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Thanks for the bump on this one. OK, I now formally have more reading material than I can deal with over the next several months. I will definitely need to cut back on my sleep!

I just downloaded this book and the The Next American Civil War onto our Kindle. Dr. Quigley's T&H (1966, First Printing) is scheduled to arrive on July 2. Add these to the pile of books my son got me for Father's Day and I will be longing for rainy weekends and nothing too urgent to attend to in the shop!

Brief comment on the Enemies: Both (Marxist-Statists and Islam) have already become firmly entrenched within. No need to be overly concerned with external threats at this point, the internal threats have already outstripped our flanks. IMO.

Well, you've certainly got your work cut out for you! But it's great work, necessary work. I guarantee that once you've made your first pass through these books, you'll never look at the world in quite the same way. The second and third passes will have even more impact. Because you'll start connecting names and events. History and the nature of Man will begin to assume a very different shape. I'll be very interrested in how it goes. There'll be a lot to discuss. We used to do that sort of thing here at FR. Back in the late 90s, an FR member who went by the moniker of ACE published a series of stunning essays here. Unfortunately, they're long since gone, but I do wish that they could be resurrected. His first one, Original Sin was absolutely brilliant. Can't find it anywhere now.

But this is the sort of discussion that all of us need to have, especially now. Modern civilizations rise and fall according to the people they produce and the ideas they follow and hold dear. And are willing to defend.

Right now, I've begun a careful re-read of the latest edition of The Road to Serfdom, and I've got Walter Bagehot's Physics and Politics on the way. After reading Quigley, Hayek's efforts to get his work published assume new meaning and context.

Dinner beckons, so I'll close this now. Good evening, all.

Say, my friend - what did you think of Quigley's take on what he calls The Pakistani-Peruvian axis? One of the best insights of the entire 1300+ pages of Tragedy and Hope, in my opinion. I have never seen such a penetrating enalysis of the mindset of our enemies, nor have I ever see nthe virtues of our Western civilizations summed up in such a moving and elegant fashion:

The ethical sides of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam sought to counteract harshness, egocentricity, tribalism, cruelty, scorn of work and of one’s fellow creatures, but these efforts, on the whole, have met with little success throughout the length of the Pakistani-Peruvian axis. Of the three, Christianity, possibly because it set the highest standards of the three, has fallen furthest from achieving its aims. Love, humility, brotherhood, cooperation, the sanctity of work, the fellowship of community, the image of man as a fellow creature made in the image of God, respect for women as personalities and partners of men, mutual helpmates on the road to spiritual salvation, and the vision of our universe, with all of its diversity, complexity, and multitude of creatures, as a reflection of the power and goodness of God – these basic aspects of Christ’s teachings are almost totally lacking throughout the Pakistani-Peruvian axis and most notably absent on the “Christian” portion of that axis from Sicily, or even the Aegean Sea, westward to Baja California and Tierra del Fuego. Throughout the whole axis, human actions are not motivated by these “Christian virtues,” but by the more ancient Arabic personality traits, which become vices and sins in the Christian outlook: harshness, envy, lust, greed, selfishness, cruelty, and hatred.

Brilliant.