One of the primary functions of literary criticism is to impose a certain order on the subject, the text. In a very basic sense, it can be thought of as a set of instructions for the reader of the text, not unlike those packed along with a dishwasher or a swing set. However, there is a significant difference in that...
Speculations on at Tendentious Science
It is a widespread belief that we can learn lessons from reading history. Of course, it is not often said what it is that we can learn, and historians are divided as to what the lessons of history really are. The opinion of most seems to be that we should read history in order to observe its ironies. That is, no general patterns, no indication...
Of Communists and Marxists
Maurice Isserman is one of the more resilient members of the radical generation that came of age during the 1960’s. Although his apocalyptic ambitions were frustrated, he refused to succumb to gloom, setting out instead in search of a “tradition that could serve as both a source of political reference and an inspiration in what now was clearly to be...
Two Cultures
Four decades before Hillary Clinton coined the term “Deplorables,” Chronicles predicted how the battle lines in the culture war would be drawn.
Making a Morass of Metaphysics
Most people know nothing about metaphysics and wish to know less. The case is not that they do not actually govern their lives in harmony with a set of metaphysical principles, for that is simply not an option. As Aldous Huxley perceived: “It is impossible to live without a metaphysic. The choice that is given is not between some kind...
Solzhenitsyn and Democracy
The name of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has fallen on hard times. My many public lectures on this author convince me that his sympathetic admirers are legion, but even these admirers are troubled that the press commentary on him seems to be fairly consistently negative. While almost all of his Western critics allow that Solzhenitsyn is a majestic presence on today’s generally...
Comment
Hillman writes of “the governance of the gods.” It is morenreasonable to assume that both men are attracted to the Buddhistnconcept, according to which there is no self, only a flux ofnsensations cut up into discrete and illusionary consciousnesses.nThis view was shared by philosophers from Heraclitus to Nietzsche,nand it has had decisive influence on devotees of Orientalnwisdom. Jung discovered this...
Church +/- State (Part 1)
Church ± StatenA DIALOGUEnThe Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in AmericanRichard John Neuhaus: The NakednPublic Square: Religion andnDemocracy in America; Wm. B.nEerdmans; Grand Rapids, MI.nJames Hitchcock is professor of historynat St. Louis University. His latestnbook is The Pope and the Jesuits,npublished by the National Committeenof Catholic Laymen.nGeorge M. Marsden is professor ofnhistory at Calvin College and editornof EvangeHsm in...
Confluences – From Boring to Bootless
One of the best things about most of America’s past Presidential elections is that they have really decided so little. A remarkably centrist cultural and social consensus has dictated that, despite all of the vehement campaign rhetoric, both major parties have usually agreed on a wide range of fundamental issues. This national consensus has often made for dull elections, as...
Screen
Goodbye, Peter Pan The Big Chill; Directed by Lawrence Kasdan It is unique in that it has something for virtually everyone to hate. Consider the characters, all eight. They are the types of people that our parents warned us about in the late 60’s and early 70’s: not the drug pushers who lurked behind bushes, as they had been identified...
Russia’s Bloody Gold
‘Lasciate ogni speranza” -Inferno, by Dante Alighieri The history of gold mining in Russia—a record of the greatest abuses of human rights ever perpetrated—has seldom been told. The use of slave labor in state-owned Russian mines goes back to the 19th century, when Lithuanian, Polish, and Ukrainian patriots who rebelled against Russian occupation were put to work mining gold while...