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The Long View

The Long View: The Coming Caesars

Riencourt's book makes the argument that America is literally the second coming of Rome. In this, he follows the views of many of the American founders. I stumbled on this idea when I was reading about Cincinnatus, the Roman who was twice elected dictator, and twice resigned his

The Long View: Tribe and Empire

This book review probably ought to be read in counterpoint with John' earlier review of The Twilight of Democracy by the same author. The Twilight of Democracy overlaps thematically a bit with Tribe and Empire [Amazon link], but the earlier work has more of a Cold War grand strategy

The Long View: The World After Modernity

For a span, John was an unaffiliated but not wholly unrespectable scholar of millennialism. This essay dates from that time. This is a useful précis of John's thoughts on Spengler, millennialism, and the imperial turn. The e-book of John's entitled Spengler's Future can be

The Long View 2003-06-18: Suspicious Readings

This bit from 2003 reminds me of what Steve Sailer said earlier this year about Vietnam. To a casual observer, it actually looked like the Iraqs were happy with us because we mostly talked to people who spoke English. That was a minority of the population, and not close to

The Long View 2003-06-13: Rough Justice

Did I mention that John predicted that there would be no major changes in the intellectual movements of the twenty-first century? Who is on top of the struggle at a particular time keeps changing, but the argument never changes. Everything in this post from 2003 is still current, even though

The Long View 2003-06-04: Alternative History

In this post, John discusses two books with the same title: Empire. As I noted, imperialism was a fascination with John, so this should not be surprising. What really made this post was the authors of the two books were put together into one interview on NPR. Regrettably, this combination

The Long View: Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power

Imperialism is a subject John often returned to, but his interest in the subject was quite different from most others. For John, what mattered were not mere national empires like the British Empire, but the Empire, the universal state into which all political and economic systems seem to eventually collapse.