Thought

What You First Create, You Must Then Defend

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Some people think that one big home run will set them on easy street for life.  They think that when they accomplish something, the game is essentially finished, and they can move on to something else.  But the world doesn’t really work that way.  Very often, the reward of labor is more labor:  but the new work is different in character from the old.  The creative labor of invention is replaced by the fighting labor of preservation.  We can see an example of this principle in the career of Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone.

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Why Worrying Is Pointless

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For a good part of my life I used to worry excessively about things.  When I was in college I worried about keeping up my grade point average and being able to complete Marine Corps Officer Candidate School; when I was on active duty I worried about doing my job well; when I started my law practice many years ago I worried about all the various thing related to establishing oneself in one’s profession.  And there are other examples of worrying that I need not rattle off here.  All of this worry, all of this stress, was largely self-inflicted.

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“Dark Globalization”: The New Dimensions And Continued Progress Of The Plutocratic Insurgency

Quintus Curtius Current News, Thought ,

We have previous discussed in these pages a new and largely ignored form of insurgency warfare:  the globalized elite’s coordinated, targeted efforts to dispossess the general public.  Dr. Robert Bunker (on the staff of the US Army War College) and Pamela Bunker coined the term “plutocratic insurgency” to describe this novel form of warfare.  In a brilliant series of articles published on the Small Wars Journal website, Bunker has made a compelling case that what he calls “extra-sovereign actors” (i.e., globalized elites moving themselves and their capital freely across international boundaries) have been permitted to wage non-traditional warfare against the societies in which they operate.

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Getting A Point Across With Tact And Authority

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One feature of great men is that they generally know how to handle themselves in a variety of situations. They tend to be flexible and agile; they will know when to scold, when to chastise, when to use the velvet glove, and when to use the hammer.  Only the experience of life can impart this kind of wisdom.  But we can at least prepare ourselves in some ways.  One of these ways is to read the letters of such men.  See how they interact with their peers.  Study how they solve various problems or issues that fall on their desks.  You will spend a good part of your life “putting out fires” at work and at home, so you might as well learn from the masters.

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Knowledge Cannot Be Confined Within Official Limits

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Information is like a living organism; it expands to fill the container in which it is kept.  Put some life form (it does not matter which) in some environment, and it will instinctively probe the outer limits of its habitat.  Knowledge is like this, too.  It can be suppressed for some time, but in the end, it cannot be held back forever.  It always disseminates in one way or another.  No matter how effective propaganda, official lies, and ideological correctness may seem, they can never hold back the tide of truth for an indefinite duration.

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Observations On Some Myths About War

Quintus Curtius Politics, Thought , ,

The Army Times recently published a post discussing some comments by Army Chief of Staff Mark Milley on current popular myths about war.  I liked his comments very much, and I take them as my starting point in this article.  More than anything else, we should see his remarks as a warning.  The United States has not faced a military adversary worthy of the name since Vietnam, perhaps not even since China and North Korea in the early 1950s.

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We Should Seize The Present Hour For Action

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At the beginning of this month I bought the special director’s cut of the Michael Mann film Collateral.  I don’t usually buy movies, having learned from past experience that it makes more sense to rent them.  But every rule should have exceptions; and it is a good thing to collect those movies that transport you to a specific place or mood.  And when you recall the mood, you revisit certain pleasurable sensations.  There is just something about the way Collateral is shot, the way it glimmers, that gives it a cool but intense patina.

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On The Remaking Of Character

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One of the apparent corollaries of the maxim that “character determines fate” is that character is static and unchangeable.  In the majority of cases this is undoubtedly true; but this truth should not be used as a license for us to lie supinely on our backs and let the swerve of the atoms in the void determine our future.  As volitional beings, we must act.  Forward movement is one of the imperatives of masculine virtue.  The negative personality takes refuge in the apparent indifference of the universe; but the active man, the healthy man, is too busy with his own affairs to fret over such exculpatory abstractions.  Each of us is responsible for his own fate.  Having accepted this, we will now ask how character can be modified to suit the will.

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Focus On Causes, Not On Pretexts

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The great Irish statesman and political theorist Edmund Burke wrote a seminal essay of political theory in 1790 entitled Reflections on the Revolution in France.  His purpose was to attack the intellectual underpinnings of the revolution and show, by reasoned argument, that the French revolutionaries were engaged in the height of folly by consciously turning their backs on the past.  The long essay was cast in the form of a “letter” to an unnamed “gentleman in Paris,” and stretched to nearly 360 pages.

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Sometimes It Is Not Advisable To Question Authority Or Tradition

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While it may be good in some instances to question inherited tradition and authority, there are many times when one should not.  Free-thinking individualism has its place, but there is an equally valid place for respecting the power of authority and tradition.  This point is amusingly illustrated in the two anecdotes presented below.  They are related in De Slane’s edition of Ibn Khallikan’s encyclopedia, but the first tale is originally found in the Egyptian historian Al Maqrizi.

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