Peter Lawler

So I have to give a talk at the American Political Science Association in a few weeks on Strauss. Here are some tentative thoughts for your consideration. In his essay on Kurt Riezler in WHAT IS POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY? Strauss writes “If we are permitted to say that historicism is the view . . . . Continue Reading »

Dr. Pat Deneen has a fine post (recycled from the leading journal in political science in the world) about the movement from family and community to individuality and choice in Barry Levinson’s AVALON in the mode of Ehrenhalt’s classic LOST CITY. It’s true that people spent more . . . . Continue Reading »

Here’s another installment in my “What Was History (with a Capital H)?” The End of History in the strong or revolutionary sense was discredited by the Marxist tyrannies that turned people into history fodder and nothing more. That doesn’t mean that we aren’t surrounded . . . . Continue Reading »

So here’s an article by ME on Solzhentisyn, technolog y, purpose, and our future. A taste: People are more concerned than ever with doing what’s required to stay alive, even as they do everything they can to divert themselves from real thoughts about love and death. They’re . . . . Continue Reading »

This “industrial farmer” is really ticked off by crunchy, porch-bound critics who don’t know what they’re talking about. The truth is that many “industrial farmers” are family farmers; they’re not all that alienated from the land or nature, and they give a . . . . Continue Reading »

Here’s another segment of my “What Was History (with a Capital H)?” For now, I skipped over the part that both connected and distanced “Historical” thinking from Christian thought. I’m still working on key details of that. Modern thinkers aren’t quite . . . . Continue Reading »

Ted McAllister was puzzled (in a nice way) about some of the features of my post about his pro-Bohemian post. Because he wasn’t man enough to post his concerns on our site and boost our fabulous ratings even further, I’m not going to link his comments. Nonetheless, his questions should . . . . Continue Reading »

Ted McAllister has posted my favorite porcher comment so far. The true conservative, in our day and age, defends the bohemian against bourgeois careerism and slouching toward a meritocracy based on the productivity that comes from being smart, pretty, pleasing, and industrious—as opposed to . . . . Continue Reading »

This is PART TWO of the lecture I gave on “What Was History (with a Capital H)?” at the ISI Honors Symposium. The Christians rejected the Greek view of what a human being is—the natural being who makes history. For the Christians, the human being is not merely a part of nature or . . . . Continue Reading »

So I wrote up a talk at the ISI Honors Program on “What Was History (with a Capital H)?” Even the part I actually gave was way too long. And here’s part of the introduction that I had to cut. I will get around to posting some of the other parts soon. Are human beings fundamentally . . . . Continue Reading »