North, to the future: Sarah Palin's Farewell Address

Following is the poetic middle section of Sarah Palin's farewell address, delivered on July 26.

"It is the best road trip in America soaring through nature's finest show. Denali, the great one, soaring under the midnight sun. And then the extremes. In the winter time it's the frozen road that is competing with the view of ice fogged frigid beauty, the cold though, doesn't it split the Cheechakos from the Sourdoughs? And then in the summertime such extreme summertime about a hundred and fifty degrees hotter than just some months ago, than just some months from now, with fireweed blooming along the frost heaves and merciless rivers that are rushing and carving and reminding us that here, Mother Nature wins. It is as throughout all Alaska that big wild good life teeming along the road that is north to the future."

To really catch Palin's spirit, I recommend watching the recitation of it by The Great Shatner. And for something completely different, here is some fantastic verse by a great American poet, Robert Frost. This is the poem that he recited at Jack Kennedy's inauguration. But I like it anyway.

The Gift Outright
by Robert Frost (1874-1963)

The land was ours before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia.
But we were England's, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak.
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.

Liveblogging from the Lehrman American Studies Center's Summer Institute

These days I write from Princeton, New Jersey. I am a fly on the wall of the Lehrman American Studies Center's Summer Institute. The Lehrman American Studies Center (LASC) is connected to the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI). The Summer Institute is a two-week course which combines substantive discussion and lectures of core texts and ideas from American history, political philosophy, and political science, with sections on professionalization.

AFF Chicago round table: Marketing the classical liberal alternative

Went to a great panel discussion by AFF Chicago on Wednesday evening, May 20. It was moderated by John Tillman; the panel consisted of four short presentations suggesting different approaches for libertarians to advance their agenda and candidates. The first discussant, Nikki Sullivan, said that since voters vote irrationally anyway, a movement needs a charismatic leader, whether it's Reagan, Obama or a new libertarian spokesman. By contrast, Marisa Maleck

Financial Crisis Conference 2009, University of Chicago (transcript)

[Dear Reader: What follows is a transcript of the conference held today at the University of Chicago on the origins and implications of the current financial crisis. It was enormously stimulating. The panelists were twelve professors of economics, history, sociology and anthropology from the University of Chicago, Rutgers, the New School for Social Research, the University of Michigan, and the University of Missouri at Kansas City. NB This is the raw transcript; I will correct it for spelling and turn it into full Thucydidean prose in the next week or so.]

Panel 1: Sources of the Crisis
(see separate posting, where I have typed these up complete)

[What follow are the rough notes to Panels 2 and 3. I will turn them into prose soon.]

Panel 2: Crisis in Perspective: Historical and International Comparisons