Crank It Up

 A tradition on this blog: Dougie MacLean shows how to sing "Auld Lang Syne." 

Sweet Bunch

 Ann Althouse and Glenn Reynolds on the politicized Justice Department.

Some Unusual Films That Should Be Seen At Least Once

 

Understanding the Structure

 

I Can Support All of Them

 A Large Regular has some excellent goals for the New Year.

Rudeness is Unacceptable

 The American Spectator; R. Emmett Tyrrell on when Matt Gaetz was banned from The Saturday Evening Club.

As the End of the Year Looms

Note what was achieved, what was overlooked, which solutions have brought new problems, what is likely to be lurking in the new year, and how you'll prioritize your work.

But set aside your activities for a while and prepare your attitude. To the greatest extent possible, be calm when there are no challenges and even calmer when there are.

List and analyze your assumptions. They may be as light as cobwebs, but they can soon turn into chains.

There is a grand world out there and there are many roads to your destination. You may have to create more than a few paths.

[Photo by Nick Haupt at Unsplash]

First Paragraph

 During the last days of the Western Roman Empire and throughout the Middle Ages, Western Europe was threatened, and often invaded, by outsiders. First came the Huns, then the Arabs, then the Magyars, then the Vikings, then the Mongols, and then the Turks. Each in turn, they were described as ferocious warriors none could withstand. Each in turn, their hordes inflicted immense bloodshed, destruction, and suffering on a continent rendered almost defenseless by the prevailing socio-economic-political structures and the internecine struggles to which it led.

- From Pussycats: Why the Rest Keeps Beating the West and What Can Be done About It by Martin van Creveld

Find Something Beautiful Today

 

[Photo by Mar Cerdeira at Unsplash]

The Ultimate College Application Essay

ARE THERE ANY SIGNIFICANT EXPERIENCES YOU HAVE HAD, OR ACCOMPLISHMENTS YOU HAVE REALIZED, THAT HAVE HELPED TO DEFINE YOU AS A PERSON?

I am a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice. I have been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, making them more efficient in the area of heat retention. I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban refugees, I write award-winning operas, I manage time efficiently. Occasionally, I tread water for three days in a row.

I woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing, I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I cook Thirty-Minute Brownies in twenty minutes. I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru.

Using only a hoe and a large glass of water, I once single-handedly defended a small village in the Amazon Basin from a horde of ferocious army ants. I play bluegrass cello, I was scouted by the Mets, I am the subject of numerous documentaries. When I'm bored, I build large suspension bridges in my yard. I enjoy urban hang gliding. On Wednesdays, after school, I repair electrical appliances free of charge.

Read the rest of the story of Hugh Gallagher's college application story.

Memorable

 

A Few Substack Columns

 Here are the links for a few of my Substack essays that have received particular interest:

Most Recent:

Where Were the Lawyers?

Most Popular:

Time to Look for the Genuine

Public Service:

Are Millions of Americans Being Rejected by HR Software?

Surprise Hit:

Cultural Revolution in the Police Departments

The Game's Afoot

 My new Substack post is up.

If you're looking for the culprit in the spread of divisive DEI programs, there is one question to ask.

Check here.

The Best Star Trek Commercial Ever

 

If We Had a Press Corps

 Despite Past Denials: Jonathan Turley on the President's business associates.

The Heady Days of Radical Chic

New York magazine: "That Party at Lenny's" by Tom Wolfe.

[Tom Wolfe is deeply missed.]

First Paragraph

 In the Lenin Barracks in Barcelona, the day before I joined the militia, I saw an Italian militiaman standing in front of the officers' table.

- From Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

Simple Brilliance

 

This is Not Focused. It is Circling. And I'm Not Sure What is at the Center.

 Part of the morning was spent reviewing the careers of Elon Musk and Steve Jobs.

The rest will be focused on preparing (and reading) Substack essays.

The afternoon will shift to correspondence, fiction, and errands.

And thinking.

[My "Not to Do" List is much lengthier.]

All of the above is designed to assist in finding what I really want to be thinking about.

A Key Perspective

 The Free Press: Bari Weiss and Tom Holland on how Christianity remade the world.

Tom Holland's book, Dominion, is very interesting.

First Paragraph

 The Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, revealed a seismic change in the way young people in the United States think about Israel and Palestine. A poll conducted two months after the attack found that while Americans as a whole supported Israel over Hamas by 81 percent to 19 percent, those aged 18-24 were split fifty-fifty. Within that age group, 66 percent of respondents agreed that Hamas's attack was "genocidal in nature," yet 60 percent also said it "can be justified by the grievances of the Palestinians." In other words, more than half of college-age Americans seem to believe that it would be justified for Palestinians to commit a genocide of Israeli Jews.

- From On Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence, and Justice by Adam Kirsch

In the Stack

 

Happy Hanukkah!

 

[Photo by Nikola Johnny Mirkovic at Unsplash]

Have a Marvelous Christmas

 

[Photo by Erwan Hesry at Unsplash]

Silent Night

 

With Shakespeare

Back soon.

[Photo by Taha at Unsplash]

Back By Popular Demand: Jacobson on Writing

 

In the Background

 

10 Soundtracks for the New Year

My new Substack essay is up.

Check it out here and please spread the word.

Rejection of a Rejection Letter

 

Time to Re-Read

Here is the C.S. Lewis site.

First Paragraph

CHIEF OF POLICE: I have invited you here, gentlemen, in order to communicate to you a most unpleasant piece of news: a government inspector is coming to visit us.

- From The Inspector General by Nikolai Gogol [first performed in 1836]

Formidable!

 

Find Something Beautiful Today

[Photo by Aaron Burden at Unsplash]

First Paragraph

She was standing in the middle of the railroad tracks. Her head was bowed and her right front hoof was raised as if she rested. Her reins hung down to the ground and her saddle had slipped to one side. Behind her, a warehouse filled with medical supplies had just caught fire. Lying beside her was a dog with its head between its paws and its ears erect and listening. 

- From The Wars by Timothy Findley

Crafting a New Type of Power Center

The Tablet magazine: 

"Rapid-Onset Political Enlightenment: How Barack Obama Built an Omnipotent Thought-Machine, and How It Was Destroyed" by David Samuels. 

A Child's Christmas in Wales

 

By Your Wrapping We Shall Know Thee

All of the nice-looking presents under our tree have been wrapped by my wife or my children.

The ones wrapped in industrial-strength aluminum foil have been wrapped by me.

It's a time management strategy.

[Photo by Michal Pechardo at Unsplash]

Once in Royal David's City

 

Reminder

 

I have to get cracking to finish re-reading two Shakespeare plays by January 1.

Music for Your Next Wolf Hunt

 

"Sharp as a Tack"

 Jonathan Turley on the Wall Street Journal's story revealing the efforts of the Biden administration and the press to cover up the mental failings of the President.

None of those people should be trusted with power again.

A natural question for the moment is: Who is the real president?

Quick Look

 

Who Could Possibly Question This?

 The police could be abolished because people are kind and - once rescued from poverty and racism - wouldn't hurt each other. Homeless addicts can set up long-term communities in public parks because they absolutely will share space conscientiously with local families. Neighborhoods can be given over to protest movements because those protest movements know how to hold themselves accountable, and because city governments are old-fashioned and unnecessary when people are good. We don't need to authorize new housing because we can just ask young professionals not to move to a crowded town, and they'll of course understand. Gender dysphoric children should be given the medical interventions they ask for, at any age they ask, because those children know themselves perfectly. If a non-profit leader says they are spending money on black lives, then that's what they're doing, and to ask for records is part of the problem.

- From Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches from the Wrong Side of History by Nellie Bowles

Crank It Up

 

Attention: Sweater Companies

Patrick Rhone has a series of posts on his collection of sweaters.

I've yet to see a bad one.

In fact, some savvy sweater company should hire him as their representative. 

The slogan: Sweaters look cool.

People are Harder

Crocodiles are easy. They try to kill and eat you. People are harder. Sometimes they pretend to be your friend first.

- Steve Irwin

Advice from Rob Firchau

 

The Hammock Papers is always uplifting, as is the spirit of this advice.

I confess to following the "no television" part and to reading old books. Am getting my old bicycle repaired and my wife is the proponent of opening windows. 

Oh yes, at the encouragement of my son, I am drawing more and have begun painting.

The quality of the painting is another story.

[HT: Cultural Offering]

Too Clever

 Tevi Troy, in Commentary magazine, examines the effects of Obamacare. An excerpt:

By excluding the input and oversight of the vast majority of the nation’s elected representatives, the bill turned the American system inside out. The legislation would rely on the administrative state to write and execute much of the policy details of Obamacare. For instance, the law contains more than 1,000 mentions of the phrase “the secretary shall”—the secretary in this case being the unelected head of the Department of Health and Human Services. In other words, to avoid negotiation and controversy, the authors in Congress effectively took power away from Congress and gave it to the executive-branch bureaucracy. This passing of the buck from Congress to the administrative agencies would have multiple negative ramifications.

First Paragraph

Imagine that a person in a position to alter your career invites you to a party at his home. When you arrive at the party, the talk of the moment seems to be about the living room's pale neutral colors, the latest trend in interior decoration. The look does not appeal to you, but you would rather not say so, lest your host be hurt. Feeling pressured to say something, you compliment his "sophisticated taste." A while later you find yourself in a conversation on wasteful development projects in Latin America. Someone pompously asserts that under socialism there would be no waste. Although you find the claim preposterous, you let it go unchallenged, to avoid sparking a divisive debate. 

- From Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification by Timur Kuran

On My List

 

Your Personal Connection to History

My new Substack column is up.

Check it out here and be sure to spread the word.

My goal is to add at least 20 new followers by the end of the year.

Courage Briefing

Yesterday, I gave a briefing on courage, its importance, and how to increase it, to the first Ambassadors class of the Prohuman Foundation.

A very bright group with very diverse backgrounds - sort of a reminder that people are novels - and the 90-minute session went quite well.

Courage is a timely topic nowadays, mainly because there is such a short supply in so many arenas.

That topic will become one in an assortment of briefings I'm currently developing. It requires research, of course, and yet the inspiration can be seen all around us.

The good news is that courage is about to make a serious come-back.

[Photo by Sandro Gautier at Unsplash]

Bate on Books

 Nicholas Bate has some solid ideas for your reading time.

I'll add some additional suggestions: Schedule primary reading time - go for a daily dose of 45 minutes to an hour - but also make sure that a good book or journal is always within reach.

It is truly sad to see waiting rooms packed with people scrolling through smartphones when they could be reading.

Not a Christmas Film

 

Courageous Patience

"Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous patience."

– Admiral Hyman Rickover, father of the American nuclear submarine program

Spooky and Nice

 

Datsun 240z

Sippican Cottage has the restoration details.

This has long been on the List of Cars I Wish I Had Owned.

[Photo by Andrei Ianocskii at Unsplash]

Revolt of the Public - 10 Years On

 There's a radical dissatisfaction with the social and political status quo across the democratic world. The people in charge are distrusted and despised by the public: They are thought to be in business for themselves and indifferent to the concerns of ordinary people. From government agencies to the scientific establishment, the institutions that buttress modern society have been tainted by the corruption and poor performance of the ruling elites. The public has come to view these institutions as cash cows for the haves - and an oppressive machinery for bleeding the have-nots.

- Read the rest of Martin Gurri here.

Powerful

 I knew wherever I was that you thought of me, and if I got in a tight place you would come - if alive.

-          William Tecumseh Sherman, in a letter to Ulysses S. Grant

 

When Freedom of Expression is Squelched on Campus

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has issued a report with very troubling findings.

One especially disturbing finding: Only 20% of university faculty say a conservative would fit in well in their department.

FIRE notes that this is a more severe repression of opinion than was on campuses during the McCarthy era in the 1950s.

Hmm

 

Find Something Beautiful Today

[Photo by Peter Thomas at Unsplash]

Beautiful and Powerful

 

25 Blogs

Kurt Harden writes Cultural Offering, an essential blog that provides wisdom along with daily illustrations of a life well-lived.

I am honored to be on his list of 25 Blogs Guaranteed to Make You Smarter.

Many thanks, Kurt!

"The Clock Strikes Thirteen"

In America, the left spent years bullying people into accepting "woke" ideas on race, gender, and politics. There's considerable reason to believe that a majority of Americans never accepted these ideas, but between constant media repetition, and risk of being mobbed and canceled if you disagreed with them, most people for years were afraid to stand up. 

Click here to read all of the essay by Glenn Harlan Reynolds.

Presentation Prep

Researching. Analyzing. Circling the key points. Organizing them in the traditional fashion.

And then remembering the novelist's rule: Give them the third paragraph first.

[Photo by Claudia Wolff at Unsplash]

Ready for the Weekend? Crank It Up.

 

The Importance of Preserving Tradition

 Some recent thinkers have argued that the only way to save modernity is to free it of militant modernism. A culture that cannot balance the modern and the traditional, one that is all for the modern and all against the traditional, will end up destroying itself. When the moral capital of Western civilization is finally exhausted, we will not have entered some brave new world. We will have compassed our own destruction. What the barbarian hordes of ancient and medieval times were unable to accomplish we will have done to ourselves.

- From "Civilization & Tradition" by Allen C. Guelzo and James Hankins in Where Next?: Western Civilization at the Crossroads: Essays from The New Criterion, edited by Roger Kimball

How Liberalism Got Hacked

 The Free Press: Kemi Badenoch, leader of Britain's Conservative Party, gives an analysis. An excerpt:

That is the trick that those on the authoritarian left have pulled off. They have smuggled ideas and policies that look like liberalism but are anything but. They speak the language of the civil rights movement, but they aim to resegregate us. They preach about social justice, but they do not believe in the most basic ideas of fairness and equality. They demand our tolerance even as they seek to undermine the very culture and institutions that create that tolerance in the first place.

The Power of Technology

 We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true.

-  Robert Wilensky

"The Vibe Shift Goes Global"

 The Free Press: Historian Niall Ferguson on the global shift:

The Vibe Shift is a healthy suspicion of credentialism and a return to human judgment.

The Vibe Shift is living not by lies, and instead speaking the truth - whatever the cost.

The Vibe Shift is directly facing our tumultuous times, refusing to blackpill, and choosing to build instead.

The Vibe Shift hit American politics on the night of November 5. What no one foresaw was that it would almost immediately go global, too.

Hmm

 

Perspective

As the light changed from red to green to yellow and back to red again, I sat there thinking about life. Was it nothing more than a bunch of honking and yelling? Sometimes it seemed that way. 

- Jack Handey

 

Your Holiday Gift-Giving List Just Got Easier

My latest Substack list has books that will provide travel, adventure, and joy.

Check it out.

[And - shameless plug - please spread the word about my Substack column. The goal is to add a chunk of subscribers - free or otherwise* - by Christmas and New Year's Eve.]

*"Otherwise" refers to the noble souls who, by pledging a very small amount, support my efforts to pay book bills and other necessities.

Yes

 

"The Greatest Military Production Machine"

 "The result [of giving American business leaders the lead in key decisions for mobilization] was that by December 1941, when the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor, the U.S. was already poised to outproduce Nazi Germany in war materiel. By 1944 American industry was producing eight aircraft carriers a month, 50 merchant ships a day, and a war plane every five minutes. Two-thirds of all the war materiel used by all the Allies in World War II came from America - as did the most powerful innovative weapon in history, the atomic bomb."

- Arthur Herman, "The World War II Lesson for DOGE" in The Wall Street Journal, December 19, 2024

Great Films in Black and White: A Series

 

From the Sophisticates at The New York Times

 

Back By Popular Demand

 

Amazingly Dumb

 The Biden administration revoked the veterans' hiring preference for civil service jobs.

Many years ago, I reviewed civil rights laws in a variety of nations. Laws giving preferences to veterans were among the most common.

I also recall talking with a senior EEOC investigator during the Carter administration when there were rumors of such a change. He said that the word from EEOC headquarters was that there was no way the preference would be dropped because it would trigger an adverse reaction from Congress.

I expect the preference will be restored in late January.

[HT: A Large Regular]

Medical Test

 I have a medical test today. 

The memorable observation by Mel Brooks comes to mind: "Zero [Mostel] would rather eat a broom than go to a hospital."

My own preference with any medical procedure would be to be knocked out in the parking lot, carried into the hospital for whatever treatment, and then later carried back to my car where I could then be driven home.

Even better, of course, would be the Star Trek medical exams where the doctor merely waves a wand in front of you to deduce your condition.

Perhaps that is closer than we think. Computers are used to diagnose automobile problems. I expect that we will eventually reach the point where medical clinics can link the body to artificial intelligence for an overall diagnosis.

In the meantime.

Deeply Mellow

 KNCT-FM in Austin, Texas is mellow listening.

[HT: David Burge, Iowa Hawk Blog]

The Man Who Never Sleeps

Nicholas Bate is giving a few gentle glances to 2025.

While you're on his blog, check out the list of his books. I bet you'll be seeing more in 2025.

Dickens, Steinbeck, and Shakespeare Need Your Help

 My latest Substack essay is out. 

Its subject: Rescuing the English departments from the ideologues.

Great Films in Black and White: A Series

 

Gift Suggestion

I am re-reading "Spook Street" by Mick Herron. 

The characterization and plots are brilliant. 

They should be studied in writing classes.

Find Something Beautiful Today

[Photo by Steven Van Elk at Unsplash]

Political Activism and the Professors

 Over the past 10 years, I have watched in horror as academe set itself up for the existential crisis that has now arrived. Starting around 2014, many disciplines - including my own, English - changed their mission. Professors began to see the traditional values and methods of their fields - such as the careful weighing of evidence and the commitment to shared standards of reasoned argument - as complicit in histories of oppression. As a result, many professors and fields began to reframe their work as a kind of political activism.

- From "We Asked for It": The politicization of research, hiring, and teaching made professors sitting ducks" by Michael W. Clune, in the November 29, 2024, issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education

In Infamy

 

Artificial Intelligence and The Technological Arms Race

 

When the Royal Marines Recruit

 

The What Ifs of History

One of the pleasures of studying history is to consider the What Ifs.

Such as, what if ...

• Nixon had burned the White House tapes?
• France had heavily fortified the Ardennes Region in 1940?
• Barry Goldwater had won the presidency in 1964?
• Benito Mussolini had decided to form an alliance with Spain and Portugal rather than with Germany and Japan?
• Napoleon had won the Battle of Waterloo?
• Spain, not Britain, had settled North America?
• George Washington had become a king?
• Peter Best had stayed with The Beatles?
• The majority of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention had insisted upon the abolition of slavery?
• Charles Dickens had never published a novel?
• William Shakespeare had never written a play?
• The Confederacy had seized the White House after the Battle of Bull Run?
• George Orwell had been killed in Spain?
• A cure for polio had been delayed for forty years?
• Africa had never been colonized?
• Baseball had never been invented?

A Bad Time for Job Applicants

 Fortune magazine (December 3, 2024) reports that 40% of job seekers say they haven't had a single job interview this year.

It adds that "a striking 72% of U.S. adults say that 'applying for jobs feels like sending a resume into a black box,' according to a survey of more than 2,000 respondents by the American Staffing Association and The Harris Poll."

I wonder how much of this stems from employers not wanting to hire people due to an uncertain economy and how much is generated by unduly restrictive HR screening software that is keeping qualified people from getting interviews.

As the Media Wanes

Read "The Suicide of the Mainstream Media" by Christine Rosen in Commentary magazine. An excerpt:

Then in late June, the first presidential debate occurred, and Biden’s decline could no longer be hidden or explained away. A genuinely adversarial press would have questioned its own behavior in failing to report on this fact and would have fully and fairly investigated the murky process whereby Biden was then forced off the ticket and replaced by Kamala Harris—who had never received a single vote from a Democratic primary voter.

The Good Old Days

 

The Due Date is Looming

Do you need to file under the Corporate Transparency Act?

FutureLawyer has the details.

Update: A delay with a perhaps.

Rediscovering Courage

My new Substack essay on courage is up.

Please check it out and spread the word.

We Need More of This

 About half the practice of a decent lawyer consists in telling would-be clients that they are damned fools and should stop.

- Elihu Root

Old Documentary, Continuing Problem

 

Our Future Wizards

The New Criterion, in its December 2024 issue, reports that Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy had a special post-election program "In recognition of these stressful times."

This was the agenda:

10:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.: Tea, Cocoa, and Self-Care

11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.: Legos Station

12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.: Healthy Treats and Healthy Habits

1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.: Coloring and Mindfulness Exercises

2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.: Milk and Cookies

4:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.: Legos and Coloring

5:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.: Snacks and Self-Guided Meditation

The School educates future diplomats and policy makers.

Great Films in Black and White: A Series

 

Watch the Gates

If the battle for civilization comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win.

- Thomas Sowell

On My List

 

All Hands on Board

There is something very liberating when you clear the decks to deal with a problem.

All eyes and efforts are where they should be.

And you wonder why you're not doing it more often.

[Photo by Linus Nylund at Unsplash]

The Most Important Teacher

I've had many excellent teachers in my life. 

[There were some terrible ones too, but that's a subject for another day.]

The teacher that made the greatest difference for me was - hands down - the one who taught me how to read.

I still get a sense of magic when reading a "Dick and Jane" book.

New York's Self-Inflicted Wounds

The Free Press on the migrant gang member who robbed a Manhattan prosecutor.

His seventh arrest since June.

Great Films in Black and White: A Series

 

Size Matters

 

As organizations grow, they often congratulate themselves on their progress, but they seldom ask, "What is the ideal size for an organization of our nature?"

When it comes to treating the most common ailments, hospitals may benefit by maintaining a smaller size. The staff may have greater camaraderie, and the patients may sense a more personal touch. I've personally noticed that and have often heard reports of that nature from patients.

Hardly academic in rigor, I know, but my guess is the studies bear that out.

At the very least, it is a question worth exploring. If your organization is growing, at which point does the growth become a negative?

[Photo by Zhen H at Unsplash]

Find Something Beautiful Today

[Photo by Jorgen Hendriksen at Unsplash]