Category: Free Content

A Brief Chronology of later Roman History with a few quotations and citations added as the weeks go by….

The period of the Persian Wars and the aftermath were a period of intense political activity at Athens. In one generation, Athenians had expelled the tyrants, completely reorganized their commonwealth, and beaten back two Persian invasions. Such success was bound to inspire confidence in the Athenian commonwealth, a confidence that would lead first to to the  hybris of the Athenian Empire and then to the ruin Athens suffered in the war with Sparta and her allies.

The moment I learned of the existence of Catholic Confederates:  Faith and Duty in the Civil War South, I set about acquiring my own copy.  For the book in question deals with an important and fascinating subject which has been mostly “memory-holed” by Catholic pop media  which is more interested in celebrating the ostensibly “Catholic” side of Mohatmas Ghandi than in recalling those of our forebears who stood on “the wrong side of history.” 

Ted Geisel/Dr. Seuss ia finding what he would have wrongly supposed to be unlikely “conservative” allies, who either defend him on the grounds that the enemy of my enemies is my friend–what we might call the Stalin Complex–

At breakfast here on Sullivan’s Island, my wife commented: “I guess we missed to really big events last night. The Golden Globe Awards and Trump’s CPAC speech.” I feel just awful about it

Sienkiewicz has set  his narrative in the most troubled period of Polish history. This is not one of the historical subjects I know at all well and will content myself with a brief comment that will probably do as much to distort as to clarify the context. From today’s perspective, Poles frequently comment on the tragedy of their nation, caught between two ruthless imperial peoples, German and Russian.  One might add, that the Swedes to the North were also a threat.  That is a valid way of looking at the situation, but there is another:  Poland was in a good...

I posted this squib on FB  in answer to a discussion of the origin of America’s ongoing ideological crackdown via the media.

Every political regime (or tribal society) known to me imposes, whether consciously or not, its way of thinking on the populace.

Let us first and briefly consider several character portrayals before going on in the next stage to speak of the political dimensions.  I’ll pass over our young hero, who is a somewhat more violent version than Scott’s most heroic characters and look at the variety of tough men portrayed:  Chelmnitski, Bogun, Tugai Bey the Tartar chief, Zagloba and the Prince. Chelmnitsk is the pivot of the action.  He is the soul of the rebellion and the personification of the Ukrainian Cossacks.  The wrong he has suffered from the Polish elite–whose leaders he understands very well–have given him, at least in...