Author Archives: stephenkmacksd

Mr. Sturrock’s ‘The Word from Paris: Essays on Modern French Thinkers and Writers’  Links to two of Mr. Sturrock’s insightful and challenging review/essays for the London Review of Books : (Behind a pay wall, but completely worthy of the cost, … Continue reading →

Thank you for your comment. ‘How do you know which activities I pursue? I would be really interested.’ At the least, Keynes was a fascinating and complex man, thinker and being! Full of contradictions, but none the less worthy of … Continue reading →

Mr. Sullivan’s penchant for political  moralizing is a never ending phenomenon, some examples of his analysis of the governor’s race in Virginia between Ed Gillespie and Ralph Northam are demonstrative of his rampant self-congratulation, not to speak of  his self-conception … Continue reading →

Yet how has the system that failed in Moscow succeeded in Beijing? The big difference between the two outcomes lay with Deng Xiaoping’s brilliant choices. China’s paramount leader after Mao Zedong kept the Leninist political system — above all, the … Continue reading →

Before I begin to comment on Mr. Brooks’ current essay the reader might just begin at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and its entry on Francis Bacon, and its entry 3.1 and sub-entries of 1 through 4. To refresh the … Continue reading →

Mr. Ganesh again proves that he is talented at producing the political and moralizing feuilleton. A journalistic staple of a European journalism of the 19th and early 20th Centuries, though not focused on the larger questions he touches upon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feuilleton … Continue reading →

Polemic is a discourse of conflict, whose effect depends on a delicate balance between the requirements of truth and the enticements of anger, the duty to argue and the zest to inflame. Its rhetoric allows, even enforces, a certain figurative … Continue reading →

Miriam González Durántez isn’t just an ‘international Lawyer’, she is described as both a lawyer and a lobbyist on her Wikipedia page: ‘She is the wife of Nick Clegg, the former Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.’ González Durántez … Continue reading →

The headline at the Financial Times should hysterically proclaim : The Second Spanish Civil War Approaches! But given the latest developments as reported in the pages of this newspaper that headline should now read The Second Spanish Civil War is … Continue reading →

Polemic is a discourse of conflict, whose effect depends on a delicate balance between the requirements of truth and the enticements of anger, the duty to argue and the zest to inflame. Its rhetoric allows, even enforces, a certain figurative … Continue reading →