A carnival float depicting Donald Trump with a USA flag cut in the shape of a Nazi swastika in a backstreet for the start of the traditional carnival parade in Duesseldorf, Germany, on Monday, Feb. 12, 2024. The foolish street spectacles in the carnival centers of Duesseldorf, Mainz and Cologne, watched by hundreds of thousands […]
M*A*S*H’s Dr. Winchester and the Chinese prisoners in the American camp find a common language in a single piece of music, written a century-and-a-half before: Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet. The final episode of the hit TV series, M*A*S*H aired on February 28, 1983, garnering an astounding 125 million viewers, the most in television history at the […]
Felix Mendelssohn, for all his amazing versatility, is now remembered by a tiny handful of his works, themselves not always representative. But there is now no excuse for neglecting so many of the masterworks of a composer who was central to the art of his epoch. Mendelssohn: The Caged Spirit: A New Approach to the […]
The protagonist of the film “Groundhog Day” discovers that what makes life worth living is not immediate gratification, or moral autonomy, or flippant cynicism, or self-deification, but rather encountering those things that give meaning and purpose to our lives. Today, we are experiencing nothing less than a renaissance of classical education throughout the United States, […]
Westerners today ought to meditate upon Montesquieu’s admirable reflections whenever they decide to launch a war of humanitarian intervention. These reflections especially call into question the institutionalization and systematization at work in contemporary demands for international justice. In The Spirit of the Laws (1748), Montesquieu effected a revolution, one that called into question the character of Christian […]
When man pursues beauty, he takes it into himself and becomes beautiful through it; a perpetual beauty-seeker, such as Don Quixote, is, therefore, a beautiful man. He conceived the strangest notion that ever took shape in a madman’s head, considering it desirable and necessary, both for the increase of his honor and the common good, […]
When will men in hats come back? When men come back. When we push back from our desks and laptops, turn off the television and go back outdoors where we belong, we will start to need hats again. Whatever happened to the hat? Whither the fedora? Where have they stashed the Stetsons? Who has banished […]
In the annals of writing history, there are a handful of volumes that have become established as models due to tone, insightful content, and excellence of style. The most recent historical work by Jacques Barzun is such a work. It is a cultural history of the highest standard. As a historical volume of such scope, […]
As you celebrate New Year’s Day remember that for one thousand years the welcoming of a new year was not just a calendar event, but a culturally religious event which linked the renewal of nature with the redemption of the world. Some atheists, Muslims, and Christian fundamentalists like to grumble and gibe that the celebration […]
College football bowl season isn’t what it used to be anymore — and that fact was highlighted during Thursday night’s Pop-Tarts Bowl in Orlando, Florida. The advent of the College Football Playoff has made bowl season something of an afterthought for all but the most die-hard of college football fans. If you’re not gambling on […]
Welcome, Login to your account.
Welcome, Create your new account
A password will be e-mailed to you.