Winter Song

Noel

Indian Nativity

In 1642 the Jesuit Missionary Jean de Brebeuf at St. Marie Among the Hurons. Brebeuf had been a missionary among the Hurons for a few years by then and had mastered the language so he wrote a hymn in Huron for his new converts. The music he used was an old French folk tune Une Jeune Pucelle.1

The Side of “Progress”

Deutscher and Trotsky

 

Leon Trotsky

Perhaps the most telling indication of someone’s ideological bent is how they face up to what would happen if their ideas were fundamentally wrong.

Here I will briefly discuss thought experiment played out by Trotsky. In it Trotsky considered what would be the case if his ideas of “History” were wrong; and Deutscher’s consideration of Trotsky’s thoughts on the matter.

Freedom and Doublethink

A Note

Athenian Voting Machine

Freedom is possibly the most important political value we have in contemporary Western society and by definition one would think that the opposite of “freedom” is “despotism” and “slavery”. Sadly that is not the case for it is possible to “Doublethink” “Freedom” into its opposite and in fact that was done long before George Orwell.  Just how that was done is the subject of this essay.1

Nightmare

Movie Poster

Spoilers!!

What would be your worst nightmare upon sleeping? What would be the worst thing that could happen to you that you could think about upon waking up? I suppose not waking up at all would be the worst, but perhaps almost has bad would be waking up and finding out that you had been ripped away from family and friends and imprisoned. And that imprisonment is intended to last the rest of your life.

Child Killers?

The Trophet of Carthage

One of the most notorious of “facts” concerning the ancient Carthaginians is that they indulged in mass sacrifice of children.

This is because of mass burials of very young children found at the so-called ‘Trophet” or sacred enclosures at various Carthaginian sites, including the site of Carthage itself.1 Because of the sheer mass of children’s cremated bones found in this “Trophet” many have been inclined to think that the practice of infant sacrifice was widespread in ancient Carthage. This seems to be a mistake.