Remembering a man who escaped Iran's dictatorship and was able to get to the United States, but many years later, would still get occasional phone calls from their secret police just to let him know that they knew where he was.
The world will be a far better place when that evil regime is gone.
I love the definition of the ideal, well-rounded person given in the 1930s by J.F. Roxburgh, the first headmaster of Stowe School:
"Acceptable at a dance and invaluable in a shipwreck."
One of my brothers goes to Mexico several times a year. He's gotten to the point where he lives there for months at a time, mainly in an area that is around 20 percent American/Canadian for most of the year.
When he's not near the ocean, he's in the interior. All of it is for leisure, not business.
My other brother recently returned from a business trip to South America and is set to make one to Asia over the next few months.
And what am I doing?
Scribbling.
I would rank this as The Great American Novel.
The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Lonesome Dove, To Kill a Mockingbird, and other fine works compete for second place.
But Trump’s doings and undoings are more than merely a reaction to the triumphalism of the period, including the notion that we had reached the “end of history.” The objections extend back to the basic elements of the post–World War II liberal order itself. Though this order was largely American in origin and a product of the unprecedented global dominance of the United States across all measures of power in the aftermath of World War II, for many it has become a euphemism for a system that allowed our allies a free ride on our defense dollar and the entrenchment of trade rules that allowed foreign countries to place barriers to entry on American-made products while the United States opened itself up to a flood of imports grounded in cheap labor abroad. Even after the Cold War, the United States maintained a disproportionate security burden, while NATO allies shirked defense commitments to boost their domestic welfare programs. American-led interventions in Kuwait and the former Yugoslavia went off smoothly in the earliest post–Cold War years, but the failures in Iraq and Afghanistan created a crisis of confidence and fueled debates about American military presence abroad.
Read the rest of the essay by Tod Lindberg and Corban Teague in Commentary magazine.
Novel writing day.
Many drafts to be finalized.
I expect that the manuscript will be done very, very, soon.
I am a short-range pessimist and a long-range optimist. I sincerely believe that we may be on the way to a very different and far better time. Let us hope so. Let us pray so.
David McCullough, History Matters
[Photo by Max Sulik at Unsplash]
The Chevy Suburban sped down the road, enveloped by the hushed darkness of the Virginia countryside. Forty-one-year-old Adnan al-Rimi was hunched over the wheel as he concentrated on the windy road coming up. Deer were plentiful here, and Adnan had no desire to see the bloodied antlers of one slashing through the windshield. Indeed, the man was tired of things attacking him. He lifted a gloved hand from the steering wheel and felt for the gun in the holster under his jacket; a weapon was not just a comfort for Adnan, it was a necessity.
- From The Camel Club by David Baldacci
FAIR for ALL: Catherine Simpson on the dangers that arise when librarians become gatekeepers.
Dave Barry describes his Waymo adventure.
I see lots of Waymos every day.
Law professor Jonathan Turley on the question of John Cleese and British laws limiting freedom of expression.
And the clip below, for pure entertainment:
The reforms of Diocletian and Constantine, by implementing a policy of systemic spoliation to the profit of the State, made all productive activity impossible. The reason is, not that there were no more large fortunes: on the contrary, their build-up was made easier. But the foundation of their build-up was now no longer creative energy, or the discovery and bringing into use new sources of wealth, or the improvement and development of husbandry, industry, and commerce. It was, on the contrary the cunning exploitation of a privileged position in the State, used to despoil people and State alike. The officials, great and small, got rich by way of fraud and corruption.
- Michael Ivanovich Rostovtzev, Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire (Oxford, 1926), p. 475.
The (European) continent is like a patient who has had a cancer, Hitlerism, and who, to prevent any chance of relapse, is operated on and reoperated on by his surgeons, of whom Professor MRAP is one of the most renowned, in such a thorough manner that they will one by one deprive him of all vital functions. He will die, no doubt, but at least it will not be of Nazism, fascism, racism, or anti-Semitism.
- Renaud Camus, Speech Before the 17th Chamber, printed in Enemy of the Disaster: Selected Political Writings by Renaud Camus
[NOTE: "MRAP" refers to the Mouvement contre le racisme et pour l'amitié entre les peuples.]
There is more in common between two deputies of whom one is a revolutionary and the other isn't, than between two revolutionaries of whom one is a deputy and the other isn't.
- Robert De Jouvenal
Getting down to the final copy of the novel.
Multiple drafts. Double-checking items. Avoiding duplications.
And, of course, scrawling down those "middle of the night" ideas.
In this particular case, they have been surprisingly good.
James Rosen's recent story in The New York Times about the recently released testimony of former President Richard Nixon deserves wide attention.
There was a "deep state" and there is no reason to believe it went away.
Richard P. Nathan's The Plot That Failed: Nixon and the Administrative Presidency is on my 2026 reading list along with Silent Coup: The Removal of a President by Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin.
Am also re-reading William Safire's Before the Fall: An Inside View of the Pre-Watergate White House.
The Universalists say that it is improper for teachers to take elementary and high school students out of class to participate in a political protest that is neither favored by many of the parents and students nor by the local school board.
The Universalists also would not approve such activities for causes in which they believe because they support the equal application of the standards.
The Particularists say that exceptions are proper if the cause is one which the teachers and many others deem to be just.
The Particularists would not favor similar conduct if the cause were one that they opposed.
[Photo by Pixel Shot at Unsplash]
The Raphaëls leave in the middle of the night, and they leave everything behind.
- From 33 Place Brugman by Alice Austen
Remember the ancient days of pre-cable television?
Those days when there were special programs that everyone watched for free?
Ones that everyone talked about because everyone had seen them?
These were the big ones:
- The Olympics from the Opening Ceremony all the way through to the Closing Ceremony. We were immersed in stories about the serious contenders and the very long shots. ABC Sports coverage was legendary.
- The World Series. All the games or, at least, most of them in the days when the games were played during the day. I recall a television being wheeled into elementary school classes for some brief viewing during the school day.
- The Super Bowl. I recently tried in vain to find the game without paying for a subscription.
- Political Conventions once had gavel-to-gavel coverage. You got to know the famous, the infamous, and the fairly obscure political figures. For those of us who are political junkies, that was a Golden Age.
It was great to see personalities such as Everett Dirksen, Edward W. Brooke, Jacob Javits, Margaret Chase Smith, Harold Washington, Sam Yorty, and Richard Daley in a less-formal setting.
This may seem like a minor complaint, but when you take away (or make it difficult to find) that "free" coverage, you've removed some major unifying events.
The national community is diminished.
These books can be life-changers.
I wish they had been around when I was in high school.
[Photo by Eric Vo at Unsplash]
Tucson became the head-quarters of vice, dissipation, and crime. It was probably the nearest approach to Pandemonium on the North American Continent. Murderers, thieves, cutthroats, and gamblers formed the mass of the population. Every man went armed to the teeth, and scenes of bloodshed were of every-day occurrence in the public streets. There was neither government, law, nor military protection. The garrison at Tucson confined itself to its legitimate business of getting drunk or doing nothing. Arizona was perhaps the only part of the world under the protecting aegis of a civilized government in which every man administered justice to suit himself, and where all assumed the right to gratify the basest passions of their nature without restraint. It was literally a paradise of devils.
Not that it matters, but a great deal of the background in this story is accurate.
SMERSH, a contraction of Smiert Spionam - Death to Spies - exists and remains today the most secret department of the Soviet government.
At the beginning of 1956, when this book was written, the strength of SMERSH at home and abroad was about 40,000 and General Grubozaboyschikov was its chief. My description of his appearance is correct.
- From the Ian Fleming novel, From Russia with Love
I continue to hear more about "Memories of the Job Search Jungle."
Will be writing on how to correct the HR software scandal.
[Photo by Nathan Sack at Unsplash]
- Phil Jackson
[Photo by Markus Spiske at Unsplash]
Appeasement never quite died in France.
The failure to control the surge of migrants in many European countries is an on-going scandal that will eventually destroy their cultures and human rights.
The novel is very close to completion. It will soon be in the "That's it" stage but, I must add, each revision has strengthened the manuscript.
Final hint: It is a story that you think you know, but you may not really know. I suspect that process of discovery will continue throughout life and beyond.
At last year's (2024) Salesforce Dreamforce event in San Francisco, Marc Benioff, the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Salesforce, declared in his keynote, 'We are moving from an AI-assisted to an autonomous world,' highlighting a transformative shift underway in technology. To drive the message home, he urged attendees to experience Waymo's autonomous cars first-hand - a glimpse into the future of autonomy in action. The statement was not just a call to explore innovation but a bold reminder of the pace at which the world is evolving.
-From Human Edge in The AI Age: Eight Timeless Mantras for Success by Nitin Seth
These are films that are enjoyable and educational in terms of how real life operates:
Dennis Prager once said that the one perk of the ultra-wealthy which he envies is the freedom and convenience of private jets.
I completely agree.
Large houses? Nope.
Fancy cars? Nope.
Yachts? Nope.
Never having to worry about money? Nope.
But a private jet has definite appeal.
"The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason."
Great advice at Cultural Offering.
Check out the entire list. It's powerful.
