The Very Idea
Puritan Freedom
Freedom is, on this model, freedom to do good. And good is defined as actions in accordance with God’s will. Unfreedom comes from sin, or from subjection to Satan’s power. Our natures, though fallen, are […]
Blog
The Very Idea
John Winthrop, A Modell of Christian Charity (1630)
We’ll have occassion to dwell quite a bit on the less positive aspects of New England puritanism, and Foner presents the puritan model of freedom as the foil for “American freedom” which, he says, “began […]
The Very Idea
On Greatness
GREAT IDEAS: SO WHAT’S THIS ALL ABOUT, ANYWAY? For the duration of the semester, we’re all going to be concerned with “great ideas.” Specifically, in this section, we’ll be looking at, or looking for, “Great […]
The Very Idea
Meet the Teacher
Hi, folks. Here’s a bit of personal information about me: I was born in the Redwoods, in northern California…long enough ago that I was legal to drink before a number of your were born. My […]
Contr'un
Natural Gas Wars, Then and Now
The more things change. . . and all that. There are moments when it really feels like nothing much ever changes, except perhaps the scale of our collective foolishness. Last night, over coffee, i set […]
Contr'un
Radical Deficiency of the Existing Circulating Medium, 1857
William B. Greene’s 1857 Radical Deficiency of the Existing Circulating Medium, and the Advantages of a Mutual Currency is now online in the Libertarian Labyrinth. This is the text issued during the Panic of 1857—at […]
Contr'un
William B. Greene’s 1850 “Mutual Banking”
By 1850, the year William Batchelder Greene turned 31 and retired from the ministry, he had written, in one form or another, nearly all of his major works. He lived until 1878, and was active […]
Contr'un
Sarah Orne Jewett Text Project
In the course of doing some research on Bessie Greene, I ran across the excellent Sarah Orne Jewett Text Project. The archive contains a large number of Jewett’s texts, from Country of the Pointed Firs […]
Contr'un
William B. Greene, Equality (1849)
I’ve finally got Equality, the first of Greene’s mutual banking books online. This is the 1849 work largely based on those still-elusive Worcester Palladium articles. Here’s the index: EQUALITY, NO. 1. The Banking System The […]
Contr'un
A first go at Google Books
After reading all sorts of newspaper coverage about the conflict between publishers and Google over the intellectual property rights issues involved with the Google Books scanning project, I decided to see what the project amounted […]