There is a fundamental misunderstanding of democracy that undermines much domestic and foreign policy. One way to put it is that democracy is seen as a kind of natural way for societies to organize themselves. What could be more normal than a bunch of people getting together for mutual benefit…

The ideas here are based on a small amount of data and are undoubtedly well-known in some form to many people. However they don’t show up in the usual discussions of Bach, and they certainly don’t seem to have influenced performances on recordings. I’m been playing some pretty basic Bach-three-part…

Heather McGhee begins her book The Sum of Us with the question “Why can’t we have nice things?” …

It has become clear from all polls that the key issue for voters in this midterm election is inflation. That’s a difficult issue for Democrats, so we have tried to make it something else: January 6, the Supreme Court, etc. The time has come to realize that all of that…

There’s an important article about climate change in the latest IEEE Spectrum. It’s only two pages long, but there is much to think about. It is high time to recognize the reality of what we’re fighting. The article points out that a reasonable estimate for the cost of the energy…

We’re not paying enough attention. This midterm election hides a real danger of Depression. We’re stumbling into exactly what happened in the 1930's. The Great Depression of the 1930’s occurred when the financial authorities of the day responded to a sudden downturn with the opposite of what was needed. A…

I’m tired of arguments over whether Republicans or Democrats are better managers of the economy. The situation for the midterms is starker than that. In this election cycle we are parallel to 2014, a mid-term election with an open Presidential election to follow. What did the Republican Party do with…

The public discussion of Biden’s student loan plan seems to be about some other country-certainly not this one. Much of the discussion takes the point of view that Biden’s plan is a wildly-expensive and unnecessary change, since post-secondary education is functioning the way it always has. …

This note is occasioned by John McWhorter’s piece in the NY Times, basically praising Clarence Thomas as a thinker who has been too easily dismissed. While I agree with Mr. McWhorter on some subjects, I think he is very wrong on this one. …