Professional Historian and History Consultancy Services Brisbane
Category: American-Australian Relational History
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The Challenge to a Person’s Historical Understanding (more than knowledge): Either a Level of Stupidity or Propaganda (lying and knowing it)
“You either have an extractive elite — an oligarchy — or you have a productive elite — an aristocracy — in every society,” he said in an interview in his office in Scottsdale, Arizona. History, according to Chris Buskirk, J.D. Vance’s operative in the American “White House”. (Source: Elizabeth Dwoskin, The secretive donor circle that…
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David S. Brown on Richard Hofstadter: Personalism in Personable Context is Correct
Social environment inevitably intrudes upon historical analysis, however, and so we must appreciate not simply the author’s work, but also the public and personal circumstances that sustain and gave meaning to his efforts. “Before you study the history,” one commentator advised, “study the historian…The historian, being an individual, is also a product of history, and…
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WEEP FOR THE USA
I weep for the persons of the United States of America. The prolonged government shutdown is helping the Trump administration advance its goal of closing the Education Department — a longtime conservative aim that congressional Republicans have failed to act on. The Education Department is in the process of laying off…
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What is my Thought, What is Your Question: An Academia and Educational Paper
A phenomenological-existential investigation of the question of why populations stagnated into “more of the same” ‘bullshit’, as in Harry Frankfurt (2014). Frankfurt determines that bullshit is speech intended to persuade without regard for truth. The liar cares about the truth and attempts to hide it; the bullshitter doesn’t care whether what they say is true…
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John Searle Obituary, from “The Guardian” with a few comments from the Work of Dr Buch
John Searle obituary American philosopher whose Chinese Room thought experiment rebuts the idea that computers can think as humans do Jane O’Grady, The Guardian Sun 5 Oct 2025 22.29 AEDT The American philosopher John Searle, who has died aged 93, first made his name in philosophy of language, then in philosophy of…
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RFK Ideology 2025
From The Atlantic, “Going Back”, 26 September 2025: Will Gottsegen: How does the ideology of conservatism explain what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is trying to do with health policy? Elizabeth Bruenig: When you think of conservatism, you’re thinking basically of someone who wants to conserve. William F. Buckley Jr. said the conservative disposition…
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“Come upon me”, said Sofia, “and I will give you rest.”
If statehood were offered to Australia and New Zealand instead of to Canada, would they warm up faster to the idea of becoming part of the most powerful and richest country the world has ever seen? Are they more pro-America than Canadians? That is the most ridiculous question…
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Sick and Tired of Bullshit Stories
Have a better worldview. I had this guy turn up at the Coopers Plains Inspect the Archive event, it started okay but then at the very end it turn sour. As he yarn away, half of what he said sounded reasonable and possible but the other part sounded like bullshit. It went sour with his…
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Why Educative Culture cannot be dismissed by ‘antis’ and ‘cynics’: Donald Trump’s America
There are many good reasons one could argue, to the presumptuous ‘antis’ and ‘cynics’ — those who have dismissed the intellectual criticism, that their nonsense is actually against educational culture but it will fail as Donald Trump’s American Agenda. This reasoning from Chris Havergal, editor of the Times Higher Education Supplement, is one…
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Northwestern Commencement Speech 2025 from Clary Doyle
Clary Doyle was the undergraduate student speaker at Northwestern University’s 2025 commencement. Her address to classmates has been edited lightly in Clary Doyle, “I just graduated with a philosophy degree. Here’s my message to the Class of 2025”, The Washington Post, EDT, 25 June 2025, at 6:00 a.m. EDT. https://wapo.st/443krna …