For all you history buffs out there, and for anyone interested in the roots of progressivism in the United States (which would probably include most readers here), Theodore Roosevelt and the American Political Tradition by Bowdoin professor Jean Yarbrough sounds … Continue reading →
[Hat tip: Ace.] The liberal agenda continues apace, in ways that are especially chilling but not at all surprising. I’m referring to Sarah Conly’s new book entitled Against Autonomy: Justifying Coercive Paternalism, which purports to use social science research to … Continue reading →
I’ve never been all that keen on novels, except for those novels on which I’ve been very keen. The latter tend to be classics: Jane Eyre, David Copperfield, Moby Dick, 1984, with a coupla Russian guys and some random others … Continue reading →
Try this for size (hat tip: Gerard Vanderleun at American Digest). The video includes a lot of new-agey political stuff, but it’s the pictures that are wonderful: OVERVIEW from Planetary Collective on Vimeo. Here’s an early post of mine on … Continue reading →
I’ve written before about Allan Bloom’s masterful The Closing of the American Mind, published in 1987, here and here. And I probably will again. It is so richly loaded with thought that almost every sentence might cause the reader to … Continue reading →
Amity Shlaes, author of the highly-praised (by conservatives, anyway) The Forgotten Man, about the Great Depression, has just put out a biography of Calvin Coolidge called—simply and appropriately enough, since he was known as a man who didn’t waste words—Coolidge. … Continue reading →
[NOTE: I thought this post, first published here in November of 2010, could bear repeating. I had forgotten the Jarrett quote with which it begins. But on looking at it again, it seems even more chilling than ever—and it was … Continue reading →
I was introduced to Gregory Corso’s poem “Marriage” by a boyfriend long ago, and it stuck in my mind because it was one of the few poems I’ve ever read that is genuinely funny; more a comedy monologue than a … Continue reading →
On one of the recent art threads, commenter “Smock Puppet” offered a link to a sculpture by Rodin entitled “She who Used to Be the Beautiful Heaulmiere”: The sculpture ‘Celle qui fut la belle heaulmié¨re’ is also known as ‘The … Continue reading →
Actor and world celebrity, twice husband of Liz Taylor, Richard Burton was also a prolific diarist. His diaries were published this past fall, and I recently got the book out of the library. It makes for interesting intermittent (or intermittently … Continue reading →
Several years ago I read the first third of Allan Bloom’s great work The Closing of the American Mind. The other day I picked it up where I had left off, and was struck simultaneously by how relevant it still … Continue reading →
Here’s what Fernandez has to say about that Seidman op-ed (the one I previously wrote about here): The United States was founded on an extraordinary wager upon the nature of the human spirit; predicated on the belief that men valued … Continue reading →