Am. History & Culture
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Leo Strauss & the Neocons
Andrew Sullivan is like the Matt Damon character in "Syriana"–decent, idealistic, smart, well-informed, but nevertheless naive about how things really work–too credulous of the the official cover story, too trusting of the guys in power to behave decently and according to their professed ideals. He’s just a glass-half-full kind of guy, I guess. In any
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America’s Evolving Identity
I randomly tuned into "Scarborough Country" last night which was in the middle of a hot debate about "white America." There was Pat Buchanan, who actually sounded pretty reasonable compared with Jared Taylor of American Renaissance. Taylor said his position was analogous to Rabin’s about Israel when Rabin said that at least 80% of Israel’s
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Understanding the Backlash
In my reading of so many secular Liberal pundits and blogs I continue to find remarkable how patronizing and tone deaf they are to the concerns and sensibilities of religious believers. If nothing else, it's just politically stupid. I don't have a problem with anybody condemning hatred, intolerance, and the plain nuttiness of the Robertson,
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Libertarianism–The Unwitting Ally of Tyranny
I can understand why the very rich would profess to be Libertarians in the same way that I can understand why the Robber Barons of the late nineteenth century professed to be Social Darwinists. When you burn away all the high-sounding rhetoric and distorting propaganda for which Libertarianism is the cover, it's essentially the same
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American Decency
This from Katrina van den Heuvel, editor of The Nation magazine: On some of the fundamental core issues, people don’t want this kind of messianic, militaristic policy. They just want to be secure and have some kind of principled foreign policy. They want universal health care. They want an end to the war. With virtually
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Puritans Running Amok
I made a couple of attempts in February here and here to talk about the effect of the Puritan mind on contemporary culture. I was interested in those pieces mainly about the peculiar psychology that is associated with it, and how that psychology shapes our politics. ForestWalker sent me a related article that came out
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Dream Time
There's an interesting interview with entomologist and founder of sociobiology, E.O. Wilson, at Salon this week. He's a thoughtful man who in many of his books seems very much to want to break out of the rational/materialistic straitjacket so many people who have accepted the assumptions of modernity want to do. But he can't. Take
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Faith & Truthiness
Everyone shall be remembered, but everyone became great in proportion to his expectancy. One became great by expecting the possible, another by expecting the eternal; but he who expected the impossible became the greatest of all. —Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and
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The Spirit of Whiggery
One of the things I'm trying to do is to think through for myself a critique of the American political and economic system that isn't dependent on Marxism. The Marxist critique, no matter how trenchant, will always be perceived as un-American. It's always going to be associated with the secular left, which, whether its members
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The South Gets the Last Laugh
I've been tough on the Puritans in recent posts, but I'd like to put in a good word for the historical Puritans, those Whiggish, crusty revolutionaries who had a passion to establish a country inspired by religious and republican ideals. One could argue that the English Puritans were the first real moderns in the political