Category: navel gazing

It’s World AIDS day; please remember it. Redintegro Iraq,-Vardibidian….

One strain of thought sparked by a recent Molly Ivins column has been about the nature of people in positions of power, and the differences between leadership based on the support of followers, and that based on the control of…

Your Humble Blogger just read a remarkably well-written and perceptive note by ‘DHinMI’ over at the Daily Kos. It’s a defense, more or less, of Terry McAuliffe and the DNC, based more or less on Harold Meyerson’s article in the…

Your Humble Blogger is still, slowly, working his way through Whitehall, by Peter Hennesy (New York: Free Press © 1989). It’s not actually that terrific a book, but it has led me to question a few things that I had…

Your Humble Blogger hopes that none of y’all Gentle Readers have been wasting any valuable blog-reading time on the buffoon Chris Matthews and his worthless interviews with the Democratic presidential candidates. I happened to see his recent interview with Carol…

So, a couple of weeks ago, Your Humble Blogger officially opened up this Tohu Bohu to presidential politics, and my first question is what kinds of leadership qualities we want in a President just now. For instance, Gov. Dean’s remarkable…

I think it was Clive Anderson who pointed out that what we need is a contemporary wit to whom to attribute witticisms. I mean, if something is timelessly witty, you can attribute it to Oscar Wilde, or if it’s just…

As a matter of coincidence, I happened to come across a discussion of the Suez crisis in Whitehall, by Peter Hennessy (New York: Free Press © 1989), and of course it started me thinking about paths to invasion, and repercussions….

Your Humble Blogger is reading (among other things) The Autobiography of G. K. Chesterton (New York: Sheed & Ward, © 1936) (although the in-print version appears to be from House of Stratus). I had remembered that Chesterton was, of course,…

The term “welfare state” appears to have been coined in 1941 by Archbishop Temple (William Temple, of York, and later of Canterbury). The OED quotes Citizen & Churchman ii. 35 “We have..seen that in place of the conception of the…