Edward Curtin My title comes from a 19th century author whose name does not matter nor would it mean much if I mentioned him. It’s an old truth that has not changed a bit over the centuries. I think, however, it would be more linguistically accurate to say that most people want to be deceived, for …
Edward Curtin “No one knows who will live in this [iron] cage in the future….” Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism I would prefer not to relay the following very strange story given to me by a fellow sociologist, but he had done me a number of favors, and since he …
Edward Curtin “Ingsoc. The sacred principles of ingsoc. Newspeak, double-speak, the mutability of the past.” – George Orwell, 1984 As today dawned, I was looking out the window into the cold grayness with small patches of snow littering the frozen ground. As light snow began to fall, I felt a deep mourning in my soul as …
Edward Curtin “What they [regular people] need, and what they feel they need, is a quality of mind that will help them use information and to develop reason in order to achieve lucid summations of what is going on in the world and what may be happening within themselves….what may be called the sociological imagination.” …
Edward Curtin “The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus Really? Or was he joking? Whenever January rolls around and a new year begins with its implied ending, I think of my father and Albert Camus, both born in 1913. …
Edward Curtin On December 15, the night that the Biden administration released some of the remaining JFK files while withholding others with another half-assed excuse, Tucker Carlson, the most-watched cable news television host, delivered a monologue about the JFK assassination. It garnered a great deal of attention. Although I don’t watch Carlson’s television show, I received messages …
Edward Curtin “The most incomprehensible talk comes from people who have no other use for language than to make themselves understood.” Karl Kraus, Half-Truths & One-and-a-Half Truths Things, possessions, life on the installment plan or credit card. This is the season to buy, to accumulate more folderols, to give things to one’s children and each other, …
OffGuardian has been privileged to feature the work of David Ray Griffin several times in our history. So when we heard the sad news of his passing we decided to organize a small tribute to his life. We asked his close colleague Elizabeth Woodworth to say some words and to name the colleagues and friends …
Edward Curtin “There’s a blaze of light in every word It doesn’t matter which you heard The holy or the broken Hallelujah” Leonard Cohen, Hallelujah The last time I was in Montreal, Leonard Cohen, who had been dead two years, was on my mind. How could it be otherwise for one who has admired his songs …
Edward Curtin My title comes from a song sung by soldiers as they marched to hell in the trenches of World War I and the same song my sisters and I sang in the car as our parents drove us to our summer vacation in paradise at Edgewater Farm. I think of this as we march to …
