Much of what is written below is pulled from my comments on Zenpundit’s critique of my earlier post “Dreaming Grand Strategy.” If you have already read them, you will find little new here. In the post “Dreaming Grand Strategy” I set out to explain why America is suffering a crisis in grand strategy. Doing so […]
Earlier this weekend The New York Times reported that Pakistan has allowed some 11,000 Chinese troops into Gilgit-Baltistan, a strategically significant part of the contested Kashmir region. Steve Hynd (of NewsHoggers) beat me to posting on the news. As his thoughts on the situation mirror my own, I direct my readers to his post: China […]
WARNING – ANOTHER SUPER LONG POST (Sorry I keep throwing these things on you guys). An interesting discussion has been enfolding over at Zenpundit’s place. The topic of the day is grand strategy and its relation to moral and national purpose. My previous foray into the topic, “Dreaming Grand Strategy”, drew the attention of Mark […]
Via Arts and Letters Daily comes this fascinating presentation by psychologist Jonathan Haidt on ‘moral psychology’. More interesting than Hait’s thesis is the qualifiers he adds to it, noting two important studies that gave him cause for intellectual humility. Says he: The New Science of Morality Jonathan Haidt. Edge. July 2010. But before I come […]
THE REPUBLIC An Uncomfortable Intimacy Joseph Fouche. Committee of Public Safety. 4 August 2010. This is an important piece that addresses many of the themes found on this site. In good time I hope to write a response to it. Though the author does not claim as much, it lays bare one of the fundamental […]
Boz (of Blogging by Boz) is perhaps my favorite Latin American hand publishing on the internet. This week he turned my attention to the violence that is wracking Venezuela. Writes Boz: Censurado 2 “Boz”. Bloggings by Boz. 20 August 2010. El Nacional reports that a government report from the National Institute for Statistics shows 19,133 […]
In a previous discussion I mentioned the important part narrative building plays in human cognition. As it turns out, I am not the only person to reach this conclusion. This week’s “intriguing passage” comes from the pen of Azar Gat, excerpted from his awesome War in Human Civilization. It excellently illuminates the human need to […]
The following is my contribution to the Afghanistan 2050 Roundtable hosted by the proprietors of ChicagoBoyz. The opening post of the roundtable – which explains its purpose and methods – can be found here. My piece is cross-posted at ChicagoBoyz with the rest of the submissions. The great challenge with interpreting the future is that […]
Today’s “intriguing passage of the week” takes issue with the economic theorems of David Ricardo. One of the founding fathers of modern macroeconomics, Mr. Ricardo published his opus, On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, more than two centuries ago. Despite its age On the Principles of Political Economy is a treatise with few […]
The following series is an attempt to make some sense of that most peculiar of subjects: human civilization. My interest lies in the dynamics of civilized societies: their material needs and limitations, the recurring patterns of geography, social organization, and cultural complexity upon which they are built, and the type of interactions that define their […]
