John Kennedy’s How To Test Negative For Stupid

A friend gave me this book for Christmas. I don’t usually read books by politicians, but How to Test Negative for Stupid by Senator John Kennedy (R, Louisiana) is one of the funniest and entertaining memoirs I’ve read in a long time. He is definitely one of a kind, known for the very humorous quips and questions he makes during Senate hearings. He has a thick Southern drawl, which can lead an unsuspecting witness or nominee to underestimate him, but he is smart as a whip.

Practically every page has a laugh-out-loud passage:

For as long as I can remember, one thing has been true about me: I have the right to remain silent, but not the ability. (Page 1)

Most Americans imagine the Senate as this grand theater filled with distinguished lawmakers delivering erudite speeches. In reality, it’s usually empty as a timeshare salesman’s heart. (Page 13)

I observed to a reporter one time that you can lead a person to Congress, but you can’t make him think. (Page 21)

I’ve never heard either Susan [Collins] or Jeanne [Shaheen] raise her voice. Composure is their super power. They are as polite as they are effective. Imagine a cross between a hall monitor and a class valedictorian. I honestly believe that Susan and Jeanne think WTF stands for Well, That’s Fantastic. (Page 22)

“Thom [Tillis] may not like my bill, but I still think he’s a good man. He has many friends, including me. Let me tell you what one of Thom’s childhood friends said about Thom’s first sexual experience. Thom was thirteen. It was night. It was dark. He was nervous. He was scared. And he was alone.” (Page 26)

That’s Lindsey [Graham] – unafraid and able to talk the hinges off a gate. That doesn’t mean he’s always right. Sometimes I think his motto is “Don’t be part of the problem – be the whole problem.” But he’ll say the quiet part out loud, and I respect that. He’s also unpredictable. Invite him to dinner, and you don’t know if he’ll sit  down for an intelligent conversation or get drunk and vomit in the fish tank. But that’s why I like him. (Page 14)

Even though Kennedy is a Republican, he began his political career as a Democrat, and he doesn’t let party loyalty get in the way of his principles. One thing that comes through loud and clear is his desire to cut through Washington D.C. BS and make sure the federal government serves the American people.

As Kennedy relates the high points of his life, we learn about his growing up in the small town of Zachary, LA, his time at Vanderbilt University as an undergraduate, then UVA Law School, as well as some graduate work at Oxford. I have to quote him on when he first arrived at Vandy (my own alma mater, BTW):

   Then and now, Vanderbilt ranks as one of the top American universities. So many people I met there seem to have attended private school. This made no sense to me. Back in Zachary, everyone went to a public school. The only reason you’d go to a private school was if you were a badass who kept getting in trouble. That would get you sent to a private military academy that was supposed to straighten you up and teach you discipline. March to class and do push-ups and that kind of stuff. So, as I walked around the campus of my new college, meeting people who went to private schools with names like Woodberry Forest, Montgomery Bell Academy, and Phillips Exeter, I remember being shocked.
“My God, ” I thought, “I’m going to school with a bunch of juvenile delinquents. They must have turned themselves around in military academy to get into Vanderbilt.” (Page 41)

Some of the most interesting passages involve Sen. Kennedy’s interactions with Pres. Trump. He gets along well with Trump, but he isn’t in awe of him. He understands that Trump likes to take credit for successes, even when it isn’t warranted, and he supports Trump’s attempts to reform “The Swamp”.

Kennedy also gives the reader a glimpse into the Byzantine workings of the US Senate, providing a few of his “greatest hits”, viral moments from various hearings. He wraps up How to Test Negative for Stupid with a speed round: his thoughts on various issues like immigration, the media, crime, etc. If he has a consistent ideology, it’s basically libertarian: it’s the job of the government to provide a safe place for Americans to live, work, and worship as they see fit. The lower the taxes and the fewer the regulations, the better off we all are.

Regardless of your political leanings, How to Test Negative for Stupid is a very entertaining read, and it gives me hope knowing there are men like John Kennedy in the Senate. He’s not afraid to say what he thinks, whether it angers Republicans or Democrats. He marches to his own drummer, and I respect him for that.

Joel J. Miller’s The Idea Machine – A Fascinating History of Books

I have been a subscriber to Joel Miller’s excellent Substack, Miller’s Book Review for a couple of years. He never fails to pique my interest in whatever he’s reading, and it doesn’t hurt that he’s a hell of a good writer. So, I was very pleased when he announced that Prometheus Books had agreed to publish his book, The Idea Machine. It’s premise is very simple: How have books changed the world, and what is the history of them? As Miller writes on page 1:

The book, as I argue in the pages ahead, is one of the most important but overlooked factors in the making of the modern world. Why this lack of appreciation – or even awareness? Arguably, the book is a victim of its own success. Familiarity usually breeds more neglect than contempt. We fail to recognize the book for what it is: a remarkably potent information technology, an idea machine.

So begins Miller’s history and appreciation for the written word. He starts at the beginning with ancient Sumerian cuneiform tablets, through ancient Greek and Roman ways of storing and retrieving information on scrolls, the development of codices in Christian medieval Europe, to the explosion of books made possible by the printing press. Along the way, I learned all kinds of fascinating facts.

I did not know that the books written on scrolls in ancient times did have the commonplace things we take for granted that make reading easy, namely spaces between words and punctuation. Because of this, reading and understanding a text took a lot of energy and intellectual effort. Roman elites had literate slaves read books to them, and it was unheard of to read a book silently. The ancient Romans were not interested in having as many literate people as possible, because the ability to read denoted higher class. 

It wasn’t until the reign of Charlemagne that Christian monks and nuns took it upon themselves to create schools to teach reading to the masses. Christianity differed from paganism in that it was grounded in texts that were shared, copied, and disseminated as much as possible. 

If there is a thread running through the entire book (besides the history and development of the book as an information technology), it’s the various ways cultures developed to catalog the information contained in large collections of books. Scrolls were very unwieldy when it came to quickly finding a desired passage; the codex, which consisted of pages that were bound together like our familiar books today, was much better at yielding up its information. Once the printing press made books easy to produce, the problem became one of organizing and cataloging the huge amount of information that was available. Until the advent of digital computers, the best people could do was analog card catalogs, encyclopedias, and indices. Miller makes the case that with AI, we are on the verge of another breakthrough on a par with the printing press. AI will allow users to quickly find and summarize relevant works. 

If you’re wondering why Christendom quickly passed Islamic culture in terms of innovation and creativity, it’s because Muslim leaders banned the printed word, while Europe embraced it. As more and more ideas were written, printed, and spread, they led to even more ideas and insights. Thus, books were carriers of “viral” thoughts and theories that generated more creativity from their consumers. Areas under Muslim control missed out on this, because of their insistence on using hand-copied manuscripts. 

The Idea Machine also has a chapter on how Thomas Jefferson’s buying books in Europe and sending them to James Madison back in the American colonies had a profound effect on the writing of the United States’ constitution. Another interesting chapter relates the struggles enslaved blacks underwent to learn how to read and write. The southern plantation owners it quickly realized that if slaves could read, their entire economic system was at risk of collapse.

Miller includes lots of illustrations throughout The Idea Machine (see the above depiction of Pliny the Elder for an example), as well as a “Marginalia” at the end of each chapter. These Marginalia focus on one or two specific examples that expand on the theme of the previous chapter, and are always entertaining.

I love books, and reading has given much pleasure. I still remember how excited I was to be able to read a simple story in first grade. All of a sudden, entire worlds were opened to me. As Miller remarks in his chapter on the novel, 

Novels provide temporary leave of our specificity, an escape from the enclosed space of ourselves, the prison of our popular psychology. Literature brings us into the lives of others. If only for a few hours, we can appreciate their motivations and values; we can see what drives them, inspires them, and repels them. We can take the place of someone radically different from ourselves and engage the world as that self. (Page 254)

The Idea Machine is a wonderful history and analysis of books as a technology – without them, it’s doubtful human civilization would have ever gotten off the ground. Miller takes what could have been a dry and boring subject and turns it into an exciting tale of invention and discovery. Along the way, the reader gets to meet some of the most entertaining personalities in history. Any lover of books should add this one to their library.

 

 

 

Nadya Williams’ Christians Reading Classics: What the Ancients Can Teach Us

I love old books, but sometimes the gulf between the culture in which a book was written and my own is so great that I fail to get the original intent of the author. Nadya Williams’ new book, Christians Reading Classics, is an invaluable guide to some of the most time-tested classic works from the ancient world, and it can help bridge that cultural divide. It is divided into five parts, in rough chronological order.

Part I is Longing for Eternity, and it covers Homer’s The Iliad, Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days, Pindar’s Odes, and the Histories of Herodotus and Thucydides. Each chapter is relatively short but packed with profound insights. For example, in her analysis of The Iliad, Williams writes,

The externally governed nature of this heroic code – that one is only a great hero if this person is recognized by others and has accumulated great prizes of honor, including prizes that are real people! – is a warning to us as we consider how aspects of such a code appeal to our own desires even today. Each of us wants to be declared good – as God once spoke when he created Adam. In fact, we would like to be declared “the Best”, and we would like this coronation to come unconditionally from absolutely everyone around. But our worth and any declaration of goodness, excellence, and ultimately righteousness is to be found in God alone, not in other people’s view of us. The suffering of the heroes in The Iliad and in other ancient epics, where heroes do all they can to be declared “the Best”, is an important warning of what happens if we place our value in others’ opinion of us. It reminds us of the empty promises of this kind of glory – it cannot satisfy. (p. 9)

Part II: The Formation of Virtuous Citizens, covers Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Euripides, Plato, and Aristotle. These authors’ works are the high point of ancient Greek literature, and Williams makes the case that they wrestle with the issue of what qualities are necessary to be virtuous. Aristophanes used comedy and political satire to make his points, while Sophocles and Euripides used tragedy. At the end of each chapter, Williams includes some helpful questions. Here are the ones at the end of her chapter on Plato and Aristotle:

1. What do we learn about Socrates and the Socratic method from Plato and Aristotle?
2. What is the difference between eunomia and isonomia? Why does it matter?
3. Why did Aristotle consider poetry so important for the education of citizens? Do you agree? Why or why not?
   (page 113)

In Part III:  Words of Power and The Power of Words, we transition from Greek culture to Roman. It includes ancient Athenian forensic speechwriters, an entertaining overview of ancient “how-to manuals”, Cicero, Caesar, and Ovid. If there’s one obvious difference between Greek and Roman authors, it’s that the Romans are much more practical and pragmatic.

Part IV: Heroes and Role Models features Cato, Livy, Vergil, Tacitus, Suetonius, and Plutarch. These writers were alive from when the office of the Roman emperor was established through the turbulent and unstable second century AD. Williams makes an interesting point about how the new religion of Christianity made profound changes in Roman culture:

We can learn a lot about a culture’s values from seeing who its heroes are. In the ancient world before Christianity, these heroes were always famous politicians and generals – an overlapping category, for to be one was to always to be the other. Only after the rise of Christianity do we see different sorts of heroes arise: the meek, the lowly, and the ones willing to die for their faith. The rise of these new heroes correspondingly changes the genre of biography.
(page 218)

The final section, Part V: Virtues and Vices in the Age of Anxiety, brings us to the end of the Classical Age. We meet Apuleius, Marcus Aurelius, Augustine, Perpetua, Cyprian, and Boethius. Williams makes a very compelling case that Athens (rationalism) needs Jerusalem (heart and soul), and Jerusalem needs Athens. You can have political leaders that are brilliant, but without virtue, they will turn into tyrants:

Socrates students were renowned as brilliant. They had received an excellent education. But lacking genuine character formation in the virtues, some of them turned that education against fellow citizens, overthrowing their democracy and ruthlessly killing anyone who opposed them. After all, selfishness and desire for power are the only impulses that do not have to learned – they are inbuilt.
(page 251)

Christians Reading Classics is an excellent introduction to some of the greatest thinkers and writers who ever existed. It is not a deep analysis of their works, but rather an appetizer that ideally encourages the reader to check out the actual plays, speeches, histories, and dialogs these men and women wrote centuries ago. Williams makes a strong case that they still can entertain and enlighten us. She includes recommended translations of every work she refers to at the end of each chapter. There’s a reason these are classics – they have stood the test of time, and generations of readers have benefitted from reading them.

Ivanhoe: Great Fun and Adventure

I read Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe when I was in high school back in the 1970s. Was it required reading? Nope, I just picked it up in my local bookstore because the cover looked interesting and it was $0.95. With a 5% sales tax, it cost me a dollar even, which was a bargain. I soon got caught up in Scott’s fast-paced tale of a valiant and honorable knight who was treated wrongly. I’ve been rereading literary classics that I first read when I was much younger to see how much more meaning I get from them now, and I decided to dive into Ivanhoe.

The Paperback version I bought fifty years ago.

Scott published it in 1820, and it was a big hit. It is set in the late 1100s, in Britain, after the Normans had established their conquest of it. There remain a few Saxon nobles, but almost all power resides in the Norman landowners. Richard the Lionhearted is king, but he hasn’t been seen for years, since he left for a Crusade, and it’s rumored he is being held prisoner in Europe. His brother, John, sits on the throne, and he is doing everything he can to consolidate his power.

The novel begins with an introduction to Gurth the swineherd and Jamba the fool.  While relaxing outdoors, they meet the epicurean Pryor of Aymer and his companion, the Knight Templar Brian de Bois-Guilbert who are traveling to an upcoming jousting tournament. The weather is threatening, and they ask Jamba if there is shelter nearby. He tells them Cedric the Saxon’s castle is near, but he gives them incorrect directions. They manage to find it as the storm breaks.

Cedric is a very proud Saxon who despises the Norman conquerors of Britain. He refuses to speak Norman French, and he maintains his estate despite pressure and conflict from his Norman neighbors. He is the guardian of the beautiful Rowena, a Saxon princess, and the father of Wilfred of Ivanhoe, whom he has banished because he fell in love with Rowena.

As everyone gathers for supper during the storm, a pilgrim shows up and is welcomed. Also, a poor, elderly Jewish man, Isaac of York, knocks on the door and begs for shelter. When Isaac enters, Scott makes clear how prejudiced 12th century Britain was towards Jews. No one will allow Isaac to sit at the table, until the pilgrim invites him to join him at his seat by the fire.

During the dinner conversation, de Bois-Guilbert admires Rowena to the point of rudeness. He is very arrogant, and he denigrates Richard the Lion-Hearted, who is a prisoner in Hungary after going on a Crusade. The pilgrim speaks up on behalf of Richard, telling everyone he was in Palestine and witnessed his valor, as well as Ivanhoe’s. It’s clear there is immediate and deep dislike between the pilgrim and de Bois-Guilbert.

Early the next morning, the pilgrim awakens Isaac to warn him to leave immediately, or else de Bois-Guilbert will track him down and kill him. He accompanies Isaac to safety with his relatives in the town of Ashby, which is hosting the tournament. In gratitude, Isaac writes him a note that will enable him to get a horse and armor, because he sees that he is no ordinary pilgrim, but rather a man trained in the art of war.

We soon find out that Isaac is not a poverty-stricken mendicant, but rather a very well-off usurer. He has a beautiful daughter, Rebecca, and when they show up at the tournament, everyone notices how attractive she is, including Prince John, the younger brother of the absent King Richard.

John is duplicitous, impetuous, and temperamental. He has gathered about himself a cabal of fawning supporters to whom he doles out favors that aren’t his to give, since he isn’t the rightful sovereign. As he presides over the tournament, an unknown knight appears who refuses to give his name, except to call himself “The Disinherited Knight”. This knight displays the highest virtues of chivalry, and captures the hearts of the crowd. He chooses to joust against de Bois-Guilbert and triumphs over him, to de Bois-Guilbert’s shame and disgust.

The next day is the general battle, where two teams of fifty knights vie for supremacy. It’s a bloody contest, as Scott explains, tongue firmly in cheek:

Thus ended the memorable field of Ashby-de-la-Zouche, one of the most gallantly contested tournaments of that age; for although only four knights, including one who was smothered by the heat of his armour, had died upon the field, yet upwards of thirty were desperately wounded, four or five of whom never recovered. Several more were disabled for life; and those who escaped best carried the marks of the conflict to the grave with them. Hence it is always mentioned in the old records, as the Gentle and Joyous Passage of Arms of Ashby.

Walter Scott. Ivanhoe: A Romance (Kindle Locations 2799-2804). Standard Ebooks. Kindle Edition.

The Disinherited Knight’s team prevails, with some aid from a mysterious black knight. Prince John is furious that his team of knights have lost, but he is forced to award the laurels to the Disinherited Knight. When Rowena, who had been chosen by John as the Queen of the Tournament, comes down to place the victor’s laurels on the knight’s head, he takes off his helmet, and it’s Wilfred of Ivanhoe! He collapses due to a serious wound in his side he sustained.

So begins a rollicking adventure that has everything: dastardly villains, beautiful maidens, virtuous heroes, secret identities, lots of swordplay, humorous side-stories. Ivanhoe is even responsible for the version of Robin Hood and his Merry Band that we all know and love. It’s a really fun read that has a pitched battle to take the bad guy’s castle, unrequited love, and lots of action.

It also contains several scenes that illustrate the vicious and virulent antisemitism of medieval Europe. The moneylender Isaac and his extraordinarily beautiful daughter Rebecca are forced to hide their authentic lives, because they are members of the “accursed race”. Rebecca is a gifted healer who takes it upon herself to help Wilfred recover from the wound he sustained in the tournament. When he regains consciousness while in her care, he is first stunned by her beauty, but quickly recovers himself:

But Ivanhoe was too good a Catholic to retain the same class of feelings towards a Jewess. This Rebecca had foreseen, and for this very purpose she had hastened to mention her father’s name and lineage; yet— for the fair and wise daughter of Isaac was not without a touch of female weakness— she could not but sigh internally when the glance of respectful admiration, not altogether unmixed with tenderness, with which Ivanhoe had hitherto regarded his unknown benefactress, was exchanged at once for a manner cold, composed, and collected, and fraught with no deeper feeling than that which expressed a grateful sense of courtesy received from an unexpected quarter, and from one of an inferior race. It was not that Ivanhoe’s former carriage expressed more than that general devotional homage which youth always pays to beauty; yet it was mortifying that one word should operate as a spell to remove poor Rebecca, who could not be supposed altogether ignorant of her title to such homage, into a degraded class, to whom it could not be honourably rendered.

Walter Scott. Ivanhoe: A Romance (Kindle Locations 5584-5592). Standard Ebooks. Kindle Edition.

Scott does a fine job decrying the unreasoning prejudice and hatred Christians had towards Jews. I wonder how his sympathetic portrayal of Isaac and Rebecca was received when Ivanhoe was published.

As I reflect on the novel, it strikes me how little Ivanhoe is featured in it. Except for the tournament and the climactic scene involving the trial of Rebecca for sorcery, he is pretty much out of the picture. Most of the novel’s drama is concerned with Rebecca and Bois-Guilbert’s obsession with her. He ultimately ends up a tragic figure, willing to throw away his reputation, his position with the Templars, and his pride in the vain hope of winning her heart. A more appropriate title might be Rebecca.

Is Ivanhoe a classic? Yes, of course. Is it great literature? Here’s my hot take: no, it’s not. It’s a very entertaining read, but it doesn’t compare to anything Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, or George Eliot wrote. Sir Walter Scott was one of the most popular writers of his time, with many “bestsellers”. I would liken him to Stephen King – a much-loved author who sells boatloads of books, but will probably be barely remembered a hundred years from now (assuming people will still be reading a hundred years from now). When Scott was writing his Waverly novels, of which Ivanhoe was a part, the novel was a relatively new literary form. It took Jane Austen to point the way to its true potential, even though Pride and Prejudice was contemporaneous with Scott’s work. 

You can download an excellently formatted ebook of Ivanhoe here.

Addendum: After I finished reading Ivanhoe, I looked it up in my handy Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. In its entry for Ivanhoe, it mentioned that William Makepeace Thackeray wrote a novella, Rebecca and Rowena, that continued the tale of Ivanhoe. I checked it out, and it is very funny.

Thackeray begins with describing how incredibly boring and irritating marriage to the oh-so-pious but insanely jealous Rowena is. She can’t resist snarkily referring to Rebecca in Ivanhoe’s presence. He finally decides to join his old friend King Richard – who is portrayed as a greedy, money-hungry despot – in France as he besieges a castle to get the riches within. To Ivanhoe’s surprise, Rowena quickly agrees to his plan, and as he is leaving their estate, he sees his old rival Athelstane riding towards it.

Thackeray spoofs the superhuman exploits of Wilfred of Ivanhoe by describing how he is often killed but brought back to life by an elixir Jamba carries with him. Ivanhoe travels to Spain in the hope of finding his true love, Rebecca. He slaughters thousands of Moors as the Iberian peninsula is liberated from them, and he eventually finds Rebecca. Rowena has conveniently died while being imprisoned by King John, and Rebecca has conveniently converted to Christianity. It’s a pretty accurate parody of Scott’s style and I found it quite entertaining.