Plutocratic vistas: America’s crisis of democracy

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 17:45:00 +0000

The crash of 2007/2008 hit Harvard University especially hard. Thanks to the overweeningly brilliant, unflappably self-confident financial guidance of ex-president Lawrence Summers, Harvard lost nearly a third of its $36 billion endowment in one year. ("As a former Secretary of the Treasury, I assure you that interest rates will not fall below X," he is rumored to have told the governing board, who were anxious about a particularly daring credit-default swap he was proposing.) Every department's belt was tightened several notches, and widespread layoffs were anticipated.

“Great Soul”: A Gandhi biography that will break your heart

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 00:30:00 +0000

The great are a pretty mixed lot, especially in politics. Hitler, Stalin and Mao were among the great, each in his own monstrous way. Churchill was, too, for both good and evil, and Roosevelt as well, though mainly he was lucky. De Gaulle may or may not deserve to be included in such company, but he certainly behaved as if he was sure he did.

Gandhi is, to my mind, the gold standard of 20th-century political greatness. He produced tremendous effects, overwhelmingly good, and he achieved them not by luck, force or guile but virtuously, by persuasion and example. Martin Luther King is perhaps his peer in these respects, but the scale of Gandhi's accomplishment was much greater.

Salon.com > George Scialabba

Plutocratic vistas: America’s crisis of democracy

“Great Soul”: A Gandhi biography that will break your heart