The League of Ordinary Gentlemen

Transcribed from the Book of Jereniah:   Lo, for I am your Tod – and so that you shall have no other Tod above me I give unto thee the following 10 commandments that are Right and Holy, that you might follow: 1. Cheese is given unto you as a Holy food, and thou shall purchase [...]

Francisco Tarrega’s Lágrima, played by Cesar Amaro

Surge was a citrus-flavored soda pop launched in the US by the Coca Cola Company in 1996 as an American variant of the Norwegian Urge. It had an advantage over 7-Up and Mountain Dew in lacking a syrupy aftertaste, although, like them, it essentially tasted like what a kiwi fruit might urinate, if it could [...]

(This will take more than a paragraph.) Ron Graff was noticeably shorter than me, which puts him on the short side for a man. When I was in his drawing classes, he had a stout, stocky, muscular build; a fire-plug. I bet he still does. He was intense, mostly coiled, with occasional outbursts; not of [...]

In his 1877 preface to, and defence of, his novel L’Assommoir, Émile Zola writes: “I wanted to depict the inexorable downfall of a working class family in the poisonous atmosphere of our industrial suburbs. Intoxication and idleness lead to a weakening of family ties, to the filth of promiscuity, to the progressive neglect of decent feelings, [...]

The Islands of the Blessed are sort of like Hawaii, but more. And a whole lot less crowded. The uplands resemble the south of France. Which is to say that they’re really quite nice, in all. How nice are they? They are so nice that Karl Marx, Murray Rothbard, and John Rawls have patched up [...]

Jakadrian Turner was 14 years old in November of 2010 when, despondent over her parents’ divorce and the recent death of her grandfather, she ran away from her home in Dallas, Texas. Somehow, she made her way to Houston, where she was arrested on suspicion of theft, and gave a fake name to the police. Only [...]

I chose to remain silent during the recent round of Ron Paul posts. It wasn’t because I had nothing to say but it was because I didn’t think he had much of a chance to win Iowa. Last night shook out exactly like I thought I would which doesn’t make me a mystic but instead points [...]

Yeah, sure, it’s yet another post about Ron Paul.  (Perhaps you’ve heard of him?) But today’s post by Ta-Nehisi Coates is so much more than that.  It’s about the complex emotions that surround his participation in the (Insert Disputed Number Here) Man March and Louis Farrakhan in his youth.  It’s about movements, and the frustration of [...]

One thing that’s overlooked by those who defend Ron Paul on civil liberties grounds is Paul’s staunch opposition to what I would argue is the greatest boon to liberty in American history: the 14th Amendment. If it were up to Ron Paul, it’d be removed from the Constitution, and he’s said so on numerous occasions. [...]

The Republican Party doesn’t need its opponents to call it stupid. They call themselves that—there’s no point in denying an open secret. It was proper and legal to invoke Virginia’s already-existing election code and ask for a good-faith “loyalty oath” before you participate in the upcoming primary, that you intend to vote GOP in the [...]

Quoting from James Fallows’ Dick Cheney’s Heart: “We all know the cliche about people who switch from youthful idealism to mid-life flinty-mindedness. One version goes, If you’re not a socialist in your twenties, you have no heart; if you’re not a capitalist in your forties, you have no mind. I think there’s an important addition: If [...]

Over at the League sub-blog “Forbes”, E.D. shares Roger Ebert’s suggestions as to why movie theatregoing is declining. As avid cinephiles, one might expect me and the missus to go to the movies more frequently, and yet our attempts to do so this holiday season reminded us once again that, for adults, moviegoing is not [...]

The first of probably quite a few posts that I’ll be writing about Thomas Hobbes and Leviathan. I think Rufus is basically right in his understanding of Hobbes here, but Leviathan is, shall we say, a multifaceted book. I believe it’s possibly the only work of political theory that leads with a digression on wet [...]