Ron Lipsman

 

Ron Lipsman is Senior Associate Dean and Professor of Mathematics in the College of Computer, Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the University of Maryland. He has a Bachelor of Science degree from the City College of New York and a Ph.D. in Mathematics from M.I.T. He is the author or co-author of eleven books dealing with mathematics and computing. He has also published more than 70 scientific research articles and is the editor of numerous mathematical research volumes. Recently, he published YOU CAN DO THE MATH: How to Overcome your Math Phobia and Make Better Financial Decisions, a financial self-help manual for the math-challenged people of America. He divides his time between College Park and Garrett County in Western Maryland, and his interests oscillate between math and science on the one hand and politics and history on the other.

 

“Talk radio hosts seem to believe conservatives are from Mars and liberals are from Venus—two different species, in other words. Ron Lipsman’s new book uses a mix of rational analysis and personal history to suggest there may be deeper psychological laws at work here that help shape our worldviews. He's on to something!” —Elias Crim, Publishing Consultant.

“An insightful and witty examination of the values and beliefs that divide liberals and conservatives in America today. A penetrating look at the concept of the ‘aging liberal’, especially as it pertains to the Jewish and academic communities.”
—Bruce Bartlett, nationally syndicated columnist

 

Books-and-Authors.net: Where did you grow up and was reading and writing a part of your life? Who were your earliest influences and why?

Ron Lipsman: I grew up in the Bronx in New York City. I went to the Bronx High School of Science, whose rich academic tradition and demanding curriculum included a great deal of reading and writing. At the same time (my early/mid teens), my father and his brother were having an important influence on my intellectual development. My uncle bought me a subscription to the New York Times, whose content he was always anxious to debate with me. My father loved to read (newspapers and books) and discuss his reactions with me. Both of them encouraged an incipient interest in finance and politics on my part. Neither had a college degree, but both strongly urged me to pursue a higher education. Also, my maternal grandfather, who had an Engineering degree from Cooper Union College, was constantly challenging me with math and science problems.

I greatly admired and respected these three family members. Reading was a big part of their lives; writing was not. Thus reading came naturally to me. Writing came later, largely under the influence of a phenomenal and inspiring English Professor who taught several courses that I took at the City College of New York.

 

Books-and-Authors.net:  Why do you write?

Ron Lipsman: I write for three reasons:

** to develop and hone my own ideas about math, science, finance and politics;

** to expound and expand upon what I see as the most important ideas of key people in these arenas; and

** to try to influence the opinions of others.

My professional career has been devoted primarily to mathematics and I have published more than 70 mathematics research articles and a dozen books dealing with math and computing. In the last few years, I have turned my attention more sharply to finance (in You Can Do the Math: Overcome Your Math Phobia and Make Better Financial Decisions, 2004, http://www.math.umd.edu/~rll/cgi-bin/YCDTM.html) and politics (in Liberal Hearts and Conservative Brains: The Correlation between Age and Political Philosophy, 2007, http://home.comcast.net/~ronlipsman).

 

Books-and-Authors.net:  In your new book "Liberal Hearts and Conservative Brains" you define the many differences between a liberal and a conservative. Can you briefly give your personal definition of the two and are there any similarities?

Ron Lipsman: By the "many differences" I believe you are referring to the Table (pp. 6-7) in Chapter 1 of the book where I highlight two dozen issues on which liberals and conservatives take diametrically opposed positions (e.g., abortion, gay marriage, government spending, illegal immigration and capital punishment). Those positions are manifestations of political tendencies governed by whether one leans to the left or the right. In the second chapter of the book I give six different definitions of liberalism and conservatism-which offer a beginning toward understanding why those positions are taken. The first definition is lifted directly from the dictionary: " Liberalism. A political philosophy based on belief in progress, the essential goodness of man, and the autonomy of the individual.

Conservatism. A political philosophy based on tradition and social stability, stressing established institutions, and preferring gradual development to abrupt change. Next, I embellish the dictionary definitions in five different ways via what I call anchors, which correspond to the inherent nature of man, God, government, time and the economy, respectively. Space does not permit a full description here, but let me state the first of these more personal definitions, which is rather succinct.

" A liberal is someone who believes in the perfectibility of man and that society must therefore be structured so as to foster the best possibility of man advancing toward that state of perfection; whereas a conservative accepts that man is inherently flawed, and so society must be arranged so as to minimize the mistakes he can make and the damage he can wreak.

For the other four definitions, see pp. 31-35 of the book; indeed, this one speaks loudest to me, and is reflective of the fact that the gulf between liberals and conservatives is rather wide.

Finally, regarding similarities, I do highlight in Chapter 2 some of the common ground among liberals and conservatives, e.g., I point out that both generally espouse: respect for the law, veneration of education, civilian control of the military and a few other shared stands (see page 25).

 

Books-and-Authors.net: In "Liberal Hearts and Conservative Brains" you write, "If you are young and not a liberal, then you have no heart; but if you are old and not a conservative, then you have no brain." Explain.

Ron Lipsman: Well in some sense that is the point of the entire book. The famous quote, which is most often attributed to Churchill or to Disraeli, expresses the thought that-in the context of the primary definition stated above-human beings are naturally liberal when they are young, but just as naturally conservative when they are older. My book examines personality traits and mental frameworks that might account for this, attempts to "justify" the truth of the aphorism and, perhaps most interestingly, examines the most fascinating contrarians to the tendency-what I call premature conservatives and aging liberals.

 

Books-and-Authors.net:  "Liberal Hearts and Conservative Brains" is an original look at history - You say that the two most important politicians in US history are Ronald Reagan and Winston Churchill. Explain.

Ron Lipsman: The exact quote is on p. 110, namely, "The two politicians of the twentieth century who achieved the greatest good were Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan. Without Churchill, Britain falls and the Nazi menace might still be with us. Without Reagan, the evil Soviet empire is still at our throats. The number of human beings who live in freedom today, thanks to those two gentlemen, is counted in the hundreds of millions." I also explain there why I don't accord the same heroic status to either Woodrow Wilson or Franklin Roosevelt. Incidentally, another interesting list would specify the 20th century's greatest villains, e.g., Stalin, Hitler, Mao Tse-Tung, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Robert Mugabwe, Khomeni, Saddam Hussein-ughh, the list of bad guys is clearly longer than the list of good guys.

 

Books-and-Authors.net:  In your opinion what makes "Liberal Hearts and Conservative Brains" different from others in the political genre that may focus on the subject "liberals versus conservatives".

Ron Lipsman: I expound on this point at some length in the Preface (pp. xiii-xiv), but let me quote briefly from it: "I…suspend value judgments from the main presentation of the liberal and conservative agendas in the first part of the book. Although I freely admit that I am an adherent of the conservative philosophy, I see no purpose in allowing that potential bias to color my outline of the two agendas. I…confine the expression of my personal preferences largely to those portions of the book…[in which]…I trace my personal experiences as I made my own journey from the liberal to the conservative side of the ledger."

If I may offer another quote from the Preface, "Most contemporary political books promote exactly one of the liberal or conservative agendas. This usually entails an attendant attempt to explain why the other agenda is misguided. This book will differ from that mode in several respects. First, it will offer a, hopefully, fair comparison of the agendas. Next, although it will quickly be evident that my poker chips are on the conservative side of the table, I will at least entertain the notion that I am betting a losing hand. Also, the book presents a rather comprehensive and coherent enumeration and compartmentalization of the current central tenets of the two agendas. And finally, I will explore the correlation of these agendas with age. All of this is rather different from the usual book that either examines specific political battles, eras, individuals or events, or evolves quickly into a political diatribe on the superiority of one philosophy over the other."

 

Books-and-Authors.net: What do you hope to achieve with "Liberal Hearts and Conservative  Brains"?

Ron Lipsman: My goals are exactly the three that I enumerated in the answer to the second question above, especially the last one. There are, I believe, a great number of intelligent and well-intentioned liberals out there who have not engaged in a hard analysis of the classic liberal dogma, nor have they come to terms with the mounting weight of evidence that liberal policies do more harm than good. If I could cause a few liberals to reexamine their positions by reading this book, I would be more than satisfied that I had achieved my main objective.

Actually, I had another objective. Leftist thinking has become so predominant in academia that, for the sake of tranquility and personal comfort, I have often muzzled myself on campus over the years. My political ideas were so unwelcome that it was easier to keep quiet than to engender the wrath of my colleagues. Not a behavior of which I am proud! With this book, I took off the muzzle.
 

Books-and-Authors.net:  What's next?

Ron Lipsman: I am not sure. I have been batting around three ideas:
" a sequel to my personal finance book;
" a book about higher education-in particular, the natural tension between math, science and engineering on the one hand, and the humanities and social sciences on the other; " a historical novel.

I am also planning to devote more time to my (too little developed) blog (at http://thewritestuff.townhall.com/) and to my literary articles and book review activity. In regard to that activity, you can find some of my work in the two online magazines the Intellectual Conservative and the Common Conservative.

 

Books-and-Authors.net:  What was the last book you read?

Ron Lipsman: I recently finished reading A History of the English-Speaking Peoples since 1900, by Andrew Roberts. I found it a fantastic read, not only because there are many points of agreement between it and my book, but also because I thought Roberts made a very compelling case for the assertion that the ascendancy and influence of the English-speaking peoples (primarily Great Britain and the USA) over the last quarter millennium has brought a great boon to the world in the form of liberal democracy, free market capitalism, the rule of law, the defeat of totalitarianism (OK, Nazism and Communism are buried, but the last manifestation in the form of Islamic radicalism has yet to be tamed), life-saving scientific and medical discoveries, and a sort of pax englishana that has brought more peace and prosperity to more corners of the Earth than could have been imagined. His book ends with these words: "It is in the nature of human affairs that, in the words of the hymn, 'Earth's proud empires pass away', and so too one day will the long hegemony of the English-speaking peoples. When they finally come to render up the report of their global stewardship to History, there will be much of which to boast. Only when another power-such as China-holds global sway, will the human race come to mourn the passing of this most decent, honest, generous, fair-minded and self sacrificing imperium."

Not surprisingly, the book has come under scathing attack-primarily from the left. Apropos the plans I mentioned above and some of the conclusions I reached in my book, I think Roberts' book will serve as an excellent springboard for future work on my part.

 

Books-and-Authors.net: Do you have any hobbies? What are they? How do they enhance your writing?

Ron Lipsman: Since I still have a (more than) full-time job as an academic administrator at the University of Maryland, one might consider my writing to be a hobby. In truth, my hobbies are cycling, swimming, and-when my body objects to one or both of those-walking. All afford the time and atmosphere to think about the topics that most interest me and to germinate ideas for the current or next writing project.

Also, my grandchildren-and my desire that they should continue to enjoy and eventually contribute to the great blessing known as the United States of America-provide a constant source of inspiration. I like to think that in 50 years one of them will read something I wrote and be pleased by it.