Weekend Reading & Selected Links

Happy weekend! Here are some links to things I've been reading or watching that you might also enjoy:

1. 'God is a Russian', a 2018 essay by Tim Snyder for The New York Review of Books, on Ivan Ilyin, one of Putin's favourite philosophers.

2. 'Immense Wars of the Spirit', the final chapter of Fukuyama's The End of History and The Last Man. Worth reading.

3. Arnold Schwarzenegger's address to the Russian people (transcript here), one of the greatest American political speeches of the last decade, masterfully written and delivered. (I say 'American' for more than one reason, since it's not clear what impact the speech will have in Russia.)

4. An excerpt from Chapter 2 of Czeslaw Milosz's The Captive Mind.

5. 'Ukraine and the Clash of Civilisation theory, an interview with Olivier Roy', on why Samuel Huntington was plain wrong. Via Tyler Cowen.

6. John Maynard Keynes on Clemenceau, an excerpt from The Economic Consequences of the Peace.

7. 'Monumental Egos', a classic Spectator article by the late Roger Scruton, on the problem with modern architecture.

Have a great weekend,  


Joe