A recent headline read “Dividing forces are mounting in Europe.” A more charitable version might have said “Sovereignty Returning to European Countries” or “Self-Preservation on the Rise.” “Until just a few weeks ago the European world seemed to be in order,” reports Handelsblatt. “The freedom of travel [between E.U. countries] guaranteed by the Schengen Agreement...
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A Legend for Our Time
In the spring of 88 b.c., dozens of cities across Asia Minor united in a secret plot to kill all the Romans and Italic peoples—man, woman, and child—in their territories. How the plot was kept secret remains unknown, but the massacre was carried out successfully. Ancient sources indicate that almost all Roman and Italic residents...
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Frankfurt School Tories
It is a strange world in which allegedly conservative politicians will go to great lengths to demonstrate their politically correct bona fides. For years, we have witnessed this tendency within the Republican Party. A recent example is the new Republican Party website (www.gop.com), which one might confuse for the websites of the NAACP or La...
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Cicero’s Legacy
Once a believer in the blessings of modernity and classical liberalism, Dutch philosopher Andreas Kinneging now considers himself a “convert” to traditional thinking. He believes that the Enlightenment and Romanticism have brought “decline and deterioration, instead of progress and improvement.” Today, public discourse, directed by shallow pragmatists, reveals an historically illiterate ruling class. “Because we...
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Waiting for Charles the Second
“How will it be with kingdoms and with kings— With those who shaped him to the thing he is— When this dumb Terror shall rise to judge the world, After the silence of the centuries?” —Edwin Markham, “The Man With the Hoe,” 1899 “A state cannot be constituted from any chance body of persons, or in...
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Homogeneity Was Our Strength
“Diversity enriches education,” then-presidential-candidate Barack Obama commented in a Q&A session with The Chronicle of Higher Education. Students should be “exposed to diversity in all its forms,” and affirmative action is the vehicle to guarantee this goal. Contrary to the expectations of naive commentators who hoped we had entered a new epoch, the election of...
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Homeric Lessons
“Should one have lived, only to read the twenty-third song of the Iliad, he could not lament of his existence,” commented G.E. Lessing. Of course, in Lessing’s day, many of the literati could have read the Iliad in Greek. Today, the typical reader experiences the Iliad in translation, and he has over 100 translations to...
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Caesar on His Own
“The Republic is nothing, a mere name without form or substance,” Julius Caesar allegedly stated. The sentiment, certainly, was validated by the end of Caesar’s life, which marked the transition from an imperial republic to an empire eclipsing republican institutions. So bloody and tumultuous was this period, it is unsurprising that estimations of Caesar vary....
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The “Smart” Port
In saner times, countries had borders, and along these borders were ports for the inspection and tagging of goods coming into or leaving the country. The border, after all, would be the logical place to conduct such business, since it is the terminus ad quem cargo would be outside or inside a country. Globalization, however,...
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Globalization Transforms Kansas City
After a decade of living in Europe and various locales in the United States, I returned four years ago to the place where my family has long resided. My great-great-great grandfather, John Maget, along with his brother Rufus, bought in to the Platte County Purchase in 1847, which included lands north of Kansas City. They...