When asked what was the greatest challenge for a statesman, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan reportedly responded, in his inimitable style, “Events, my dear boy, events.” 

You make your mark as a statesman by your ability to control events. And Netanyahu, my dear boy, does not look like much of a statesman.

David Foster Wallace, via Andrew Sullivan: 

This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.

Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.

And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship--be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles--is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.

If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness. 

Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings. 

They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.

And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it.

But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving.... The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.

For more thought-provoking quotes, check out the Politics by Other Means quotes section here.

It is almost laughably easy to criticize the models of political science and economics. They are always reductionist, littered with obvious exceptions, and describe the past rather than the future. But since we can't get very far without making assumptions, we are willing to suspend disbelief and assume things, even concepts that are obviously incorrect. So the assumption that people are rational perseveres. After all, there are infinite ways to be a moron, but only one way to act rational (or so they say).

Because of this modeling fetish, many obvious observations that can't be modeled never enter into the economic/political science canon, while many dubious models persist simply due to elegance. 

That's why I love that Larry Summers (by all accounts an arrogant prick) once began a paper attacking efficient-market (i.e. super rationalist model) theories with this line:

"THERE ARE IDIOTS. Look around."

From NPR, via Andrew Sullivan:

Have you noticed, [Neuroscientist David Eagleman] says, that when you recall your first kisses, early birthdays, your earliest summer vacations, they seem to be in slow motion? "I know when I look back on a childhood summer, it seems to have lasted forever," he says. That's because when it's the "first", there are so many things to remember. The list of encoded memories is so dense, reading them back gives you a feeling that they must have taken forever. But that's an illusion. "It's a construction of the brain," says Eagleman. "The more memory you have of something, you think, 'Wow, that really took a long time!

I think there is a parallel between this and peoples' ruminations on living abroad. Stimulation distorts time and space. I can think of weekend trips that I had to truly fascinating places, and in the short time I spent there, I had so many experiences etched into my memory that in retrospect I marvel at the shortness of my stay. It's also similar experience to when you quickly fall for someone romantically, and you can't believe that you've only known each other for a few days.

Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms? The band itself is made of men; it is ruled by the authority of a prince, it is knit together by the pact of the confederacy; the booty is divided by the law agreed on. 

If...this evil increases to such a degree that it holds place, fixes abodes, takes possession of cities, and subdues peoples, it assumes the more plainly the name of a kingdom...

Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, ‘What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor.

- St. Augustine, City of God: pg. 112-113

Political jobs would be torture for most people.  You have no freedom.  You are underpaid and over-bugged.  You lose a lot of your privacy.  You have to stop writing emails or saying what you think.  You don't get to read many good books or go for many quiet walks.  It's hard to be a non-conformist.  And so on. 

Yet it's really hard to get top political jobs.  So who gets them?  People who truly, deeply love the power.

- Tyler Cowen

The perfect is the enemy of the good. (Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien.)

- Voltaire

This sums up the central problem of politics--the best policy rarely survives the gauntlet of political constraints. Instead, politicians must compromise and settle for the attainable-- "the art of the possible".  Then, of course, they are attacked by their base, who point out the gaps between campaign rhetoric and actual behavior in power. This is problem that Obama is now facing, and it is the fundamental problem that all practitioners of politics eventually face.

A philosopher is someone who goes into a dark room at night, to look for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian does the same thing, but comes out claiming he found the cat.

- Nick Philips

Regardless of what people say, analyzing political events is an art and not a science. It is somewhat like looking for a black cat in a dark room. We are constantly drawing conclusions from incomplete information. Improving your political analysis (i.e. learning from your mistakes) is also terribly difficult, because outcomes are often unclear and dependent on many variables.

Here at PBOM, we want to makes sure that we don't become political "theologians." There are too many of them out there, practicing "political science" and completely lacking in epistemological humility. 

Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have.    
- James Baldwin

Ideas were all-important for the individual whom they impelled into action; but the historian must attach equal importance to the circumstances that gave these ideas their chance. Revolutions are not made without ideas, but they are not made by the intellectuals. Steam is essential for driving a railway engine; but neither a locomotive nor a permanent way can be built out of steam.

- Christopher Hill