October 31, 2018 – 12:46 pm
With the mid-term elections less than a week away, Angelo Codevilla surveys the social and political battlefield that the United States — now more disunited than at any time since our last Civil War — has become. His essay begins: Prior to the 2016 election I explained how America had already “stepped over the threshold […]
October 30, 2018 – 2:27 pm
This is promising: it appears that President Trump is going to declare, by executive order, an end to birthright citizenship for all but legal residents. The question of whether he has the power to do this, and whether birthright citizenship as currently understood is in accord with the Fourteenth Amendment, will then be taken up […]
October 28, 2018 – 12:02 am
Tonight I have for you a recent half-hour talk by Anthony Daniels (A.K.A. Theodore Dalrymple), on the corrosive combined effects of today’s expansive view of rights and the pernicious ideology of multiculturalism. I’ve transcribed some excerpts. Dr. Daniels mentions that he had asked a young patient, who had announced with the glow of religious inspiration […]
October 27, 2018 – 4:03 pm
It’s hard to know what to say in the wake of the sickening horror in Pittsburgh today. Evil is real, and it is always at large in the world. Eleven years ago, in the wake of the Virgina Tech massacre, I wrote this: When this sort of thing happens, the natural reaction here in the […]
October 27, 2018 – 12:13 am
Whelp, it appears that I got that one wrong. The “bomber” (to the extent that what he sent can be called “bombs”) now seems to be a Trump-loving loonie. (“With friends like that…”) I thought William of Ockham was on my side on this one, for all the reasons I laid out in my earlier […]
October 24, 2018 – 8:30 pm
Replying to our recent post about the “caravan” approaching our southern border, commenter Jason asks: From what I have read, there seems to be an honest albeit contentious difference of interpretation within the Trump administration over whether we can prevent South Americans from seeking asylum at the border, versus at various consulates throughout Mexico (and […]
October 24, 2018 – 3:51 pm
OK, by now we’ve all heard today’s top story: suspicious devices delivered to prominent Democrats. I’ll join the chorus of people saying this is a “false flag” operation. The whole thing is just so fishy, in so many ways: 1) Why would anyone bother sending bombs to Obama or the Clintons? They aren’t in power […]
October 23, 2018 – 12:12 pm
Judicial Watch reports on the “refugee” caravan snaking toward our border, and paints rather a different picture than our major news media: Besides gang members and mobs of young angry men, the Central American caravan making its way into the United States also consists of Africans, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans and Indians. Judicial Watch is covering […]
October 22, 2018 – 10:11 pm
Back in May I offered a post linking to Spandrell’s essays on what he calls “Bioleninism”: the enormous political power that becomes available to elites who are able to create durable coalitions of naturally low-status members of society. If you haven’t read these yet, you really must do so; it’s all going to be on […]
October 22, 2018 – 12:51 pm
As I write, a column of foreign invaders is marching toward our border, intent on breaching it to enter the sovereign territory of the United States. Given that our Republic has a government in place that controls the world’s most powerful military, this is a thing that we should have ample resources to prevent. (As […]
October 20, 2018 – 10:42 pm
“No man is always in a disposition to write, nor has any man at all times something to say.” – Dr. Johnson (Also, I have house-guests. Back soon.)
October 17, 2018 – 9:53 pm
If you’ve been trapped in rubble for the past couple of weeks, and have only just got back online, you might be puzzled to see ‘NPC’ everywhere you look. It stands for ‘non-player character”, and it’s a meme that has spread with amazing rapidity. It also seems to be particularly irritating to our new digital […]
October 17, 2018 – 2:20 pm
Attention, all you myrmidons toiling distractedly in your little cubes, or struggling to shut out the bustle of the ant-heap as you type with your thumbs in some noisy cyber-cafe: thanks to the ingenuity of the Japanese, you can now equip yourself with horse-blinkers. And it gets even better: they will deafen you as well. […]
October 17, 2018 – 2:02 pm
I so dislike Elizabeth Warren, and would so like to see her drummed out of public life, that I’ll pile on a bit here. Not only is she a race-hustling fraud, as she has in these last days kindly demonstrated for all to see, but she is also a plagiarist. Some time ago she contributed […]
October 16, 2018 – 7:59 pm
It’s been a gratifying few days for Mr. Trump: he swatted aside a hostile 60 Minutes interviewer on Sunday night, then had a judge throw out Stormy Daniels’ lawsuit (and award him court costs). But best of all has to have been Elizabeth Warren’s foolish broadcasting of a DNA result that shows that she might […]
October 16, 2018 – 5:55 pm
From Boston Dynamics: Haha, just some harmless fun, right? Now watch this:
October 16, 2018 – 5:14 pm
A fascinating aerial-photography collection. Here.
October 14, 2018 – 12:01 am
…around here, anyway. I’ve been offline, mostly, for the past few days, and paying little attention to the news. I did see that there was a brouhaha of some sort between Antifa and Gavin McInness’s “Proud Boys” in New York City today, but I don’t know more than that, and can’t really be bothered to […]
October 10, 2018 – 3:08 pm
Victor Davis Hanson has been everywhere, lately, it seems, and he has been writing at a tremendous clip. (I don’t know how a man of his years can maintain such a pace.) Here’s a jeremiad of his, from a couple of weeks ago, that I’d overlooked until now: Epitaph for a Dying Culture. (There’s nothing […]
October 9, 2018 – 10:45 am
On Saturday, the New York Times published an opinion piece by Alexis Grenell, a Democrat strategist. Had it run even a few years ago, the language it contains would have been shocking; now the piece is only another example of how far that paper (and with it, American culture) has declined. The essay, written under […]
October 8, 2018 – 11:09 am
Well, the IPCC has released another terrifying report on the climate crisis. This time, we’ve got 12 years to make “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society”. Or we’re all doomed. This ultimatum is nothing new: we’ve had a decade or so to act before reaching some catastrophic “tipping point” for a […]
October 6, 2018 – 9:43 pm
We won. Not the war, which is just beginning. But we won this battle. Take a moment to savor the victory. Let us also praise two unlikely heroes of this campaign: Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham. Who knew? War brings out the best and the worst in men. I commend them for their valor.
October 6, 2018 – 11:50 am
I heard someone reading a favorite Rudyard Kipling poem on the radio just now. (Looking back from 2018, it’s hard to believe that Kipling could even have really existed. He is one of many reminders that, unfortunately, to look backward is often to look steeply upward.) If you can keep your head when all about […]
October 5, 2018 – 1:34 pm
There’s been a lot of excellent commentary on the Kavanaugh carnage from, to hijack a phrase from an erstwhile commenter of ours, “the adults in the room”. Here’s a sampling (with a hat-tip to Bill Keezer for sme of these links): First up, we have former senator Tom Coburn, who identifies as a root of […]
October 4, 2018 – 11:36 pm
Well, the FBI report is in. Unsurprisingly, it contains nothing new. (If it had contained any damaging evidence against Brett Kavanaugh, the Democrats would have leaked it. If, on the other hand, it had contained some exculpatory evidence — which, given the lack of any specifics in the Ford allegation as regards time and place, […]
October 3, 2018 – 2:18 pm
I’d have thought that old recording engineers, like old soldiers, “never die – they just fade away.” It isn’t so. I note with sorrow the death of Geoff Emerick, who punched out yesterday at age 72. He was a towering — preeminent — figure in our arcane craft, and when he took over as The […]
October 2, 2018 – 10:17 pm
Still very busy here, I’m afraid. I’ve also got little to add to the big story of the moment, which is of course the Kavanaugh appointment. There’s nothing subtle or nuanced about any of it; it’s just raw combat, and everyone knows it. So what can I say? (New things do keep popping up, though.) […]