Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Political Conversions

  • Ronald Radosh on David Horowitz: A Critical Appreciation

    On very rare occasions, something surfaces at The Bulwark worth reading. Radosh, who is well worth reading, gives his take on Horowitz's flipping of his ideological script, and takes him to task for his late extremism. But how is this judgment by Radosh not itself extreme: What David is being celebrated for is the opposite…

  • Every Generation Faces a Barbarian Threat . . .

    . . . in its own children.  A Substack entry in honor of David Horowitz, recently passed, from whom we the teachable have learned so much. We salute you, sir, and we will carry on to the best of our limited abilities.

  • Slouching Toward Totalitarianism

    Can Trump save us? Klingenstein: Is our regime totalitarian, emerging or otherwise? What makes it so? How far along are we? Can we fight back? Ellmers: I think the essay that Ted Richards and I wrote for your website, and the several excellent responses that you published, cover this pretty well.  Klingenstein: How much can Trump fix it? Ellmers: Very hard…

  • Trotsky’s (Misplaced) Faith in Man

    On 20 August 1940, 84 years ago today, the long arm of Joseph Stalin finally reached Leon Trotsky in exile in Mexico City where an agent of Stalin drove an ice axe into Trotsky's skull. He died the next day. Yet another proof of how the Left eats its own. The last days of Lev…

  • Another Useful Idiot Crosses My Path

    I'm the chess guy hereabouts. A year and a half ago I got a call from an 86-year-old retired chemist with an interest in the game. A meeting was arranged, a game was played, and then the talk turned to politics. The old man told us that he had voted for Biden out of revulsion…

  • Civil Courage and Practical Dissidence

    This just over the transom from Malcolm Pollack: The problem, Bill, with your call for prudence is that courage is what encourages courage in others, and vice versa.  But it's true also, as both you and Moldbug remind us, that in a predatory environment we should remember that we are prey. I agree with you about the confrontational folly of open…

  • Three Notes on David Mamet

    Top o' the Stack. The third note sends the reader to How the Democrats betrayed the Jews. Mamet is right about the Dems. He also rightly notes that Christianity bears some responsibility for anti-semitism: It began with the fall of the Jewish state in 77 CE. Afterwards, we find the Christian libel that the Jews…