John Manifold was an Australian poet who fought in the European theater during World War II. I read the first long ago in an anthology, and it has always served to remind me that fine and vigorous formal verse could still be written in the middle of the 20th century. It is a pity that he is not read more outside of Australia, where is or was something of a hero.
The discussion of human rights limps along on the Forum: Political theories are often too abstract–too etherial to stand fast in the high winds of everyday life. Let us turn to some everyday topics where human rights might be invoked. I’ll put a simple one on the table, and others, I hope, will up the ante. Once upon a time it was assumed that parents were obligated to provide for their children’s education, either by teaching them at home, paying for the private schools they sent them to, or, by the later 19th century in some parts of the US,...
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That Jacques the peasant, whom I had occasion to recall the other week as the emblem of all spontaneous popular unrest, is indeed in fine fettle is further corroborated by news stories from the city of Yekaterinburg, the capital of the Urals region, infamous for the cellar in which the Russian royal family was executed. It occurred to the spawn of the Antichrist who now control the Moscow Patriarchate that coming to terms with the city’s ignominious past in time for its tercentenary would make a good pretext for building a new cathedral, meanwhile keeping under wraps the news that...
Last month, the Democrats’ newly restored majority in the House voted to obey their tech masters and bring back Net (Non-) Neutrality, with the misnamed Save the Internet Act.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Twitter, of course represents San Francisco and is a co-sponsor, as are Eschoo and others in the ApplePay pockets of the tech titans.So these Digital Dictators are not independent of the government, but meshed tightly with it.
To spend uncounted years of pain,
Again, again, and yet again,
In working out in heart and brain
The problem of our being here;
Here’s something weird about Bernie Sanders’ campaign: If he pulled our troops home from abroad and canceled dumb military projects like the F-35 – called the $1.4 Trillion National Disaster – he would have plenty of money for his other projects: covering all those without medical insurance, free college for everybody and jobs training for anyone. There would be no need for imposing new taxes on “the wealthy.”
The subject of Shakespeare films was mooted in the comments to last week’s post, with one reader skeptical, and as it so happens that the subject is a vital part of my autobiography, I thought I’d put in my ha’penny’s worth. The fact is, Olivier’s Hamlet was how, at the age of eight, I began to learn English, thanks to some friends who had sent us a recording of excerpts from the 1948 film. My father had not given me the text of the play. The point was to piece it together by listening to the record – I listened...
The Balkans: by fate the cross-roads between Greek East and Latin West. In the fourth century, the line dividing the Western from the Eastern Roman Empire had been drawn through the northern and westerly reaches of these lands denominated by the Romans as “Illyricum.” As far as sacred jurisdiction was concerned, Illyricum was, by the eighth century, disputed territory. Against the ancient claims of Rome and because of her obnoxious refusal to fall in line with the imperial proscription of images, Emperor Leo III (717-741), “the Saracen-minded,” had removed even western Illyricum from Rome’s theoretical jurisdiction and placed it directly...
According to nationalists, the will of the nation, as defined as an historic community of blood and tongue, had to find expression in a common and unified state. Hence, the Italian nationalist Mazzini, whose political lineage goes back to the Revolution, spoke always of the twin principles of unity and nationality.
