THE CURISOU CAPITALIST

When the Dismal Science Was Brilliant
by Rona Foroohar

Sylvia Nasar explains the history of economic genius. We could sure use some.

The 20 century economists have done a good job, but their theories do not apply in today's post financial crisis. The writer says in conclusion, "As we enter an era of rising inequality and powere shifts that promises to be just as unsettling as the Industrial Revolution was, it's clear that economic genius is needed now more than ever.

I did not know that Charles Dickens's "A Chrismas Carol" called for new and more generous economic thinking. Now I understand how Scrooge helped the Cratchit and his family in the end of the story.

America's Nitwit Anglophiles by Joe Queenan

  Why are they so oblivious to the things that really make Britian great?

　　Americans’ Anglophiles believe Americans are loud, rude and afflicted with poor taste and despise their compatriots, but 20,000 drunks, lechers, sluts and gangsters hang around London’s Leicester Square. Anglophiles get all weak in the knees at the very mention of Beatrix Potter and Peter Pan. Their admiration of the royal wedding is an act of demented form of cultural fetishism. Anglophiles do not admire the wonderful things the English have given the U.S.—legal system, King Lear, Jane Eyre, and the Protestant Reformation, but their attention is madly directed at the things like bowler hats, Harrods, people with names like Bonham-Carter. Isn't something wrong with Anglophilia? (105 words)

Question: Why do Anglophiles admire people with names like Bonham-Carter? What lies in the name, Bonham-Carter? Please, anyone reading this blog, give me the answer.

Join the Club by Michael Elliot

 How Europe can help the revolutions in the Middle East succeed

　　As long as you grasp the revolutions in the Middle East within the framework of what has gone before, you will get nowhere. Instead, if you review history, you will get useful lessons.
　　First, when revolutions happen, tolerate messiness. Any revolutions were unstable at first. If you review the revolutions in the United States, France, and Russia, you will understand that these countries had to wait nearly 100 years before they became peaceful dispensations. Second, while leadership matters, institutions matter more. Institutions that support the revolution are necessary for successful revolutions. Thirdly, revolutionary states need to be welcomed into international clubs like EU. (103 words)

The Asian Experience by Hannah Beech

What the region can—and cannot—teach the Arab world about democracy through revolution.

　　Thailand and the Philippines cannot be the model for the Arab World: Tunisia, Yemen, and Egypt. In Thailand protesters overthrew a military regime in 1992, but they failed to nurture its newfound democracy. In the Philippines a sea of yellow-clad demonstrators peacefully overthrew Marcos, a corrupt, aging, U.S. backed dictator in 1986, but the country is still beset by poverty, cronyism and nepotism that provoked the 1986 revolution.
　　The countries the Arab countries should learn lessons from are South Korea, which carefully constructed a prosperous democracy, and Indonesia, which has changed not in one cataclysmic jolt but through years of brick-by-brick nation building.

IN THE ARENA Arms and the Unbalanced

by Joe Klein

Heated rhetoric doesn’t help, but the real need is to reassess policy on guns and the mentally ill.

A U.S. democrat Gabrielle Giffords was shot by Loughner, a mentally ill man. Two questions are involved here: one is that many U.S. citizens are victims of crazy people. In 1950s they were confined to mental hospitals, but 1960s major cities were teeming with the homeless or/and mentally ill. Romanticization of mental illness and the American Civil Liberties Union made it near impossible to put the schizophrenics to a secure facility. The second is the lenient gun control. The National Rifle Association’s campaign and a Supreme Court rule enhanced the right to bear arms. These two problems should be reassessed.

A Lady Called Hope

by Wang Dan

A Chinese dissident tells what Aung San Suu Kyi’s long fight against tyranny means for him.

Wang Dan was twice inspired by Suu Kyi. Once when he read her essay which said that perseverance is the most important asset for a protest movement. The other is when she was released from house detention. She is more than an individual and the junta is less than the guns of the soldiers. China has given an 11-year imprisonment sentence to Liu Xiaobo, a Nobel Peace Prize winner. Real progress in human rights cannot be achieved without active and constant pressure on China. To try to advance democratic reforms within a dictatorship through coordination and encouragement is too easygoing. (100 words)