August 1, 2018 – 10:36 am
Here’s a fine meditation, by Bill Vallicella, on the tension between reason and faith, and what it means for the philosopher who is also a Christian.
I’ve just read a brief interview with Sir Roger Scruton over at National Review. (Hat-tip to our friend David Duff.) This caught my eye: [Interviewer Madeleine Kearns]: What is the difference between a reactionary and a conservative? SRS: A reactionary is fixed on the past and wanting to return to it; a conservative wishes to […]
With a hat-tip to the Maverick Philosopher, here’s an essay by Bruce Thornton arguing that we might as well give up on political debate with the cryptoreligious Left. The best recourse, he tells us, is ridicule. (Hume was right: reason is the slave of the passions.) I agree with Professor Thornton about the futility of […]
Sorry about the scanty output: it’s summer, and I’m on a reduced schedule. I have begun reading The Political Theory of the American Founding, which you may recall from our link to, and subsequent discussion of, Michael Anton’s review. The book directly addresses several questions I have been stewing over for a long time now, […]
With a hat-tip to Bill Vallicella, here’s a survey of the blood-soaked political battlefield from Victor Davis Hanson.
John Batchelor discusses, with former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, the FISA-court application that got the Mueller investigation started. (The redacted application was finally released this weekend in response to persistent FOIA pressure by Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch.) The interview is in two parts, here and here. Mr. McCarthy writes about the release in his […]
From “The Authentic Reactionary“, by NicolÁ¡s GÁ³mez DÁ¡vila (1913”“1994): History is a necessity that freedom produces and chance destroys. This is a beautiful formulation: our freely chosen actions put in train an expanding system of consequences that, being beyond the control of any individual and therefore subject to an irreducibly complex web of contingency, lie […]
Today I was sent an article from the New York Times about Susan Unterberg, a philanthropist who supports female artists. The item was sent to me “as another example of how women are underpaid and not supported”. An excerpt: “They don’t get museum shows as often as men, they don’t command the same prices in […]
An injunction blocking a California law that threatens gun owners with fines or imprisonment if they don’t surrender or otherwise dispose of “high-capacity” magazines (the term refers to anything over ten rounds) has been upheld by, if you can believe it, the Ninth Circuit. David French has the details in a column published yesterday. He […]
Following on our previous post, today we bring you a column by Angelo Codevilla about Monday’s conference in Helsinki. It begins: The high professional quality of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin’s performance at their Monday press conference in Helsinki contrasts sharply with the obloquy by which the bipartisan U.S. ruling class showcases its willful incompetence. […]
How wearying it is to watch the reaction of the press, and of his political enemies, to President Trump’s press conference with Vladimir Putin. The hyperbole — “Treason! Pearl Harbor! Kristallnacht!” — would be comical if we weren’t already at about the halfway point on the road to civil war. (This is the same crowd, […]
I’m still too distracted by my houseful of relatives — four generations in all! — to do any writing, or even to pay any serious attention to the wider world, but I feel it necessary to post something — anything! — to push that smirking, malevolent avatar of villainy down the page. But if I […]
Over at Kakistocracy, Porter tosses and gores one Jessica Wood, a Ph.D. student at the university of Guelph, who has written a report that arrives at the following conclusion: “We found people in consensual, non-monogamous relationships experience the same levels of relationship satisfaction, psychological well-being and sexual satisfaction as those in monogamous relationships… This debunks […]
Here’s a good recent item by “Z-Man” on the effects of cultural and sexual rootlessness. Excerpt: Maybe a better way of thinking about the sexual aspect of our cultural crisis is that both men and women are haunted by different specters. For instance, our women are growing increasingly deranged, not because men are wimps, but […]
If things are a bit quiet here over the next few weeks, it’s because we have a full house — our daughter Chloe, her husband Chris, and our little grandson Liam are here from Vienna to stay with us in Wellfleet for a few weeks, and later this week they’ll be joined by our son […]
If you are as fatigued as I am by that false and flyblown “nation of immigrants” propagandum, you will read with appreciation this item, by Pedro Gonzalez, at American Greatness.
Our friend Bill Vallicella quoted this, from Michael Anton, on Independence Day: For the founders, government has one fundamental purpose: to protect person and property from conquest, violence, theft and other dangers foreign and domestic. The secure enjoyment of life, liberty and property enables the “pursuit of happiness.’ Government cannot make us happy, but it […]
Yesterday, on the nation’s 242nd birthday, I asked if we could set strife aside for a day, and just be grateful to live in such a remarkable nation. It occurred to me immediately after writing that line, though, that simple gratitude for the nation we have is itself a deeply conservative disposition. Joseph Sobran described […]
Happy Independence Day, America. And to all of you, dear readers, as well. I hope we can set strife aside for a day to appreciate how lucky we are to live in this extraordinary country.
Here’s a peppery little post by one Anne Carter on the state of public discourse: Shrieking Monkeys. Ms. Carter is a Southerner, and so, not having been farm-raised in the Yankee waters that our ruling classes have swum in all their lives, she is in a position to notice the moralizing and missionary zeal that […]
Bernie Sanders Is Not the Left
Here’s a brief, two-part discussion between John Batchelor and historian Michael Vlahos (of Johns Hopkins) on signs of civil war. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. Some previous entries in this ongoing conversation are here, here, and here.
I’ve just read a good item, by Joel Kotkin at City Journal, about a conference in Normandy on the future of Western democracy. It is appropriately gloomy, and savvy readers will catch a whiff of the Iron Law of Oligarchy in the extent to which democratic rule in Europe is anything but representative, and proceeds […]
Bill Vallicella weighs in on the natural-rights question we’ve been discussing, here. We read: The problem is that the notion of a natural right is less than perspicuous. Part of what it means to say that a right is natural is that it is not conventional. We don’t have rights to life, liberty, and property […]
The title, of course, is a reference to the oft-heard quip that there are three branches of government in the contemporary United States: the Executive Branch, The Legislative Branch, and Anthony Kennedy. Justice Kennedy has announced that he is retiring. This is huge news, and a wonderful opportunity. May RBG be next, and soon. Update: […]
Two posts ago we read Michael Anton’s emailed reply to a collection of questions I’d posted in Part 1 of this series. I mailed back a response, and received another reply in return. (There the correspondence stands, for the moment, as I’ve been traveling and working the past couple of days. I’d also like to […]
Our commenter Jacques has replied, in an email to me, to Michael Anton’s response (published in our previous post). I am posting it below. Michael Anton (on the question of “natural rulers”): “One can raise all sorts of objections to this. For instance, if Trump is such a natural ruler, why did he lose the […]
My last two posts (here and here) were in response to an extensive review, by Michael Anton, of Thomas West’s new book on the American Founding, and to a comment by our reader Jacques. In Saturday’s post I laid out some questions that I thought the review, and Jacques’ comment, had raised. I did not […]
In my previous post I linked to a review, by Michael Anton, of a new book on the American Founding by Thomas G. West of Hillsdale College. I have a keen interest in the Founding, and in particular I am, like nearly everyone in the “neoreactionary” community, dogged by the question of just where things […]
I’ve just read a remarkable review, by Michael Anton, of a new book by Thomas G. West, who is a professor at Hillsdale College. (You may know Michael Anton as ‘Publius Decius Mus’, the author of the celebrated essay “The Flight 93 Election” that argued for the necessity of electing Donald Trump in 2016.) Professor […]
As I mentioned recently, it’s been a busy spell for me, with little time or “bandwidth” for writing (though by now I’ve built up quite a backlog of things I’d like to comment on). Now I’m off to Kansas City on business for a few days. Will post as time permits.
I heard some very dark news last night: a woman we know, the closest friend of a couple who are among our own closest friends, has been diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer. She is one of the nicest and most intelligent people I know, and has already been though hell: her husband died in a […]
Well, the long-awaited Inspector General’s report on the FBI’s handling of the Clinton email investigation came out on Thursday. I’m interested enough to read it, but haven’t had the time. Mollie Hemingway has, however, and she gives us a helpful summary of it over at The Federalist. Key points: The philandering Peter Strzok, who was […]
From the Guardian: Einstein’s travel diaries reveal ‘shocking’ xenophobia I guess cultural relativity was just too much even for him. (Some things are true despite being obvious.) I’m reminded of the old joke: “Why did the mob have to rub out Einstein?” “Because he knew too much.” Wait till this mob gets a-hold of him.
As we all know, the accelerating edge of cultural evolution is steered and sharpened at our nation’s institutes of higher learning. Long gone is the cultural Pleistocene of my youth, when one could simply live and think according to the principles, customs, precepts, guidelines, mores, and traditions our parents learned as children, and passed along […]
It’s a busy stretch for me, with little time for writing (sorry about the lack of substantial posts here lately), but I’ll get back to logorrheic bloviation as soon as I can. Meanwhile, I have to post a picture I just ran across: Donald Trump at the G7 meeting, resolutely staring down a hectoring Angela […]
“We often read nowadays of the valor or audacity with which some rebel attacks a hoary tyranny or an antiquated superstition. There is not really any courage at all in attacking hoary or antiquated things, any more than in offering to fight one’s grandmother. The really courageous man is he who defies tyrannies young as […]
Charles Krauthammer is not long for this earth, it seems. Whether you agree with him or not on the issues — sometimes I have, and sometimes I haven’t — he is an intelligent, civilized, thoughtful and articulate man, who has borne a life-altering disability with strength and dignity.
It’s fifty years since Robert Kennedy was shot dead, and the press is gushing in fond remembrance. Not so Boston’s own Howie Carr, though.
Here is a good piece by JM Smith at The Orthosphere on the acedia consuming the modern world.
According to a new report by the Senate Homeland Security Committee, the Obama administration, having repeatedly assured Congress that under the JCPOA Iran would have no access to U.S. financial markets for asset conversion, nevertheless clandestinely issued a license permitting Iran to do exactly that. Apparently the effort failed because the banks themselves, showing more […]
Well! It being The Current Year, the beauty pageant “Miss America”, an iconic American institution, has announced that it will no longer be judging contestants on their appearance, and is getting rid of the swimsuit competition. (As “Iowahawk” quipped online: “well, I guess they can move it to radio now.” We read: The organization is […]
In a recent interview, Bill Clinton expressed sympathy for the #MeToo movement (which, as various wags have pointed out, can be read off as “Pound Me Too”), and said it was “overdue”. I try not to write much about the Clintons anymore — they are perhaps the vilest and most contemptible public officials to have […]
With yet another hat-tip to Bill Keezer, here’s a tart little item, by Don Surber, about the nation’s gradual recovery from Barack Obama’s years of control. Perhaps one day it will all seem like it was just a bad dream.
From Reason.com: how to make your own handgun — no Federal government involved, and all perfectly legal (depending upon your jurisdiction). Here.