We don’t need to guess about how republics fail: we have history and philosophy to guide us. Republics end with tyrants, but that is an odd thing since a republican will hate tyrants by nature. How do we get tyrants? One wise man wrote on tyranny and the human soul and he tried to understand how tyrants were made. He knew that nobody was born a tyrant, but tyrants exist. He saw a so-called democracy advocate torture and murder the... Read more
For almost four hundred years, my family lived in western Virginia and West Virginia. We are a state so beautiful that if any place finds a spot that looks like West Virginia, they put a fence around it and call it a state park. When Mr. Lincoln was President and Virginia seceded from the Union, we had the courage to secede from Virginia and fight (both sides of the family) for Union and liberty. I have a bust of Mr.... Read more
Whenever I believe good intentions are enough, I recall standing at the tomb of Maximilian of Mexico. There have been many worse political ideas than making a mildly liberal archduke of Austria the Emperor of Mexico with French arms, but few that worked out so badly for everyone. The Hapsburg family was decaying in power by the middle of the nineteenth century, but still had a reputation as a defender of Catholic Europe. Mexico was a mess and owed several... Read more
America faces five months of incredibly negative political campaigning. Sigh. We could all dash around and be miserable about politics or we could give up and retreat in despair. I say: “No.” Nothing we can do now will change the next five months (for good), but we can make sure that our grandchildren are in a better position than we are. We can educate: teach reading, writing, critical thinking, Socratic wisdom, and Christ’s philosophy. If we do, we will produce... Read more
There was a time when a sneer of the elite was about “middle class morality,” but now we have achieved moral unity. Elite, middle class, and poor, we all divorce, watch porn, and follow our hearts. We have mocked the church ladies to the brink of extinction and leveled the cultural playing ground by elevating pop culture and avoiding anything challenging (new or old). The result is a cultural elite that think comic books are Shakespeare and Babbittry is classy. We are philistines... Read more
No nation lasts forever. The United States of America nearly fell apart in the Civil War and faced stresses early in the Industrial Age that destroyed other nations (such as Russia), but which we survived. We should not take our stability for granted. I have pointed out many times that the order created by the World War II generation is over . . . for good and bad. Global organizations built after the War have outlived their usefulness and in... Read more
One of my children once said: “I don’t want to be too good. It would be boring.” This was a sensible thing as the budding Socrates was shooting for moderation: too much of any virtue becomes a vice. The only problem was the use of “good.” If goodness is “rule keeping,” then too much goodness is not just boring, but wicked. When third-class passengers were warned by wrathful stewards that they would have to pay for the damage they were... Read more
There are some men so great that even when they are hardly involved in an event, they dominate it. So it is with Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar. The great man gives his name to the play, but was assassinated early. Death doesn’t keep a Shakespearean character from making an appearance later, but it does limit the number of lines. Brutus, the noble Roman who helps kill his friend in an attempt to save the Republic, is “there” far more than Caesar, but... Read more
If only fools fall in love, then only greater fools miss love for intellectualism. Intellectualism is the pursuit of intellectual pleasure without the balance of a total life. We are not just brains, but beings with hearts and bodies and so need more than intellectual pursuits to be whole. This is a lesson schools forget when they cancel recess for more time in the classroom as if their young students could possibly cram more into their heads with ten extra... Read more
William Shakespeare may be the greatest writer in the English speaking world and a brilliant Christian thinker, but he was also limited by his time period. Shakespeare’s science is acceptable, given what was known when he wrote and his theology is mainstream Christian given the limits of the sixteenth and seventeenth century of turmoil in the European Christian world. In some areas of sexual ethics, Shakespeare’s time was saner than our own, but in other areas, such as the nature... Read more
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