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Ben Stein's Diary
Agony and Ecstasy
Dispatches from our hero’s private oasis. From Ben’s monthly print Diary.
Saturday
Hmmm. I slept in my office above
the garage this morning. I have gotten into the evil habit of
getting up in the middle of the night, reading some upsetting book
about Hitler, and then finding that I am too anxious to fall back
asleep in my usual bed in my bedroom. The book I am reading now is
as good a book of European history as I have ever read. It is
Hitler’s Central European Empire by Jean Sedlar. The
author, who died recently, was the mother of my dear friend Eric
Sedlar, who was married to my other dear friend Tatyana, who died
this summer. Too much dying. The book is super smartly written—more
than that, supremely brilliantly written, magnificently
researched—but tells such sad truths about humans that it disturbs
my rest. We humans are made of crooked, hating, hurting wood.
“Flawed” is putting it mildly.
Plus, on a more micro level, my usual bed is a total mess. It has stacks of bills, many CDs still unopened, waiting to be played in my ancient compact disc player, many books about how to deal with anxiety, many Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, and a big dog.
I found I needed a neater bed at five in the morning, so I packed up my dog and my fat old self, and I walked downstairs, through the dining room, the breakfast room, the kitchen, the laundry room, and then outside along a small (very small) pathway to the stairs to what we call the “Garage Mahal”—my office above the garage.
This all gives the impression that we live in an enormous house. We don’t. It is a normal home and it does not take long to traverse it.
When I get to my office, I am invariably happy. I like being in a room that is NOT littered with my own mess. I put my Mozart piano concertos on my ancient, barely working Discman and go right back to sleep. Usually, I awaken fairly happy.
This morning though, I awakened and started to measure what we as a nation have lost in recent years.
We have lost the freedom to speak in a candid and truthful way. This has happened largely over matters of race. We as a nation are totally right to want to avoid offending men and women because of their race. To use evil names to race-bait our fellow Americans is just an outrage.
But we don’t do anyone a favor if we pretend that all the races in this country are each the same as the others. Yes, of course we all have equal rights under law. That’s mandatory. But it’s a fact that black Americans are in deep trouble in terms of education, unemployment, work experience, family cohesiveness, drug use, and health. We do not do anyone favors by pretending that things are hunky-dory in the black community. They are not, and if we could honestly say that many of the problems of our schools, our prisons, our neighborhoods are closely tied to race, we might be able to at least start to think about them more clearly. It is just plain foolish to ignore people and say we do them a favor by ignoring them.
We really must examine what works for poor black people, in terms of making them more productive citizens, and do more of that. I notice, for example, that the military, by expecting high standards of behavior from people of color, usually gets it. No excuses. Just do it. I wish we could respect all races enough to tell the truth about what we need to do to help them have great lives.
Black people cannot just be swept under the rug. They are people and have feelings and needs and hopes and fears just like everyone else. They deserve respect, especially from the president, who does not give it to them.
I was also thinking about how we cannot tell the truth about science. We all admire study and discipline and the accretion of knowledge. But to pretend that science has all the answers about where life came from or where the laws of physics or motion come from is just fantasy.
We are all supposed to bow down and worship science, even though science changes, can be used for wicked purposes, and is often just plain fraudulent.
The Germans under Hitler were rated as great scientists by many, yet they insisted that science demanded that whole races be exterminated to better mankind. “Science” as practiced by the native peoples of this hemisphere often required human sacrifice. What do we think about that? For decades, science said that babies in the womb were basically the same as bowls of gelatin. Therefore they could be ground up like horse meat and no one would be worse off. Now, we know that babies in the womb can feel pain, enjoy music, behave almost exactly like babies outside the womb. When we kill them, we are killing babies just like the ones so many of us love in our own homes.
If we say that, we are called terrible names. But how far is it from human sacrifice?
Well, I thought about that for a while. Then I went back to sleep yet again. Then I did a few chores, decided it was too cold to swim, and then had some breakfast instead: a toasted bagel.
About the Author
Ben Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Beverly Hills and Malibu. He writes “Ben Stein’s Diary” for every issue of The American Spectator.
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EastTexasRancher| 2.28.13 @ 7:02AM
Dear Ben Stein,
I love your heart of gratitude. But there is a verse from Psalms you need to complete your life. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not unto your own understanding. Now, take a deep breath. Breathe in, breathe out, trust God.
B. Gunn
East Texas Rancher
Peppermint Tea | 2.28.13 @ 10:50AM
We TAS readers love you too, Ben.
Just not a much as the moochers you write a check to every month.
C Smith | 2.28.13 @ 10:54AM
Verses from Zechariah you need to complete your life:
After the time of Jacob's Trouble, (The Final Holocaust): "... saith the LORD, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein.... And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my people: and they shall say, The LORD is my God" (Zechariah 13:8-9).
"And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.
In that day shall there be a great mourning in Jerusalem, as the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon" (Zechariah 12:10-11).
http://theisraelofgod.blogspot.....aphat.html
TXRPLS| 3.1.13 @ 6:00AM
To: B. Gunn
Nice to know there is another christian in East Texas that reads Ben Stein.
W. Green
East Texas Surveyor
SCrouch| 3.1.13 @ 2:06PM
Even more than that...
S. C.
East Texas Engineer
Frank Drackman| 2.28.13 @ 7:13AM
Back when I had my own award winning blog I did a mean Larry King satire, you know the bit...
.....Why isn't tuna more popular?...
.....For my money nothing was funnier than Bob Hope in Black Face...
but Ben's onto something, and I'm not talkin about his affinity for Nordic Ice Princesses...
Just for fun, try to find the ratio of:
Blacks murdered by Whites/Whites murdered by Blacks.
Shouldn't be that hard right? $ 15 trillion deficit, Censuses that ask more personal questions than my Life Coach(AKA Mom)instead of just how many peoples live under my roof...
And to be fair, you can find the info, infact I know the answer, could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you, perhaps skewering the data...
And its a logial phallic-sy, because with E-ville White Peoples still being the majority(Barely) and Afro Americans 14% of the Population(seems like more) shouldn't the ratio be ummm roughly 3??
Except it's not, not even close...
Frank
Occam's Tool| 2.28.13 @ 7:37PM
Dear Ben, you bloody moron: an exercise in basic algebra.
Suppose that X = 3 Y.
Then, is .28 X equal to .70 y, greater than .70y, or less than .70 y. The answer is greater than .70 y. I mention this because .28 and .70 are the maximum tax rates in the Reagan and Carter administrations, and X and Y represent the DJI (as a proxy for the GNP) in those two administrations.
We need to GROW our way out of this mess, you demented baboon. The best way to deal with our mess is to start by approving drilling in ANWR and approving Keystone. Go from THERE.
Taxing productivity is a moron's game. See Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron."
What will work for poor Black families is very simple. Set up all aid given for children to be higher if the couple is married. See what happens. Simple intervention, complex good results. Complex intervention, simple (and bad results).
Frank: I think Ben refers to "Big" wifey in the same context that my wife is "She Who Must be Obeyed."
Frank Drackman| 2.28.13 @ 7:18AM
"Big" Wifey???
umm thats a joke right, like how morbidly obese people are called "Tiny", or how we called the blackest guy on my YMCA basketball team "Whitey"...
Frank
Bill8472| 2.28.13 @ 10:02AM
At least you didn't call him "Snowflake."
Marc Jeric| 2.28.13 @ 7:47AM
Ben Stein should apply his penmanship to this problem: We conservatives and Republicans are called names such as "right wingers", "naxis", and "fascists"; while our socialists and communists and racists call themselves "liberals" and "progressives".
Well - Hitler's party was officially "German National-Socialist Workers Party; Mussolini's party was called officially "Italian Socialist Party".
Lyneuss Fields | 2.28.13 @ 10:49AM
Your Conservatives are getting soaked by America's electorate, Marc. That's because you need to attract more Latino, Africans and Women. That's because our Tea Party friends don't handle dissent very well, or perhaps you've never heard their acronym RINO? The message here brother is to buy a bigger umbrella so we can all enjoy winning general elections.
Bill8472| 2.28.13 @ 9:59AM
George Orwell has observed several times that human social life involves an interesting phenomenon: there are things that we want that we perceive as desirable, but the means we have to employ in order to achieve the things we want are sometimes so bad that we can't bring ourselves to use them.
A dialogue on race -anywhere in the world, not just the U.S.- is one of those things. It would probably be a net good thing if blacks and whites could actually sit down and speak their minds. The problem is that one side gets offended and accuses the other of racism when that sort of thing begins. The means by which we discuss racial issues meaningfully is so repulsive to us that we can't do it.
C. Vernon Crisler | 2.28.13 @ 10:00AM
Maybe someone should write an article "I, Bagel" and explain to Ben the chilling effects on economic activity of higher taxes.
Bill8472| 2.28.13 @ 10:03AM
Kafka: "Gregor awoke one morning to find that he had turned into a giant bagel..."
C. Vernon Crisler | 2.28.13 @ 1:34PM
;-)
Occam's Tool| 2.28.13 @ 7:40PM
Yeah: I wonder how the inventor of the toaster oven would have responded to higher taxes...
Ben is an attorney you see. With few honorable exceptions that I have cited before (Luv ya, Tony and Big E!), attorneys are parasitic drones who invent and design nothing except idiocy and its means of application.
Lyneuss Fields | 2.28.13 @ 10:30AM
Thanks for pressing the panic button Ben. Anyone interested in verifying Ben's National Income Accounting, concerning America's debt and unfunded liabilities, can find the numbers on usdebtcolock.org. Seeing this “Monster on The Loose” should scare the hell out of everyone.
SUBVET| 2.28.13 @ 10:38AM
Ben.........you had me until the raise "taxes" part
I should just skip to the comments from now on.....your a mess.
Albert Constantine Jr.| 2.28.13 @ 11:08AM
That skipping is a much wiser course...
PCC| 2.28.13 @ 11:16AM
The U.S. government doesn't need more taxes. It needs less spending and more revenue.
To achieve less spending, it needs less government. To achieve more revenue, it needs higher economic growth.
To achieve higher economic growth, it needs lower tax rates and less regulation.
Most of all, the U.S. must COMPETE in a globally competitive world. Global U.S. businesses already understand this, but domestic businesses only understand this in a vague and episodic way, and the mass of the citizenry don't seem to understand it at all.
Yes, the Chinese and others want a bigger piece of the global economic pie for the betterment of their lives. Stop whining about it and do something about it.
Work harder, save more, lower taxes and regulations, put more effort into making the U.S. an attractive destination for investment by welcoming educated and well-capitalized foreigners and end the race-based, politically correct nonsense.
SUBVET| 2.28.13 @ 1:34PM
pcc........your preaching to the peanut gallery
untill the pain exceeds the pleasure nothing is going to change.
Paul A'Barge | 2.28.13 @ 12:33PM
Mr Ben (may I call you "Mr Ben"?), I asked Amazon to ask the publisher of the book to deliver the book in a Kindle edition:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/digit.....1591139104
BShep| 2.28.13 @ 3:30PM
I will never understand how Walter Williams, Paul Krugman and Ben Stein all can call themselves economists and no one ever objects. It would be as if they all called themselves black. Only one is but no one could point out this obvious fact.
Ben, anytime you want to show us peons the light and pay more taxes just start filing your taxes using the short form. You will get so much satisfaction from doing so and the almighty government will be better off too.
You might want to stop calling your wife “Big”. I’ve seen her picture, you are wrong about this too.
Occam's Tool| 2.28.13 @ 7:45PM
BShep: Mr. Willians is a brilliant man with common sense. Mr. Krugman is an idiot savant with one area of brilliance (his Nobel was well deserved; his NYT articles my dog has refused to poop on, shaking her head sadly---her poop deserves better than that.) Ben is just a spastic moron, whose comic shtick was based on his "appearing" to be verbally articulate and otherwise incredibly dense regarding human motives. To put it another way: Ben, Hollywood Call Girls are NOT an example of normal human moral functioning, nor are Hollywood actors. Nor are Washington Politicians. Nor are you.
As an UCLA psychiatrist in training who also treated multiple prostitutes, I know this. You seem to still be captivated by these people.
Let's rumble| 3.3.13 @ 9:45PM
No Ben, all we need to do is close a few loopholes. That's what your buddy Obama says. Why do you go off the reservation and say things like raise taxes? I don't consider anyone very smart at basic math that believes we could tax enough to raise a bjillions dollars let alone consider the effects on productivity. I just continue to NOT understand why you are given a voice here?