…got some new material simmering… but I’ve been hiding in the library shelves the last week, otherwise trying to get some real world work done. Here’s a useful fragment for later use the next time we feel like discussing constitutionalism,…
Books
On re-reading Liberal Fascism: Defining Evil Down
The comforting exaggerations and ideological short-cuts, historical curse words, the imputation of the the worst imaginable intentions to all political adversaries, reflect an unreformed, self-defeating desperation. Maybe, as Goldberg writes in the last paragraph of Liberal Fascism, when protesting the other side’s insulting tactics, it’s past time to cry, “Enough!”
It wasn’t a very good year: 1938 – Hitler’s Gamble by Giles Macdonogh
[amazon-product]0465009549[/amazon-product] Considering the centrality of “Munich” to American thinking on foreign policy – and the centrality of the war that followed to what America has become – there’s an argument for considering 1938 to be as important to our understanding…
Posted in Books, History, International Relations Tagged with: Afghanistan, anti-semitism, Berlin, Cuba, Hitler, Iran, Iraq, Korea, Kuwait, NATO, Pre-Emption, Taiwan, Vietnam
How little you know: The Deniable Darwin by David Berlinski
The Deniable Darwin collects essays written from 1996 to 2009 mostly on the same general theme: That the insufferable pretensions and aggressive self-certainty of science ideologues prevent us from justly appreciating how much we actually have learned about the natural…
Books in Brief: THE LIFE OF BELISARIUS; I, SNIPER; THE WAR THAT KILLED ACHILLES
I ordered Lord Mahon’s The Life of Belisarius on a recommendation at NRO The Corner from Victor Davis Hanson. For the amateur history buff, perhaps the most interesting aspect of the book, which was first published in 1829, is its depiction of…
Tales from the Geopolitical Crypt: Seven Deadly Scenarios by Andrew Krepinevich
Seven Deadly Scenarios can be read and enjoyed almost as a collection of near future science fiction stories, though unlike sci-fi writers, who typically unveil the imagined course of future events elliptically, piece by piece, thus to keep the reader…
Portrait of a Failed Presidency: "What the Heck Are You Up To, Mr. President?" by Kevin Mattson
As though to make it inescapably clear that the Carter Presidency lacked the Mandate of Heaven, even the national 4th of July celebrations in Washington DC were rained out, and a week later Skylab came crashing to Earth…
If At First You Don’t Succeed… – WORLD WAR ONE – a Short History by Norman Stone
The point was supposed to have been progress, or loyalty, or self-defense, or empire, or enlightenment, or democracy, or honor, or justice, but the arc of modern history bends toward irony.
Just read: THE CAVALIER IN THE YELLOW DOUBLET
I won’t attempt a review of The Cavalier in the Yellow Doublet, the fifth book of Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s “Captain Alatriste” series, which is set during the decline of the Spanish Empire in the early 17th Century. Instead, I’ll note in…