Some months back a wise friend of mine observed that the frequency with which I sound off on Russia – notwithstanding that I am tied to this troublesome part of the world by “propinquity and property of blood” – is likely to fatigue the gentle reader.
We see hurried people that come and go, avoiding giving the slightest importance to what is happening around them.
Just like that, it was over. On Christmas Day 1991 at 7:32 pm Moscow time, the hammer-and-sickle red flag of the Soviet Union was lowered for the last time over the Kremlin.
My firstborn Nikolai is in Palermo this week to meet his new brother and, perspicaciously, has brought with him a liter of excellent French brandy to mark the occasion. “Your Christmas pudding, Father,” he said, handing over the ornate gold-topped bottle.
Rather few people have any idea about what conservatism is or was and how it evolved. I don’t blame anyone for not caring, because it is not worth the effort.
One of the things the Left likes to do is put up fake conservatives to tell real conservatives what to think and. This also serves the purpose of telling the Left what supposedly really is going on among conservatives.
For several hundred years, ordinary people have been taught to regard such practical necessities as surviving and defending themselves as rights that derive from nature. Theories of natural rights are, alas, a poisoned chalice, since every assertion of right can be met with a counter-assertion
A diverting article in the New York Post, of all places, made me look back on nearly half a century of Western handwringing and eyerolling at the mention of the homeland I had lost long before I was born.
