Yawper

It is a sad fact that something deeply embedded in the human psyche is inexorably drawn to utopian visions.  What begins with confidence and optimism invariably falls to a harsh reality.  The hopeful seduction of fixing the world has ever ended in heartbreak. In the United States the nineteenth century was a time that swelled […]

Destined to become the greatest of the Musketeers, the young d’Artagnan leaves his poor home with few advantages.  Humble though his origins may be, Alexandre Dumas, author of The Three Musketeers (the first of the three novels known as the d’Artagnan Romances) does give his hero an important asset.  D’Artagnan had a loving father. Setting […]

The St. Crispin’s Day speech of Shakespeare’s Henry V tears at me.   In the historic Battle of Agincourt, Henry’s men were badly outnumbered, far from home, exhausted, and suffering from widespread dysentery.  The eloquence the Bard injected into the English defiance resonates still. The valiant stand and the lost cause are among the most powerful […]

As Paul Rahe famously expounds in his 1997 essay “Don Corleone, Friendship, and the American Regime,” the opening scene of The Godfather establishes a distinction between two worlds, two cultures that can exist side-by-side but ultimately force each person to choose one, and then live with the consequences. In that scene the Don sits at […]