“If the missiles had remained, we would have fired them against the very heart of the U.S., including New York. The victory of socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims.” — Che Guevara, November 1962 Many of the violent protesters at the G20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany, in July were clad in standard-issue anarchist-nihilist riot gear: […]
One Steel Knife; One Copper Kettle — Killer Consumerism
Consumerism is killing us. This is known. The oceans are choked with plastic from billions of packages, used once and discarded. Landfills are crowded with acre upon acre of … stuff. Our insatiable appetite for more and more stuff is not just burying the planet; it’s killing us spiritually. We know this, too. We feel in […]
She Was With The Russians, Too
I went home with a waitress The way I always do How was I to know She was with the Russians, too? — Warren Zevon, “Lawyers, Guns, and Money” During one of the 2012 presidential debates, incumbent president Barak Obama shanked his opponent Mitt Romney with a well-prepared and well-deployed line: “Gov. Romney, I’m glad that you recognize that al-Qaida is […]
It’s Not The Apocalypse
Rome was not built in a day, nor did it fall suddenly to a horde of screaming, blue-painted savages. Some scholars argue that Rome never really “fell” at all, at least as we imagine the “Fall of Rome.” Instead, the Empire slowly succumbed to its own weight and rot, like an old drunk with a three-pack habit and […]
The Barbarian Virtues
“Over-sentimentality, over-softness, in fact washiness and mushiness are the great dangers of this age and of this people. Unless we keep the barbarian virtues, gaining the civilized ones will be of little avail.” — Theodore Roosevelt — Rough Rider; President of the United States We all know we’ve lost something. Our culture has lost its spark, the element […]
