Coming in Paperback: RUSSELL KIRK, AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE
I found out late yesterday afternoon that the University Press of Kentucky will be publishing RUSSELL KIRK: AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE in paperback for their spring 2018 list.
How great is this??? I’m thrilled.
I’m not sure how many changes I’ll be able to make to the text, but, amazingly, I’ve found only one typo thus far. The press has been extraordinary.
This said, if you’ve had a chance to read the book, I would love a review at amazon.com. Indeed, it would mean a great deal to me. Only if you have time or desire, though.
Thanks!
Blacks During Reconstruction (Study Guide)
Reconstruction study guide: What happened to Blacks?
Lincoln died before he could fully articulate his own vision, but we do have some glimpses. Lincoln and his cabinet launched a plan to remove and colonize the ex-slaves somewhere in Latin America. Lincoln told a group of groups visiting the White House: “There is an unwillingness on the part of our people, harsh as it may be, for you colored people to remain with us” [quoted in Johnson, AMERICAN, 497]. After failed negotiations with Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and Costa Rica, they settled 450 in Haiti in 1863. Proved a disaster–the colony was whipped out by small pox and starvation. Result: pretty much left alone, and blacks did incredibly well. Followed the model of almost all other immigrant groups. “Free from competitive counterpressures and strongly equipped to enforce compliance, public officials could discriminate pretty much as their pleasure or caprice might dictate. Under these circumstances it was a definite blessing for the blacks that the governments of the post-bellum South were still quite limited in the range of functions to which they attended. Such salvation as the black man found, he found in the private sector” (Higgs, Competition and Coercion, 133).
Reconstruction Study Guide
Reconstruction Study Sheet: Birzer
Three big questions being asked:
- What to do with the Southern states?
- Which is more powerful–the Legislative or Executive branches?
- What to do with 4 million emancipated slaves?
Each question carried with it a very strong taint of bitterness.
Progstock: October 13-15, 2017
Even before two lectures delivered on the cultural changes that accompanied America’s Great Depression, I had the great privilege of talking with Tom Palmieri, manager of Circuline and fountainhead behind Progstock 2017.
Though we only had about 30 minutes to talk, I found Tom quite engaging and incredibly entrepreneurial.
Progstock 2017–hopefully the first of many more to come–will be held October 13-15, this year, in Rahway, New Jersey, a part of larger New York City, just to the west of Staten Island.
The lineup is simply astounding, featuring Glass Hammer, Echolyn, The Tangent, Karmakanic, 3RDegree, Simon Godfrey, and even our own Jason Rubenstein.
TR, Wilson, or Coolidge? (full lecture)
President Calvin Coolidge–one of the best men in American history. I’d take one Coolidge over a thousand Wilsons.
“When a man begins to feel that he is the only one who can lead in this republic, he is guilty of treason to the spirit of our institution.”–The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge
Progressivism’s Origins: In Pure and Unadulterated Racism
Just a quick note–the quotes below from E.A. Ross–a leading public intellectual during the Progressive Era–are quite disturbing and despicable. Still, when Progressives claim they favor equality, they must at least acknowledge their rather brutal past. Ross’s views are typical of the era, especially when all Eugenists were Progressives.
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The following quotes are all from Edward Alsworth Ross, The Old World in the New: The Significance of Past and Present Immigration to the American People (New York: The Century, 1914).
“The influence of the Germans in spreading among us the love of good music and good drama is acknowledged by all. But there is a more subtle transformation that they have wrought on American taste. The social diversions of the Teutons, and their affirmance of the ‘joy of living,’ have helped to clear from our eyes the Puritan jaundice that made all physical and social enjoyment looks sinful. If ‘innocent recreation’ and ‘harmless amusement’ are now phrases to conjure with, it is largely owing to the Germans and Bohemians, with their love of song and mirth and ‘having a good time.’” (pg. 54)
Civil War Battle Study Guide
Birzer Civil War Study Guide, Spring 2017
Battles to Know/Army of the Potomac Leaders (No naval battles listed)
1861
Battle of First Bull Run
Battles of Wilson’s Creek/Lexington (Missouri)
Battle of Ball’s Bluff
1862
Battle of Forts Henry and Donelson
Battle of Shiloh
New Mexico/Southwest Campaign
The Peninsular Campaign
Antietam Campaign
Battle of Fredericksburg
The Killing Fields, Study Guide
[Originally published at TIC]
Review of “The Killing Fields,” by Roland Joffe (director), Warner Brothers, 1984. Re-issued on Blu-ray, 2014 in hardback digi-book form.
Based on the true events of a New York Times employee, Dith Pran, (a native Cambodian; Khmer) who has to escape the Cambodian gulag, ca. 1976, the movie follow Pran through his horrific and terrifying escape from the Khmer Rouge, a journey that took four years from beginning to end.
Horrors of Communism (Full Lecture)
With an emphasis on the Hiss-Chambers trial, the horrors of communism.
The “Machine” of Ideology (Full Lecture)
My follow-up to last week’s talk on Progressivism. Now, the meaning of ideology and its inherent and inevitable demeaning of the human person. All ideologies–left and right.
Matthew Colville’s Dungeons and Dragons Videos
I’ve been proudly playing Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) since 1980.
Yes, 1980 was back when a number of folks feared that the game itself was evil. Jack Chick was worked up as was Tom Hanks. I still remember my mother talking to another friend’s mother, worried that we might be doing something to conjure up the devil.
Honestly, I’ve never understood this, as D&D more than anything else taught me the glory of the ideas of imagination, free will, and morality. D&D seemed not just the opposite of evil, but a very refuge from the evils that seemed to lurk on all sides of life back in 1980 (most of the chaos and evil was personal and in my very family, as I tried to navigate around and away from it all).
Stormfields 