A strong observation from Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges’s The Ancient City: “It is a general fact, and almost without exception in the history of Greece and of Italy, that the tyrants sprang from the popular party, and had the aristocracy as enemies. ‘The mission of the tyrant,’ says Aristotle, ‘is to protect the people […]
How Populists become Tyrants — classic examples Read More »
Poem by Anonymous*: Here, richly, with ridiculous display,The Politician’s corpse was laid away.While all of his acquaintance sneered and slanged,I wept: for I had longed to see him hanged. * * * [Update: A reader informs me (thanks!) that Hilaire Belloc is the author of the poem.]
The Politician’s Funeral [Humor] Read More »
[Reposting from July, 2012, and with this update on the controversy over Hochschild’s book: Gilley critiques and Hochschild responds.] One of the most outrageous evils of the 19th and early 20th centuries was Leopold II of Belgium’s rape of the Congo. The story is well told by Adam Hochschild in King Leopold’s Ghost. King Leopold
*King Leopold’s Ghost* — slavery in the Congo Read More »
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902)Speech to Women’s Suffrage Convention, Washington, D.C. (1868) I urge a sixteenth amendment, because ‘manhood suffrage,’ or a man’s government, is civil, religious, and social disorganization. The male element is a destructive force, stern, selfish, aggrandizing, loving war, violence, conquest, acquisition, breeding in the material and moral world alike discord, disorder, disease, and
Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s 1868 “sixteenth amendment” speech Read More »
Essayist Joseph Epstein asks a question about philosophers: “What is it about the study of philosophy that tends to make brilliant minds stupid when it comes down to what are known as actual cases? Consider Martin Heidegger, Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, the four great names in twentieth-century philosophy: the first was a
“Why are philosophers stupid about politics?” Read More »
“The doctrines of Europe, were that men in numerous associations cannot be restrained within the limits of order and justice, except by forces physical and moral wielded over them by authorities independent of their will …. We believe that man was a rational animal, endowed by nature with rights, and with an innate sense of
Thomas Jefferson on the old doctrines of Europe Read More »
I usually think of Slavoj Žižek as a performance-artist-of-philosophy-sometimes-shading-into-clownishness, but he can be perceptive, especially when diagnosing the internal dynamics of his fellow leftists. Here is his taxonomy of left thinkers in terms of where they stand on the issue of enjoyment: “Leftist libertarians see enjoyment as an emancipatory power: every oppressive power has to
Žižek on pleasure and three types of leftists Read More »
Hardin is one of the most widely-read twentieth-century intellectuals, most known for his two pieces “The Tragedy of the Commons” and “Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping the Poor.” The two are intimately related, as one diagnoses a fundamental problem with resources and the other draws policy conclusions. A key quotation, in which Hardin states
Garrett Hardin bemoaning India’s 600 million population in 1974 Read More »