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The Long View

The Long View 2003-12-11: McCain-Feingold; Iraq Contracts: The Human Gaia Effect; Nixon the Nazgul

I am not an expert in elections law, but I do find it remarkable that John felt that the long term impact of the McCain – Feingold Act would be to ultimately weaken American political parties to the point where a celebrity could run for President without really needing to heed

The Long View 2003-12-03: The Lullaby of Big Brother

I am sorry to say that John Reilly got me reading Belmont Club in about 2003. What can I say? I was young and naive. Wretchard [Richard Fernandez] was a huge booster of the second Iraq War, and a tireless apologist for President George W. Bush. As commenter Pat Bryan

The Long View: Lathspell

This is an appropriate story for Holy Week. Rene Girard is popular in Catholic circles, but I have never really seen his appeal myself. There is a kind of poetic simplicity in the idea of the universal scapegoat, but like many such theories, they pall when you look into the

The Long View 2003-12-01: Short Review: The Making of Late Antiquity

This post fundamentally informs my view of Rome pre-fall. While I am not deeply versed in the history of the period, fundamentally Brown's presentation makes sense from what else I know of history and human nature. Including the baleful effects of lead in water pipes and cosmetics, and

The Long View 2003-11-20: Snappy Answers

John's 2003 ponderings about Mars in this post and the last are fortuitous, since I just reviewed the Martian by Andy Weir. This is exactly the kind of thing that got me interested in science, and directed me to physics as a field of study. Planetary science has

The Long View 2003-11-20: Incongruous Elements

John guessed correctly in 2003 that the War on Terror postponed culture war issues like gay marriage for the duration of the emergency. Incongruous Elements President Bush gave another one of his remarkable set-speeches at White Hall in London yesterday. As he has been doing since 911, he put the

The Long View: Far Futures

John J. Reilly never really cared for Steve Sailer, even though they had some ideas in common. Even fifteen years ago, Steve traveled in intellectual circles that were considered gauche. However, the very first line of this review is an idea John and Steve share: science fiction usually tells you