[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 56 (Wednesday, May 10, 2006)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E788-E789]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    J.K. GALBRAITH'S TOWERING SPIRIT

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                           HON. BARNEY FRANK

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, May 10, 2006

  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, the recent death of John 
Kenneth Galbraith brought to a close one of the truly great careers in 
both the intellectual and political history of our country. As an 
economist, as a teacher, as a writer, as a creative public official, 
and drawing on all of these and more, as a tough-minded and effective 
activist for social justice, John Kenneth Galbraith made enormous 
contributions to the quality of life in America.

[[Page E789]]

  Appropriately, he was memorialized in the Washington Post recently by 
one of his most important comrades in arms, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who 
shared with Ken Galbraith not just a friendship, but the effective 
pursuit of the roles I have just described, substituting of course 
Arthur Schlesinger's historical work for Ken Galbraith's economic 
contributions.
  Drawing on their collaboration on so many issues over more than 60 
years, Arthur Schlesinger concisely and deftly reminds us in his essay 
of what citizenship in a democracy is at its best. I ask that this 
article be printed here.

                    J.K. Galbraith's Towering Spirit

                      (By Arthur Schlesinger Jr.)

       Edmund Burke once made a famous prediction. ``The age of 
     chivalry is gone. That of sophists, economists and 
     calculators has succeeded and the glory of Europe is 
     extinguished forever.'' Some years later Thomas Carlyle 
     disdained economists as professors ``of the dismal science.'' 
     The profession has indeed done little since to disprove 
     Carlyle and to refute Burke. But neither Burke nor Carlyle 
     foresaw John Kenneth Galbraith.
       In the first place, Galbraith was the tallest economist in 
     the world. That reinforced the boldness with which he 
     confronted the establishment and its ``conventional wisdom.'' 
     Salvation, Galbraith argued, lies in the subversion of the 
     conventional wisdom by the gradual encroachment of 
     disquieting thought. ``The emancipation of belief,'' he 
     writes, ``is the most formidable of the tasks of reform, the 
     one on which all else depends.'' He was the republic's most 
     valuable subversive.
       His skills were not confined to economics. He was a 
     diplomat, politician, bureaucrat, satirist, novelist, 
     journalist, art collector, and man of the world and wit, and 
     he took disarming delight in each role. I met him as a 
     Washington bureaucrat during World War II. We discovered that 
     both of us were born on Oct. 15, 9 years apart, and we became 
     grown men who were, in height, 13 inches apart. The 
     convergence of thought--I do not remember a disagreement--is 
     the only compelling argument for astrology that I know.
       His brilliant deployment of subversive weapons--irony, 
     satire, laughter--did not always please the more sedate 
     members of his profession. But it vastly pleased the rest of 
     us. Ken used the whiplash phrase and the sardonic thrust for 
     several purposes: to reconnect academic economics, walled off 
     in mathematical equations, with human and social reality; to 
     rebuke the apostles of selfishness and greed; and to give the 
     neglected, the abused and the insulted of our world a better 
     break in life.
       He challenged the national conscience with a series of 
     thoughtful books, provocative interviews, merry rejoinders 
     and lethal wisecracks. The Bush presidency led Ken to muse 
     aloud that it had caused him to think thoughts that he never 
     thought himself capable of thinking. I asked, ``For 
     example?'' Ken replied, ``I begin to long for Ronald 
     Reagan.''
       Galbraith was never less than opinionated, and his opinions 
     were often deflationary and sometimes devastating. He was the 
     master of the unconventional wisdom. How, in view of his 
     elegant unmasking of pomposity, hypocrisy and shame, can we 
     account for the broad and indeed ecumenical range of his 
     friends and fans--stretching from left to right; from tall to 
     short; from Bill Buckley to Arthur Schlesinger (and Ken more 
     or less induced the last two characters to be fond of each 
     other)?
       Within this tall fellow bristling with opinions there 
     resided a rare kindness of heart and generosity of spirit. In 
     Mr. Dooley's phrase, Ken not only afflicted the comfortable 
     but comforted the afflicted. In a quiet way, without fanfare, 
     he helped more people, promoted more noble causes, sustained 
     more fragile spirits than almost any of us have known, giving 
     of himself and his substance with grace and concern. 
     Underneath his joy in combat, he was a do-gooder in the dark 
     of night. There is another reason why Ken was so generally 
     loved--his wife of 69 years, Catherine Atwater. Kitty was an 
     intrepid lady, having stood up to Ken for more than half a 
     century. Together they created a welcoming household.
       John Kenneth Galbraith has left us, and the sum of human 
     valor, wit, irreverence, sympathy, compassion and courage has 
     badly diminished when we need them most.

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