Skip to main content

The Irony of American History by Reinhold Niebuhr

A densely written, difficult book, but very much worth reading. Predictive (almost prophetic you could say) of many of the struggles the USA faces now, nearly 70 years later. See, for example, the ugly ironies of modern culture wars, the invisible ironies of modern censorship, and saddest of all, the ironic struggle of working and middle classes under our technology overlords and government elites who, under the guise of "helping" us, increasingly control what we see, what we can say, and what we can do.

Niebuhr also points out in powerful ways the irony of "the pursuit of happiness" and how it places the individual in opposition to the collective, and how it leads ultimately to a vapid and vulgar culture.

The more powerful we have become as a nation, the less we are masters of our destiny. Niebuhr points out, again ironically, that we were a far greater master of our nation's destiny in the early decades of our history than we are now. When Niebuhr wrote this book in the early 1950s, we were totally unable to control the spread of international communism, we were unable to do anything about the USSR's complete hegemony over all of Eastern Europe, we stood helplessly by as China fell to Communism, and we were about to begin, with the conflict in Korea, the first of an endless list of "endless wars."

Today, you could argue we are more "powerful" than ever, yet far from controlling our destiny, we can hardly control ourselves at all. We bound from endless war to endless war across the Middle East, accomplishing nothing except adding strength and number to peoples who hate us (with good reason). And learning nothing: we further extended our wars into the domain of international trade, engaging in trade policies that ultimately gutted our own labor market, depressed our own workers' wages, and led to the export of most of our manufacturing base.

With all the power that we supposedly have, we remain nothing more than a "pitiful helpless giant" (to borrow the 1970s phrase from Richard Nixon), "living in an age of anarchy, both abroad and at home."

As individuals we are no less impotent. We allow our childish sociocultural tribalisms and our ill-informed ideological disputes to interfere with family, friendships and living a friendly, healthy life. And we always think we're right and the other guy is wrong! Another painful irony.

Finally, this book brought home to me, indirectly, the utter pointlessness of talking about politics. Keep in mind: Decades ago, Reinhold Niebuhr wrote a profound and deeply insightful book illustrating ironic hypocrisies throughout our political system. Today, no one reads this book (I only discovered it thanks to an obscure footnote in another obscure book that no one has ever read), and no one has even heard of Reinhold Niebuhr. Yet he's one of the 20th Century's most important philosopher-theologians! 

So why would we think there is any merit in offering our own unread, unremembered and ill-informed thoughts on politics in the postmodern era, which at their best take the form of virtue signalling and snarky putdowns on heavily-censored social media sites?

More Posts

Empire, Incorporated by Philip J. Stern

Bluntly: this book is worth your attention if two things are true: 1) you're interested in the history of the early joint stock companies and their role in colonial history, and 2) you're willing to put up with a long, cluttered and disorganized book. Empire, Incorporated doesn't know what it really wants to be, and as a result author Philip Stern finds himself scattered everywhere, throwing at the wall anything and everything to do with mercantile-era joint stock companies. The book simply crawls with minutia to the point where even its own author at times gets his own lines crossed and loses his own thread. [A quick  affiliate link to Amazon  for those readers who would like to support my work here: if you purchase your Amazon products via any affiliate link from this site, or from my sister site  Casual Kitchen , I will receive a small affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you!] I'll critique the work more in another paragraph, but let's first ...

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch [spoilers]

A first-rate central concept inside a second-rate plot wrapper. After reading two Blake Crouch novels , Crouch's gift for concept is obvious, but writing believable and well-resolved narrative arcs is an area for improvement. We'll start with this novel's concept layer, the multiverse: the idea that there are an infinite number of possible universes, and with every choice we make, every fork in our road, a new separate universe will exist for any and all of these possible choices. Dark Matter is a story about a physicist, Jason Dessen, who figures out a way to place a human being into "superposition," enabling him to move from quantum universe to quantum universe, and even to choose which quantum universe to inhabit. [A quick  affiliate link to Amazon  for those readers who would like to support my work here: if you purchase your Amazon products via any affiliate link from this site, or from my sister site  Casual Kitchen , I will receive a small affiliate commis...

The Dhandho Investor by Mohnish Pabrai

Worth reading, and rereading, and re-rereading. An elegant book that teaches fundamental principles of value investing, and much more. The Dhandho Investor  also has the highly unusual quality of being useful at a wide range of reader sophistication levels: you can gain tremendously from this book as a beginner or as a deeply experienced investor. I'll single out Chapters 5 and 6 for particular mention: Chapter 5 describes author Mohnish Pabrai's investing framework, with nine interlocking and synchronistic rules. Chapter 6 describes in very simple language all of the gigantic structural advantages of investing in the stock market, as it offers low frictional costs, a tremendous selection of possible businesses, and, most importantly, periodic incredible opportunities. These two chapters explain why you will take a pass on almost all investments--but then, once in a while, make large bets on specific situations that meet your requirements. [A quick  affiliate link to Amazon ...