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Posts Tagged ‘Victor Davis Hanson’

Lawful Neutral

Posted in Events, Musings, Research in Progress, tagged , , , , , on June 18, 2019| Leave a Comment »

I’ve just discovered this blog post lurking in my ‘Drafts’ file, having apparently been created in mid-March; I can’t remember why I never got round to finishing it – unlike another post I started back in the autumn, which perhaps needs to wait for an appropriate moment – but that’s probably revealing in itself. Anyway, in a number of ways this unfinished discussion connects to what I was planning to write this morning, so I’ll post it here and then add current thoughts underneath…

If what you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If what you have is a copy of Thucydides, everything looks like the Melian Dialogue. (more…)

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Backlash

Posted in Musings, tagged , , , , , on August 1, 2018| 2 Comments »

Let’s assume that Brexit goes ahead in some form – a depressing thought, but serious people suggest that there simply isn’t time between now and the end of March to set up a second referendum even if the will was already there to do it, so the only hope would be an extension of the Article 50 period, if the will was there to ask for that. Let’s take the further giant imaginative leap and assume that Brexit turns out to be less than wonderful for most people and for the country as a whole. What might we expect – a revival of the ‘Blitz Spirit’ of courage and grit in the face of adversity? Seems unlikely, however much imaginary nostalgia for those days may be underpinning the “of course we can go it alone” project, given that it was all a myth and propaganda exercise in the first place. (more…)

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Irregular Verbs

Posted in Musings, tagged , , , , , on November 8, 2017| 4 Comments »

We appear to have reached a tipping point, where future historians of this period – not necessarily human – will simply refuse to believe what they find in their sources on the grounds of plausibility. Just as with the Julio-Claudians, we can discuss the discourse of polemic and invective, and the values and cultural assumptions it reveals, but not the historical reality that lies somewhere behind it; we cannot study Boris Johnson as a real historical individual, but only the image of him as cartoonish buffoon constructed by hostile sources… (more…)

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