Following a link on another blog, I just read a column by Spengler, which is the name David Goldman uses for his columns in the Asia Times online. This particular Spengler piece conjures up the ghost of Richelieu, who "advises" that Iran should be attacked. According to a puff for one of Goldman's books at Amazon, his Spengler column has a million readers a month. If true, this is depressing. The book in question, by the way, appears to argue that "population decline" is "the issue of the 21st century" and that declining fertility in the Muslim world fuels Islamic radicalism. Or something like that. I never cease to wonder at the amount of rubbish that manages to get published. Declining fertility in the Muslim world actually is a positive trend, certainly from the standpoint of long-term economic development, and one has to ponder the sanity of someone who tries to construe it as a major "threat."
Update: Wikipedia's entry on the real Spengler mentions that Goldman has been writing his column since the beginning of 2000. I had been happily unaware of the column until now.
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3 comments:
LFC
I usually only read his columns when someone points to them. So thank you, he is in humorous mode, a bit of fun no matter what he said. Not his best on substance.
The recalled spirit sounds like something the rather cynical Richelieu would recommend looking at the situation. Is Spengler endorsing it, or being his usual provocative self?
He is opinioned, sometimes misses the point, sometimes flat out wrong, but you almost always learn something maybe not what he is wanting to present, makes you look at an issue from other directions, and provokes thought.
Worth following some else's link, to idiosyncratic to be a regular read.
Hank’s Eclectic Meanderings
too idiosyncratic to be a regular read
Definitely. (I might use another word, but never mind.)
p.s. I was interested to find out about him, even though I can't see reading him more than once every 6 months (if that).
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