Enjoying the view from Limbo
Every person I care about on this Earth either lived in the past, or lives in the present. Within a very few years of my departure from this Earth, there will be no one left on the planet whom I ever knew or cared about. Why, therefore, should I concern myself about what happens to my work, my thoughts, or my deeds after...
“Following the science,” contrary to the way that phrase is universally employed today, does not and cannot mean following the scientists. For scientists are just flawed human beings, like everyone else, and thus no more worthy of unthinking deference — of being “followed” unquestioningly — than any other normal man. Truly following the science can mean only one thing in practice, namely following...
The title of this post could be taken as referring to the entire Trump presidency, from the infamous day in the summer of 2015 when he slithered down the escalator to the January day, five and a half years later, when he incited his followers to threaten the life of his own vice president. But in this instance I am referring simply to...
Desperation will tempt a man to try almost anything. A desperate man who lacks virtue — who “has no conscience” as we moderns are wont to say — is more likely to succumb to the temptations of despair. Nothing infuses a man with desperation more thoroughly than the approach of public humiliation and ignominious defeat. And no one fears public humiliation more intensely...
Everyone knows that a greedy man will never reach the limits of his desire for more, for it is the essence of greed to acknowledge no natural limit to its ambition. Everyone knows totalitarians are intrinsically, definitively, obsessed with totality with respect to control, and that an obsession with totality admits of no inherent restraint or misgivings, for totalism in the quest for...
Anything that cannot be justified as contributing to the advance of my ultimate human goal — the glimpse of eternity, a share of wisdom, god-like happiness, call it what you will — must be regarded as an obstacle and liability, and therefore rejected or actively diminished in significance in my life, as the case admits. It is the easiest thing in the world,...
Wishing for a world in which everyone is free to mind his own business is all well and good. But as soon as you encounter someone who does not share your wish, you have a problem to solve, and restating your original wish a hundred times will not solve it….
Poland has been Ukraine’s most stalwart ally during that country’s war of self-defense against Vladimir Putin’s empire-building invasion. Poland is the country to which most Ukrainian women and children flee, and where they are accepted and cared for, during the horror of Putin’s wanton destruction. Poland was the Soviet satellite nation that rebelled most effectively against the communist empire at the moment of...
Ideas and Reflections / What is Progressivism?
by Daren Jonescu · Published April 10, 2022 · Last modified April 22, 2022
On being “absolutely modern.”— We naturally get excited about new ideas, new explanations. In such excitement, all past ideas seem paltry and passé. Such is the nature of enthusiasm. The whole world reflects our excitement back at us, reinforcing the illusion of absolute certainty attending the compelling new thoughts and their accompanying feelings. Hence, all previous modes of thought appear to us as...
From Newsweek: Ben Shapiro Says There’s ‘No Excuse’ for Mitt Romney Supporting Jackson.
In the accompanying article, Shapiro is shown lambasting the Utah senator for joining the standing ovation for newly confirmed supreme court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, labelling it “virtue signaling.”
Follow: