Monthly Archives: June 2019

Retraction

June 28, 2019 – 10:08 am

In last night’s post, I wrote that, based on what I’d just seen, I believed that Donald Trump will be re-elected in 2020. The impression, however, that the ten people on stage last night had made on me was so strong — the craziness so palpable — that I had, in the moment, forgotten to […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (3)

Results Are In

June 27, 2019 – 11:02 pm

Just watched the first hour or so of the second round of the Democrats’ debates. Donald Trump will be re-elected in 2020.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (1)

The Principle of Relativity

June 26, 2019 – 3:10 pm

The New York Times has published an article, with lovely graphics, explaining that the GOP is now an extreme right-wing party, while the Democrats — whose presidential candidates were on stage tonight calling for, among other things, abolishing private healthcare, stripping and redistributing legally earned wealth that they believe to be “in the wrong hands”, […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Politics | Comments (1)

The American Founding: Four Causes

June 24, 2019 – 10:00 pm

Jefferson: Final cause Madison: Formal cause Washington: Efficient cause America’s British colonists: Material cause

By Malcolm | Posted in Ruminations | Comments (2)

A Tide In The Affairs Of Men

June 21, 2019 – 3:36 pm

Yesterday’s post, in which I attempted a taxonomy of civil war, brought out a long and sorrowful reply from a reader by the name of Casey. I began to respond in the comment-thread, but the concern Casey expressed seems to me so prevalent in traditionalist and conservative circles lately that I thought that I should […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture | Comments (11)

A Taxonomy Of Civil War

June 20, 2019 – 6:17 pm

In David Armistead’s fascinating and insightful book Civil Wars: A History in Ideas, the author distinguishes three kinds of civil war: “successionist”, “supersessionist”, and “secessionist”. Successionist civil wars are those that are fought over which individual shall sit atop a nation’s institutional hierarchy. The king dies. Who will succeed him? In this sort of war […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Politics, Ruminations | Comments (5)

Conservation

June 18, 2019 – 3:44 pm

Like animals and plants, humans, too, create complex organic ecosystems that vary according to population, evolutionary history, and environment. Ours are social, cultural, and political. How sensitive we are to tampering with the ecoystems of animals and plants! How careless with our own!

By Malcolm | Posted in Apophthegmata | Comments (0)

Vallicella On The ‘Proposition Nation’: Scylla And Charybdis

June 17, 2019 – 11:53 pm

My friend Bill Vallicella has posted another interesting item on the idea of America as a “proposition nation”. Bill, who is quite rightly trying to find a middle way between open-borders multiculturalism and blood-and-soil ethnonationalism, begins by citing with approval a quote from Patrick Buchanan: But the greatest risk we are taking, based on utopianism, […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture | Comments (2)

Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?

June 16, 2019 – 1:07 pm

Here’s a scathing summary, by the indispensable Kimberly Strassel, of the government’s abuse of power in what has come to be known as Spygate. Please watch. It would be all too easy for an increasingly childlike and easily distracted polis to let all of this slip out of mind. (I’ve started the embedded video about […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (0)

“Beggar’s Democracy”

June 15, 2019 – 10:15 pm

Do you still read the papers? Do you send a letter to the editor now and then, or leave a comment at the online version? Enjoy it while it lasts, warns John Derbyshire. Here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Immigration | Comments (0)

Race: Untangling ‘Ought’ From ‘Is’

June 12, 2019 – 12:41 pm

In Monday’s post about Angela Saini’s race-denialist polemic, I should have added a few words about the deep moral and philosophical errors that lead so many people to fear, and to seek to suppress, the stubborn realities of human biodiversity. (“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”) For Americans […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, HBD | Comments (10)

The “Social Construct”

June 10, 2019 – 10:30 pm

Attracting considerable attention is Superior: The Return of Race Science, a new book about race by Angela Saini. It makes the usual case: that beyond mere superficialities, race is a meaningless concept, a “social construct”. In the face of mounting evidence, this is a claim that is becoming more and more difficult to defend; indeed […]

By Malcolm | Posted in HBD | Comments (0)

Malcolm John Rebennack, Jr. 1941 – 2019

June 7, 2019 – 6:20 pm

I note with real sorrow the death of Mac Rebennack, AKA “Dr. John”, who died yesterday of a heart attack. He was 77. In my opinion he was a national treasure — a first-tier master of an indigenous hybrid American musical style. I worked with Mac on a couple of projects a long time ago. […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Music and Recording | Comments (1)

Aloha, DL

June 7, 2019 – 1:11 pm

I haven’t paid much attention to baseball this year (although if you do, I’ll make a shameless plug for my son Nick’s outstanding baseball-analysis website, Pitcher List). But I have just noticed that what used to be called the “disabled list” is now the “injured list”. Why? It’s because the word “disabled” might offend someone. […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Language, Sport | Comments (2)

A Reminder

June 5, 2019 – 11:09 pm

Everywhere around us, “progressivism” is getting more and more frantic. The latest round of freshmen elected to Congress, the delirious fantasies now put forward as actual policy proposals by legislators and presidential candidates, and the hysteria that has overwhelmed higher education may, quite understandably, strike your heart cold with fear. What can be done? we […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Reaction | Comments (6)

The Perpetual Diamond

June 4, 2019 – 11:19 pm

Here is a fantastic visual illusion.

By Malcolm | Posted in Curiosities | Comments (2)

The Love That Dare Speak Its Name

June 4, 2019 – 10:33 pm

Here’s an item for you: an advocacy group called “Super Happy Fun America” says it has been granted a permit for a Straight Pride Parade to be held in Boston this August. Their motto: “It’s great to be straight!” (Also, apparently, “Please don’t hate me — I was born this way.”) They even have a […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Reaction | Comments (1)

All Sail, No Ballast

June 3, 2019 – 11:57 pm
This entry is part 3 of 8 in the series Pilgrim's Progress

The novelist and podcaster Andrew Klavan has published an essay at City Journal making an eloquent defense of the position that, contra Steven Pinker and others, the hyper-rationalism of the Enlightenment is insufficient to sustain our civilization against moral, spiritual and philosophical exhaustion — and so he calls us back to the faith that built […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Reason and Philosophy, Inner Work, Religion, Reaction | Comments (3)

Rashomon

June 1, 2019 – 11:27 am

Attorney General William Barr sat down for an interview on CBS a couple of days ago. Mr. Barr was, as usual, sensible and forthright, and made clear once again that he is interested in the truth about the Russia investigation, and that what he’s seen so far gives him reason to have serious concerns about […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (2)