This week I finished:

Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, by Hannah Arendt: I heard about this book a long time ago. I wondered if I’d ever read it. I took it on now while learning how people came to do things so contrary to what seems human we can’t believe they happened, in particular after The Lucifer Effect.

For a book about one of the greatest atrocities ever, it was remarkably accessible. Arendt seemed almost breezy at times and wrote about hundreds of thousands of people being killed in an intervention as you might talk about a typical workday.

I didn’t know about how much Nazis worked with Jewish Councils. For Nazis to work with Jews wouldn’t make sense from a typical race-based perspective, but does from a dominance hierarchy perspective.

I had to look up other views. A more recent book, Eichmann Before Jerusalem, based on newly acquired information unknown to Arendt, showed he was more calculating and antisemitic than he let on at the trial.

Most of all, the book showed how everyday people can become assistants to cold-blooded killing to the level of genocide and feel good about it if culture leads them there. The scariest thing about the book is how possibly what happened then could happen now. Certainly more people die from breathing polluted air every year today than Jews were killed by the Nazis over all of the Holocaust. It’s hard not to conclude future generations will see us as we see them. Eichmann’s “stock phrases and self-invented clichés” sound not exactly like but close to our rationalizations and justifications.

I didn’t realize how much Zionists had started pushing Arabs out of Palestine from long before Israel began. I can see why many wouldn’t like Arendt, but I’m glad she wrote what she did.

One review I read remarked on the long-term value of Ben Gurion’s producing the trial in a way to project to the world what happened to Jews in Europe.

She treats the trial from different perspectives: as a reporter, philosophy, survivor, and more. I recommend the book.

Videos on James Madison:

Having finished books on Lincoln, Jefferson, Frederick Douglass, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and more, I felt it time to learn about Madison. I have a few books on my list before I start one on Madison, but I have a few in mind. In the meantime, I started watching videos of Madison biographies:

• James Madison: A Life Reconsidered
• James Madison: America’s First Politician — with Jonah Goldberg and Jay Cost | VIEWPOINT
• James Madison: A life reconsidered
• Becoming Madison: The Extraordinary Origins of the Least Likely Founding Father
• Remembering James Madison: Character, Vision & Experience
• James Madison Lecture: Was James Madison Truly Father of the Constitution? — Akhil Reed Amar

I’ll read a full biography soon, probably Lynne Cheney’s.

Videos of Akhil Reed Amar

The guy named in the last one in the list above, Akhil Reed Amar, spoke knowledgeably. He was fun and engaging too. He turns out to be a Yale constitutional lawyer who won many awards, speaks in many places, and hosts a podcast. I loved what I heard from him so watched several of his talks:

• Akhil Reed Amar – “The Law of Our Land: America’s Written and Unwritten Constitution”
• What Makes America Exceptional, with Akhil Amar
• Philosophy PPE: The Constitution and the Presidency – Dr. Akhil Reed Amar (Yale)
• Constitutional Conversations: The Words that Made Us with Akhil Reed Amar
• The Constitution & New York with Akhil Reed Amar
• Akhil Reed Amar: Original Intent & Understanding the Constitution

I downloaded nine or ten of his podcast episodes too. I enjoyed diving into his work. I liked his embrace of original intent and American exceptionalism while breaking the usual mode of people with that embrace.

I can’t wait to talk to him about the APPLE PIE amendment from my book. I’ll invite him the the podcast.

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