Two Voices, G.K. Chesterton (A reading)
1904
One of my all-time favorite passages from G.K. Chesterton. “Two Voices” from THE NAPOLEON OF NOTTING HILL (1904). This one from Chapter III of the Dover edition (1991).
Machiavelli vs. Socrates (Full Lecture)
Machiavelli (left); Socrates (right). In more ways than one.
A rather in-depth look at how Machiavelli inverted the western Socratic project. Please note two things: 1) I’m terribly biased in this lecture; and 2) I tell a beautiful (at least to me) but personal story of my grandfather and mother.
So, a look at Chapter 18 of THE PRINCE, Act III of MANDRAGOLA, and THE CRITO.
I find Machiavelli truly diabolic.
Support Your Local Comic Book Store TODAY!
A worthy cause. No other medium in modern western civilization comes even near comic books when it comes to the need to explore and promote the classical virtues.
Petrarch (Full Lecture)
Petrarch. Clearly not vain.
An attempt to looks at three iconic figures in the Renaissance: Petrarch; Pico; and Machiavelli. This lecture mostly considers Petrarch, the ultimate Renaissance Christian Humanist.
Republican Cycles: Birth, Corruption, Death, Rebirth?
In nearly every class I teach–whether it’s about western civilization, the American founding, or Christian Humanism–I talk about the natural (supposedly) cycles of life, the seasons, and republics. If you’re interested, here are my favorite quotes and art supporting the view.
In Miletus, ca. 500BC
Can we escape the cycles of the seasons, of man, of life?
Polybius (200-117BC)
No clearer proof of the truth of what I say could be obtained than by a careful observation of the natural origin, genesis, and decadence of these several forms of government. For it is only by seeing distinctly how each of them is produced that a distinct view can also be obtained of its growth, zenith, and decadence, and the time, circumstance, and place in which each of these may be expected to recur.
End of the Medieval World (Full Lecture)
The end, my only friend, the end.
Full Lecture
The End of Christendom, 1350-1492
- The Plague, killing anywhere from 33-50% of Europe. In terms of population, Europe not recover until mid-seventeenth century. Especially hit the good clergy, as they were first to rush in to help. This added greatly to the corruption of the Renaissance Western Church.
- The resurgence of barbarianism, especially nationalism. Christendom celebrates the universal, nationalism, the particular. First and second nations–both out of Iberia, home to the centralized Visigoths.
- “Christianity rejoices at the mixture of races,” Lord Acton wrote in his famed 1862 essay “Nationalism.” Paganism, however, “identifies itself with their differences, because truth is universal, errors various and particular.”
- “Indeed, modern nationalism has tended to idealize the native cultures of the Western barbarians, and to see the Germans, the Celts, the Slavs and the rest as young peoples full of creative powers who were bringing new life to an exhausted and decadent civilization”–Christopher Dawson
As a subset of this: the “Gunpowder Revolution”
- Man becoming, again, the measure of all things. Attempts at apotheosis; development of modern humanism (quite different from Christian Humanism).
Campanella: “O my art, grandchild to the primal Wisdom, give something of his fair image which is called Man.
A second God, the First’s own miracle, he commands the depths; he mounts to heaven without wings and counts its motions and measures and its natures.
The wind and the sea he has mastered and the earthly globe with pooped ship he encircles, conquers and beholds, barters and makes his prey.
He sets laws like a God. In his craft, he has given to silent parchment and to paper and power of speech and to distinguish time he gives tongue to brass.”
Campanella planned a whole new government: “It was a totalitarian communist theocracy governed by a priest king–the Metaphysician–elected by universal suffrage, and three magistrates representing the three divine hypostases–Power, Wisdom, and Love–who deal respectively with war, science and education, and economics and eugenics. Neither property, marriage nor the family were admitted and the magistrates work according to aptitude, honours are given according to merit and food according to need and constitution.”
The Advent of Modernity. Modernity proves very difficult to define, but it does, usually, include the following five elements.
- Secularism; the separation of the cult from the culture; man as the measure of all things
- Artificial (man made) as opposed to natural; hence critics of modernity often identify it as a poor substitute for reality
- Personal relations/loyalty replaced with mechanized bureaucracy and abstract nation-state
- Focus on the particular rather than the universal
- Ironically, considering the above point, it results in conformity and uniformity
The Future of the Anglo-American Alliance?
Time to divorce?
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been an avid Anglophile. I love the history of England, the English language and the English writers and poets, the Common Law and, well, almost everything else English (and Celtic). As such, this last week has taken a terrible toll on my own love for that people.
From the BBC, the major English newspapers, and, perhaps most blatantly, across the various organs of social media, the British have lambasted us. Not just once and not merely constructively, but a million times and with intense bitterness. I’ve even deleted my Facebook account as I simply can take no more of the anger spewing from my British “friends.”
Damned if we do, damned if we don’t. I’d be the last person on earth to defend American military actions abroad over the last 25 years, but the British reaction to us is just vile. If we intervene, we’re warmongers. If we pull back, we’re destabilizers.
I have strong reservations about President Trump as well, but I do hope that the next four years will give us Americans time to pause and reconsider our role in the world, with NATO, and with every other strategic alliance. It might very well be time to return all European defense back to Europe.
Certainly, our American Founders envisioned us avoiding ALL entangling alliances.
Regardless, we live in interesting times.
Concert Review: Anderson, Rabin & Wakeman (ARW) Saturday, November 12, 2016 at the Majestic Theater, San Antonio, Texas. — Progarchy — Progarchy
With the first step into the Majestic Theater in San Antonio one crosses the threshold into a magical space, like entering a ride at a theme park. The original 1920’s tiled floors direct your paces into the main theater with beautifully sculpted dark wood line the walls, railings, ceilings, and staircases. Ornate chandelier’s illuminate the […] […]
Re-Thinking U.S. Foreign Policy
The U.S. military abroad, according to Politico Magazine:
A year ago, on Facebook, I posted this as a way of thinking about Veterans’ Day:
It’s perfectly possible to be in favor of “isolation” and not be a fool.
It’s perfectly possible to love the Marines but fear the U.S. government.
It’s perfectly possible to believe in a strong military and not support empire.
A republic can never be and will never be compatible with an Empire.
A republic is secure and inward looking, an empire is arrogant and always demanding more.
For what it’s worth, I not only completely agree with what I wrote, but I think the moment in history–as in now–is much different than it was a year go. Some mood has taken hold of many in the English-speaking world, recognizing, I think, that smaller units are more humane–generally–than larger units. Brexit is a case in point, and Donald Trump’s election, or thus far, seems the same. Please note, I’m not trying to make a statement either pro or con Brexit and Trump, only that each represents something changing dramatically in the western mindset.
Now, even leftists in California are talking seperation from the Union. Generally, in the American experience, it’s the non-leftists who want to exit this or that. It’s a good sign–at least to me–that the desire for separation is transcending simply ideological politics.
As of November 11, 2016, I do believe we’re at an important turning point in our history. As Americans, I believe we’ve given enough to the world, especially to the world that can afford to defend itself. It’s time to bring every one back home. No more bases abroad (except where absolutely necessary). I don’t mean to suggest that others haven’t done their fair share, only that we’ve been so committed to our adventures (and misadventures) overseas, that I think we’ve destablized the world as much as we’ve stablized it. The same is true for our republic.
For too long, the wealthy of this country have stolen from those of us who work–through taxes and stimuli packages–to pay for the war machine that marches flabbily across the world.
Enough. We are a republic, and our form of government was never intended to become an empire. Indeed, we were founded as the most anti-imperial of all peoples. We must re-embrace that tradition. The moment is now.
[The above map is taken from: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/us-military-bases-around-the-world-119321]
Senator Rand Paul: The Best
My favorite person in government. Thank you, Senator Paul. You are our Cicero.
A Primer on John C. Calhoun
[N.B. The best person to read when studying Calhoun is Lee Cheek, an amazing scholar and equally gracious gentleman.]
Sam the Eagle. . . I mean, John C. Calhoun
Pre-Compromise of 1820 Nationalism. Early Nationalist/War Hawk Calhoun: “Let it not be forgotten, let it be forever kept in mind, that the extent of the republic exposes us to the greatest of calamities—disunion,” Calhoun warned as Secretary of War in February 1817. “We are great, and rapidly—I was about to say fearfully—growing. This is our pride and danger, our weakness and our strength. . . . We are under the most imperious obligations to counteract every tendency to disunion. . . . Whatever impedes the intercourse of the extremes with this, the centre of the republic, weakens the union. . . . Let us, then, bind the republic together with a perfect system of roads and canals. Let us conquer space.”
Post-1820 Decentralized Calhoun. His theory (very Roman republican and very Calvinistic) as most fully expressed in The Disquisition on Government.
A Conservative Reflection on the 2016 Presidential Election
My own Supergirl–worth more all the politicians in the world.
A brief version of this appeared at https://home.isi.org/nothing-has-changed-least-fundamentally. A huge thank you to ISI for soliciting it. Below is the director’s cut.
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As another presidential election cycle comes to a conclusion and a new one already begun, it’s well worth thinking about the state of conservatism, its present and its future, as well as of the state of western civilization. While this vicious, brutal, and malicious election cycle resembles many of the past elections in American history—especially those bitterly contested in and of 1824, 1876, and 2000—there are things about the 2016 cycle that make it interesting from a long-term perspective. For one, the role of populism has made its striking mark across the political spectrum, perhaps in ways, at this moment, incalculable. Perhaps more than anything else, personality mattered in the 2016 election. Not character, but personality. Not virtue, but smackdowns.
Stormfields 