Category: Free Content

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...

The press have been beating down my door and besieging me by telephone and email to find out my positions. My crack team of specialists and eggheads is preparing a package of proposals that I intend, as every good candidate does, to ignore.

I can’t say how many times I have heard some bishop or diocesan official or other representative of the pro-life movement explain solemnly that being “truly pro-life” means you won’t just be concerned about abortion.  No, we also need to be committed to alleviating the plight of migrants, the homeless, Third World babies in need of adoption, those on death row, and for all I know the polar bears. 

On a previous website, I used to list, periodically, what I happened to have been reading.  I think it is worth reviving, but this time, I invite others to comment on the books listed and to share their own recent adventures in literacy. I am not including With Fire and Sword.