Welcome.
I’m entirely new to blogging, having only recently discovered the ease and economy of having a blog, and so here I am, if you please. At this point I don’t think I’ll say anything about my general intentions for UniBrow beyond what might be revealed in describing its inaugural project–a serial commentary on The Federalist Papers–and by wholeheartedly endorsing Hamilton’s imperishable assertion, in the 6th Federalist, that we err grievously if we “forget that men are ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious.” A system of government that so ingeniously anticipates, either by thwarting or by channeling, our innate avarice and power-lust could have issued from no other understanding of the human animal. Our brilliant founders kept this sober verdict always before their minds, and we owe it to ourselves to do likewise.
Having said that, I wouldn’t want it thought that UniBrow will be interested primarily in politics, or that it will hew to the daily headlines. It won’t. There will be more here about literature and culture generally than politics, and items from the news of the day will surface only if they seem to me to illuminate the scene in some peculiar way.
I could give some biographical details at this point, but I’d rather not–except to say that my most absorbing interest is serious literature, that I despise the way religious fundamentalism disfigures our culture and politics and threatens the education of our children (as we’ve seen most recently in the attempted imposition of “intelligent design” in the science classroom), and that it depresses me–actually it frightens me–to see how few people, especially younger people, have any decent sense of the past. We are all suspended, it seems, in a present utterly saturated with technology-driven sensation and diversion. We are less conscious, less critical, and less free because of it.
Of which more in process of time. My name is Tom. I’ll be back tomorrow, or at any rate soon, with our first post on The Federalist.
