My Review of Tom Arnold-Forster's "Walter Lippmann: An Intellectual Biography"

 The Evolution of Walter Lippmann from Socialist to Conservative-Liberal

 

I previously reviewed Craufurd Goodwin’s book on Walter Lippman as an economist. (See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2014/11/my-amazon-review-of-craufurd-goodwins.html ) Here we have Tom Arnold-Forster’s work as a complete intellectual biography of Lippmann’s thought. Lippmann, born in 1889 from a wealthy Jewish family, would over the next seven decades would become one of America’s great pundits. He would ignore his Jewish heritage throughout his life.

 

Lippmann advised presidents, worked on Wilson’s 14 Points, was present at the Versailles Conference and with his 1922 “Public Opinion” became a leading political scientist. To Lippmann social psychology was the driving force behind the formation of public opinion.

 

After graduating from Harvard Lippmann hung out in the socialist milieu of the Greenwich Village and the New Republic crowd of the 1910’s. He became good buddies with the soon to be communist, John Reed. However, he never lived there and retreated to his upper-eastside family home.

 

From his perch as a syndicated columnist, first with the New York World and then with the Herald Tribune, through his "Today and Tomorrow" column he became widely known and very influential. He fully supported the urban liberalism of Al Smith. He was extraordinarily prescient in 1931 about the enormity of the crisis caused by the Great Depression and again in 1938 he fully understood Hitler’s motives to conquer Europe.

 

However, once the immediate emergency of the depression was over, Lippmann moved to the Right. So much so that a group of European conservative economists, including Hayek, sponsored a 1938 colloquium in his honor. Simply put Lippmann’s opposition to state planning put him in good stead with that group and it was there he coined the term “neo-liberal.”

 

He went all out to support the U.S. military build-up from 1939-41 and after the war he became an advocate of military-Keynesianism. Early on he understood the danger coming from the Soviet Union and he popularized the term, “Cold War.” His Eurocentricity made him a critic of the Vietnam war.

 

Lippmann was a great believer in the role of newspapers in forming public opinion. Afterall, he wrote “Public Opinion” just prior to the advent of radio. I wonder what he would think now of the collapse of newspapers and panoply of information sources that the public now has available?

 

My concern about the book is that Arnold-Forster largely presents criticisms of Lippmann from the Left about his economics and his belief in a strong America. Criticism from the Right comes very late in the book and is minimal. My guess is that the author unfortunately sides with the Left.

The Pentagon Makes a Play for Rare Earths

In taking a page out of Winston Churchill's playbook, where Britain acquired a 51% controlling interest in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (now BP) on the eve of World War I, the Pentagon today made a $400 million dollar investment in rare earth miner/refiner MP Materials. The Pentagon on full exercise of its convertible preferred and warrants will own 14% of the company and become its largest shareholder. Paired with the investment is a long-term supply contract at fixed minimum prices thereby ensuring profitability. 

Rare earths are used to make highly sophisticated magnets that are used in advanced aircraft (think F-35) and guided missiles. At the present time the bulk of the rare earths used by the Pentagon and U.S. industry are imported from China, not the best of circumstances.

The Pentagon's logic behind the deal is identical to Churchill's over 100 years ago. As First Lord of the Admiralty Churchill was seeking a secure supply of oil for the Royal Navy. In addition to its investment, Britain secured a 20-year supply contract for Anglo-Persian's oil. 

As an aside, the preferred stock is convertible at $30.03 a share. MP Materials stock shot up to $44, so thus far the Pentagon is well ahead of the game.

My Review of Tim Bouverie's "Allies at War"

 A Menage of Convenience

 

Historian Tim Bouverie has written a follow-on to his “Appeasement…” (See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2019/07/my-amazon-review-of-tim-boveries.html ) with an exhaustive history of the Roosevelt-Churchill-Stalin alliance of World War II. After Stalin’s dalliance with Hitler fell apart in June 1941 he joined up with Churchill. Although Roosevelt supplied Britain with lend-lease aid, he didn’t become a full partner until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Bouverie recounts in great detail the diplomacy involved in keeping the alliance together where, to say the least, the war aims of the three parties differed.

 

I will not recount here what has already been written about the big wartime conferences in Casablanca, Tehran, and Yalta. What I found most interesting was how Churchill’s dealings with Vichy France, Spain, and Iraq in 1940 and 1941 was of great strategic import. To back up a bit in 1936 British Foreign Secretary Samuel Hoare teamed up with French Prime Minister Pierre Laval in a failed scheme to appease Mussolini in Ethiopia. Moving ahead to 1940 we found Hoare working brilliantly as ambassador to Spain to keep Spain out of Axis hands while Laval worked for the Nazi’s has a high official in Vichy France.

 

In response to Vichy, Churchill acted boldly in sinking a good portion of the French fleet off the coast of Algeria to keep it out of the hands of Germany. The U.S. policy towards Vichy was far more muddled. (See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2021/12/my-amazon-review-of-michael-neibergs.html )

 

Simultaneously Churchill had big troubles in the middle east where a pro-axis coup in Iraq threatened its oil supplies. Churchill deployed his over-stretched army in Egypt and Palestine to over-turn the coup and remove Vichy authorities from Syria. (See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2019/06/my-amazon-review-of-john-broichs-blood.html ) All the while London was being blitzed and Britain’s position in Egypt was under threat.

 

As the war was winding down the early fissures of the Cold War came to the fore. Although Bouverie does not think the Cold War was inevitable, I would tend to disagree. He doesn’t give much weight to the removal of the more pro-Western Maxim Litvinov from his ambassadorial post in Washington and similarly the removal of Ivan Maisky from London in 1943 with more hardline officials. To me that was a major tell. Once Stalin achieved the initiative on ground in 1942 his war aim was to seize eastern Europe to establish a buffer from Germany. Bouverie is correct in stating that Churchill and Roosevelt at Yalta could do little to alter the facts on ground.  The combination of the Soviet army along with the success of its spy services made the Soviet Union a clear winner at enormous cost of World War II. ( See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2021/06/my-amazon-review-of-sean-mckeekins.html )  That in turn set the stage for the Cold War.

 

Tim Bouverie has written an important book about diplomatic history. There is much here to study, and he demonstrated that although the parties had different war aims they succeeded in destroying the Hitlerite regime.

Slaying the CEQA Dragon

 In a victory for the “abundance agenda” (See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2025/04/my-review-of-ezra-kleins-and-derek.html ) over the “enviro-liberals” (See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2016/04/donald-trump-and-enviro-liberals.html ) and their labor union* allies the California Legislature just amended the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) to exempt multifamily housing projects in urban areas from the strictures of the law. No longer can narrow special interest groups hold up much need housing by threatening and engaging in litigation.

 

California is the midst of the worst housing crisis in the Nation. The median price of a single-family home is $900,000 and where so-called affordable housing projects come in in excess of $1,000,000/unit. California used to build housing and from 1960 -2010 the state authorized about 200,000 units/year. In 2024 only 100,000 units were authorized, and the state is now short about 2,000,000 units.

 

Although the housing shortfall has many causes, much of the blame can be placed at the feet of CEQA. A coterie of neighborhood groups, enviro-liberals, labor unions and law firms seem to work in unison to stop much needed housing. Until about 1970 house prices in California were roughly in line with the national average. However, with the Friends of Mammoth Decision that made CEQA applicable to private projects and the passage of the California Coastal Act in 1972, house prices took off. As a result, house prices in the Golden State are nearly two and half times the national median. It is no wonder that there is an exodus from the state.

 

The Democratic Legislature and Governor Gavin Newsom deserve credit for enacting this legislation. It is way late, but better late than never.

 

*Labor unions used CEQA to extort project labor agreement from developers. Indeed high-rise construction under the Bill requires union labor.

Havana on the Hudson

 Zorhan Mamdani, the TikTok Jacobin, upset former governor Andrew Cuomo in New York City’s Democratic Primary making him the odds-on favorite to be the next mayor. Running as a Democratic Socialist, Mamdani’s slick TikTok campaign came across as young and energetic sharply contrasting himself to a Cuomo who appeared ancient. On substance, under the banner of making New York City affordable, he called for the tired old socialist nostrums of rent freezes, increasing business and personal income taxes in the already highest tax city in the country, city-owned grocery stores, free bus service, a $30/hour minimum wage, and for effectively increasing property taxes for white homeowners. His program represents a sure-fire path for New York City to join the failed cities of Chicago and Los Angeles.

 

Contrary from socialist dogma, Mamdani’s base was not lodged in the working class and the African American communities, but rather it came from the young children of privilege who are over-credentialed, underemployed, and housing stressed. Most of them resided in what is called New York’s “commie belt” which runs from western Queens to western Brooklyn. For the most part these hipsters believe that society owes them a good life in New York City. Unfortunately for them, they can’t really afford it, and many live off the largess of their parents. Indeed, with two-bedroom apartments renting for more than $5,000/month, New York City is objectively unaffordable. This is not true of Mamdani whose college professor Dad and movie making Mom are more than comfortable.

 

The underbelly of the Mamdani campaign is its extreme anti-capitalist, anti-colonialist, defund the police, and above all its anti-Zionism themes. As late as this morning Mamdani refused to condemn the term “globalize the intifada,” which means kill the Jews in the diaspora. If that isn't antisemitism, I don't know what is! It is not a surprise that Jeremy Corbyn, the notorious British antisemite, congratulated Mamdani on his election win. Indeed, many of the people who marched in New York’s anti-Zionist parades worked as Mamdani’s shock troops during his campaign.

 

How did this happen? The answer is that both the Democratic and Jewish establishments in New York City are sclerotic. They are pale shadows of their former selves, and it will be difficult for them to rally to oppose Mamdani in the general election, where his most likely opponent would be Eric Adams, the current scandal plagued mayor. However, because the turnout in the primary was low, it is possible that Mamdani’s youth turnout hit a ceiling and that older voters will go to the polls in November in substantial numbers to swamp the TikTok generation. If not, New York City will soon become Havana on the Hudson as its tax base abandons the city.  

My Review of Dan Edelstein's "The Revolution to Come: A History of the Idea from Thucydides to Lenin"

 To the Barricades

 

Stanford Professor Dan Edelstein has written a very academic intellectual history of the idea of political revolutions. To the ancients up to the time of the French Revolution the whole idea of revolution was disturbing. It meant a useless cycle of destruction as society moved from tyrannical to mob rule with nothing being accomplished.

 

From Professor Edelstein I learned of Polybius a Greek historian writing in the time of the Roman Republic. Polybius endorsed the idea of a “balanced constitution” that distributed executive, legislative and judicial power, sounds familiar. His writings greatly influenced the founders of the American republic. Edelstein views the American Revolution as “radical conservatism” designed to “preserve the state.” This produced the American constitution which to the frustration of the extreme right and the extreme left forces policies into the center.

 

All of this changed with the French Revolution where the idea of progress took hold. The belief in progress meant that a revolution could bring about a glorious future and instead of having a balanced constitution it excused dictatorship in the hope that it would bring about a better world to come. To Edelstein, dictatorship was not an exception, but rather a feature of modern revolutions. Starting with Napoleon in 1799, to the Latin American caudillos of the early 1800’s, to Lenin, Mao, and Khomeini.

 

This is a hard book for the lay reader, but for those interested in the idea of revolution it is well worth slogging through.

Trump Crosses the Rubicon

In 49 BCE Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon in northern Italy thereby declaring war on the Roman Senate. The phrase has since come to mean “passing the point of no return.” President Trump with his B-2 bomber strike on three Iranian nuclear facilities has gone where no president has gone before, including Bush II, Obama, Trump I, and Biden. As a result of this action the middle east has been irrevocably changed, hopefully for the better.

 

It remains to be seen how successful the bombing mission was and to what degree Iran will retaliate. It will take time to do a bomb damage assessment, but the early indications are that the damage was substantial. The key question will be how hard the underground Fordow site was hit. (See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2025/06/israel-and-iran-fog-of-war.html )

 

The bombing raid was coordinated with Israeli strikes earlier in the week that took out Iranian air defenses in southern Iran. With the Iranian nuclear threat presumably removed, Israel prime minister Netanyahu will now have a freer hand to make peace in Gaza. He now may be strong enough to deal with the hard right members of his cabinet.

 

When Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon, he reportedly said “the die is cast.”  The dice are now rolling in the middle east which means the middle east will look quite a bit different than the way it looked two days ago.

 

One last point, Wall Street’s “TACO trade” (Trump always chickens out on tariffs”) may no longer be valid.  (See:

https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2025/06/my-ucla-anderson-forecast-presentation.html )   If anything, Trump proved that he is not a chicken.