Monthly Archives: February 2020

A Remarkable Man

February 29, 2020 – 10:05 pm

We must note the passing of Freeman Dyson, one of the greatest minds of our era. He died yesterday, at 96, after a fall. Read about the life of this extraordinary man here.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (0)

Are We Loving Modernity Yet?

February 27, 2020 – 10:34 pm

As the world sinks deeper into panic over the coronavirus outbreak, I’ll remind you again to have a look at Curtis Yarvin’s paean to global decoupling, published last month at The American Mind. (I’ll drop a link also to a far briefer item of my own, from 2018.) Not long ago — in my own […]

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

It Can Happen Here. And It’s Happening Now.

February 24, 2020 – 11:29 pm

Here’s a chilling item from Rod Dreher about the green shoots of totalitarianism now rising in our academies. How we arrived at this place — how this became possible, and what led to its becoming actual at our specific point in history — is an important question about the great cycles of human societies. But […]

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

Macbeth Does Murder Sleep

February 22, 2020 – 5:36 pm

John Batchelor’s series of conversations with historian Michael Vlahos about civil war continues this week with a discussion of regicide. Readers may recall a post here last June describing a tripartite taxonomy of civil war. Professor Vlahos suggests a similar classification of regicides: those that seek to replace not just the nation’s leader, but also […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (0)

More Than This

February 21, 2020 – 6:31 pm

Naturalism asks us to believe that we are just a pile of protons, electrons, etc., pushed and pulled willy-nilly by mindless attractions and repulsions — or even that we are, at bottom, nothing more than a set of solutions to some fundamental equations. Yet we think and dream; we feel love and grief. We taste […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Science, Religion | Comments (7)

Too Much Too Soon

February 17, 2020 – 5:51 pm

I haven’t written much about it lately, but I really do think the Democrats are in for a historic ass-whipping this fall. (In case you missed it, this lifelong Democrat thinks so too.) More than anything else, it’s because they seem to have lost sight of what most people want most: stability. They want the […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (0)

On A Personal Note

February 14, 2020 – 11:22 pm

I’ll ask your forgiveness once again for the lack of substantial posts here over the past few weeks. Regarding the political scene, I’m finding it awfully difficult right at the moment to summon up the will to comment on any of it — not that there isn’t plenty I could say, but at this point […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Music and Recording, Politics, Foreign Affairs, General | Comments (5)

Two And One

February 11, 2020 – 10:21 pm

There are times when it seems more important to me to read and think than to write, and these past weeks have been one of those times. I do apologize to those of you who come by here regularly, and I promise that these lulls are always temporary. But I hate to send you away […]

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (0)

Racist Thing #113

February 10, 2020 – 1:03 pm

Climate activism. “Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ’em, And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.”

By Malcolm | Posted in Racist Things | Comments (2)

A House Divided

February 8, 2020 – 5:43 pm

John Batchelor is in Baku again this week — I don’t know how he does it, at his age — but he managed to continue his weekly conversation with historian Michael Vlahos on the question of American civil war. This week, Mr. Batchelor comments on an obvious metaphor from this week’s news that I (somehow!) […]

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

Are We Loving Modernity Yet?

February 6, 2020 – 1:23 pm

Growing older has its consolations. Among them are a blessed respite from the tumultuous urgencies of youth, and the time and perspective for contemplation and deeper understanding. That perspective and understanding can, however, leave the contemplative geezer feeling at times downright disconsolate, when he looks around himself and sees how much there is in our […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture | Comments (3)

Racist Thing #112

February 4, 2020 – 6:45 pm

The Iowa Caucuses. (I guess they’re too “Caucasian”.)

By Malcolm | Posted in Racist Things | Comments (0)

Would You Hire These People?

February 4, 2020 – 12:19 pm

The Democratic Caucuses in Iowa (or, as the ailing Rush Limbaugh calls them, the “Hawkeye Cauci”) are in embarrassing disarray, with a new report-resulting “app” (reportedly designed by Hillary Clinton campaign bigwig Robbie Mook) having apparently failed to work. Multiple candidates are claiming victory, but nobody knows. (Remember the rollout of the Obamacare website?) Meanwhile, […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (11)

Bad News

February 3, 2020 – 5:03 pm

I was shocked and saddened just now to learn that Rush Limbaugh has been diagnosed with “advanced” lung cancer. Mr. Limbaugh, a brilliant analyst of the American political scene, has most importantly been, for decades now, a vital brake (to the extent that such a thing is possible) on the entropic forces of the American […]

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (0)

Charles Murray’s Latest

February 1, 2020 – 12:18 pm

Charles Murray has a new book out: Human Diversity: The Biology of Gender, Race, and Class. From the blurb at Amazon: The thesis of Human Diversity is that advances in genetics and neuroscience are overthrowing an intellectual orthodoxy that has ruled the social sciences for decades. The core of the orthodoxy consists of three dogmas: […]

By Malcolm | Posted in HBD | Comments (4)