Military history tells the story of human nature at its great heights and terrible lows. by Bruce S. Thornton // Defining Ideas In the latter years of World War I, Winston Churchill met with the novelist and poet Siegfried Sassoon. Sassoon was a winner of the Military Cross––he single-handedly routed 60 Germans and captured a trench […]
Why Should We Study War? Read More »
by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media We all know the usual reasons why we are prodded to read the classics — moving characters, seminal ideas, blueprints of our culture, and paradigms of sterling prose and poetry. Then we nod and snooze. Share This
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by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Today’s Washington journalists are like J. R. R. Tolkien’s ring wraiths, petty lords who wanted a few shiny golden Obama rings — only to end up as shrunken slaves to the One. Share This
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by Bruce S. Thornton Defining Ideas “To read the Latin & Greek authors in their original,” Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “is a sublime luxury.” Fortunately, for those who don’t read Greek and Latin, the great works of Classical literature are available in first-rate translations. The following five classics are some of the best works from
A Summer With Virgil Read More »
by Bruce S. Thornton City Journal Review of Why the West is Best: A Muslim Apostate’s Defense of Liberal Democracy, by Ibn Warraq, (Encounter, 2011, 286 pp.) Share This
by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Is Reading Good Books Over? There is great “truth and beauty” in Homer’s Iliad [1], but I would not try to make his sale on such platitudes. Share This
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by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online I am starting to feel as if I am living in a Vandal state, perhaps on the frontier near Carthage around AD 530, or in a beleaguered Rome in 455. Here are some updates from the rural area surrounding my farm, taken from about a 30-mile radius. In this
A Vandalized Valley Read More »
by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media A Look Back People just don’t disappear. Look at Germany in 1946 or Athenians in 339 B.C. Share This
Why Does the Good Life End? Read More »
by Bruce S. Thornton Advancing a Free Society One of Broadway’s big hits this season is the musical The Book of Mormon, a creation of the scatological geniuses behind the cartoon South Park. As one would expect, the show is “blasphemous, scurrilous and more foul-mouthed than David Mamet on a blue streak,” as the New York Times put it,
Running Scared of Islam Read More »