Starship Troopers, sixty years old, is a famous work of science fiction. As with most Robert Heinlein novels, the point is more the ideas than plot or character. Heinlein therefore often swerves dangerously close to message fiction, but it never becomes intolerable. This book is Heinlein’s vehicle to explain who he thinks should rule a| The Worthy House • Towards A Politics of Future Past -
Among the many idols of our age, there is one that rules them all: John Stuart Mill’s harm principle, the belief that an individual’s choices may never be legitimately hampered, by anyone at all, except if he is harming others. Bizarrely, this idea, radical in 1860 when Mill published On Liberty, has now even been| The Worthy House • Towards A Politics of Future Past -
This classic book, by a long-dead and almost-forgotten German economist, is suddenly relevant again. I have had a copy on my bookshelf for thirty years, never read, and I was startled by how timely A Humane Economy is. Today, elements of Left and Right are ganging up to kick neoliberalism when it’s down, aiming to| The Worthy House • Towards A Politics of Future Past -
This is not a book about how you can make more money as a plumber than by going to law school. It is, rather, a book of philosophy, revolving around thoughts on alienation, self-reliance, and what we owe to others. I found it to be both a bit rambling and unexpectedly deep—it manages to connect| The Worthy House • Towards A Politics of Future Past -
Billed as a continuation, this book is really the chiral image of Michael Walsh’s earlier book, The Devil’s Pleasure Palace. That book was an attempt, with limited success, to outline and discuss the poisonous Frankfurt School of political philosophy, Critical Theory, through the prism of art. This book, on the other hand, aims to discuss| The Worthy House • Towards A Politics of Future Past -
To Change the Church: Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism (Ross Douthat)| theworthyhouse.com
In their eternal quest to remake reality, a perennial target of the Left is the family: man, woman, and children, the bedrock of all human societies. The family, by its existence and by what it brings forth, mocks the Left project, and so the Left has tried to destroy it for 250 years. But only| The Worthy House • Towards A Politics of Future Past -
The poor Enlightenment. Trapped by its inherent contradictions, we in the West find ourselves locked into playing out the game set by it, struggling to make the best of a bad hand until inevitably forced to fold, though the precise manner and consequences of that folding are yet to be determined. The Enlightenment’s defenders, cut-rate| The Worthy House • Towards A Politics of Future Past -
For some time now, I have been claiming that what we are likely to get, and probably need, whether we like it or not, is a Man of Destiny. The original man called that was, of course, Napoleon Bonaparte. Neither my claim nor Napoleon is popular nowadays. We have gotten used to hearing that individual| The Worthy House • Towards A Politics of Future Past -
The Delphic Maxim “know thyself” has never appealed to me. Why, exactly, is the unexamined life not worth living? Thus, I’ve always been more interested in action than introspection, although that certainly hasn’t stopped me from having extremely positive thoughts about myself. Nobody ever accused me of being self-hating. Nonetheless, my purpose today is to| The Worthy House • Towards A Politics of Future Past -
Ship of Fools extends the recent run of books that attack the American ruling class as decayed and awful. However it is characterized, as the professional-management elite, the Front Row Kids, or one of many other labels, all these books argue the ruling class is running our country into the ground, and most argue it| The Worthy House • Towards A Politics of Future Past -
A friend of mine has been pushing me to look into Jordan Peterson for the past six months. I thought, since my friend is conservative, that Peterson offered right-wing politics, and it is true that he has recently been in the news for his thoughts on certain charged topics. However, Peterson does not, in fact,| The Worthy House • Towards A Politics of Future Past -
Private equity has made me rich beyond the dreams of avarice. Yet private equity can be, as this book shows, a tool of the devil, a corrosive and destructive force in American life. Still, I do not think the story is as simple as Brian Alexander, the author of Glass House, would have it. The| The Worthy House • Towards A Politics of Future Past -
It seems to me that we in the West are like men in a cavern, out of which lead many paths, none signposted. Some paths lead to bright futures, but other paths lead to terrible ones, among them those where, once again as we did not so very long ago, we slaughter each other over| The Worthy House • Towards A Politics of Future Past -
Do any American children learn about William Tell today? Do any Swiss children learn about him? Very few, if any, I suspect. My children do, but only because last year I was reminded of William Tell by Ernst Jünger’s The Forest Passage, and so I went and bought what few children’s books are still in| The Worthy House • Towards A Politics of Future Past -
This book was once famous, but was mostly forgotten when Communism died and so-called liberal democracy seemed ascendant. It is increasingly famous again, and relevant, in these days of a new creeping totalitarianism, this time in the West itself. Such timelessness is the signature of a classic work, so my goal today is to explicate| The Worthy House • Towards A Politics of Future Past -
When I am dictator, which hopefully will be any day now, I am going to bring back what was once a crucial distinction. Namely, the sharp separation between the deserving and the undeserving poor. Theodore Dalrymple’s book shows both why that distinction is necessary, indeed absolutely essential, and why it has fallen from favor among| The Worthy House • Towards A Politics of Future Past -
Would you like to read a book about Scott Adams? Then this is your book, especially if you want to hear Scott Adams talk about how awesome he is. Would you like to read a book about persuasion techniques? This book may shed a little light, maybe two pages’ worth. Would you like to read| The Worthy House • Towards A Politics of Future Past -
