“If we look at culture as a superorganism with its own immunological mechanisms, we can recognize modern societies as being profoundly dysregulated, and this gets worse the more modern they get.”
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Tag: Essay
The Joy of the Knife: On Autoimmune Responses in Politics
The Second Elizabeth, a Life Appreciated
“From that distant day when I saw her ride down Poonamallee High Road in Madras, the epitome of regality and restraint, Elizabeth II did her best in balancing the demands of tradition, the weight of history, the requirements of society and culture both at home and abroad, and also attended to her family.”
Canada and the Many Problems with Euthanasia
“The story goes on to detail another Canadian citizen who was repeatedly and continuously offered euthanasia, to such an extent that he began recording these occasions.”
The Queen: 1926-2022
“It is too much to say that the world will not see her like again; there is within all of us the potential to aim for the higher moral life that the Queen embodied, if we engage in the striving that she did that is necessary to attain this.”
Review: “People Love Dead Jews” by Dara Horn
“All of this is captured in twelve essays in novelist Dara Horn’s powerful and coruscating book on why people still love dead Jews over living Jews. It is a book that shreds modern piety and sophistry in equal measure.”
British Conservatism Is Doomed
“To put it simply, if one cannot accumulate capital, he will not support capitalism; and if one has no solid basis for conserving one’s family and community, which property provides, then he will not become a conservative.”
Review: Matthew Continetti’s “The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism”
“It is to Continetti’s credit that he develops his narrative after this with fair-minded even-handedness for the most part, even if he lets his own views bleed through in the chapters concerning President Trump’s rise and fall, as well as the mix of grift and genuine intellectual ferment that he dragged in his orange wake.”
Excerpt: Jason Pack’s “Libya and the Global Enduring Disorder”
“And hell, if General Haftar was going to win, President Trump would happily give him some tips about where to buy vacation properties in Virginia Beach. His steering of the private ‘confidence building’ chit-chat with General Haftar to real estate matters was not actually as ridiculous as it might seem.”
Review: China Miéville’s “A Spectre, Haunting: On the Communist Manifesto”
“Sentimental and sycophantic in turns, it may be hard to dispel the impression that Miéville is merely a hysteric. All the same, A Spectre, Haunting is a post-Nietzschean book, which leans into the charge of ressentiment. Spurning subterfuge, Miéville quite openly asserts that justice and revenge amount, more or less, to the same thing.”
Review: Barry Strauss’s “The War That Made the Roman Empire”
“Barry Strauss, America’s foremost popular classicist, brings the story of Actium to life in ways that rival and surpass Shakespeare’s tragedy Antony and Cleopatra and Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Cleopatra…”
Why Is This Not Enough?
“Jackson was out walking on his property in Kansas one spring day and called Jensen with a simple question: ‘Why is this not enough?'”
Being Critical of Enlightenment Triumphalism Isn’t Always Wrong
“Having considered the evidence, it seems more accurate to say that the Enlightenment project presented itself as a savior from ignorance and poverty but was really a movement to dethrone the old social order rooted in hierarchies and aristocracies.”
The Oversimplification of the American Founding
“Devotion to reading non-politicized history and putting it into context is necessary and something to which we should diligently commit.”
The Quarrel within American Conservatism
“The current politics of California, which more than any other American state has been shaped by mass immigration from Mexico, should likewise shake the confidence of conservatives who scoff at the alleged illiberalism of immigration hawks.”
Limits in a World That Erases Them
“There is a paradox to life that an acceptance of limits, borders, and boundaries can be the most liberating thing of all.”
