Philosophy
May 30, 2026 — Scott Johnson
Reading Edmund Burke as a college freshman was a transformative experience for me. I am thinking specifically of his Reflections on the Revolution in France, but other of his works also had a deep impact on me. In this passage of his Letter to a Member of the National Assembly (1791), he restates the wisdom of the ancients for modern man: Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion
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April 9, 2026 — Bill Glahn
Commentary in The Hill newspaper, Petraeus: Iran could emerge from war ‘militarily weakened’ but ‘strategically strengthened’ Ok. But which Iran? No one seems to recall that the top several layers of Iranian leadership have been wiped out since the war began a few weeks ago. We are now dealing with the third and fourth stringers from earlier this year. The Iran of 2025 is not the same as the Iran
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March 22, 2026 — Bill Glahn
“Civilization” has existed on Earth for less than 5,500 years. Through trial and error, we’ve developed a tiny handful of institutions/concepts that, in combination, finally broke through the “nasty/brutish/short” barrier. The key pillars to civilization are: –Monogamy –Free enterprise –Representative government –Universal education (reading/writing) –Scientific method –Monotheism Take away any one pillar, and eventually, the whole system falls apart. Now, all six are under attack. Beginning with the Enlightenment, through
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February 15, 2026 — Bill Glahn
Rudyard Kipling’s 1919 poem “The Gods of the Copybook Headings” contains a warning to us timelier than ever. Call it the poem of the week. As the poem’s date would suggest, it should be read as his reaction to the aftermath of World War I, and in opposition to the “progressives” of his day. I’ve never seen one, but a copybook was a schoolchild’s notebook that included pithy sayings and
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July 15, 2025 — Scott Johnson
When the flash floods hit Texas and wiped out the lives of so many beautiful young people, I thought of Voltaire’s account of the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 in Chapter V of Candide. The earthquake was a massive natural disaster. It killed thousands of people. In Candide Voltaire famously mocked the philosophical “optimism” of Alexander Pope (“whatever is, is right)” and Leibniz (this is “the best of all possible worlds”)
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December 19, 2024 — Steven Hayward
John Adams Wettergreen, long-time professor of political science at San Jose State University in the 1970s and 1980s, sadly passed away at the too-early age of 45 back in 1989. At the time he had been writing a magnum opus, which he tentatively called Total Regulation. It was a novel and heterodox account of the rise and transformation of what we today call the administrative state, going all the way
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August 24, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Our occasional podcast guest Glenn Ellmers recently sat down with Tom Klingenstein for a fascinating dialogue on the nature of political philosophy today. Normally I’d just post a link in our “Picks” section, but aside from the fact that the lengthy title and source would be hard to fit in our abbreviated format for Picks, I think the conversation is so good that I asked if we could reprint the
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June 11, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Sad news of the passing, at age 95, of Warren Winiarski, the founder of one of Napa Valley’s early and legendary wineries, Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars. If you know your Napa lore, you know the famous story of Winiarski’s 1973 Cabernet Sauvignon—the first ever from his new venture—winning the “Judgment of Paris” blind tasting in 1976, which scandalized the French, who couldn’t conceive the possibility that a California wine could
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April 6, 2024 — Scott Johnson
I want to strike a Nietzschean note in this comment on the rideshare ordinance enacted by the City of Minneapolis this past month. Under the ordinance, Uber and Lyft would be required to pay drivers a minimum rate of $1.40 per mile and 51 cents per minute to ensure that they earn the equivalent of local minimum wage of $15.57 per hour — effective May 1. The city council overrode
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August 25, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Finally, some answers to the core question of all metaphysics: Why did the chicken cross the road? Plato: To get to the essence of good Marx: It was historically inevitable Machiavelli: To instill fear in other chickens Nietzsche: On the assertion of its will to power Sartre: The chicken was ordered to cross the road De Beauvoir: One is not born chicken, one becomes Samuel Beckett: Because he was tired
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August 24, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Here in America, we have a chief executive who is elderly, frail, and in declining health. Not so in Finland. Finland’s Prime Minister is Sanna Marin, 36 years old and pretty. Over the last week or so, Marin has been caught up in a series of scandals–or are they pseudo-scandals? What is clear is that she likes to party, while her husband apparently doesn’t. Two videos of Marin partying with
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July 23, 2022 — John Hinderaker
The skeptical philosopher David Hume is one of the giants not just of the Enlightenment, but of the whole history of philosophy. But that was not enough to save him from being canceled in his native Scotland. At the instance of “woke” students, who wallow in incorrigible ignorance, David Hume Tower at the University of Edinburgh was re-named “40 George Square.” Hume’s offense was that, while he opposed slavery, there
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June 19, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Listeners to the 3WHH podcast will know that “Lucretia” and I have long divided on the question of Edmund Burke. To paraphrase something William F. Buckley once said about Harry Jaffa, if you think it is difficult to argue with Lucretia, just try agreeing with her—it’s nearly impossible. Back in our grad school days we liked to make fun of the leftist pop psychology popular at the time that everything
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October 17, 2021 — Scott Johnson
Provoked by Charles Murray’s laid-back admiration of Harvard Professor Michael Sandel’s The Tyranny of Merit, I touched on the issues that seem to be raised by Sandel’s book in “The merit of meritocracy.” Sandel’s book is now out in paperback and the Washington Free Beacon has just published Peter Berkowitz’s review of Sandel’s book. Placing the book in the context of Sandel’s career and the tradition of political philosophy, Berkowitz’s
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June 28, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
As college students, John and I both subscribed to the philosophical doctrine of determinism. We differed, though, on what implications, if any, the doctrine had for the issue of income distribution. I believed that because the traits that result in wealth are determined by causes beyond our control — the genetics lottery, for example — wealth is undeserved. Therefore, inequality is unjust and should be abolished John understood that my
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September 26, 2020 — Steven Hayward
Freshly resupplied with a shipment of Laphraoig, Talisker, and “Murdered Out” dark roast from Black Rifle Coffee, “Lucretia” and I drink to the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court, smack around Biden a little (but only a little because otherwise it would be elder abuse), and then resume our discussion from two weeks about about liberal education and Leo Strauss’s famous lecture entitled “What Is Liberal
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September 12, 2020 — Steven Hayward
Well now we’ve done it! This week Lucretia and I decided to take a break from downing whisky shots over the latest crazy news headlines and drag listeners back into the classroom for a new mini-series. I get lots of emails and comments from listeners and readers about why we surrender the term “liberal” to deep leftists who are profoundly illiberal. It’s a great question, and so Lucretia and I
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