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Does India’s oldest political dynasty face oblivion? In a new AEI “In 60 Seconds” video, Sadanand Dhume describes how the defeat of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty in the southern Indian state of Karnataka could be a sign that this is possible. Watch the video here.
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RICHARD FEYNMAN AND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLEBy EPPC Fellow Algis Valiunas
The New Atlantis The modern world is sometimes called disenchanted, denuded of magic, because science has annihilated the invisible homeland of the spirits, where angels, demons, and God himself were believed to dwell. But Richard Feynman spoke unabashedly of the wonders and miracles to be found in nature as modern science describes it. Read More (See also Mr. Valiunas’s piece for the Weekly Standardexplaining that physics was “glorious play” for Feynman.) Analysis: Benedict XVI’s unpublished letter—God is key to understanding human rights By Andrea Gagliarducci, Catholic News Agency on May 14, 2018 03:39 pm The final question, for Benedict XVI, is always God. Can a state be built without God? And how much can the state involve itself in [...] Read in browser » Cardinal Eijk, Pope Francis, and problems of governanceBy Christopher R. Altieri The basic dynamic of this pontificate is quite clear, and it leaves far too much unclear. [...] Read in browser » HOW TO MAKE A CARING AND CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF POPE FRANCIS By EPPC Fellow Luma Simms The Federalist A new collection of essays offers up illuminating and respectful critiques of Pope Francis’s attitudes toward capitalism. Read More The Suicide of the West: A Tale of Two Miracles
John Horvat II “There is no God in this book.” Thus reads the provocative first sentence of Jonah Goldberg’s latest release, The Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics is Destroying American Democracy. This declaration is perhaps an unintended summary of the book about the crisis in the West. From it, […]Read More Notre Dame To Establish New American Home For Solzhenitsyn Research
mentioning Michael S. Bernstam via Notre Dame News In 2018 — the centenary of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s birth and the 40th anniversary of his prophetic Harvard commencement address — the University of Notre Dame will launch several initiatives connected to the work of this novelist, critic of Communism and 1970 Nobel laureate for literature. Through his writing on the system of forced labor camps in the Soviet Union, Solzhenitsyn brought worldwide awareness to the devastating core of totalitarianism The British Way of War – Balancing Fire and Manoeuvre for Warfighting
From The Wavell Room: “To paraphrase a famous philosopher, “opinions about tactics are like arseholes… everyone has one.”
May 1968: the Forever Protest
Fifty years after what Parisians call “the events,” a participant reflects on the French penchant for revolution. THE LURE OF OUTSIDERISMBy EPPC Hertog Fellow Yuval Levin
National Review Online Across society, people with roles to play inside institutions instead see those institutions as platforms for them to perform on, and the performance they offer up is generally a morality play about their own marginalization. As a result, too often no one claims ownership of the institutions of our society, and so no one accepts responsibility for them. Read More An Amazonian Trade Strategy for Africa
Carl Manlan urges the continent's economies to emulate the platform strategy pioneered by America's e-commerce giant. Liberal Totalitarianism Yanis Varoufakis argues that the relentless commodification of privacy has made individual self-ownership impossible. Ten Weimar Lessons
Harold James urges all democracies to learn from the political, economic, and social conditions of the early 1930s. At 200, Marx Is Still Wrong by Russell A. Berman via Defining Ideas Marxism was never about achieving an egalitarian society. It was about the pursuit of raw power. Marxism "The Opium Of The Intellectuals" quoting Thomas Sowell via Troy Media Karl Marx is buried in England, in the north London suburb of Highgate. I know that because I came across his grave in the summer of 1964. Topped by a large bronze bust on a marble pedestal, the tomb is hard to miss. Karl Marx a tool to 'win the future' for China, Xi Jinping says (Deutsche Welle) The Chinese president has praised Karl Marx as the "greatest thinker of modern times" ahead of the bicentennial of the German philosopher. Xi's German counterpart, meanwhile, was far more critical. Governments can try to play favorites, but leadership in the tech sector comes from free markets Mark Jamison | AEIdeas Governments can indeed play favorites and create wealth for some at the expense of others. But world-class innovations that benefit both the creators and citizens emerge from free markets and innovator relationships. Karl Marx, Zombie
The philosopher’s admirers continue to try to animate a corpse.
Egypt continues at profound risk: Motherland Lost: 1 of 2: The Egyptian and Coptic Quest for Modernity (Herbert and Jane Dwight Working Group on Islamism.) by Samuel Tadros.
In Motherland Lost, Samuel Tadros provides a clear understanding of the Copts—the native Egyptian Christians—and their crisis of modernity in conjunction with the overall developments in Egypt as it faced its own struggles with modernity. He argues against the dominating narratives that have up to now shaped our understanding of the Coptic predicament--their eternal persecution, from the Roman and Byzantine emperors to the rule of Islam, and the National Unity discourse--asserting rather that it is due to the crisis of modernity. Linking the Egyptian and Coptic stories, the book argues that the plight of Copts today is inseparable from the crisis of modernity and the answers developed to address that crisis by the Egyptian state and intellectuals, as well as by the Coptic Church and laypeople. The author asserts that the answers developed by Egyptian intellectuals and state modernizers to the challenge modernity poses revolved around the problem of Islam. The Copts, then, although affected, like their fellow Egyptians, by the challenge of modernity, were faced with a separate crisis: a specific challenge to their ancient church and the need for a new orientation and revival to be able to deal with modernity and its discontents. Tadros concludes that the prospects for Copts in Egypt appear bleak and are leading to a massive Coptic exodus from Egypt. AMAZON BOOKS
“A kink in Europe’s climate during the fourteenth century indirectly triggered a seven-year cataclysm that left six million dead, William Rosen reveals in this rich interweaving of agronomy, meteorology, economics and history.... Rosen deftly delineates the backstory and the perfect storm of heavy rains, hard winters, livestock epidemics, and war leading to the catastrophe.” --Nature
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CategoriesArchives
February 2024
EXAMPLE OF SUCCESS IN U.S. FOREIGN POLICY ACE VENTURA
PAUL RAHE: REALISM IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS, SPARTA
CONSCIENCE & TEMPORAL AUTHORITY
SHAKESPEARE
POSITIVE LAW vs. CONSCIENCE
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