To be born an Englishman is to win first prize in God’s lottery. It’s a phrase often misattributed to Dr. Johnson or Rudyard Kipling, but in fact it was Sir Cecil Rhodes, the English mining magnate who discovered and lent his name to an African territory, Rhodesia, before that nation became Zimbabwe in 1980. As is so often the case when whites are no longer in charge of black people, Zimbabwe went rapidly downhill, with societal breakdown followed by hyper-inflation. At one time, there was a billion-dollar banknote in Zimbabwe. (more…)
Author: Mark Gullick
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CHAPTER 3
DENAISSANCEReverse-engineering the West
But what of those decadent ages in which no ideal either grows or blossoms?
Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution. (more…) -
2,243 words
In the first century AD, during the ascendancy of the Roman Empire, a writer named Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus was born in what would nowadays be Algeria. Known to posterity as Suetonius, he wrote on various, mostly antiquarian subjects, as did all the Roman literary class. (more…)
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5,945 words
CHAPTER 2
THE LAST GLASS BEAD GAMEDecommissioning The Universities
It is difficult to imagine that there is either the wherewithal or energy within the university to constitute or reconstitute the idea of an educated human being and establish a liberal education again.
Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (more…) -
CHAPTER 1
GOING UNDERGROUNDWho killed philosophy?
Philosophy bestows this boon upon us; it makes us joyful in the very sight of death, strong and brave no matter in what state the body may be, cheerful and never failing though the body fail us.
Seneca, letter to Lucilius. (more…) -
This is the preface to a book I started writing five years ago when it occurred to me that philosophy in the West is, if not dead, then certainly dying. The book is titled Unmourned Funeral: The Welcome Death of White Western Philosophy. Philosophy is my subject. In a way, it’s what I do. My doctorate is in philosophy, and as I advance in years I find myself spending more and more time reading it to the exclusion of other distractions. (more…)
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2,584 words
“It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”
Mark Twain
“It was still at the stage of clubs and fists.”
The Clash, “English Civil War” (more…)
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The Albert Memorial in London. (Image source: Wikimedia Commons)
The Albert Memorial in London. (Image source: Wikimedia Commons)
2,598 words
A Tale of Two Cities
It’s always instructive to compare the respective fortunes of England and France, those old enemies. And what better way than to follow the lead of Charles Dickens, take the cultural temperature of both London and Paris, and so tell a tale of two cities? We’ll start with my hometown. (more…)
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Sunil Sharan (Image source: RosettaBooks)
Sunil Sharan (Image source: RosettaBooks)
2,603 words
I can date my study of British politics quite precisely to a few days after 9/11. I heard a Muslim woman on the BBC’s Today program, sounding very pious and concerned about something which has become a regular Islamic stratagem following any terrorist attack: the danger of an “anti-Muslim backlash.” This is designed to engineer the sympathies of the listener, and the problem, she informed us, is that so many non-Muslims don’t know anything about Islam. My own reading was meandering down various dead-ends at the time, and I decided to take her implied advice and learn more about the religion, as we were told after 9/11, of peace. (more…)
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Nick Lowles, founder and Chief Executive of the antifa organization Hope Not Hate. (Image source: Gov.uk)
Nick Lowles, founder and Chief Executive of the antifa organization Hope Not Hate. (Image source: Gov.uk)
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The first point in occult science is by no means the advancing of assertions or opinions which are to be proven, but the communication, in a purely narrative form, of experiences which are to be met with in a world other than the one that is to be seen with physical eyes and touched with physical hands. — Rudolf Steiner, An Outline of Occult Science (more…)
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Felicia & Leonard Bernstein with Black Panthers leader Donald L. Cox in January 1970. (Image source: GetArchive)
Felicia & Leonard Bernstein with Black Panthers leader Donald L. Cox in January 1970. (Image source: GetArchive)
2,717 words
They [the Black Panthers] exist as a continual barometer to measure ourselves against — both in terms of lessons that have been garnered as well as challenges in terms of where we can improve and deepen our analysis. — Ainslin Pulley, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Chicago
The place had sunk back into its wonted quiet. The blended murmur of the unceasing city, which during the party had been shut out and forgotten, now penetrated the walls of the great building and closed it once more upon these lives. (more…)
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David Lammy, the UK’s new Foreign Secretary, who made sure to mention in his very first speech in the post that he is “a descendant of enslaved people.” (Image source; UK Parliament website)
David Lammy, the UK’s new Foreign Secretary, who made sure to mention in his very first speech in the post that he is “a descendant of enslaved people.” (Image source; UK Parliament website)
2,607 words
England swings like a pendulum do.
Bobbies on bicycles two by two.
Westminster Abbey, the tower of Big Ben.
The rosy red cheeks of the little children.
— Roger Miller, “England Swings”And so, as they say, it begins. Labour’s predicted landslide in last week’s United Kingdom general election proved to be just that, with the party winning 412 seats out of the parliamentary total of 650. It is the second-largest Labour majority in history in a general election which had the second-lowest voter turnout (a pathetic 52%) in that same history. (more…)
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Plato’s cosmology as depicted by Calcidius in his commentary to his fourth-century Latin translation of the Timaeus.
2,882 words
I am embarrassed by the world. I cannot believe that a watch exists and has no watchmaker. — Voltaire
Which of the patterns had the artificer in mind when he made the world? — Plato
Given the world we have created, or rather a world which has been created for us, whoever “we” are could do a lot worse than take advice from the Classical world. For the vast majority of us, our world is one we never made, and those who did are becoming intentionally isolated, remote from those whose lives they control, living as they do in a dry and ideological gated community. (more…)