The Misanthrope
Wow, it's not often you absorb as much hatred as you'll find here: Gore Vidal in his final years. The novelist-Al Gore cousin-homosexual is one shockingly bitter man (heck, I didn't even know he was still alive): "Yet now, he says, it is clear the American experiment has been "a failure". It was all for nothing. Soon the country will be ranked "somewhere between Brazil and Argentina, where it belongs." The Empire will collapse militarily in Afghanistan; the nation will collapse internally when Obama is broken "by the madhouse" and the Chinese call in the country's debts. A ruined United States will then be "the Yellow Man's Burden", and "they'll have us running the coolie cars, or whatever it is they have in the way of transport".
And Still More on McDonald's?
Americans Spend More On Overdraft Fees Than They Spend On Fresh Vegetables.
Jouvenel Corner
I'd read quite a bit of Jouvenel before (overtly) running into his Catholicism. He approaches political philosophy like Aquinas approached metaphysics: without regard to revelation. His is a natural political philosophy, not a divine one, though for any honest thinker, one's religious roots--whether Catholic, Jewish, Hindu, agnostic, atheist, or other--come through. I don't think Jouvenel is any different, and when I read a footnote like the following that I found on page 134 of Sovereignty, I really enjoy it:
Herein lies the seriousness of the monophysite heresy. If Jesus had not entirely assumed man's nature, if he was merely God in disguise, it would follow that human nature would be powerless to imitate him; and it is imitation of him that has been set before us.
