Hmm

 

Using a Mirror and Not a Window

 My new Substack essay is up.

It warns of gated communities of the mind and flashes back to a 1965 conference at Princeton.

[Consider signing up for a free subscription. To attain heroic status, help pay my book bills with a paid subscription.]

The Oscars Are Still Around?

Tablet: Sasha Stone's essay on "Who Killed the Oscars?"

An excerpt:

"What becomes of this vast production of dreck is hardly inspiring. Sometimes, they hit theaters and play to empty houses for a week or two. Otherwise, they are dumped into the giant Sahara Desert of the streaming services. There, maybe someone clicks on it; maybe they scroll on by. Every so often - which, to be honest, means not very often - a movie surprises, and actually connects with an audience."

Back By Popular Demand

 

A Hidden Life

 "For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."

- George Eliot, Middlemarch

Democracy and Disagreement Class?

The Stanford Review covers the recent story about the disruption of the speech by former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers.

Fortunately, the protesters encountered some push-back.

Get Ready for Summer

 

Clever, Witty, and Wild

I stared and stirred my tea. I didn't want to look at him, but I did, realizing, as he came into focus, that he was certifiable. But jolly. He was a pleasant-looking fellow, slightly racially ambiguous, an equine face and tightly curled hair. He was a slight man. "You look too nice to be a villain," I said.

From Dr. No: A Novel by Percy Everett.

The School of Resentment

The Rauch Review: JM Albandoz on Harold Bloom's battle against The School of Resentment. 

Advocates of that school don't study and honor great literature, they deride and degrade it.

The Anti-Social Century

 

In the Stack

 

Chilling

 

Bear with Me

A heavy scribbling day.

[Photo by hannah grace at Unsplash]

Music for Dragon Training

 

First Paragraph

 A long ocean voyage seems plentiful in small incidents at the time, but is remembered as a blur when it ends. On my journey to Australia on the Sussex, a gentleman in the saloon said one day off Africa that only being wrecked would save us from the tedium. But after Cape Town it was all wind and fury as we tore across the Indian Ocean and the base of the Australian continent to our destination.

- From The Dickens Boy by Thomas Keneally

21 Things I Wish I Knew in My Twenties

Here's the updated list on Substack.

As the old saying goes, good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment.

First Paragraph

On a visit to Leningrad some years ago, I consulted a map to find out where I was, but I could not make it out. From where I stood, I could see several enormous churches, yet there was no trace of them on my map. When finally an interpreter came to help me, he said: "We don't show churches on our maps." Contradicting him, I pointed to one that was very clearly marked: "That is a museum," he said, "not what we call a 'living church.' It is only 'living churches' we don't show."

- From A Guide for the Perplexed by E. F. Schumacher 

This May Be True

 

Find Something Beautiful Today

[Photo by Ignacio Brosa at Unsplash]

How to Transform a Character Within Seconds

 

From the Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy series starring Alex Guinness.

First Paragraph

 We were about to give up and call it a night when somebody dropped the girl off the bridge.

- From Darker Than Amber by John D. MacDonald

The Debt Monster

 

Book Manuscript Completed

 The final reviews are now being done before its submission to a publisher.

What type of book? A novel.

What is the subject? That, for now, is a secret. I will say that it is unusual.

A lot of research was required, but that was enjoyable.

Other writing projects? Two are in the pipeline. One fiction and one nonfiction.

Watch this space.

A Good Time for Orwell

 I started re-reading Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell.

A strong reminder of another time when the world was bizarre, and we needed to be saved from utopians.

Douglas Murray on JD Vance and the German Elections

 

DOGE Cleanup Crew

The public is partly shocked, partly outraged. People in North Carolina devastated by Hurricane Helene have until recently been ignored by their government. Yet that same government, through the spigot operated by USAID and the State Department, could spend $15 million on condoms in Afghanistan, $1 million to boost French-speaking LGBTQ groups in West and Central Africa, $14 million on cash vouchers for migrants at the southern border, $3,315,446 for “being LGBTQ in the Caribbean,” $7,071.58 for a BIPOC speaker series in Canada, $1.5 million to promote job opportunities for LGBTQ individuals in Serbia, and $425,622 to help Indonesian coffee companies become more climate- and gender-friendly.

Read the rest of The New Criterion article here.

The Intangibles

 Just as fish may fail to notice water, so to do human beings tend to overlook the intangibles.

The tangibles, such as money and supplies, can be very important but also watch for intangibles, such as courage, trust, patience, and kindness.

Just Arrived

 

Revenge of the Trophy Wife

 

A Revised Org Chart

If we could take organization charts with all of their nifty boxes showing areas of responsibility and then, as if under a microscope, begin to enlarge the boxes so we could even more clearly see the walls of each box, a very helpful revision would be to be able to answer this simple but important question:

Where are the gates?

[Photo by Sterling Lanier at Unsplash]

Spooky

 

When Bystanders Film Crimes

My latest Substack essay is up.

Our society is emerging from the weakness of a bystander culture.

Read it. Post it. Spread the word.

Many thanks!

The Reconstructionists

 

On My List

 Venice to Paris on The Orient Express.

Spending in Washington

“A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money."

- Senator Everett Dirksen (1896 - 1969)

The German Prosecutorial Mindset

 

Three books I recommend:

• The Law in Nazi Germany: Ideology, Opportunism, and the Perversion of Justice, edited by Alan E. Steinweis & Robert D. Rachlin
• A Terrible Efficiency: Entrepreneurial Bureaucrats and the Nazi Holocaust by Franklin G. Mixon, Jr.
• Modernity and the Holocaust by Zygmunt Bauman

Bonus points for reading A Man for All Seasons, a play by Robert Bolt.

President Dave

 

Presidents Day

 

C. Northcote Parkinson Would Love This

 

Find Something Beautiful Today

[Photo by Chris Smith]

Back By Popular Demand

 

The Quest for Clarity

The drafts often begin complicated and then, as newer versions are crafted, a tighter grasp is achieved, and they are simplified.

Which is all for the better because the light of simplicity provides a clearer view.

By the end, humility and clarity produce a better product.

Brooks Does Sinatra

 

All Men Want to Be Heroes

Finally, one of the guys managed to take the door off the frame using tools from his truck, revealing a rail-thin, spiky-haired man sprawled on the toilet who, when woken from his concoction-of-substances-induced sleep by his distraught woman, walked directly to the bar with an oblivious grin and ordered another drink. He wasn’t the main character of this story.

Read the rest of Chris Arnade in The Free Press.

Is There an "I, Robot" Moment in Our Future?

 FutureLawyer is getting worried about AI.

I suggest that he calm his nerves by watching this reassuring film:

Stories for the Weekend

 Nicholas Bate: Read more. Scroll less.

Yes

 

What Has Happened to the Wall Street Journal?

 Kurt Harden at Cultural Offering has done some detective work.

Warning: It is a tough video to watch. A sign of the fall of journalism.

Reboot

Have you tried turning the government on and off again?

- Elon Musk

Found in Many a Faculty Lounge

 We in the West continually come across oikophobia. We see it when a schoolteacher tells the students that Western civilization has been uniquely evil in its pursuit of colonization and slavery, with the implication that other civilizations have not engaged in such dark things; when a school named after Thomas Jefferson seeks to change its name because of concerns about racism; when a commercial for a Scandinavian airline insists that nothing is truly Scandinavian; when Western universities "decolonize" their departments to make them even less Eurocentric that they have already become; when the waving of one's own national flag is decried as xenophobic while other nations are encouraged to display pride in their cultures; when wild crowds tear down statues of their country's founders. These instances reveal a civilization that has stopped believing in itself, that hates itself, and that is therefore unwilling to defend the values of freedom, democracy, and scientific and scholarly skepticism that have been handed down to us since antiquity.

- From Western Self-Contempt: Oikophobia in the Decline of Civilizations by Benedict Beckeld

Get Your Buzz Ready for the Weekend

 

Valentine's Day

 

[Photo by Laura Ockel at Unsplash]

Assignment for today: Analyze this poem by e.e. cummings.

Crank It Up

 

The President's Plans

The New Criterion: Victor Davis Hanson with "MAGA agonistes." 

[Photo by David Everett Strickler at Unsplash]

Also Read the Novel

 

The Danger of Filing Systems

 When the (American Civil War) broke out, (Ulysses) Grant unhesitatingly wrote to the War Department to try to get a commission in the regulars to fight secession. He never received a reply (the letter was found some years later in "Some out-of-the-way place" in the adjutant general's office), but a month later the governor of Illinois appointed Grant colonel of the 21st Illinois volunteers, and from then on, Grant went nowhere but up.

- From Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War & Reconstruction by Allen Guelzo

Miscellaneous and Fast

• William Deresiewicz on who holds power when the center fails to hold.
• Joe Rogan on the rapid decline of a political party.
• Nicholas Bate on his novel Bram: A Spy Story.
• Yanis Yaroufakis on Trump's economic master plan.
• From 2019: Angelo Codevilla on the techno-surveillance empire.
• FutureLawyer on using chat GPT as a legal assistant.
• Sidetracked: An interview with Swiss adventurer Sarah Marquis.
• Jonathan Turley on the false "constitutional crisis."
• Christine Rosen on the Tradwife dilemma (and masculinity).

[Photo by Rod Long at Unsplash]

From the Frying Pan to the Fire

 

Lincoln

Steve Layman at A Layman's Blog jarred my memory. It is Abraham Lincoln's birthday.

An eclectic list of some great books about that extraordinary man:

• Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President by Allen C. Guelzo
• Lincoln: A Novel by Gore Vidal
• Lincoln by David Herbert Donald
• Abraham Lincoln by Lord Charnwood
• Lincoln and His Generals by T. Harry Williams
• Lincoln's Virtues: An Ethical Biography by William Lee Miller

[If I could only pick only one volume, I'd go with Lord Charnwood's. If two, I'd add the one by T. Harry Williams.]

On order: Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment by Allen C. Guelzo.

Wait, wait! Another biggie: Crisis of The House Divided: An Interpretation of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates by Harry V. Jaffa. One of those simply brilliant books.

Alarm Bell

 It is disturbing when the primary advocates of big government do not welcome extensive audits of big government.

Multiple Drafts

 Typing. Scribbling. Typing some more.

The due date is the 20th of this month.

Books stacked on the dining room table.

The obligatory staring off into space.

The book will happen.

Hmm

 

Looking the Part

 The Free Press: Elliot Ackerman on "How to Dress Like a Gentleman."

• Hermes ties
• Elizabetta ties
• Brooks Brothers ties
• Mountain & Sackett ties 
• J. Press ties

On My List

 

Perspective

 Free Beacon: Historian Andrew Roberts on the historical case for Trump's Riviera.

Disaster in the Schools

 Frannie Block in The Free Press: How American Educators Are Conning Kids.

Note from Boss to Employees

Whether you are a boss or an employee, this latest Substack post contains some vital reminders.

Practical, relevant, and timeless.

Wisdom of the Founders

Public Discourse: Michael Maibach and Howard Muncy on the history and virtues of the Electoral College.

Find Something Beautiful Today

 

[Photo by Dave Adamson at Unsplash]

If You Don't Want to Watch Football This Weekend

 

Back on the Shelf

 Call me Oscar Progresso. Or, for that matter, call me anything you want, as Oscar Progresso is not my name. Nor are Baby Supine, Euclid Cherry, Franklyn Nuts, or any of the other aliases that, now and then over the years, I have been forced to adopt. No one knows my real name anymore: it's been too long. And all the things that I myself once knew are like a ship glittering in the dark, moving away from me as I am left in homely silence. My time is drawing to a close, so I thought I would take one last shot.

- From Memoir from Antproof Case by Mark Helprin

I have not read this novel in years. Was thinking of giving it away, but glanced at the first paragraph and thought, "This deserves another reading."

If Mark Helprin is not the greatest living American novelist, he's in the top three.

First Paragraph

Premonitions can be precious. They offer an uncanny, decipherable warning about something or other, especially if the person having them is at the right place at the right time. Consider the Anglo-American Christopher Isherwood and the German Alfred Döblin, novelists who each wrote about Berlin in the 1920s and early 1930s. In the guise of fiction, a writer can more easily tell the truth, hiding behind his characters and other forms of make-believe. Their Berlin is a fantastic, neurotic nightmare.

- From Wasteland: A World in Permanent Crisis by Robert D. Kaplan

Escape from Quicksand

Manhattan Institute:  A new framework for modernizing America by Philip K. Howard.

[Photo by Jonathan Ansel Moy de Vitry at Unsplash]

In the Stack

 

Remember

You can get all A's and still flunk life.

- Walker Percy, The Second Coming 

How Did I Miss This?

 

It's Time to Expand Job Interview Pools

My latest Substack post tackles a timely subject: Why are job ads so narrow?

Spread the word. We need less tech and more job interviews.

Time Travel

One of the greatest autobiographies ever written. I first read it while a freshman in college.

An amazing life. Very human. Often haunting.

First Paragraph

The DOGE $2 trillion budget savings goal is crucial to the very future of constitutional democracy and capitalist prosperity in America. In fact, the soaring public debt is now so out of control that the Federal budget threatens to become a self-fueling financial doomsday machine.

- From How to Cut $2 Trillion by David A. Stockman

Hmm

 

Steadfast LA

 A foundation to rebuild Los Angeles.

An Ounce of Prevention vs. A Pound of Cure

 A reminder: The President needs to create an Office of Crisis Identification. 

DOGE is doing a lot, but even it will miss things.

The Next Pandemic?

 Commentary magazine's James B. Meigs explores the possibility of avian flu. An excerpt:

What’s particularly damning is that, while Covid came seemingly out of nowhere, the potential for a human breakout of avian flu has worried epidemiologists for decades. As Princeton University data scientist Zeynep Tufekci writes, “If there is an avian flu epidemic it will rank among the most foreseeable crises in history.”

Avoiding a Debt Crisis

 The Manhattan Institute's Brian Riedl has a plan to avert a debt crisis. An excerpt:

The fiscal consolidation in this report calls for trimming some Social Security and Medicare benefits for upper-income recipients. Some taxes would rise. Spending on defense would continue to fall as a share of the economy. In short, there is something in this blueprint for everyone to oppose. But letting the country plunge into a debt crisis would be far more painful than this blueprint’s reforms.

"What are you going to do about it?" - Boss Tweed

 

A good time to remember and honor the great cartoonist Thomas Nast.

Hit the Books

 

WordPerfect Nostalgia

Word seems to go out of its way to remind me why I get nostalgic for WordPerfect.

I am seriously considering switching back.

Time to Re-Watch

 

To Be Read and Re-Read

 

This book by The Stoic of South Florida - FutureLawyer and High Techie Rick Georges - has arrived. I am eagerly going through what will be multiple readings.

I should note that his section on zones of indifference is brilliant, but I also like how he applies the lessons of Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Seneca to everyday life.

The "multiple readings" part is no joke. These lessons need to be periodically renewed lest our problems chomp down and drag us into a swamp.

The Marcus Aurelius quote on page 87 is just one of the many lessons that I will be passing on to my clients. Wisdom in a stomach punch.

Elon and Friends

 The Free Press: Eli Lake looks at The Boys of DOGE.

When Writing

 Don't confuse writing to persuade with writing to dissuade.

In the first case, you are marshaling facts and arguments that will logically lead to a particular conclusion.

In the second case, you have a more tightly focused mission. You are mentioning a fact or a potential development that will spark fears that cannot be quickly, if ever, swept aside.

If you have any concerns about the courage or reasoning ability of your audience, the second approach is the most effective.

First Paragraph

 Finally, all questions concerning the rise of Christianity are one: How was it done? How did a tiny and obscure messianic movement from the edge of the Roman Empire dislodge classical paganism and become the dominant faith of Western civilization? Although this is the only question, it requires many answers - no one thing led to the triumph of Christianity.

- From The Rise of Christianity by Rodney Stark

On My List

 

The Typewriter

 

From Bert Fireman's "Mostly Sweat" Speech on Arizona History

I must tell you what I believe about Arizona history. I believe a

callus on the palm of an unknown woodcutter was more important in

Arizona's development than a notch on Wyatt Earp's gun. I believe

the shovel was a lot more important than the six-gun. I believe the

church was more important than the gambling hall. I believe that an

immigrant's wagon being ferried across the Colorado River on the

trail from Utah to Arizona was more important than a stagecoach

robbery anywhere. I believe the tiny wisp of smoke from a prospec-

tor's forge on the desert was more important to Arizona's develop-

ment than all the gunsmoke at the O. K. Corral. And I believe that

when Barry Goldwater's grandfather opened a sack of beans because

some miner was hungry, that was more important than when another

"bucket of blood" opened on Whisky Row in Prescott or Brewery

Gulch in Bisbee ....

I wish the movies and TV shows would present this side of west-

ern history.

Bert Fireman

Arizona Pioneers Reunion

Phoenix, Arizona

April 12, 1958

 

First Paragraph

 Throughout my years as a social psychologist, I have learned how important a sense of belonging can be. Today, many people who once took that feeling for granted seem unmoored and adrift. In the turbulent election season of 2016, my colleagues and I conducted a survey of law students at a selective university to determine who felt most alienated on campus. The two groups who felt least like they belonged were black women and politically conservative white men. These two groups seem to fall at the farthest poles of our political discourse. Yet they shared a feeling: They felt like outsiders. The defining feature of our era seems to be that few groups feel confident in their sense of belonging.

- From Belonging: The Science of Creating Connection and Bridging Divides by Geoffrey L. Cohen

Remembering James Hilton

 

You'd think that the author who wrote Lost Horizon; Goodbye, Mr. Chips; and Random Harvest, all of which were made into major films, would be better known.

The Career Manifesto is Back!

I've popped it up on Substack.

Read it. Learn it. Live it.

[And don't forget to subscribe. Free subscribers are welcome. Paid ones are honored.]

First Paragraph

 In 1937, the soul of Genghis Khan disappeared from the Buddhist monastery in central Mongolia along the River of the Moon below the black Shankh Mountains where the faithful lamas had protected and venerated it for centuries. During the 1930s, Stalin's henchmen executed some thirty thousand Mongols in a series of campaigns against their culture and religion. The troops ravaged one monastery after another, shot the monks, assaulted the nuns, broke the religious objects, looted the libraries, burned the scriptures, and demolished the temples. Reportedly, someone secretly rescued the embodiment of Genghis Khan's soul from the Shankh Monastery and whisked it away for safekeeping to the capital in Ulaanbaatar, where it ultimately disappeared.

- From Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford

Find Something Beautiful Today

 

[Photo by Robert Murray at Unsplash]

Chaos, Anyone?

I was saved by these wise words of Nicholas Bate as I was pondering some invitations to chaos that were on my desk.

Remember, chaos doesn't come with warning labels.

Deeply Missed

 Read any of the material about Tom Wolfe at this National Endowment for the Humanities site. 

An excerpt:

Bruce Cole: I wanted to talk about literature and you as a chronicler. You just spent a lot of time on college campuses talking to kids. What is happening with how we study literature and how we interpret literature in the academy now?

Tom Wolfe: The study of literature has been so politicized at the graduate level that I urged my daughter, who has a degree in English from Duke, not to even think about it. It's a theory-ridden field now and the theories, somewhat like the theories of the international style in architecture, are essentially political.

Haidt on Phone-Free Schools

 

Memorable Encounters

Encounter A: He had long bushy hair and a beard. Was wearing a yellow Mickey Mouse t-shirt, jeans, and tennis shoes. Scruffy look but not so much that you'd give him a lot of attention.

Encounter B: They were dressed neatly and could have been grad students or professors. Every item they had on was German. They spoke German flawlessly and were circumspect in their use of German body language. I was permitted one quick glance across a room.

Encounter C: Both of them were filthy. Long unwashed hair. Large beards. Leather jackets. Greasy Levis. Motorcycle boots. One had a chain for a belt. I assumed they were armed.

Encounter D: A police supervisor. Sharp and experienced. He described the psychological problems often faced by those who were in deep undercover work. One of his concerns: an undercover officer had recently gotten a tattoo, which could be a warning sign regarding identity issues. Another topic to counter a civil rights query by a state attorney general's office: there was no way that we were going to put a female officer in an undercover assignment in a biker bar. The gangs regarded women as currency.

Encounter E: The managers explained that their employee came up clean in a local records check. [He had been convicted in California.] He was hired in a special jobs program and then transferred to the City Treasurer's Office. He was caught after an alert bank employee noticed an odd movement of over $700,000. Everyone in the office liked him. A frequent comment: "Willing to work late."

Current Late Night Re-Reading