In The Road to Serfdom, Hayek noticed the many students who went to Europe (especially to France and Germany) to study in the 1920s and 30s: “Many a university teacher during the 1930’s has seen English and American students return from the Continent uncertain whether they were communists or Nazis and certain only that they […]
“Violence on many sides” claims and Hayek’s warning Read More »
Thomas Hager (p. 240) describes well the attitude of a majority of students and professors within the universities, when Hitler and and his Culture Minister demanded that all Jews be removed from their professorships: “German university students were, in general … devoted to making Germany great again. They were strongly pro-Nazi. Among faculty members, there
Forcing professors out, 1933 edition Read More »
Olympe de Gouges’s first-wave feminism and her The Declaration of the Rights of Woman (1791). The first two items: “1. Woman is born free and remains equal to man in rights. Social distinctions may be based only on common utility. 2. The purpose of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible
Olympe de Gouges’s 1791 declaration of women’s rights Read More »
When women got the vote fully at the national level: 1893 New Zealand 1902 Australia 1906 Finland 1913 Norway 1915 Denmark 1917 Canada 1918 Austria, Germany, Poland, Russia 1919 Netherlands 1920 United States 1921 Sweden 1928 Britain, Ireland All other countries: Granted later or not yet granted. Note: Six of the fifteen are British or former British colonies; the other nine are northern European. (Also worth
Where women first got the vote and when Read More »
Reading postmodern history can be frustrating, with its philosophical antipathy to facts and truth and its ideological priors. Here’s an example — Jean-François Lyotard on the rise of authoritarianism: Saddam Hussein is a product of Western departments of state and big companies, just as Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco were born of the ‘peace’ imposed on
Correcting postmodern history — imperialist version Read More »
How culture gets made. At the Library of Social Science, a selection of quotations — philosophers, poets, historians, and other intellectual leaders — on German militarism from Kant’s time to World War I. For example, who said this? War itself, if it is carried on with order and with a sacred respect for the rights of
Quotations on militarism in the lead-up to World War I Read More »
After my talks at the University of Kasimir the Great in Poland, I received a gift from Professora Ilona Błaszczyk: a book on Seneca on education. Professora Błaszczyk is a scholar of classical thought who has translated Seneca’s work into Polish. A striking feature of the book, though, appears on the title page: a Third
Third Reich stamp in Seneca book Read More »
