Tuesday, October 06, 2026
Amid All of the Artificial Intelligence Talk
This is a time for us to be rehumanized; i.e. to rediscover what it means to be more than a success formula or a project completer.
What will this require?
More poetry, more beauty, more patience, and more attention to the intangibles.
It will require more time in the white spaces between the boxes on the org chart and, with that, a greater sense of what people want and what they fear.
When the Frost Is on the Punkin
This has become an Execupundit tradition:
Kent Risley with a marvelous recitation of the poem.
[Photo by Nik at Unsplash]
Monday, October 05, 2026
Sunday, October 04, 2026
Saturday, October 03, 2026
How the Democrats Drifted Left
City Journal reviews "Nothing Left: Confessions of a Democratic Operative" by Evan Barker.
Hot Times in Europe
Plus:
- The Strange Death of Europe; Islamophilia; The War on the West; On Democracies and Death Cults by Douglas Murray.
- Reflections on the Revolution in Europe by Christopher Caldwell.
- While Europe Slept; and Surrender by Bruce Bawer.
- America Alone; After America; and Lights Out by Mark Steyn.
- The Tyranny of Guilt; and An Imaginary Racism by Pascal Bruckner.
- The Great Replacement; Enemy of the Disaster; You Will Not Replace Us!; and Remigration: The Bourne Speech by Renaud Camus.
- Submission; and Annihilation by Michel Houellebecq.
Friday, October 02, 2026
True
What nature delivers to us is never stale. Because what nature creates has eternity in it.
- Isaac Bachevis Singer
An Imaginary Racism
Let us recall that the goal of a wise politics is to prevent discord and avoid war. But anti-racism, which has become the civil religion of modern times, has been transformed into a permanent war of all against all, a rhetoric of recrimination.
- From An Imaginary Racism: Islamophobia and Guilt by Pascal Bruckner
Thursday, October 01, 2026
America.gov
[Photo by Nik Guiney at Unsplash]
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
My Thoughts on Progress
In one part of the world, they are launching rockets into space and returning them to Earth. In another part, they cannot prevent rubber boats from crossing the English Channel.
Tuesday, September 29, 2026
Monday, September 28, 2026
The Sovereign Individual: 30 Years On
The Sovereign Professional is taking another look at a book that influenced many of us and is finding good and bad.
An excellent update. Check it out.
Write Against the Lines
In recent years, the number of "scriptwriters" produced by our universities far exceeds the number of drama and English majors.
Their advice is the equivalent of the old grade school admonition: "Stay within the lines."
But it's applied to other subjects and they determine the lines.
[Photo by Yoann Siloine at Unsplash]
Sunday, September 27, 2026
Saturday, September 26, 2026
Beware the Technocrats
Spiked has a message for us all.
I've dealt with many of them and yes, they can be dangerous.
Reasonable Question
What do you mean you haven't read this?
And given copies to friends, relatives, passing acquaintances, and strangers.
Good Point
"Listening to people who have not been much heard before is a good idea, but agreeing with whatever they say is not."
- Nigel Biggar, The New Dark Age
Friday, September 25, 2026
Get a Look
This is a great chance to get a look at some of the Nicholas Bate (a.k.a. The Man Who Never Sleeps) novels.
I finally realized what Nicholas was doing during those years when he was flying between London and the Far East.
He was writing.
New Perspective: The First World War
Rapid industrialization not only allowed for the support of massive armies, it also introduced advanced technologies and weapons systems to the battlefield in numbers that would have been unfathomable to commanders in any previous war. Prior to Pickett's Charge, at the Battle of Gettysburg, Lee tried to break the Union line with a mere 170 guns. In contrast, during World War I, it was not uncommon for attacks to be supported by 5,000 artillery pieces. At Waterloo, Wellington had fired less than 10,000 rounds of artillery ammunition. At the Somme, Haig fired almost two million shells in preparatory fires alone. When the war began, Allied councils feared they could never match the $70 million in gold reserves Germany had set aside and kept in Spandau Castle specifically to finance any future war. By 1915, the Allies were spending that amount every twelve hours during a big push, and every two days when the front was quiet.
- From Pershing by Jim Lacey
Thursday, September 24, 2026
As Boss Tweed once said, "What are you going to do about it?"
California runs the nation’s largest welfare system, devoting more than $180 billion annually to food, health care, and other programs for the poor and downtrodden. To sustain the arrangement, the state imposes the nation’s highest tax rates.
In theory, these programs are supposed to help struggling Californians. In reality, many serve large numbers of illegal immigrants. Today, California oversees a shadow welfare system that allows noncitizens to receive health care, rental assistance, college grants, tax credits, low-cost car insurance, and even smartphones on the taxpayers’ dime.
- Christopher Rufo in City Journal, September 2026
Party Time
I have an affection for the strange people who see things differently than the usual "smart bunch."
That's why a party with Flannery O'Connor, Stefan Zweig, George Orwell, Ray Bradbury, William Faulkner, Andre Gide, Ralph Ellison, Aldous Huxley, Agatha Christie, Mario Vargas Illosa, Graham Greene, J. R. R. Tolkien, William Golding, Ayn Rand, Mark Helprin, JK Rowling, Mark Twain, Herman Melville, Oscar Wilde, Raymond Chandler, Tom Wolfe, Jim Harrison, Hunter S. Thompson, Jack London, Charles Johnson, Zadie Smith, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Vasily Grossman, Zora Neale Hurston, James Joyce, Ambrose Bierce, and Dorothy Parker might be a lot of fun.
Or a street fight.
[Photo by Myriam Zilles at Unsplash]
Wednesday, September 23, 2026
Comparing Britain to Florida
Alister Heath in The Telegraph:
It will guarantee a shock to your system, and jolt you out of any residual complacency. It will simultaneously energise you and plunge you into depression. You will be blown away by the growth, the clatter of construction, the siege of cranes across the skyline, the massive cars, the energy, drive and ambition, the wealth, abundance and cheap energy, the entrepreneurial go-getting, the ostentatious celebration of success.
[Photo by Juan Pablo Mascnfroni at Unsplash]
Bureaucracy Lives
"Can an appointment be made with the doctor prior to having the medical records?"
"No, you must have your medical records from the hospital before setting the appointment."
"Can't the specialist directly obtain the medical records from the hospital?"
"No, the patient will have to do so, and then an appointment can be set."
"Will it make a difference if the specialist and the hospital are in the same medical group?"
"Sometimes, but not in these types of medical cases."
"Aargh."
Tuesday, September 22, 2026
Europe's Suicide
To be on the side of the incomers was to be on the side of the angels. To speak for the people of Europe was to be on the side of the devil. And all the time there existed that strange assumption that Europe was simply letting one more person into the room. Whether that person was genuinely about to be killed in the corridor became immaterial. If he was cold, poor, or just worse off than the people inside the room, he too had the right to come in. Europe could no longer be bothered to turn anyone away. And so the door remained open to anyone who wanted to walk through it.
- Douglas Murray, The Strange Death of Europe
Monday, September 21, 2026
Patience and Thought
We live in an action-oriented society, one stressing motion and quick decisions, and often it is not until later in life that one begins to appreciate the importance of patience.
While pondering a related essay, I have been noticing how many times in my youth involved checking multiple boxes and meeting an array of deadlines.
In retrospect, I would have benefited from a frequent routine of long walks and slow cups of coffee combined with heavy doses of introspection.
Those practices once were wrongly regarded as goofing off.
That's no longer the case for me.
[Photo by Daiga Ellaby at Unsplash]
The Diversity of Like Minds
Yet featured in the pageantry of the day are the speeches, lasting well into the afternoon, that disfigure it. Student orators have a say; the president speaks; various deans congratulate their charges; invited guests add their voices. And every one of them intoned the talk of the left wing of the Democratic Party. Not a single Republican was to be heard - not even heard of, not even a mention of Donald Trump (that I heard), for no speaker bothered to state views opposed to their own. Present and future Republicans and conservatives were gratuitously slighted and left with a sour taste of having their good will imposed upon. At commencement the university exposes its beliefs, showing whom it honors and for what. Harvard's honorary degrees went only to men and women of the left, all speaking to the goals and practices of diversity and the opinions of the left.
- Harvey C. Mansfield, Where Harvard Went Wrong: Fifty Years of Commentary That Fell on Deaf Ears
Sunday, September 20, 2026
Saturday, September 19, 2026
Terror's Excuse Makers
My new Substack essay explores how people are rationalizing the monstrous.
[Photo by Obi at Unsplash]
First Paragraph
Europe is committing suicide. Or at least its leaders have decided to commit suicide. Whether the European people choose to go along with this is, naturally, another matter.
- From The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam by Douglas Murray
Friday, September 18, 2026
As Media Heads Explode
Politico: A new security agreement between Denmark, Greenland, and the United States is expected to be signed next week.
Defending Your Right to Agree with Them
I had dinner with a Harvard Law Professor, who expressed disbelief that I expected him to vote for any faculty applicants who held views he considered wrong. When I noted that I regularly vote for faculty candidates who hold opposing views, he just shrugged and said that, if he rejects their views, he cannot vote for those views to be taught to students.
- Jonathan Turley
First Paragraph
Anti-colonialists often talk about 'the colonial project', as if an empire such as the British one was a single, unitary enterprise with a coherent essence. Then they characterize that supposed essence in terms of domination, despotism, oppression, racism, white supremacy, exploitation, theft or unconstrained violence. In this way they imply that its driving motives were lust for power, delight in domination, racial contempt and greed.
- From Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning by Nigel Biggar
Thursday, September 17, 2026
Secession
The Telegraph: The Village of Piddington is now the Principality of Piddington.
I doubt if they'll be the only ones to take that path.
First Paragraph
The crisis came toward the end of October 1918, in a forested area most Americans had never heard of, the Meuse-Argonne. For almost a month, over a million American soldiers pounded their way forward against forty German divisions, defending positions so impenetrable that American soldiers wondered if the devil himself had designed them. Already, 100,000 Americans had fallen and General "Black Jack" Pershing's assault divisions were on their last legs. The German line showed no sign of cracking, and there was widespread speculation that the American army might be the first to break.
- From Pershing: Lessons in Leadership by Jim Lacey
Wednesday, September 16, 2026
Canadian "Justice"
There's a lot of deep thinking north of the border.
Especially if you're a defendant.
"The Lie About Islam, Europe, and the Dangers We Face"
The Economist would not have written, in 1935, that the Comintern and the League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports were symmetrical extremisms requiring equal vigilance. It would not write today that the Chinese Communist Party and the Falun Gong are symmetrical authoritarianisms. In every other domain, this magazine understands that variables such as scale, state sponsorship, and institutional depth matter; that a movement with a coherent multigenerational strategy is not the same kind of thing as a collection of aggrieved amateurs. On this subject, uniquely, the analytical standards slip. It is worth asking why.
Read all of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's essay in The Free Press.
Rainfall and Irrigation
There has long seemed to a connection between washing your car and rainstorms.
Since I live in Phoenix, that theory means I should wash my car every day, but I've noticed another theory to consider: flood irrigation.
I live in an older section of Phoenix that has irrigation. Every two weeks in the summer and far less so in the winter months, my lawn is flooded with water from the irrigation canals.
That means I never sprinkle the lawn but depend solely on the irrigation. There are reports that this system uses less water than the homes with sprinklers, but who knoweth? It's a handy system and, unlike the old days when I did my own irrigating, there are professional irrigators who turn on and off the pipes going into the lawns, so the water flows from one lawn to another.
Rain is predicted this week. So is my irrigation. We'll take it whenever we can get it.
Tuesday, September 15, 2026
It's a Great Time to Discover the Genuine You
My Substack is up on thwarting the negative trends of our times.
[Photo by Viktor Forgacs at Unsplash]
Monday, September 14, 2026
My Desk Has Much in Common
Cultural Offering has a video on Louis L'Amour's Desk of Hidden Wonders.
Beware of people who have clean desks.
Sunday, September 13, 2026
Saturday, September 12, 2026
Hey Ho, Hey Hey! Western Civ Has Got to Stay!
Civilization is always found at Stephen Landry's Blog and The Hammock Papers.
[Photo by Constantinos Kollias at Unsplash]
The Oyster Months
Several bloggers I know have been referring to "The Oyster Months."
Being a native Arizonan, I've heard Cinco de Mayo mentioned far more than "Oyster Months."
Germany's Turn
If all opposition to the migration crisis can be said to be the work of German neo-Nazis, then Europe is lost. Because no party of opposition will be untainted. If Germany can be saved, then Europe can be saved. But in order for that to happen, people—including the international press—need to listen to what is actually happening in Germany, take notice, and recognize the situation as it is, not the strange Nazi-haunted fever dream that they curiously seem to wish it to be.
- Douglas Murray
First Paragraph
A cold wind blew off Hanging Dog Mountain and I had no fire, nor dared I strike as much as a spark that might betray my hiding place. Somewhere near, an enemy lurked, waiting.
- From Jubal Sackett by Louis L'Amour
Friday, September 11, 2026
The Untold Pre-History of 9/11
Chris Naylor examines the pre-history of 9/11 in The National Interest. An excerpt:
"The attacks of September 11, 2001, which marked the dawn of the new millennium and appeared to many like a wholly new phenomenon, were, in fact, the culmination of decades of changing terrorist tactics, systemic aviation vulnerabilities, and institutional failure to recognize and address known threats."
[Photo by Getty Images at Unsplash+]
"Let's Roll"
Commentary magazine's Seth Mandel: "Schools Should Teach the 9/11 Heroism of the American People."
Thursday, September 10, 2026
"The discrimination is ongoing"
New York Post: The U.S. Justice Department goes after UC Berkeley Law School for illegal discrimination.
High time.
A revealing video in which the Dean is discussing strategies:
Well Done
My ancestor Moses Montefiore, a British magnate, knew everyone from sultans to tsars in the Victorian era. In the 1820s, he befriended Muhammad Ali, Turco-Albanian ruler of Egypt. Nowadays, I admire how Moses coped with anti-Semitism. Attending a royal dinner, a bigot denounced him: ‘I just visited Japan which I loved because Japan has no Jews and no pigs!’ ‘Then you and I should go to Japan together,’ answered Montefiore. ‘So they have one of each.’
- S. Sebag Montefiore
Opening Lines
Pete Kitchen was the connecting link between savagery and civilization in Arizona. He was a rough charcoal sketch of a civilized man. He came to Arizona in 1854, and farmed rich, broad acres on Potrero Creek near its junction with the Santa Cruz. During the bloodiest days of Indian warfare his name was a household word among the white settlers, and to the wild Apache he was "more terrible than an army with banners." His hacienda, situated on the summit of a rocky hillock overlooking the valley in every direction, was as much a fort as a ranch-house.
- From "Pete Kitchen" - a chapter in Pioneer Portraits by Frank Lockwood
Wednesday, September 09, 2026
The Second Worst Chancellor in History
From First Things in February 2025: Christopher Caldwell reviews the memoirs of Angela Merkel.
Tuesday, September 08, 2026
Walk Around the Lift
There comes a point when you have to step back and get a larger gestalt. Have a cigarette and walk around the lift. Any mechanic will tell you that it is invaluable to have other mechanics around to test your reasoning against, especially if they have a different intellectual disposition.
~
Even on the relatively primitive vintage bikes that were our specialty, some diagnostic situations contain so many variables, and symptoms can be so under-determining of causes, that explicit analytical reasoning comes up short. What is required then is the kind of judgment that arises only from experience; hunches rather than rules. I quickly realized that there was more thinking going on in the bike shop than in my previous job at the think tank.
- Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work
Why the AfDs Wins in Germany
Christopher Caldwell explains in First Things.
You may have seen his book on the problems in Europe.
Monday, September 07, 2026
Small Project Week
The Rhone household is onto something both small and big, starting with a spice drawer.
A Dubious Quest for 'Reparatory Justice'
If European abolitionists did not become saints overnight, African chiefs who insisted on business as usual were hardly Satanic. They were instead agents following a brutal social logic: So integral was enslavement to the internal workings and moral order of most African communities in that period that it is difficult to conceive of their functioning without it. Historically, a pre-colonial African kingdom that did not extract slaves from a vanquished vassal was as rare as one that did not regularly engage in slave raids. In the 1840s, Gezo, king of the West African state of Dahomey, told the importuning British, “The slave trade is the ruling principle of my people. It is the source and the glory of their wealth.… The mother lulls the child to sleep with notes of triumph over an enemy reduced to slavery.” In this, he echoed a sentiment that was not uncommon for the time.
Read all of Ebenezer Obadare's essay in Commentary magazine.
Unusual Jobs: Utah Fish and Game
The Panhandle region placed 172 GPS radio-collars on 6-month old elk calves in the Coeur d’Alene and St. Joe River drainages since 2015. A couple reasons we collared so many elk was to determine survival rates and for those elk that didn’t make it, find out why they died.
Sunday, September 06, 2026
Saturday, September 05, 2026
"What critics keep getting wrong about capitalism"
Vincent Geloso goes after The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's "takedown" of capitalism.
Diversity of Dispositions
A good diamond cutter has a different disposition than a good dog trainer. The one is careful, the other commanding. Different kinds of work attract different human types, and we are lucky if we find work that is fitting. There is much talk of "diversity" in education, but not much accommodation of the kind we have in mind when we speak about the quality of a man, or woman: the diversity of dispositions.
- Matthew B. Crawford in Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work
Friday, September 04, 2026
The Crystal Ball Essay Has Been Expanded
A cartel with a nuke? Putin deposed? Sovereign cities?
Get out your marker and rate the possibilities.
[Photo by Natalia Blaueth at Unsplash+]
Preparing a Crystal Ball
With the German elections coming up, I'm preparing a Substack essay on the possible events in Europe.
Strange stuff could be just around the bend.
Thursday, September 03, 2026
Affirmations and Advances
A gizmo may bring advances in particular subjects, but so much of life does not depend upon advances.
It depends upon reaffirmations of core values such as honesty, courtesy, kindness, courage, and personal accountability.
Without those, we will become barbarians with smartphones patiently filming crimes and disasters when we're not scrolling.
Wednesday, September 02, 2026
First Paragraph
It was summertime, and the living was easy for the Red Sox because Marty Rabb was throwing the ball past the New York Yankees in a style to which he'd become accustomed. I was there. In the skyview seats, drinking Miller High Life from a big paper cup, eating peanuts and having a very nice time. I wasn't supposed to be having a nice time. I was supposed to be working. But now and then you can do both.
- From Mortal Stakes by Robert B. Parker
Tuesday, September 01, 2026
Wendell Berry, RIP
Kentucky Lantern: The author, poet, and farmer Wendell Berry has passed away.
I wrote about his novels in a Substack essay:
The Detached
The corporate elite's embrace of cultural radicalism, in Hollywood and elsewhere, also could prove combustible. Using schools to indoctrinate young people to see America as a systematically flawed society may not appeal to those who did not attend the primary centers for elite indoctrination like the Ivy League, Berkeley, or Stanford. One can comfortable genuflect to intersectionality in Manhattan or Malibu but, according to one recent survey, barely 8 percent of the population embraces the political correctness agenda, with most, including most minorities, seeing it as a "problem."
- Joel Kotkin in The Rise of Corporate-State Tyranny
Monday, August 31, 2026
Proper Decor
A Large Regular has a picture of Cormac McCarthy's living room, not his library, and it is clear evidence that I need to boost my book purchases.
Although some may disagree.
Strange Divisions
Many years ago, I learned that the worst companies are the least-inclined to seek outside advice whereas the best-run companies seek fresh perspectives on a regular basis.
The same goes for individuals.
But let's broaden that scope.
The older and more experienced people have the resources and habit of getting outside opinions in order to make sound decisions.
But many of the most important decisions occur early in life and are made by the young.
And those innocents have few, if any, sound advisors.
But they have a lifetime to review their performance.
If they are wise, they'll learn the lessons and exile the regrets.
First Paragraph
On Saturday evening, March 23,1996, eighteen-year-old apprentice airman Steven Nary went looking for his regular carousing buddies on the USS Carl Vinson, then berthed at the Alameda Naval Air Station across the bay from San Francisco. Two of his fellow sailors were on vacation, however, and two were on leave, so Nary decided to go in alone, the first time he had done so. Bad move.
- From What's the Matter with California: Cultural Rumbles from the Golden State and Why the Rest of Us Should Be Shaking by Jack Cashill
Sunday, August 30, 2026
Saturday, August 29, 2026
First Paragraph
The office of the university president looked like the front parlor of a successful Victorian whorehouse. It was paneled in big squares of dark walnut, with ornately figured maroon drapes at the long windows. There was maroon carpeting and the furniture was black leather with brass studs. The office was much nicer than the classrooms; maybe I should have worn a tie.
- From The Godwulf Manuscript by Robert B. Parker
Buses and Light-Rail Trains Should Not Be Billboards
My Substack column: Get Government Out of the Graffiti Business!
[Photo by Getty Images for Unsplash+]
Friday, August 28, 2026
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