TAKING A DEEP BREATH

Thank you all for the kind comments about the Marx tutorial. This is an entirely new form of teaching for me, and I still have not accustomed myself to the fact that there may be five hundred, or even many more, people "studying" with me -- vastly more than I ever taught in a classroom during my half century career.

While I have been deep in the details of Marx's labor Theory of Value, the world seems to have carried on quite nicely without me. Like everyone else on the planet, I have been following the extraordinary events in Egypt. One of the side-consequences that has fascinated me is that it the mainstream commentary now accepts and highlights the fact that for half a century America has been supporting dictators, against the interests and desires of the people over whom they tyrannize. This is hardly news, but it is not so often stated so clearly. Whether it will cause some people to rethink their attitude towards America's foreign policy remains to be seen, of course. I have also been interested to observe that despite the efforts of some commentators, the Egyptian eruption is simply not about Israel. Could a time come when America's foreign policy is not driven by Israel's imagined needs? One wonders.

And then we had the always enjoyable annual CPAC meeting [Conservative Political Action Committee, for my non-American readers.] The spectacle of Donald Trump announcing that Ron Paul cannot get elected was worth the price of admission. Can it be that the Republicans will nominate Mitt Romney and drive the Tea Partiers into a third party? I would be happy to see Romney nominated just so we could endlessly recycle the story about his family's trip to Maine during which he tied the family dog to the roof of their station wagon. [I am really not making this up.]

On to more serious matters. One commentator to the final Marx post expressed himself as looking forward to my next tutorial. I have not given any thought to doing another one. Each series is really a great deal of work, although that does not seem to deter me from repeatedly getting myself into yet another one. A faithful reader has privately expressed the desire that I undertake a series of posts on the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, but that strikes me as guaranteed to drive away virtually everyone who has visited this blog.

At any rate, the sun is out, the temperature is rising here in the South, and we sun-lovers are crawling out of our burrows, sniffing the wind, and thinking about T-shirts and shorts. Wouldn't it be a hoot, as one commentator mused, if the entire Middle East turns into a home for democracy except for Iraq and Afghanistan, the two countries we invaded supposedly to bring them the blessings of the American political system?