The Road to Transhumanism: How Man Became a Project
The category of the Project has been introduced into our daily lives. The very thoughts and feelings of the human person have been turned into a Project. It is happening in Russia and America. It is happening in philosophy and science. It’s also happening in geopolitics.
This is not a global conspiracy. It is a global trend. Still, one can’t help wondering whether or not the Grand Designer behind it isn’t the same one that the American hieromonk, Fr. Serafim Rose, was referring to back in the early 1980s when he wrote: “It is later than you think.”
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Seven Books Not Enough People Read
What is it with books and writers? Often, really lousy writers and their equally lousy books achieve great popularity, while miraculous works of miraculous artists and thinkers fall to the margins of obscurity. For example, no one read William Blake much until he was rediscovered by the Pre-Raphaelites and William Butler Yeats. The same was the case for a few centuries with John Donne until T.S. Eliot rescued him from neglect in the early 20th century. In the spirit of rescuing from neglect, below is a list of books I wish more people would read.
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U.S. Sanctions Must Stop
Sharon Tennison, director of the Center for Citizen Initiatives, has called for an end to the U.S. policy of sanctions against dozens of nations during a deadly global pandemic. We urge everyone to read her appeal, sign on to it, and distribute it further.
CCI’s statement notes the foolishness of a policy which “affects the ability of [other] countries to contain the [COVID-19] outbreak, leading in turn to more infections” and the likelihood that the virus will then spread beyond those nations’ borders, restarting the global outbreak.
CCI’s appeal draws attention to the obvious inhumanity of the United States’ actions against Iran in particular, a country whose economy was already in shambles thanks to the so-called ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions regime …
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Talking Heads: Why Tucker Carlson Tell It Like It Is
[Published Feb. 10, 2020 in The National Interest ]
Over the past few years, an unusual political-philosophical realignment has appeared in the United States, one which brings together a certain kind of Christian conservative and a certain kind of secular leftist.
Judging from their public pronouncements, what unites these contrasting camps is a concern for ordinary workers, their families and their communities, and a refusal to worship at the altar of profit maximization and technological change. And that is just by way of first approximation. This is still a moving target. By far the most well-known member of the group to which I am referring is Fox News host Tucker Carlson. His show is the second most popular news show on American television today. With a figure like Carlson finally championing these ideas, a “new” strain of conservative thought has finally pushed its way into the public square.
READ ARTICLE ON THE NATIONAL INTEREST
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Meet the Cold War Liberals
[Published in The American Conservative, December 30, 2019]
They see a new Iron Curtain dividing right-wing authoritarianism and the democratic values embodied by American and Euro progressives.
Before Donald Trump’s election, many progressive foreign policy thinkers were simpatico with conservative and centrist realist thinkers. “Progressive realism begins with the cardinal doctrine of traditional realism: The purpose of American foreign policy is to serve American interests,” wrote Robert Wright in The New York Times in 2006. Sherle R. Schwenninger was a founder of the New America Foundation and one of those progressive foreign policy thinkers. “The progressive realist critique…,” he stated, “centered around international law; non-intervention; disarmament; and winding down the worst excesses of the post-9/11 period.”
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The Liberal International Disorder
Foreign policy is only one among many areas where liberal modernity displays its novel understanding of freedom as autonomous will to power. A similar voluntarism dominates everywhere from the boardroom to the bedroom. Still and all, foreign policy as practiced by the United States, especially in recent decades, nonetheless enjoys a special distinction. The chaos engendered by its voluntarist will to power is painfully obvious..
In response, two prominent scholars have recently mounted a critical analysis of America’s drive for hegemony and the relation of this effort to liberalism.
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