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.
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. 
