Search Results for: henry sumner maine

This Thing All Things Devours

December 14, 2019 – 11:50 pm

I’ve just read Propaganda (1928), by Edward Bernays. Bernays, who died in 1995 at the uncommonly advanced age of 103, was the founder of the modern era of marketing and public relations. (Some would call this a “science”, as it does have an empirical and experimental side.) Bernays makes clear his opinion that the great […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Ruminations | Comments (5)

The S.O.B. On Democracy

December 23, 2018 – 4:44 pm

The S.O.B. is, of course, the Sage of Baltimore, H.L. Mencken. I’ve just re-read his Notes on Democracy, after many years, and it is as astringent as I remembered it. For example: It remains impossible, as it was in the eighteenth century, to separate the democratic idea from the theory that there is a mystical […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Reaction | Comments (0)

Questions About The Founding, Part 4

June 26, 2018 – 10:42 pm
This entry is part 5 of 8 in the series Michael Anton, Thomas West, and the Founding

Two posts ago we read Michael Anton’s emailed reply to a collection of questions I’d posted in Part 1 of this series. I mailed back a response, and received another reply in return. (There the correspondence stands, for the moment, as I’ve been traveling and working the past couple of days. I’d also like to […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Reason and Philosophy, Politics, Reaction, Society and Culture | Comments (5)

The Torments Of The Damned

March 2, 2017 – 10:58 pm

In a heartwarming opinion piece today at the New York Times, Thomas Edsall laments the internet’s toxic effect on what it calls “democracy” — a term that, if I understand the piece correctly, is to be defined as a political system in which two political parties, and a few other “dominant organizations” (here, the Times […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics, Pretty Good Posts | Comments (5)

It Ain’t Necessarily So

March 26, 2016 – 8:54 pm

I’ve had absolutely nothing interesting or original to say for several days now. (This happens sometimes; even Rachmaninoff had almost nothing at all to say from 1897 to 1901.) So tonight I’m offering some excerpts from Sir Henry Sumner Maine’s Popular Government, published in 1885. I’ve mentioned this book several times before. As “red pills” […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (19)

View From The Right

March 9, 2016 – 12:49 pm

Nick Steves has posted this week’s reactionary roundup. He gave ‘Best of the Week’ to this essay by Mark Christensen, and it seems a good choice. In the essay, Mr. Christensen quotes Mencius Moldbug: All schools of libertarianism, whether Rothbardian or Randian or (nearly-stillborn) Nozickian, rest on the idea of limited government. Note the intrinsic […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Reaction | Comments (42)

Today’s Assignment

February 10, 2016 – 5:16 pm

With the presidential campaign now at cruising speed, I thought it might be helpful to offer some readings and reflections on the nature of democracy itself: what it really is, what it isn’t, and how it really works. Really, if you want to understand this contraption, what you ought to read is a book that […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics, Reaction | Comments (8)

The Wire-puller

October 5, 2014 – 10:02 pm

Sir Henry Sumner Maine on the locus of power in democracies: Political liberty, said Hobbes, is political power. When a man burns to be free, he is not longing for the “desolate freedom of the wild ass”; what he wants is a share of political government. But, in wide democracies, political power is minced into […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (4)

About time!

February 8, 2018 – 7:14 pm

Back in late November of 2016, the New York Times lamented, in its smugly named “Interpreter” column, that democracy was suddenly in danger around the world. (What might have happened around then that would have put them is such a frame of mind? I feel as if I’m forgetting something…) They called upon two boyish […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Politics | Comments (0)