Terry Babcock-Lumish, founder of Islay Consulting LLC, teaches economics at the United States Military Academy at West Point. She has worked in local, state and federal government, most recently in the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. Upon leaving the White House in 2001, she served as a researcher for two books by former Vice President Al Gore.I enjoyed reading it--especially her little "experiments" in invisibility!
Thursday, December 05, 2013
An Interesting Perspective on West Point, In The New York Times, Of All Places
Don't worry, though, liberals, it's written by one of you:
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What I liked about the article was the writer's treating West Point, and by extension the concept of the military, as if she were an anthropologist observing a Stone Age tribe in the jungles of New Guinea.
Oh look at the strange inhabitants with their wonderfully colorful, ceremonial robes! Oh, look at their strange customs which dictate carefully structured, formal greetings to some and the inherently humorous ignoring of others!
Aren't they strange? Aren't they wonderful? Notice the similarity to other exotic locales like Ghana and Jordan and Oxford where people also engage in strange rituals?
The reason I enjoyed her viewpoint was its self-parodying nature. Certain of her own sophistication and worldliness the good instructor, incapable of confronting her own blinkered viewpoint, has to carefully concentrate on some comforting aspect her situation lest she confront the rather more serious purposes of the buildings, people and rituals surrounding her. She perfectly exemplifies the parochialism inherent to Pauline Keal's classic astonishment at the election of Richard Nixon.
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