Looking Back to Glory A Brief Presentation to the Abbeville Institute Hopswee Plantation,  21 January 2017 When Don Livingston told me that participants in this seminar were supposed to celebrate some aspect of the Southern tradition, my mind—a lint-trap for useless facts that occlude my consciousness like floaters on the surface of the eye—churned up from its turgid depths a song popular the year I was born, though it was written much earlier. It’s a way way down where the cane grows tall Down where they say “you all” Walk on in with that southern drawl ‘Cause that’s what I...

Trump’s first two weeks have been, if not especially interesting, predictably exciting.   A pattern has already begun to emerge:  Trump attempts to carry out one of the promises on which he successfully campaigned for the White House, and his measures are met with criticism, abuse, and public rioting.  It will be some time before we can know whether this pattern is merely a temporary panic attack or one that  holds for the duration of his term in office. By now my readers probably do not need to be told that the Bill of Rights does not protect people who...

Socrates:  Then where does this leave us? Xanthippe:  Why ask me?  You’re the philosopher in the family.  I have no idea where we are or even when we are.  Can this really be  Athens in the archonship of Diocles? Socrates: But even if you don’t know the time of day, you know where we stand in the argument.  First, we are agreed that Pheidippides’ philosophy, which he got third hand from the Scythian she-wolf, is false. We cannot simply dismiss our obligation to fellow-citizens by saying that everyone is master of himself. Xanthippe: :  Certainly we cannot. Socrates: So we...