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The Rise Of The “Plutocratic Insurgency”
I’ve written before on the extreme social dangers that come about from excessive concentrations of wealth in the hands of a few. An important series of articles by Robert and Pamela Bunker in Small Wars Journal has taken this idea one step further: they have identified the current vast income disparities as a form of insurgency…
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The Hedonistic Philosophy Of Yang Zhu
It is an unhappy fate for a philosopher to be known to posterity only through his enemies. Quotes may be taken out of context, writings may be warped or obfuscated, and conclusions may be cherry-picked to present a picture far out of accord from the writer’s original intention. We do not know if this is…
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Friday Movie Roundup (3/10/2017)
The Bridesmaid (2004) Director: Claude Chabrol
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The Life Of Father António Vieira
One of the most compelling figures of Portuguese history–and surely one of the greatest practitioners of its prose–was Father António Vieira, a Jesuit missionary, orator, statesman, writer, and mystic. His career illustrates that stimulating mixture of conservative and progressive thinking that would come to characterize the Jesuit order throughout much of its history. He was born…
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The Wisdom Of Mercy From Ibn Hazm Al-Zahiri
We turn now to those founts of wisdom who have lessons to teach us. Abu Muhammad Ali Ibn Ahmad Ibn Sa’id Ibn Hazm (أبو محمد علي بن احمد بن سعيد بن حزم) is known to history as Ibn Hazm Al-Zahiri. Born in Cordoba, Andalusia (Spain) in 994, he achieved enduring fame for his incredible intellectual…
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The Lizzie Borden Murders
Writing recently about the O.J. Simpson murders has rekindled an interest in another infamous American crime story, one that is not as well-known to modern readers. The Lizzie Borden axe murders of 1892 were in their day somewhat comparable to the Simpson case: both trials were highly publicized, the jury’s perceptions were skewed by preconceptions…
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Wednesday Movie Roundup (2/28/2017)
These are the latest two films I’ve check out in recent days. Both of them are very good, if somewhat maddening in not resolving some plot twists I would have liked to see resolved.
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The Lazarus Taxon: Something “Raised From The Dead”
There is a concept in biology called the Lazarus taxon. The word taxon (plural taxa) means a taxonomic category, as a species or genus. The term is used to describe animals or plants that vanish from the fossil record for long periods of time, only to “reappear” at a different point in history. Organisms long thought…
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Revisiting the Simpson Case: Netflix’s “The People Vs. O.J. Simpson”
I was a first-year law student in 1995. When the whole O.J. drama broke, I followed it (off and on) in the media like everyone else. I don’t remember exactly what my feelings were about the case at that time, other than the fact that I didn’t think things were going to turn out well…
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Tuesday Movie Roundup (2/21/17)
Whiplash (2014) Director: Damien Chazelle
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Why Every Man Should Read “Robinson Crusoe”
By any standard Daniel Defoe (1659?-1731) is one of the most remarkable authors in English history. In versatility, energy, and practical wisdom, few can claim to be his peer in life experiences or in skill with the pen. He came to writing by a circuitous route. After fathering seven children, he threw himself into business…
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Six Ethical Principles To Rejuvenate Societal Health
I read recently that a very rare animal was observed in the wild in the state of Iowa for the first time in over one hundred fifty years. It is called a fisher; I had never heard of it before, but the biologists tell us that it is a predatory mammal related distantly to the…
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Some Questions From An Ex-Military Reader (Podcast)
I received a great email the other day from an accomplished ex-military man who is currently enrolled in a higher degree program at a major US university. He wanted to know my thoughts on these questions:
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How Benito Mussolini Took Power
Stalin biographer Stephen Kotkin spends several pages of his book discussing the lessons to be learned from Mussolini’s seizure of power in Italy in the early 1920s. It was something that happened gradually, in stages, when institutions that should have been able to bring him to heel did nothing, either due to their own lack…
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Abu Al Hasan On The Fleeting Nature Of Earthly Riches
We will now relate another anecdote from Ibn Khallikan.
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Dirk Benedict’s “Lost In Castration”
By some miracle I stumbled on this incredible article written in 2006 by actor Dirk Benedict. For those unfamiliar with his name, he is an American film and stage actor with a career that dates back to the 1970s. His “big break” came in the late 1970s when he won a lead role on the…
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A Letter To A Graduate Student
I recently received an email that asked the following:
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Coming In Summer 2017: Sallust’s “Conspiracy Of Catiline” And “War Of Jugurtha”
Intrigue…murder…the lust for power…and the fatal hubris that leads men to their dooms. These are some of the compelling themes of Sallust’s famous works The Conspiracy of Catiline and The War of Jugurtha. Considered the first of the great Roman historians, Sallust’s gripping narratives have been read for centuries for their penetrating character studies, timeless…
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Sunday Movie Roundup (2/5/2017)
Black Mass (2015) Director: Scott Cooper Boston has always been a more “closed” town than the other big east coast American cities. It’s always been a weird mix of provincialism and internationalism. And even within Boston, South Boston is a very different place from the other parts of the city. If you grew up in…
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Money Is Of Secondary Importance In War
Human nature being what it is, there will always be many different reasons why wars begin. All of these reasons ultimately find their roots in human passions: greed, the lust for power, or simply a desire to “put fortune to the test” (fortunam temptare) as the ancient Latin historians would say.
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Movie Roundup (2/1/2017)
I usually do movie reviews on Sundays, but what the hell. Sometimes it’s good to vary up the routine a bit.
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The World’s Fury, And The Spirit’s Repose
It should be a consolation to us to know that the world’s mindless injustices and furies are of old date. Every age sees and experiences them, and every man finds his own way of adapting himself to the clamor and tumult around him. Some throw themselves into their work; others retreat into solitude; some find…
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Successful In One Job, A Failure In Another (Podcast)
Herbert Hoover, the 31st president of the United States, is generally considered to have been a dismal failure as chief executive. Less well known is the fact that he was a brilliantly successful organizer of humanitarian projects around the world before he became president. Among those successes was his Russian famine relief operation in the…
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Seeking One’s Fortune, And Meeting George Washington
François-René de Chateaubriand (1768-1848) was a French writer, diplomat and historian famous for his posthumous autobiography Memoirs from Beyond the Tomb. The book is appealing for its admixture of blunt honesty and romantic reflection that capture the spirit of the times in a way that enables the reader to feel he is a participant himself.
Original copy of Cicero’s De Officiis (On Duties) published in Holland in 1642. From the collection of Fortress of the Mind.
Quintus Curtius 
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