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A collection of 249 issues

Ellis Sandoz, RIP

The Voegelin community is a puzzling one. To an outsider (i.e., to me), it seems insular but enthusiastic. It's like they're on their own island and eagerly invite others to the island but with one requirement: the others already be on the island. And what

In Praise of Clichés

Avoid stale phrases. Orwell called them "dying metaphors." Robert Fiske called them "moribund metaphors." They're sayings that have been used hundreds of time but haven't yet made it into regular vernacular. "Emotional rollercoaster," "It's a jungle out

Don't Kill Hudge and Gudge by Thinking Like Hudge and Gudge Writ Small

The struggle to reconcile our use of Amazon with our hatred of big corporations is a constant mental, even emotional, struggle, especially when facts like this are plopped in front of us: Money is power, and companies like Amazon suck this economic power out of local communities and concentrate it

Localism without Fundamentalism

We can applaud yesterday's small towns without worshipping them. We can appreciate the local without demonizing the central. But we also need to insist that today's progressives applaud yesterday and that today's centralizing gnostics respect the local. I'm afraid those just aren&

Are Saints Sent at Specific Times for Specific Reasons?

Every so often, spiritual lightning sears across a culture's landscape. The example of St. Francis of Assisi immediately comes to mind. So does St. Antony. Their intense holiness was bright and powerful, and left an indelible mark on the earth. We can't know for certain why

Zen in Brief

When Mahayana Buddhism traveled east out of India and into China, it mingled with Taoism. The offspring: Zen. Like all Buddhism, its ontology (i.e., its theory of what constitutes fundamental reality) is steeped in pantheistic monism. This means that the Buddhist believes all things are one. The same spirit

Dalrymple on the WNBA

Anthony Daniels aims at three of my favorite targets: (1) The relentless propaganda to push the WNBA on the populace (but in Daniels' case, he marvels at the propaganda to push female soccer in Europe), (2) tattoo culture, and (3) ugly buildings ("brutalism"). Underlying these three seemingly

Rabelais

One of my favorite writers, Albert Jay Nock, was a huge Rabelais fan. He wrote two books about him. From the first: It must be laid down once and for all, that the chief purpose of reading a classic like Rabelais is to prop and stay the spirit, especially in

When Gods Fight, Men Die

It is important for us to realize that mankind is doomed to live more and more under the spell of a new scientific, social, and political mythology, unless we resolutely exorcise these befuddled notions whose influence on modern life is becoming appalling. Millions of men are starving or bleeding to

Bertrand Russell Summarizes the Left Hemisphere

Science is "power-knowledge"