W.J. Astore “[W]ar is a distressing, ghastly, harrowing, horrific, fearsome and deplorable business. How can its actual awfulness be described to anyone?” Stuart Hills, By Tank Into Normandy, p. 244 “[E]very generation is doomed to fight its war, to endure the same old experiences, suffer the loss of the same old illusions, and learn the…
W.J. Astore I have a friend who speaks with great authority on life. Not only is he a topnotch historian, but he’s lived a life rooted to reality, a life in which he’s demonstrated great generosity of spirit. He wrote recently to me about what he considers to be the acid test of a person’s…
W.J. Astore I have conservative friends (Yes, I do!) who express disfavor with higher education. They see higher ed as being in lockstep with liberal/leftist agendas. Things like gay marriage, aggressive feminism, multiculturalism, and diversity that focuses not on wide-ranging political views but on the politics of gender and race. They further see higher ed…
A friend of mine knew the big wigs at a leading manufacturer of agricultural equipment back in the late 1960s. He recalls reading an article back then in the Wall Street Journal about the company being sued for the deaths of farmers. The gas tanks on some of their tractors were exploding because they were…
W.J. Astore Hannah Arendt, the famous philosopher and author of The Origins of Totalitarianism, wrote that “thoughtlessness“–the inability of people to think deeply and critically and reflectively–was a defining characteristic of our times. Thoughtlessness is characterized by the repetition of certain “truths,” often defined by the state, that are not meant to be questioned. Contemporary examples…
W.J. Astore In the New York Times on July 20, Major General H.R. McMaster penned a revealing essay on “The Pipe Dream of Easy War.” McMaster made three points about America’s recent wars and military interventions: 1. In stressing new technology as being transformative, the American military neglected the political side of war. They forgot…
My wife and I recently visited the National Shrine of The Divine Mercy in Stockbridge, Mass. At the shrine, there’s a simple, moving, memorial to the Sandy Hook children (see photo above). Rarely has the Biblical phrase, “Jesus wept,” been sadder or more appropriate. And the people said, See how much He loved them. Message?…
A sequel to our recent article, Dueling Bumper Stickers I remember making collages in grade school; they were always good fun. I came across this collage of bumper stickers yesterday at the Gypsy Joint Cafe in Great Barrington, Mass. (They make scrumptious sandwiches and salads, by the way.) It’s a representative sample of sentiments that…
In the preface (dated 1907) to the first German edition of The Perfect Wagnerite, George Bernard Shaw issued a warning about trends that he saw in German character and culture. What struck me upon reading them was not just their insight into the Second Reich (1871-1918) and their prescience about the Third Reich to…
W.J. Astore Education in my sense of liberating and strengthening (making articulate and uncompromising) the intellect is of course antithetical to much of what is going on in our schools and universities, which I would rather refer to by such terms as training, molding, socialization, mystification, memorizing of facts, obfuscation of meaning–all processes designed to…
The Contrary Perspective 