November 1, 2020 – 1:37 pm
A lively discussion has ensued in the comment-thread to our previous post. Commenter “vxxc” argues that my assessment of the natural assets of the Red coalition is too optimistic: that our lack, so far, of functional organization puts us at a lethal disadvantage in the gathering struggle. I, on the other hand, think this is […]
October 27, 2020 – 11:53 pm
The political situation is like nothing I have ever seen in my longish lifetime; as I wrote a little while ago, we are no longer a single community disagreeing about the difficulties of the world we share, but rather two bitterly antagonistic camps inhabiting utterly different realities of belief and perception, with nothing objective in […]
October 27, 2020 – 4:57 pm
Today I saw my shoulder surgeon, Dr. Laith Jazrawi of Langone Orthopaedics, for my six-week post-op followup. The result was gratifying: everything is fine, with impressive progress toward full range of motion, and I no longer have to wear that bloody sling. I am also cleared to drive again, which is enormously liberating. I’m able […]
October 23, 2020 – 1:27 pm
I’ve just read a pithy and sensible article at Quilette on the subject of psychological and behavioral sex differences. The essay was written by David Geary, a professor of psychology at the University of Missouri, and it disputes the social-sciences orthodoxy that sees all such differences as social constructions, remediable (as if remediation were actually […]
October 18, 2020 – 7:36 pm
It is notable that the Biden campaign hasn’t denied the veracity of the material taken from Hunter Biden’s laptop, even though it appears to be damning indeed. To the cynical observer this suggests what we’ve suspected all along: that the senescent and ineradicably tainted Biden is simply a Trojan horse intended to get the most […]
October 18, 2020 – 3:46 pm
What an extraordinary time in American history this is. We are bifurcated, not into opposing political camps as in normal times, but into opposing realities. The developing story of Biden-family corruption is, in one of these dimensions of reality, evidence of disgraceful, comprehensive political and moral malfeasance that should utterly, and obviously, disqualify the Democratic […]
October 16, 2020 – 6:42 pm
From a sharp new item by Andrew Sullivan: What antiracism brilliantly does is adopt all the instincts of racism and sexism — seeing someone and instantly judging them by the color of their skin, or sex — and drape them with a veil of virtue. Also this: Many moderns want the experience of religion without […]
October 11, 2020 – 7:32 pm
Here is a scorching critique of the New York Times’ calumnious “1619 Project”, from one of its own.
October 10, 2020 – 2:03 pm
My latest, about the modern-day sanctification of democracy as an end in itself, is up at American Greatness. Have a look.
October 6, 2020 – 1:10 pm
From the Perry Bible Fellowship, a timely and essential truth:
October 2, 2020 – 3:30 pm
Sorry to have been so neglectful here. I’m recovering normally, but am still supposed to keep use of my right arm to a minimum for another week or two, and am living in a sling. Typing is slow and uncomfortable. Meanwhile the lovely Nina had surgery yesterday to remove a basal-cell carcinoma from the bridge […]
September 13, 2020 – 12:00 pm
Shoulder surgery tomorrow, 9/14. I’m glad to be getting it done, but my right arm’s going to be in a sling for six weeks, so it’s going to be hard to write. Back when I can. Update, typed with left hand only, Monday 7 pm: All done. Supine and resting at home, generously medicated and […]
September 13, 2020 – 12:02 am
I want to apologize to all of you who have been coming here over the past few months only to find little or no new content. I’ve written three articles this summer for publication elsewhere, but since my excruciating shoulder injury in July I’ve badly neglected the blog. Since 2005 I’ve written over five thousand […]
September 10, 2020 – 7:50 pm
In an article a few weeks ago at American Greatness I wrote about the dark effect of mask-wearing: The face we present to the world is our “sigil,” our flag of individual distinctness. Our faces, and the richness of expression they make possible, are the primary medium of interpersonal communication. [The old expression “Smile when […]
September 6, 2020 – 12:23 pm
The election is two months away. I don’t get the sense, from most people, that they have any inkling of what a catastrophe it’s going to be. But if you think it’s been a crazy year so far, the period after Election Day is going to make the first ten months of 2020 look like […]
August 30, 2020 – 3:49 pm
I’ve just posted an adaptation of my old (2013) “Small World” essay at American Greatness. Here.
August 30, 2020 – 10:56 am
Essential reading: Michael Anton explains, more persuasively than I’ve read anywhere else, why we must have a Trump win in 2020. You may not fully understand the scope of the calamity that awaits us if the Democrats consolidate their power; read his essay and you will. Here.
August 28, 2020 – 8:39 pm
Here’s the latest collaborative video from my Star Island music team: a lighthearted cover of another Beatles classic. (You can see our others here.) Lead and background vocals, some bass guitar, and mixing: your humble correspondent.
August 19, 2020 – 7:11 pm
Our August hiatus continues. I’m a little hampered by the painful shoulder (broke a toe yesterday as well), and there have been the usual distractions of this late-summer season. (There’s a lot going on in the world, as always, but I’m taking a little break.) What time I’ve had for writing I’ve been using to […]
August 10, 2020 – 12:35 pm
I’ve a new essay up at American Greatness on the prospect of civil war. Have a look here.
August 10, 2020 – 12:33 pm
Sorry, readers, for the quiet around here. (August is always a bit of a hiatus for the blog.) I’ve been back and forth to NYC to get the shoulder looked at (will head back for surgery in a few weeks), and have been distracted in other ways as well. I’ve also been working on some […]
August 3, 2020 – 11:43 am
Off to NYC for a couple of days to have the shoulder looked at. Back soon. Update, 8/4: Surgery it is; seems I tore it up as badly as I had feared. September, most likely.
I had a post ready to go here yesterday, but I sent it off to American Greatness and they picked it up, so I’ll ask you to read it there. Note: a disclaimer about the reality of the pandemic didn’t make the final cut. I’ll I’ll post the unedited, and possibly slightly revised, version here […]
You may have noticed an uptick in mobs surrounding drivers in their cars, and an increasing willingness in drivers thus imperiled simply to step on the gas. “What shall we call this?” wondered someone on Twitter. The answer, of course, is obvious: Accelerationism.
Sorry (again) that it’s been so quiet here. I’ve been nursing this shoulder injury — due to insurance-coverage issues I’ve had trouble getting an MRI, and will end up traveling from Wellfleet to Connecticut next week to get it done — and although it’s been getting a little better, it’s still been uncomfortable to type. […]
From The True Believer, by Eric Hoffer: “When hopes and dreams are loose in the streets, it is well for the timid to lock doors, shutter windows and lie low until the wrath has passed. For there is often a monstrous incongruity between the hopes, however noble and tender, and the action which follows them. […]
From Steve Sailer: Our New Religion of Race Read also this post of his from June 10th, linked in the article above. I won’t even talk about what the Smithsonian’s been up to; it deserves a post of its own, which I haven’t the oomph to write just now.
Opinion editor Bari Weiss has been purged from the New York Times for a lack of ideological purity. Her resignation letter is a window into the intensifying vortex of cryptoreligious madness that now threatens to consume all of Western civilization. Read it here. PS: Remember always that we outnumber these people, and that they have […]
Slipped on a puddle in the kitchen last night, caught my right elbow on the counter as I was falling, and tore my right shoulder to pieces. Back from the ER at Cape Cod Hospital — lovely people there! — but will need MRI and orthopaedic consultation. Judging by the tearing and crunching sounds as […]
Sorry it’s been so slow around here — summer doldrums, mostly, and lack of anything interesting to say. (We also have our son Nick, whom we haven’t seen for months due to the Wuhan Red Death, paying us a brief visit.) Should be back with something soon. Thanks all for coming by, and please feel […]
Happy birthday, America. Never in my lifetime has the fate of the Union seemed more precarious. To begin our 245th year, President Trump gave a rousing defense of the traditional American nation at Mount Rushmore. Unlike the terrible forces arrayed against him, this man truly loves his country, and he understands the awful threat it […]
When football season opens, if it does, we’ll be hearing two national anthems. (Readers of a certain age may remember one of them; it went with the deprecated American nation we all grew up with.) The NFL will be playing the “Black National Anthem” before “The Star-Spangled Banner”. Why would one nation have two national […]
It surprises me that anyone on the Right (or for that matter, anyone of middle years or older who grew up in the former United States, and feels that he or she has had a pretty good life) would have any hesitation at all about supporting Donald Trump — not only in the upcoming election, […]
We hear in the media, and from his political opponents, that Donald Trump considers himself to be “above the law”. Unsurprisingly, such accusations never seemed to be leveled at his predecessor. As this four-part list of two hundred examples shows, though, they might well have been.
My old pal Jimmy Haslip sent me a link to a new version of the old Weather Report song, as conceived by Zawinul protégé Scott Kinsey. The video features Jimmy on bass, Scott Kinsey on keys, the terrific Hungarian drummer Gergo Borlai, saxophonist Katisse Buckingham, and bassist/singer Naina Kundu on vocals. Here it is. Turn […]
Just in (I have bolded the key passage): The Department of Justice today filed a statement of interest in Idaho federal court defending Idaho’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act against a challenge under the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. “Allowing biological males to compete in all-female sports is fundamentally unfair to female athletes” said Attorney General […]
Another day, another calamity at the Supreme Court: John Roberts sides with the liberal wing to block the recission of DACA, remanding it to the Department of Homeland Security for another try. The argument in the majority opinion — and along with the dissenting Justices, I think it’s so thin as to be quite transparent […]
With a hat-tip to my e-pal David Duff, here is an open letter written by a black professor at UC Berkeley urging us not to be taken in by the infantilizing Democrat race-hustle known as Black Lives Matter. The writer makes the essential points: that BLM promotes a malignant, paternalistic ideology that “strips black people […]
Here are two black voices that have very little chance of being heard above the din. Both are tenured professors at Ivy League universities: Glenn C. Loury of Brown, and John McWhorter of Columbia. (Given, by the way, that Brown University was founded on slave-trade wealth, and Columbia was named after noted unperson Christopher Columbus, […]
It was a busy day yesterday at the Supreme Court — and from over here on the Right, a disappointing one as well. I haven’t read the opinions, so I should refrain from analysis, but the results — in particular, blows against freedom of association, the Second Amendment, and enforcement of the nation’s immigration laws […]
I wrote a while back about the tidal forces straining the Left as it falls deeper into the gravity well surrounding an all-consuming singularity. In a sharp essay just published, Matt Taibbi looks at the disintegrating American press.
I’ve long supported subsidiarianism – the idea that government should be as local, and locally accountable, as possible. I’ve also been saying for years that the U.S. has become so large, and so diverse, as to be ungovernable by central authority. What’s worse, the power held by that central authority is so pathetically insecure that […]
Well! As I write an ISIS-style warlord, a rapper named Raz Simone, has declared a portion of a major American city — Seattle, Washington — to be an autonomous region no longer part of the United States of America. He is enforcing his rule over the Capitol Hill neighborhood of that city in the usual […]
I’ve said for years that the missionary Progressivism now in control of every aspect of our civilization can only be properly understood as a religion. And just as the Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th century were attended by great waves of repentance for our sins, and the fear of Hell, exactly so is […]
We hear a lot these days (possibly the understatement of the year) about bias; in particular “implicit bias”. In a recent article about racism, though, a young black writer mentions some other kinds of bias: First, our intuitions about whether trends have increased or decreased are shaped by what we can easily recall—news items, shocking […]
The late Yuri Bezmenov explains. (To bring this fully up to date, we would swap out “Marxism”.)
I’m browsing my old posts, to see how much of our current state of affairs was visible in prospect years ago. Here’s a long excerpt from something I published back in 2012. * * * * * * * … Democracy works well enough for a while, I suppose, while a nation […]
Haven’t looked at the news much for a week or so. Did I miss anything?