One Hand Clapping

Essays of enduring interest by other writers
These are essays by other writers that I commend to you, in no particular order. To see the index of my own essays I consider of enduring interest, go here.

Edward Said and the Saidists: or Third World Intellectual Terrorism by Ibn Warraq

How Important Is Iraq? Just Think Of It As World War IV - J. Rauch, Ntl Jrnl

Foaud Ajami: Iraq and the Arabs' Future

Islam and the Theology of Power by By Khaled Abou El Fadl, UCLA School of Law. "Supremacist puritanism in contemporary Islam is dismissive of all moral norms or ethical values."

Seeking the Roots of Terrorism (Chron. of Higher Education)

"The western roots of Islamism," on Samizdata. An essay showing the influence of European philosophical nihilism on present-day Islamic terrorism.

Bernard Lewis: What Went Wrong

The Concept of Human Rights, the Process of Modernization and the Politics of Western Domination By Nasr Abu-Zayd

A Grand Strategy of Transformation, an analysis of 2002 of President Bush's then-new National Security Strategy and its implications and risks.

World War IV: How It Started, What It Means, and Why We Have to Win, by Norman Podhoretz, Commentary magazine, Sept. 2004.

The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads, and Modernity, by Tariq Ali

"Al Qaeda's Fantasy Ideology," by Lee Harris; also his essay, "The Intellectual Origins of America-Bashing."

George Weigel writes about "Europe's Problem - and Ours"

"An Anglosphere Primer," James C. Bennett, presented to the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

The Anglospherist school of thought asserts that the English-speaking nations have not only formed a distinct branch of Western civilization for most of history, they are now becoming a distinct civilization in their own right. Western in origin but no longer entirely Western in composition and nature, this civilization is marked by a particularly strong civil society, which is the source of its long record of successful constitutional government and economic prosperity.

Terror and Liberalism by Paul Berman; also his related 4-16-04 NYT piece, "Will the Opposition Lead?"

"Against Rationalization," by Christopher Hitchens, in The Nation.

"Power and Weakness," by Robert Kagan: "It is time to stop pretending that Europeans and Americans share a common view of the world, or even that they occupy the same world. ..."

Failed Ideas in Newsweek, Oct. 15, 2002

Muslims and Christians in Denial: Five Letters from the New York Times, by Irfan Khawaja.

"Goodbye, All That: How Left Idiocies Drove Me to Flee," by self-described "anti-materialist liberal Democrat" Ron Rosenbaum, Oct. 14, 2002.

Six fatal shortcomings of the modern Left, by Paul Berman, an old-style Leftist, Dissent Magazine, Winter 2004.

Why History Has No End by Victor Davis Hanson.

Carcass of Dead Policies: The Irrelevance of NATO, by Steven E. Meyers, published in Parameters, Winter 2003-04.

Christ and Nothing, by David B. Hart.

And so, at the end of modernity, each of us who is true to the times stands facing not God, or the gods, or the Good beyond beings, but an abyss, over which presides the empty, inviolable authority of the individual will, whose impulses and decisions are their own moral index.

The Ideological War Within the West, by John Fonte.

He suggests there has arisen a conflict within the democratic world between liberal democracy and transnational progressivism, between democrats and what he calls post-democrats.

(a longer version here).

The Fruits of Appeasement by Victor Davis Hanson.

If Marx receded from economics departments, his spirit reemerged among our intelligentsia in the novel guises of post-structuralism, new historicism, multiculturalism, and all the other dogmas whose fundamental tenet was that white male capitalists had systematically oppressed women, minorities, and Third World people in countless insidious ways. The font of that collective oppression, both at home and abroad, was the rich, corporate, Republican, and white United States.

The Law of the Good and the Law of the Right by Prof. Frederick Turner.

Michael Crichton's two speeches about environmentalism as fundamentalist religion and how "global warming" is a marketing and ideological phenomenon, but not a scientific conclusion.

The folly of the International Criminal Court, by Robert Brickman, published on Brandeis University's web site (PDF document).

Iraq: Setbacks, Advances, Prospects, by native Iraqi Adeed Dawisha, who teaches political science at Miami University of Ohio (PDF document).

Wimps and Barbarians: The Sons of Murphy Brown, by Terrence O. Moore, on the de-masculinization of American boys.

"Gay Marriage vs. American Marriage," by Kay S. Hymowitz, an examination of how the American republic depends on a republican understanding of marriage.

See also, "Redefining Marriage Away," by David L. Tubbs, Robert P. George.

"Let Africa Sink," a pessimistic but highly thought-provoking essay on Africa's future, or lack of it, by a true African-American - born and lived in Africa until age 30, then immigrated here.

Steven Den Beste's "Essential Library"

A Collection of quotes and excerpts on military service, compiled by Andrew Olmsted, US Army.

"The Rebirth of Apologetics," by Avery Cardinal Dulles (First Things, May 2004).

"A way out of the Balkans," by Suzanne Fields, on the perils of multiculturalism.

"The atheist sloth ethic, or why Europeans don't believe in work," by Harvard Prof. Niall Ferguson.

"Like Sheep without a Shepherd: The Lack of Leadership in Sunni Islam," by J.A. Morrow, Ph.D.

"The Soul of Worship," by Rev. Dr. Mark D. Roberts.

Human Rights Advocacy in Mainline Protestant Churches (2000-2003), a critical analysis, by the Institute on Religion and Democracy, documenting the left-wing bias of mainline American Protestantism.

Islamic Europe? in the Weekly Standard.

"The Media and Medievalism," by by Robert D. Kaplan. Kaplan says that world media now have become a new priesthood, having true political power without accountability.

by Donald Sensing, 9/6/2003 04:13:00 PM. Permalink |

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