William Ian Miller’s Eye for an Eye did not make it into my “top ten books I read this year” list for 2017, but it was one of the more thought-provoking things I read last year. Miller is an unusual creature: part law professor, part medievalist, Miller is equally comfortable discussing ancient Hittite legal decrees, the […]
No definition for the word “democracy” has ever made sense to me but this one: a society of self-governing men and women banded together in self-governing communities–in other words, free citizens that possess the autonomy and power to govern themselves.I have friends that dwell in some of the earth’s most despotic domains. They are often […]
Image Source The most important thing you will read this week—likely the most important thing you will read this month—is Anne-Marie Brady’s report “Magic Weapons: China’s political influence activities under Xi Jinping.” In this report Dr. Brady describes in detail what is known about Chinese influence and intelligence operations inside New Zealand. In many ways […]
Graphic source: Kevin Urmarcher, Kevin Schaul, and Dan Keating, “These Former Obama Strongholds Sealed the Election for Trump,” Washington Post (9 November 2016). There has been a bit of push back to my last post. A lot of it revolves around this fact: Donald Trump did not win the popular vote. Others point out that […]
Go, Soul, the body’s guest, Upon a thankless errand; Fear not to touch the best; The truth shall be thy warrant: Go, since I needs must die, And give the world the lie. —Sir Walter Raleigh, “The Lie,” (c. 1592) A question many of us should be asking: do I […]
“Pegausus,” Those Do Not remember the Past Are Doomed to Repeat It (2016) Image Source: Sam Hayson, “British Street Artist Compares Trump With Hitler,” Mashable (22 Feb 2016). A Note to Readers: I wrote the body of this post several days ago on a Facebook note. Several of those who read it there have urged […]
Everyone will be talking about American politics today. However, Iowa is just the first step in the race for the Presidency, and its darlings are often eclipsed by candidates with stronger showings down the road. I don’t have much to say about it. Instead I would like to comment on a different electoral victory. As […]
A “Family Temperance Pledge” from 1887. Group pledges such as these were central to the success of the temperance movement. Source: Library of Congress. “An American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera.” 2004. In the comment thread of the post “Honor, Dignity, and Victimhood: Three Centuries of American Political Culture” a […]
Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.(1929 – 1968) stands in front of a bus at the end of the Montgomery bus boycott. Montgomery, Alabama December 26, 1956 Image Source Jonathan Haidt, the social psychologist who penned The Righteous Mind, wrote an important blog post a few days ago responding to a paper by sociologists Bradley Campbell […]
A Serbian Gypsy Family at Ellis Island. “Gitanos Augustus” by Augustus Sherman (1917), displayed at Statue of Liberty National Park. Image Credit: Wikimedia. What history should an educated American be expected to know?The most recent issue of Democracy Journal includes a long essay by Eric Liu on “cultural literacy,” a term coined by E.D. Hersh […]
