Tag Archives: Democracy

Re-Igniting America’s Imagination

Posted on February 6, 2019 by Joel D. Hirst

“Judah says he can still remember the exact moment, nearly 75 years ago, after 10 months in a concentration camp, when he and his family were put on a train, and told they were going to another camp. Suddenly the … Continue reading →

Posted in America, Liberty, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

“The Revolt of the Masses” – A Must Read

Posted on December 21, 2018 by Joel D. Hirst

“The Revolt of the Masses” is an extraordinary book about our arriving ordeal and why it has come. Written in 1932, it is as prescient now (perhaps more so) than when it was written; for the arc of history is … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Review, Liberty, Uncategorized | Tagged | 5 Comments

Our Tremendous Inequality

Posted on July 29, 2018 by Joel D. Hirst

Painters and poets and inventors, dreamers all – starving and blind. Paul Gauguin on a tropical island painting the interior walls of his desperate cabin before burning it to the ground in his madness (if we are to believe W. … Continue reading →

Posted in International Affairs, Liberty, Travel, Uncategorized | Tagged , | 6 Comments

The Untold Stories of Maria Corina

Posted on May 27, 2018 by Joel D. Hirst

“Who will deliver us from them—?” Them, of course, are the hostage takers in all their forms: dictators, socialists, totalitarians, criminal gangs who seize the apparatus of the state to have easier access to the weapons they need to ply … Continue reading →

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Venezuela’s Zombie Election

Posted on May 19, 2018 by Joel D. Hirst

Two years ago I wrote about a suicide. A sad, bitter, rueful blog that went viral, capturing the desperation of a prescient people who saw clearly what was coming just over the horizon. The timeless tides creating currents that follow … Continue reading →

Posted in International Affairs, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 12 Comments

Deneen and the Defense of Culture: on “Why Liberalism Failed”

Posted on May 2, 2018 by Joel D. Hirst

I recently returned home from a business trip. West Africa, Istanbul, Bangkok, Paris and back to West Africa. It’s appropriate that my journey started in West Africa, from whence Robert Kaplan twenty-five years ago warned us of the ‘coming anarchy’, … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Review, Liberty, philosophy, Travel, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 15 Comments

War and The Quiet American

Posted on September 16, 2017 by Joel D. Hirst

War mixes everything up. Or maybe everything is already mixed up and war just jumbles it around. Love and lust and vulnerability; ambition and power and youth. Ideologies and instincts, all shaken together and served upon a platter before a … Continue reading →

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Politeness and our Struggling Democracy

Posted on May 19, 2017 by Joel D. Hirst

A few years ago, on what is popularly called our “baby-moon” (that special trip you take with your wife before the hurricane descends in the form of a squealing, squeaking, energetic little boy who these days sits at the dinner … Continue reading →

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Sorry, You’re Not a #Resistance

Posted on March 10, 2017 by Joel D. Hirst

Words matter – they transmit meaning to help us make sense of the world around us and communicate our intentions and fears and needs to others. Consequently, one of the things that frustrates me most about the US over the … Continue reading →

Posted in Liberty, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 40 Comments

Brazil’s Moment of Madness

Posted on February 19, 2017 by Joel D. Hirst

I wrote this a while back for InBrazil – I thought I’d reblog it here. “But what can I say about a country that experiences a near miss? Like a distressed man who, in an act of madness cuts his … Continue reading →

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