EconAir

Berkeley 1962 - 30 students against racial discrimination I was mildly political in high school. In 1960, I picketed the Democratic Convention that was in L.A. with a small group of radical Quakers protesting atmospheric testing of atomic weapons. The protest was in front of the Biltmore Hotel, where the candidates were staying. We were outnumbered by federal agents with cameras. After our little protest, I wandered into the Biltmore. While loitering in the main corridor, John Kennedy walked by. He was a few feet away. I didn’t think anything of it until his brother was assassinated eight years later in a different Los Angeles hotel. Looking back, I was amazed at the lack of security. A kid in a protest just walks into the hotel – no security at the door, no identity checks, very little security (if any) around Kennedy. I guess all the government agents were too busy developing the film they took of our protest and writing detailed reports on how Quakers were threatening America’s secu...

Thucydides A friend of mine recently said that the most “useless” course he took in college was history. Let’s start with Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War . This was a war that took place over 2,400 years ago. What possible relevance could it have? In this war, Athens and Sparta, the two “superpowers” of Greece, were locked into a long war for the dominance of Greece. The climax to the story in Thucydides was that Athens decided to send its formidable fleet and much of its army to attack Syracuse, an ally of Sparta far away across the Mediterranean Sea in Sicily (still there). The campaign was a disaster, leading to political instability at home and weakening Athens’ military position in Greece. Sound familiar? Remind you of our involvement in Vietnam? This is not a direct analogy but suggestive of some of the consequences of the Vietnam War. These potential consequences were not factored into the decision to make a major commitment in Vietnam. Fort...