On Saturday’s show I mentioned a concept I picked up from Carrol Quigley’s Tragedy and Hope: that culture changes when children’s values are disconnected from their parents;’ this can happen in any of a number of ways from technological progress to outside cultural influences. I believe this method is deliberately used in the United States to move us from our individualist past to the “collectivist future.” Specifically I believe childhood education (literally disconnecting us from our parents), higher education (indoctrinating us to the state), high taxes (causing both parents to work), welfare (breaking up families), the drug war (creating outlaw subcultures), immigration policy (deliberately
Culture
Talk About “In A Nutshell!” The big picture in 75 seconds
This whole thing is worth watching – it’s great – but the BIG PICTURE is distilled down to 75 seconds from 11:34 to 12:49.* A note on political philosophy: From what I can tell by listening to these guys a number of times, they are socialists** who feel that the right role of government is … Read more
Talk About "In A Nutshell!" The big picture in 75 seconds
This whole thing is worth watching – it’s great – but the BIG PICTURE is distilled down to 75 seconds from 11:34 to 12:49.* A note on political philosophy: From what I can tell by listening to these guys a number of times, they are socialists** who feel that the right role of government is … Read more
Shirtless Cheeseball or Class Act?
This video demonstrated something interesting to me about standards, dignity, decorum, etc. My last facebook post was a video (see below) of how ignorant our college kids can be and I think those low standards reach up to the highest levels in our society, certainly in our government–but that’s not true everywhere. Putin really looks … Read more
Human Nature & The Wiki Concept
I stumbled upon this video while trying to look up something depressing on Wikipedia (specifically, what Wikipedia says about MH17). I absent-mindedly typed in “wiki” in the search box and this is what came up… I watched it because the idea of wiki-style shared information appeals to me (see below) and I’m sharing it because … Read more
Human Nature & The Wiki Concept
I stumbled upon this video while trying to look up something depressing on Wikipedia (specifically, what Wikipedia says about MH17). I absent-mindedly typed in “wiki” in the search box and this is what came up… I watched it because the idea of wiki-style shared information appeals to me (see below) and I’m sharing it because … Read more
What Would Make YOU Leave AMERICA? Podcast of July 12, 2014 Show
Hour 1 Hour 2 Hour 3 A few of the references from the show: Complexity & Chaos, Empires on the Edge of Chaos, by Niall Ferguson Neo-conservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea, a review of Irving Kristol’s book.
What's at the bottom of the rabbit hole? The Report from Iron Mountain. Podcast of June 7, 2014 Show
Hour 1
Hour 2
Hour 3
This is a must read, full stop: The Report from Iron Mountain. (See also, “another update” below.)
What’s at the bottom of the rabbit hole? The Report from Iron Mountain. Podcast of June 7, 2014 Show
Hour 1
Hour 2
Hour 3
This is a must read, full stop: The Report from Iron Mountain. (See also, “another update” below.)
Bewitched or Mad Men?
I am obsessed with Bewitched. It was my favorite show as a kid because of the magic but it’s my favorite show now because of the nostalgia – not nostalgia for my childhood memories, but for an era I have no memory of…the Sixties that existed in the pregnant pause before the cultural revolution–that long tail of the post-war Baby Boom that would fuel the counter-culture that changed it all.
But the show is also amusing on its face and even my modern kids enjoy it. I don’t let them watch TV or use electronics on school nights mostly because they fight too much over who gets what for how long. A month or so ago, however, I made an exception and bought the first season of Bewitched. Now we watch one episode per night as a family. We all love it. But when we first started watching it, I grieved for American innocence lost–a culture of etiquette and gentility that perhaps skewed corny but was fundamentally good. Then the outdated terms of the husband-wife relationship broke through to my consciousness and it occurred to me that really this might just be a white-washed version of the ugly culture depicted in Mad Men. Darrin Stevens and Larry Tate were the original mad men and the cigarettes and martinis and gender roles ring true in both versions. I was a little disturbed by this possibility, but also a little relieved because I didn’t have to have Good Ol’ Days syndrome – maybe those days weren’t so good after all.
To check my instincts on this, I took advantage of an opportunity to get an unbiased impression of that era as I was driving in the car with my 8-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter. My 9-year-old had announced at dinner the night before that she “accidentally” stumbled across the word “sexist” in the dictionary while looking up some “other word.” It didn’t take me long to come up with a list of “other words” she might have been looking for on that page, but I let that pass. I did, however, use that information later in the car to ask, “Hey, since you know what the word ‘sexist’ means, let me ask your opinion on something. Do you think the show Bewitched is sexist?” I was so amazed by their answers, I decided to share them….