I woke up today with this happy thought. Born in April 1945, I am a 8 months too old to be a Boomer. That means I enjoy the rare privilege of not belonging to some stereotyped identity created by sociologists and exploited by marketing geniuses to enslave the minds of anyone dumb enough to call himself a Boomer, Gen Xer, Millennial, etc. Don’t Trust Anyone Under 78!
Dr. Fleming and Stephen discuss this worthy send-off for The Duke, and for this segment of our Westerns discussion. Your homework for next episode: Dances with Wolves.
Several commenters have been kind enough to say they liked our recent pieces on the Middle East. I am grateful for the kind words. I am no expert on Middle Eastern affairs, though I flatter myself I know a few things about the history of the region. If my way of thinking has any distinctive merit, it is because I have followed a line of thought you can find in such diverse political thinkers as Thucydides, Machiavelli, the Marquis of Halifax, Gaetano Mosca, Roberto Michels, and Sam Francis
I am afraid to go to sleep at night. What if Hamas decided to stage an attack on my house in Rockford. My cynical friend Jeremy Chiaroscuro tried to reassure me.
Hamas and Israel are sticking to their game plans of inflicting maximum damage on each other’s civilian populations, but back here in the center of the universe the citizens of the only remaining superpower are continuing to abide by the rule that in war truth is the first casualty. At least our people are lightening up the situation with their comic antics.
It has been 50 years since the last general war in the Middle East, the Yom Kippur War, which had been preceded by serious conflicts between Israel (backed by the US) and the Palestinians, Egyptians, and Russian
In Ephesians 4:22-27, Paul instructs Christian converts to live according to the faith. He specifically cites the need to tell the truth, control anger, and work productively (rather than steal):
Edgar Lee Masters of Illinois was a law partner of Clarence Darrow until Darrow tried to frame him for his own chicanery. He was a biographer of Lincoln and Vachel Lindsay–the only other poet from Illinois. I’ve never much liked his verse, but he did have the knack of capturing the characters of the Midwest.
This a much revised section of a chapter (“The Demands of Blood”) of Volume II of Properties of Blood. It is the first of a series of chapters in which vengeance–its nature, its institutions, its justifications–are discussed. It begins by taking up one of the oldest and still most thorny ethical dilemmas: Why do good men suffer, and what can be done about it? It is the first step in laying the groundwork for understanding the violent anarchy into which American society has fallen and the possible means at our disposal for redressing the injustices.
