Joseph Stromberg

TURNING A BLIND EYE TO EMPIRE During the High Cold War, the topic of empire was seldom on the table in New Right circles. It was the New Right’s1 commitment to winning the anti-Communist crusade – at any conceivable cost – that made it necessary not to inquire too closely whether or not creation of … Continue reading “Empire and Reaction”

Richard M. Weaver (1910-1963) was a contributor to that strand of American thought which might be called "libertarian conservatism." He is only now coming to be properly appreciated.1 But Weaver was much more than just an intelligent man who wrote, now and then, on politics. He was much more: he was a student of the … Continue reading “Richard M. Weaver on Civilization, Ontology, and War”

COLD WAR IMPERIALISM, OR ‘LEADERSHIP OF THE FREE WORLD’ With the ritual bombing of Iraq taking on symbolic importance as the first foreign policy act of any incoming US administration, it is astounding that our wonderful "free press" can never bothered to admit, much less discuss, the joys and sorrows of empire. World War II … Continue reading “An Anti-Imperialist’s Reading List:: Part Two”

GOING ALL PEDAGOGICAL I thought that this week I would sketch out a reading list for those wishing to pursue the themes dealt with in this column and at antiwar.com generally. Some of the works listed are popular, some are scholarly, but all contribute to building the framework needed if we are to gain a … Continue reading “An Anti-Imperialist’s Reading List: Part One”

THE JOYS OF UNIVERSALISM Universalism is said to be a wonderful thing. It brings to mind Alexander the Great, widely praised by historians earlier in this – I mean the late – century, as a heroic founder of ‘universalism.’ The praise came because he made his officers take Persian brides, as did he, to cement … Continue reading “Janus-Faced Universalism and Rosy-Fingered Dawn”

AGAIN THE MILLENNIUM Today we stand just a few days this side of the real thousand-year mark, that is, midnight 31 December 2000. You knew I wasn’t going to let that go, didn’t you? I still wonder why all the calendar-challenged classes insisted on having a big song and dance last year, but can’t be … Continue reading “Western Civilization: Love It Or Leave It”

STATES, NON-STATES, AND HISTORICAL METHOD Hendrik Spruyt’s The Sovereign State and Its Competitors (Princeton, 1994) is a very stimulating account of how modern states came to be and, perhaps more importantly, why competing forms of governance fell by the wayside. It is a sweeping book which attempts to theorize the political main drift from the … Continue reading “Competing Producers of Security: Round One”

CHALMERS JOHNSON AS SEEN IN THE ‘MIRROR’ One of the few benefits of wasting most of a day in airports is that one can at least catch up on the foreign press, while drinking bad coffee and eating overpriced food. Thus it was that I found an interesting interview with Chalmers Johnson in the German … Continue reading “Chalmers Johnson on an ‘Ersatz Roman Empire’”

NATIONALISM AS SCAPEGOAT There is a widely accepted reading of recent history which puts the blame for such disasters as World Wars I and II squarely on the shoulders of nationalism. This might be true and it might not. It is convenient for some because it removes blame from a certain murderous internationalist ideology, which … Continue reading “Random Thoughts on Nationalism”

‘THE PATRIOT’ While Mel Gibson’s recent film still remains in the public mind, it might be good to look at a few issues it raises. The first is the "kids with guns!" problem so dear to a number of reviewers. All I can say to this is that young men probably matured earlier in the … Continue reading “Was There ‘Revolution’ in the American Revolution?”