“George Washington and the other Founders were moral, fallible persons, not Divinely inspired oracles. If we take every word they wrote, every phase they uttered to the bank, we are making big mistakes of our own.”
And yet you are the biggest perpetrator of that “big mistake”:
“The USA was founded as a trading nation;”
Again, intellectual dishonesty or stupidity on display.
“Falling on our faces in deference to “timeless truths” and “unchanging verities” takes us nowhere - though chanting those terms over and over can comfort children, the ignorant, and the lazy.”
The only “timeless truths” I keep hearing are from the likes of you: “Free trade” you cry over and over.
I find no comfort there, although it’s clear you do.
“I have to admit to curiosity as to just what an “intellectual subordinate” is.”
No problem google: Dunning-Kruger.
“...intellectual dishonesty or stupidity...’Free trade’ … I find no comfort there … Dunning-Kruger.” [JPJones, post 26]
I am beginning to see where you became confused: I typed the word “trade,” not “free trade.” Lots of readers skip essential elements, or become convinced they have read something that wasn’t there.
Few things should be more self-evident than the early and extensive association of the British Atlantic seaboard colonies with trade. The disputes that arose in the mid-18th century between the Colonists and Britain’s home government revolved around trade. It wasn’t a bunch of rock-ribbed pioneering isolationist backwoods subsistence farmers who revolted against British rule.
The historic fact of trade cannot be disputed, no matter how much forum members might be displeased with the way trade was conducted then, or is today. Everyone is free to feel comforted, or discomfited as they see fit. Their feelings won’t change any of it.
Defending a preferred policy position by calling on the authority [sic] of research by the likes of David Dunning and Justin Kruger won’t get you anywhere. Most hard science types, and those of us who performed applied science as part of their professions, cannot take much of psychology very seriously. It was pretty much the same with intellectuals, philosophers, attorneys, academics, economists, and the leadership hierarchy. Without descending into personal attacks, I can say that if we got anything done at all, it was in spite of the people on that list, not because of any help they gave us.
I did spend 29 years in uniform, some of it at the cutting edge of human perception, and in consultation with system designers and engineers who were looking to improve human/machine interfaces. So what people perceive or don’t perceive, and how they do it and why, was important to us. And conclusions drawn from our work was of great interest to those in the armed forces who were going in harm’s way.
When I wasn’t doing that, I was (among other things) explaining to high rankers, accountants, IG inspectors, and colleagues in different fields just what we were doing and why. Some of them had to be tutored extensively, and get talked to using very small words.
But for all that, I don’t feel slighted. There are plenty of misconceptions out there; if someone (or all of us) want to cling to this or that one, I never take it personally.