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PJ Mediahttps://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2008/11/17/therapeutic-cogitations-from-duff-cooper/feed/PJ Media is a leading news site covering culture, politics, faith, homeland security, and more. Our reporters and columnists provide original, in-depth analysis from a variety of perspectives.en-usThu, 11 Jun 2026 03:32:39 -0400Therapeutic cogitations from Duff Cooper<![CDATA[A few days after Obama’s elevation, . . . er, I mean “election,” I had occasion to mention Duff Cooper’s observation, from his memoir Old Men Forget, that “Nothing can enlighten a theorist so quickly as the task of dealing with a practical problem; nothing can sober an agitator so completely as the weight of responsibility.” Cooper was not only a canny observer of the political scene, he was also a good judge of men, so I suppose there are grounds for hoping Obama’s redistributionist, statist rhetoric–not to mention his sops to the Green lobby–will be tempered by the pressure of reality. There are some who maintain that his populating his inner circle with so many figures (“retreads” is the unkind epithet) from the Clinton administration argues for just such a pragmatic approach. Perhaps. I hope, at any rate, that someone in authority will read, and heed, what Andrew McCarthy has to say about the folly of attempting to employ the US criminal justice system to deal with Islamic terrorism.]]>Mon, 17 Nov 2008 06:14:07 -0500<![CDATA[Roger Kimball]]>https://pjmedia.com/roger-kimball/2008/11/17/therapeutic-cogitations-from-duff-cooper-n115367