When Your Friend Gives You a Book and You Begin to Question the Friendship

 Recently, a long‑time friend gifted me a book. Normally this is a safe bet. I’m an avid reader. Give me paper with words on it, and I’m happy. I read cereal boxes. I read museum plaques. I read the fine print on shampoo bottles. I read everything.

So, imagine my shock when I opened this book and discovered… nothing. Nothing, as in no punctuation. Not a period. Not a comma. Not even a rebellious semi‑colon trying to start a revolution. Just one long, uninterrupted literary scream. It felt like the author had taken a deep breath in 1972 and never exhaled.

I fought my way through a couple of pages—squinting, sweating, mentally begging for a comma like it was water in the desert—before emailing Joe, my friend of nearly 50 years, to ask whether the entire book was written like someone had thrown grammar out a window.

Joe confirmed that yes, the whole thing was punctuation‑free. He encouraged me to read on, pointing out the literary and cultural allusions sprinkled throughout the first few pages as if that would soothe my rising blood pressure.

I had caught the allusions—plus a few he hadn’t mentioned—but the experience was giving me a headache. Still, I trudged through the first chapter, mostly out of stubbornness and the faint hope that maybe, just maybe, a period would appear like a rare desert flower.

It did not.

Meanwhile, Joe started sending me articles—glowing reviews of the book—to convince me to read on. With 50 years of friendship, I generally trust Joe’s recommendations, so I went back to the beginning and slogged through to the end of the second chapter.

That’s when I had the moment. The moment every reader knows. The moment when you close the book, stare into the middle distance, and think: “Why am I doing this to myself?”

Life is too short to spend your free time wrestling with a book that feels like an Olympic event.

Now, let me be clear.

As I wrote previously, there is power in reading. Some books are challenging because they’re meant to be; they offer deep truths, vital history, or new ways of seeing the world. Some books are emotionally heavy or slow, but worth the effort because they expand your mind. And some books should be read simply because they’re foundational to cultural literacy.

But here’s the problem: Americans aren’t reading much anymore. The National Endowment for the Arts reports that the share of people who read for pleasure on any given day dropped from 28% in 2004 to 16% in 2023—a decline of more than 40%. According to YouGov’s data 40% of Americans didn’t read a single book in 2025. 

There are many reasons for this decline, but one big one is that people don’t enjoy reading something simply because they're told they should read it.

So, here’s my suggestion: Your free time is precious. Don’t spend it on a book that bores you or frustrates you. There are millions of wonderful books waiting for you. Giving up on a boring one simply frees you to find a story you’ll actually love.

 

What Happens When God is Dead?

When Friedrich Nietzsche declared that “God is dead,” he was not simply making an argument against belief. He was diagnosing a cultural crisis. The old religious framework that had given Western civilization its moral order, shared meaning, and sense of cosmic purpose was losing its power. The question was no longer whether people would believe in something sacred. The question was what they would treat as sacred once traditional religion declined.

Nietzsche’s Warning: The Crisis of Meaning

Nietzsche first wrote the phrase “God is dead” in The Gay Science and later expanded on it in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. He was not claiming that a supernatural being had literally died, nor was he merely offering atheism as a doctrine. His point was much larger: the Enlightenment, scientific skepticism, and the rise of modern secular thought had undermined the old Christian metaphysical order that once anchored Western morality.

For Nietzsche, this loss created a frightening vacuum. If society no longer relied on God as the source of moral truth, then the inherited categories of right and wrong began to lose their foundation. The result was nihilism: the sense that life has no intrinsic meaning, value, or direction. Nietzsche believed modern people would have to confront this emptiness honestly rather than pretend the old certainties still held.

Jung’s Answer: The Religious Function Does Not Disappear

Carl Jung approached the same problem from psychology. Unlike Sigmund Freud, who often treated religion as illusion or neurosis, Jung argued that the “religious function” is built into the human psyche. By this he did not mean organized religion, doctrine, or creed. He meant the mind’s deep need for relationship with the sacred, the mysterious, and the numinous—those experiences that inspire awe and give life meaning.

Jung preferred the older Latin sense of religio, meaning careful consideration. True religion, in this sense, is not blind belief but careful attention to the deep currents of inner life. It is the conscious observation of the unconscious, the symbolic, and the mysterious forces that shape human behavior.

The Sacred Always Finds a New Home

If Jung was right, then the decline of traditional religion does not eliminate the human need for meaning. It merely redirects it. When people lose connection to the religious function, the sacred energy and quest for meaning goes somewhere else. Money, possessions, science, addictive substances, or political movements with charismatic leaders who become substitute gods.

This is why modern politics can take on a religious intensity. Parades, banners, rallies, slogans, and mass gatherings can function like substitute liturgies and rituals. They give people a feeling of belonging, certainty, and protection within a larger collective body. Political doctrines become absolute truth. Leaders are treated as prophets. Dissent becomes heresy.

Jung warned that when individuals surrender conscience to the crowd or the state, they lose their moral compass. In mass movements, people can sink below their ordinary level of judgment, becoming more emotional, more suggestible, and more willing to commit acts they would reject as individuals. Destructive political ideas can possess people with the force ancient cultures once attributed to demons.

The Remedy

Nietzsche and Jung both believed the answer begins with the individual. Nietzsche saw struggle, suffering, and inner chaos as the raw material of self-overcoming. His famous line “You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star” captures the idea that growth requires tension. A person must pass through uncertainty and loss to create a stronger, freer self.

Jung likewise argued that the only real defense against collective madness is psychological maturity. A person who understands their own mind, acknowledges their own dark impulses, and thinks independently is less likely to be swept up by the frenzy of the crowd. Such a person can resist the temptation to hand their conscience over to a party, leader, state, or ideology.

The deeper solution is not to replace one idol with another. It is to cultivate meaning from the inside out: through honest self-knowledge, deep relationships, meaningful work, art, philosophy, and a genuine inner spiritual life. When people are rooted in living meaning, they become far less vulnerable to the false promises of political utopias offered by authoritarians.

Why This Still Matters

The modern world has not outgrown the sacred. It has merely become confused about where the sacred lives. Nietzsche warned that the death of God would unleash a crisis of meaning. Jung warned that the religious instinct would not disappear; it would seek new objects. Together, they show why a society that abandons inner meaning may end up worshipping power, ideology, or the crowd.

The task, then, is not simply to believe or disbelieve. It is to become conscious of what we serve. If we do not carefully cultivate meaning within ourselves, something outside us will gladly offer one—and may demand our conscience in return.

What I’m Reading: Voices from Earlier Generations

As I prepare my upcoming lecture series, The Anatomy of Fascism, I’ve spent the past few months reading widely. Much of that work has focused on contemporary political philosophy and analyses of authoritarianism, fascism, and Nazism. But I’ve also returned to several older works that feel especially worth revisiting in the current political climate.

Some of these works connect obviously to authoritarianism and fascism.

• George Orwell: 1984 (1949) and Animal Farm (1945) are layered critiques of authoritarianism, each approaching the subject from a different angle: dystopian prophecy in one case, political allegory in the other. Together, they offer Orwell’s most forceful warning about how oppressive systems rise, consolidate power, and destroy truth

• Sinclair Lewis: It Can’t Happen Here (1935) remains one of the sharpest American literary warnings about fascism—not as a foreign import, but as something that could grow from U.S. traditions, anxieties, and political habits. Lewis suggests that American fascism would arise from populism, nationalism, economic fear, and the appeal of a “strong man” promising order.

Other works I’ve returned to are less obviously tied to The Anatomy of Fascism, but they still speak powerfully to the topic and to current political moments.

• F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby (1925) is an elegant critique of the American Dream. Jay Gatsby embodies that dream in motion, but Fitzgerald shows how the American’s Dream promise—that anyone can succeed through hard work—collapses under wealth, class, illusion, and human frailty. The novel portrays a nation where aspiration curdles into disillusionment, a theme I will connect to fascism’s roots in The Anatomy of Fascism.

• Ernest Hemingway: In A Movable Feast (1964) and The Sun Also Rises (1926), Hemingway traces two stages of disillusionment—one reflective and elegiac, the other raw and immediate. Both works show the “Lost Generation” struggling to rebuild meaning after World War I. Disillusionment is one of fascism’s emotional engines: not because disillusioned people seek tyranny, but because widespread loss of faith—political, economic, cultural, and moral—creates a vacuum that fascist movements can fill with certainty, identity, and rage.

• Christopher Isherwood: Goodbye to Berlin (1939) offers a vivid eyewitness account of fascism’s rise in everyday life—not through grand speeches, but through the gradual normalization of hatred, poverty, and political violence.  Isherwood shows fascism emerging slowly, through social decay, economic desperation, moral collapse, and the willingness of ordinary people to look away.  The 1966 musical play and 1972 film Cabaret are based on the 1951 play I Am a Camera, itself adapted from Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin.

To understand what we are experiencing today, we sometimes need to listen to the voices of earlier generations.

Read on!

 

 

Democratic Socialism, Communism, and Political Language

Democratic socialism has surged into public conversation in recent years, prompting a familiar question: Is this the next evolution of the Democratic Party? While it is far too early to make sweeping predictions, one thing is clear—democratic socialism has become a visible and growing faction within the party. The result is an ideological tug‑of‑war between the party’s long‑established center‑left wing and an energized, farther‑left movement pushing for deeper structural change.

This internal debate is not happening in a vacuum. Democratic socialist candidates have gained traction in local elections, and the movement’s policy priorities—universal healthcare, aggressive housing affordability measures, and stronger wealth redistribution—have resonated with a sizable portion of voters. That visibility has also brought opposition, including a persistent rhetorical strategy: equating democratic socialism with communism.

Why Confusion?

Some of the conflation of democratic socialism and communism is deliberate political propaganda—designed to provoke emotional reactions rather than encourage thoughtful discussion. But part of the confusion is historical and conceptual. In the United States in particular, these two left‑leaning ideologies are often collapsed into a single category. Both ideologies after all critique capitalism and highlight social, political, and economic inequality. Both seek to expand social ownership and reduce exploitation. But democratic socialism and communism differ in fundamental ways; their methods, goals, and political assumptions diverge sharply.

Democratic Socialism vs. Communism: What is the Difference?

Democratic Socialism seeks to reduce inequality and expand public ownership in key sectors while preserving democratic freedoms. Markets still exist, but they are regulated and balanced with strong social protections. Change happens through democratic institutions—elections, legislation, and public participation.

Communism envisions a classless, stateless society with no private property and fully communal ownership of production. The path to this society is revolutionary, typically involving a single party that centralizes power during the transition.

A Side‑by‑Side Comparison

Path to Change

·        Democratic Socialism: Reformist—works through elections, legislation, and democratic processes.

·        Communism: Revolutionary—seeks to overthrow capitalism and transition through a socialist state.

Political System

·        Democratic Socialism: Requires multi‑party democracy, civil liberties, free press, and constitutional protections.

·        Communism: Concentrates authority in a single party, even though its theoretical end goal is a stateless society.

Economic Structure

·        Democratic Socialism: Mixed economy with public ownership of major sectors and regulated private enterprise. Worker cooperatives and public accountability are common elements.

·        Communism: Full socialization of the means of production; markets are replaced by centralized planning.

Why Clear Language Matters

Explaining democratic socialism—or any political ideology—does not imply agreement with it. But meaningful democratic debate does require clarity. When political language becomes sloppy, as George Orwell warned, public reasoning decays with it. Propaganda thrives in ambiguity. Democracy does not.

If we want rational political conversations, we must resist emotional shortcuts and insist on precise language. Clear thought depends on clear words—and clear words are essential for democratic life.

What I'm Reading - Democracy Awakening by Heather Cox Richardson

Every so often, a book arrives at exactly the moment it’s needed. Heather Cox Richardson’s Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America is one of those rare works—part history lesson, part warning flare, part call to citizenship. Drawing on the same clear-eyed analysis that powers her newsletter Letters from an American, Richardson offers a sweeping narrative of how the United States arrived at its current political crossroads and what it will take to move forward.

This isn’t just a chronicle of recent events. It’s a story about the long arc of American democracy—how it has bent, broken, and been repaired by generations who refused to surrender it.

How Democracies Falter: The Authoritarian Playbook

One of Richardson’s central arguments is that the threats facing American democracy today are not new. She traces how an elite minority has repeatedly used language, mythmaking, and selective history to consolidate power. From the post–Civil War backlash to the rise of modern conservatism, she shows how political movements have often relied on:

• Creating an “us vs. them” narrative
• Rewriting history to justify exclusion
• Using fear to weaken democratic norms

Richardson doesn’t frame this as inevitability. Instead, she shows how these tactics have been used—and resisted—throughout American history.

A Historical Roadmap for the Present

One of the book’s greatest strengths is its ability to connect eras that often feel disconnected. Richardson moves seamlessly from:

• the ideals of the Founders,
• to the abolitionists who insisted those ideals apply to everyone,
• to the New Deal’s reimagining of government’s role,
• to the political realignments of the Nixon era,
• to the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

By placing these moments in conversation with one another, she reveals a pattern: American democracy has always been contested, and its survival has always depended on ordinary people choosing to defend it.

A Call to Action—Rooted in Hope, Not Despair

What makes Democracy Awakening more than a history book is its insistence that the story isn’t over. Richardson highlights the countless times marginalized groups—women, Black Americans, immigrants, labor organizers—have pushed the nation closer to its stated ideals.

Her message is clear: Democracy is not self-sustaining. It requires participation, vigilance, and a willingness to confront uncomfortable truths. But she also reminds readers that Americans have risen to this challenge before. The book is ultimately hopeful because it trusts the power of informed citizens to shape the future.

Why This Book Matters Now

In a moment when political language is weaponized, when misinformation spreads faster than facts, and when many feel exhausted by division, Richardson offers something rare: clarity. She gives readers a framework for understanding the present without losing sight of the past. She shows how democratic erosion happens—and how it can be stopped. And she invites all of us to see ourselves not as spectators to history, but as participants in it.

If you’re looking for a book that explains not just what is happening in American politics but why it’s happening—and what can still be done—Democracy Awakening is essential reading. Because, as Richardson reminds us, democracy doesn’t disappear all at once. It erodes when people stop paying attention. And it revives when they decide to act.

 

Emotional Reasoning: When Feelings Masquerade as Facts

 There is a quiet, persistent cognitive trap that slips into everyday thinking, often without our noticing. It whispers a simple but seductive message: “I feel it, therefore it must be true.”

·       If I feel anxious, the situation must be dangerous.

·       If I feel guilty, I must have done something wrong.

·       If I feel dismissed, the other person must have intended to hurt me.

·       If I feel frightened, the other person must be a threat.

This is emotional reasoning—the habit of treating feelings as objective evidence, as facts. Emotional reaction defines reality. Even when empirical evidence contradicts the feeling, the feeling wins. This is why emotional reasoning is so powerful—and so distorting. It bypasses the slow, reflective parts of the mind and goes straight to certainty. The emotion becomes the proof – and the conclusion.

The problem is that while emotions are real, they are not facts.

The Personal Cost of Treating Feelings as Facts

Relying on emotional reasoning can quietly erode a person’s essential psychological capacities:

·       Impaired Self‑Awareness

When emotions are treated as truth, we stop examining our emotions. We do not ask: Where is this feeling coming from? What triggered it? Is it accurate? Instead, we accept the emotion as a verdict.

·       Weakened Emotional Growth

Ironically, treating feelings as facts prevents people from understanding their own emotions. Instead of asking “What is this feeling trying to tell me?” the mind jumps straight to “This feeling is the truth.” Emotional reasoning blocks the very self-awareness that leads to maturity, empathy, and resilience.

·       Reduced Emotional Resilience

If every uncomfortable feeling signals danger, failure, or rejection, then discomfort itself becomes intolerable. Emotional resilience requires the capacity to adapt, recover, and grow stronger when faced with stress, trauma, or adversity.

·       Distorted Personal Decision‑Making

When emotions become evidence, people make choices based on fear, shame, anger, or insecurity rather than on clear thinking. This can lead to avoidable conflicts, impulsive decisions, and self‑sabotage. Over time, emotional reasoning can trap people in cycles of anxiety or resentment because the feeling continually recreates the “proof.”

·       Reinforced Cognitive Biases

Emotional reasoning strengthens the mental shortcuts we already have—especially the ones that distort reality. And the most powerful of these shortcuts is confirmation bias.

Confirmation Bias: The Emotional Echo Chamber

When emotional reasoning takes the wheel, confirmation bias becomes its loyal co‑pilot. People unconsciously:

• Seek out information that validates their feelings.
• Accept evidence that supports those feelings.
• Remember details that reinforce the emotional narrative.
• Ignore or dismiss anything that contradicts their feelings.

The result is a self‑sealing emotional logic loop. If I feel threatened, I will notice every sign of danger and overlook every sign of safety. If I feel unappreciated, I will remember every slight and forget every kindness. If I feel certain I am right, I will interpret all new information as proof – and reject any evidence to the contrary. The feeling creates the belief, and the belief protects the feeling.

The Social Cost of Treating Feelings as Facts

In a world saturated with outrage-driven media, political polarization, and algorithmic echo chambers, emotional reasoning is not just a private mental habit; it has public consequences. When enough people begin to treat feelings as facts, the boundary between subjective experience and shared reality starts to erode. And once that boundary weakens, everything built upon it—trust, dialogue, community, democracy—begins to wobble.

·       Emotional Reasoning Damages Relationships

If “I feel hurt” automatically becomes “you intended to hurt me,” then misunderstandings escalate into moral judgments. Emotional reasoning turns partners, friends, and colleagues into mind‑readers who are always failing the test. It replaces curiosity with certainty and replaces dialogue with accusation. Relationships become fragile because every uncomfortable emotion is treated as a formal accusation.

·       Emotional Reasoning Fuels Polarization and Outrage

At the societal level, emotional reasoning is rocket fuel for polarization. Outrage-driven media ecosystems thrive on emotional certainty:

o   I feel threatened, therefore the other side must be dangerous.

o   I feel disgust, therefore the issue must be immoral.

o   I feel loyal, therefore my group must be right.

When feelings become the arbiter of truth, people stop engaging with evidence and start defending emotional narratives. Public discourse becomes a contest of whose feelings are louder, not whose arguments are stronger.

·       Emotional Reasoning Makes Us Vulnerable to Manipulation

Advertisers, political strategists, and social media algorithms all understand one thing: emotions move people faster than facts. Emotional reasoning creates a population that is easier to influence, easier to divide, and easier to mislead. If a message can trigger the right feeling, it does not need to be accurate. It only needs to be emotionally plausible.

·       Emotional Reasoning Undermines Shared Reality

A functioning society depends on at least some agreement about what is real. Emotional reasoning fractures that agreement. When personal feelings override observable facts, we lose the ability to solve collective problems—from public health to climate resilience to community safety—because we no longer start from the same ground.

Reclaiming the distinction between what we feel and what is true is not just a psychological skill. It is a civic one. Emotions are essential. But they are signals, not verdicts. A healthy society requires the ability to feel deeply without surrendering our judgment. When we learn to hold our emotions with respect but not obedience, we reclaim the ability to think clearly, connect honestly, and live in a reality that is shared rather than splintered.

An Invitation to Action

If emotional reasoning is a quiet force shaping our inner lives and our shared world, then the work of countering it begins with something deceptively simple: pausing before we conclude. Not suppressing emotions. Not shaming ourselves for having them. Just pausing long enough to ask: “Am I treating this feeling as a fact?” That pause is the hinge on which clearer thinking, healthier relationships, and stronger communities turn.

So, here is the invitation:

• Notice your emotional narratives. When a feeling arrives with certainty, get curious.
• Seek evidence that challenges your first emotional reaction – not to invalidate the feeling, but to broaden the picture.
• Ask others how they experienced the same moment. Shared reality is built through shared inquiry.
• Practice emotional humility. The willingness to say, “I might be wrong,” is not weakness. It is wisdom.
• Model this publicly. In conversations, classrooms, families, and communities, show what it looks like to hold feelings with respect but not obedience.

We cannot stop emotions from arising. But we can stop them from becoming unquestioned truth. And if enough of us do that—patiently, consistently, courageously—we help rebuild something our culture desperately needs: a reality grounded not in the volatility of emotion, but in the steadiness of reflection, evidence, and shared understanding.

 

 

The Founders and the Problem of Parties

This morning someone asked me whether America’s Founders were truly opposed to political parties. It is a familiar question, and for good reason: the early republic was full of warnings about “factions,” the term they used before “party” became standard political vocabulary.

George Washington’s Farewell Address is the most famous example. As he prepared to leave office, he cautioned that factions would inflame jealousies, divide the nation into rival camps, and invite foreign powers to manipulate American politics. Washington’s concern was civic and national: parties, he believed, threatened the fragile unity of the new republic.

Thomas Jefferson is often quoted—and often misquoted—on the subject. A popular paraphrase has him saying, “If there are political parties in heaven, I’d rather not go there.” Jefferson did not write that exact line, but he did write something close. In a 1789 letter to Francis Hopkinson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson wrote:

I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party… If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.

Jefferson’s point was philosophical and personal. He believed that republican virtue required independent judgment, and that parties demanded a kind of moral surrender. To join a party was, in his view, to hand over one’s conscience.

James Madison, ever the architect, approached the problem differently. He agreed that factions were dangerous—especially when a majority could use them to oppress a minority. But unlike Washington or Jefferson, Madison believed that given human nature factions were inevitable and that they could not be eliminated without unjustly limiting freedom. As he wrote in the Federalist Papers, the task therefore was not to eliminate factions but to “break and control the violence” they could unleash. His answer was structural: a large republic, separation of powers, and institutional designs that force competing interests to check one another.

So, while Jefferson, Washington, and Madison all distrusted parties, they distrusted them for different reasons: Jefferson feared the corruption of personal judgment, Washington feared the loss of national unity, and Madison feared the tyranny of an unchecked majority. And yet, despite their warnings, parties emerged almost immediately.  Jefferson, Washington, and Madison warned us—and we still walked right into the trap.

Rethinking Leadership: When Wisdom Governs

Picture this: It’s ancient Athens. Democracy is… let’s call it “chaotic but enthusiastic.” Politicians are making big promises, citizens are yelling in the agora, and someone named Thrasymachus is definitely shouting about power again.

Enter Plato, who looks around and says, essentially, “You know what would fix this? A ruler who doesn’t even want to rule.”

And thus, the philosopher king is born.

The Philosopher King: The Overachiever of Overachievers

A philosopher king is not your average ruler. No, this is someone who wakes up excited about metaphysics, eats a light breakfast of virtue, and then spends the afternoon contemplating the nature of justice while everyone else is trying to figure out who stole their sandals. 

Introduced in The Republic, the philosopher king represents Plato’s vision of the ideal ruler—someone who unites deep wisdom with political authority. In a world where leaders often chase power, wealth, or popularity, Plato imagined something radically different: a leader motivated solely by truth and the common good.

But is this ideal inspiring, impossible, or a blueprint for authoritarianism? Let’s explore what Plato had in mind, why the idea still fascinates us, and where its critics push back.

Key Traits (According to Plato, Who Had High Standards)

• Loves wisdom: Not “likes reading.” Loves wisdom. The kind of person who would choose a good book over a good throne. Philosopher kings are driven by a passion for truth—not wealth, status, or personal gain. Their curiosity is lifelong, and their decisions are grounded in reason.

• Knows “the Good”:  Not just good, but The Good™. The cosmic, universal, capital‑G Good. It’s like having the Wi‑Fi password to the universe. Plato argued that understanding “the Good” is essential for just leadership. This isn’t just moral goodness—it’s a deep grasp of reality, virtue, and what truly benefits society.

• Lives simply: No gold-plated chariots. No palace with a lazy river. Just a humble home, a clean conscience, and maybe a very well-organized bookshelf. These leaders live simply, act selflessly, and maintain high moral character. Their personal lives reflect the values they expect from the state.

• Trained like an intellectual Navy SEAL: Plato's ideal leaders excel intellectually. Their education spans decades - decades of math, logic, philosophy, and perhaps military drills. Imagine a Rhodes Scholar who can also lead a cavalry charge. 

What Does This Paragon Actually Do All Day?

• Ensures Justice: They structure society so everyone does what they’re best at. Bakers bake. Soldiers soldier. Philosophers… well, philosophize. Their central mission is to structure society according to reason and fairness. Justice, for Plato, means each part of society functioning harmoniously.

• Guides the Youth: Part teacher, part guardian, part “please stop poking the fire with that stick.”  Philosopher kings guide citizens—especially the young

• Makes Rational Decisions: No impulsive decrees. No “I had a dream last night and now we’re banning olives.”  Their leadership is grounded in calm, thoughtful deliberation rather than impulse or passion.

How to Become a Philosopher King (Spoiler: You Won’t)

Plato’s process makes Harvard admissions look like a raffle.

• Selected Early: Not because their parents donated a wing to the Academy, but because they show promise and don’t bite other children. Potential rulers are identified early in life based on talent and character—not family background.

• Educated for decades:  Rigorous education filters out anyone lacking discipline, intellect, or virtue. Only the most capable advance.

• Practical Experience: If they survive the math, the metaphysics, and the existential dread, they're still only halfway there. Plato thought that before ruling, the ideal leader needed practical experience in political roles that proved their good judgment and resilience. Experience in civic duties. Probably some crisis management experience. Maybe eve military service 

• Final promotion: Only after proving they are wise, virtuous, and not secretly power-hungry do they get the keys to the kingdom.

Why People Like the Idea

No corruption. No petty politics. No leaders who say “I did my own research” after reading half a scroll.  A philosopher king would, in theory, rule with fairness, clarity, and a deep sense of responsibility. The idea of the philosopher king appeals to anyone frustrated with short-term politics or leaders driven by ego.

Why People Side-Eye the Idea

It is a little elitist—and it’s only one bad day away from “philosopher tyrant.” Let’s be honest: “power” and “trust me, I’m virtuous” is a combination that has historically gone sideways.

Why Does the Idea Still Stick Around?

Because it taps into a universal fantasy: What if the smartest, kindest, most reasonable person was in charge? Not the loudest. Not the richest. Not the one with the best slogans. Just the wisest.

It’s a lovely dream — even if, like most lovely dreams, it dissolves the moment you try to implement it in a room full of actual humans.

Planning Ahead: The Anatomy of Fascism

The 20th century left us a warning written in ash and bone: when fascism rises, entire societies can be dragged into catastrophe. World War II did not simply erupt—it was engineered by movements that fed on rage, myth, and the seductive promise of national rebirth. In the end seventy‑five to eighty million lives had were claimed. With destruction on that scale, understanding fascism becomes more than a historical exercise

Fascism today is often reduced to a casual insult, a rhetorical weapon tossed at any politician or policy we dislike. That flattening strips the term of its historical weight.  [What We Lose When “Fascism” Becomes an All‑Purpose Insult]  Even in more serious discussions, however, we tend to imagine fascism as a tidy ideology—a fixed set of doctrines that can be summarized like a party platform. But as historian Robert O. Paxton reminds us in his book The Anatomy of Fascism, “fascist movements varied so conspicuously from one national setting to another… that some even doubt that the term fascism has any meaning other than as a smear word."

The truth is that fascism was never primarily about doctrine. It was about behavior. Fascist movements revealed themselves through what they did: their mobilization of crowds, their glorification of violence, their manipulation of myth and emotion, their relentless pursuit of power. Their ideas were often contradictory or deliberately vague because coherence mattered far less than momentum. Fascists were not theorists; they were activists, agitators, and opportunists who believed that action itself—dramatic, theatrical, often brutal—was the engine of political transformation.

A past that cost tens of millions of lives is not something we can afford to misunderstand. The question is not whether history repeats itself exactly, but whether we are paying attention when its shadows begin to lengthen again. 

This is why my lecture series The Anatomy of Fascism approaches the subject not as a static belief system but as a dynamic political movement. To understand fascism, we must watch how it behaves, how it grows, how it exploits crisis, and how it transforms ordinary citizens into participants in extraordinary violence. Only by studying its patterns of action can we recognize how similar forces might re-emerge in different times and places, wearing new symbols but pursuing familiar ends.

Orwell's War on Sloppy Language

When George Orwell sat down in 1946 to write Politics and the English Language, he wasn’t just irritated by bad prose. He felt something larger slipping away—clarity, honesty, even the ability to think straight. To him, the decline of language wasn’t a cosmetic problem; it was a moral one. Foolish thoughts produced sloppy language, and sloppy language made it easier to think even more foolish thoughts. Left unchecked, the cycle would spin on forever.

Eric Arthur Blair (1903 – 1950)
who wrote under the pen name of
George Orwell

Orwell believed that political actors understood this perfectly well. Sloppy, inflated, evasive language wasn’t an accident—it was a tool. It allowed governments to hide brutality behind soft cushions of words, to make the indefensible sound reasonable, and to lull citizens into accepting what they might otherwise resist. When language becomes vague, he warned, truth becomes optional.

The Fog That Thinks for You

Orwell describes the modern writer as someone moving through a thick fog of ready‑made phrases. The fog is comforting; it saves effort. Why think when a cliché can do the thinking for you? Why confront a brutal truth when a soft euphemism can cushion it? Orwell sees how this fog works on the mind; once you stop choosing your own words, you stop choosing your own thoughts.

Orwell had a gift for metaphor, and he used it to expose the tricks of bad writing. He compared insincere writers to cuttlefish, creatures that release clouds of ink whenever they feel threatened. Politicians and bureaucrats, he argued, do the same thing—only their ink takes the form of long words, stale metaphors, and phrases so overused they no longer mean anything.

He noticed how often writers and politicians reached for ready‑made phrases, “long strips of words." These bits of language, he said, anesthetize the mind. They allow a writer or speaker to sound authoritative without anyone actually thinking.

Worst of all for Orwell was political euphemism—the art of making “lies sound truthful and murder respectable.” Bombing civilians became pacification. Forced displacement became transfer of populations. The words were clean; the actions were not.

And then there were the meaningless words—terms like democratic or fascist that had been stretched so thin they could mean anything or nothing. Such words were perfect for praise or condemnation because they required no evidence, only emotion.

Echoes in His Fiction

Orwell's concerns weren't confined to his essays. They became the backbone of his fiction. In 1984, Newspeak is the logical endpoint of linguistic decay: a language engineered to shrink the range of human thought. If there is no word for freedom, how can one imagine it?

In Animal Farm, language becomes a weapon of control. Slogans are repeated until they replace memory. Commandments are quietly rewritten. And the chilling line “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” shows how easily language can be twisted to make injustice sound natural.

A Way Back

Despite his bleak diagnosis, Orwell wasn't a fatalist. He believed that the decline of language was reversible. He insisted that writers and speechmakers could resist the drift into the fog by choosing clarity over ornament, precision over vagueness, honesty over convenience. His six rules for writing—avoid clichés, use short words, cut unnecessary language, prefer the active voice, avoid jargon, and break any rule before saying something absurd—were meant as an act of resistance and rebellion.

Fighting for a clean sentence, Orwell is not polishing prose for beauty’s sake. He is trying to keep language alive because once language collapses, truth is next. His essay is a reminder that clarity is not just a stylistic choice. It is a moral stance. It is a refusal to let someone else think on your behalf. It is the belief that words, used honestly, can still cut through the fog.

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More on Orwell

Who Really Writes History? The Winners, the Losers… or the Liars?

The Future Orwell Feared Is the One We Built

What’s Next? Erasing History

Earlier this month, I explored the state of healthcare in the United States and how numbers alone cannot capture the deeper moral and civic questions beneath the surface. In April, I will turn to another topic where facts, memory, and meaning collide: the struggle over history itself.

Across the political spectrum, people accuse one another of rewriting or erasing the past. Confederate monuments come down. Military bases are renamed—sometimes more than once. Textbooks and school curricula are revised. Museums rethink their exhibits. Even state flags are redesigned. Each of these actions is framed by some as an assault on heritage and by others as an act of moral repair.

The central question of my upcoming lecture is simple but demanding: When do these actions erase history, and when do they represent an attempt to care for the nation’s soul?

The Soul of a Nation

The idea of a national soul is ancient. Around 375 BCE, Plato explored the soul of a city-state in The Republic, describing how a community’s character, justice, and shared ideals shape its political life. That idea has echoed across centuries of political thought: nations, like individuals, have an inner life.

A national soul can be understood as:

• The deep, animating collective spirit of a people
• The core identity that binds a nation together
• A shared set of ideals, values, and principles
• A collection of enduring, aspirational commitments
• The moral conscience that guides political, social, and economic life
• A living inheritance that grows out of a shared remembered past

A nation’s history—its triumphs and its traumas—forms the narrative through which people understand who they are, how they relate to one another, and what is good and important. That narrative is never static. It is shaped, revised, and sometimes contested as new generations reinterpret the past.

When Does Change Become Erasure?

The tension arises because caring for the national soul requires two things that can feel contradictory:

1. Honoring the past—even when it is painful, complicated, or uncomfortable.
2. Refusing to enshrine falsehoods—especially when they distort who we have been or who we aspire to be.

Removing a monument, renaming a base, or revising a textbook can be an act of erasure if it attempts to hide or sanitize history. But it can also be an act of moral clarity if it helps a nation confront the truth more honestly.

The difference lies in intention and outcome:

• Does the action obscure the past, or does it illuminate it?
• Does it narrow our understanding, or deepen it?
• Does it silence part of the story, or make room for voices long ignored?

A healthy national soul requires the courage to face both the good and the bad without flinching. It requires the discipline to distinguish fact from fiction, memory from myth, and heritage from nostalgia.

Caring for the National Soul

Caring for the national soul is not a passive act. It demands ongoing engagement with history—its achievements, its failures, and its unresolved tensions. It asks us to hold complexity rather than retreat into simplicity. It challenges us to build a shared narrative that is honest enough to heal and hopeful enough to inspire.

The debate over “erasing history” is really a debate about who we are and who we want to become. It is a struggle over memory, identity, and the moral responsibilities of citizenship.

As April approaches, I am looking forward to exploring this question: not to settle the debate, but to help us see it more clearly.

Erasing History—or Caring for our National Soul?

Tuesday, 4/21; 9:30 – 11:30 AM Pacific Time

Osher Lifelong Learning Institute

California State University, East Bay

Register here (Must be a member to register)

 

More on Erasing History

Erasing History in Plain Sight

Who Really Writes History? The Winners, the Losers… or the Liars?

March Is Women’s History Month

March is Women’s History Month – And I Have Some Reading Suggestions

March invites us to pause, look back, and honor the women whose courage, intellect, and persistence shaped the nation we live in. It’s a month for rediscovering stories that were too often pushed to the margins—and for celebrating the writers who bring those stories back into the light.

Three Books by Cokie Roberts Worth Your Time

If you’re looking for meaningful, accessible, and deeply human history to read this month, you can’t go wrong with Cokie Roberts. Her trilogy on American women is a gift: warm, meticulously researched, and filled with the kinds of stories that make you wonder why these names weren’t in your school textbooks.

Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation

Roberts opens the American Revolution from a new angle—through the women who sustained households, managed businesses, ran farms, and shaped political thinking while the men drafted the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. These are stories of grit, sacrifice, and strategic brilliance. They remind us that independence was not only fought on battlefields but also in kitchens, parlors, and makeshift war rooms across the colonies.

Ladies of Liberty

Roberts continues the story into the early republic, spotlighting the women who helped steer a fragile new nation. Roberts shows how these women balanced public influence with private responsibility, often acting as political advisors, social diplomats, and cultural leaders in an era that pretended they had no role at all.

Capital Dames: The Civil War and the Women of Washington, 1848–1868

By the time Roberts reaches the Civil War, the women of Washington, D.C. are no longer operating behind the scenes—they are shaping the political and social landscape in unmistakable ways. This book is a riveting portrait of independence, service, and political empowerment during one of the most turbulent periods in American history.

A New Voice for Women’s History: Norah O’Donnell

I just downloaded Norah O’Donnell’s new book, and it promises to be a powerful addition to the genre.

We the Women: The Hidden Heroes Who Shaped America

O’Donnell brings together portraits of American women—from 1776 to the present—whose courage and persistence helped bend the arc of the nation toward a more perfect union. It’s a sweeping, modern look at the unsung heroes who fought for freedom, expanded rights, and insisted that America live up to its ideals.

Why These Books Matter

Women’s History Month isn’t just about celebration—it’s about correction. It’s about restoring the missing chapters, acknowledging the invisible labor, and recognizing that the American story has always been a collaboration, even when only half the collaborators were credited. These books remind us that history is richer, more complex, and far more inspiring when we widen the lens.

And one more thing—because the science is too good not to mention: people who read live longer. Truly. Studies show that regular reading is linked to longer life expectancy, reduced stress, sharper cognition, and deeper empathy.

So, this March, pick up a book about the women who shaped America. You’ll honor their lives—and maybe even extend your own.

 

 

Erasing History in Plain Sight

 As I prepare for my upcoming lecture Erasing History—or Caring for Our National Soul? I keep circling back to a simple but unsettling truth: forgetting history is sometimes accidental – but sometimes it’s not. Sometimes, history is curated and aestheticized. Sometimes history is written by the losing side of battles, or by the nostalgic, or by the people who desperately need the past to be something more flattering than it was. And sometimes, history is sold to us with a mint julep and a guided tour.

Suzannah Herbert’s new documentary film Natchez, which turns its lens on plantation tourism in Mississippi, captures this dynamic vividly.  The film is not just about a place; it’s about a performance — a carefully staged version of the past that comforts visitors while burying the truth beneath layers of charm and choreography.

Orwell’s Warning: Memory as a Battleground

George Orwell famously wrote that “who controls the past controls the future.” He understood that the past is contested terrain. In my earlier post on Orwell and erasing history, I explored how defeated movements — such as post‑WWI German nationalists and the architects of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy — often craft seductive counter‑historical narratives. These stories don’t triumph because they’re accurate. They triumph because they’re emotionally satisfying. Natchez shows this process unfolding in plantation tours that become a kind of soft‑focus propaganda where slavery is minimized or euphemized, violence is reframed as hardship, enslaved people are reduced to footnotes, and architectural beauty becomes a distraction from human brutality. This is not history. It is mythmaking. And it is exactly the kind of mythmaking Orwell warned us about.

The Plantation as a Stage Set

One of the most striking insights in Natchez is how plantations function as theatrical spaces. The tours are scripted. The costumes are curated. The narratives are polished until they gleam. Visitors are invited to admire the chandeliers, the gardens, the gowns — everything except the system of racial terror that made those luxuries possible. The film exposes how this “heritage tourism” industry relies on a kind of emotional laundering. The past is cleaned up, softened, and made palatable. The result is a version of history that feels safe, even charming, but is fundamentally dishonest.

This is erasure by substitution. Not deleting the past but replacing it with something prettier.

Losers Writing History: The Lost Cause Lives On

What makes Natchez so powerful is that it reveals how the Confederacy — a defeated cause — still shapes American memory. The plantation fantasy is not a victor’s narrative. It is a loser’s narrative that has been elevated, repeated, and monetized until it feels authoritative.

The defeated can rewrite history just as effectively as the victorious, especially when their version of the past meets a psychological need. The plantation myth serves to ease guilt, evoke nostalgia, deflect responsibility, and craft a sellable narrative.

In this sense, Natchez is a case study in how societies choose comforting lies over difficult truths.

The Soft Erasure: How Forgetting Really Works

Sometimes erasing history is dramatic with book burning and censorship. Sometimes erasing history is much less than dramatic. It can be something quieter: selective omission; euphemism; aesthetic distraction; or narrative substitution. Natchez captures this soft erasure with painful clarity. The film shows how plantation tours don’t deny slavery; they simply bury it under magnolia blossoms and romanticized storytelling. This is how forgetting becomes a cultural habit.

Why This Matters Now

We are living through a moment when the past is being contested with new intensity. School curricula, public monuments, museum exhibits, and tourist attractions have become battlegrounds. The question is no longer what happened but whose version of what happened will define our collective memory.

Natchez forces us to confront the stakes of this struggle. It asks whether we are willing to face the truth — or whether we prefer the comfort of curated forgetting.

Reclaiming the Past Without Rewriting It

If we want a healthier relationship with history, we must resist both forms of distortion: the victor’s triumphalist rewriting and the loser’s sentimental rewriting. We must insist on a memory that is honest, unsparing, and humane. That means telling the full story of plantations — not as romantic estates, but as forced‑labor camps. It means centering the lives of the enslaved, not the fantasies of the nostalgic. It means recognizing that the struggle over history is not about the past at all. It is about the future we are willing to imagine.

Natchez reminds us that the past is not gone. And unless we challenge the myths, it will continue to shape us in ways we do not see.

Who Really Writes History? The Winners, the Losers… or the Liars?

 “History is written by the victors.” It’s a familiar line that many people casually attribute to Winston Churchill. But there’s no evidence he ever said it. George Orwell, however, did—and he meant it as a warning.

In his As I Please column for the Tribune on February 4, 1944, Orwell used the phrase to describe how power shapes memory. Whoever wins—whether a war, an election, or even a public argument—gets to decide what “really” happened. And if the winners are totalitarians, they don’t just shape the story. They can rewrite the past itself.

That idea echoes through one of the most chilling lines in 1984:

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

Orwell feared that authoritarian regimes don’t merely lie—they attack the very concept of objective truth. If dictators survive, their lies harden into “history.” If they fall, those lies evaporate. He pointed to Nazi radio reports of imaginary British air raids. Had Hitler won, those fictional raids would have become historical fact, dutifully recorded by future scholars.

So yes—history is written by the winners.

But is it really that simple?

When the Losers Pick Up the Pen

If history were only written by the victors, the 20th century would look very different. Some of the most destructive political myths in modern history were crafted not by triumphant powers, but by the defeated—losers rewriting their loss into a story of betrayal, nobility, or victimhood.

The Stab‑in‑the‑Back Myth: Germany, 1918

After World War I, Germany’s military leadership faced an inconvenient truth: they had lost the war. Rather than accept responsibility, they promoted the Dolchstoßlegende—the Stab‑in‑the‑Back Myth. According to this narrative, the German army was undefeated on the battlefield but sabotaged by Jews, socialists, and democratic politicians at home.

It was a lie. But it was a useful lie.

It destabilized the Weimar Republic, fueled antisemitism, and helped clear the path for the Nazi rise to power. A defeated military elite rewrote history—and millions paid the price.

The Lost Cause: America, 1865

The Confederacy lost the Civil War. Decisively. And yet, in the decades that followed, a new story emerged: the Confederacy hadn’t fought for slavery (despite its own documents saying exactly that), but for “states’ rights.” Slavery, in this retelling, was benign—sometimes even virtuous. The antebellum South became a romantic fantasy, complete with gallant generals and loyal enslaved people.

This myth—history written by the losers—reshaped American memory, culture, and politics for generations. Its echoes still reverberate today.

Truth as a Fragile Habit

Orwell believed that truth depends on a “liberal habit of mind”—a willingness to treat facts as something to be discovered, not manufactured. That habit requires a free press, open debate, and a public that values accuracy over comfort.

Without those, the idea of a “correct” version of history collapses. What remains is simply the version with the most power behind it. Sometimes that power belongs to the victors. Sometimes it belongs to the aggrieved, the resentful, or the defeated.

Either way, Orwell’s warning stands: If we stop believing that facts can be true whether we like them or not, then history becomes nothing more than a contest of narratives—and the loudest storyteller wins.

 

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More on Orwell

Orwell’s War on Sloppy Language

The Future Orwell Feared Is the One We Built