What is paleoconservatism? I should have put the question in the past tense, but, in deference to the true believers who collect hula hoops, and 8-track tape players, we can pretend there is still some sort of active movement going by that name. Like many political labels—Whig and Tory, Rebel and Yankee—the word “paleoconservative” would seem to be an insult.
Allen Wilson The Greek search for universal order and principles doubtlessly also led them to make the innovation which they are known to have made with the alphabet, the vowel letter. It made logical sense to make such an innovation, and I wonder if their development of it was connected with their development of grammar and logic. Hesiod’s moral understanding of the universe seems to indicate a mindset which in future times would be capable of adopting the Christian moral understanding, and also refine that understanding using the tools which that mindset had already produced: logic, rhetoric, and philosophy. Ken...
I finished rereading The Man in the High Castle. I found the character development and plotting a bit muddled and, while I had remembered a subtle metaphysic that would justify and make interesting the alternate time track, it was not worked out in the book, though, judging from Dick’s other books, he had developed a coherent theory in his mind. My verdict: Enjoyable, far from a waste of time, but needed a second or third revision. We’re continuing our rather spotty reading of Gibbon, but it is as great a pleasure as the previous times, perhaps even more because reading Gibbon’s...
Rochester was a Restoration rake, suicidal in his excesses, and excessive in his cynicism. Much of his thought consists of the fag-ends of the French literature he picked up during the nightmare years of the regicidal commonwealth. His deathbed conversion has done little to improve his general reputation, but I am tempted to compare him with other poets of despairing disbelief, Baudelaire and Lou Reed. John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, might have said of himself, one of Lou Reed’s lines: “Some kinds of love are mistaken for vision.” Please don’t go looking for the source of the line, because decent people should be offended.
Donald Trump, after plunging the world into poverty, misery, violence, and bigotry, is now using his evil powers to create storms that will destroy the goddess Gaia. This is truly the Clash of the Titans. Be on the look-out for the sequel, as the Evil Trump takes on Satan himself, defeats his master, and rules the universe.
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We are fortunate in having the poems of Theognis, a Megarian conservative aristocrat who lived through this period and sighed for the good old days.
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The name of Hesiod was often coupled with that of Homer, though the two are different expressions of the Greek mind and temperament. While Homer writes of aristocratic warriors, Hesiod, in his surviving works, is more concerned with expounding rustic life and its values and with making coherent sense of the gods. As a Greek writer, he was the first agrarian but also the first theologian and the godfather of philosophy.
This reading list (very much a work in progress) is offered in the hope that it will help families, schools, and people of all ages to read some of the really valuable books in the American, British, European, and classical traditions.
