Island Life by David Slack

Google provides the answer in 0.04 seconds and boy, was I far off the mark. It was going to guess a poor translation of Machiavelli.

Redbaiter!

Nah, really it was Shadia Drury, writing of the neo-conservative followers of Leo Strauss. But I only know that 'cause of google.

Nicole Kidman, of the Church of Scientology?

Free copy of Civil War and Other Optimistic Predictions (the 2005 election year book that never goes out of date) to Jake and Giovanni if you'd like one. Just email me a mailing address.

Llew, you can have one too if you don't already.

Heh. I was thinking some ancient Roman or Greek orator..

Even more interesting is today's news that a Kiwisaver "rejig" involving "small changes" will release the squillions needed to fund tax cuts.

There is no safe retirement fund. My advice to look after yourself in your old age - buy property. Seriously, why the .... would anyone trust private or government savings schemes.

That seems unduly generous, David, but I am not known to turn down free stuff, much less free books. Tell you what, I'll accept so long as you're able to track down the author and get him to sign it.

Now there's a challenge for you.

(My son the other day spotted this book in the lounge I had just brought home, Film and the Shoah in France and Italy, written by our dear friend Giacomo Lichtner. He wanted to know what it was about, so I told him, although obviously given that he's 6 years old I didn't get into the kind of detail that you would expect to impart on an older fella. Still, there was the basic concept there, that certain men felt that whole other groups of people had to be destroyed, and they set about doing just that, and the concept must have registered at a certain level judging by the expression on his face, and a very obvious thing occurred to me, namely that there is a first time in life when you learn about these things that are bigger than life itself, death being the most egregious one I guess, and being there to witness one such occasion made me catch my breath for a moment.)

(What Machiavelli did in fact write, among very many other things, is that men ought to other be indulged or utterly destroyed. Go figure.)

Either. Either be indulged.

Its Tolstoy bitching about Gandhi, right?

Cheers David, I think you've offered before & I probably promised to support impoverished authors by buying my own copy...

... I probably spent the money on drugs &/or porn... or squandered it in some way.

Couldn't really imagine Nicole using a word like "lest" anyway.

is that men ought to other be indulged or utterly destroyed.

Are those two concepts mutually exclusive?

Chocolate fish to anyone who can prove they've actually read anything by Strauss -- documentary evidence of brain bleeds, haemorrhaging eyeballs etc.

Are those two concepts mutually exclusive?

Not at all, he was pretty clear you could do one and then the other (although not vice versa).

Craig - is he that bad? I have read about him (in an honours seminar, Margaret Clark made us do it) but nothing he has written. It was described in that piece as "opaque"...

Thanks David -- if only all of my intermittent breaks from reading about 17th Century Dutch maps were as profitable.

And although I've not read any Strauss, I did have the misfortune of having to read some David Horowitz last semester -- now there's an insane man playing an important role in the Republican movement. I note that his name has been cropping up a bit on Farrar's blog, but from what I can tell no one (apart from maybe Redbaiter and Michael Coote of the NBR on the New Zealand Right has gotten out there yet.

I like to think that, despite Bill English's indiscretions revealing that they haven't given up on the 90s yet, the ideological extremists that dominate the Republican party in the US are still on the fringes in New Zealand.

Or not.

Craig - is he that bad?

I wouldn't say "bad", but I'll put it this way: If Mike Moore or Ann Coulter is your idea of political philosophy -- no troublesome reading of dead white guys who use big words or actual thought required --, stay the hell away from Leo Strauss. And if you're looking for some Neoconservatism For Dummies polemic, good luck. I just suspect Strauss is one of those writers who is more name-checked (either to praise or damn) than actually read. The poli sci equivalent of A Brief History of Time or The Bone People. :)

Chocolate fish to anyone who can prove they've actually read anything by Strauss -- documentary evidence of brain bleeds, haemorrhaging eyeballs etc.

i once read "the raw and the cooked" if that's any qualification.

I note that his name has been cropping up a bit on Farrar's blog, but from what I can tell no one (apart from maybe Redbaiter and Michael Coote of the NBR on the New Zealand Right has gotten out there yet.

Coote's a hoot. I can't confirm if he actually is Redbaiter, but The Fundy Post has revealed his after-hours gig: he's the campaign manager for National's Jackie Blue in Mt Roskill.

Which certainly casts an interesting light on this part of his NBR polemic:

Which feckless, taxpayer-funded bunch of collectivist lickspittles - red or blue - one wants to preside nominally in Parliament over the country's true entrenched ruling class of expropriating bureaucrats and other species of mis-named public servants, is all that anyone will be turning out one upcoming Saturday to vote upon. Those who expect the unelected ruling class to be disestablished as an outcome of the election would be wise to hedge their bets by launching a petition for Pharmac to undertake full funding of psychiatric drugs to be available without prescription in supermarkets.

Oh bloody dear.

Oh, and Public Address reader Andrew Wilson gave us this personal account of a Horowitz lecture appearance in Indiana in 2005.

It is every bit as disturbing as you'd expect. And then some more.

Wasn't someone asking about this term recently - great turn o phrase by Mr Litterick:

**PoMo**, a world without moral absolutes where nobody listens to priests any more

Coote's a hoot. I can't confirm if he actually is Redbaiter, but The Fundy Post has revealed his after-hours gig: he's the campaign manager for National's Jackie Blue in Mt Roskill.

Redbaiter would never have anything to do with those socialist scum.

BTW - who can tell me the name of Stephen Franks' campaign manager? I've heard a rumour it's someone I know, but I'd like to see it confirmed (or not).

Redbaiter would never have anything to do with those socialist scum.

Thus the brilliance of his disguise. No beard necessary.

Shadia Drury paraphrases the "universal truth" that all politicians lie to become all Straussian politicians lie.