Victor Davis Hanson reminds us that nothing is new under the sun, and the old books remind us that we’ve been here before. (via Ace) We can learn from classics that most of us are more likely to resent superiority than to reward it, to distrust talent than to develop it. With classical training, our… Read More Why You Should Read the Classics
…I found myself overladen with Things to Do. You know the story. Blogging will be light for the forseeable. Right now, enjoy some Dante: I found myself in dark woods, the right road lost. To tell about those woods is hard – so tangled and so rough And savage that thinking of it now, I… Read More Mid-Way on Our Life’s Journey…
Coming soon from Riposte Publishing.
[The following post will be of no interest to people who are not fans of George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series.] This is me, calling it. (h/t: Finish the Book, George) When the HBO series started, I knew this wouldn’t work. I knew that the series would go faster than the books,… Read More George Will Not Finish the Book(s)
Since I began the process of attempting to read Civil Disobedience, I’ve had in the back of my mind a typically starchy takedown of him by P.J. O’Rourke in his 1996 book All the Trouble in the World. I quote at length: Thoreau took the bad ideas and worse ideals of the primitivists, added the pitiful self-obsession… Read More P.J. O’Rourke on Thoreau
Over at Wired, a lawyer named James Daily has done a quick (to the extent that lawyers do anything quick) analysis of the legal contract drawn up between Bilbo and the dwarves in The Hobbit. It’s a fun read for those interested in the intricacies of law, and manages to avoid turgidity. For the most part, Daily… Read More The Hobbit: An Unexpected Legal Conundrum
Civil Disobedience was a quick read, and provocative, if also strangely tedious, and occasionally downright whiny. So provocative, in fact, that I feel an essay coming on. I’m thinking long form, semi-fisking, rather like the opening chapters of John Locke’s First Treatise on Government. Check this space for further details.
I received The Joy of Hate for Christmas yesterday, and devoured it in a day. It’s a quick read, and most of it tells me something I learned long ago: that “tolerance” is a rhetorical slight-of-hand whereby progressives grant themselves a license to demonize, terrorize and condemn. So to the extent that it didn’t reveal anything… Read More Greg Gutfeld Wins at Life
Am currently reading The Education of Millionaires: Everything You Won’t Learn in College About How To Be Succesful, on Instapundit’s recommendation (how much money do use suppose Reynolds has made Amazon over the years). It’s maybe the book I’ve been looking to read for a long time. Money quote, on the Art of Earning a… Read More You can be a Millionaire, once you figure out how to earn a Million dollars
A writer quickly moves from one project to another, and I have one suited for these troubled times. I am fascinated, and long have been, by the dynamics of revolution, ever since first tasting the heady brews of Pareto and de Tocqueville. A while back, I wrote an essay, which some of you may have… Read More A Man May Never Have Too Many Books
Content Blues 