June 2013
How Do Religions Modernize?
Religions can modernize. When we explore the history of how human beings coped with fear, disasters both natural and man-made, fertility, and death, we see great changes to the religions of our most ancient ancestors.
• Pantheism. Our ancestors invented systems for coping with existential fears. They saw the divine all around them: initially as forces to be placated, but also to be honored and celebrated. The ancient Greeks, for example, modernized their earlier pantheis more...
In Defense of Dead White Men
The youth and women’s revolutions of mid 1980s, attacked western civilization, particularly the traditional educational focus on the great figures of Western history. It became chic to call all of our progenitors, the likes of Shakespeare, Socrates, and our Founding Fathers, “Dead White Males.” Academic institutions and the popular media hastened to get on board, deeming Western Civilization overblown in importance (at least) and deserving of obliteration (at best).
The fem more...
The fem more...
Are We in an Everlasting War?
President Obama recently declared that it was time to end our war on terror. Some consider this stupid because individual terror attacks still go on, but I think the President is right. Unless we plan to invade Pakistan or Saudi Arabia and clean out their Islamists, we no longer have a war in which a country is involved. He did not say that terrorism was over; but these nasty terror cells can be managed by police and FBI and tried as criminals.
President Obama does have a more...
The Chechens Are a Model of Dysfunction.
Some of us who are geographically impaired have been confusing the Chechens with the Czechs. All they have in common was that both suffered under the rule of the Soviet Union. The Czechs (the former Czechoslovakia) were under Soviet rule from the end of World War II until the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. The Chechens, however, have been ground under the Russian Empire's heel from 1830, next under Soviet rule (1917), and once again under Russia (1989). They are not a happy people in the best of more...
Sex and the Army Have a Long History
My mother told me that it isn’t polite to discuss sex, money, or politics. I have minded all her other admonitions, but these topics are the fodder of historians and columnists, and I am both.
The whole issue of rape in the military has many more sides than the outraged press, the brave women on the Armed Services Committee, and the Defense Department are addressing. We need some perspective before we can fix the problem.
The very idea of having women in the prof more...
The whole issue of rape in the military has many more sides than the outraged press, the brave women on the Armed Services Committee, and the Defense Department are addressing. We need some perspective before we can fix the problem.
The very idea of having women in the prof more...