Enjoying the view from Limbo
Donald Trump continues to insist that the stumbling block to a peace deal in Ukraine is President Zelensky. (Why do I refer to Trump as “Donald” while at the same time referring to the leader of Ukraine as “President Zelensky”? Because I am a Platonist who believes that truth consists primarily in proper definitions. Zelensky is the president of Ukraine. Trump has ceased...
Ideas and Reflections / Liberty's Labors Lost / What is Progressivism?
by Daren Jonescu · Published April 22, 2025
Back in 2013, when Barack Obama was well into his second term of running roughshod over American principles and destroying the last remnants of the constitutional guardrails against excessive executive power, I wrote an essay for American Thinker in which I attempted to outline the wide array of forces that had been gradually corralled into a generational shift away from the moral premises...
In order to become the American president, a man must not merely win an election but must ultimately swear an oath to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” In order to swear an oath in a morally or legally binding way, a man must have the capacity, both intellectual and linguistic, to understand the terms entailed by that oath....
Douglas Murray, one of those “trending” fake intellectuals du jour who manifestly calculates his every angle and word with his fame-dazzled eyes focused on the many and the money, has garnered some headlines this week for (sarcasm alert) daring, while a guest on Joe Rogan’s podcast, to criticize the host’s approach to choosing guests, which sometimes causes him to lend his enormous platform...
by Daren Jonescu · Published March 7, 2025 · Last modified March 10, 2025
Last May, I took a stab at translating Jorge Luis Borges’ excellent poem, “Mirrors,” the voice and ideas of which I believed had not quite been captured by the previous translations I had read. It does not follow from this that I succeeded in capturing the poem’s essence any better than my predecessors; I am merely explaining my reasons for trying. You may...
Books / Ideas and Reflections / World Politics
by Daren Jonescu · Published February 25, 2025 · Last modified February 26, 2025
A question from an ambitious student, paraphrased: What makes poetry poetry? In other words, what are the defining features of a poem that distinguish it from other forms of verbal or written communication? The easiest answer, and probably the one you would find most often in any quick internet search of this question, is that poetry, unlike non-poetry, is written in verse form,...
by Daren Jonescu · Published February 18, 2025 · Last modified February 21, 2025
Occasionally, one happens upon a certain page of classic literature at a strikingly appropriate moment, such that its evergreen insights appear to have fallen directly into one’s immediate midst and experience like a gracious snowfall of cleansing wisdom, leaving one feeling almost as though a long-dead author had mysteriously inserted this commentary into his work anachronistically, or just yesterday, for your personal benefit....
by Daren Jonescu · Published February 6, 2025 · Last modified February 8, 2025
The annoying thing about unrestrained government authority is that it does not magically become beneficial when it happens to fall into the hands of the faction you prefer. The insidious thing about unrestrained government authority is that it invariably appears to have become a beneficial thing when in the hands of the faction you prefer. Everything political leaders do is questionable, because only...
Elon Musk, as I have previously discussed here, has been widely accused of giving a Nazi salute to his fellow Trump supporters, said accusation consisting in an object lesson in establishing a truth by dint of endless repetition of a blatant lie. For the video clip of the supposed neo-Nazi outrage is readily available for all to see, although I am quite sure...
by Daren Jonescu · Published January 28, 2025 · Last modified January 29, 2025
Listening to a friend’s description of a disappointing social engagement with a former work colleague, in which she confessed, though without any great sense of self-recrimination, that she herself was “being boring” during that evening’s dinner conversation, I was compelled to reflect upon my own life as a social entity, such as it is, or rather to reflect on the sense in which...
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