Tagged: history

Trimming the Fat, Progressive Style

The publisher and copyright holders of the famous children’s stories of Roald Dahl have systematically expunged certain progressively offensive words from the new editions of his books, in order to bring them into line with current progressive notions of “inclusiveness” (read Marxist mind manipulation). A character who was “enormously fat” is now simply “enormous,” lest anyone be infected with the horrific, antiquated idea...

On Defining Our Times

Any age, society, or political regime requires a justification for its existence, which is to say it needs a justifying person — a type or example of something great and enduring which was made possible, or rather more possible, by the prevailing conditions of that age, society, or regime. A human being who is recognizably of his time but also unqualifiedly for all...

Two Observations On Progress Today

Reason as hatred.— If disapproving of someone’s behavior, or disagreeing with his reasoning, is to be understood as an expression of hatred for the person, and if all hatred in turn may be regarded as violence, in the moral and perhaps legal senses, then all rational discussion or moral argument is effectively criminalized, and anyone who dares to express disagreement or disapproval of...

A Small Torrent

There is a sense of everything closing in or coming to a head. It is palpable. But this sense does not answer to simplistic and tribally convenient conspiracy theories. It belongs to the more complex realm of historical inevitabilities….

Systemic Oppression

Progressives believe, or say they believe, that the history of “Western civilization” is systemically racist, sexist, oligarchic, intolerant, and so on, not merely accidentally or on its margins, but as an essential element and raison d’ĂȘtre of its existence. In other words, these people believe — their political movement depends on the belief — that the entire philosophic, religious, scientific, artistic, and political...

Wisdom In Context

All thought, as expressed, is in part a temperamental response to circumstances. Thus it is a mistake to imagine any single great thought is The Thought, unless it be a thought arisen from universal circumstances. This is why all searches eventually return to Greece, which, partly due to its being the first flower of mature poetry, philosophy, and politics, appeals to all thinking...

Polis, Soul, Nectarine

Political life is over. There are only money and guns now, each of these, in any socially effective quantities, increasingly concentrated in the hands of an increasingly affiliated few. Everywhere, men are cowering, conceding, complying — and not only with their bodies. Modern men, in fact, have developed an impressive ability to feign courage, resistance, and erectness with their bodies, as a veil...

Battles and Wars

Reply to a dear friend.— The battle is lost, I’m afraid. But every war has lost battles, and it is narrowminded to succumb to despair over one loss, however severe it may seem to us in the moment. The war is much longer than we can conceive from our most immediate, self-interested perspectives — which is why we easily mistake a lost battle...

The Long-Range Outlook

If an elected government can sweep away a nation’s founding principles, pride, and moral essence in three months, then that nation’s principles were already reduced to sand, its pride no better than a dust ball, its moral essence just a bit of dead skin. Joe Biden and his communist puppeteers have achieved nothing, in fact, that was not effectively a fait accompli. That...

Easter Musings: What We Have Learned

The man whose life is celebrated on Easter weekend died at age thirty-three, having been earnestly engaged in the full blossom of his life’s mission for just a few short years. He died condemned as a criminal, and at the time was mocked and ridiculed, or simply ignored, by most of his fellow men. So much for the ultimate significance of empires and...