Rudyard Kipling, in his poem Recessional (1897) famously prophesied a time in which the British Empire would be no more, hard though this may have been to imagine in 1897, the diamond anniversary of the reign of Victoria. The poem consists of five stanzas of six lines each, and each stanza has a straightforward ABABCC rhyme scheme. The third sticks to my mind right now. Far-called, our navies melt away; On dune and headland sinks the fire: Lo, all our pomp of yesterday Is one with Nineveh and Tyre! Judge of the Nations, spare us yet, Lest we forget—lest we forget! Of course, the British Empire did in fact melt away, under the pressure of two world wars in the first half of the following century and then of the sweeping anti-imperial mood in the non-industrialized parts of the world that followed the end of the second of them. Fortunately, as it melted away it was replaced in near-hegemony by a more-or-less friendly successor power where people ...
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In a new book, Yechiel J.M. Leiter offers a "Hebraist" interpretation of the political philosophy of John Locke. This view holds that, despite Locke's nominal affiliation with the Church of England, and thus by inference, with Christianity, the New Testaments play very little role in his thinking. Furthermore (on Leiter's view) classical Greek sources play only a minor role. Leiter says that Locke's views were formed largely from contemplation of the Old Testament. Leiter is not merely a man of ideas but a man of affairs in Israel. He has served as chief of staff to Prime Minister Netanyahu. Locke has always struck me as a schoolhouse pest, given a role as venerated sage in American secondary school education because of his importance to the founding generation, but not especially intriguing in the way that other great Brits, like Thomas Hobbes or Adam Smith, often are. But perhaps Leiter's argument can induce me to give Locke another look. Leiter plac...