The Post-Partisan Emporium

  The Rock and the Egg A Useful Guide for Telling One from the Other LIBRARIAN OF CELAENO Your eyes are closed.  You hold out each of your hands.  Into one is placed a rock, into the other, an egg, each having approximately the same size and shape.  You must decide which is which using the senses available to you. Sight is closed off, as noted.  Hearing will be of little use.  Smell might help*, but the egg is fresh and the stone is a stone.  You could try to taste it, but biting down on a rock could be hazardous.  This does give you an idea, though.  You run your fingers across the surface of stone and egg, but you gain nothing by this.  Each is cold and smooth and hard and hefty.  A test of each object at the surface level is fruitless.  Then you squeeze.  All at once, the distinction between the two objects that a moment ago each seemed so solid is revealed.  A particular application of touch- pressure- sufficed to...

Weep for the West ALASTAIR CROOKE Michael Anton, a former U.S. Presidential National Security Adviser,  gives  us this analogy for the U.S.’ and Europe’s situation today: “On Sept. 20, 1911, the RMS Olympic—sistership of the ill-fated Titanic—collided with the Royal Navy cruiser HMS Hawke, despite both vessels traveling at low speeds, in visual contact with one another – for 80 minutes. “It was,” writes maritime historian John Maxtone-Graham, “one of those incredible convergences, in full daylight on a calm sea within sight of land, where two normally operated vessels steamed blithely to a point of impact – as though mesmerized””. We too seem headed for a similar point of impact, with the prospect of collision in full view – and one as obvious as it was on that day in 1911. Equally, our ruling class is not for changing course. It must want this percussion —or else perhaps they view an Armageddon of collision as ultimately destined to provide the path to the triumph of ‘righteo...