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Friday, June 12, 2026

Bad Design Update

Military Times has a look at the initial design for the Global War on Terrorism Memorial.

It's sort of mind-bogglingly bad.

[But it might make a suitable skate-boarding park.]

Remembrance in Full

City Journal: Wilfred M. McClay on the significance of the Declaration of Independence. An excerpt:

We are thinking a lot about remembrance, with the 250th anniversary of American independence approaching. How, in this contentious time, should we remember this event? How should we observe the occasion? Do such things really matter?

The last question is the easiest to answer. Yes, they matter, because looking forward necessarily entails looking backward. The two vistas are symbiotically connected in the human soul. Edmund Burke captured this truth when he famously remarked: “People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.” We must connect with both if we are to have a stake in either. We are better able to imagine, and work toward, a future for our children when we remember, with gratitude, that we ourselves are the embodiment of our predecessors’ tomorrows.

Revolutionary

Thursday, June 11, 2026

A Lesson in Power

In 1815, there was an intriguing editorial shift as Napoleon returned to France following his exile on Elba.

Le Moniteur Universel, which was the official government newspaper, reported:

March 9: "The Anthropophagus has quitted his den."
March 10: "The Corsican Ogre has landed."
March 11: "The Tiger has arrived at Gap."
March 13: "The Tyrant has passed through Lyons."
March 18: "Bonaparte is only sixty leagues from the capital."
March 19: "Bonaparte is advancing with rapid steps, but he will never enter Paris."
March 20: "Napoleon will, tomorrow, be under our ramparts."
March 21–22: "The Emperor has arrived at Fontainebleau" and "His Majesty the Emperor made his public entry. Nothing can exceed the universal joy."

Andrew Roberts, in his massive biography of Napoleon, notes:

"On March 21, the Moniteur, which once again changed its editorial policy the moment he returned to power, printed the name NAPOLEON in capital letters no fewer than twenty-six times in the course of four pages, telling the news of his triumphal return."

[Photo by Nicolas HIPPERT at Unsplash]

A French Perspective

In the voting booths, it's a historic realignment. For the first time in modern history, anti-system parties are simultaneously leading in the three major economies of Europe. Reform is crushing everything in the UK with a Starmer at -61 net popularity. The AfD ahead of the CDU. The RN higher than ever. Italy governed. Austria, Portugal, the Netherlands tipping. Trump reelected. Milei turning Argentina around live.

This isn't a wave. It's the entire Western bloc rejecting the same software at the same time. Why now? Because the ideology made the mistake that its previous version took 70 years to make: it took power. An opposition ideology is irrefutable. An ideology in power produces results. From 2020 to 2024 it governed, and reality started sending its refutations again, like Budapest 1956, like the boat people. Everyone saw the unmanageable cities, the collapsing schools, the BLM founders buying four mansions with the cause's money. The people didn't need to read Foucault. They looked at who was getting rich preaching sacrifice.

And then there's the factor that neither the USSR nor French Theory ever had to face. In 2024, Peter Thiel dines with Elon Musk. Thiel tells him: if Trump loses, I'm leaving the country. Elon replies: "There's nowhere to go." There's nowhere to go.

Thiel goes home and two hours later understands what he just heard: Elon no longer believes in Mars as a refuge. Because the socialist government and the woke AI would follow him to Mars. The man who builds rockets to leave Earth had just concluded that escape was impossible.

What did he do with that despair? He didn't emigrate. He bought the global public square, broke the censorship monopoly, put his fortune into the fight. This man is now on track to become the first trillionaire in human history, and he has made the destruction of this ideology an explicit goal.

- Brivael Le Pogam, co-founder Argil

[Photo by Cecilia Miraldi at Unsplash]