A marvelous piece on the morality behind music and the problem with much of pop music, from Roger Scruton. Excerpt: “The ways of poetry and music are not changed anywhere without change in the most important laws of the city.” So wrote Plato in The Republic (4.424c). And Plato is famous for having given what [...]

Tags: Morality, Music, Nota Bene, Philosophy

If we take by the “End of History” Prof. Fukuyama’s sometimes misunderstood thesis that liberal capitalist order has no theoretical and ideological opponents left, and that the only future adjustments are within the bounds of democratic capitalism, what happens when the goose that lays the golden eggs lays smaller and smaller eggs? I think the financial crisis is re-ordering the [...]

Tags: Culture, Economics

Patrick Deneen’s most recent article in The American Conservative, “Counterfeiting Conservatism,” brings to mind an excerpt from one of the essays in my application to the John Jay Institute: One of the more interesting criticisms of Edmund Burke made by Leo Strauss was that, in his valiant effort to defend certain latent functions in society, [...]

Tags: Conservatism, Edmund Burke, Tragedy