Flashback Friday: The Time I Interviewed P.J. O'Rourke

It's been a while since I've done a flashback friday, so I decided to revisit one of my finest achievements at UCLARadio: interviewing the legendary P.J. O'Rourke. A writer whose wit is as sharp as his insight, he has earned a place in my heart as one of my top writing inspirations (as I gushed at him towards the end of our talk), in both political and personal spheres. We covered quite a lot of ground in the interview: I opened up by asking about him about The Baby Boom, the subject of the book tour he was on at the time, and we went on to discuss his time at National Lampoon and Rolling Stone, his friendships with John Belushi and Hunter S. Thompson, topical political subjects like environmentalism and foreign policy, and other books of his like Parliament of Whores, All The Trouble In The World, Peace Kills: America's Fun New Imperialism, and Driving Like Crazy. It was an honor to speak with him, one made even greater when he said he really enjoyed speaking with me. Please check it out, and let me know what you think!

His Crime, And Ours: Against The Death Penalty For Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

A streetside memorial to the victims of the Boston bombing.

HonorSociety.org just published my newest article on their blog roll. You can read the full text below, or access the original article here. This time, I wrote about the recent sentencing of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death. Naturally, I took issue with the sentencing, as guilty as Tsarnaev may be. Towards the end, I contrast the way people responded to the three deaths Tsarnaev was responsible with the some 150 deaths caused by Chris Kyle in Iraq. If I were still writing the piece, I might have noted the similarities not only in this regard but also in the way both Tsarnaev and Kyle perceived themselves. Kyle thought he was waging a life-and-death struggle that would determine whether America was saved from hordes of marauding jihadists by taking part in an invasion of a country that never attacked the U.S., while Tsarnaev imagined himself and his brother to be the ones who would avenge the death of hundreds of  thousands of Muslims killed in America's wars by blowing athletes and bystanders at a sports event to smithereens. As countless others have said, in the War on Terror, messianic delusions abound on both sides, and in very few places is this as apparent as in the cases of the American Sniper and the Boston Bomber.

                                    His Crime, And Ours: Against The Death Penalty For Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

Two years since improvised explosive devices killed three and wounded hundreds more at the Boston Marathon, the U.S. District Court for the District Of Massachusetts has sentenced 21-year old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving perpetrator of the bombing, to death by lethal injection. Considering the way thousands across the nation intently followed on Twitter and television the massive manhunt launched by various law enforcement agencies after the bombs first went off, it was only natural that just as many would take to the Internet or media to announce their take on the verdict. Conservative Internet personality and once-in-a-blue-moon funny guy Steven Crowder took to Twitter to declare "If you don't think Tsarnaev deserves death, you're a pansy and beyond all hope," while Greg Gutfeld, host of Red Eye on Fox News and a generally-more funny guy, said "eat it, fans of #tsarnaev" and left it at that. However, it wasn't just conservatives howling for the bomber's blood. Recently-confirmed Attorney General Loretta Lynch stated that "the ultimate penalty is a fitting punishment for this horrific crime," a somewhat shocking statement from someone demonized/praised by Republicans/liberals as ultra-progressive, although perhaps no more shocking than the fact that her predecessor, the allegedly-equally-ultra-progressive Eric Holder, pushed for the death penalty in the first place. Leave it to death to create that sense of bipartisanship that we as a country so desperately need. Maybe John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi could put aside their differences and watch the execution together, live blogging it all the while for their loyal constituents. What a major achievement that would be for the American political system. All that being said, regardless of how popular across the political spectrum killing convicted criminals is, is it as "fitting" a punishment as Attorney General Lynch would have us believe? I would argue not.

Now, let's put aside the obscenely-high rate at which people who are sentenced to death are exonerated (in all too many cases, posthumously) and the well-documented fact that capital punishment has no discernible, much less negative, effect on crime rates. Tsarnaev is indisputably guilty of all thirty charges, including the murders of 8-year old Martin Richard and two others and usage of a weapon of mass destruction. Even his attorney, Judy Clarke, did not dispute these facts, which is why Tsarnaev's defense focused on why he was driven to such acts, not whether he committed them or not. "I'm not asking you to excuse him. There are no excuses. I'm not asking you for sympathy," she told the jury, and with good reason. There are no excuses for Tsarnaev's crimes, and he deserves no sympathy either. But by condemning him to death via lethal injection, are we as a society also not committing a crime that would turn a murderer into a victim, and thus, ironically, someone who deserves sympathy? In other words, is it possible, contrary to what Peter Falk says in an episode of The Twilight Zone, to murder a murderer?

As it turns out, many share or are otherwise amenable with this sentiment, with a significant number of them surprisingly being in Boston. According to Yahoo News, "a WBUR poll of Boston residents found that 62 percent of them favored a life sentence for Tsarnaev," a surprising number considering that Boston residents were the primary victims of Tsarnaev's and his brother's acts. No less surprising is the opposition of none other than the late Richard Martin's parents to the death penalty for him. If anyone could be said to deserve the satisfaction of knowing Tsarnaev met an untimely demise, it would be them. Yet they, direct relatives of a child murdered in cold blood by him, have no stomach for it. With this in mind, one can only speculate what sort of person would. 

Of course, it is not fair to cast aspersions on those who support capital punishment. Rather, we should return to the question of whether executing Tsarnaev is an equitable punishment or at least an effective deterrent to similar crimes. In this writer's humble opinion, it is neither. Pumping Tsarnaev full of deadly chemicals, well perhaps cathartic for some, won't bring any of his victims, the people most directly impacted by his actions, back. Nor is it clear that honoring those who had their lives taken by taking the life of the one who took said lives in the first place can be said to be honorable at all. As the saying goes, an eye for an eye makes the world blind. A cliche, yes, but a very insightful one at that. Then there is the matter of whether terrorists in general and Islamic extremists in particular, many of whom believe that Paradise awaits them after they die or otherwise are willing to die for the cause they are fighting for, will be deterred from committing their misdeeds by the threat of state-sanctioned killing. In fact, many might see it as a chance to become a martyr as well as a short-cut to a celestial reward, leading many to jump at this perceived opportunity. If any one doubts this, one only has to look at the thousands of fighters pouring into Syria and Iraq, encouraged by ISIS and other terrorist groups to join them in the chance that they will earn martyrdom at the hands of Syrian strongman Bashar Al-Assad and the combined airpower of the U.S. and it's allies.

Then there is the question of how people regarded Tsarnaev's acts compared to how they regarded similar acts committed by others. Having killed three and wounded over 200 others, Tsarnaev was rightfully subjected to opprobrium by Americans. Yet just a few months before his sentence was pronounced, many of these same Americans were in thrall to the wartime-turned-celluloid exploits of Chris Kyle, a U.S. Navy sniper who killed over 150 people while on duty in Iraq and, per his own admission, never batted an eye. When writing about whether he was concerned about the possibility that at the very least one of the people he shot didn't deserve to die, Kyle proclaimed, "Every person I killed I strongly believe that they were bad. When I do go face God there is going to be lots of things I will have to account for but killing any of those people is not one of them." The late Chris Kyle wasn't concerned with whether the people he killed were actually threats to the United States or himself; he was staunchly convinced of the threat posed by every single one of them, and reveled in their destruction right up until that fateful trip to the shooting range. In contradistinction, Tsarnaev, widely portrayed and perceived as an amoral extremist indifferent to the mayhem and bloodshed he wreaked, confessed to regretting his acts, at least if Catholic nun and final witness Sister Helen Prejean is to be believed. "He said it emphatically. He said, 'No one deserves to suffer like they did'," she relayed to the court. How strange that a man who killed over a hundred people without regard for their innocence is venerated as a hero in word and film while a man who killed three and subsequently recognized the wrong he did, revealing his potential for redemption, is condemned to a fatal fate. 

Let me be clear: Tsarnaev's guilt is beyond doubt. The offenses he committed are of the gravest nature and punishment is due. Perhaps that means life in prison, as some have suggested, perhaps it means something else, but it should not be death. As former Attorney General and peace activist Ramsey Clark once mused, there is a Latin saying that translates as, "I'm a man - nothing human is alien to me." Tsarnaev, far from being an implacable demon, is a human just like us. A wicked one, yes, but a human nevertheless. As we much as we be tempted to send him to the gas chamber, we must stop and ponder why we're so tempted to do so. Maybe then, we will recognize the impulse in all of us that made it possible for him to plant those bombs on that tragic day. 

Concert Review: They Might Be Giants @ Anaheim House Of Blues 5/02

Going into the Anaheim House of Blues, I had no idea what to expect from They Might Be Giants. I had just eaten the most delicious burger I'd had in a while, but it did nothing to mollify my apprehensions about the concert. Yes, I was already familiar with TMBG, having listened to such old favorites as "Everything Right Is Wrong Again", "Purple Toupee", "Whistling In The Dark", "The Guitar (The Lion Sleeps Tonight)", and even that damn Malcolm In The Middle song ad nauseam, but these songs were just that: old. 20 years and 13 albums later, what should I have expected? Not helping matters was the crowd, which I (rightly) assumed would avail itself of the illicit beverages generously provided by the bar staff. I am a fan of neither crowds nor alcohol, so I naturally found myself worried that what George Carlin (un)affectionately referred to as the "House of Lame White Motherfuckers" might erupt into some disturbance or another. As it turned out, of course, these apprehensions of mine could not be more overwrought. They Might Be Giants were great and the show was, contrary to what Retired Animatronic Abraham Lincoln said via telephone to John Linnell mid-performance, not at all "like Gitmo".

No, any place with close proximity to Disneyland, great burgers (well, non-intravenously-fed ones anyway) and TMBG is about as far as you can get from Gitmo. It's not even close to being as much a "House of Lame White Motherfuckers" as George Carlin made it out to be. If anything, it was a "House of Tall White Motherfuckers" that night, as I discovered when I struggled to look over the heads of chiseled white dudes blocking my view, although the crowd was hardly made up solely of those. Indeed, the audience was a fairly diverse bunch, with lanky hipsters, older folks, presumably veteran TMBG fans, and brown-skinned 20-somethings like myself all turning out that night for the musical stylings of John Flansburgh and John Linnell, the singing, songwriting and creative core of They Might Be Giants, more than ably backed by Dan Miller on guitar, Danny Weinkauf on bass, and Marty Beller on drums. It was a pretty hip crowd, at least as far as I could ascertain. I guess you have to be to some degree to like They Might Be Giants, who at their most elementary level are the alternative of alternative rock. As far as I'm concerned, they have even transcended that overdone, over-saturated genre and become pioneers and patron saints of dork-rock (the only other contenders being Devo and Weird Al Yankovic). Marrying absurd, even childish lyrics to impossibly catchy melodies since 1982, TMBG are an unstoppable, alt-alt-rock powerhouse, dishing out short-but-sweet tune after short-but-sweet tune and leaving listeners begging for more, as one could easily see that night.

The band got off to an energetic start, playing fast-paced, up-beat numbers like the more recent "The Mesopotamians". A slightly melancholy tale about a rock band struggling and failing to gain recognition, the song features a simple-but-brilliant chorus that has John Linnell belt out names we haven't heard since junior high social studies like Sargon, Hammurabi and Gilgamesh over Dan Miller's vibrant guitar riffs and Marty Beller's snare drum and cymbals. Whether the song is autobiographical in any shape or form or just another nonsensical story like the ones so frequently cooked up by the Johns was, it seemed, not remotely of interest to the audience, who enthusiastically rocked along to Beller's beat. This was especially impressive, as it seemed many, including myself, were not familiar with "The Mesopotamians". If anything, it assuaged any misguided fears (like the ones I held) that TMBG had lost either their touch or that quintessential quirkiness that only they could make palatable to young adults across multiple generations.

This celebration of silliness continued with the next song, introduced by John L. as the "most honest song they had ever done." "Like that Roberta Flack song," John Flansburgh added, referring to "Killing Me Softly", to which John L. retorted "That she didn't write," prompting laughter from the audience. He remained center-stage behind his keyboard as the rest of the band broke into the piece, a lively little (in the literal sense of the word) number. John F. pranced around the stage, squawking all the while into a microphone before John L. joined in with the lyrical portion of the song. The song, "Anaheim (House of Blues)" was a whimsical ode to the venue, praising it as a fun alternative to, among other things, booze, pornography and Death Wish 3. One might think this would be a stretch in the minds of the drunk, the randy, or cheesy 80's movie fans in the audience, but judging by how positively they received the song, many of them really did feel that shelling out the big bucks to see TMBG at the Anaheim House of Blues was worth putting aside alcoholic drinks, skin flicks, and Charles Bronson for one night.

I was completely baffled by the next song, however. It's not that I disliked or didn't recognize it. I enjoyed John F.'s alternatively soothing-and-shrill singing and Dan's strong guitar melody, and I dimly recalled the notes and structure of the song. It's just that I didn't recognize it as a TMBG song. Could this be *gasp* a cover??? Not helping was the fact that when they introduced the song, the audience, animated as ever, drowned them out, leaving me, way in the back of the room, with no chance of hearing what the song was called and who did originally performed it. It was only afterwards that I did some research and discovered that the piece was called "Bills, Bills, Bills" and originally by, of all people, Destiny's Child. Where TMBG got the idea to cover this particular song is beyond me, but I am pleased they did, as John L.'s voice unexpectedly fit the resentful-but-haughty tone of the lyrics and the rest of the band cleverly reinterpreted it as a driven rocker punctuated by John F.'s high-pitched "soooooooo"'s. Don't be surprised if I come away from this review stocking up on Destiny's Child CDs along with some more TMBG ones.

They Might Be Giants in action, or at least what I could see of them.

It wasn't until later in the act that the band played any songs I, along with what seemed like a good chunk of the audience, genuinely recognized. The first of these was "Number Three", from their very first, eponymous album. For this, John F. busted out an acoustic guitar to play the song's folksy-sounding notes and took over lead vocals from John L., who would chime in during the chorus as the sped-up saxophone from the original recording was piped in via speaker. The rest of the band similarly took a backseat in this stripped-down number, with the exception of Marty who provided a steady beat on the bass drum for the song's duration. The next song the crowd immediately recognized, the much, rightfully-ballyhooed "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)", wasn't played until the very end of the show's first half. It was an excellent way to end a setlist though, as the infectious vocal harmonies John F. and John L. generated whilst they strummed the guitar and banged the ivories respectively created the hypnotically off-beat sound TMBG are famous for. Topping the performance off was the crescendo near the song's end, as the entire band drew out their individual parts to the most intense possible conclusion, driving the audience wild and concluding the first half of the performance on an impeccably high note.

Following an old novelty-song and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest theme-filled intermission, the band wasted no time kicking it back into high gear with "You're on Fire". Another of their newer songs, I was very familiar with "You're on Fire", as it was my go-to track at UCLA Radio whenever the extension cords weren't working and I had to play something on the CD player in the station. Since we were in possession of a promotional copy of Nanobots, the album on which it was released, I had the opportunity to listen to it many times, so I couldn't help but feeling a sense of nostalgia as John F. and Dan complemented each others' guitars and John L. not-so-ominously intoned that the subject of the song's hair was on fire. It was yet another classic combination of lyrics describing a comically-heightened reality and a unique, up-beat sound like the ones they made so often during their early years. Considering that the last song they played was one of, if not the standard for, such songs, it was very fitting that they opened the second half of the show with one of their latest and most engaging songs. It served as another reminder that They Might Be Giants still had it.

Indeed, they had it so much so that they were confident enough to close the show with one of their numerous children's songs, "Robot Parade". For this piece, TMBG went full-Kraftwerk, with John F.'s vocals being processed through a vocoder and John L. playing a slick electric piano setting on his keyboard. In retrospect, I must confess, I found this section of the concert a little wanting, as the original recording was played at a much lower tempo and only consisted of the vocals and electric piano, giving it a mellow, slightly menacing, sound. With the addition of bass, drums, and guitar, the piece becomes fundamentally changed, taking on a more dynamic character that I take was meant to be more suitable for live performances. This is understandable, if a little unfortunate in my humble opinion. However, they did add a fun new spin to the song's ending. As the normal run of the song came to an end, John F., still stuck in robot-speak, asked the crowd to join him in creating the world's first "human theremin". Instructing us to raise our voices in the way a theremin raises it's pitch, he sought to literally end the show on a high note. We tried, starting out low before many tapered out, causing John F. to stop, dress us down, and urge us to try again, maintaining that Borg cadence all the while. So once again, we began at the lowest possible note before slowly raising our voice. I lasted only a couple seconds before my voice gave out, but the rest of the crowd did a fair job in reaching that elusively high note. Following this, the band wrapped up, bowed to the audience, and walked off-stage.

As you might have guessed, they weren't getting off so easily. The crowd, intoxicated both figuratively and literally, demanded an encore. "Birdhouse In Your Soul" seemed to be the choice of many, and with good reason, although I think I would have preferred "Shoehorn With Teeth" or "O Do Not Forsake Me". Sure enough, the band came back out, much to the audience's joy. That joy seemed to evaporate though, when they began transitioning between the many constituent portions of "Fingertips", an oldie made at a time when "shuffle" was a novel concept and thus an attempt to exploit the myriad possibilities it offered. This sense of novelty and experimentation was apparently lost on the audience, who from what I gathered assumed it was a medley and struggled valiantly to keep up with the various transitions. One tall, impressively-mustachioed young man wearing Woody Allen glasses a couple rows ahead of me did his best to sing along and groove to each part, earnestly trying to get his female companion, short and still, into it. As far as I could tell, he didn't have any luck. After this epic act of trollery, the band got up and left the stage again, and before you could say "Please pass the milk please", the crowd resumed begging for "Birdhouse". This went on for a while, with it really seeming like a possibility that the audience would leave the House of Blues pissed that they didn't get to hear "Birdhouse". But at the last possible second, TMBG returned a second time, and yes, they played "Birdhouse". It was a spectacular send-off, thanks in no small-part to John L.'s mellifluous organ melody, John F.'s forceful guitar solo, and Marty's purposeful drumming. After the last few notes finally rang out, I stuck around and, like many, managed to not only get one of the many TMBG stickers passed out by John F. and Marty, but also get it signed by Marty as well. He was a real trooper, signing stickers and taking pictures with fans well after the show ended. Upon leaving, I found myself not apprehensive, but certain. Certain that not only was They Might Be Giants as fresh as they were 25 years ago, but they were absolutely worth seeing live, perhaps even a second time if one got the chance.

My sticker, generously signed by Marty Beller. Now to get the Johns!

Book Review: F.A. Hayek's "The Road To Serfdom"

My third article for HonorSociety.org has been published, and boy am I proud of it! I reviewed Friedrich Hayek's "The Road To Serfdom", making this my first book review ever. In retrospect, I wish I had touched more heavily upon the similarities between the Western socialist left and the fascist right Hayek observes and analyzes, which it seems I neglected in favor of highlighting the commonalities between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, but overall I am happy with how this piece turned out. Let's hope that my next such review is as good as this one (or for that matter, that you think it's as good as I do!) The original article can be accessed here, and the text is reproduced below.

                                                                          Book Review: F.A. Hayek's The Road To Serfdom

For a topical work published some 70 years ago, Friedrich Hayek's The Road To Serfdom still manages to inform American political discourse. This could be either due to the book's ability to articulate and defend it's central thesis, or it may be due to noteworthy/notorious figures like former Fox News darling Glenn Beck who eagerly latched onto it and promoted said book and said thesis, usually butchering Hayek's analysis of socialism, totalitarianism, and central planning into something more closely resembling National Review Online writer Jonah Goldberg's essentially ad hominem characterization of modern day progressives, budding college Democrats, and organic food-eating hipsters as advocates of something he dubs "liberal fascism". Ironically, that phrase would likely have made Hayek clasp his forehead in exasperation, considering the lengths to which he tries to not only make known the original meaning and tenets of liberalism, but to make the case for them as well. This meaning and these tenets, it cannot be stressed enough, are not what either Beck and Goldberg or the aforementioned young Democrats and Whole Foods hipsters probably imagine them to be. 

Liberalism, as envisioned by Hayek, is a system in which the government interferes in both the social and economic spheres of life only when absolutely necessary (such as enforcing minimum living standards and in times of war). This definition, however, has practically been inverted, as he notes in the foreword to the 1956 paperback edition. "In current American usage, it [liberalism] often means very nearly the opposite of this. It has been part of the camouflage of leftish movements in this country, helped by the muddleheadedness of many who really believe in liberty, that 'liberal' has come to mean the advocacy of almost every kind of government control," (pg. 45), he laments, as he would continue to do so if he were here to see the lasting perception of liberalism as pro-government intervention. Strangely, this particular insight of Hayek's has not been the recipient of exposure, much less praise, by his supposed ideological bedfellows (i.e. Beck, Goldberg, et al.), even though on the face of it this statement would help make their point. This is because they either, like the muddleheaded liberty lovers Hayek woefully mentions, do not understand liberalism, or do not understand it's enemies, whom are the architects of the titular Road To Serfdom and thus the main subject of the book's analysis. 

That subject is socialism, another widely-thrown around yet largely-misunderstood word. Today, when it is par for the course to hear right-wing shock jocks rail against “liberal socialists” when they aren’t ranting about “liberal fascism”, this might come as a blinding revelation to readers on both sides of the political spectrum. But for Hayek, it was a given. As the Allies made common cause with Soviet communism against German and Italian fascism, he couldn’t help but noticing the elements common to both the West’s totalitarian enemies and it’s temporary totalitarian ally. The rhetoric and justifications were different, as misguided liberals (used in the current, incorrect sense of the word) and outright apologists for either system are eager to point out, but in Hayek’s opinion (as well as this writer’s), the similarities between the leader-driven nationalism of Hitler’s Germany and the left-wing paternalism of Stalin’s Russia, to say nothing of those between the gulag and concentration camps, the NKVD and the Gestapo, or any number of illiberal aspects of the two, far outweighed any differences in ideology or political theory between the two regimes. It is for this reason that Hayek dedicates this book “To the socialists of all parties,” a statement that might make modern readers scratch their heads until they realize that socialism can arguably be a phenomenon of the right just as much as the left.

This is not, of course, to imply that every socialist is a bloodthirsty megalomaniac bent on subduing humanity. On the contrary, Hayek observes that many of his contemporaries sympathetic to socialism earnestly believed that there would be room for liberty and individuality in the centrally-planned, economically-egalitarian society they hoped to build. What these self-proclaimed “liberal socialists” failed to take into account, he contends, is that enforced equality and unencumbered liberty are directly at odds with each other, writing “The economic freedom which is the perquisite of any other freedom cannot be the freedom from economic care which the socialists promise us and which be obtained only by relieving the individual at the same time of the necessity and of the power of the choice; it must be the freedom of our economic activity which, with the right of choice, inevitably also carries the risk and the responsibility of that right,” (pg. 133). In short, a free-market economy is conducive to individual liberty and freedom, while a command economy, with it’s directives and goals, inevitably comes into conflict with those who do not agree with, say, a particular allocation of resources. Perhaps if this was the full extent of the inconveniences of socialism, it wouldn’t be as unfavorably viewed as it is by many, and Hayek wouldn’t have felt the need to write this book in the first place. The thing is though, this isn’t the full extent of it’s inconveniences. In fact, it is the first stop on the long, winding road to serfdom, and it gets worse from here on out.

As the demands of the state grow, so do the chances of it’s citizens expressing opposition to them. At first, only the wealthy or other marginal (whether in the numerical or social sense) groups are going to be the only ones directly affected by it’s edicts, but when these edicts fail to create the utopia spoken of by supporters of central planning, the average citizen is liable to find their liberties curtailed as the sacrifices required of them by the government increase. This might take the form of banning of speech that opposes or otherwise criticizes government initiatives like an inefficient public works program or government initiative, incorrectly blaming low enthusiasm on the part of citizens for it’s failures instead of structural defects within the program or initiative in question. As time goes on, this might metastasize into banning speech critical of the leader or ruling party’s policies in general. It may even rise to the curtailing of speech critical of the leader or ruling party period and woe betide anyone who ignores these restrictions. Scenarios similar to this one unfolded in Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Soviet Russia, and it is this gradual, often-unintended sequence of events that Hayek seeks to warn readers of. The high-minded intentions of the system’s original proponents fade into irrelevance as some, upon seeing the costs of their revolutionary project, abandon and disavow it while the ones who still believe in their vision double down and pursue it all the more zealously, without regard to the amount of blood shed and treasure wasted. To these remaining few, no cost is too high, and anyone who stands in their way and is subsequently killed, imprisoned, or otherwise oppressed is collateral damage. This is because, as Hayek asserts, “From the collectivist standpoint intolerance and brutal suppression of dissent, the complete disregard of the life and happiness of the individual, are essential and unavoidable consequence of this basic premise, and the collectivist can admit this and at the same time claim that his system is superior to one in which the ‘selfish’ interests of the individual are allowed to obstruct the full realization of the ends the community pursues,” (pg. 168). The inhuman horror of Auschwitz, the mindless terror of the Great Purge, this is where one finds themselves after reaching the end of the road to serfdom.

Unfortunately, as was the case when the book first came out, many will dismiss Hayek’s warnings as overstated, expressing the unfathomably naive and equally ahistorical sentiment that “It can’t happen here”. They may very well attribute the killing and destruction of the 20th Century totalitarian regimes to alleged innate traits of the peoples who were subject to them. The Germans, for example, were commonly said during and after the war and in some quarters still are said to be a militaristic people almost biologically inclined to genocidal anti-Semitism. Such absurd explanations for the excesses of National Socialism ignore that anti-Semitism existed in countries like Britain and France long before the Germans even organized themselves into a nation-state. Indeed, Hayek reminds readers that, “There are many features which were then regarded as ‘typically German’ and which are now equally familiar in England, for instance, and many symptoms that point to a further development in the same direction. We have already mentioned the most significant - the increasing similarity between the economic views of the Right and Left and their common opposition to the liberalism that used to be the common basis of most English politics,” (pg. 193). Hayek’s point is that the primary factor in it being Germans who perpetrated the Holocaust rather than Englishmen was not the blood and genes they possessed, but the ideas and values they held. Ideas and values that, Hayek warily observes, had their basis in seemingly-unrelated ideologies gaining currency among well-meaning people at the time in Britain and by extension, the United States. Some might even make the case that it has happened here, as anyone who has seen black and white pictures of helpless Lakota Indians gunned down by the U.S. Calvary at Wounded Knee and innocent Japanese-Americans driven away in trucks and confined behind barbed wire fences, colored photos of American soldiers rounding up Vietnamese women at My Lai before massacring them and National Guardsmen firing upon student protestors at Kent State, or live footage of the FBI ramming a tank into the doomed Branch Davidian compound at Waco and a South Carolina policeman shooting an unarmed Walter Scott as he fled in terror, in the back and in cold blood, might tell you. Incidents like these and the larger forces they represent should serve as a reminder that we too are susceptible to the authoritarian, even murderous impulses that Hayek described, and all the more reason for us to remain vigilant and resist them.

“The Road To Serfdom”, it must be said, falls short in some areas, although none that irreparably harm the work. An Austrian academic (an economist no less), Hayek’s manner of writing can be dry at times, possibly requiring readers to reread certain passages after having attempted to read them once only to zone out after being overwhelmed by the staleness of the often-theoretical text. Readers may also find themselves confused by references to figures and organizations active at the time of Hayek’s writing but now lost to mainstream historical memory. Regarding the views Hayek espouses in the book, he at least on one occasion finds himself guilty of doing what he accuses his ideological adversaries of. While mockingly claiming that advocates of central planning don’t know exactly what it is they are planning, just that they are planning and thus feel they are accomplishing something, Hayek, when defending his views from charges of being simply “laissez-faire” (pg. 118), says that he supports government action in certain areas, such as “security against severe physical privation, the certainty of a given minimum of sustenance for all; and, second, the security of a given standard of life, or of the relative position which one person enjoys compared with others; or, as we may put it briefly, the security of a minimum income and the security of the particular income a person is thought to deserve,” (pg. 148). He does not explain what he considers to be an acceptable “minimum of sustenance”, nor does he identify a suitable minimum income, committing the same fallacy he accuses socialists of. However, these shortcomings do not damage the book as a whole. The prose may be clinical, but the ideas and sentiments it conveys are intellectually stimulating and at times outright exciting, and the definitive edition of the book put out by The University of Chicago Press and edited by Bruce Caldwell helpfully adds footnotes that identify now-obscure references. Hayek’s defense of his own ideas may need some fine-tuning (as he surely did over the course of his long career), but as the book is primarily a blistering polemic against the ideas of others, it does not undermine his main point.

If you are interested in politics or history, you will more than likely enjoy Hayek’s landmark work. Those who it is aimed against (that is, progressives and authoritarian right-wingers) may find themselves frustrated or even enraged by Hayek’s contentions. There is also the chance that they might find themselves exposed to an interesting perspective they weren’t privy to before. Some might even come away from reading it as die-hard libertarians, as many who identify as such will attest to. However you receive it, The Road To Serfdom will be the source of much food for thought or at the very least an engaging, new topic to argue about at the dinner table.

A Delicate Balance: How To Enjoy Your Education

My second article for HonorSociety.org has been published! This time, I wrote about how college students can budget their time between studying, sleeping, and recreational activity. I must say I was a bit apprehensive about writing this article, as it's advice is mainly drawn from my own experiences, but I am very happy with how it turned out. The original article can be accessed here, or you can just read it below!

                                                                           A Delicate Balance: How To Enjoy Your Education

My first week at UCLA, I was told that there were three things students needed to make time for: studying, sleeping, and partying. Not only that, but you also had to make a choice. You only had time for two, so you would have to neglect one, at least if you planned to succeed while at UCLA. Just under five years later, however, I would argue that the person who said this couldn't be more wrong.

One of the biggest obstacles college undergraduates face is leaving the trivial concerns and pursuits of adolescence behind and becoming responsible adults both aware of and a part of the world around them, all whilst staying on top of reading often dense books, writing research papers, studying for midterms, and for many, working part or even full-time jobs. Not helping is the fact that the aforementioned trivial concerns and pursuits of high school - that is, friendships, intimate relationships, and cultivating a certain image of one's self in the eyes of others - are hard to leave behind. I myself distinctly remember zoning out in one of my classes freshman year, stunned by the realization that I had nothing in common with one of my high school crushes and thus no real grounds for a relationship with her. I glumly dwelled on this state of affairs the whole class, briefly putting my morbid meditation on hold when called upon by the professor, mumbling the answer to his question, and quickly returning to my inner pity party as soon as he moved on. I cannot bring myself to believe for a second that I am the only person who has had an experience like this, that no one else has gone through something similar. On the contrary, I think that many college students at some point find themselves beset by both growing pains and rigorous coursework, and it is for you that I write this.

It goes without saying that you must stay on top of your academics. In my experience, the surest way to do this is to keep up with the reading. Some people might groan upon hearing this advice. They might say they don't need to read the book because they go to lecture everyday, making the book redundant (I would like to point out that I actually have met people over the course of my college career who said this). It is true that lectures cover the same material as the books, but this position ignores one very important fact: while books provide a wealth of information about a given topic and can be accessed at any time once you acquire them, lectures are finite discussions that condense all of that information into two or three hours, requiring you to write down every little thing the professor says, lest you miss something important. The mere act of learning, which should be an engaging and rewarding pursuit, becomes laborious and stressful. Students mindlessly scribble "Michel Foucault: neoliberalism" into their notebooks without knowing, much less understanding, who Michel Foucault was, what neoliberalism is, and what one has to do with the other. With increasing numbers of professors posting their lecture PowerPoints online for review and even podcasting their classes though, notetaking is becoming less and less vital to mastering course material and, indirectly, giving students more time to wrestle with the ideas discussed in their books. This is something students should take advantage of, as reading a writer's work and becoming acquainted with their ideas, in their own context, is a more involving, more intellectually stimulating activity than having someone you know only peripherally talk at you about said writer's work and ideas in an abridged, usually bowdlerized fashion. If you can remember and analyze not just the ideas and facts but also their contexts, you will be well equipped to ace tests and write excellent papers about them and by extension, pass your classes.

Of course, one shouldn't forget about the good things of life just because they're a student. Studying at a university provides you with copious chances to attend interesting and exciting happenings, like film screenings and Q&A's, lectures by visiting notables, and musical performances. You get a student discount for a reason. Use it. In some cases, you might even get to go to such events for free, which is a bargain as many are once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. There are also less cultured but equally enjoyable activities to partake in, such as dinners with floormates, club and group meetings, and partying, for those of you who are into that. In short, there are plenty of opportunities for you to learn and interact with others outside of the classroom. It's even as simple as ordering a pizza and watching a movie on your laptop with your roommate. You just have to make time for it, which admittedly can be a hard task. Sometimes, you can get so caught up in schoolwork that you can't bring yourself to take a two hour break and go see the student production of And Then There Were None, or you might find yourself at the opposite extreme, staying a few more hours than you originally planned at the frat party even though you have a biology midterm to study for. It is for this reason that you must plan in advance when you decide to go to a particular social gathering. Determine if you can stay as long as you want or if you need to be back in your dorm or head out to class by a certain time, and allocate homework and study time in such a way throughout the prior week that you have the least amount or hopefully none to worry about when the big day comes. It requires a lot of forethought, but the opportunity to have time for both education and entertainment should be incentive enough to start mapping out one's social plans in advance.

Last but definitely not least, you need sleep. You need it, and you can get it, if you budget your time wisely. The conventional wisdom that young adults need approximately eight hours of sleep is a source of woe to some students, as they view those eight hours as valuable time in which they could be fine tuning their final paper or hanging out with frat buddies. It is thus not surprising that many students go without a goodnight's sleep, forcing themselves out of bed the day of finals after a week of sleepless study nights and gulping cup after cup of bad coffee on their way to class. It doesn't have to be this way though. As I mentioned before, a little planning can go a long way, and the best way to get enough sleep is to pick a particular bedtime and a time to wake up. These times don't necessarily have to be the same for everyday. For example, if you have a morning class one day and no class the following day, you can wake up earlier the day of the morning class and sleep in the next day. It is consistency, not uniformity, that we are concerned with, as it will facilitate not only healthy sleeping habits, but also recreational activities and academic pursuits. 

My First Published Work!

Pardon my absence, dear reader. I know it is most unbecoming, but some exciting developments have arisen in my life, as you might have guessed by the title of this post. Aside from seeing (and reviewing) Arlo Guthrie, I am now a Featured Writer at HonorSociety.org, a nation-wide support group for college students, and had my first piece published last week. It is a simple "About Me" that covers much of the same ground as my first blog post, but I would be more than honored if you were to take a look at it yourself. I will write three articles for them a month covering books, current events and education, so expect to see them posted on here. Don't fret though, I still plan on writing on here about stuff that falls out of the purvey of those topics, so this blog certainly won't be obsolete. The article can be accessed here, and it is reproduced in full below.

                                                                                                     A Little (Or Lot) About Me

Hello dear reader. I would assume by this point that you have seen the byline and thus my name, but just in case you haven’t, let me restate it. My name is Reginaldo Peralta, although I almost always go by Reggie. Feel free to call me that from here on out.

As you might have guessed, I am a college student, studying Radio and Television/Video Production at Fullerton College. However, Fullerton wasn’t my first college. Prior to this, I attended and graduated from UCLA as a Political Science major. The four years I spent there were formative for me, both academically and socially. I must admit that my first two years were very rough, filled as they were with growing pains both inside and outside the classroom. It was only in my junior and senior years that I came into my own.

It is no coincidence that during these two years, I joined and was involved with UCLARadio, the campus radio station, as a disc jockey. For just under two years, I played music, usually classic rock and novelty songs, and interviewed dozens of guests, including former Massachusetts governor and 1988 presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, The Doors drummer John Densmore, “The X-Files” co-star William B. Davis, Miss America 2014 Nina Davuluri, and former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark. It was a significant achievement for me, particularly considering the fact that I had trouble interacting with others, let alone with an audience.

Indeed, it was my experience with UCLARadio that convinced me that what I wanted to do was work in broadcasting. Uneasy about entering graduate school, I resolved instead to look for programs that would prepare me for a career in radio. I checked the University of California, I checked the Cal State system, I even checked community colleges, but I couldn’t find anything remotely resembling the technical type of program I was looking for. It wasn’t until, on a whim, I looked at the offerings of Fullerton College when, at last, I found such a program.

During this time, I also became seriously interested in writing. I had written material here and there before, but never on a consistent basis. Yet over the course of my time at UCLARadio, I exposed myself to dozens of books in order to prepare myself for interviews with guests. Having been exposed to said material, I suddenly found myself not only interested in what others had to say, but also what I had to say. At moments, I even find myself wishing that I had double majored in English, in the hope that it would refined my writing ability.

The time for regrets is past though, and the best course of action (at least from my perspective) is to keep moving forward. To that end, I make it a point to read at least 50 pages a day, so as to keep my mind active and expand my horizons. Although I will read pretty much anything, historical and political non-fiction are especially interesting subjects to me. Expect much of my writing to take the form of book reviews and analyses of current political events, usually ones dealing with foreign policy (my major had a concentration in International Relations after all) and civil liberties. I will also cover education, whether that means advice pieces that draw from my own experiences and reflections or discussions of contemporary developments that affect college students. Ultimately though, regardless of what I address, I hope that you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy writing it.

Concert Review: Arlo Guthrie @ Irvine Barclay Theatre 4/11

"I bet when some of you heard I was playing tonight, you thought 'Isn't that guy dead?" Arlo Guthrie mused to the crowd, which promptly burst into laughter tinged by what I presumed to be guilt on the part of some audience members. That guilt might have been warranted, however, as nothing could be farther from the truth: not only is Arlo Guthrie not dead, he's alive and kicking, as anybody who saw him perform that night will tell you.

Currently on tour to commemorate the 50th anniversary of his most famous song, "Alice's Restaurant Massacree" (referred to from this point on simply as"Alice's Restaurant"), Arlo and his backup band, including the talents of Bobby Sweet on electric guitar and violin, drummer Terry Hall, bassist Darren Todd, and none other than his son Abe Guthrie on keyboards, stopped in Irvine last week to play songs and regale fans with stories from his life. The appeal of both was very real, as evidenced by the large turnout. Naturally, the crowd was mostly on the older side of the spectrum but surprisingly, the people were mostly clean-cut, a strange thing to observe given Arlo's association with the sillier elements of the 60's counterculture. Perhaps many of them were hippies when they were younger, but if so, it looked like they had left flower power, free love, and psychedelic drugs long behind them, in favor of kids, grandkids, and, judging by their clothes, cushy jobs. It must be noted, however, that this was definitely not the case with Arlo, who himself is pushing 70. Sporting long white hair, wearing thin-framed glasses and having grandkids of his own, he is sillier than ever.

Any doubts about this assessment were laid to rest when the screen in the back of the stage started playing a music video featuring "The Motorcycle Song". The source material for the video, featuring daredevil pickles brought to life in (in)glorious claymation, were said by Arlo to be lost since the 1980's. "You can see why," he quipped upon it's end.

Of course, this is not to suggest that it was just a night of Arlo singing sweet lyrical absurdities and cracking self-deprecating jokes. Shortly after "The Motorcycle Song", the band broke into "Darkest Hour", a decidedly more heavy, to say nothing of sensual, song. Heavy in the sense that the subject matter is heavy, not simply the sound or instrumentation. Before I offer my take on this particular part of the concert, I would like to point out that I almost always prefer the studio version of songs over live versions. I'd also like to point out that "Darkest Hour" wasn't one of my favorite Arlo Guthrie songs. So imagine what it says about the band's rendition of it that I came out of the theatre eager to rip from Youtube buy a CD with this particular version of "Darkest Hour" on it. All levity aside though, I would go as far to say that Arlo's heartfelt vocals, telling of his love for the swashbuckling woman who saved him from captivity, and Bobby Sweet's stirring violin are enough to justify buying a physical copy of the concert album that will inevitably be released when the tour concludes.

Light-hearted themes were revisited in "Me and My Goose", albeit with a dark twist. Explaining that he was tired of the increasing tendency of children's music to be blandly benign and often educational, he wrote this song in the style of the old campfire songs both he and his father (the legendary Woody Guthrie, for any heathens reading this) grew up listening to. "Me and My Goose" is musically conventional, but the subversive nature of the piece lies within the insincerely innocent lyrics, which tell the story of a boy and his pet goose, Al. One day, Al disappears and the boy is unable to find him when his mother asks him to come home for dinner, and all that that implies. Needless to say, the little girl sitting with the family next to me (one of the two people I saw that were either younger or around my age) was inconsolable. It didn't help that the background screen displayed images from the book (which I happened to snag a copy of afterwards), leaving no room for ambiguity as to Al's fate.

The screen would come in handy again when it was time for the centerpiece of the performance. Right after the intermission, Arlo started strumming one of his guitars (he had several on stand-by throughout the show) and easing himself into the spoken word opening of "Alice's Restaurant". Naturally, he invited the audience to join in during the chorus, which, being the stuffy Irviners they were, they did half-heartedly. This was not a matter of them not knowing the lyrics, as they were helpfully displayed on the screen, allowing even the musically illiterate like myself to join in the piece's notorious refrain. Their lack of enthusiasm was abundantly made up for in Arlo's apparent affection for the song. The fact that he still regards "Alice's Restaurant" with care rather than weariness is impressive, given the copious amount of times he has played it in it's 18-minute entirety over the years, if not decades. Indeed, the song's age shows, with Arlo having to explain the draft, a crucial plot point in "Alice's Restaurant", to those of us who were too young to remember (all three of us, although I don't count given my frequent perusing of the relevant pages on Wikipedia) and the scenes from the movie adaptation played on the screen portraying Arlo and his long-haired hippie friends crashing in the church Alice and her husband lived in and getting into trouble with law enforcement (portrayed more as buffoons than fascists) when, after finding the dump closed, they dumped some trash on Thanskgiving Day and thus charged with littering. Interestingly, the main antagonist, Officer Obie, was the actual cop who arrested Arlo, claiming that if anybody was going to make him look like a fool, it should be himself, as Arlo recounted. On top of that, over the course of the film's production, he became a good friend of Arlo's, right up until his death a couple years ago. Maybe there really is something to the song's message, however vague it may be, of unity.

This sense of community was still present by the end of the concert, when Arlo and the band played several songs written by his father and closing with that infernal stealth communist anthem (said with tongue partially-in-cheek), "This Land Is Your Land". I imagine most people haven't heard that song played live since elementary school, so imagine what it was like to hear someone (the son of it's writer, no less) play those simple chords and that iconic fourth line before a packed theatre. But Arlo didn't play the whole song. He just left us with the last, less known yet more moving verse before transitioning into the chorus we all know and love. I would quote it here, but apparently the Guthrie estate is very protective of Woody's lyrics. A bit ironic, considering the song rails against private property at one point, but hey, I can appreciate irony.

I will tell you though, that that last verse was quite a bit more thought-provoking (as well as libertarian) than paeans to California and redwood forests, at least in my opinion. But the paeans to California and redwood forests are what everybody remembers, so Arlo once again asked the audience to sing the chorus with him and once again the stuffy Irviners did it half-heartedly. This time though, Arlo wasn't having it, lamenting "Come on, even for Irvine, that sucks!" After the resulting laughter died down, he played the chorus again, and this time around, the audience finally put it's heart into it. For a moment, I felt young again, or at least as young as a recent college grad can feel. I wonder if the rest of the audience felt the same way.

At the very least, they enjoyed the show immensely, since many begged for an encore after he and his band mates got up and left the stage. Their requests were heeded, and Arlo promptly returned, much to the crowd's pleasure. He offered to leave us with another song penned by Woody. Lyrics penned by Woody anyway, as he never recorded it and the music for it could not be found. To that end, Arlo wrote some music for the song, titled "My Peace". Poking gentle fun at the "kumbaya" nature of it, he invited us once again to sing along with him. The crowd joined in, this time gladly following Arlo's lead as he sang the lullably-like lyrics and strummed his guitar. As the song said, his peace was all he had, and come it's conclusion, it was all he could give. The audience and myself appreciated this gift: on my way out of the theatre, I heard one older gentleman say to a friend, "You know, I feel like going home and breaking out my Arlo Guthrie." I had half a mind to say, "You and me, sir. You and me."