November 6, 2018 – 10:28 am
OK – it’s Election Day. Republicans: the polls are open. You know what to do. Democrats: it looks like rain, and your guys are probably going to win anyway. I think you’re off the hook.
November 2, 2018 – 10:55 pm
In Baltimore for a conference this weekend. Back next week.
November 1, 2018 – 11:12 pm
The next skirmish in the war for religious rights and freedom of association might be the case of the Hope Center, of Anchorage Alaska, a Christian charitable organization that provides succor for the poor and downtrodden. Among the services it provides is a women’s shelter. The shelter’s clients are typically victims of domestic and sexual […]
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.) […]
September 29, 2018 – 12:04 am
Now Twitter has suspended my all-time favorite account, the brilliant and eccentric @ThomasWictor. How intensely irritating. Update, 9/29: Now @hbdchick (who is the very soul of reason and moderation) is gone too! (Her blog, which is effectively an online university, is here.)
September 28, 2018 – 3:46 pm
Things are moving more quickly now. Let’s review the status of our three branches of government: After Donald Trump’s shocking defeat of Hillary Clinton, the losing side has done everything in its power to delegitimize his administration — from trying to co-opt the Electoral College in the early weeks, to a ginned-up story about Russian […]
September 27, 2018 – 6:57 pm
You’ve probably seen it by now, but here’s Lindsey Graham at today’s hearing. I’ve never been much of a fan of the man, to put it mildly — but this new, red-pilled Lindsey Graham is something else again.
September 24, 2018 – 10:38 pm
I’m very sorry never to have really got back up to speed after the August break. The blog is still very much alive, but the Muse unusually silent, and it has been a very busy and chaotic time the past few weeks. Currently we are in Chicago for a couple of days, and there will […]
September 23, 2018 – 10:46 pm
This is war. Vote. — Malcolm Pollack (@mtpollack) September 24, 2018
September 20, 2018 – 9:18 pm
At Newcomb Hollow Beach this afternoon: (If you hadn’t heard, Mr. Medici, 26, was fatally attacked a week ago by one of the great white sharks that have recently made our part of Cape Cod their home.)
September 19, 2018 – 5:09 pm
In the latest ploy to stall the Kavanaugh appointment until after the midterm elections, the Democrats have arranged for Mr. Kavanuagh’s accuser, Christine Ford, to demand that the FBI investigate her claim before she will consent to provide any testimony. This is ridiculous, of course: the FBI exists to investigate federal crimes, not decades-old recovered […]
September 19, 2018 – 4:24 pm
About a year ago, I wrote this: Our attention, which is more precious than gold, and the one thing we must master if we are to have any hope at all of inner development, is increasingly spent in a virtual world created, manipulated, and harvested by a few increasingly powerful companies. (Note that we “pay’ […]
September 17, 2018 – 10:54 pm
As the Democrats launch a desperate last-ditch offensive against Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, the president, in a flanking maneuver, has declassified an assortment of records — FISA applications, Strzok-Page texts, and whole lot more — that may be of considerable importance in exposing the real scandal in Washington: the weaponization of government agencies, by […]
September 14, 2018 – 2:53 pm
Our friend Bill Vallicella explores the tension — which he believes is a fruitful one — between Athens and Jerusalem. Why is such a tension — an essential feature of Christianity, with its mysteries and paradoxes, that is conspicuously absent in Islam — fruitful? It is a fruitful tension in the West but also in […]
September 11, 2018 – 1:49 pm
Here is a remarkable video clip of the center of Hurricane Florence.
September 10, 2018 – 4:56 pm
Well, I’m back from our annual musical retreat in the Isles of Shoals, but I’m completely exhausted. (We get up early, spend the days organizing and rehearsing, then play for the rest of the folks on the island from cocktail hour until the “wee small hours of the morning”. Getting more than about four or […]
September 6, 2018 – 2:08 pm
Returning from a month of happy isolation and indifference to the news, I see that we’ve been slipping ever deeper into bitter factional strife, if not yet (quite) outright war. The Kavanaugh hearings, which I had on in the background as I worked these past two days, are an obvious and dispiriting example. A steady […]
September 4, 2018 – 1:15 pm
It’s September, and after a restful summer break, it’s time to start getting back to normal operations around here. (There’s been a lot to talk about.) The next few days are busy ones, though: I’ll be working long hours today and tomorrow, and from Friday until Monday I’ll be on remote and rocky Star Island […]
August 23, 2018 – 1:07 pm
From our reader and commenter “Whitewall” comes a link to an excellent piece by Richard Fernandez: a review of Michael Walsh’s new book, The Fiery Angel. (Mr. Walsh’s previous book, The Devil’s Pleasure Palace, is excellent, and I recommend it to you all.) What struck me in particular as I read Mr. Fernandez’s review was […]
August 9, 2018 – 12:09 pm
Did you hear about this? Didn’t think so.
August 5, 2018 – 12:36 pm
In a recent post our friend Bill Vallicella sticks to his guns regarding what he considers the “mistake” of looking at the missionary leftism of the modern West as a religion. He prefers to use the alienans expression “ersatz religion” to describe it, while I’ve said all along that it really is a religion — […]
Once again we call your attention to the ongoing conversation between John Batchelor and historian Michael Vlahos on the darkening clouds of civil war. You can find all of these podcast episodes here.
Once again, it’s August, and the weather here in the Outer Cape is warm and sultry. Suddenly, swimming my daily mile in Wellfleet’s clear glacial kettle-ponds, gathering and consuming our renowned oysters, gazing at the blue horizon, and slowly working my way through a swelling backlog of books (including Thomas West’s book about the Founding) […]
August 1, 2018 – 10:47 pm
A reader has sent me this link, to a blog dedicated to what has come to be known as “pizzagate”. I present it without comment, for now at least.