Category: Culture Matters
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Trump has Made News Great Again
Politics in hyperdrive. Who can keep up? And to what extent should one keep up? Here are a couple of articles that caught my eye: The Islamic Republic's New Lease on Life. Mercifully brief, and very interesting. In Foreign Affairs, by one Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar. I'd be interested in Caiati's and Soriano's comments. Elon Musk…
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Postmarked Utopia
Ed Farrell, a long-time friend and reader of Maverick Philosopher since April 2010, tells me that he has a Substack up and running, entitled Postmarked Utopia. Please do bring him some traffic. Here is the initial paragraph of his inaugural post: I've called this site "Postmarked Utopia" not because I live in Utopia but because…
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The Atheist
Substack latest. A rumination 'inspired' by Paul Brunton. An embedded article confronts Sam Harris, one of the "four horsemen" of the New Atheism, which is now old hat. As old hat as the expression I just used. There's nothing new under the sun, saith the Preacher, and in these hyperkinetic times, what's new gets old…
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The Message of Visible Tattoos
Top o' the Stack. Me? I sport no tattoos and never will. My dress is functional and tailored to the needs of the occasion. No one could accuse me of being a Sharp-Dressed Man
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The Dark Heart of Modern Chess
Hyperventilatory. Consume cum grano salis. Here is much better writing about chess by Grandmaster Raymond Keene.
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Richard Dawkins on Christianity and Islam
Here (HT: Catacomb Joe): Famed atheist and self-styled intellectual Richard Dawkins shared in a recent interview that he was “horrified” to find that Oxford Street in London had lit up its public signs and displays to celebrate the Muslim fasting period called Ramadan, just days before Easter Sunday. “I have to choose my words carefully: If I…
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‘Insurrection’ as ‘Fedsurrection’ and the ‘Vibe Shift’
The Jan 6 narrative crumbles as Roger Kimball reports in his Navigating the Vibe Shift of a Cultural Reckoning. But the 'vibe shift' in the direction of optimism faces stiff resistance. And so our man ends on a less-than-optimistic note: I, too, discern cracks in the Narrative. I seem to see the Overton Window being forced open…
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Multi-Racial but not Multi-Cultural: Self-Critique of a May 2017 Entry
In May of 2017, I wrote: The USA cannot help but be a multi-racial society, but if we cannot agree on a common culture for public purposes with English as its official language and the values of the founding documents as its foundation, then the end is in sight. But collapse takes time and those…
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Legutko on Entertainment
Legutko tends to exaggerate, as witness the final sentence in the following quotation, but the point he is making is true and important. In today’s world entertainment is not just a pastime or a style, but a substance that permeates everything: schools and universities, upbringing of children, intellectual life, art, morality, and religion. It has…
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Is the Enlightenment the Problem?
This is a redacted repost from 21 June 2015. In the subsequent eight years, we in the West are 'infinitely' worse off than before. Time to re-visit the topic and re-assess. Mournful was the tocsin Malcolm Pollack sounded in 2015; what must its sound be today? ……………………….. Malcolm laments via e-mail: Don't things seem to…
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No Day without Cultural Appropriation
Substack latest.
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Termitic Librarians
Library 'science' now attracts the mindlessly presentist, the terminally woke-assed, the viciously anti-civilizational, and the erasers of the historical record. See here and here. Build private libraries and be prepared to defend them. In your will, specify a worthy, like-minded heir to whom to bequeath the library that you have spent a lifetime building along…
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Rod Dreher on the Ben Op and the Bon Op
One of the few free ones. Excerpt: “The Benedict Option is not available to us; it is either the Boniface Option or destruction,” he writes. “You cannot run and hide from Trashworld. Our only option is to despise it and to fight back.” Leaving aside this inaccurate caricature of the Ben Op, what does Isker…
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Why Typos Don’t Matter Much and the Musical Watershed of the ‘Fifties
This is a re-post from 21 September 2011. I dust it off in dedication to my friend Dr. Vito Caiati, historian and old-school scholar who is excessively worried about typographical errors in his missives to me. He is not alone; he has recently been joined by long-time blogger buddy Tony Flood who shares Vito's worry.…