Geography to the rescue. “If you notice, there are two very different types of regions here, the mountains that catch water, and the plains that emerge around their rivers. The mountains are hard to rule, but defensible. The plains are… Read More »How Did Islam Spread So Fast?
Avoid dogma. “There are an ever-increasing number of opinions you can be fired for. Those doing the firing don’t use the word “heresy” to describe them, but structurally they’re equivalent. Structurally there are two distinctive things about heresy: (1) that… Read More »Heresy
Extremism and partisanship hurts everyone. “Roughly speaking, we have three major political movements — the MAGA right, the socialist left, and the “woke” left. But none of these seems especially interested in the kind of smart, reasonable policies that would… Read More »America’s political economy is pretty bleak right now
And some history that you should know.
History is mor3 complicated and narratives matter. “By the time Pope Urban II preaches the First Crusade at Clermont in 1095, Islamic powers have held two-thirds of formerly Christian territory for more than four hundred years. The immediate trigger is… Read More »Load-Bearing Walls
History is connected. “We tend to learn history in discrete chunks, carved up by area studies and chronology. The Protestant Reformation, the Thirty Years War, Queen Elizabeth I and the Spanish Armada, the Sengoku, the conquest of the New World,… Read More »The Empresa de China & the Hapsburg Bid for World Supremacy
Don’t trust people who claim to speak for God or people. “Hitler never commanded majority support. This is common for populist authoritarians – while they claim to speak for ‘the people,’ they generally only speak for their own supporters, who… Read More »New Acquisitions: 1933 and the Definition of Fascism
When judging history, you need to know the context. “whereas today, national independence movements often take it as a granted principle that a people ought to be free to make its own government, ought to be free of the domination… Read More »Collections: On the Declaration of Independence
Stating you can rebel against a government so you can rebel against the government. Declaration of Independence. “A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a… Read More »Declaration of Independence: A Transcription
Reading Magna Carta is quite interesting. Most people, like me, think it is about freedom as such, but in the end it is a business contract. And war was necessary to have it written. “Neither we nor our officials will… Read More »Magna Carta, 1215 – The National Archives