Let me go to the ever reliable 1913 edition of Webster’s once-fine dictionary, listing just two definitions of `covenant’ which seem most relevant to my discussion: A mutual agreement of two or more persons or parties, or one of the stipulations in such an agreement. [Appropriate example:] Then Jonathan and David made a covenant. –1 … [Read more…]
There is much talk and many words being spoken or written about elites, those who are destroying what was once good in the West and who have concentrated much wealth in their hands. These are the famous 1% or even 0.1% or still smaller groups of the ultra-wealthy and ultra-powerful. Some serious thinkers in academia … [Read more…]
Recently, I read The China Mirage: The Hidden History of American Disaster in Asia by James Bradley. In early chapters, Bradley describes the American role as junior member of Great Britain’s Opium Trade in China. The Americans were freeloaders of a sort, relying upon the British Navy and Army to prevent the Chinese government from … [Read more…]
I’m reading The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson and find it interesting that Isaacson sees matters in terms of individual effort vs collaboration, parallel to my efforts to deal with human being in its individual and communal forms. The research laboratories such as … [Read more…]
As I move forward on my project to make sense of human being as both individual and community, I’m reading in certain areas of mathematics (topology and differential geometry and abstract algebra and others) and also trying to keep up my readings in history and literature. The project threatens to swallow me at times, but … [Read more…]
The title tells it all, but—of course—I have a bit more to write. We are somewhat realistic about the inner-city results of disorder in modern human communities. Gangsters come to local power. Thuggish young men begin to form gangs which fight for control of the distribution of heroin and other drugs in a few blocks … [Read more…]
Rod Dreher posted an interesting essay on March 23, 2016: Millennial Landslide. I’ll start with a snippet of a quote he provided from another source: The percentage of Americans who prayed or believed in God reached an all-time low in 2014, according to new research led by San Diego State University psychology professor Jean M. … [Read more…]
Historical narratives will typically note that the Magna Carta was a result of struggles between an unpopular king and a group made up of secular lords and lords of the Catholic Church in England. It’s actually a pretty complicated story which played out over centuries and also had a long prologue, but the point is … [Read more…]
[I am reposting this essay because it shows how I’ve been dealing for more than five years with the problems of self-righteous blindness in Americans, beginning at least with the Puritan Fathers of New England. Puritanism—Calvinism in general—was one of the most important of the early ideologies infected with radical individualism. And, true to form, … [Read more…]
I’ll beat again on a drum, though perhaps a different region of that large and complex drum. Let’s imagine a Catholic confessional booth with a sign over the entrance: If you feel good about it, it’s not a sin. Don’t bother to enter. This is one of the possible sins against the Holy Spirit: To … [Read more…]