Author Archives: theamericanplutarch

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About theamericanplutarch

Writer, thinker, historian.

Of Love and Empathy

What is love, and is it related to empathy? Can a person feel empathy if they do not feel love? Can I love a person if I do not empathize with them? Great philosophers have written great books about such … Continue reading

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Reflections on Erich Fromm, “The Art of Loving”

For Erich Fromm (1900-1980), the German-American psychologist, love is active power, where one preserves one’s own integrity. Love helps overcome separation and anxiety, stimulates union. Love is part of a need to know, to know someone else or self. It … Continue reading

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What is True History?

The mirror of the past is the only way to peer at the image of what is human. The reflection is darkened by time and sin. Specters of the dead, haunting the dusty stacks of long-ago thoughts, turn up repeatedly, … Continue reading

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Son of Man

Today we celebrate the birth of  the unknown, Who came to earth as all men of a  mother born, He proclaimed himself unique coming to atone, For the sins of all mankind so forlorn. Such pain he took upon himself, … Continue reading

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Review of the novel Joe, by Larry Brown

Joe is a book showing the underside of rural life among the poor and ignorant in late 20th century Mississippi. The protagonist Joe is a drunk and aggressive man with few concerns about anyone else besides himself but who has … Continue reading

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Reflections on Daniel Boone, American Frontiersman, and John Filson, his First Biographer

John Filson, in his 1784 portrait of “The Adventures of Col. Daniel Boon” appended to The Discovery, Settlement and Present State of Kentucke, declared that “curiosity is natural to the soul of man.” With these words Filson sparked the beginning … Continue reading

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Tecumseh: A Reflection

When I wish to find out about a person from the past, the first thing I look for, to wrap my mind around so that I feel like I might know this person, is an image, a portrait or photograph. … Continue reading

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Who Discovered America? If it wasn’t Columbus, if it wasn’t the Vikings, then who was it?

A historical investigator par excellence, Jeremy Belknap, who lived in late eighteenth-century New Hampshire, posed this question to his many readers in a two-volume work, the first of its kind in American publishing history, The American Biography. He began his … Continue reading

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New in Historical Fantasy Fiction: The Search for the Bronze Amulet

The Search for the Bronze Amulet is historical fantasy fiction, the story of a young Congregational minister (Jonathan Tucker, called Tuck) after the American Revolution who takes a position as pastor to impoverished fishers and their wives on the Isles … Continue reading

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Richard Hooker’s Laws of the Ecclesiastical Polity and the Postmodern Episcopal Church

My wife comes from a family of New England Episcopalians. She is a cradle Episcopalian. We were married in the Episcopal Church. I converted to Episcopalianism and its parent belief, Anglicanism. However, with all of this tradition and important life … Continue reading

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