Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Decline of the West

  • ‘Democrats’ Aping National Socialists

    Excellent commentary here: In two years, the Nazis went from being a fringe party to having a stranglehold on the German government and people. It was then that they unleashed their previously subdued anti-Semitism, from boycotts to book burnings to de facto discrimination to de jure separation (Nuremberg laws) and, finally, to the Final Solution.…

  • Rod Dreher: Floating Above the Fray as Usual

    Here: We are somewhat insulated from this in America because we don't face the hideous energy crunch that Europeans do. Do you really think, though, that the US is going to be fine when one of our largest trading partners goes belly up? We are going to crash too, and crash hard. A word to…

  • Rod Dreher on Critics of the Benedict Option

    A re-post from 20 July 2015.  Things are falling apart so fast that July 2015 seems  like a long time ago, even to an old man for whom tempus fugit is an understatement. The original posting occurred roughly four and a half years before the annus horribilis of 2020. And here we are more than…

  • Adeimantus, Machiavelli, Bloom, and Strauss

    Recent events make it clear that the West is on the wane. The sun is setting on the Land of Evening. As the West goes under, the philosopher, like the proverbial owl of Minerva, spreads his wings in the gathering dusk so as to attain an altitude from which to survey the passing scene.  He…

  • Jerking (and Twerking) toward Social Collapse

    Thanks to 'progressives,' our 'progress' toward social and cultural collapse seems not to be proceeding at a constant speed, but to be accelerating. But perhaps a better metaphor from the lexicon of physics is jerking. After all, our 'progress' is jerk-driven. No need to name names. You know who they are.   From your college…

  • The Decline of the West Proceeds Apace

    Roger Kimball: Angry at the Gyndes River for sweeping away and drowning one of his sacred white horses, Cyrus decided to punish the river by having his slaves cut 360 channels into it, stanching its flow to a trickle. This we have done to ourselves, applying mental tourniquets to the arteries that fed us from…

  • Thomas Klingenstein on Trump’s Virtues

    Outstanding! Memorize it and propagate it. I am very happy to have discovered Klingenstein. He is right on target. Here is a short (4:28) explanation of the war we are in. This is the truth. Face it!

  • Memorial Day?

    What's to celebrate in a nation so decadent that it cannot preserve its monuments and memorials from leftist thugs and their globalist enablers, a nation so decadent that its 'leaders,' complicit in the erasure of history and the erosion of standards, have no plans to restore what has been destroyed? Politicians who won't take action…

  • An Oligarchic Pathocracy

    That may well be what we have going in the good old USA at present. You decide. Oligarchy: a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes. (Merriam-Webster) Pathocracy: "A system of government . . . wherein a small pathological minority takes control over a society of normal people."…

  • Christianity and Individualism

    Mark Tooley: Easter is a timely reminder of Christianity’s development of individualism, which is now widely derided by many on both sides of the political spectrum.  Yes. Many on the post-liberal left replace individualism, which they equate with greed and capitalism, with raucous identity politics stressing communal identities based on race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity or…

  • Madeleine Albright Dead at 84

    I will now have to leave off calling her 'Madeleine None-Too-Bright,' at least for a time. De mortuis nil nisi bonum, et cetera. This Revolver piece covers the essentials.  Unfortunately, Madeleine Albright’s long career represents all the failures and mistakes that, in just thirty years, have taken America from its superpower apex to the brink…

  • Moral Progress in the West and its Benchmarks

    A London correspondent writes, A question for you: is there a set of verifiable practices that would act as a benchmark for the Western Enlightenment? I can think of (i) widespread (but not universal) respect for science (ii) separation of church and state (iii) end of judicial torture (iv) abolition of slavery, etc. 1) I…

  • Is America Heading for a Systems Collapse?

    It would appear so. An historian marshals the evidence.

  • More Malcolm on Mass Formation

    Here at Motus Mentis, the weblog of Malcolm Pollack.  Pollack is an uncommonly good writer as you will see from the quotation below.  More importantly, he speaks truth against the current madness. In my earlier post on his American Greatness essay, after acknowledging his even-handedness, I suggested that  . . . he may be giving…

  • We Must Work with Atheists to Defeat the Left

    America is is where the West will make its last stand, or else begin to turn the tide. The rest of the Anglosphere appears lost. It is falling asleep under the soporific of 'wokeism,' the latest and most virulent form of the leftist virus. To assure victory we theists need to work with atheist conservatives.…