I started the Execupundit blog on December 28, 2005.
The blog has gotten over 19 million visits and I'm still scribbling away.
This addiction (correct term) has grown with a Substack column.
[The latest is on our impending Brave New World.]
Oh, and a novel is in the pipeline. More on that later.
Please know that I deeply appreciate the kindness and attention of each of you.
Special thanks go to those who read and spread the word.
Many thanks!
Michael
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Nicholas Bate is going to have us up-and-running for the new year.
Current guidance:
Meanwhile, go walk, go read some fiction and go drop some thank you notes in the post.
My Christmas books are:
Shiloh by Shelby Foote
Appeasement by Tim Bouverie
Down Cemetery Road by Mick Herron
History Matters by David McCullough
Didion: The 1960s & 70s by Joan Didion
The Godfather by Mario Puzo
Lenin by Victor Sebestyen
[Photo by Tanya Barrow at Unsplash]
Study yourself. It will be a life-long course. Don't let admirable long-term plans keep your focus so heavily on the horizon so that you trip over the immediate. Always know how much time you have. Count on a project taking at least three times longer than you originally planned. Don't be too quick to forgive yourself but be able to do so. Avoid haters. Try to have a good laugh at least once a day. Never quell on bad experiences. Move on from them. Become a gourmet of life's beauty. Don't rush; speed is often over-rated. Learn something unusual once a month. Look for the story behind the story. Recognize that "No" often has an expiration date. If something is too easy, there is a reason and it's usually not good news. Elude the cheap fashions of our times. Search for great people who are not celebrities and never confuse greatness with celebrity. Craft a philosophy. Don't assume that societal progress is ordained. Chop back the jungle every day. Know the symptoms of inertia. Watch out for once-impressive programs that have become skeletons in new suits. Never take your future for granted. Relax as seriously as you work. Cultivate courage and kindness. Be noble.
Check out Nathan Pinkoski in the Claremont Review of Books.
An excerpt: Four forces worked to achieve this symbolic murder of presidential authority, driving Nixon from office and enshrining the mythology of Watergate in America’s collective psyche. In the bureaucracy, it was the national security apparatus; in culture, rising anxiety over authoritarianism; in media, the hegemony of network television; and in law, the fanaticism of the college-educated elites.
Cultural Offering on going Prep.
A well-dressed society is a noble goal.
The movement can start by showing those old Cary Grant films on a loop at universities.
I've been rediscovering the works of historian Bruce Catton this past year.
He's excellent.
Hunter Gatherer Nicholas Bate has a great list of Christmas-related stories.
[Photo by Jessica Fadel at Unsplash]
The British reacted to [General George C. Marshall] with an almost touch-sensitive awareness of his powers. "Marshall remains the key,' wrote Lord Moran, hardly a week after meeting Marshall for the first time" '. . . neither the P.M. [Prime Minister] nor the President can contemplate going forward without Marshall." And later: "In truth, it was impossible not to trust Marshall. . .. It is what Marshall was, and not what he did, that lingers in the mind - his goodness seemed to put ambition out of countenance." After dinner with Marshall in July 1945, Churchill said to Moran, "That is the noblest Roman of them all."
- From Commander in Chief: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, His Lieutenants & Their War by Eric Larrabee
Matt Taibbi interviews Jacob Savage, the author of the hottest article on the Internet.
Equal Employment Opportunity means Equal Employment Opportunity.
"Like every book I never wrote, it is by far the best book that I have ever written."
My favorite of the titles mentioned is The Neglect of Cheese in European Literature (in five volumes).
This isn't a story about all white men. It's a story about white male millennials in professional America, about those who stayed, and who (mostly) stayed quiet.
Read all of "The Lost Generation" by Jacob Savage in Compact magazine.
More than ever, it is time for good people to stand up.
When it comes to constituent letters, Congress should drop its current duplicitous system and Make Correspondence Great Again.
[Photo by Tareq Ismail at Unsplash]
Hunter Gatherer Nicholas Bate has just given a helpful nudge.
In addition to nonfiction, I've been slow-reading A Christmas Carol by the incomparable Dickens and In My Father's Court by the always excellent Isaac Bashevis Singer.
Nicholas recommends a Sherlock Holmes mystery.
Great idea!
[And, as the above trailer shows, Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot also had some Christmas episodes.]
Steve Layman has a quote from a commencement address by Tom Brokaw that is, I'm sad to say, painfully accurate.
I continue to be stunned by the pettiness that often arises in even the most sophisticated circles.
Here's a list of contenders. Which ones are your top three picks?
This short book is not a comprehensive history of American liberalism. A number of important figures and episodes are merely glossed over. Instead, it rewrites the history of modern American liberalism. It shows that what we think of liberalism today - the top-and-bottom coalition we associate with President Obama - began not with Progressivism or the New Deal but rather in the wake of the post-World War I disillusionment with American society. In the Twenties, the first writers and thinkers to call themselves liberals adopted the hostility to bourgeois life that had long characterized European intellectuals of both the left and the right. The aim of liberalism's founding writers and thinkers - such as Herbert Croly, Randolph Bourne, H.G. Wells, Sinclair Lewis, and H.L. Mencken - was to create an American aristocracy of sorts, to provide the same sense of hierarchy and order long associated with European statism.
- From The Revolt Against the Masses: How Liberalism Has Undermined the Middle Class by Fred Siegel (2015)
I've taught an Equal Employment Opportunity workshop for several decades.
I keep being dragged back in.
On the other hand, it's a very good class and it helps to counter much of the nonsense that was peddled under the name of D.E.I.
I am honored to be on Kurt Harden's list of 25 blogs guaranteed to make you smarter.
What a great group!
Kurt's Cultural Offering blog is a daily visit for me. A symbol of life well-lived.
[Photo by Sixteen Miles Out at Unsplash]
In The New Criterion in 2008, Joseph Epstein reviews some extraordinary memoirs. An excerpt:
At Versailles, information was the most precious of commodities. Those who were expert at gathering it were in the strongest position. As Jacques Revel puts it, “to gather information was both to maximize one’s chances and, just as important, to minimize one’s risks.” Gossip was of course a primary source of information and, as the Duc de Saint-Simon makes us realize, the natural outlet of a widely curious and genuinely critical mind. This le petit duc possessed in excelsis, and they had everything to do with making him a great writer and his Memoirs a landmark work.
[Photo by Elena Rabkina at Unsplash]
In The Everlasting Man, G. K. Chesterton begins his essay on "The End of the World" by noting his introduction to a new religion.
I was once sitting on a summer day in a meadow in Kent under the shadow of a little village church, with a rather curious companion with whom I had just been walking through the woods. He was one of a group of eccentrics I had come across in my wanderings who had a new religion called Higher Thought; in which I had been so far initiated as to realise a general atmosphere of loftiness or height, and was hoping at some later or more esoteric stage to discover the beginning of thought.
Jonathan Turley on Justice Brown Jackson's view that the chief executive (a.k.a the President) should not be able to fire experts in the executive branch.
I'll add some relevant quotes:
"This army of [college-educated] scribes is clamoring for a society in which planning, regulation, and supervision are paramount and the prerogative of the educated."
- Eric Hoffer
"Rather than opening minds, social media seems to be creating a generation largely unable to communicate in person."
- Joel Kotkin
"The truth always hurts. But there is another reason the NSS has outraged the papers of record. Since the early 20th century, the foreign policy establishment has held this truth to be self-evident, that all regions are not created equal, and Europe is the most important region of them all. The NSS rejects this. It firmly puts Europe in second place, after the Western Hemisphere."
Read all of Niall Ferguson's Free Press essay here.
[Photo by Thomas Fields at Unsplash]
Imagine if in the future, your car could be charged while you watch a drive-in movie.
We may, of course, need to consult the nation's foremost drive-in movie expert.
[Photo by Dominique Hicks at Unsplash]
It's unsettling to see so many American clothing firms describing their products as "Imported."
That's not necessarily because the items are made in another country. It is because the quality of the imported clothes seems to have seriously declined in recent years.
At least, that's my opinion.
I have some "imported" jackets from Orvis and Land's End. The newer ones are clearly inferior to the older ones. It's not even a contest.
But wait, here's a counter-argument.
Which way do you tilt?
There are some great blogs that contain more of a view of the personality of the blogger. Among my favorites are:
[I note with sadness how much the late Rick Georges, the multitalented lawyer who wrote the unique FutureLawyer blog for many years, is deeply missed.]
There are many excellent blogs with multiple points of emphasis, but these are always about a life well-lived.
Cultural Offering was - and continues to be - the trailblazer, but don't miss:
Each one possesses a magic.
[Photo by Tim Cooper at Unsplash]
City Journal: Kevin Wallsten looks at the political causes of higher education's decline.
A few interesting statistics:
"More than 70 percent of college administrators and more than 60 percent of students now identify as liberal."
"According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression's Campus Deplatforming Database, the number of speakers targeted by 'attempted' or 'substantial' disruptions climbed from just three in 2021 to 79 in 2024."
The Man Who Never Sleeps (a.k.a. Hunter Gatherer Nicholas Bate) is cranking out books, both fiction and non-fiction.
I am waiting to hear from a publisher about one book and am heavily into completing another.
In short, I'm way behind Nicholas.
A friend recently asked, "How do you write?"
My response was "I rewrite."
My entire set of The World Book Encyclopedias arrived yesterday. The original delivery date was originally supposed to be Monday, but that is no matter.
Shelves are being cleared and cleaned. I've already peeked and am eager to delve into the volumes.
And I'm tracking down some card catalogues!
I am going through the most extensive office cleaning in years.
[Screams. Shouts. Shots fired.]
Very liberating. Files beyond files. Ancient history is emerging.
[Cryptic comments from family members.]
Portions of my office floor can now be seen. I see tribal markings.
[Photo by Zac Edmonds at Unsplash]
There are reports that the wizard behind the Jaguar rebrand/weird commercial has been fired.
The introductory essay by Jerry Z. Muller, taken from Conservatism: An Anthology of Social and Political Thought from David Hume to the Present, can be found here.
[HT: Jonathan Haidt]
My Substack essay is up. The recent A.I. news story in Fortune magazine was a shocker.
[Photo by BoliviaInteligente at Unsplash]
