Enjoying the view from Limbo
If the history of civilization has taught us anything — and by “us,” I mean non-progressives, progressives being constitutionally opposed to learning from history — it is that government will never be perfect, will rarely be good, and will usually be dreadful. Tyrannical impulses, fatal compromises of principle, and catastrophic blindness are such intractable facts of the human condition that it is an...
The open-minded person says, “I will always try to give a fair hearing to words and ideas that I do not like, or which make me uncomfortable; for my preference and comfort are not valid measures of the true, the good, and the beautiful, which will as often as not prove to be cleverly hidden behind some discomfitting word.” The closed-minded person says,...
Knowing all the facts in the world grants not the least bit of understanding of what is actually happening, let alone what is likely to happen, anymore than reciting the dates and numbers of history grants the least wisdom about why events transpired as they did. What is needed, rather, is an understanding of human nature, including its most common weaknesses, defensive postures,...
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...
The goal of life, as humans must live it, is not to get what you want so much as to find out what you want. Human life is essentially a search, not an awards ceremony.
Cuteness vs. Beauty.– Here in brave new world, mankind has systematically and insidiously substituted trivial and infantile playthings for all those notions that were once definitive of human aspiration….
The recent actions of the United States of America and the Russian Federation with regard to Afghanistan and Ukraine, respectively, offer us a tidy summary of some essential differences between a declining democracy and a declining tyranny — differences which, characteristically, the tyranny recognizes and hopes to exploit, but the democracy does not. Democracy regards twenty years as too long to sustain a...
You tell yourself that you are showing restraint and offering concessions to the bully in order to help him save face, thereby perhaps preventing him from acting rashly in his humiliation. He tells himself that your boasting of restraint and your concessions are merely your means of saving face as you surrender to him, and that he may therefore be more certain than...
Caricature: “exaggeration by means of often ludicrous distortion of parts or characteristics.” (Merriam-Webster) What is a human being, as ordinarily witnessed? A creature that devotes too much of its brief life and limited energy to the acquisition of goods that would only have ultimate value to a being that was going to live forever. And what is a tyrant? A human that devotes...
Who would harm me envies me. Who would harm the world envies all. The former honors me with his flattering hatred. The latter is a groveling worm beneath my foot, a tyrant in spirit…
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