Image Sourc “We should continuously upgrade our understanding of Marxism and maintain steadfast pursuit of the great ideal and goal…. We should earnestly study, understand and believe these theories, and put them to good use. We should not be conceived or impetuous when we have won success and not waver or give up in times […]
This week Jonathan Schulz, Duman Bahrami-Rad, Jonathan Beauchamp, and Joseph Henrich had their big piece on WEIRD psychology and the Catholic Church published in Science. [1] Long term readers will remember that I wrote about this piece in the American Conservative when the pre-print was published last year, and then wrote a critique of the […]
Flappers playing mahjong. Image source. Last week’s post, “If You Were to Write a History of 21st Century America, What Would It Look Like?,” asked what a 21st century version of Frederick Lewis Allen’s Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s might look like. Here is how I described the book in that post: […]
One of the best histories I have had the pleasure to read is Frederick Lewis Allen’s Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s. There are many things to love about this book. Allen wrote his history of the 1920’s in a jaunty, breezy style. When you pick his book up it is hard to […]
Rainer Hachfeld, Stalin-Mao-Xi, originally published 12 March, 2018. The State is a machine in the hands of the governing class for suppressing the resistance of its class antagonists. In this way the dictatorship of the proletariat differs in no way essentially from the dictatorship of any other class. —Joseph Stalin (1937) Over at Sinocism, Bill […]
Image Source The time was, sir, when we loved the King and the people of Great Britain with an affection truly filial. We felt ourselves interested in their glory. We shared in their joys and sorrows. We cheerfully poured the fruits of all our labour into the lap of our mother country, and without reluctance […]
Image Source I am a fan of the musical Hamilton. My willingness to acclaim its merits is quite shameless, actually. This may strike some readers as odd, and perhaps strangely arbitrary. One of Hamilton’s main selling points is its casting of Hispanic and black leads to play historical figures who were in reality lily-white. As with […]
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 […]
There once lived in a far country a people of gentle nature and perceptive understanding. They were led by a man of great vision. At great cost he decided to dedicate his life to preserving this people’s way of life. He saw in them a beauty and virtue he could find nowhere else. In a […]
A supposed bust of Alcibiades. Image source. I spent the later part of my teenage years in the forbidding climes of southeastern Minnesota. In those days I’d often hear a joke that I sometimes still repeat: “In Minnesota we have four seasons: near-winter, winter, still-winter,… and road construction.” Minnesota’s northern reaches are pockmarked with lakes […]
