Stream of Consciousness . . . Kinda, Maybe
Man, brutal weekend, with a brutal week ahead. Today's post will be half-SoC and half-normal. If I like it enough, it might become my normal.
First, a great passage from this review of a book by France's Jean-Francois Revel (died 2006): "'If you take away anti-Americanism there is nothing left of French political thought.' He goes further. Totalitarianism is Europe's great modern innovation, its gift to the world, and Europeans consciously or unconsciously resent that the United States has been preventing them from fully developing this great modern innovation of theirs." . . . . Whenever I want to throw up my hands and leave my pitiful world of letters, cutting-but-entertaining prose like that keeps me going. Maybe, someday, I'll write something that good. I lack the talent, of course, but it's so much more pleasing to blame the harried nature of my family situation. . . . . That quote came out of National Review. I quit reading NR years ago because I thought it had become juvenile, but I picked up a few issues lately. They proved enjoyable. . . . . Maybe the world outside of letters is alright after all. Does one really want to end up like this? "During one night of carousing, Sarte propositioned Koestler's soon-to-be second wife, Mamaine. Koestler scrambled up the stairs on all fours, still determined to tackle Sartre over Marmaine. When Camus tried to intervene, Koestler lashed out, giving Camus a black eye. Camus leaped at Koestler and had to be clawed off by the others, and Koestler disappeared into the night." (American Spectator, March 2010). Buncha reprobates. And I like Camus, and thoroughly enjoyed Koestler's The Sleepwalkers (one of the best refutations of the scientific humanists' exaltation of Galileo you'll ever find). I have no use for Sarte, of course, because I'm not a total freak, homosexual-wannabe. . . . Gotta get a copy: Forgotten Founder, Drunken Prophet: The Life of Luther Martin (Amazon link). Kauffman writes with erudition and bite. And he has a vocabulary the size of Alaska. His Look Homeward America is one of the most engaging books I've read in the past five years. Now he writes about one of the earliest men to see the Federalist scheme for what it's become: a leviathan. When trying to understand something evil, it helps to learn about someone who was there when it started. Imagine how much you'd know about evil if you interviewed someone who saw Lucifer falling from heaven. It's something like that here.
