Michael Goldfarb

London

Host at FRDH Podcast with Michael Goldfarb

Host FRDH Podcast @ https://t.co/ZqeATd8gje. Substack https://t.co/erkjVysCzj Hear/Read: BBC, NYTimes, Guardian, FT

Articles

BIBLE STUDY FOR ATHEISTS: ISRAEL DEMANDS A KING

1 week ago | frdhfirstroughdraftofhistory.substack.com | Michael Goldfarb

Difficult as it is for anti-Trump Americans to acknowledge, the Donald is a world historical figure. He has broken the critical barrier that has allowed the US to grow, amend its flaws, and flourish for a quarter of a millennium. He has demonstrated the fundamental tenets of America’s constitutional order could be violently challenged and still be elected President.
A JOURNEY OF A THOUSAND MILES BEGINS?

2 weeks ago | frdhfirstroughdraftofhistory.substack.com | Michael Goldfarb

They came out across the US and in the ex-pat centers of Europe. High spirits. It was good to be out and among people in analog reality rather than hunched over laptops and phones communicating digitally. In London’s Trafalgar Square, the weather was spectacular but the crowd small and showing signs of overexposure to English wit. Erich McIlroy pictured above is a stand-up comic and he made an important point in his opening speech: Mockery is an excellent non-violent tool.
First Rough Draft of History

3 weeks ago | frdhfirstroughdraftofhistory.substack.com | Michael Goldfarb

This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. Please turn on JavaScript or unblock scripts
250 YEARS, A QUARTER OF A MILLENNIUM

3 weeks ago | frdhfirstroughdraftofhistory.substack.com | Michael Goldfarb

This month, 250 years ago, the American Revolution began. On April 19, 1775, a series of battles — skirmishes really — took place around Boston between regular troops of the British Army and the militia of the Massachusetts Bay colony. The day’s fighting culminated in Concord, Massachusetts by the old North Bridge, where several British soldiers, whether under orders or by mistake opened fire on the assembled militia. This fire was returned.
TRENDS IN BRIEF

1 month ago | frdhfirstroughdraftofhistory.substack.com | Michael Goldfarb

Apologies to my paying customers for the brevity of this week’s dispatch. I am on a very tight deadline for an hour-long documentary called “NATO: Then, Now, Now What?” for BBC Radio 4 — in the studio on Friday with much yet to do. But there were two very distinct groups of events this past seven days and I wanted to note these trends and will, no doubt, come back to them. The first is the bedding down of elective authoritarianism in the US and in several of its allies.
CARPE'ING THE DIEM

1 month ago | frdhfirstroughdraftofhistory.substack.com | Michael Goldfarb

There is a tide in the affairs of menWhich, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat, And we must take the current when it servesOr lose our ventures. Julius Caesar, Act IV, scene iiiLast week, two important dates that occupied the minds of many appalled by the onslaught of the Trump regime’s second incarnation passed. The first was the idea of “53 Days”.
O LOST!

1 month ago | frdhfirstroughdraftofhistory.substack.com | Michael Goldfarb

"O Lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again."Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward Angel. Those words are repeated throughout Wolfe’s massive novel like a musical motif recurring in a symphony. They prefigure the feeling many in America have of the current state of affairs. We are LOST!! The irony is that many people might not be able to put those words to their feelings of something irreplaceable having been lost. No writer’s reputation has fallen as fast in my lifetime as that of Wolfe.
WHEN THE PEOPLE GET IT WRONG

1 month ago | frdhfirstroughdraftofhistory.substack.com | Michael Goldfarb

We all know the Winston Churchill quote:“Democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time …”We have rarely had to think about why that might be true but the reason is playing out in front of Americans and the world right now: sometimes the democratic process of elections can bring about democracy’s destruction.
STOP LOOKING FOR A HERO

2 months ago | frdhfirstroughdraftofhistory.substack.com | Michael Goldfarb

What is the driving force of history? Strip away economics, politics all the big picture stuff: human beings are the driving force of history. Individual lives, people like you and me, our quotidian acts, not those of the great men. It is not easy to see the power we ordinary people hold. The great British novelist George Eliot knew this.
Что делать?

2 months ago | frdhfirstroughdraftofhistory.substack.com | Michael Goldfarb

It is hard to accept if you are an American born in the numerical middle of the American Century that all the good stuff about your country was frontloaded, and that most of your adult life would be spent in a long slow ebb tide. This culminated in last week’s service of divorce papers on the Alliance that rebuilt Europe after World War 2, outlasted the Soviet Union, and served, even in a flawed state, as the guarantor of an idea of liberty and freedom of conscience around the world.