Ken Burns’s The War

Jordan Peterson’s Forward to the 50th Anniversary of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Epic ‘The Gulag Archipelago’

The three volumes of The Gulag Archipelago — one continuous, extended scream of outrage — are, paradoxically, brilliant, bitter, disbelieving and infused with awe: awe at the strength characterising the best among us, in the worst of all situations. In that monumental text, published in 1973, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn conducted “an experiment in literary investigation” — a hybrid […]

On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor, November 1766

Ben Franklin, November 1766 I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I traveled much, and I observed […]

When Can We Get Underway, Dammit!

There perhaps is no more apt analogy for our current financial crisis than the USS Titanic. Mr Ismay with his fateful line “when can we get underway, dammit!” embodies current American sentiments like “we can’t let this crisis slow us down,” “how can we fix this?” and “the USA’s banking system is just too robust […]