History

I have another piece on the Sixties up at Crisis Magazine. It orginally started with an epigraph from The Doctrine of the Mean by Confucius that got ditched because the site software couldn’t accommodate it:

“The ancients who wished to illustrate illustrious virtue throughout the empire, first ordered well their own states. Wishing to order well their states, they first regulated their families. Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons. Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts. Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts. Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost their knowledge.”

The epigraph was the source of the “solid advice” I refer to about the middle of the piece.

My latest piece at Crisis Magazine explains the Sixties as a stage of modernization (not necessarily a good thing).

I have a new piece up at Crisis on the illusion and reality of the Sixties. What people expected to be liberation and soaring horizons turned out to be the rise to power of a severely flawed ruling class.

Medieval history has its striking themes and incidents. Beyond that, it’s fascinating for us today, or at least for me today, because it’s the source of the modern Western world, so it’s infinitely close—our modern thoughts and institutions can all be traced back there—but it’s also infinitely far away.

Peter Brimelow begins his book Alien Nation by calling current immigration policy “Hitler’s posthumous revenge” on America.

I just finished another of Belloc’s books, Characters of the Reformation.

I’m about half-way through Prescott’s History of the Conquest of Peru (available free online). It’s a great book from the great age of New England letters.