Artificial Intelligence Versus Human Intelligence

January 2, 2026

Futurist Ray Kurzweil has foreseen a coming “Singularity” when artificial intelligence outstrips ours, then widens the gap exponentially by taking over its own further development. Making a new and different world. Some fear this threatens humankind.

Melanie Mitchell’s book, Artificial Intelligence — A Guide for Thinking Humans was written in 2019, before the field really exploded with ChatGPT in 2022. Yet the book usefully explores relevant fundamental questions. Mainly, what is intelligence, really? Like humans have.

Back in 2016, I attended a talk by computer guru David Gelernter, who deemed artificial consciousness impossible, insisting consciousness requires neurons. I challenged this in the Q&A, arguing that if neurons’ functioning could be replicated artificially, there’s no bar to consciousness. It’s not magic.

Mitchell’s book might make consciousness seem impossible — even for humans. There’s a recurring trope: it’s the easy stuff that’s hard. Meaning the ways our minds function, virtually effortlessly, negotiating through everyday life. “Common sense” is another repeated notion. It turns out all this is not simple at all.

Actually, in terms of raw intelligence, artificial systems already far outstrip human brains. Being able to access vastly more information, analyze it, put it together, draw conclusions. And yet — a key Mitchell point — what they cannot do is understand.

That’s the big difference. Our minds arise out of the functioning of our neurons, processing information. An AI processing information may seem analogous. But the processing in our brains results in consciousness, in understanding, that artificial systems cannot (yet) come close to.

Consciousness means not just thinking but thinking about our thinking. Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio elucidated this in Descartes’ Error. Our minds create, for a perception or idea, a representation of it. The self perceives that representation. By means of a further representation, of the self perceiving that initial representation. But it may need yet a still higher order representation. It gets complicated.

An aspect here is feelings. Part of having a sense of self. Artificial systems lack that and hence cannot want anything. They only “want” what they’re programmed for. At one point Mitchell writes of an AI program learning to improve its performance by earning points for certain results. But I wondered: what would an AI care about such points? It cannot care about anything.

So how, exactly, does all this happen in our brains? This has been called the “hard problem.” An understatement. Our science isn’t really close to solving it. And Mitchell’s contrasting what our brains do do, versus what (extremely sophisticated) artificial systems do, makes the former so advancedly complex as to seem virtually impossible. Yet of course we know even nitwits do it, effortlessly.

Mitchell discusses in depth how artificial intelligence work has developed over decades. Basically, the thrust has been to equip artificial systems with vast libraries of knowledge which they can use to analyze problems. For example, IBM’s “Watson” program that could answer “Jeopardy” questions.

But what modern systems like ChatGPT do seems different — not just answering questions. These “large language models” can write essays, poems, songs. An AI-created song, even including an ersatz singer singing it, has now topped the charts. Mitchell notes a test where some music mavens were given a lesser known Liszt composition versus an AI-created Liszt mimic. They mistook the mimic as the real Liszt.

However much all this seems like intelligence at work, we’re still assured it’s indeed artificial and not true intelligence (like ours). More specifically, all a program like ChatGPT does is simply to guess the next word in a sequence. Writing whole books that way.

But just for a laugh, I asked ChatGPT for aValentine’s poem for a wife who’s herself a poet and also an AI aficionado. It produced a fairly clever poem riffing on those elements — with a cute funny ending, which it was hard to believe wasn’t planned by the “writer” from the outset. (Read it here: www.fsrcoin.com/AI.htm)

Writing this essay, it feels a lot like I too work by simply guessing each next appropriate word. Yet I do have some overall ideas in mind, that I’m putting into words, one by one. I have understanding.

Which brings us back to the key point. An AI simulates understanding, without actually having it. And let’s be more concrete about this. Mitchell goes into some depth explaining how a human mind, from an extremely early age, develops a common sense understanding of how the world works. Such simple concepts like a smaller object isn’t visible if behind a larger one; objects fall down, not up; etc., etc. Such things may seem obvious, but an AI operates without this sort of knowledge. Mitchell cites one effort to specifically instruct an AI with a full repertoire of such simple understandings. It failed because millions of such precepts would have been required.

Another point: integral to our consciousness is its continuity, throughout one’s life. Even while asleep. Does an AI have an existence like that, just quietly waiting to be given a query? It seems like a wholly different sort of being.

In the end, Mitchell returns to the idea of artificial systems gaining general intelligence, far surpassing anything humans are capable of — overcoming all the “annoying limitations” we’re subject to, all our irrationality and cognitive biases, our slowness, emotions, etc. Thus attaining “super-intelligence.” However, she suggests, all those supposed human limitations are actually integralto our general intelligence, making us what we are, “rather than narrow savants.” Better really.

Understanding and consciousness go hand in hand. The idea of an AI arising into consciousness is a gigantic matter. Meaning AI personhood; becoming not our tools but our brethren. Again, if we do not understand exactly how our own consciousness arises, we do know there must be something about our neuronal functioning that creates it. So it’s logically conceivable that at some point, artificial systems could have a complexity of information processing at a level sufficiently comparable to ours to produce consciousness.

However, it’s almost surely wrong to envision a consciousness suddenly bursting forth that’s fully equivalent to the human kind. Consciousness is not either-or, but instead falls along a spectrum, with human level consciousness at the top (at least on this planet) and other creatures, like chimps, elephants or dolphins, apparently having something close; dogs, and then cats, descending down the scale, followed by mice and lower animals; insects may have a very rudimentary sort of consciousness. Could an existing AI already have something like that? How could we tell? Moreover, could there be a kind of consciousness differing from what we’re familiar with? Could we recognize it?

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Lai, Law, and Lies

December 29, 2025

Jimmy Lai, 78, is a wealthy Hong Konger whose Apple Daily newspaper, advocating for democracy, was a thorn in the Chinese regime’s side. They crushed Hong Kong’s 2019 protest movement with a draconian “National Security Law.”

Lai’s been jailed since 2020, and has now been given a life sentence. A brave hero. Holding British citizenship, he might have escaped what befell him, but chose to stand up and face it. Another Navalny.

Hong Kong, controlled by Great Britain until 1997, was handed back to China under an agreement that its rule of law and democratic institutions would be respected at least until 2047, indeed with elections broadened. China trashed that commitment.

Adherence to international agreements is (was) a foundational principle of a world order rising above past horrors. In the 1994 Budapest Pact, Ukraine agreed to give up its Soviet-legacy nuclear weapons in exchange for Russia’s commitment to honor its sovereignty. The Ukraine war is about whether the world order is now nihilism.

(Yesterday, after talking to Putin and Zelensky, Trump the fool said Russia wants peace, and “wants to see Ukraine succeed.” No, Putin wants Ukraine under his fist.)

Back to Hong Kong and Jimmy Lai: An article in The Economist was full of words like “law,” “trial,” “verdict,” “judge,” “legal,” even “just.” Reading this, I was like, what are they talking about?

Rule of law has been another cornerstone of a modern world putting past horrors behind us. China does not have rule of law but rule by law. Rule of law means a society freely agreeing to comply with strictures created jointly for the general good. A concept China’s regime actually rejects as some alien Western idiosyncrasy. Their very different rule by law is imposed by the regime for its own purposes, to control people as it sees fit.

Thus Hong Kong’s “National Security Law” — what it really is is the regime just forbidding any dissension. Jimmy Lai is jailed not for offense against society but against its rulers — who rule not by consent but by force. All the legalistic formalism seen in Lai’s case is just a big lie masquerading that rule by force. The National Security Law simply is cover for the repression to which the regime deems itself entitled.

Rule of law is not some Western cultural foible, but a fundamental universal human ideal. America was long in its vanguard. Today that light is going out. Led by a man who tried to overthrow our lawfully elected government, using violence, then pardoned those guilty, and made the “Department of Justice” into a corrupt vehicle for punishing political opponents, while a masked gestapo seizes people off the streets without due process. Will Americans wake up to what they’re losing while it can still be saved?

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Nicki Minaj: Trump Derangement Syndrome’s Contagion

December 26, 2025

Rap Star Nicki Minaj once condemned Trump. Now she’s converted, our local paper reports, quoting her at a Charlie Kirk memorial fest: “This administration is full of people with heart and soul, and they make me proud of them. Our vice president, he makes me . . . well I love both of them. Both of them have a very uncanny ability to be someone that you can relate to.” She called them “role models for young men.”

Given Trump’s heinous response to the Reiner murders? This regime’s corruption, dishonesty, lawless inhuman cruelty? Role models? Heart and soul?

“Trump Derangement Syndrome” was coined to mock his opponents. When it so truly describes his supporters.

He once said he “could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and . . . ” It’s seemed weirdly true. Though increasing evidence of his vile depraved character*, as in the Reiner episode, may have shaken the faith of some; but many swallow that vileness for the sake of what he stands for. Even while his actions too, in fact, betray them.

I used the word “faith.” This is indeed like a religious cult, valorizing faith not despite its flouting reality but as its virtue. And while some may be jarred loose by such travesties as the Reiner attack, others, like Minaj, are somehow still seduced. Trump Derangement Syndrome is contagious.

It’s demoralizing to a humanist like me, loving humanity — and reason. When the one so often traduces the other.

“The madness of crowds.” Populations can sink into mass derangements. Like in Nazi Germany. I once imagined most North Koreans only pretended Kim worship, for self-preservation, and would tear him to pieces if they could. But do most suffer Kim Derangement Syndrome?

Nicki Minaj gained success and fame while fairly young, which can warp the brain. A perverse moth-to-flame glamour in Trumpworld sucks in glitterati like her. We increasingly see success and wealth have scant correlation with smarts, and often actually dehumanize a person. George Clooney, recently interviewed, said he was lucky fame didn’t come till he was mature, with experience of normal life.

In the same day’s paper a commentary by Martin Schram starts off, “It’s time for all Americans . . . to respect the wishes of all who voted [for Trump] by finally being willing to take him at his word.” Stopping “the negativity and name-calling” and “replacing today’s mistrust with a new era of mutual trust.”

Schram seemingly attempts that. But “to take our leader at his word” proves a fool’s errand because his “word” (full of “familiar personally vindictive name-calling insults”) is an incoherent swamp of pathological lying and manifest “cognitive decline.”

That, by itself, is sad. But what’s really so sickening is the contagiousness of the derangement syndrome that induced our citizenry to elect him, with so many still afflicted in defiance of facts, while some, like Minaj, even now newly fall victim. Depravity reigns triumphant.

* Given that manifest degeneracy (“Grab them by the pussy”), and the depth of his palship with Epstein, despite the furious covering-up it’s absurd to believe Trump “did nothing wrong” with any of Epstein’s legions of sexual victims. (Epstein called Trump “the worst person who ever lived.”)

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William F. Buckley, Jr.

December 23, 2025

William F. Buckley, Jr., was considered virtually the impresario of the modern American conservative movement. A towering figure in my own life — I was swept into political activism at 16, with the Buckley-backed 1964 Goldwater campaign. Sam Tanenhaus has authored a monumental Buckley biography, and appeared recently discussing it with New York State Writers Institute Director Paul Grondahl.

Tanenhaus called Buckley an intellectual prodigy — something particularly rare among various sorts of prodigies. His research turned up Buckley’s apparent first speech, at 15, in 1941, in a debate, defending Charles Lindbergh. A remarkably well phrased speech, Tanenhaus judged, quoting one line: “A megaphone can’t stop a mechanized army.” It struck me that the word “mechanized” was a particularly Buckleyan touch. (As was the alliteration. Tanenhaus explained that Buckley was talking about propaganda. But saying “propaganda” there would have lacked the punch.)

Lindbergh was a Hitler fan. In fact, said Tanenhaus, Buckley’s patrician family itself seemed to have such an affinity. Also ran a South Carolina newspaper promoting “White Citizens Councils.” And when Bill Buckley finally stepped down from editorship of The National Review magazine he’d founded in 1955 (I was an avid reader), he said his successor ought to be a “believing Christian.” A nice way to exclude Jewish contenders.

He himself was indeed much the Christian believer. He’d first exploded into fame with his youthful 1951 book God and Man at Yale. But I see Buckley’s great intellectual heft undermined by the religion thing. Its being so widespread does not justify adherence to a belief so contrary to reason.

Tanenhaus, disavowing much in the way of ideology himself, spoke of his book as neither hagiography nor hit job. And while he worked closely on it with Buckley himself (who died in 2008; the book was a longtime project), he said his obligation was not to the person portrayed but to the reader.

Unsurprisingly, in the Q&A, he was asked what Buckley would think of Trump. Tanenhaus said he had run across Buckley having once called Trump a narcissist (bigly), but decided to omit that from the book, it was a quarter century ago. Some thoughtful conservatives — a few, like Max Boot — have escaped Trump Derangement Syndrome. But it’s such a powerful force, even an intellect like Buckley’s might buckle.

Tanenhaus did note that Buckley (a prolific writer!) had tried to craft a short book explaining the conservatism of which he was such a leading shaper — and was unable to do it. Maybe because, in the last analysis, that “conservatism” was not really so much about public policies but rather attitudes, ideas about the world. Sounds right to me. Previously Tanenhaus wrote a book titled, The Death of Conservatism. In 2009! It took me till 2017 to finally renounce the word, as having completely transmogrified from the political stance I’d held since 1964. For those who still call themselves “conservative,” it’s really mostly about how they see other people.

In 1965, I enthusiastically supported Buckley running for New York City Mayor, as the Conservative Party candidate. Republicans had nominated the liberal Lindsay. At Queens College, I’d enrolled in a political science class taught by Mary Earhart Dillon (1885-1983), the department chair, former president of the New York City board of education, named to head a public utility company in 1926, author of a Wendell Willkie bio . . . and, at 80, past her prime. On the first day of class, Dillon asked Buckley supporters to stand up.

I did, along with several other pals from the college Conservative Club.

“Get out of my class!” Dillon said. And meant it. She threw us out. (She was ultimately forced to take us back.)

Yes, William Buckley was a controversial figure.

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America’s Suicide Note

December 20, 2025

America’s new official “National Security Strategy” unfriends Europe and turns our back on NATO. Historian Anne Applebaum, a tribune for democratic values, calls this our suicide note.

Trump’s mind fixates on strength. Many Americans voted for him with a similar mentality. Strength is a good thing when paired with good values. But not when it’s strength in evil. That’s how Trump goes so wrong, bedazzled by the “strength” of a Putin, like a moth to a flame.

And for all his bluster about strengthening America, Trump is so clueless he’s weakening us in myriad ways. The “National Security Strategy” is a shocking blueprint for national decline.

It’s not because of anything Europe’s democracies have done against us that we’re tearing up our longstanding alliance structure. It’s a cultural thing, which we’ll get to. Though Trump does say the European Union was created “to screw” America. Typical bizarre nonsense. The EU made Europe a stronger partner for us.

Being leader of that powerful partnership enabled America to shape the world to our liking and our benefit. Mainly making it more prosperous and less violent — a better neighborhood for us to live in. Other nations growing richer made us not poorer but richer too.

All that Trump throws away. For what? The NSS burbles about better ties with Russia. As if we now have more affinity with Russia than Europe? There’s no way we can benefit from coziness with such a bad actor.

The NSS hardly mentions China. Whose strength Trump has also ignorantly, contrary to all his rhetoric, actually boosted. The emerging “Trump doctrine” seems to be letting China, and Russia, rule in their neighborhoods, bullying nearby nations as if by right. With America confined to being warlord of just our own near-abroad. Thus much diminished.

This might account, sort of, for our hostilities with Venezuela. It would be pretty to think the aim is to oust dictator Maduro and restore democracy. As if Trump cares about democracy. No, it’s just to show who’s boss in our claimed zone of influence. (Trump doesn’t idolize Maduro like other tyrants because he made the mistake of labeling his regime “socialist.”)

The NSS does fault Europe on freedom of speech. Which might be a fair point, but for the Trump regime’s own war upon a free press and other media, browbeating universities, and perverting our justice system to persecute political foes.

However, as noted, it’s mainly for reasons of culture that the NSS unfriends Europe — deemed to be courting “civilizational erasure” — referring to traditional Western Christian culture. Which it says is being undermined (not invigorated and enriched) by immigrants.

This reflects the xenophobic MAGA hatred of non-white people in general and immigrants in particular. The NSS even lauds Europe’s MAGA-like extremist right-wing populist political parties — Farage’s Reform UK in Britain, LePen’s National Rally in France, and the “Alternative for Germany.”

All anti-immigrant and smiling at Russia. Germany’s AFD is neo-fascist, whitewashing Nazism, and anti-semitic. (The U.S. regime endorses it while supposedly battling anti-semitism on our campuses.) Our supporting these parties unthinkably intrudes in European countries’ internal affairs. And those parties gaining power would make for a poorer, nastier, more dangerous world.

What has heretofore bound America and Europe in alliance has not been a (false and dying) religion, nor shared ethnicity but, rather, fundamental values: democracy, freedom, rule of law, humanistic tolerance, mutually beneficial trade, and a world order where nations are secure within their borders, not one where might makes right and the weak are at the mercy of the strong. Russia and China stand against all that. This is the meaning and importance of Russia’s Ukraine aggression, which Trump refuses to understand.

Indeed, standing too now against that enlightened world order is America itself, pursuant to our new “National Security Strategy.”

Trump derides Europe as “decaying.” While his sick regime — and our electing it — shows that it’s America sinking in moral decay.

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New Auction of Ancient & Early World Coins

December 19, 2025

My Auction 130 is now posted at:

www.fsrcoin.com/vv.html   OR

https://www.biddr.com/auctions/fsrcoin/browse?a=6609

The biddr site shows current bid levels. 

590 lots. NO BUYER FEE. Live bidding Jan. 18, but you can bid the old way, simple e-mail is fine.

Includes ancients, early world coins, British, Irish, German, Chinese, etc; group lots, literature, and some fixed price specials.

Happy holidays,

Frank S. Robinson

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Dick Van Dyke, Carol Burnett, Rob Reiner . . . and TDS

December 16, 2025

Dick Van Dyke turned 100 on December 13. PBS ran a 2-hour “American Masters” profile. What a delight!

Van Dyke starred in the unforgettable eponymous 1961-66 TV series, as a comedy show writer, with Mary Tyler Moore as his wife. Both of them fond youthful memories. Dick’s show was ended after just five seasons because they feared its getting stale. Bravo for that too.

The show’s panache couldn’t be equaled by Van Dyke’s later TV ventures. However, he did landmark unique movie roles, notably in Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

An amazing performer in so many ways — notably the physical comedy. Watching such bits in the documentary, it was hard to believe a human body could be made to do what he did. And for so long. Dick was still performing at 99; still with physical shtick.

He is also an admirable person — his performances coming from his heart. He was even admirable talking about his alcoholism (which he overcame) in the documentary.

Also talking much in it about Dick was Carol Burnett. Another flame from my youth. Such a warm feeling I get seeing or thinking of Carol Burnett.

Not just a great talented performer, but a sweet lovely human being. The world is better for having Carol Burnett in it. She’s 92 now.

“American Masters” included a clip of Carol and Dick, playing enfeebled oldsters, getting into a physical fight. Extending for many minutes, their mock rough-and-tumble looked carefully choreographed and rehearsed. Yet we learn it was all actually improvised, on the spur of the moment.

Still another fond TV remembrance was Rob Reiner, playing Archie Bunker’s son-in-law (and foil) Mike in “All in the Family” (1971-79). Rob’s father was Carl Reiner (1922-2020), a comedy legend who famously partnered with Mel Brooks (oh! marvelous Mel Brooks!), and had a key role in the Dick Van Dyke show.

Rob went on to a sterling career as a film director. Notable for iconic classics like This is Spinal Tap (“It goes to eleven”) and When Harry Met Sally (“I’ll have have what she’s having” — perhaps the most famous movie line ever, actually an unscripted ad lib spoken by Estelle Reiner, Rob’s mother, as an extra).

Shows, and movies, like those mentioned were American cultural anchors. Part of all our lives; a unifying force. We no longer have that, and it’s a loss.

Reiner, 78, and his wife Michelle were murdered December 14, apparently by their son Nick, whose life was a mess of addiction and other pathologies. Based on which Rob had even made a film. This story was a profound tragedy all around.

Its cause, Trump wrote in an online post, was Rob Reiner’s “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” Reiner was politically active and a regime critic. Trump elaborated with a stream of vicious verbiage demonizing Reiner’s politics as a form of insanity, and implying he got what he deserved.

Not mentioned was that Michelle Reiner, a professional photographer, did the cover picture on Trump’s “Art of the Deal” book.

There’s no reason to imagine politics had anything to do with these murders.

After the recent Charlie Kirk killing, MAGA-land went to town objecting to arguably insensitive comments. People lost their jobs. Trump himself gave a televised speech denouncing nasty political talk — and in his next breath spewed some very nasty political talk. But that was nothing compared with his Reiner comments.

They did elicit some tsk-tsking by Republicans. Mild and muted. Were they biting their tongues?

“Trump Derangement Syndrome” is a term concocted by MAGAdom to mock critics, as if outrage at this regime’s atrocities signifies mental illness. As if tolerance for them is mentally healthy. Like being okay with Trump’s Reiner comments. We know what Trump Derangement Syndrome really is.

Its poster boy is Trump himself. Imagining that writing what he did about Reiner’s murder was a good idea. And challenged about it the next day, he doubled down.

America is full of wonderful people. Why are we led by one so vile?

The president is clinically insane and should be removed from office through the procedures of the 25th Amendment.

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“The American Revolution” — Film Review

December 12, 2025

Ken Burns films are unique. This one (done with Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt) chronicles surpassingly important history. With no contemporary cameras recording it, a hard film to make, yet it’s a beautiful thing. The music sublime. Peter Coyote’s narration imparts every word with gravity. The story so much part of my own personal mythos, I watched its twelve hours with emotions at high pitch.

The Enlightenment, begun about a century before, aimed at human progress through use of reason. That idea infused the men who made the American Revolution, their guiding light. I see myself their heir.

But it’s not a simple story; history never is. I recall that point impressed upon me reading Simon Schama’s Citizens about the French Revolution. Burns’s The American Revolution gave me a lot of new perspectives.

No hagiography, it presents an unflinching picture, with all the ugliness to which human events are prone. The patriots were not always angels. And we’re reminded how different people can see things very differently (so true in today’s politics). Those Americans siding with Britain are sympathetically given their voice.

But it often seemed obvious that what the British were doing was crazy. Dead set on crushing the revolution, at vast cost in blood and resources. For what? To beat down a multitude who’d now be not loyal subjects but embittered antagonists? Why not instead make peace, for mutual benefit, by acknowledging and dealing with their grievances? But such wisdom is alas rare. Look at Russia laying waste to Ukraine. And Israel in Gaza. And what China is bent on doing to Taiwan.

The American Revolution was a noble cause. But again, nothing is ever all one thing. The film highlights that while our forebears fought the British, they were also fighting, with less lofty motives, against a lot of Native Americans. And in particular, it highlights the gigantic contradiction that, for all the invocations of “freedom” and “liberty,” legions of Blacks were brutalized in slavery.

The film also notes that the revolution’s leaders were not for “democracy” as they understood the word. Their idea of self-government didn’t mean everyone participating. When Pennsylvania’s new constitution decreed just that (at least for white males), John Adams is quoted saying, “Good God!”

The democracy that did emerge was something of an unforeseen byproduct of the forces those founders unleashed.

We see repeatedly one of the war’s greatest heroes, and most capable generals, acting with immense personal bravery and steadfast leadership: Benedict Arnold. Individual humans are complicated too. The story is that he felt under-appreciated. But still. It’s hard to rationalize his behavior.

Washington was better. Not always the best military strategist, but acting overall with great wisdom, perspicacity, integrity, and grit. “Washington Crossing the Delaware” is an iconic image, if idealized. The film does justice to the reality. After we watched that episode, I remarked to my wife, “You know what wasn’t shown?”

“The painting,” she astutely replied. Burns used much art work to illustrate his story, but I thought leaving out that one was actually admirable.

In late 1776, the rampant British forces had chased the American army’s much battered remnants across the Delaware river. Encamped with them, Thomas Paine now wrote The American Crisis: “the times that try men’s souls.” Try meant test.

There wasn’t much left of them, and many of their enlistments were ending in days. Washington now went for broke: on December 25, taking his men back in the boats, back across that river, to march 9 miles, dragging cannons, through a blizzard, to attack the British and their Hessian hired guns occupying Trenton.

We won, a great victory; had we not, the revolution would have been over.

That Delaware crossing, for me, exemplifies what is splendid in the human soul. Those bedraggled men who, on a freezing night, got back in those boats, to make the supreme effort for a transcendent ideal. This striving in the face of adversity, this greatness of spirit, inspires my love for humanity. This is what I celebrate every December 25. And a Washington plaque graces my wall.

The film ends beautifully, expounding the Revolution’s meaning, for the whole human story, and for us today. Saying it’s still unfolding is a cliche, but true. It was a long upward climb as we progressively worked to more fully realize the ideals of 1776. And yet one had to view this film mindful of how those ideals are now being traduced. With uncanny parallels to the indictment the Declaration of Independence laid against King George III. My 2022 book was titled The American Crisis.

The film was produced by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Now shuttered by the Trump regime.

We need another revolution.

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Ukraine Migraine

December 9, 2025

The White House has unveiled a new official “National Security Strategy.” Reeking with disdain and vitriol toward Europeans. Saying they’re unrealistic about Ukraine. Let in too many immigrants (read: non-whites), heading for “civilizational erasure.” So Europe’s only hope lies with right-wing populist xenophobic political movements, which the U.S. should encourage. NATO mustn’t expand. Instead we need to improve ties with Russia.

Russia has officially praised this as echoing their own view. While Europeans don’t welcome American interference in their politics.

The U.S. President, who is clinically insane, also recently put out a 28-point Ukraine “peace plan” that was a Russian wish-list. Europeans politely found it unhelpful. So Putin — who invaded Ukraine and continues horrendous atrocities there — says Europeans don’t want peace, they want war. And he’ll gladly give it to them, too.

Let’s be clear: Russia never had any legitimate cause to attack Ukraine. Ukraine was no threat to Russia. Nor indeed was NATO. Which only ever existed because it was Russia that was a threat to the West.

All Trump cares about is a Nobel Peace Prize. (That silly football “peace prize” concocted to kiss his rear doesn’t cut it.) He somehow believes that rewarding Russia’s military aggression, and proving that might makes right, should earn him a real peace prize. Ignoring all else he’s done making the world nastier and less stable.

So he’s sent his fools Witkoff and Kushner to Moscow to play patsies in Putin’s pantomime game of pretending to want peace while making unrelenting war. The peace Putin wants is snuffing out Ukraine’s resistance.

Europeans have woken up to the Russian threat — and that they’re on their own. Talking about massively increasing defense spending, if not yet actually doing it. The problem is where the money will come from. Not retrenchment on social welfare spending, which would worsen the public disaffection that fuels those right-wing populists — who coddle Russia.

Rather than building up defenses against the Russian threat, it would be cheaper in the long run to eliminate it. Nip it in the bud, by giving Russia a bloody nose in Ukraine. Letting Russia constitute a threat is ridiculous. Europe’s economy is ten times bigger than Russia’s. And Russia has lost much of its own military capability in the Ukraine shredder. Europe is an elephant intimidated by a mouse.

True, Putin still has nukes, and has hinted at using them. Europe should call his bluff. There is no realistic way nuclear weapons can be used in Ukraine, let alone beyond it. Why does Europe tie its hands from deploying its troops, arms, bombers, etc., in Ukraine? Rather than spend trillions against a threat from Russia, they should work with Ukraine to destroy it.

Meantime there’s a quarter trillion dollars of sanctions-related frozen Russian assets sequestered by Brussels Eurocrats. They are taking the interest on that money for Ukraine, but not the principal amount. Like, they’re holding it in trust for Russia!

Some Europeans have been trying to find a work-around, but that’s getting nowhere, gummed up in red tape. And get this — they worry lest Russia sue them for the money. Are you clucking kidding me? They’re in an existential war with Russia, and they’d allow Russia to sue them?

I give up. The world’s gone mad, run by knaves and fools.

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“Abundance” — And Liberalism’s Curse

December 5, 2025

Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson consider themselves liberals. Yet their 2025 book Abundance blames liberalism for much that ails us. In too many ways, undermining abundance.

Liberals believing in democracy want to empower, well, everybody, giving all a say. Producing what political scientist Francis Fukuyama has called vetocracy. (Ten years ago I reviewed his book on this. It anticipates much of Abundance.)

The term “special interests” connotes particular individual interests at odds with those of society at large. But that’s really true of everyone’s interests. Everyone, for example, wants to pay less tax, obviously inimical to society. Yet we must reconcile this.

In idealistic theory, the clash of competing interests, in open democratic debate, ought to yield utilitarian outcomes — the greatest good for the greatest number. However, on any given issue, certain interests may have a big stake, so they will push hard — whereas the mass of citizenry, only marginally affected, doesn’t care that much. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

Thus can a narrow interest stymie the general will. Such is NIMBYism — “not in my backyard.” The authors tear their hair out over this. Again and again, desirable projects are thwarted by certain interests wielding a veto. While environmental reviews and various other sorts, like catering to asserted Native American tribal concerns, stretch out endlessly. Those are valid considerations, but we seem unable to say “enough is enough.” And everything gets balled up in litigation. Activist groups empowered. Lawyers themselves constituting an interest group — seeking more opportunities for lawsuits.

Our “affordability” problem significantly includes housing. It’s supply-and-demand — insufficient supply pushing prices up. But we make it hard for the market to increase supply. As with zoning rules, virtually prohibiting multi-family dwellings in many places, NIMBYism incarnate. Note that this serves the interests of existing homeowners, boosting their properties’ value, hence the difficulty of changing it.

The City of Albany misguidedly tried to expand affordable housing by requiring some lower-rent units in new buildings. Result: construction stopped because it became uneconomic. Mayor-elect Mamdani wants to freeze rents for some tenants. Sure to make apartments dearer for others. It’s been said the two best ways to destroy a city are carpet bombing and rent controls.

The liberal mindset tends to be hostile toward the very idea of business making profits. As if that’s somehow anti-social. As Adam Smith explained, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner.” I know people who truly don’t get that.

Fukuyama also discussed how our system of checks and balances, with a cat’s cradle of red tape, creates a governmental strait-jacket. Abundance sees liberals as defensive over government’s legitimacy and accountability, and responding with an obsession over process which tends to be at the expense of outcomes. More, they often try to do too much; the authors point to Biden’s semiconductor legislation stuffed with all sorts of DEI aims and the like. Housing initiatives commonly stipulate hosts of required amenities and niceties. All that, with excessive process, suffocating paperwork, and litigation, raises costs and kills projects. The perfect as the enemy of the good.

It feels like the whole public machinery is grinding to a halt. The more government spends, the less it achieves. And this has hugely corrosive civic effects, making many people lose trust in government, and societal institutions more broadly, feeling they’re just not working for them. Thus seduced by the “only I can fix it” strongman. Who can never do that. It’s a myth that Mussolini “made the trains run on time.”

Speaking of trains —

The authors discuss high speed rail. Whenever I see those words in the paper, I turn the page, a waste of time. California actually tried. Spent billions, over decades. Ghostly partial construction litters the landscape. Governor Newsom finally gave up on a line between Frisco and LA, so obviously needful, instead aiming for a much smaller project. But even that prospect looks dim. Britain also sunk billions on a rail upgrade that ultimately sputtered out — after actually lengthening travel times.

New York’s Governor Hochul wants a nuclear power plant. Good luck. New York’s history with nuclear energy shows not only how hard it is to get something built, but even to keep what we’ve got. We had a fine nuke at Indian Point and shut it down.

I myself have form on this. In the 1980s, Long Island’s Shoreham nuclear plant stoked intense local opposition, so Gov. Mario Cuomo finally pressed the utility into an agreement to scrap the plant. The deal needed Public Service Commission approval; I was the administrative law judge. My report recommended rejecting the deal and running the plant. The Commission overruled me.*

I was never an American type government-loving liberal, instead skeptical toward government. The unending atrocities of New York’s rollout of a legalized cannabis industry are illustrative. Yet there are needed things only government can do. The answer is not to hobble it, but to get it to do the right things in the right ways. It can be done. The book cites the 2023 collapse of a critical Pennsylvania bridge. Rebuilding it under standard procedures would have taken years. Those procedures were designed to avoid various risks — but sometimes risks are worth taking. Gov. Josh Shapiro decided to take them, sweep away process, and just build. It took twelve days.

The authors see one decades-long “political order” supplanting another, with our current upheaval a transition stage toward a new one. Giving them hope. If only Americans had some grasp of political principles and realities, and genuine information. I might understand losing trust in elites and societal institutions — but look at the creep squad they’ve empowered instead. Plunging from the frying pan into the fire.

* PSC Chairman Bradford told me he welcomed my recommendation because it gave the proceedings a veneer of objectivity.

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