Beauty, Art, and Darwin
January 14, 2010
Posted in Arts and Letters, Civilization, New.
The American, October 8, 2009
At first glance our two authors could hardly be more unlike. Judging from his new book Beauty, Roger Scruton’s idea of a pleasing view would probably be the Wiltshire countryside circa 1750 — a scene like that on his website banner, with perhaps some red-coated riders, left, and a fox, courant, [...]
Can Sudan be Saved?
December 10, 2004
Posted in Africana.
Commentary, December 2004
The African peoples now being pillaged and destroyed have names like Zaghawa, Fur, and Massalit, and they live in the extensive region of Western Sudan called Darfur. The Arab horsemen of the apocalypse laying waste the land are called janjaweed, and they are acting for familiar reasons: an unswerving sense of racial destiny, [...]
Nihilism in the Middle East
September 10, 2003
Posted in Civilization.
From Colonel Lawrence to Mohammed Atta
(Quadrant, December 2001; revised 2003)
The art of guerrilla war
Now that sporadic sniping in Baghdad looks set to escalate into more serious guerrilla activity this might be the time to take another look at Colonel Lawrence. He had lots of experience at this sort of thing and was an able theorist. [...]
Sexualizing Everyday Life
April 10, 2007
Posted in Artists And Politics.
from Mann and Nabokov to Sheik al-Hilaly
Quadrant, January-February 2007
Where are the sheiks of yesteryear, riding romantically over the dunes? Not in Australia. Here a burly Egyptian with an ugly turn of phrase recently set new records for ungallantry. Scantily clad Australian women, complained Sheik Taj el-Din al Hilaly, go around like “exposed meat” inviting rape.
Of [...]
American Gothic
March 1, 2006
Posted in Arts and Letters.
It’s a shame really. Paris Hilton could easily give sluttishness a bad name. I don’t mean just the video that’s available—I mean the chilling vacuity: it’s enough to give Casanova the wilts.
But that’s by the way. My darker purpose here is to see how the ethical world of Grant Wood’s 1930 painting American Gothic, with its moral Puritanism and devotion to hard work, could be adapted and parodied for TV trash starring rich party girls and poor dumb animals in the year 2003.
What Native Peoples Deserve
May 10, 2005
Posted in Tribalism.
Commentary, May 2005
The Roosevelt Indian Reservation in the Amazon rain forest is not a happy place. Last year the Cinta Larga Indians slaughtered 29 miners there, and in October the Brazilian who was trying to mediate [...]
How Eugenics Began
June 11, 2007
Posted in People.
From private griefs to public disasters
We know how it ended. But what was Sir Francis Galton thinking of when eugenics began? What led from the quiet book-lined study of a Victorian scientific worthy, loved by his family and admired by his peers, to the charnel houses of the Nazi era? Did he in fact have [...]
Inside Journalism
December 10, 2007
Posted in Artists And Politics, People.
Mr Gunther and Mr Duranty
[This article first appeared in the Autumn 2007 issue of The American Interest with the title “Over There, Then: John Gunther’s Inside Europe”]
The War had started and Churchill had lots on his mind. But even in September 1939 he still had time for John Gunther. The much-travelled American journalist was one [...]
Collapsing the Maya
October 10, 2005
Posted in Civilization.
Let’s take Jared Diamond by the horns.
He would like us to believe that the decline and fall of the Maya was a tragic loss, and a sadly overgrown sculpture in the jungle ornaments the cover of his book Collapse.
But I don’t [...]
The Rise of the Anthropologue
December 10, 1986
Posted in Civilization.
White Science, Black Humour
(Encounter, December 1986)
“We found many of the natives dressed in a thin French gauze, which they called ‘byqui’; this being a light airy dress, and well calculated to display the shape of their persons. The manners of these females, however … were rude and troublesome in the highest degree … being so [...]
