One of the most striking aspects of America’s founding is how many men of such great quality joined in the enterprise. They were men of different talents, different temperaments, different classes, different places. And thus they fitted together almost perfectly, certainly better than some of them knew. In Boston – then, believe it or not,…
Category: History
Review: Imbeciles
See if you can follow this chain of logic. Human defects – mental, physical, and moral – are carried through heredity. In order to eliminate these defects from the human race, the genes that cause them must be eliminated from the gene pool. In order to eliminate such bad genes, the carriers of those genes…
We Are (Not) the Hollow Men
In the last year of the Civil War, Confederate leaders in Charleston, South Carolina turned the city’s horse-racing track (the Race Course, they called it) into a prisoner-of-war camp. They herded Union soldiers into the track’s interior, forcing them to live there without any shelter. In these miserable conditions, 257 Union soldiers died. The Confederates…
Summer, Intellectuals, Imbeciles
Summer is here early, and I don’t say that because of the weather, which is, at this particular place and time, overcast, rainy, and certainly no warmer than 60. I say it because the school year is over and done, and I’m settling into summer routines. My job takes less time than the classes, with…
Review: James Madison – A Life Reconsidered
James Madison, more than a Founding Father, is the father of the Constitution – the author of that document, less dazzling but more solid, more worthwhile than the Declaration of Independence. In her new biography of our fourth president, Lynne Cheney asks us to consider again James Madison, his achievements and their meaning. James Madison:…
Review: Outpost
Christopher Hill spent a lot of time in the world’s hotspots – Kosovo, Bosnia, North Korea, post-surge Iraq. If you have never heard of him, I’m not surprised. Diplomats are rarely household names. Outpost: Life on the Frontlines of American Diplomacy is Christopher Hill’s memoir. He had many consequential jobs: working on the negotiations that…
Blog Tour: A Different Kind of Courage
Who Was Dr. Joseph Warren? A Guest Post by Sarah Holman The early years of the American Revolution have been almost completely forgotten. Actually, the entire history of that war is often condensed down to these events: The Boston Tea Party, The Midnight Ride/Lexington and Concord, the Declaration of Independence, 1776, Americans win the War….
CSFF Blog Tour: Like a Crusader
“Crusader perched like a gargoyle on a second floor ledge …” So begins Numb – with Crusaders and gargoyles, icons of the Middle Ages and the Catholic Church. Although there are obvious and significant differences between the True Church of Numb and the medieval Catholic Church, there are also definite similarities. The power exercised in…
CSFF Blog Tour: Apples and Barrels
Among the true-to-life complexities of Jill Williamson’s Safe Lands series is the diversity of the motley opposition against the Safe Lands government. There are the people of Glenrock and Jack’s Peak, who were dragged into the city and fell into the war quite haplessly. If the Safe Lands had left them alone, they would have…
CSFF Blog Tour: Romans and Druids
In Sigmund Brouwer’s speculative series Merlin’s Immortals, Druids are the villains – lying, thieving, manipulative, murdering villains. This, of course, is only fiction. The real Druids were much worse. The Druids regarded it as unlawful to commit their teachings to writing. The oldest accounts of them come to us through a third party – a…