Monthly Archives: November 2025

Should We Be Tried By Juries?

November 26, 2025 – 7:54 pm

I see in the news that the UK is considering abandoning the jury system for all but the darkest of crimes. To someone who’s grown up in the Anglosphere this feels shocking; the idea of trial by one’s peers has been a bedrock principle of English common law since Magna Carta, and of American law […]

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

Does Wisdom Require Talent?

November 23, 2025 – 8:10 pm

JM Smith, an occasional reader and commenter here, has a fine short post up over at The Orthosphere, in which he considers an assertion by Eugene William Newman that “wisdom is the gift of nature” — as opposed to knowledge, which “comes from books”. Professor Smith is careful to distinguish between knowledge and wisdom, and […]

By Malcolm | Posted in General, Inner Work, Ruminations | Comments (3)

Caveat Bellator!

November 21, 2025 – 3:14 pm

The Democrats have released an ad encouraging members of the military to defy what they call “illegal orders”. Presumably this is aimed at disrupting President Trump’s recent use of the armed services to address a bouquet of emergencies confronting the nation — including crime, invasion, and the smuggling of lethal drugs. The people who made […]

By Malcolm | Posted in General, Politics | Comments (5)

Who’s Asking?

November 19, 2025 – 5:07 pm

Buried among all the clickbait I happened across today was an item that seemed interesting: an article about quantum cosmology’s having found itself in a bit of a jam, with the only way out appearing to be the necessity of an ontologically subjective observer. (We’re not talking about the familiar, century-old “measurement problem” here, but […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Ruminations, Reason and Philosophy, Science, Religion | Comments (2)

Too Cool For School

November 15, 2025 – 1:19 pm

I love living way out here in the Outer Cape, but the official religion is awfully hard to take sometimes. Here’s an example, from my local paper, the Provincetown Independent: A Creature of Habit Resisting the ‘new normal’ in a universe that does not care Premises: an indifferent universe devoid of all meaning or purpose; […]

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

Talking Heads

November 13, 2025 – 7:21 pm

For those of you who might enjoy some cask-strength political-theory geekery, I offer this recent discussion, hosted by Auron Macintyre, between Nick Land and Alexander Dugin. I haven’t gone through the whole thing myself, so I won’t offer any comments of my own just yet. But I must doff my cap with appreciation to Mr. […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Reaction, Society and Culture, Reason and Philosophy | Comments (0)

The Long And The Short Of It

November 11, 2025 – 4:47 pm

In a comment to yesterday’s post, our reader Jason cited an article by Claire Berlinski, in which she points out one of the cardinal weaknesses of our form of government — to wit, that the constant demand of election cycles make officials focus almost exclusively on the short-term problem of holding their offices. [The problem] […]

By Malcolm | Posted in General, Society and Culture, Politics, Technology, Reaction, Ruminations | Comments (7)

Clown World

November 10, 2025 – 6:55 pm

Well, it looks like the shutdown’s over, following what appears to be a cave-in by Democrat leadership in the Senate, which has provoked a mutinous uprising in the ranks. Robert Stacy McCain has some details, here. The temporary funding measure will expire in January, at which point the factional struggle will resume. Can anyone look […]

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (4)

Homer Nods

November 9, 2025 – 9:20 pm

Apologies for the glaring error in Saturday’s post (since corrected). Age and memory have a complicated relationship.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (2)

Truth, And Consequences

November 9, 2025 – 1:28 pm

Steve Sailer has published an item today about the late James D. Watson, who died last week at the age of 97. Watson, who won the Nobel Prize as the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, was driven from polite society decades ago for uttering heresies regarding the possible genetic basis, and varying distribution, of […]

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

House Of War

November 8, 2025 – 8:27 pm

I’ve been reading The Path Of The Martyrs, Ed West’s excellent account of the eighth-century defeat of the army of Islam by the Franks, under Charles Martel. (The turning point, as I’m sure you know, was the Battle of Tours, in 732.) That shining moment was arguably the birth of the great Christian civilization of […]

By Malcolm | Posted in General, Jihad | Comments (0)

When The Baby Gets Hold Of The Hammer

November 6, 2025 – 12:51 pm

In a comment to our previous post, Vito Caiati linked to an outstanding article by Heather Mac Donald on the consequences awaiting New York City as Zohran Mamdani prepares to take office. Her essay begins: William F. Buckley Jr. once quipped that he would rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston […]

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

Alea Iacta Est

November 5, 2025 – 3:21 pm

Well, it’s done — New York has elected its first Muslim, socialist, dawa-jihadi mayor, and a new era begins: one that will likely make the nocuous administrations of David Dinkins and Bill De Blasio look like the Gilded Age. Some are blaming Curtis Sliwa for this, but not me; it’s simply indefensible to say that […]

By Malcolm | Posted in General, Politics | Comments (4)

Is Religious Belief Rebounding?

November 2, 2025 – 8:29 pm

Is it possible that the maladaptive effects of secular materialism (which I’ve been writing about in these pages since at least as far back as this post from 2009) have now become so obvious, and so painful, that belief in God is making a comeback? Longtime readers will know that I’ve slowly turned toward theism […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Reason and Philosophy, Religion | Comments (4)