Monthly Archives: October 2024

The Endarkenment

October 31, 2024 – 12:04 pm

I have been presenting for years, in these pages, a charge against the Enlightenment: namely that it enshrined, with religious fervor, a radical skepticism that acted as a kind of “universal acid” that no tradition or social order could contain. In 2022, for example, I referred to: …the radical skepsis of the Enlightenment, which simultaneously […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Reaction | Comments (4)

Simple As

October 30, 2024 – 2:06 pm

“As a child, learn good manners, As a young man, control the passions, In middle age, be just, In old age, give good advice, Then die, without regret.” – Inscription found in the Bactrian city of Ai-Khanoum in Afghanistan. Attributed to Clearchus of Soli, a student of Aristotle

By Malcolm | Posted in Marginalia | Comments (3)

Buckle Up

October 30, 2024 – 1:04 pm

Over the past few years, prominent members of our ruling Democrat oligarchy have declared those of us not aligned with “progressivism” to be racists, sexists, white supremacists, bitter clingers to guns and religion, deplorables, irredeemables, Nazis, and Fascists. Last night, we learned, also, that our sitting President thinks of us as “garbage”. That’s at least […]

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

We Wish To Complain

October 27, 2024 – 1:20 pm

The problem with the way our era looks at history is that all it wants is to barge in and speak to the manager.

By Malcolm | Posted in Apophthegmata | Comments (3)

Repost, With Commentary: The Inverted Monarchy

October 26, 2024 – 4:40 pm

The following is a repost of an essay I published at American Greatness in October 2020. Four years on, I think it holds up fairly well, but its closing remarks about the Constitution need, I’m afraid, some further qualifications, which I have added at the bottom of the post. Not a day goes by lately […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Politics | Comments (4)

And Now For Something Completely Different

October 25, 2024 – 8:09 pm

This.

By Malcolm | Posted in Music and Recording | Comments (2)

“America First”, And The Uselessness Of Treaties

October 25, 2024 – 5:14 pm

Prior to the takeover of U.S. foreign policy by Progressive world-savers, American statecraft followed the wise course plotted by George Washington and John Quincy Adams: to refrain from meddling in the internal affairs of foreign nations, and to avoid being drawn into their external quarrels, whether by treaty or simple ambition. Adams (who was arguably […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Foreign Affairs, Ruminations | Comments (1)

Top And Bottom Against The Middle

October 24, 2024 – 9:50 pm

Eric Hoffer: A minority is in a precarious position, however protected it be by law or force. The frustration engendered by the unavoidable sense of insecurity is less intense in a minority intent on preserving its identity than in one bent upon dissolving in and blending with the majority. A minority which preserves its identity […]

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

On Carl Schmitt’s Friend-Enemy Distinction

October 20, 2024 – 12:08 am

In a pair of posts at Substack and his own website, Bill Vallicella revisits a conversation he and I had a couple of years ago about the shrinkage of circles of moral inclusion in periods of deep political strife. I had commented on this passage of his: …haven’t the barbarians forfeited their (normative) humanity to […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Reason and Philosophy, Politics | Comments (9)

There’s No Fixing This

October 18, 2024 – 6:28 pm

Yesterday I sat at a dinner event with some members of our ruling overclass, including a wealthy and powerful septuagenarian Washington lawyer and her husband, a D.C.-area doctor and hospital administrator. (I will not name names, but we are talking about the very highest levels of swamp creatures here. If I had been carrying an […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Reaction, Society and Culture, Politics | Comments (14)

AI Debates The Existence Of God

October 14, 2024 – 5:12 pm

There was a time when human capabilities formed a continuous landscape. Rising from the plain were such towering prominences such as language, art, reason, literature, musical composition, science, mathematics, and so on. Now, however, artificial intelligence is like a rising tide, inundating the terrain. Even now, with AI only in its infancy, the lower elevations […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Reason and Philosophy, Technology, Religion | Comments (1)

Wormtongue

October 13, 2024 – 12:00 pm

This is what we’re up against, folks. (You can almost smell the sulfur.) Raddatz: "The incidents were limited to a handful of apartment complexes… A handful!"@JDVance: "Do you hear yourself? Only a handful of apartment complexes were taken over by Venezuelan gangs and Donald Trump is the problem and not Kamala Harris' open border?" ? […]

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

Recommended Reading

October 11, 2024 – 7:38 pm

I’ve just finished an excellent book by Auron MacIntyre, an up-and-coming voice on the Right. It’s called The Total State, and it is well worth your time. MacIntyre is emerging as an influential political analyst and public intellectual, with a job at The Blaze and a regular output of podcasts and videos. (His YouTube channel […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Books | Comments (1)

On Comments

October 3, 2024 – 12:56 pm

A quick review of my comment policy: WordPress, the software I use, provides a comment-moderation feature that blocks all incoming comments until they are approved by me. I’ve never switched it on; I’ve been fortunate, over the decades, never to have felt the need. After 6,766 posts, and 28,888 comments, I’ve only ever removed a […]

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (2)

Falling Down

October 2, 2024 – 4:09 pm

Last weekend we went to Chicago for a wedding. We flew round-trip from Boston, on American Airlines. Our departing flight was scheduled for 2:13 p.m. on Friday. We checked a bag and went to the gate, but just before we were to board, we were told that our aircraft, a Boeing 737, was having some […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture | Comments (9)