Yes, yes, your Curmudgeon knows perfectly well it should be “unworthiness.” But essay titles are special around here. We use them to draw attention, to stimulate thought, and – on occasion – to elicit a laugh or two. Especially on those occasions when we’re striving not to be “stuffed shirts.” Say, how long …
Category: great men
Dec 23 2024
Leadership, 21st Century Edition
“To lead people, walk beside them … As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honor and praise. The next, the people fear; and the next, the people hate … When the best leader’s work is done the people say, ‘We did it ourselves!’” – …
Dec 13 2024
An Era For Great Men
If you’re around my age, I pity you… no, wait, strike that; it’s not what I was thinking a moment ago. If you’re around my age, you probably received something that resembles an education in the history of the West: i.e., Europe and the Americas. Among the things to which you were probably exposed …
Nov 30 2023
The Diplomat
peace n: A state of tension falling short of armed conflict. [Definition proposed by the late Keith Laumer in his Retief tales] Among the political fantasies of our era, the notion that one can negotiate an enduring peace with an enemy ideologically committed to one’s destruction ranks very high, possibly supreme. Yet that …
Sep 09 2022
The Passing Of A Monarch
Monarchs aren’t what they once were, to be sure. The First World has no recognized kings or queens who wield the powers once associated with those titles. Elizabeth of the House of Windsor, a.k.a. Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales, certainly didn’t wield the powers of …
Aug 31 2022
Great Men…And Others
There are great men that the histories recognize, and there are great men whose greatness largely goes unrecognized, sometimes even unrecorded. Some fall between those two poles. Some are remembered for the wrong things. Mikhail Gorbachev died yesterday. He’s mostly remembered for being the last potentate of the old Soviet Union. Vladimir Putin …
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Margaret’s Recent Novels
