I am exploring the possibility of a Greek adventure in January. The plan is for three to four days in Athens and roughly the same amount of time in the Peloponnese. The highlights of the stay in Athens would include the Acropolis and the Acropolis Museum, the Archeological Museum, the ancient Agora, the Kerameikos Cemetery, and the Temple of Olympian Zeus. We are also considering a bus trip out to Cape Sounion to visit the Temple of Poseidon.
It is dangerous to associate oneself with the term “romantic,” lest one be labeled a sentimental fool, a Don Juan, Taugenichts or a heretic from someone’s orthodoxy; I do, however, reluctantly claim the epithet. From childhood, in my earliest memories, I apprehended, although I certainly did not comprehend, that God, who is wholly other, was nevertheless, paradoxically, immanent in nature – the cosmic order. I thus developed a sense of awe which anticipated an impending encounter. As I matured, I came to understand, that nature was therefore a mediator, a sacramental element between God and man. It was at a...
Each generation does what it can in its own time and in its own way. Fundamental principles—political as well as moral—do not change, but the challenges that require a political response are always changing. There is little point in quarreling with the conservatives who defined themselves almost exclusively by their opposition to Communism, an entirely evil political doctrine implemented and reinforced by actions and policies that were equally evil. Nonetheless, whatever their virtues might have been, those defenders of the New Deal status quo had little to say of any use to people of the year 1990, and their attitudes, in...
From almost the day of Reagan’s election, many self-described conservatives were having serious doubts about the usefulness—and sincerity—of the so-called movement and the institutions and publications that were its most public face. Skepticism developed into cynicism and disgust as a set of leftist opportunists—“so-called neoconservatives”—waged a blitzkrieg campaign to take over the movement. When conservative writers and activists welcomed the newcomers as sincere and talented, the reaction of sensible people should have been amused incredulity.
Trump’s term in the White House seems to have given Americans a respite from self-congratulatory meditations about being on the “right side” of history. The Obama White House seems to have used the term upwards of two dozen times, according to the American Presidency Project, but Trump has both refrained from such presumptions himself and struck enough fear in the hearts of positivists to get them to shut up about it: at least temporarily
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...
In 21st-Century America, there are precious few mediums through which the issue of race can be addressed with even a modicum of rationality. One of the few means still available is the thorough, well-researched work produced by historians. Perhaps the only reason this avenue is still available to us at all is because those whom you would expect to participate in protests over its content do not usually spend the required time for reading books or truly studying history.
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.
While I still hope to pen some reflections on this past summer’s Shakespeare Symposium, today’s post is purely practical in nature: announcing the sale of the complete set of those talks which many of you had the pleasure of hearing in person this year, but also the Cicero set of 2018. Charter Members have access to all of these recordings (Cicero here and Shakespeare here) as part of their membership, but everyone else has to pay, though the prices we are offering are quite reasonable! Each Cicero lecture is available for $6 each, or you can get all 11 for...
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.
