Tag Archives: Freedom

In Defense of Beautiful Things

Posted on June 17, 2024 by Joel D. Hirst

One of the defining factors of Weimar Germany as the country slid into Nazism was the glorification of the ugly. The music was shreakish; they printed literature without punctuation as a ‘novelty’; a toilet nailed to a 2X4 was ‘art’. … Continue reading →

Posted in America, Liberty | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Too Much Fukuyama Not Enough Kaplan

Posted on May 24, 2024 by Joel D. Hirst

We have really flubbed our utopia. A lot has been said of Francis Fukuyama’s “End of History“. More than the book itself, it engendered an attitude, a spirit — mostly within the American managerial elites. I think I first encountered … Continue reading →

Posted in International Affairs | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

The Gods Will Have Blood

Posted on March 24, 2024 by Joel D. Hirst

Utopianism is extremely dangerous when it is comingled with envy and greed. And revolutions are easily captured. These are the two simple lessons I learned from Anatole France’s masterpiece “The Gods Will Have Blood”. The book is an easy read, … Continue reading →

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Our Democracy Needs To Go Back To The Basics

Posted on February 17, 2024 by Joel D. Hirst

In the 1980s the communist dictatorship of Daniel Ortega (Round #1, although Round #2 isn’t communist only purely despotic) would bring journalists from the USA and Europe to show them the revolution. They took them to a few neighborhoods where … Continue reading →

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We Help Those In Our Path

Posted on January 7, 2024 by Joel D. Hirst

As I continue reflecting on 25 years in the trenches, as I start to dredge up the past, old memories start floating to the top like decaying chunks of wood from an ancient wreckage I disturbed. I think, often in … Continue reading →

Posted in Honor, International Affairs, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

On War Crimes

Posted on September 29, 2023 by Joel D. Hirst

Laws are fragile things. To a certain extent, just words written down on paper or parchment. Easily erased or burned or just ignored. For ‘Common Law’ countries, they represent codification of patterns and mores and values, agreements arrived at over … Continue reading →

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The Epic Tale of Revolutionary Venezuela

Posted on September 23, 2023 by Joel D. Hirst

Venezuela continues to be in the news daily. The efforts by that beautiful, valiant, sad Caribbean country to find rock bottom continue to be befuddled by the greedy and the criminals, long after the utopians and the communists have wandered … Continue reading →

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Help Rebalance Our Unbalanced World

Posted on August 13, 2023 by Joel D. Hirst

“Growth for growth’s sake is the ideology of a cancer cell,” is the famous quote by environmentalist Edward Abbey. My mind is brought here to Twitter — Oh excuse me X — the historic effort of Elon Musk to take … Continue reading →

Posted in philosophy | Tagged | 4 Comments

On Force

Posted on June 14, 2023 by Joel D. Hirst

The Eastern mind has a different understanding of God than the West does. Our God is rational, Aristotelian even. He is a moral philosopher and a physicist. And a humanitarian. We’re comfortable with this God; He fits into our neat … Continue reading →

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On Grammys and Afghanistan

Posted on April 28, 2023 by Joel D. Hirst

A while ago I wrote about some work I did, more than a year and a half ago, during the fall of Kabul, to help evacuate the Afghanistan National Institute of Music. That effort, laid out very well by Daily … Continue reading →

Posted in International Affairs | Tagged , | 1 Comment