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…]
Even without a Christian civilization, Christianity remains a holy thing, but it would be a little thing. Partly because of a bad bargain that various Christian traditions made in coming to the United States, dominated after the War Between the States, by a liberal, non-Creedal form of Protestantism, Catholics and Orthodox and Lutherans and other … [Read more…]
Let me start by discussing war, a situation in which leaders of states often try to impose their will by wreaking havoc and unleashing forces of disorder, all the while thinking they can keep matters under control. Anthropologists, working with archaeologists and other pre-historians, now have strong evidence that the average level of violent killing … [Read more…]