Author Archives: jimmie

The Curious History of American Exceptionalism

Francois Mitterrand, the longest serving president of France (1981-1985), not long before he died (1996), made this quite extraordinary statement: “France does not know it, but she is at war with America. A permanent, vital, economic war, and only apparently … Continue reading

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Ukraine, The Fumes of Madness

In about 50 BC the Latin poet Publilius Syrus said, “By knowing nothing, life is most delightful” (In nil sapiendo vita iucundissima est.) And in 1788 English poet Thomas Gray rendered the idea in English, “Where Ignorance is Bliss, It … Continue reading

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Revolutions Then and Now

  Plutarch wrote his Parallel Lives, biographies of famous men, arranged in pairs to illuminate their common moral virtues or failings. In a more modest imitation I will draw a parallel between our current historical moment and the phase of … Continue reading

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Germany, Russia and Remembrance of Things Past

Hegel the philosopher demonstrated that all partial truths are falsehoods. For partial truths are all the infinite half-truths that, stated without context and without qualifying their limits, become outright manipulations. Wherefrom it follows that great historical movements and events share, … Continue reading

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Covid and the Magic Power of 3

The recent and still boiling controversy about the nature, choice, type, assortment, variety, disparity, quality, benefits or dangers of available Covid vaccines shows clearly that the approximation of ideas cannot abate the vehemence of passion. And passion leads men to … Continue reading

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The Mystery of Things

There is a certain satisfaction, however idle, in finding the seeds and weak beginnings of social phenomena that affect the world at large. And in understanding the orientations and critical directions of the historical process we live in. Even if … Continue reading

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On Medicine and Dr. Knock

However it might be varnished by imagination or sophistry, the Covid pandemic is one of the most extraordinary phenomena of our times – but it is also the culmination of a mode of thought gradually developed through a long historical … Continue reading

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The Zeitgeist or Spirit of the Times

To understand Hegel (the philosopher) the reader must be in perfect health, though sometimes the minds of geniuses deliver compact nuggets of wisdom, understandable by the rest of us. One such instance is the idea of ‘Zeitgeist,’ the spirit of … Continue reading

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Black Lives Matter and Related Matters

For many or most history is the study of what man did in the past, in different times and civilizations. Yet man is both the protagonist and the writer of history. It is he who develops a historical understanding of … Continue reading

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Pandemics and Ideologies

A man’s life’s no more than to say ‘one’ – Hamlet tells his friend Horatio (1). And Voltaire has a character from one of his novels declare, “… We in a manner begin to die the very moment we are … Continue reading

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