Great men make laws, and greater men interpret them.
If a leader wishes to achieve immortality, let him organize, arrange, and codify a body of law for his people. Many of the greatest leaders (Numa Pompilia, Lycurgus, Solon, etc.) have been lawgivers. The monuments of stone have crumbled, but the laws remain.
To codify is to bestow immortality.
I read this weekend an article in the BBC that I interpreted as a good thing. The article was discussing a recent decision of Pakistan’s Supreme Court to replace English with Urdu as the official language.
I should say at the outset here that I have never been to Pakistan and know nothing about its languages. So why was I happy to see the Pakistan elevate Urdu as the official language? This is the reason: it shows that the dominance of English can be challenged.
I was talking to a friend earlier today, and the conversation happened to be diverted into the topic of hucksters, pitch-men, and carnival-barkers.
After thinking about the conversation, my mind wandered off to some of the late-night “pitch-man” advertising I had seen years ago.
The Sufi order called Qadiri was founded by Abdul Qadir Gilani Al Amoli (1077–1166). He was born at Nif, which lies to the south of the Caspian Sea. The Qadiriyya Order is a large one and has many adherents in the Islamic world.
There is a teaching story that I came across recently that reminded me of some of the stories told by the Stoics. It stands for the idea that the right thing must be done for the right reason; and that actions without pure motives remain worthless.
I have adapted this story from Indries Shah’s The Way of the Sufi.
A peasant once planted come vines out of a desire to create something beautiful and produce something of worth. But the vines he planted were the type of vine that only bore fruit after many years.
I wanted to write something in response to some recent articles and commentary I’ve seen from colleagues and friends of mine. It concerns the subject of college.
Much of this recent commentary, while well-meaning and making valid points, nevertheless paints a picture that is in need of qualification.
So I wanted to share my thoughts.
Is it a waste of time? Should you go? Should you go to a trade school? Should you start working?
We do not often think about how knowledge is gained or transmitted. We simply take it for granted that some idea or morsel of information crosses our path, which we then incorporate into our storehouse of knowledge.
Or do we? Is this really how information is, or should be, passed on?
Here is a good story of palace intrigue and conspiracy. We turn our attention to late antiquity, to the Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy.
Amalasuntha (c. 495-535) was the daughter of Ostrogothic King Theoderic the Great. When Theoderic died, his grandson Athalaric nominally became king. But being a child, the real power lay with his mother Amalasuntha, who ruled as regent.
I was talking to my father on the phone earlier today. He was telling me that he had been speaking recently to another man he knew. It had been a sad conversation with this friend of his.
This man had suddenly discovered he had serious health problems. Basically, he found out that he had prostate cancer issues.
“You know, it’s amazing,” he told me. “There is all this push in the culture here for awareness of women’s health issues. We hear about breast cancer awareness week. We hear about how we should care about female slavery in the Third World. We hear about how we should care about reproductive rights. We hear about how we should care about all things about women’s health.
I had conducted many jury trials in state court before my first jury trial in federal court. One of the differences in federal court was that the attorneys had the ability, after the trial was over, to review the written critiques that the jurors had left behind.
In a previous article here we recounted the dramatic fall of one of the Emperor Justinian’s venal officials, John of Cappadocia. The key roles of this drama were the Empress Theodora and her amoral compatriot Antonina (c. 484-565), the wife of Belisarius. It is now time to relate yet more adventures of this depraved yet admittedly fascinating figure. Almost all of what we know about her and her unscrupulous maneuverings comes from the historian Procopius, whose Secret History (Anecdota) is a scorching indictment of Justinian, Theodora, and their court. He is not an impartial source; and he seems to have been a snubbed official who revenged himself on the court by chronicling their indiscretions for posterity. Yet there is some truth to his accounts, and his is not a voice that can easily be dismissed.
Quintus Curtius 
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