Archive for August, 2009

Machiavelli: Discourses B

As any schoolboy used to know, the Greeks not only invented or brought to perfection most of the great arts of civilization—epic, tragedy, and comedy; classical architecture, sculpture, painting—but left behind monuments that have rarely been equalled and never surpassed. The history of philosophy, as Alfred North Whitehead once famously remarked, is a series of footnotes to Plato and Aristotle.

The Right Wing’s Prince of Gonzo

The “Prince of Darkness”—aka Robert Novak—who died this week of a brain tumor, was the Hunter Thompson of the right, albeit with predictable differences. Thompson, like Rimbaud, espoused a total disordering of all the senses—with materials as varied as ayahuasca, LSD, cocaine and tequila whereas Novak stuck to booze. Thompson blew his brains out, whereas Novak fell prey to the Enemy Within—not Communism against which he inveighed for decades in the Cold War, but a brain tumor.

From Citizen to Serf in 200 Years

America is a strange place. Liberals get emotionally distraught that the Founding Fathers stuck Second Amendment rights in the Constitution. For American citizens to possess firearms is considered to be dangerous. Yet, it is quite all right for Americans to possess deadly green mambas.

Hollow Champion

Teddy Kennedy’s disasters were vivid. His legislative triumphs, draped in this week’s obituaries with respectful homage, were far less colorful but they were actually devastating for the very constituencies—working people, organized labor—whose champion he claimed to be.

 The Get-Cheney Squad

“Men sleep peacefully in their beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”

George Orwell’s truth comes to mind as one reads that Eric Holder has named a special prosecutor to go after the “rough men” who, to keep us sleeping peacefully at night, went too far in frightening Khalid Sheik Muhammad, the engineer of the September massacres.

Ted Kennedy: Lion of Liberalism or Lyin’ Liberal?

De mortuis nihil nisi bonum. 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

Closed Societies, Open Minds—September 2009

Thomas Fleming on real education reform, Michael Hill on Southern education, Thomas J. Korcok on the development of the LCMS school system, and Fr. Hugh Barbour on educating for faith in the O.C. Plus, Alberto Carosa on Berlusconi’s latest move in Italy’s fight against illegal immigration.

Fatal Flaw of Democracies

“We just can’t afford it!”

Not long ago, every America child heard that, at one time or another, in the home in which he or she was raised.

“We just can’t afford it!” It may have been a new car, or two weeks at the beach, or the new flat-panel TV screen.

Obama’s Blunder

If the left wing of the left wing of the left wing in American life doesn’t control most of the Obama farmstead’s best and richest acreage, it could be time for new spectacles—since things surely look that way.

Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to go after the CIA has all the earmarks of policy designed to make left-wing hearts palpitate.

Machiavelli: Discourses A

Machiavelli begins his work with an introduction, acknowledging the achievements of the ancient world and noting the reverence in which ancient art and law is held, but deploring the failure to learn the lessons that are taught by ancient history. Thus, we know from the beginning that he is not really writing history but political theory.