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And see especially, Dremel 3000-2/28 2 Attachments/28 Accessories Rotary Tool.

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BONUS: Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy.

Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea.

Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now

Out February 27th, at Amazon, Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress.

Albert Camus, The Plague

I need to read some existentialism, heh.

At Amazon, Albert Camus, The Plague.

Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

At Amazon, Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning.

Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy

The classic text.

I'm reviewing my copy to check out the impact of Ancient Rome on Western philosophy, since I'm immersing myself in this literature.

At Amazon, Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy.

ICYMI: Angela Nagle, Kill All Normies

I started reading this. It's a quick read and really interesting.

There's a ton of reviews already online, at Quillette, for example. I'll post a few thoughts of my own when I finish, as well as links to a few more reviews. I gotta say, though, it's a valuable treatment of current online political and ideological wars, for all the book's other faults (of which there are a few).

In any case, at Amazon, Angela Nagle, Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars From 4Chan And Tumblr To Trump And The Alt-Right.

Mark Lilla, The Shipwrecked Mind

At Amazon, Mark Lilla, The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction.

What Is Conservatism?

From Ofir Haivry and Yoram Hazony, at the new journal, American Affairs:

The year 2016 marked a dramatic change of political course for the English-speaking world, with Britain voting for independence from Europe and the United States electing a president promising a revived American nationalism. Critics see both events as representing a dangerous turn toward “illiberalism” and deplore the apparent departure from “liberal principles” or “liberal democracy,” themes that surfaced repeatedly in conservative publications over the past year. Perhaps the most eloquent among the many spokesmen for this view has been William Kristol, who, in a series of essays in the Weekly Standard, has called for a new movement to arise “in defense of liberal democracy.” In his eyes, the historic task of American conservatism is “to preserve and strengthen American liberal democracy,” and what is needed now is “a new conservatism based on old conservative—and liberal—principles.” Meanwhile, the conservative flagship Commentary published a cover story by the Wall Street Journal’s Sohrab Ahmari entitled “Illiberalism: The Worldwide Crisis,” seeking to raise the alarm about the dangers to liberalism posed by Brexit, Trump, and other phenomena.

These and similar examples demonstrate once again that more than a few prominent conservatives in America and Britain today consider themselves to be not only conservatives but also liberals at the same time. Or, to get to the heart of the matter, they see conservatism as a branch or species of liberalism—to their thinking, the “classical” and most authentic form of liberalism. According to this view, the foundations of conservatism are to be found, in significant measure, in the thought of the great liberal icon John Locke and his followers. It is to this tradition, they say, that we must turn for the political institutions—including the separation of powers, checks and balances, and federalism—that secure the freedoms of religion, speech, and the press; the right of private property; and due process under law. In other words, if we want limited government and, ultimately, the American Constitution, then there is only one way to go: Lockean liberalism provides the theoretical basis for the ordered freedom that conservatives strive for, and liberal democracy is the only vehicle for it.

Many of those who have been most outspoken on this point have been our long-time friends. We admire and are grateful for their tireless efforts on behalf of conservative causes, including some in which we have worked together as partners. But we see this confusion of conservatism with liberalism as historically and philosophically misguided. Anglo-American conservatism is a distinct political tradition—one that predates Locke by centuries. Its advocates fought for and successfully established most of the freedoms that are now exclusively associated with Lockean liberalism, although they did so on the basis of tenets very different from Locke’s. Indeed, when Locke published his Two Treatises of Government in 1689, offering the public a sweeping new rationale for the traditional freedoms already known to Englishmen, most defenders of these freedoms were justly appalled. They saw in this new doctrine not a friend to liberty but a product of intellectual folly that would ultimately bring down the entire edifice of freedom. Thus, liberalism and conservatism have been opposed political positions in political theory since the day liberal theorizing first set foot in England.

Today’s confusion of conservative political thought with liberalism is in a way understandable, however. In the great twentieth-century battles against totalitarianism, conservatives and liberals were allies: They fought together, along with the Communists, against Nazism. After 1945, conservatives and liberals remained allies in the war against Communism. Over these many decades of joint struggle, what had for centuries been a distinction of vital importance was treated as if it were not terribly important, and in fact, it was largely forgotten.

But since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, these circumstances have changed. The challenges facing the Anglo-American tradition are now coming from other directions entirely. Radical Islam, to name one such challenge, is a menace that liberals, for reasons internal to their own view of the political world, find difficult to regard as a threat and especially difficult to oppose in an effective manner. But even more important is the challenge arising from liberalism itself. It is now evident that liberal principles contribute little or nothing to those institutions that were for centuries the bedrock of the Anglo-American political order: nationalism, religious tradition, the Bible as a source of political principles and wisdom, and the family. Indeed, as liberalism has emerged victorious from the battles of the last century, the logic of its doctrines has increasingly turned liberals against all of these conservative institutions. On both of these fronts, the conservative and liberal principles of the Anglo-American tradition are now painfully at cross-purposes. The twentieth-century alliance between conservatism and liberalism is proving increasingly difficult to maintain...

Keep reading.

Gertrude Himmelfarb, Past and Present

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Past and Present: The Challenges of Modernity, from the Pre-Victorians to the Postmodernists.

Tom Shillue: Stop Comparing Yourself to Others (VIDEO)

He's a wise dude.

For Prager University:

National Teach-In Movement Called 'Teach, Organize, Resist'

This is literally criminal.

In California, the education code prohibits partisan indoctrination in public college instruction. These activities, starting at UCLA, are illegal.

At Campus Reform, "Profs pledge to 'use regular class time' to protest Trump":

“[Use] your classrooms...[to] protest policies of violence...segregation, and isolationism.” https://t.co/eDSwqvnqf2 #Trump

— Campus Reform (@campusreform) January 17, 2017

A national “teach-in” movement is asking professors to set aside class time between Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and the presidential inauguration to “protest” oppression and challenge “Trumpism.”

The movement, known as “Teach, Organize, Resist,” is set to kick-off on January 18, strategically “poised between Martin Luther King Jr. Day and the presidential inauguration” as an explicit means of “challenging Trumpism.”

Academics Plan 'Read In' of Michel Foucault to Protest Inauguration of Donald Trump

These people are insane.

But they're leftists, so you knew that.

At the Other McCain, "Academics Protest Trump With Public Reading of French Homosexual’s Book":

Foucault was a gay French philosopher who died of AIDS in 1984. His postmodern (or poststructural) philosophy was typical of the French Left in the decadent political and intellectual aftermath of World War II. The Communist Party was so powerful in France that, when the Kremlin wished to signal a change in the party line in 1945, the chosen messenger was Jacques Duclos, the Stalinist leader of the French Communist Party. It was the infamous “Duclos letter” that spelled the doom of CPUSA Chairman Earl Browder (who had sought to maintain the old Popular Front line) and ushered in the anti-American stance of Cold War Communism. The extraordinary influence of Communism in post-WWII France helps to explain why French intellectuals like Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir were so consistently anti-American, a tradition to which Foucault was an heir, and which made him a darling of American academics, whose hatred of America is their intellectual raison d’etre...

Robert Stacy McCain should have a second career as a professor of political philosophy, heh.

Still more.

Anthony Gottlieb, The Dream of Enlightenment

For my philosophy readers, at Amazon, Anthony Gottlieb, The Dream of Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Philosophy.

BONUS: From Gottlieb, The Dream of Reason: A History of Western Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance.

The Dictatorship of Virtue

At Amazon, from Richard Bernstein, Dictatorship of Virtue: How the Battle over Multiculturalism Is Reshaping Our Schools, Our Country, and Our Lives.

Also, from Roger Kimball, Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Our Higher Education.

More, from Kim R. Holmes, The Closing of the Liberal Mind: How Groupthink and Intolerance Define the Left.

Michael Walsh, The Devil's Pleasure Palace: The Cult of Critical Theory and the Subversion of the West.

And Barry Rubin, Silent Revolution: How the Left Rose to Political Power and Cultural Dominance.

BONUS: Peter Collier and David Horowitz, Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the Sixties.

Governor Jerry Brown Signs Assisted Suicide Bill Into Law

There's supposed to be all kinds of safeguards with the legislation, but I still don't like it.

At the Los Angeles Times, "After struggling, Jerry Brown makes assisted suicide legal in California."

FLASHBACK: "Assisted Suicide of Healthy 79-Year-Old Raises Right to Die Issues."

Who Today Takes a Proud Stand for Freedom?

Not many sadly.

Or, well, while many talk the talk, few walk the walk. Might be dangerous, you know.

From William Kristol, at the Weekly Standard, "Men With Chests":

Who today takes a proud stand for freedom?

Two who did, men of [John F.] Kennedy’s generation, died last weekend. The achievements of Walter Berns and Harry Jaffa are chronicled elsewhere in this issue. Both understood that freedom was precarious and the American republic was precious. And both were students of Leo Strauss, and therefore understood the weaknesses of the modern accounts of freedom.

The life’s work of both was shaped by the problem identified by Strauss in Natural Right and History: Modern thought, most decisively in Germany, had abandoned the idea of natural right and of any claim that there might be reasonable grounds for an attachment to freedom. Strauss remarked in 1952 that “It would not be the first time that a nation, defeated on the battlefield and, as it were, annihilated as a political being, has deprived the conquerors of the most sublime fruit of victory by imposing on them the yoke of its own thought.”

Berns and Jaffa, each in his own way, sought to preserve that sublime fruit of victory. Whatever differences, important and transient, there were between the two of them, both understood that saving freedom required historical and philosophical rethinking.

Strauss’s discoveries in the history of political philosophy had the effect of liberating his students from the yoke of contemporary thought. But Strauss and his students understood—indeed, emphasized—that such a liberation could not mean simply ignoring the challenges to or wishing away the weaknesses of modern freedom. Berns and Jaffa each tried to work through the arguments and rediscover the history that could deepen our understanding of the conditions of freedom, and thereby inform and strengthen our commitment to freedom. The greatest tribute we could pay to Berns and Jaffa is to rededicate ourselves to the unfinished work that they have thus far so nobly advanced.

RTWT.

'As I grow older, I think more and more about death and what comes next...'

Saberpoint ruminates on life's meaning as one gets long in the tooth: "A Rainy Day, a Good Cigar, God and the Near Death Experience."

No, I'm not a "materialist" either.

Why Socialism Is on the Rise

From Ben Shapiro, at Truth Revolt:

It took capitalism half a century to come back from the Great Depression. It's taken socialism half that time to come back from the collapse of the Soviet Union. In New York City, avowed socialist Mayor Bill de Blasio has declared that his goal is to take "dead aim at the Tale of Two Cities" -- the gap between rich and poor. In Seattle, newly elected socialist city Councilmember Kshama Sawant addressed supporters, explaining, "I wear the badge of socialist with honor." To great acclaim from the left, columnist Jesse Myerson of Rolling Stone put out a column telling millennials that they ought to fight for government-guaranteed employment, a universal basic income, collectivization of private property, nationalization of private assets and public banks.

The newly flowering buds of Marxism no longer reside on the fringes. Not when the president of the United States has declared fighting income inequality his chief task as commander in chief. Not when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has said that America faces "no greater challenge" than income disparity. Not when MSNBC, The New York Times and the amalgamated pro-Obama media outlets have all declared their mission for 2014 a campaign against rich people.

Less than 20 years ago, former President Bill Clinton, facing reelection, declared "the era of big government" over. By 2011, Clinton reversed himself, declaring that it was government's role to "give people the tools and create the conditions to make the most of our lives."

So what happened?

Capitalism failed to make a case for itself. Back in 1998, shortly after the world seemed to reach a consensus on the ineffectiveness of socialist schemes, economists Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw wrote that the free market required something beyond mere success: It required "legitimacy." But, said Yergin and Stanislaw, "a system that takes the pursuit of self-interest and profit as its guiding light does not necessarily satisfy the yearning in the human soul for belief and some higher meaning beyond materialism." In other words, they wrote, while Spanish communists would die with the word "Stalin" on their lips, "few people would die with the words 'free markets' on their lips."

The failure to make a moral case for capitalism has doomed capitalism to the status of a perennial backup plan. When people are desperate or wealthy, they turn to socialism; only when they have no other alternative do they embrace the free market. After all, lies about guaranteed security are far more seductive than lectures about personal responsibility.

So what is the moral case for capitalism? It lies in recognition that socialism isn't a great idea gone wrong -- it's an evil philosophy in action...

There's more at the link, but this bit about socialism as "an evil philosophy in action" nail it.

CARTOON CREDIT: The People's Cube.

Yuval Levin and the Great Debate in American Politics

Judy Woodruff interviews Yuval Levin, discussing his new book, The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left.

He's very thoughtful. And he seems genuinely nice. I've been reading his writings for sometime, especially on healthcare.