The Humanities Threaten Imperial Ideology

Is it any wonder, then, that interest in them is fading in the elite educational institutions of the Empire?

Becoming an Anti-Dulles

Kinzer's book ought to be read by every man and woman of good will on the planet. I picked it up and could not put it down. I think part of its fascination for me was the fact that I grew up in the midst of men like the Dulles brothers: Scots-Irish Presbyterians with a Manichaean world view who never doubted for a moment that they knew what was best for everyone. And what was best for everyone was the enrichment of American corporations. Because wealth = happiness--it says so in the Bible.

I had no way of disputing that world view until, around age 12, I actually began to read the Bible. When I finally did so, I was disturbed by the fact that my reading of the sacred text was often at odds with the prevailing interpretation of people in my church and social milieu. Then, in my late 20's-early 30's, I began to read Tolstoy. To my surprise, he read the Bible like I did and drew very similar lessons from it. Now I was in trouble.

I understood deep down that I was not a Christian--had never been one--at least not of the kind I had always known. I could not mouth the creeds of the church any longer nor sing the national anthem nor pledge allegiance to the flag. With Tolstoy, I was a citizen of the world--and I would never relinquish my citizenship, not even for God or country. I am an anti-Dulles living in the world the Dulles brothers and their ilk have built.

Rouse up, O Young Men of the New Age! Set your foreheads against the
ignorant hirelings! For we have hirelings in the Camp, the Court, and
the University, who would, if they could, for ever depress mental, and
prolong corporeal war.

A Note From Gerard Manley Hopkins

"I am afraid some great revolution is not far off. Horrible to say, in a manner I am a Communist. Their ideal bating some things is nobler than that professed by any secular statesman I know of...Besides it is just.--I do not mean the means of getting to it are. But it is a dreadful thing for the greatest and most necessary part of a very rich nation to live a hard life without dignity, knowledge, comforts, delight, or hopes in the midst of plenty--which plenty they make..." [from a letter written by Hopkins to Robert Bridges].

A State of War of the Strong Against the Weak

Bleak House by Charles Simic.

In 1972, We Thought We Could Make It Happen...

Marxist Humanism

I want to make a concluding remark about [Marx's] theory of communism, concerning one of the most often misinterpreted features of his theory: when Marx speaks about the "historical necessity" of communism he does not understand this in the sense of communism's inevitability. What he means by this perhaps can be expressed as follows: a further long-run and uninterrupted (in a radical sense) development of human productivity and human culture will be possible only if the social conditions of contemporary industrial societies are radically changed in the direction of the abolishment [sic] of private property, organization of material production in a socially controlled and planned way, and on the basis of all this, modification of the entire character of the division of labor. Whether this would happen or not was for him a question of social practice and struggle, and not speculation. In the field of social sciences, according to him, prediction always has the character of pointing out alternatives, and the very predictions, the recognitions of possibilities, can become factors in their realization. Speaking generally about the development of higher social formations, Marx pointed out that the inner crisis of a social system can give birth to a higher social system, but can also pass into a long-run stagnation and decay, and can end up with the deeply regressive destruction of the entire civilization. What the "other" alternatives are for our culture and civilization Marx never tried to specify. He was not an unbiased viewer of history, but a revolutionist interested in the possibility of its humanistic transformation. --Gyorgy Markus, 1966.

Obamacare Makes Obama a Lefty?

The worldview of the NYT never ceases to amaze...

Aldous Huxley Predicts the Decline of American Democracy-1958