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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
A collection of articles, essays, and blog post of merit. TOP BILLING: Haiti, Disaster Sociology, Elite Panic, and LootingGary Peterson. Resilience Science. 2010 January 30. This is one of the more compelling defenses of decentralization to be found under 2,000 words. Looking at disaster situations, Mr. Peterson does not find the disorder and chaos of […]
Economic historian Angus Maddison provides us with our first “Intriguing Passage of the Week”: It is interesting to speculate on India’s fate if it had not had two centuries of British rule. There are three major alternatives which can seriously be considered. One would have been the maintenance of indigenous rule with a few foreign […]
Rufus F, of the League of Ordinary Gentleman, has written an interesting post on the Confucian way of politics. Its centerpiece is a lengthy excerpt from a previous discussion in which this author took part. Those interested in a few of my thoughts concerning the Chinese political order circa 450 BC are encouraged to read […]
To the readership: As he is heading to the mainland to visit family for a month or so, this author will be in lost in transit for the next few days. Expect posting to be light over the next week. Likewise, I ask the proprietors of the other sites I frequent (and occasionally start arguments […]
A collection of articles, essays, and blog post of merit. THE REPUBLIC American Murder Mystery Hannah Rosen Atlantic Magazine. July 2008. Over the last decade crime rates in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, and Chicago have all shrunk. A great American success story? Not quite. While the crime rates of the big cities fell, […]
A collection of articles, essays, and blog post of merit. A lot of good material has been published this week. I am a bit on the busy side, so the usual long winded responses will be replaced in favor of one-sentence summaries. THE REPUBLIC How Trillion Dollar Deficits Were Created New York Times. 9 June […]
War and Peace and War: The Life Cycles of Imperial Nations, Peter Turchin’s sweeping application of cliodynamics to the rise and fall of great powers, has been making the rounds recently. Both the Committee of Public Safety and Sublime Oblivion have posted responses to the book. As my past posts on cultural cohesion might suggest, […]
