[…]neo-neocon » Blog Archive » Obama’s reading (and writing) list[…]…

Not true. In fact, Bush’s grades were better than Gore’s, who got kicked out of Divinity School due to low grades.

Former President Bush also reads a great deal. We rarely hear Obama talking about how books have informed him. So, exactly which deep intellectual discussion from Obama have “refreshed” you the most?

We’ve not even found his Harvard academic record or even a Harvard diploma with his name on it. Haven’t seen his Illinois law License either, and the part about him and Michelle relinquishing their license to practice law has changed at least twice since he took office.

Oh well, we shoulda’ guessed he would turn out to be a suma cum laude sooner or later. Heck, if you’re gonna’ lie, you might as well make it a big one. And this one is growing.

Obama has learned to speak (I think he’s taken professional lessons) as though he is an authority on anything he speaks of but his words and his lack of real knowledge betray him as a fraud and I consider him to be a very dangerous con man whom we will never know. Like all con men he isn’t going to help us out.

Naughty Neo! You forgot Lyric.

More on your question concerning Santayana. I didn’t read it carefully enough and forgot to answer the second part, namely, what was the motivation or purpose in reading him (not that my perspective matters, but I can only answer for myself). Hmmm. Good question.

It wasn’t due to the usual reasons: you know, a lust for those snazzy Penguin Classic covers, or the desire to pick up chicks. (No, for that you need Plato, Wittgenstein if you’re gay — and let me tell you from painful personal experience, never, ever, under any circumstances, Schopenhauer).

The quality and subtlety of his epigrams hooked me, such as “There is no God and Mary is His mother” (thanks, BetsyBounds). As an truly civilized mind in the European tradition, he seemed to offer insights into the basic question of how to live, written in beautiful prose. He reminds me of a certain species of cultural conservative who, like the historian John Lukacs, repeatedly awes, surprises, and flummoxes me by his ability to make critical distinctions. A fine mind who makes mine feel gross and clumsy by comparison.

Santayana is sadly neglected today because he has fallen through the cracks of intellectual fashion: as a philosopher, he’s too literary, and as a writer, too philosophical. You are right, nobody reads him much. Our loss. All I can claim to have read is a few essays from “The Birth of Reason and Other Essays”. His book “The Life of Reason” has been sitting unread on my shelf for several months.

Since I don’t have an original thought to contribute to this discussion of Obama’s reading and writing list, I will do the next best thing and borrow a quote from Francis Bacon:

“Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.”

I think Obama fails on all counts.

If Obama had been a plumber, every house he had ever worked in would have a flooded basement!!

There’s a much higher standard for plumbers in the world than there is for politicians, that’s for sure.