Gamma Senmin, Soga Shōhaku (1730-1783). Freer Collection, Washington.
PATRICKLAWRENCE.US serves several purposes. As an archive of the columns, commentary, and essays, it makes this work available in one place for the first time. The site also introduces my books and provides readers or those with professional queries several ways to connect. You can help sustain the work via Patreon. This is also home to an occasional journal, Cú Chulainn.
“These are my footsteps.”
——Sam Francis
Featured.
Beyond a Failed Narrative - December 17, 2022 - Americans are living a failed national narrative. Our almost universal belief in our exceptional status as a providentially “chosen people” suspends us in a beguiling myth beyond the reality of history. On September 11, 2001, we reacted with an almost...Recent work.
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Musk & the Myth of USAID - February 12, 2025 - Among the agency’s missions, the one to promote democracy has made it a very sad story. What hath the MAGA movement wrought? I doubt the archest of Donald Trump’s arch-enemies ever imagined that in his second term he would take things...
Patrick Lawrence: All the Gloves Come Off in Gaza - February 7, 2025 - Donald Trump does not seem to have too much trouble shocking people. In the three weeks since he resumed his residency in the White House, he has shocked the Danes (America must have Greenland), the Canadians (Canada will become our...
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Where Have All the Liberals Gone? - January 29, 2025 - The new liberal consensus, born of a shared “exhaustion,” is that it is time to “tune out,” or “take a break,” or simply close one’s eyes and ears. I simply cannot figure American liberals and “progressives”—’pwogwessives,’” as the late Alexander Cockburn...Cú Chulainn.
Cú Chulainn stirred,
Stared on the horses of the sea, and heard
The cars of battle and his own name cried;
And fought with the invulnerable tide.
——Yeats, Cú Chulainn’s Fight with the Sea,
1892
