Should governments know any limits to their power? One thousand years ago, after King John was forced to sign the Magna Carta, the answer became yes. The state could not legally brutalize the population with impunity.
That conviction led to …
Freedom and Virtue: Friends or Enemies?
There’s an elephant in the room, the speaker declared. He was right. I was at a gathering, as I often am, of people who aspire to rescue their countries from descending into woke, collectivist hell. But the attendees were not …
Stop pretending to be thankful
It’s Thanksgiving week in the US and, taking time off from their usual diet of gloom and uneasy foreboding, various American media outlets have been asking readers to list things for which they feel grateful. I don’t know about you, …
Can Thanksgiving Traditions Survive a Four-Year Pause?
For decades, I enjoyed Thanksgiving. Each year, we traveled to my parents’ or one of my brothers’, or in-law’s, houses. Twelve to fifteen people sat around two, age-defined tables and ate a hearty, redolent, mid-afternoon meal of turkey, stuffing, homemade, …
Love Really Can Thwart Tyranny
Long before Freud articulated the conflict, or at best the tension between the enduring psychic – and therefore cultural – forces of Eros (life-drive) and Thanatos (death-drive), the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, Empedocles, paved the way for this by positing the …
How Modeling Can Go Terribly Wrong
To theorize about our existence is essential. Indeed it could be argued that to think and speak is, in the most basic sense, to impose abstract models upon the multiple and often confusing manifestations of life around us. Without mental …
Reclaim the Elites’ Frame
One of the reasons corrupt governments love war so much is that it’s an all-access excuse to do the unthinkable. You can direct it abroad or focus it at home. You can fund and staff foreign battles or you can …
How Did Higher Education Become a Cargo Cult?
The “cargo cult” represents an important concept and seems especially so of late. Early observations of such behavior emerged in island cultures exposed to European explorers. Ships unlike anything previously dreamed of arrived full of strange people with wondrous trade …
What is Medical Freedom, Exactly?
The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms.
SocratesThe phrase “medical freedom” has become common usage in the wake of the Covid-19 catastrophe. But like many buzzwords and neologisms, “medical freedom” is perhaps ill-defined or even undefined. We …
The Emptiness of the Transhumanist Ideal
Albrecht Durer’s Hare (Feldhase) hangs on a wall in the Albertina museum in Vienna. This picture, or at least prints of it, had meant a lot to me since childhood. I had grown up loving art but lived far from …
Cutting through the Mist of the Managerial State
Who, if anyone, or what, if anything, is in charge?
In many ways this is the question of the age, inspiring passionate debates across the ideological spectrum, with divergent answers springing not just from left and right but from every …
The Cult of Safety Explodes
It was the 1970s. Dry cleaning bags lurked quietly behind couches waiting patiently for the opportunity to pounce on the hapless child who dropped a Lego nearby. Unguarded five-gallon buckets stood brazenly in the middle of basement floors hoping to entice their …
Movies Came to Life in 2020
I no longer watch much television, but I’ve taken the few occasions I do to establish a tradition I think reinforces the themes of healthy masculinity for my three boys. I call it Manly Movie Night.
I initially began my …
The Painless Extinction of Formerly Free Australia
The Demise of Frogs
If you place a frog in cool water and slowly raise the temperature, it’s said that you can boil it without it noticing and fighting to free itself. I never tested this, as I liked frogs …
There is Yet Hope for the Beauty of Cities
I’m writing on the morning of my 61st birthday — a phrase that does not trip off the tongue, or emerge easily on the keyboard! I am the only one awake yet — Brian is still asleep, and Loki, his …
