The world is a much smaller place than we are aware. Things we do, actions we take, can have far-reaching effects that come back to us in ways we can never imagine. While events, places, and the flowing rush of time are shifting and transitory, the power of virtue is such that it transcends time and place. I was reminded of this recently after reading the Second World War memoirs of Col. Hans von Luck, a German commander who fought in all the major theaters of the European war.
Abu Talib Ibn Zabada was born in Baghdad in 1128 and lived his early life there, although his biographer Ibn Khallikan says his family was based in Wasit. He is described as a poet, jurisprudent, and administrator of exceptional talent and wit; his letters were said to be singularly refined. “His epistles,” says Ibn Khallikan, “are remarkable for the graces of their style, the elegance of their thoughts, the beauty of their ornaments and the delicacy of their allusions. In drawing up dispatches, he paid more attention to the ideas than to the cadence; his letters are elegant, his thoughts just, his poetry good and his merits are so conspicuous that they need not be described.”
This is probably the most serious question I’ve ever received from a reader. A very heart-felt email from a man who is faced with an extremely difficult situation: he has been contacted by a dying father who abandoned and abused him as a child, and who now wants to have contact with him. He is unsure whether he should re-establish contact. We offer some suggestions on how to arrive at a decision.
In our lives we often encounter people whose behavior seems to make no rational sense. I am referring to people who do things that seem to be against their own self-interest: those who say one thing, but do something else. We ourselves can fall into this trap on occasion. It is almost as if there exists some morbid consciousness in all of us, a voice calling out for us to exactly what we should not do.
Earlier this month, Dr. Robert J. Bunker and Dr. Pamela Ligouri Bunker published the long-awaited Plutocratic Insurgency Reader through the Small Wars Institute. Available in both Kindle and paperback, the book is a well-researched anthology of over thirty articles by fifteen different contributors, and is the first coherent attempt to document what I believe is one of the most important issues of our time: the ongoing assault on state and international institutions by globalized, transnational elites seeking to reshape such structures for their own exclusive benefit.
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A young man of 24 years has a lot of questions running through his head. He doesn’t know what he should be focusing on right now, and is not sure he should focus on business growth, travel, or family issues. Young men by nature are idealistic and vigorous, and sometimes need guidance to point them in the right direction. We offer some suggestions.
Philo of Alexandria, in his essay on agriculture (De Agricultura), points out that there is a difference between an ordinary tiller of the ground, and an actual farmer; and that there is also a clear difference between a shepherd and someone who just tends to sheep. In the same way, he tells us, there is a great difference between a rider of a horse and a true horseman.
There’s been a surprising amount of interest from readers about how to acquire high-resolution, artist quality prints of my Moonlight Baboon painting. After doing some research on how best to make it available, I’ve found that the most efficient and cost-effective way to do this is to use Fine Art America. It’s really amazing what they can do.
In this podcast we have a bit of fun suggesting who may be the fifteen greatest military commanders in history. It is, of course, a highly subjective exercise, and I need not be told how rash the proposal is. Nevertheless, we persist. I based the selections on a specific criteria, and this method is discussed in the podcast. The full list is shown below. My hope is that this exercise will generate some animated discussion.
In taking the measure of a man’s cultural refinement, we must examine the degree to which he is practiced in the art of hospitality. And when I say art, I mean this in a literal sense. Arts are not inborn; they must be studied and honed with constant use. A culture that teaches its members how to treat guests is a confident one; it is a culture that has, to some degree at least, liberated itself from the oppressions of acquisitiveness and greed, and has embraced some aspects of the communitarian ethic. It is also a culture that understands the value of reciprocity: the idea that a good turn done for one today, may mean a good turn done for oneself tomorrow.
Quintus Curtius 
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