One important service Scott rendered his own people was the recovery of the Highlands as part of Scotland. Before Sir Walter, many Lowland Scots had shared the English view of the highlanders as brigands who periodically swept down from the hills to steal everything not nailed down. This was not an entirely false conception, as Scott freely acknowledged,
Ted Cruz, US senator for the State of Texas, recently took time out to remind us of his literalist illiteracy with regard to the Bible, Christianity, theology and morality.
I have often imagined award ceremonies to pay tribute to what is most typically American. My first thought was a PT Barnum Award for the American who most contributed to the degradation of the American character.
July 7-12 2025
The Archaic Age of Greece
In short, Lafayette and his ilk symbolize how the good intentions of the American founding paved the American Hell.
I am well accustomed to there being no money in the house, but recently something seems to have changed. In the old days I used to joke…
For the average Scottish or English reader, Waverley must have been an exhilarating backwards trip through time and history, which enabled him to see both the feudal and tribal loyalties of Scots who adhered to the Stuart cause in much the same way their ancestors had flocked to the standards of Wallace and the Bruces.
Elon Musk is a brilliant rocket engineer. But he is ignorant of the basic binary structure of American politics: only two parties. The reason is the Electoral College
“One war at a time,” Abe Lincoln famously replied when aides urged policies that might have plunged the Union into wars with France and England. Two-front wars rarely go well.
Although we have been wrapped up in the history and literature of Archaic Greece, we should not entirely neglect more recent phases of our history and civilization. Once or twice a year, I return to the works of Walter Scott, on whom I have, over the years, written one or two essays and given several lectures.
