“Americans have not moved beyond mythical consciousness. Moreover the form of the classical monomyth, with its symbolic call for lifetime service to a community’s institutions, allows us to highlight its absence in the distinctive pattern of what we call here the American monomyth. Although there are significant variations, the following archetypical plot formula may be …
Some Protestantism as Arch-Romanism
“The holy community which Calvin sought to set up in Geneva represents in some ways a completer integration of Christianity with civilization than anything Europe had yet seen. It is true that there emerges within Calvinism, especially in its later Puritan developments, a more negative attitude toward the cultural amenities than had been present in …
War That Aims for Peace
“I will never meddle with any strife but that which shall have peace to be the end of it. No war is good upon any terms, taken up upon the justest ground, unless it aims at peace. That soldier is a murderer who sheds blood not in reference to peace. The swords and ensigns of …
The Cape and Beret Problem Again
“Before romanticism declared art the province of a talented, bohemian few, drawing and painting were both common scientific tools and signs of personal refinement” (Virginia Postrel, The Substance of Style, p. 170).
Oh, Yeah
“Would you receive benefits? Bestow benefits then. Would you have mercy? Be merciful then. Would you be commended? Commend others. Would you be loved? Then love. You be the judge yourself; you be the lawgiver of your own life. That which you hate, do not to another. Cannot you endure reproach? Do not reproach others. …
Mammon and Managed Markets
Jeff Tucker lets off a little steam here. HT: David Field. But since I have linked to the von Mises site, let me just say something about secular economic libertarianism. There are two points to make about it. First, it is an idol. Second, it is an idol that virtually no one bows down to. …
Reinventing Yourself
“I like that merges into I’m like that. Identity prevails” (Virginia Postrel, The Substance of Style, p. 101).
He’s Right Here
Once there were two girls, the best of friends. They played together, went to school together, and grew up together. They even made a point of attending the same college together. Nothing could separate them, or so they thought. One day, when they were juniors, a young man in their class began showing one of …
Gratitude for the Laws
Enlightenment modernist types want laws to run everything, all by themselves, and they want this in every department of human thought. It doesn’t matter if we are talking about logic, or science, or economics. They want the whole schbeal run by the law of non-contradiction, the law of gravity, and the law of supply and …
Always Smite the Commies
I have mentioned before the fact that I am pleased to have participated in the Cold War, first as a child doing the public school nuke drills at Germantown Elementary in Annapolis, and then later as a sailor looking at Russia through a periscope. But personal experience aside, the hot wars of the first part …