Tag: russia

Vodolazkin’s critical vision of the Medieval Russian past is no different in essence from Augustine’s similarly sharp and un-glamorous vision of Roman history.

Despite Americans’ instinctive openness, decades of deadly overdoses and mass shooting victims remind them that there have to be boundaries. The difficulty of controlling protests in Russia and China reminds them that closing down too hard can destabilize the government’s hold on society and trigger an exodus. The question that remains to be answered is whether these vast societies will push their limits to the extreme such that they lose the things that closure was meant to secure and that openness was meant to allow.

Aaron Weinacht’s book is a needed corrective to the public misperception of Ayn Rand as radical capitalist. She was, first and foremost, a radical nihilist. Insofar as Rand embraced capitalism, it was secondary to her axiomatic nihilism embodied best in John Galt.

We occupants of the Porch can profitably read Vodolazkin in light of our own concern to acknowledge human limitations and find ways to live well and more fully in our own communities.

Overall, the key corrolations are clear: functional families are strong and large; strong and large families are function-rich.