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The Long View 2003-06-04: Alternative History

In this post, John discusses two books with the same title: Empire. As I noted, imperialism was a fascination with John, so this should not be surprising. What really made this post was the authors of the two books were put together into one interview on NPR. Regrettably, this combination

The Long View: Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power

Imperialism is a subject John often returned to, but his interest in the subject was quite different from most others. For John, what mattered were not mere national empires like the British Empire, but the Empire, the universal state into which all political and economic systems seem to eventually collapse.

The Long View: Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals

An early book review by John of a collection of alternative history edited by Niall Ferguson. I think alternative history and historical fiction are fun ways to explore the structure of history, and help give you concrete hooks to provide a mental map or structure that will allow you to

The Long View: The Dark Imperium

Here is an old essay of John's on Satanic eschatology. I'm sure there must be all of 50 people in the world who are interested in this subject, but for the rest of you, this essay is also a window back into time, when the Internet

The Long View 2003-05-29: Weapons of Mass Destruction

Unfortunately for John's posthumous reputation, the answer to his question is: they didn't exist. Weapons of Mass Destruction Where are those weapons of mass destruction, you may ask? Well, I certainly don't have them. The question is what happened to the Iraqi WMD inventory,

The Long View 2003-05-22: What this Country Needs....

John said in 2002 that no century in modern times had produced less intellectual history than the twentieth. Another way of putting it might be that the more things change, the more they stay the same. The quoted WNYC story in this post from 2003 is by now clearly right.

The Long View 2003-04-16: Slayage

I never was into either Buffy or the West Wing, so I don't have much to add to John's comments regarding either. I do think the Matrix Reloaded didn't live up to the first Matrix, but that was a hard act to follow. It