“A stranger hurrying as fast as he could over the icy sidewalks looked in. He saw a circle of singing people bathed in the clean white light from a tree, and his heart did a somersault, and the image stayed with him; it merged with him even as he came home to his own children, […]
There was a time when I thought Michael V. Hayden and his ilk were scum, but, as Hayden himself acknowledges: “You can only dehumanize an enemy from a distance” (238). Once I let Hayden into my head, he gave my liberal, civilian ass a serious reality check. Despite its nonlinear format and a bevy of […]
“‘A king is a creature of the moment,’ he went on. ‘He’s constantly under threat, from rebels within his own kingdom and from neighboring monarchs. He needs allies.’” ––The Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett, loc. 7395 “I liken the intelligence-policy dialogue as a room with two doors, one labeled intelligence, the other […]
“‘Highborn people make poor servants. They are disobedient, resentful, thoughtless, touchy, and they think they’re working hard even though they do less than everyone else––so they cause trouble among the rest of the staff.’ He shrugged. ‘This is my experience.’” ––The Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett, loc. 6638 “We make much in […]
“I have often compared the current evolution of cyberspace to the last great age of globalization, the centuries of European discovery. That era, for all its accomplishments, jammed together the good and the bad and the weak and the strong in ways that had never been experienced before. What the Europeans got out it was […]
“It’s not just our safety but our character as a free people that is at stake here. Every nation is required to balance the needs of security with the needs of liberty. Thanks to James Madison and a bunch of his friends, we have planted our flag well on the side of liberty in that […]
“In September 2005, following the London Tube bombings, Manningham-Buller (now chief of MI5) advocated that ‘there needs to be a debate on whether some erosion of civil liberties we all value may be necessary to improve the chances of our citizens not being blown apart as they go about their daily lives.’ I realized later […]
Several chapters from Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue were instrumental in my undergraduate thesis, but I never got around to reading the whole book until now. This is a grand and fascinating journey through the history of ethics, fueled by MacIntyre’s argument for a modern renaissance of Aristotelian thought. He begins with this assertion: The language […]
“‘What if heaven is real, but only in moments? Like a glass of water on a hot day when you’re dying of thirst, or when someone’s nice to you for no reason, or…’ Mam’s pancakes with Mars Bars sauce; Dad dashing up from the bar just to tell me, ‘Sleep tight don’t let the bedbugs […]
“I still hear the sounds of the falls on the Columbia, always will––always––hear the whoop of Charley Bear Belly stabbed himself a big chinook, hear the slap of the fish in the water, laughing naked kids on the bank, the women at the racks…from a long time ago.” ––One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by […]