Realism, as the term is used in foreign policy, builds upon the same foundations as Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand analysis of economics. It is an empirical analysis at the level of human actors without necessarily making any explicit attempt to understand why it is that those actors behave as they do. Hence, the invisibility. And … [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…]
Most modern Americans don’t truly believe in biological evolution because it conflicts with a once plausible idea which remained strong in ghetto-Christianity after the separation of Christian understandings of Creation from mainstream science and philosophy; the idea is “human beings came into being once and for all and nothing can undo that”. Most Westerners, including … [Read more…]
Paul Robinson is a professor at the University of Ottawa. At his website, he states: “I write about Russian and Soviet history, military history, and military ethics.” His general view of the politics seems to be describable in non-standard terms as “liberal realism”. For example, while making it clear he is far more liberal than … [Read more…]
I’ve been reading a fair amount of works of narrative history lately, most dealing with the history of the Celtic peoples—especially those of the British Isles; lately, I’ve been reading more general histories of the British peoples for greater context. For decades, some prominent historians have been integrating archaeological and linguistic knowledge into their analyses … [Read more…]
One of the main themes of my writing has been a tripartite understanding of the human being, individual and communal, as mind and heart and hands. We think and we feel and we do. The triad of mind and heart and hands is like the Real Presence in being somehow a way of speaking of … [Read more…]
I don’t get it. What world do political theorists and philosophers, political commentators of all sorts, live in? For decades, their fellow practitioners of the humane arts and sciences, the historians, have been trying to deal with the realities of human biological existence—William McNeil, the distinguished historian from U of Chicago, was well-known for trying … [Read more…]
In March, Justin Raimondo wrote an essay, Rand Paul, Revisited, in which he quoted Garet Garrett: “There are those who have never ceased to say very earnestly, ‘Something is going to happen to the American form of government if we don’t watch out.’ These were the innocent disarmers. Their trust was in words. They had … [Read more…]
By “liberalism,” I mean a closely related set of systems of freedoms of a specific sort, those emphasizing and even `enforcing’ an individualism which in its moderate form is compatible with the traits of many northwestern Europeans and fewer other Europeans and—for the most part—far fewer others. [An example of enforcing individualism would be changes … [Read more…]
Based on greatly expanded knowledge about human being, individual and communal, even Christian churches which have passed through periods of excessive claims to authority have come around to acknowledge there are many realms of a complete and perfect human life which lie beyond their institutional understanding and authority. I’ve discussed this in various places in … [Read more…]