Modern Israel is Anti-West
In this article, I hope to correct the way progressives think about modern Israel. I think much of our secular sympathy for Jewish people comes from the fact that the…
Unspoken questions wind their way through the national conversation. Where are we going? What can we expect in the future? Will we survive? How can we prepare? Anxiety is increased by omens in the sky and the weather. In myth and religion we hope to find promises and instructions. We hope to rediscover our foundations. But we also find lamentations. We are not children who deny the possibility of destruction and death. Not now. The worst is already upon us. We’ve seen families swept away in the flood and burned in the fire. Let’s face the future like wise men and women. Let’s sit down together like elders of the tribe. Let’s mourn what is lost and love what remains.
Irrationality as a Weapon Against the Enlightenment
I have previously criticized the Enlightenment, but now I think it may have been too easy to find fault. I was asking whether our present reality has benefitted from the…
Divisions in the Postwar Fascist International
Oswald Spengler was inside the Munich Beer Hall on November 8, 1923, when Hitler launched his putsch. Such encounters convinced him that the Nazis were the worst sort of proletarized…
Realists and the Radical Right
Professor Wen Yang claimed Anglo-Saxons missed the Axial Age. Professor Jeffrey Sachs blamed the West for a breakdown in Western philosophy. Both arguments are flawed.
Harvey on Class Nation and Nationalism
This article presents the views of Professor David Harvey on class, nation and nationalism. Harvey's recent video, published by Politics in Motion, touches on an important element of the Pinker-Mearsheimer debate about the Enlightenment.
Debating the Enlightenment and its Alternatives
This is a summary and critique of a debate hosted by the Institute of Art and Ideas. In the videos cited below, Steven Pinker and John Mearsheimer debate the Enlightenment and its alternatives. The subtitle is, Which ideals are the best guide to human betterment?
Christmas 2023
I want to quickly share a few videos and sermons that have come to my attention since I wrote the last article. I said that we need theologians to address questions that were raised in that article about the nature of God. I think some of the following links address this question.
No Christmas for Bethlehem
We no longer feel we are talking to fellow beings when we address our elected officials. And anyway, there is nothing left of the world we hoped to save. This is true of both physical infrastructure and human life.
Political Zionism is an Anachronism
Morris Jastrow wrote in 1919 that Israel is a 'glorified ghetto'. When you think about it, the conditions of Jewish life before the Enlightenment have been perfectly reproduced in Palestine.
Defeating Zionism
In the last century, events have transpired with no relation to the understanding Morris Jastrow Jr. tried to convey. The result is that in spite of his efforts, Zionism has prospered.