Tag: Manifest Destiny

2,035 words

Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)

I have had a difficult relationship with Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). Parts of this film are so emotionally powerful as to be almost unendurable. Indeed, before I began work on this review, I had seen Once Upon a Time in the West only one time in full, on a rented VHS tape in the 1990s. I knew it was a great film, so I bought the VHS. But I could not bring myself to watch it again. (more…)

6,367 words

Introduction here, Chapter 5 Part 2 here, Chapter 7 here

Translated by F. Roger Devlin

In the eighteenth century, in order to put a definitive end to the wars of religion, liberalism attempted to “pacify” society politically and ideologically. (more…)

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Hypocrisy there is in the story, and weakness, false pride and vaunting, deceit, poltroonery, ugly perversions, and baleful frenzies. But there is more also. Through the story runs the scarlet thread of courage and the golden thread of heroism. — George R. Stewart, Ordeal by Hunger

It may be trite to state that people show their true colors in extreme circumstances, but what better way is there? James Cameron certainly mocked the hubris of the Titanic true believers in the first half of his iconic 1997 movie, but the numbers of the disaster reveal a chivalry which speaks fairly well of the people who traveled and served on that ill-fated, immortalized vessel. (more…)

109 words / 2:09:40

Host Nick Jeelvy put together The Best Year Ever extravaganza on The Writer’s Bloc last weekend, where audience favorites Fullmoon Ancestry, Jim Goad, Mark Gullick, Richard Houck, Greg Johnson, Gaddius Maximus, James J. O’Meara, Kathryn S., Thomas Steuben, Karl Thorburn, and the Z Man recounted their successes and the lessons they learned in 2021, and it is now available for download and online listening. (more…)

2,756 words

Richard Lyman Bushman
The American Farmer in the Eighteenth Century
New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2018

Most of us who are not farmers are tempted to take farming for granted. We certainly see the results of farming in the produce sections of our supermarkets. Beyond that, we have pleasant images of industrious country folk in denim overalls just doin’ their thing amid amber waves of grain. (more…)

1,963 words

Greg Grandin
The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America
New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019

In this excellent and quick-to-read book about the border wall and its place in history, Greg Grandin builds upon the work of historian Frederic Jackson Turner (1861–1932). (more…)

3,288 words

S.C. Gwynne’s magnificent Empire of the Summer Moon hits as hard as literature can hit and offers history as a form of sublime entertainment. I believe the author wouldn’t take all the credit for his book’s success, since the subject matter — which is, as the subtitle tells us, the rise and fall of the nineteenth-century Comanche nation — is so fascinating, so packed with action, so rife with contradictions, so laden with heart-wrenching drama, and so existential in its meaning, the story pretty much writes itself. (more…)

John Gast, Manifest Destiny, 1872

67 words

I was interviewed by Reactionary Tree and the rest of the Manifest Destiny crew on American politics, the Alt Right, White Nationalism after the November US Presidential election, and the books and thinkers who influenced me the most. I think it went very well. Click here to listen.  (more…)

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California is the jewel in the crown of the American Union. Of all the states it contains the largest economy. Indeed, California’s economy is one of the largest in the world.[1] (more…)