Counter-the Culture

The highest way of living for those who take the tonsure is to aim to lack nothing while owning nothing. —Yoshida Kenkô, Essays in Idleness, translated by Meredith McKinney If you wish to possess everythingYou must…

Favorite Simone Weil Passages

It is perhaps even more useful to contemplate our stupidity than our sin.  Method of investigation— as soon as one has arrived at any position, try to find in what sense the contrary is true….

Sanctity of Life

[Vladimir] Lenin repeatedly expressed utter contempt for the “moral minimum” idea, and his reasoning became the Soviet position on ethics, taught to generations of schoolchildren. To prefer “the smallest number of victims,” “a minimum of…

In the Old Days

“You see that old man? He’s from my father’s village. I met him years ago, when I was young. I only met him twice. He just told me he was concerned about me, so he…

Books Inspected This Afternoon

Arthur Waley, Confucius: Analects Kenneth Rexroth, Classics Revisited Ezra Pound, New Selected Poems and Translations Ai Weiwei and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Ai Weiwei Speaks David Hinton, The Selected Poems of Tu Fu  Ezra Pound, Confucius:…

He Won’t Be Swayed

“And so I am practically compelled to follow that path, and I shall keep to it in spite of all the world.  It is useless for you to wear yourselves out trying to persuade me…

“Pure Distilled Evil”

Tablet‘s David Samuels has another illuminating interview, today with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. A brief excerpt- If you were saying, “My name is Bobby Kennedy, and I’m representing an organization called Riverkeeper, and we are…