2,392 words
Extremity = “the furthest point or limit of something.”
I watched the suspense-thriller movie, Extremities, for the first time in the late 1990s. It was one of those rare films that really grabbed me and remained stuck in my memory. Not being sure why that was, I recently watched it again to try to understand its impact. Having done so, the title now has a special significance for me. (more…)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, left, and David Hume.
3,901 words
“No good deed goes unpunished,” as the old saw goes. It puts a cynical, waggish twist on the perspicacious observation that acts of genuine generosity and kindness too often come to grief. Benefactors beware! Shades of Thomas Hobbes: “Man to man is a wolf.” (more…)
Walter Duranty
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“The strong man with the dagger is followed by the weaker man with the sponge. First, the criminal who slays, then the sophist who defends the slayer.” — Lord Acton
“There is no famine, nor is there likely to be.” — Walter Duranty, The New York Times
Walter Duranty, a British-born journalist, served as the Moscow bureau chief for the New York Times from 1922 through 1936. (more…)
Bill Browder, grandson of the former Chairman of the Communist Party USA and himself CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, spearheaded the Magnitsky Act in the Obama administration, which gives the US the ability to sanction anyone in the world deemed guilty of violating “human rights.”
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“Untruth did not begin with us; nor will it end with us.” — Alexander Solzhenitsyn
In June 2016, in what seems like light-years away in the continuing coming apart of American society, The Unz Review posted a piece by Israel Shamir, “The Untouchable Mr. Browder”. That Mr. Browder turned out to be William F. Browder, Chief Executive Officer of Hermitage Capital Management. Bill Browder, as he is known, is the self-declared “No. 1. Enemy of Vladimir Putin,” which he expounds upon in a 2020, 25-minute audio-only YouTube interview hosted by the University of Chicago. (more…)
Robert Conquest
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“Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.” — Robert Conquest, “Three Laws of Politics” (#2)
There is a surfeit of organizations that confirm the rule of this law as formulated by Robert Conquest. John Derbyshire (Isegoria) cites the Church as an example. The Catholic Church? The current Pope? Way too obvious to waste precious words. How about those starch-collared, teetotaling, Bible-thumping Baptists? Well, sorry. Hell-fire, apparently, is now reserved for “racists.” (more…)
1,961 words
Expert: “A person who has a comprehensive and authoritative knowledge of or skill in a particular area.”
Begging the question: “The fallacy of begging the question occurs when an argument’s premises assume the truth of the conclusion, instead of supporting it.” (more…)
Miss me?
1,106 words
Last week the simulacrum President of the United States put up his middle finger to white America and announced his intention to nominate a black woman to replace Clinton appointee Stephen Breyer, who is retiring from his seat on the United States Supreme Court. Nobody seemed to be surprised at yet one more “historical first” on the way, courtesy of a corrupt white Democrat. (more…)
1,929 words
“Other revolutions only incite ambition — ours imposes virtue.” — Maximillian Robespierre
Year three of ROC — the Reign of Covid — will soon be upon us. The “old normal,” bad as it was, already has for me a faraway, nostalgic call. (more…)
Karl Marx, Chief Adolescent who never worked a day in his life.
1,543 words
If I ruled the world,
Every day would be the first day of Spring
–Tony Bennett, “If I Ruled the World”
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.–1st Corinthians, 13:11
One at times has to marvel at the hordes on the Left. They cling tenaciously to adolescence; never do they grow up and come to terms with reality. (more…)
Anthony Fauci, the much less funny new incarnation of “Dr. Science,” with an unintentionally hilarious President.
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The New Year is upon us and so is the tradition of making resolutions to be done with bad habits. I kicked my bad habit of listening to National Public Radio (NPR) long ago after concluding — being the slow learner that I am — that NPR functioned as a propaganda arm of the Democrat Party. Its target audience is the affluent, Prius-driving, “progressive type”; its voice, when I used to listen to it, a choir of feminist-activist busybodies: Linda Wertheimer, Susan Stamberg, Nina Totenberg, and the intrepid Cokie Roberts. Collectively, they confirmed H. L. Mencken’s sally: “No woman is really humble; she is merely politic.” (more…)
1,969 words
Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses. — H. L. Mencken
Will Hillary Clinton ever go away and leave us in peace? Only when she is lying in her coffin with a wooden stake driven through her heart can we hope to see the last of her. (more…)
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Host Greg Johnson was joined by learned Counter-Currents writers Stephen Paul Foster, Mark Gullick, James J. O’Meara, and Kathryn S. on the last installment of Counter-Currents Radio to share their lists of five essential books every educated person needs to read — plus, of course, answer YOUR QUESTIONS — and it is now available for download and online listening.
Topics discussed include:
00:05:00 Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War (more…)