Carl Scott

Have there been good Christmas rock songs? I mean Christmas music here, not happy holidays fare like “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” etc. The classical canon is of course full of beautiful evocations of Christ’s birth, the annunciation, the flight to Egypt, etc. And then . . . . Continue Reading »

Our main purpose in looking at this song is to better judge “Eleanor Rigby,” which to some commenters’ chagrin, I criticized in the last Songbook entry.  The first contrast is that it is a song that doesn’t grab you at first—in my experience, it takes about five or so . . . . Continue Reading »

The Songbook was analyzing a set of songs about Loneliness and Individualism, such as Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sounds of Silence,” before it got side-tracked into laying out my theory of modernity’s sociological stages. It’s time to return to the first task, which brings me . . . . Continue Reading »

The author of the magisterial Republics Ancient and Modern , Paul Rahe, has had two great pieces in Ricochet of late. Today , its a comparison of John Lindsay, late 60s/early 70s mayor of New York City, with the One. Lindsay’s is an interesting story on its own terms, and considering it . . . . Continue Reading »

The Arabist is a good site for monitoring what’s happening Egypt-wise. It’s run by a set of smart analysts, who in American terms, we can label as liberal, anti-Bush/”neo-con”, and critical of Israel. They think Juan Cole is a worthy of their brief blogroll, for example. . . . . Continue Reading »

I know that I seem at times obsessed with the 60s, and in trying to figure out  How they Matter to Us Now.  But in my defense, here’s down-to-earth Michael Barone , saying that the key to Mitt Romney is that the 60s did not touch his soul one bit.  There’s not an iota of . . . . Continue Reading »

It didn’t become a hit, but this version does contain one of the band’s better guitar solos, and what matters more for our purposes, anti-oligarchic lyrics. (Read my long post below to see what I mean by oligarchic.) Here’s how it starts: You keep sayin’ no to her, Ever since . . . . Continue Reading »

Peter was fishing for my responses on Christianity and its relation to modernity’s three stages in America AND on whether or not America is more oligarchic than democratic according to Plato’s sense of the terms. Well, that first topic is huge, but even as I focus upon the second one . . . . Continue Reading »

Back in June.  And did so hilariously. Apparently, must reading these days.  Sigh.  But at least it will make you laugh. . . . . Continue Reading »

Okay, here’s a shorter way, for those of you who haven’t the patience for my full cinemascopic link-littered prose, to get at what I mean by Intermediate Modernity In Book VIII Republic terms, intermediate-modernity was the era of the self-repressing Oligarchic Soul, and “the . . . . Continue Reading »