March 19, 2019 – 11:46 pm
Having read Rachel Fulton Brown’s commentary on the New Zealand massacre, you should now go and read Peter Brimelow’s. His point is a simple one: when nations are deliberately destroyed, and all peaceful means of preventing the calamity are suppressed, what remains will be evil reactions by violent men.
March 19, 2019 – 11:34 pm
I’ve just read an item at American Greatness about the Christchurch massacre. The article is by Rachel Fulton Brown, a professor of medieval history who keeps an excellent blog called Fencing Bear At Prayer. I am an admirer of Ms Brown’s — there are many reasons for me to be — and her essay rightly […]
With a hat-tip to Nick Land, here is a densely mathematical paper that purports to model the world economy in terms of the degree of restriction of migration policy. I have looked it over, but I cannot say that I have followed its argument in detail. (If any of my readers would like to do […]
March 17, 2019 – 11:22 pm
A couple of months ago I posted an item about Germany’s ostentatious effort to rely on solar and wind power: a flamboyant exercise in virtue-signalling that has become a spectacular, and costly, failure. (I should add that I also consider those giant windmills we now see everywhere — someone has aptly called them “eco-crucifixes” — […]
The world is aghast today at the news of a massacre in a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand. The shooter was a white Australian; the victims were Muslims. As I write the death-toll stands at forty-nine. This is a horror, a sickening atrocity. It is important to try to understand what happened here, especially as […]
March 14, 2019 – 10:01 pm
The immensely profitable and influential hate-propaganda racket known as the Southern Policy Law Center is in the news today for firing its 82-year-old founder, Morris Dees, for unspecified “personnel violations”. I’m glad to hear it, of course: the SPLC is a “social-justice” flim-flam in the business of organized slander against everyone to its right, and […]
March 12, 2019 – 11:46 pm
Michael Anton comments on the seige of Tucker Carlson, here. The gist is in the final paragraph: The ruling Left cannot defeat Carlson and so must silence him. As it will attempt to silence anyone who carries his message or anything like it. Every “conservative’ who joins the ritual denunciation of Carlson wishing to be […]
March 12, 2019 – 12:10 am
So good to see someone refusing to grovel for once. Give ’em hell, Tucker.
March 10, 2019 – 12:51 pm
It’s time to panic, because the disastrous effects of climate change have now caused the cherry trees in Washington to blossom exactly when they usually do.
In Christianity and Culture (1949), T.S. Eliot wrote this about liberalism: “…it is something that tends to release energy rather than accumulate it, to relax, rather than to fortify. It is a movement not so much defined by its end, as by its starting point; away from, rather than towards, something definite. Our point of […]
Here’s a long and meaty interview with the Twitter commando who uses the name @WokeCapital. (You can view a sample WokeCapital thread here, in honor of International Women’s Day.) This is a heady sample of cask-strength NRx shitpoasting, as opposed to the sherry-in-crystal-stemware stuff you get from geezers like me. Go have a look.
Just before heading off to Ireland a couple of weeks ago, I linked to a discussion between John Batchelor and Stephen F. Cohen about the “Sovietization” of American political culture in recent years. By this term, Professor Cohen referred to the increasing use of social, political, economic, and legal pressure to cow and silence those […]
The lovely Nina and I are back in the States after a ten-day visit to Ireland. We spent time with family in Lucan (a western suburb of Dublin), and toured around a bit. Among the latter were a “black-taxi” tour of the troubled sections of Belfast (an area still deeply divided, in which the walls […]
February 22, 2019 – 11:12 am
The lovely Nina and I are off to Ireland for ten days, for a visit with our new extended family (and a little old-fashioned tourism). Things may be quiet here till we get back. Meantime, do listen to John Batchelor’s recent discussion with Professor Cohen on the Sovietization of America in recent years. Part 1 […]
February 22, 2019 – 12:10 am
Justin Smollett was arrested today. His story of having been attacked by Trumpist rednecks because he is black and gay was indeed a hoax, as I think most of us pretty much knew from the beginning. The story now is that he perpetrated this flim-flam because he was dissatisfied with what he was being paid […]
February 19, 2019 – 7:27 pm
As the Jussie Smollett “hate-crime” flim-flam falls apart, the Daily Caller has put together a list of some of the more sensational faux-racist hoaxes of the Trump era. You can read it here. It was obvious from the beginning that this Smollett business was a sham. First of all, it took place in the middle […]
February 16, 2019 – 1:38 pm
Here’s something really beautiful: a gorgeous global model of currents and temperatures in the air and sea. Click the ‘Earth’ button to change the view.
February 13, 2019 – 11:29 pm
I’d been getting worried again about John Batchelor — he’s been treated for cancer recently, took time off for surgery a while back, and has been away from the microphone again for the past couple of weeks. (The archival material he runs to fill in is always well worth listening to, but his latest absence […]
February 10, 2019 – 1:27 pm
Having pushed their doddering elders down the stairs, and finding among the corpses’ effects the keys to the family car, our newly crowned juvenocracy is wasting no time in taking it for a joyride. The leader pro tempore of this posse of hopped-up teens is a yakkity Chavista bird-brain by the name of Ocasio-Cortez — […]
February 8, 2019 – 9:52 pm
In my previous post I expressed qualified approval for Tuesday’s State of the Union address. Some commenters took me to task for this, because hey, we’re still doomed. They’re right, we probably are. And make no mistake, there’s plenty for a conservative, let alone a reactionary, not to like about Donald Trump, and about the […]
February 6, 2019 – 2:21 pm
I watched the speech last night. It was awfully good. Even for a cynic like me — who believes that this Republic, due to the inherent liabilities of democracy itself, is in the late stages of necrosis, and perhaps an early stage of civil war — Mr. Trump’s message of unity and greatness was rousing. […]
February 3, 2019 – 11:47 pm
There was a horrible story in the local news today: A young woman, pregnant, was stabbed to death in an apartment-building lobby. We read: The killer targeted the 35-year-old woman’s stomach, according to the building super, who said she watched surveillance-video footage that captured the murder. “He’s got a knife! He’s going to kill the […]
February 1, 2019 – 11:54 pm
Abortion’s been in the public eye lately: with the Democratic Party red-shifting leftward, legislators are seizing the opportunity to push the limits — both legal and moral — of the un-personing of the unborn. New York State just celebrated, with standing ovations and a festive light-show, a ghoulish dismantling of its moral obligations to its […]
January 29, 2019 – 12:53 pm
News from North Korea: North Koreans ordered to produce impossible amount of human manure every day to help save agriculture: report How much is that “impossible amount” of poop that each North Korean is supposed to provide? A hundred kilograms — far more than the average North Korean’s total body weight. Per day. At first […]
January 28, 2019 – 2:05 pm
With yet another hat-tip to Bill Keezer, here’s a therapeutic video.
January 26, 2019 – 11:56 pm
Former Federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy has a new item at NRO on the Roger Stone indictment. He makes an obvious but worth-repeating point about the “process crimes” Stone is charged with, which have to to an investigation into his efforts to find out what Wikileaks might have on Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign. Mr. […]
January 24, 2019 – 4:00 pm
New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, has just signed into law a bill called the Reproductive Health Act. (You can read it here.) The principal effects of the bill are a) to remove all mention of abortion from the New York State penal code; b) to permit licensed heath-care practitioners to conduct abortions; and c) to […]
January 23, 2019 – 11:10 pm
I don’t often link to The Atlantic, but this is worth your time: everything you need to know about the hagfish.
January 23, 2019 – 10:33 pm
I’ve just learned that Russell Baker, the longtime reporter and columnist for the New York Times, has died at the age of 93. I was a fan. I read his Observer column without fail, and have several of his books. He was a wonderful writer — graceful, witty, and piercingly but unostentatiously intelligent — and […]
January 21, 2019 – 9:57 pm
Tucker Carlson rang in the New Year with a controversial monologue on the failure of American government to address a fundamental problem of modernity: the breakdown of families, and the growing hopelessness of those who are neither intractably poor nor insouciantly rich. Unlike nearly every other “conservative” today, however, he spread the blame around, heaping […]
January 18, 2019 – 6:35 pm
Here’s the perfect gift for Mom: a vibrator on a necklace. An ad for the product says “Created by a woman to spark both conversations and feelings of empowerment”, while the online blurb refers to the object’s “forward-looking approach”. How, exactly, are these conversations supposed to go? HE: “Hi, nice to meet you. I see […]
January 17, 2019 – 9:54 pm
Magnificent. (Thanks to the indefatigable JK for the link.)
January 13, 2019 – 11:32 pm
Please forgive me for the scanty output here of late — I am deeply distracted with work and family matters, so much so that I have had very little to say. But I will direct you to two sharp posts at The Orthosphere, by J.M. Smith and Thomas Bertonneau, on the nature of the frustrated […]
January 11, 2019 – 3:08 pm
Mr. Trump, don’t give in.
January 10, 2019 – 11:19 am
Netflix has a new hit movie: Birdbox. The idea is a simple one: there are things in the world that, if clearly seen, are so radically discomfiting that those who see them are driven to suicide. So everyone puts on a blindfold. It’s a smashing success. I wonder why?
January 9, 2019 – 7:11 pm
I’m back in the States now, and catching up on backlogs of both news and work. (The latter isn’t going to leave me much opportunity for brooding and writing for a while, I’m afraid.) The new Democrat House is in charge. Among the most depressing consequences of that gloomy fact is that the ongoing investigations […]
January 4, 2019 – 5:36 pm
This weekend, after a month in Vienna, the lovely Nina and I are heading home. We’ll be back in the States by Sunday evening. It’s been a fine time — Vienna is always a nice place to be, and we welcomed a new grandchild into our expanding extended family — but it’s time to get […]
January 1, 2019 – 10:28 am
And away we go, friends. I have no idea what 2019 will bring, but I doubt it will be boring. Keep your powder dry! I wish you all good health and good fortune, and I thank you all again for reading and commenting.
December 30, 2018 – 4:36 pm
I met a charming and intelligent young Austrian man in a social setting this afternoon. I’d say he’s in his early thirties. He runs a small business, and lives in a very nice apartment here in Vienna with his wife and two small children. His wife’s American parents are here visiting, and we were invited […]
December 29, 2018 – 5:25 pm
I am sorry to report that This Week In Reaction, the weekly digest of writings from around the Dissident Right blogosphere that has been published at Social Matter for the last few years, has gone on what will likely be a permanent hiatus. My friend Nick Steves, the editor of TWIR, simply can’t keep up […]
December 27, 2018 – 3:18 pm
We’re still in Vienna (for another ten days or so), spending time with our daughter and her young family, and enjoying a year-end break from our usual cares and concerns. I’ve scarcely paid any attention to the news, and I’ll confess that, as happens sometimes, I’ve had very little inclination to take up the pen. […]
December 25, 2018 – 5:53 am
…to each and every one of you. May we all put the world and its cares aside for a day to enjoy the sweet blessings of home and hearth and family, and love.
December 24, 2018 – 8:09 am
I’ve been out of the country, and not paying much attention to the news, but I did hear about Michael Flynn’s sentencing hearing last week. And what did I hear? I heard what the mainstream media wanted me to hear: that the judge at the hearing, Emmet Sullivan, had rebuked General Flynn — whom I […]
December 23, 2018 – 4:44 pm
The S.O.B. is, of course, the Sage of Baltimore, H.L. Mencken. I’ve just re-read his Notes on Democracy, after many years, and it is as astringent as I remembered it. For example: It remains impossible, as it was in the eighteenth century, to separate the democratic idea from the theory that there is a mystical […]
December 21, 2018 – 1:27 pm
It has for many years been a tenet of the Progressive religion that solar and wind power must replace fossil fuels as the source of supply for our energy-hungry civilization. Critics of the idea have said all along that this is an impossible dream, a colossal waste of resources, is destructive to the environment in […]
December 20, 2018 – 9:04 am
There’s been a ruction, unsurprisingly, about President Trump’s announcement that we’ll be pulling U.S. troops out of Syria. I have no objection whatsoever to this decision: Mr. Trump’s promise to disentangle ourselves from pointless and costly wars in far-off snakepits was an important part of why he was elected, and Syria, a viper’s nest if […]
December 17, 2018 – 10:25 am
I’ve written for years (as have many others on the dissident Right, most notably and influentially Mencius Moldbug) that modern-day Progressivism is in fact a secularized religion. This diagnosis is plainly evident not only in its form and content, but is also confirmed by its genealogy, which reveals a lineage extending back (at least) to […]
December 16, 2018 – 6:24 am
The lovely Nina and I have just welcomed into the world our second grandchild, Declan Calder Wright, born to our daughter Chloe and her husband Christopher (who is as fine a young man as ever there was) here in Vienna, Austria, at 2:40 p.m. on Saturday, December 15th, 2018. (His middle name, Calder, was my […]
December 12, 2018 – 3:33 pm
Here’s an illustrative point from Theodore Dalrymple: Curiously, liberals who have long denied that punishment deters crime””or indeed serves any purpose, except to take vengeance on the weak and vulnerable, driven to crime by their wretched circumstances””are generally avid for strong penalties for hate crime. The way to make people like one another is to […]