Culture Wars
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David Bentley Hart: Defining Socialism
I just came across this NY Times op-ed written by Hart in 2019. It’s a useful retort to Hazony’s anti Neo-Marxism, and worth the read because, if nothing else, it shows why Neoplatonists like Hart (and me) are naturally drawn to a ‘genuine’ Left politics. Here’s a shortened version— … It may be amusing to
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Hazony vs. Neo-Marxism
I wouldn’t be giving Hazony this much air time if I didn’t think that it was important to understand what people on the Right like him are saying. He doesn’t fit into most of the cubbies that most Americans put someone who is MAGA friendly. As I said in a previous post, his team that
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Hazony’s Conservative Paradigm
Is Hazony a Continuist or a Discontinuist? I thought before that he’s more of a Discontinuist, but maybe he needs another category, say, Re-Contintuist. There’s a part of me that thinks that Hazony would be better off if he called what’s he’s talking about something other than ‘Conservative’, perhaps a Whig. I don’t think the
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Annunciation
This painting by Botticelli is, if you had to force me to choose, the one I’d pick as the Renaissance-era painting that I love the most. There’s so much going on in it, but the astonishing, gobsmacking beauty of it… It was brought to mind by the shooting earlier this week at Annunciation parish
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Continuists vs Discontinuists: Setting Up a Critical Look at Yoram Hazony
Let me start by saying that I don’t think that Yoram Hazony is an ideological hack, even if he's associating with hacks that I think diminish his credibility with the non-hack community. Nevertheless, I think he's writing in good faith, and his ideas have to be taken seriously if for no other reason that they
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J.G. Herder’s Nationalism
Those in the traditionalist group, insofar as they have retained some sense of their living tradition, see modernists as the American Indians saw the white man–as people who have no understanding, people who have become crazy and disoriented, people who have lost their souls because in their uprooted individualism they have lost any experiential connection
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Dying Traditions
[I’m reposting this essay for a couple of reasons. First, it sets up what I want to say soon about Herder’s idea of ‘the nation’ or the ‘folk soul’ and then contrast that with Hazony’s call for a nationalist state. Second, I think it’s pretty good and worth rereading. It sets up much of what
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Hazony v. Klein v. Me
I listened to Ezra Klein’s podcast interview with Yoram Hazony shortly after posting “Taking a Step Back" yesterday about the Good Society. This is a very interesting conversation, and I encourage you to listen to it. Hazony and Klein in their different ways would find my ‘Rescuing Aristotle’ argument weird, so I thought it might be