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Archive of posts published in the tag: Paul Johnson

Heartless Tyranny of Ideas

“Above all, we must at all times remember what intellectuals habitually forget: that people matter more than concepts and must come first. The worst of all despotisms is the heartless tyranny of ideas.”

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Fanaticism Defined

The world of ideas tempered by a realistic notion of human nature, moral considerations, and actual experiences is illuminating and useful. Attempting to bend human reality to theories in isolation is the definition of fanaticism.

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Beware Intellectuals

from the Wall Street Journal, Daniel Johnson’s review of the book, Public Intellectuals in the Public Arena. On a personal note: In the introduction to this book my father, Paul Johnson, is quoted warning in 1988, “One of the principal

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The Enlightenment Made Flesh

 “Unfortunately for Britain- and fortunately for America the generation that emerged to lead the colonies into independence was one of the most remarkable group of men in history-sensible, broad-minded, courageous, usually well educated, gifted in a variety of ways, and

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Eisenhower- A Better GOP Role Model

Excerpt from Modern Times on Eisenhower: “Eisenhower concealed his gifts and activities because he thought it essential that the autocratic leadership, which he recognized both America and the world needed, should be exercised by stealth. He had three quite clear

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Paranoid Explanations of Human Behavior

A few excerpts from Paul Johnson’s Modern Times, The World from the Twenties to the Nineties: “History shows us the truly amazing extent to which intelligent, well-informed and resolute men, in the pursuit of economy or in altruistic passion for

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The Origins of the League of Nations

The common belief in our history is that President Woodrow Wilson championed the concept of the League of Nations and it failed at the hands of his Republican adversaries who leaned toward isolationism.  Historian Paul Johnson in his history of

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Blind Intellect

Paul Johnson writes Men Blinded By Their Brains in the November 19, 2012 issue of Forbes Excerpt Of course, intellectuals, whom I define as those who think ideas are more important than people, are notoriously bad at seeing the ordinary

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An Antidote to Arrogance

from Paul Johnson “The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance.  It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many

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