Why?
Welcome to my anonymous newsletter. Like many, writing on Substack is not my plan for paying the bills. I have a business. Running that business requires that, for the most part, I keep my non-business opinions to myself. I am ok with this. I read a lot. Some online. A lot of books. I have over the years pestered various busy online writers, sharing with them my unsolicited thoughts. Sometimes they respond. Often they do not. I thought I would jump into the world of Substack writing and see what happens. I think there will be some who find my musings valuable.
I have training in philosophy, classics (my Classical Greek is still pretty passable 25 years after leaving school. Hebrew did not stick so well.), history, theology and biblical studies. I am Christian and belong to a protestant church with historical roots. I say that merely to indicate that I am neither a fundamentalist nor an evangelical. I think of myself as conservative. I used to be less so, but the world has shifted around me. I am a small “o” orthodox believer. That said, I tend to be an independent thinker whose ideas don’t always fit neatly into the “correct” boxes.
Since politics infects everything these days, my political views are transitioning. I am not an American, so thankfully I am exempted from the republican/democrat political binary. Having said that, I am politically conservative, but not in the way that the usual political orthodoxies might suggest. I used to be a classical liberal, global free trader who spouted all the usual low taxes, balance the budget, trickle down bromides common in what is now called “zombie Reaganism.” I used to keep a beautiful boxed two volume copy of The Debate on the Constitution on my desk which has since been moved to the stacks. Over the last 5-10 years, but particularly in the last five, I have come to embrace what might be loosely called “post-liberalism.” Part of what I am doing here is the attempt to figure out what that means in the late-West.
In this Substack of mine, I hope to integrate philosophy, theology, social theory, and political science together with insights learned by paying attention as well as those provided by the school of hard knocks. I have some ideas about this already, and some may form while writing. I am not a specialist or a scholar. I have an education, a varied set of life experiences, a love of reading and a desire to understand the world.
Let’s begin and see where it goes.