Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Decline of the West

  • The Erasure of History at the University of Leicester

    Another incident in the suicide of the West. And in England of all places. The battle appears to be lost in the mother country and in the rest of the Anglosphere with the exception of the United States of America. Here is where the West will make its last stand, or else begin to turn…

  • Diversity Worth Having

    Diversity worth having presupposes a principle of unity that controls the diversity. Diversity must be checked and balanced by the competing value of unity, a value with an equal, if not greater, claim on our respect.   Example. ONE language only in the public sphere makes possible MANY voices to be heard and understood by…

  • Can it Happen Here?

    It is happening here. We are no longer the land of the free and the home of the brave, and we haven't been for a long time. Most Americans are now willing to give up their birthright, liberty, for a mess of pottage. Safety and security are their main concerns. The orchestration of fear by…

  • Our Unprecedented Cultural Predicament

    Michael Anton says here what many  of us have been saying for years, but no one that I know of has ever said it better. One question that has been exercising me of late is: How long can a nation last that erects monuments to the worthless while destroying the memorials of the worthy? Here…

  • The Trial of Kyle

    The Rittenhouse trial was not about the 17-year-old primarily, but about one's right to defend oneself with lethal force against a lethal threat. Hence the great significance of this case. An absolutely crucial moral and legal principle is at stake. The righteous Right won this time, but the fact that the pernicious Left tried to…

  • Colander Girl

    With apologies to Neil Sedaka, Calendar Girl.  A 'pastafarian' idiot was allowed to wear a colander in an official DMV photo in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.  Bring on the hoodies, the sombreros, the ski masks . . . .  Story here. Does this have anything to do with the decline of the West?  Something.  It is…

  • The State under Leftism: Totalitarianism with Bread and Circuses

    Although the state under contemporary leftism is totalitarian and demands conformity and submission in matters of moment, it tolerates and indeed encourages the cultivation of a politically inconsequential individualism of private self-absorption. A people given bread (food stamps and other forms of infantilizing dependency), circuses (mass sporting events), dope (legalization of marijuana), HollyWeird pornography and…

  • Civilization Requires Deterrence

    Wisdom from Victor Davis Hanson. There is precious little of it on the Left. We are awash in the deleterious consequences. Excerpt below the fold.

  • Two Related Political Mistakes

    1) One is the idea that we can all live together and get along despite deep differences in language, race, religion, culture, political convictions and basic values.  This, the contemporary liberal position, either is or tends towards the idea that there are no limits on productive and mutually beneficial interaction among  very different types of…

  • Gluttony: Another Sign of Decline

    So what can we teach the Muslim world?  How to be gluttons? Another sign of decline is the proliferation of food shows, The U. S. of Bacon being one of them.  A big fat 'foody' roams the land in quest of diners and dives that put bacon into everything.  As something of a trencherman back in the…

  • Soul Food

    People are generally aware of the importance of good nutrition, physical exercise and all things health-related. They understand that what they put into their bodies affects their physical health.  Underappreciated is a truth just as if not more important: that what one puts into one's mind affects one's mental and spiritual health. The soul has…

  • Is the US Becoming the SU?

    I've been warning of this for years. Ed West, America has become its own worst enemy. Excerpt: Communists saw their political beliefs as so all-encompassing that even science was political: if science contradicted the goals of communism, it wasn’t science. In today’s United States the slow death of liberalism has resulted in the blatant politicisation of…

  • The Fix We Are In: How Should We Respond to the ‘Woke’ Revolutionaries?

    The difference between paleo-liberal and post-liberal responses to the 'woke' Left is well described in a recent Substack entry White tribalism is a third response. I have been entertaining (with some hospitality) the notion that whites may need to go tribal pro tempore, for the time being, in order to defend themselves and their interests (which…

  • The Philosopher’s Consolation: The Owl of Minerva Spreads its Wings at Dusk

    It may be too late to make America great again. Where is the glory that was Rome? How Nations Slip from Greatness to Obscurity

  • Facebook Latest: Princeton Drops Greek and Latin Requirement for Classics Degree

    Here I've been saying it for years: A 'LIBERAL' IS ONE WHO HAS NEVER MET A STANDARD HE DIDN'T WANT TO ERODE. I suppose it is all in pursuit of that beautiful thing they call 'equity,' that is, equality of result or outcome. Mathematics  is called 'racist' because blacks as a group are not good…