defense and too little on what the foreign policy glitterati call “foreign aid.” You know these lines by rote, if not by heart, if you’ve taken a Haley I.R. course… Terrorism is handmaiden to poverty and not ideology. Wolfensohn, who warned of a “tsunami” of poverty, said he had the cure for what ails us in the fight against terrorism – more money. We bailed out autos why not bail out third world tin pot despots?

By the time people realized that that policy failed – much as they are starting to realize that the Wolfensohn-endorsed microfinance project has also failed – the “force of nature” would blow over the next project for though he was an admitted “late developer,” he was an early – and masterly – networker. Despite his lackluster academic credential – he failed several university exams – he talked his way from a Sydney tenement to Harvard Business School. He got the job of World Bank president when Bill Clinton, at Wolfensohn’s Wyoming home, asked him what he would do there – not exactly a meritocracy.

Wolfensohn even found time for a little culture – playing cello before Carnegie Hall, with his pal Yo-Yo Ma, fencing for the 1956 Olympic team, and globe-trotting of the sort you might read in a CMC admission essay: “In July 1973 Elaine and I took a rare break from the mayhem of New York and Schroders. We were sailing on a 72-foot ketch from Panama to the Galapagos ... the voyage was memorable, and the night watches along with the stars and accompanying dolphins and occasional whales were an experience never to be forgotten.”

With a bit of pluck and a lot of luck, the self-described little fat boy, born to downtrodden British Jews in the Depression in Australia, aspired to greatness. He wanted to be a “global player” and plotted accordingly in his room: “What would I have to do to become prime minister, a leading banker, a judge of the Supreme Court, an Olympian, a Rhodes scholar? What would it look like to be Mr Justice Wolfensohn or governor-general Wolfensohn?'”

What, indeed! Unsurprisingly, the answer to this, and nearly every question confronted by Wolfensohn is money – and a lot of it. Money buys all sorts of things – acceptance, accolades, and even access, according to reports from an anti-corruption watchdog group.

Money is why, according to Bloomberg, Wolfensohn overlooked the shady finances of international fugitive and financial criminal, Viktor Kozeny, the infamous “pirate of Prague.” Kozeny, flush with cheating Czech taxpayers out of a billion dollars, turned to Wolfensohn to sanitize his next deal in Azerbaijan. Wolfensohn met with Kozeny twice and gave his coveted World Bank endorsement. Kozeny then went on to defraud investors to the tune of $182 million. According to the Government Accountability Project, Wolfensohn “lent his reputation and his institution’s support to precisely the kind of fraud and theft he so frequently denounced.” “None of the World Bank officials in a position to anticipate corruption was able to expose it, given that the bank president had helped to conceal it,” the report noted. He behaved less than admirably, which compounds the irony of having a financier with shady ethics ties at the same time Claremont considers an ethics general education requirement.

Wolfensohn refuses to tell that tale. He doesn’t namedrop there. Nor does anybody else, for that matter. Wolfensohn’s underling, Johannes Linn, tasked by Wolfensohn with investigating the alleged corruption on the part of Kozeny, became director of the Wolfensohn Center at the Brookings Institution when he left the bank. Later Linn denied ever having heard of Viktor Kozeny. But Beatrice Edwards of the Government Accountability Project, a nonpartisan watchdog group, points out that Kozeny was “the most notorious international financial criminal in the region. She considers it “unimaginable that Linn would not have heard of him.”

Of course that story didn’t make the cut in his book, A Global Life. Perhaps he learned once and for all that money, while it buys access to the clubs he wanted to join, cannot buy the things of the soul. For that, you need more than mere networking. “You can’t succeed with just a good Rolodex if you can’t deliver. You have to perform to the absolute highest standard.” And it sure helps if you have friends, even if fickle. In contrast to class-based Britain, Wolfensohn loves America: but even as he talks about how great America is, he namedrops. “The thing I revere about this country is that you can deal with people as people, regardless of their wealth. I could today call up Warren Buffet or whoever is the richest person in this country - I know most of them - for a coffee.”

We learn from Wolfensohn’s memoirs that he is a great many things and he will tell you about all of them but one thing he is not is a devoted family man. He lived as his memoir suggests – globally, not locally, copping to not knowing his children and confessing that while his cancer-stricken wife begged him not to take a job that led to being away from home, he took it anyway. Those were his “lost years.”

Some of us can’t afford lost years – these past few ones having often been lost enough. As we ponder commencement and family gathers, it is difficult not to be lost in thought about what is next. Here’s a thought: We ought to wish to be good husbands, good fathers, good co-workers, good sons, and good citizens. Our parents – like all good parents – gave us a better life. And so we don’t seek a global life, but a good one. If we are lucky, maybe it’ll be a great one.

What the College Accused Me Of -- Or, Why I Haven't Been Blogging

2011-05-17T08:13:00.000-07:00

Now that I have graduated it is time to explain to my readers why it is that I have been incommunicado these past days.

My cheating, lying ex-girlfriend, Tina Nguyen (Thien-Nga Nguyen) CMC '11, was apparently very upset with my blog post describing her as a cheating, lying ex-girlfriend who was making stuff about me and sending it to my admirers on Twitter.

Tina then made up a frivolous complaint against me saying that I had "harassed" and "defamed" her and brought in the Dean of Students. There was only one problem: I had, in her own writing, emails and chats that showed she had cheated and lied.

Here's the back story: I received an email from Dean Mary Spellman before I left the country saying that I had to come in and talk to her about an investigation she was completing. Apparently, I was being "investigated" for a violation of the school's Code of Conduct. I immediately called Dean Spellman and she kept insisting that I come in and meet with her. I told her I would not until she told me what I was accused of and who was making the accusations. She said I was accused of "harassment." I thought she was joking, but she assured me she was not, and said, "Well, I'm innocent." She demanded I come in again and I told her I couldn't because I was leaving for overseas during Senior Week. I refused until I could have both my recorder and my attorney present. (I did that because I may be deciding to sue both my ex-girlfriend, the Dean of Students, and the College.)

Emails ensued and she finally admitted that I was being investigated for "harassment" and "defamation" for a blog post I wrote.

I explained to her that I was not going to come in until I was told what I was charged with and who had accused me. I told her that I had retained counsel -- who worked pro bono, by the way -- and that I would not be attending as it did not fit in my schedule. (I was leaving the country within 36 hours.)

I also informed her that her investigation into my speech was illegal and in direct violation of both the college's promise of free speech and the Leonard Law. I complied with the investigation -- by telephone -- though I made clear I did not have to, and gave her a list of witnesses that would corroborate everything I said, which they did. Dean Spellman still did not allow me to have my digital recorder and my attorney could not come back from D.C. fast enough. I filed a counter-claim against Nguyen for lying, abuse, and misuse of the school's procedures.

Need less to say, I was cleared of all of the charges against me. Here's a letter from Dean Spellman:

Dear Charles:

As we have previously communicated, I have conducted an investigation into a complaint made by Ms. Tina Nguyen, which alleged that certain comments made on your blog about the student were in violation of the College’s Basic Rule of Conduct.

As part of my investigation, I conducted interviews with you, the complainant, and the witnesses identified by both of you. I also reviewed the documentary information provided by you and the complainant.

Based on my review of the information provided, I do not find evidence that warrants further action by the College. As a result, no disciplinary charges will be filed in this matter, and no record of the complaint or this investigation will be included in your educational record.

I have also conducted an investigation in response to your counter-complaint. This investigation included interviewing witnesses identified by you, communications with Ms. Nguyen, and a review of the documentary information you provided. Based on my review of the information provided, I do not find evidence that warrants further action by the College. As a result, no disciplinary charges will be filed against Ms. Nguyen.

Please also note that, pursuant to Section XIV (A) of the Judicial Procedures, all records and communications related to this process will be maintained as confidential records within the Dean of Students Office.

If you have any concerns or objections to my determinations, please be advised that you have the right to appeal my decision to President Gann.

Sincerely,

Dean Spellman
_________________________________________
Mary J. Spellman, EdD
Dean of Students
Claremont McKenna College
Heggblade Center 104

Claremont, CA 91711

My advice to any male wrongly accused of harassment? Refuse to meet until they tell you the charges and fight like the devil. That's how I avoided the attacks on me.

Here's one letter that I wrote her on May 4, 2011:

Hi Dean Spellman,

As you have still not told me what the specific complaint(s) is/are against me and only after I asked repeatedly did you tell me on the phone that I was facing a "harassment" and "defamation" inquest for something I wrote on my personal website, I'm afraid I cannot meet with you at all, though again I'd be happy to answer any specific questions you may have in writing or to meet with you with the presence of my digital recorder and attorney. I am sure that you are mistaken about whatever it is that I am accused of doing and ask that you stop this Kafka-esque inquisition against me, but if you feel the need to pursue this further, please know that I will be taking it to the highest levels.

Why do I need a digital recorder? Here's why: A transcript of any conversation we might have is very important, especially in this case as I may decide to pursue legal action against either the person or persons making what I suspect are utterly false accusations against me designed to cause me stress and terror. This is even more the case as you have explicitly threatened me with not being able to graduate. Unfortunately, as a male college student accused of harassment, merely to be "investigated" for harassment would ruin me in the eyes of my peers and, given that there is a public website that posts slander against me, professionally as well.

Moreover, to be accused of defamation, which I'm not sure you have any power to enforce or investigate anyways, is potentially damaging to my career as a journalist with The Wall Street Journal, especially as I prepare to go to Norway on one of the most important trips I have ever taken.

In past emails I have answered your questions and will answer still more of them, if you wish. But I am very pressed for time as I am about to leave the country and finish my academic work by May 6 when grades are due. As it currently stands, you are interfering with my academic responsibilities as a student and my professional obligations post-college and causing me a lot of anguish in the final days of my educational career by failing to answer the simplest of questions about what I am being investigated for, who is launching the investigation against me, and why.
You might think that I am taking this too hard, but to put it mildly I am frankly terrified of the school's procedures. Claremont McKenna, after all, has been found of having FIRE's speech code of the month in February 2011. In the past, friends of mine who were innocent of the charges against them have been found guilty on the flimsiest of evidence, while people who have assaulted women have been given slaps on the wrist while the district attorney brings a case against them. The last person who was "investigated" for something he wrote was Brad Kvederis, who won his lawsuit against the college in the late '90s for an undisclosed sum. His newsletter was a saucy satire; my website is an award-winning news site.

I am especially worried as you have not been forthcoming with what the subject of your investigation is. You first told me that I was being "investigated" for a violation of the school's code of conduct. You would not tell me what I was being investigated for until I called you on the telephone and, after I asked repeatedly, told me it was for harassment and defamation, neither of which are defined in the school's code of conduct. You then informed me the past night that it was for something I wrote on my personal website, which you have no right to use against me by virtue of California's Leonard Law, as I informed later. Then, when I agreed to meet with you and to answer your questions, I asked to have my attorney and/or my digital recorder present so as to have a transcript that might be used later. You refused my basic request to meet with you and you alone.

As I have already noted to you, you have no standing, no legal right to "investigate" me for something I have written in print on my personal website by virtue of California's Leonard Law. If my accuser or accusers think I am afoul of the Leonard Law's protections, they can challenge me in court, if they see fit, where I will have more safeguards than one dean deciding, on a lark, to investigate me for something someone or someones said against me, especially when that dean has a history of calling students into her office for offensive lunch time conversations.
I implore you to let me answer your questions via email and/or to let me have a digital recorder present. (My attorney is not able to come back to the West Coast on short notice.) Nevertheless, I am certain that I will be exonerated because truth is an absolute defense against defamation and "harassment" does not apply here.

Again, I assure you that I want to help with any good faith investigation against me. I'm sure we can put this behind us.

Thank you again,
Charles

Back From Norway, Back to Work

2011-05-13T10:53:00.000-07:00

Dear readers,

I'm back from Norway. Sorry I haven't been blogging regularly. I'll explain exactly why when the long arm of the college isn't threatening me with not being able to graduate.

--Charles

How Chapman Solved Its Parking Problem

2011-05-04T22:09:00.000-07:00

One of the promises of the past ASCMC political campaign was to fix the parking problem. It never happened.

Well, Chapman University has figured out what to do about the parking problem.

So Long Dean Castro: You Won't Be Missed Here

2011-05-04T15:48:00.000-07:00

The Forum confirms the rumor that Dean Fid Castro is leaving this summer.

I said pretty much everything I had to say about him in the post I wrote calling for him to be fired earlier last year, except this: "Good riddance." (It was the most commented upon post in Forum history, I believe and past Forum editor and abuser Michael Wilner, I'm told, deleted it for precisely that reason.)

Like all but a few administrators at Claremont -- Dean Huang being the exception that proves the rule -- he was a bully and a thug. He seldom if ever had students' best interests at heart, such as when he told David Daleiden CMC '10 during his ordeal at Pomona that

"You have no right to be on Pomona's campus. You have no more right to walk across Pomona's campus than you do to walk through someone's living room. You have no contractual agreement with Pomona college; you are not a student at Pomona; you have no more rights at Pomona than an individual walking his dog down the street."

Hamas, Bassam Frangieh's Fav. Terrorist Group, Regrets Death of Bin Laden, the "Holy Warrior"

2011-05-02T09:10:00.000-07:00

The Los Angeles Times has the story, but the prime minister of Hamas predictably slams the killing of bin Laden. This is probably why there can never be peace in the Middle East. We are dealing with savages and the only thing they understand is overwhelming force.

As The Port Side -- the same newspaper that defended Bassam Frangieh's support of terrorst organizations Hezbollah and Hamas -- celebrates this "momentous" occasion, it is worth remembering that it really isn't over. There are still supporters of terrorist organizations amongst us, even at high levels, and those that coddle them.

I know we're all supposed to come together and sing patriotic songs and whatnot, but I can't help but wonder why it is that we: 1) couldn't take him alive 2) don't have the body. And now that bin Laden is dead, I suspect that we Americans will become even softer about the evil that good men will have to do to keep us safe. Likely still is the violence that will ensue now that rival al-Qaeda factions kill off one another to establish themselves as the real McCoy. They'll up the ante and I don't know if we are prepared.

Dead terrorists tell no tales and if we are defeat them, we need to know how they operate chapter and verse.

It may not, to paraphrase Churchill, even be the end of the beginning. To whit:

Shortly after 9/11, Al Qaeda had warned to set off a “nuclear hellstorm” if Osama bin Laden is ever captured or killed, according to U.S. government documents that were leaked just last month by Wikileaks.

Wikileaks' files show that al Qaeda's senior leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was detained and interrogated, had spilled the beans that the terrorist group had, indeed, hidden a nuclear bomb in Europe and that it would be detonated if Osama bin Laden is captured or killed.

Yeah, I'm preparing to enjoy my trip to Europe next week!

ASCMC Loses More Than $31K on a Concert Few Attended

2011-05-01T17:58:00.000-07:00

This year, ASCMC, in one of the biggest boondoggles to date, spent more than $67,000 on the LMFAO concert. It took in a little more than $36,000, leaving a shortfall of $31,000 to be paid with the money that is left over at the end of the semester.

"We cut Bridges the check at the end of the semester with what we have left," says an ASCMC member speaking on conditions of anonymity. According to the high-placed source, only 1445 people attended. But Bridges auditorium's capacity was 2450 for the evening. (The information is publicly available in the minutes that Executive Secretary Alexandra Cooke CMC '14 forgot to post this last week.)

While the stipends of all of the 2010-2011 board have been delayed until ASCMC's financial house is brought into order, last year's president, Tammy Phan CMC '11, was paid her full $14,000 stipend.

Phan's stipend was already paid due to an "unknown" mishap at the start of the semester. She was paid first in contravention of the usual custom. This is, according to sources close to ASCMC, very controversial because it was her decision to bring LMFAO to campus in the first place. Phan, according to members of last year's board, did not ask the Board's opinion before she signed the contract. One member argued that this violated long-standing ASCMC protocol: "In my opinion she should give her stipend back to keep ASCMC afloat for the remainder of the year."

Phan directed me to her comment on The Forum article about this story. She did not comment on a follow-up question of whether or not she should give back her stipend.

WSJ Officially Announces Robert L. Bartley Fellows

2011-04-28T11:32:00.000-07:00

Well, this is cool.

April 26, 2011 I am delighted to announce the 2011 Robert L. Bartley Fellows. The fellowships are named in honor of the late Editor of the Journal, Bob Bartley, for young men and women whose views are broadly consistent with Bob’s beliefs in economic and political liberty and who aspire to careers in journalism. They will work this summer as paid interns on the Journal’s opinion pages in New York, in London for The Wall Street Journal Europe and in Hong Kong for The Wall Street Journal Asia.
The 2011 Bartley Fellows are: Charlie Dameron, from San Antonio, will graduate in June from Dartmouth College with a major in government and history. He is the editor in chief of The Dartmouth Review and is currently finishing a senior honors thesis on the effects of U.S. international broadcasting. He has written for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, spent a semester in research at the American University of Kuwait and interned in the office of Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. Charlie will work in New York this summer reporting to Robert Messenger, books editor. Charles Johnson, from Milton, Mass., will graduate from Claremont McKenna College in May with a major in government and economics. He is the founding editor of The Claremont Conservative, a daily blog, and has served as editor of The Claremont Independent. He is a Claremont Review of Books fellow and for several years worked as a research assistant to Alan Dershowitz and the Kauffman Foundation. He will work in New York this summer reporting to Robert Pollock, editorial features editor. Nash Keune, from Germantown, Maryland, will graduate in May from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a major in economics and American history. He is editor in chief of the Carolina Review and last summer worked for Lawson for Congress as the Orange County coordinator. He worked for the Montgomery County Libertarian Examiner in 2009. He will work in New York this summer reporting to James Freeman, assistant editor, editorial page.
Kathleen McCaffrey, from Fair Lawn, New Jersey, is a rising senior at Cornell University with a major in philosophy and history. She is a staff writer and campus editor of The Cornell Review and is the editor and founder of www.ThePoliticizer.com, an online magazine of opinion articles from students across the country. Last summer she interned at America’s Future Foundation through the Koch Summer Fellow program. She will work in London this summer, reporting to Brian Carney, editorial page editor, WSJE.
Matt Payne, from Rochester, Minnesota, is a rising senior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a major in Chinese and economics. He is an opinion columnist for The Daily Cardinal. He served as a midshipman in naval ROTC. He will work in Hong Kong this summer reporting to Hugo Restall, editorial page editor, WSJA.
Please join me in welcoming them to the Journal this summer. All best, Paul Gigot

"Most Likely to Conquer the World"

2011-04-28T10:48:00.000-07:00

I've been told I won the award of "most likely to conquer the world" at the Senior Dinner last night. I'm not sure whether it's meant as a compliment or an insult, but the more I think about it, taking over the world might not be so bad...

Although I have to wonder... why settle at the world?

Charles Kesler Talks Obama and Progressivism on PJTV

2011-04-27T14:41:00.000-07:00

My friend James Poulos interviews Charles Kesler about Obama and liberalism on PJTV. (runtime: 17 minutes, 40 second). Well worth watching.

Congratulations to all the Government Award Winners, With Correction and Update

2011-04-27T06:08:00.000-07:00

Mike Whatley CMC '11 and Andrew Grimm CMC '11 won the two highest awards the Government Department can bestow, that of Best Government Student and Best Government Thesis.

Whatley had the highest G.P.A. in the major, so he was the natural choice. Good on him.

A previous version of this post was inaccurate. I have been informed that my sources on the government department list were mistaken or I failed to understand them properly. The conversation on the awards, apparently, was wide-ranging and so there was some confusion as to how it occurred by the professors I spoke with.

Either way, the onus is on me to get it right and I apologize yet again. Grimm apparently won the best government thesis award by consensus, according to Professor George Thomas, his thesis reader, who emailed me this morning.

The close vote I mentioned previously was between me and unnamed student who won best thesis to address public affairs. (I was apparently nominated for both awards.) I do not know who that student is, but I wish her all the luck as well.

Again, congratulations to all of the of my fellow Government honors and please accept my apologies both for getting it wrong. It was what I had heard, but apparently I heard wrong. As the news source with the most traffic on campus, I have an especial obligation to get it right. Anything else is not acceptable. Given my critics, I must hold myself to a higher standard. Contrary to popular perception, I am still human and so I ask your forgiveness. I don't often get things wrong, but when I do it is incumbent upon me to apologize.

I'll try harder next time. Sorry. You deserve better, and I'll try to provide it before I retire from The Claremont Conservative in May or June.

~~Grimm and I competed for Best Government thesis, with his work on debt winning out against my work on Coolidge.~~

The vote was very close between different factions of the Government department, with 6 votes in his favor, 5 votes for mine, and 6 votes abstaining. This is, as best as I understand it, unprecedented in the history of the department. More often than not, the decision is by consensus. Here a vote took place.

I confess to being very confused with this result, especially as I don't see how it was possible for both theses in contention to have been read, merely a day after we had to hand them in. My own readers haven't been able to read all of my thesis, so I don't know what rubric the decision was made.

~~All that aside, congratulations, Andrew.~~

Please accept my apologies. I did not acquit myself well and whined when I found out on Facebook and for that I am sorry. I quickly removed the short bit, but it was inexcusable and classless. If you want to know what I said, I will try to remember -- I didn't save it -- but I won't repeat it here. Please know that it was not a reflection on my fellow students but because of my own weakness. I guess you can't win 'em all and some you never could have won, anyways.

~~Let's quash the rumors before they start, though. I won't be making the awards ceremony on May 4. I'll be in Los Angeles on a family matter.~~

Why We Need The Claremont Review of Books

2011-04-26T15:57:00.000-07:00

The Claremont Review of Books is everything that is great about Claremont McKenna extracted from everything that is wrong with it. When you read it, you get the liberal arts education you ought to have gotten in college. It really is a graduate degree's worth of knowledge in every issue.

If you haven't been reading their work, you ought to -- if only because it is so true, so important, and so worth reading. Of course I say this as a man very low on the totem pole in that organization -- as a stable keeper, really, and perhaps, as my critics make clear from my Facebook, not a very good one. You can take that comment with the grain of salt, but that doesn't obviate the truth.

Below you have The Claremont Review of Books' editor, Charles R. Kesler, explaining what the CRB is about. I often get into arguments with other conservatives as to what kind of conservative I am. This is a good summation of what I believe.

Yet we should not delude ourselves into thinking that conservatism is in robust good health, either. It is surely better off than liberalism, but the Right has its own problems, perhaps best signified by the gap between the political possibilities suddenly raised by the Tea Party's emergence and the rapid electoral repudiation of President Obama's statist agenda, on the one hand, and the confusion over what, exactly, a return to constitutional government could possibly mean, on the other.

Which is why the CRB seeks to reinvigorate the American mind by returning to its first principles. Here we follow the lead of the Claremont Institute itself, which is pledged to restore the principles of the American Founding to their rightful, preeminent authority in our public life. As Harry V. Jaffa has argued wisely and often, a return to the principles of the Constitution and the Gettysburg Address requires something like a revolution not only against modern liberalism but also within modern conservatism.

Some conservatives start, as it were, from Edmund Burke; others from Friedrich Hayek. While we respect both thinkers and their schools of thought, we begin instead from America, the American political tradition in all its genius and profundity, and the relation of our tradition to revealed wisdom and to what the elderly Jefferson once called, rather insouciantly, "the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, etc." We think conservatism should take its bearings from the founders' statesmanship, our citizens' loyalty to the Declaration and Constitution, and the scenes, both tender and proud, of our national history. This kind of approach clears the air. It concentrates the mind. It engages and informs the ordinary citizen's patriotism. And it introduces a new, sharper view of liberalism as descended not from the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, nor (God forbid) Abraham Lincoln, but from that movement which, a century ago, criticized George Washington's and Lincoln's Constitution as outmoded and, as we'd say today, racist, sexist, and antidemocratic. The Progressives broke with the old Constitution and its postulates, and set out to make a new, living constitution and a new, unlimited state, and the Obama Administration's programs are merely the latest, and worst, installment of that purported evolution.

Three Cups of Mullarkey: CMC Gets Taken In and CMC Alum and Montana Attorney General Investigates Fraudster

2011-04-26T13:53:00.000-07:00

It turns out that Greg Mortenson was running a scam and CMC was taken in when it brought his co-author to talk about

I always thought that Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea story read more like fantasy than real life. I mean, come on, are we really supposed to believe that the Taliban would just let a bunch of girl's schools roll out in Afghanistan? How silly. Perhaps that's why every freshman on campus was encouraged to read it this year.

We should have known better, as Debra Saunders over at Real Clear Politics confirms:

The worst part: "60 Minutes" checked out 30 of the 141 schools that Mortenson's charity, Central Asia Institute, claimed to have built in Afghanistan and Pakistan "mostly for girls." Kroft reported, "Roughly half were empty, built by someone else or not receiving any support at all."

American Institute of Philanthropy President Daniel Borochoff found that in 2009, CAI spent more on "domestic outreach" -- largely advertising and travel promoting Mortenson's books, "like a book tour" -- than it spent overseas.

"Into Thin Air" author Jon Krakauer, who is mentioned in "Three Cups" as a CAI supporter, charged that Mortenson, who has made millions in book sales, used the charity "as his private ATM."

Th reason for the book's 3 million in sales? The book personifies every "liberal conceit." And does it ever. Why, it's as if Ed Haley himself wrote it, with the usual genuflections to poverty, not Islamic radicalism, being at the heart of the problem in Afghanistan.

Never mind that the U.S. military builds more schools than Mortenson claimed he did, by far.

The CMC connection continues: Montana Attorney General Steve Bullock CMC '88 is on the case. Let's hope he pursues Mortenson relentlessly.

We're Back Up and Running -- and Trying to Find a Back Pack...

2011-04-25T17:07:00.000-07:00

Today's been a little hectic. I'll have more up later this evening from out and about. I'm a bit exhausted so I think I'm going to do some non-Claremont work for a few hours and then catch up on some needed blogging.

I also lost my backpack (or it was stolen). There's a sizeable reward if found. It is a dark green German military backpack with a blue pen stain on it. No questions asked. In it was my computer, an accordian file, and some books. Here's the email address again: chuckwalla1022@gmail.com.

Acknowledgements From Calvin Coolidge Thesis

2011-04-23T11:14:00.000-07:00

Acknowledgements

I owe many debts that I, unlike President Coolidge and his Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon, am hard pressed to repay. Here I shall list my necessary debts, ever thankful that I incurred them.

The list begins, of course, Professors Kesler and Rossum, who kept me out of (most) trouble these four years. What Charles Garman was to Coolidge; Rossum and Kesler are to me. They have opened their minds, their libraries, and even their homes to me. “The great distinguishing mark of all of [my professors] were that they were men of character,” Coolidge noted about his time at Amherst. So, too, could be said of my favorite professors at Claremont. In particular, special thanks go to Professor Kesler. It was said that Garman alone in the wilderness would be a university; the same is true of Professor Kesler, who, gave his attention – and more importantly, his encouragement – to this project.

Ryan Williams, Linnea Powell, Daniel O’Toole, Bryce Gerard, John Kienker, Sam Corcos, and, as always, Bernadette, listened to me recount my love of the ‘20s. Some of the aforementioned read the pages presented before you for consideration. Coolidge once said that it takes a “great man to be a good listener.” I am surrounded, then, by great men and women, who tolerated me even when I was intolerable, which I am ashamed to say was often.

An especially patient man is David Frisk. He is a great friend and a magnificent editor, who poured his attention into this project, with all of the enthusiasm that the perennial student of history and government can muster.

The family Corcos, to whom this work is dedicated, are the greatest friends I have ever had. When I had not a lot they took me in for Christmas, not once, not twice, but thrice and gave me the greatest Christmases ever.

This is fitting because in some key respects, it is always Christmas with them. When Coolidge said, that those who have “the real spirit of Christmas,” are those who “cherish peace and good will,” and are “plenteous in mercy,” I picture the Corcos family. How lucky I am to count them among my friends; how different these years would have been without them.

My parents inspire from afar, in the land that so desperately needs another Coolidge. They are truly public servants, serving the public schools where they teach, not for their pay, but for the love of, and respect of, the children in their charges. I, of course, was their first pupil – and for that I am always welcome.

Grateful, too, am I for the opportunity to study Calvin Coolidge. He was not silent, but silenced and here I hope to have him speak for himself. As we shall see, he has much to say – if we would only listen.