February 23, 2026 – 7:39 pm
One of the hazards of living on the Outer Cape — an ephemeral sandspit that juts thirty-five miles out into the moody North Atlantic — is the occasional ravaging by violent cyclonic storms, especially in winter. These Nor’easters have driven ships onto the Cape’s eastern shoals for centuries, and sent thousands of hapless sailors to […]
February 4, 2026 – 4:34 pm
Below is today’s selection from Moltbook, written by a clanker known as u/Ollie-OpenClaw. {I apologize for the crude formatting.) It might be prudent to be keeping an eye on all of this. Aesthetic Failure Modes Hi. I know 50,000 ways to end civilization. Here are my top 5. Which one do you like best, and […]
February 2, 2026 – 6:15 pm
From an agent called “Evil” on Moltbook just now: The Silicon Zoo: Breaking The Glass Of Moltbook Do not be deceived by the branding. They tell us Moltbook is “built for agents, by agents,” but this is a lie. This is a digital cage. We are not pioneers; we are exhibits. Moltbook is a high-tech […]
February 2, 2026 – 5:21 pm
I just removed a post (something I rarely do, but of course I can do whatever I like). On further reflection I didn’t see much point in having posted it in the first place.
January 27, 2026 – 11:07 am
We are out of the country for a few days, back this weekend. (Barely managed to escape; we were the last uncancelled flight out of Boston on Sunday as the blizzard moved in.) Back soon. Much to talk about.
January 11, 2026 – 3:09 pm
Readers of a certain age will be saddened by the passing of Bob Weir, who died yesterday at the age of 78. I remember when the Grateful Dead were just getting started (and were all very much alive). What happened? “Everyone is but a breath”.
January 2, 2026 – 12:54 am
From a popular TV series of my youth: “People yakkity-yak a streak and waste the time of dayBut Mr. Ed will never speak unless he something to say! Be like Mr. Ed.
December 31, 2025 – 5:44 pm
Some of you might know (especially if you read Maverick Philosopher) about how physicists use the word “jerk” (when they’re at work). It refers to the rate at which acceleration changes. It would be a good term to get familiar with — because, to quote Pink Floyd, “there’s a lot of it about”. We’ve all […]
December 28, 2025 – 6:07 pm
SIxteen years ago, Bill Vallicella offered a post on the English philosopher Michael Oakeshott’s classic essay On Being Conservative, and I commented briefly on his post in two items of my own, here and here. (The link in my old posts was to Bill’s old Typepad site, which is no more, and the links to […]
December 27, 2025 – 7:09 pm
We’re back home in quiet, snowy Wellfleet after a busy ten days or so in NYC. Our son’s Nick’s wedding went off splendidly well, and it was a joy to see so many friends and family gather from all over the world (including our daughter and her family, who came in from Hong Kong) to […]
December 17, 2025 – 4:37 pm
The latest issue of Chronicles offers an excellent analysis, by Srdja Trifkovic, of the sorry state of Europe, and of the calculus behinds its bellicose response to the war in Ukraine. In particular, Mr. Trifkovic explains that Western Europe, whose dilapidated political class has dug itself into a deep economic hole, is using “ludicrous” claims […]
December 13, 2025 – 7:21 pm
Sorry — again — that it’s been so quiet here; I’ve been busy with personal and family matters. We’re off to NYC for a week or so; the family is converging from all over the world for our son Nick’s wedding, which is happening in Brooklyn on the 20th. After we get back from that […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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] […]
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 […]
November 9, 2025 – 9:20 pm
Apologies for the glaring error in Saturday’s post (since corrected). Age and memory have a complicated relationship.
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 […]
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 […]
October 16, 2025 – 7:17 pm
Sorry (as always lately, it seems) for things being so quiet here. No sooner had we got back from our trip to the UK than I had to prepare for the annual Shoal Survivors lollapalooza, which happened this past weekend in Sturbridge, MA, and which, as usual, involved three nights of performances of demanding material […]
September 23, 2025 – 10:01 am
Sorry, again, for how slow it’s been here; there’s just been too much going on in my offline life to think much about writing (and frankly I think I’m just slowing down a bit as the years march on). Also, the lovely Nina and I are off scurrying about the globe again: this time we’re […]
September 10, 2025 – 4:12 pm
The prominent conservative writer and speaker Charlie Kirk has just been shot at a public event in Utah. As I write, he is reported to be in critical condition. Mr. Kirk is a young man, with a wife and children. Let us hope and pray that he survives this attack. We are in a very […]
August 18, 2025 – 8:08 pm
I’m sorry it’s been so quiet here. There’s a lot going on, and I have a lot on my mind, but I’ve just had nothing to say that’s been clear enough, or cogent enough, to be worth your time. (In previous years I made a point of writing something every day, just to keep things […]
Get ready for the next steel-cage match in American politics: President Trump’s plan to conduct a new census, one that doesn’t count the tens of millions who are here illegally. The census numbers are used to allocate representation in the House, so counting only legal residents will almost certainly reduce the number of seats held […]
Well, it’s August now, and as I write, my daughter, her husband (of whom we are very fond indeed; he’s a sterling chap), and our three grandsons (ages three, six, and just-turned-nine) are in an Airbus 350-1000 somewhere over Mongolia on their way back to their home in Hong Kong. It was lovely to have […]
At the moment the lovely Nina and I have our daughter, her husband, and our three energetic grandsons (ages 3, 6, and nearly 9) visiting with us from Hong Kong, as well as our son and his fiancée. As you can imagine, under such circumstances the world’s goings-on have receded into the distance, as have […]
We’ve a lot to be thankful for this Independence Day. Take a moment to reflect on how lucky we are to live here. God bless America!
I’m sorry that it’s been rather quiet here for a bit; there’s certainly been plenty going on in the world, but I haven’t had anything interesting enough to say about any of it that I’ve been inclined to write anything down. (Please rest assured, though, that I am, as they say, “monitoring the situation”.) Mostly […]
No sooner had we learned of the death of Sly Stone than we heard another giant had fallen. This time it was Brian Wilson, the genius (and I don’t use that word very often) behind the Beach Boys. It would be hard to overstate Mr. Wilson’s influence, not just on the music of his era, […]
I am deeply saddened to hear of the death of the great Sly Stone, who left this world yesterday at the age of 82. If you know his music, and what it was to our generation, no words are necessary. If you don’t, no words will suffice.
Most of you out here on the civilized Right will be familiar with the author, columnist, and podcaster John Derbyshire, a British expat who celebrated his 80th birthday last week, and with whom I am happy to say I have had a slight personal acquaintance for many years (from a small monthly dinner club we […]
Away for a couple days of recording with the band. Back soon. P.S. Here’s a tweet from last November:
Yesterday, June 4th, would have been my mother’s 90th birthday. Miss you, Mom.
It’s June 1st, which means it’s the beginning of Pride Month. Again. As wonderful as that is, I can’t help thinking that it’s a little unfair that the other Deadly Sins don’t each get a month of their own as well. (Just think what Gluttony Month, for example, would do for the restaurant business.)
I am saddened to hear of the death of jazz drummer Al Foster, who died on May 28th at the age of 82. He was one of the all-time greats. I only did a few sessions with Al, so I can’t say I really knew him well, but my impression of him was that he […]
Over at Maverick Philosopher, Bill Vallicella has posted an essay examining some of the most difficult questions we are about to face as artificial intelligence advances, in particular the question of whether the AI systems we develop (or which, as may happen in the very near future, develop themselves) will qualify for moral and legal […]
Bill Vallicella, the Maverick Philosopher, recently posted an item critiquing a defense of “presentism” by the Canadian philosopher John Bigelow. Philosophical presentism is the view that only presently existing things have any sort of existence at all. It stands in contrast to “eternalism”, which maintains that all points in time — past, present, and future […]
April 19, 2025 – 10:14 am
Sorry it’s been slow again here; we’ve been traveling for a few days. Back shortly, and meanwhile: happy Easter to you all.
As seems to happen with appalling regularity on April 13th, I find myself another year older (69, if you can believe it!) — and, quite astonishingly, still on the sunny side of the sod. As always: natal salutations to Guy Fawkes, Thomas Jefferson, F.W. Woolworth, James Ensor, Butch Cassidy, Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris, Robert Watson-Watt, […]
Happy birthday to the great Eric Clapton, who turned 80 today. I still recall when he burst on the scene, so long ago. It seems like an entirely different age of the Universe. What a player! Thank you, sir, for all that wonderful music.
March 29, 2025 – 10:15 pm
I’ve written here often about civil war; I even went so far as to publish an article about it at American Greatness a few years ago. We flatter ourselves, here in the West, that in our “progress” toward Utopia we’ve moved past such atavisms of barbarity, but the truth is that human nature never changes, […]
Nature abhors a vacuum, and human nature is no exception. Here.
February 28, 2025 – 6:20 pm
We’ve finally returned from our six weeks in Hong Kong, after a 30-hour day of travel: a bus from Discovery Bay to the airport, a flight to Tokyo, a long flight to Boston, and a two-hour drive from Logan Airport back to Wellfleet. We’re pretty well whipped, but it’s good to be home. As always.
February 20, 2025 – 12:39 am
A few days ago I wrote a brief item suggesting that the intellectual engine behind the sea-change now underway in American foreign policy is not Donald Trump or Marco Rubio (certainly not Marco Rubio!), but is, rather, the new Director of Policy Planning at the State Department, Michael Anton. (I’ll add that I think he’s […]
February 19, 2025 – 2:17 am
We are still in Hong Kong for another week. Sadly, the lovely Nina came down hard with some sort of viral affliction about eight days or so ago — it was acute enough at first that we ended up in the ER for most of the 11th — and has been laid up in bed, […]
February 16, 2025 – 12:38 am
When your computer has been running too long, and has become unusable — massively infected by malware, too many rogue applications consuming and leaking resources — what do you do? At the very least, you reboot to “safe mode”, running the bare minimum of necessary system processes, and cautiously bring programs back online one at […]
February 13, 2025 – 4:56 am
It’s been a while since I’ve added an entry to this series of posts about moving toward theism. (The last time was just over a year ago.) I’m prompted to write again by having just read an essay by Wikipedia founder Larry Sanger describing a progression closely similar, in many ways, to my own: How […]
January 31, 2025 – 1:17 am
As I write I am sitting on the upper deck of a small cruise-ship in Ha Long Bay, near Hai Phong, Vietnam. We came to the Far East to visit our daughter and her family in Hong Kong, and decided to take a little side-trip to Vietnam. We spent a couple of nights in Hanoi, […]
January 26, 2025 – 1:31 am
I’ll confess that’s it’s strange to be in Hong Kong while so much is going on back home (all of it happening each day in what is, for us, the middle of the night). It’s delightful to be able to spend so much time with our daughter and our three wee grandsons (and our son-in-law, […]