A long, rambling, two-years old Norman Podhoretz write up in Commentary that is still worth a read. Choice:
John Maynard Keynes once said that “Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.” Keynes was referring specifically to businessmen. But practical functionaries like bureaucrats and administrators are subject to the same rule, though they tend to be the slaves not of economists but of historians and sociologists and philosophers and novelists who are very much alive even when their ideas have, or should have, become defunct. Nor is it necessary for the “practical men” to have studied the works in question, or even ever to have heard of their authors. All they need do is read the New York Times, or switch on their television sets, or go to the movies
Rambling, yes. Boring, yes.
Norm baby, how do you say History Repeats itself. Sorry for the brevity.
Jim
Tedious things, aren’t they? Facts, I mean.
And there are so many of them.