Word: mattering
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...parallel pieces in the same issue: Leslie Gelb's "Remembrance: Robert McNamara" and your cover story on Afghanistan. Both articles mirror each other in thought and tone and express hope for American efforts in ongoing quagmires. Gelb and McChrystal understand that wars in places like Afghanistan and Vietnam - no matter how expertly executed - can't be won unless local people have a true stake in the operations. McChrystal's new fighting strategy - to separate and protect instead of kill, to understand motivations rather than employing brute force, to supplement instead of micromanaging conditions for success - is a step...
...system across the board to hit the efficiency levels of a Kaiser Permanente or a Cleveland Clinic or a Mayo or a Geisinger, we actually would have solved our problems. Now, even in those systems, there's still going to be hard choices, right? But the fact of the matter is, ultimately, my grandmother was able to get that hip replacement even though she had terminal cancer and even though the operation was full of risks. And so from a purely economic point of view, there would be some who argued that wasn't a good use of health-care...
...problem with paying 50% taxes or more. But government meddling with compensation practices is a bad idea." Yes, raising tax rates would bring negative consequences: more incentive for evasion, less incentive for risk-taking and entrepreneurship. Lowering the top rate had its negative consequences too, though. It's a matter of which negative consequences we'd rather put up with...
...hand, we are sober and practical and commonsensical, but on the other hand, we are wild and crazy speculators. The full-blown amateur spirit derives from this same paradox. Even as we indulge our native chutzpah - Live the dream! To hell with the naysayers! - as a practical matter, it also requires a profound humility, since the amateur must throw himself into situations where he's uncertain and even ignorant, and therefore obliged to figure out new ways of seeing problems and fresh ways of solving them. At this particular American inflection point, after the crash and before the rebuild, frankly...
...suppose my two-course Chinese feast turned out not to be much of a feast, or particularly Chinese, for that matter. But I think my mother would have nonetheless been proud...