A Review of
Advice and Dissent: Why America Suffers When Economics and Politics Collide
(Author: Alan S. Blinder)

Economist and Washington veteran Alan Blinder has come to understand very deeply the contrasts between economists and politicians. Economists are rational, correct, and naïve, while politicians cynically use economists to rationalize whatever they want to do.

Blinder is very clear-eyed about this, and eloquently describes today’s condition—so well that I’m obliged to include more quotations here than usual. But his is an extremely Washington-centric perspective, which I will comment upon later.

A Review of
The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
(Author: Steven Pinker)

There is much to love in this book. Pinker helps us understand the state of our current scientific knowledge about human nature, and suggests that our politics should be reevaluated based upon that knowledge.

…Traditional political alignments ought to change as we learn more about human beings. The ideologies of the left and the right took shape before Darwin, before Mendel, before anyone knew what a gene or a neuron or a hormone was. Every student of political science is taught that political ideologies are based on theories of human nature. Why must they be based on theories that are three hundred years out of date?

In his main chapter about politics, he points out that liberals and conservatives each have combinations of views that, on their face, do not seem to be necessarily connected.