On Substack, I explore the day the music sorta died.
[Photo by Mick Haupt at Unsplash]
Wednesday, April 01, 2026
The European Sophisticates
I was in Germany for an Army investigation back in the Seventies.
Frankfurt. Heidelberg. Kaiserslautern.
The German highways had a lot of military traffic in those days. The big emphasis, of course, was on being able to thwart a Soviet invasion. Everything else was secondary.
It was accepted that if anything bad was going to happen, it would happen quickly and would require a very strong response.
The American commitment was enormous but there was a sense of gratitude from the German people. We felt they truly appreciated our presence in those days along with that of the British and the French.
The size of the European defense budgets was much higher then, even though the nations were poorer than today.
If the current European leaders think that Americans do not notice their mild levels of military and diplomatic support, they are making a huge mistake.
The Iranian missile program was designed to bring pressure on Europe and only ultimately on the United States. There should be clear and strong support from Europe.
To borrow an old line once used by Winston Churchill with regard to the Russians, if this is how they behave in the green wood, how will they behave in the dry?
Truth
“I say in speeches that a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit. I am then asked if I know of any artists who pulled that off. I reply, ‘The Beatles did.’”
- - Kurt Vonnegut
Tuesday, March 31, 2026
Hercules Unchained
Drinking some iced Vietnamese coffee that my son brought me from Cafe Molli on 16th Street in Phoenix.
Stunningly good.
The First Management Consultant on Delegation
In Exodus, Chapter 18:
And Moses said unto his father in law, Because the people come unto me to enquire of God:
When they have a matter, they come unto me; and I judge between one and another, and I do make them know the statutes of God, and his laws.
And Moses' father in law said unto him, The thing that thou doest is not good.
First Paragraph
I, Julian Fabius, an advocate for discretion in all things, should have known better. Take that as a given. But even the best shield can drop with age, weariness, and wine and the truth is I would like my epitaph to be more impressive than "He Made a Fatal Jest about the Emperor Tiberius."
- From Pilate's Magician: A Novel of the Resurrection by Michael Wade
[E-book version is up on Amazon. News on the paperback version is pending.]
Monday, March 30, 2026
Revolutionary Climates
It is ironic that of all countries in Europe, France was the only one that could have had a revolution - not because she groaned under the lash of tyranny, but, on the contrary, because she tolerated and even invited every conceivable dissension and heresy. Restlessness, a passion for novelty and the pursuit of excitement were everywhere in the air. They were the fruits of idleness and leisure, not of poverty.
- From Paris in The Terror, June 1793 - July 1794 by Stanley Loomis
Say Again?
Click here for communication tips from Nelson Rockefeller, the British, the Dutch, and General Grant.
[Photo by Charles Forerunner at Unsplash]
A Military Rule
Those who are likely to pose an imminent threat to your nation or to others will try to disguise their conduct so by the time you might be able to perceive that the threat is real and indeed imminent, the danger will have already soared far past any hope of prevention and you may be unable to thwart it.
[Photo by Stephen Cobb at Unsplash]
Sunday, March 29, 2026
Saturday, March 28, 2026
As the AI Future Approaches
Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, the chairman and CEO of Sinovation Ventures, was asked these questions by some five-year-olds at a Beijing kindergarten:
"Are we going to have robot teachers?"
"What if one robot car bumps into another robot car and then we get hurt?"
"Will people marry robots and have babies with them?"
"Are computers going to become so smart that they can boss us around?"
"If robots do everything, then what are we going to do?"
- From AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order by Kai-Fu Lee
[Photo by Getty Images for Unsplash+]
Friday, March 27, 2026
Five Management Tools
Nicholas Bate now has five eBooks out in his Companion Series.
Practical advice, easy to understand, and which can be put to immediate use.
When Things Slip Past
While preparing a Substack essay on organizational problems, I thought of the great John Lennon observation:
"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."
I would add this: "The most dangerous distractions are disguised as something else."
That's a small part of my upcoming analysis. It should be out in a few days.
[Photo by Stephen Ellis at Unsplash]
Thursday, March 26, 2026
Wednesday, March 25, 2026
Worth Another Look
Edward N. Luttwak wrote The Endangered American Dream in 1993.
It's both disturbing and strangely amusing to see his analysis of the American Border Patrol at that time. He notes that as of 1990, the Border Patrol only had 3,857 agents on duty. That included those at the Mexican border, the Canadian border, and Alaska.
In contrast, he noted that Italy had 53,000 border guards plus the Carabinieri and the police for passport control.
He also noted: But preemptive declarations of impotence that disregard perfectly available remedies have become something of an American habit. When gangs were rampaging in Los Angeles in their regular everyday fashion even before the spectacular May 1992 riots, the city authorities reacted by asking for sociological studies of the gangs. Actually it is the city authorities themselves that are sociologically much more interesting and definitely worth studying: with a population of 3.5 million, the city had a grand total of 8,381 police officers (yes, eight thousand three hundred eighty-one), a ratio of 2.3 per 1,000 inhabitants. That would be just about enough for, say, quietly industrious Nagoya in law-abiding Japan. By contrast, the Italian countrywide ratio is 4.2 - though even crime-ridden Italy is a paradise of tranquility as compared to Los Angeles. The Border Patrol, or rather the lack of it on the Mexican border, is exactly the same category: self-inflicted impotence, rationalized as an inherent impossibility.
Tuesday, March 24, 2026
Beware of the Utopians
“Objective evidence was cast aside because it was too inconvenient. The very idea of reason and rationality was dismissed. All these ideologies — multiculturalism, lifestyle choice, deep green environmentalism, moral relativism — were utopian. They promised perfection. Anyone who brought facts against them wasn’t just wrong… they were evil.”
- Melanie Phillips
- Melanie Phillips
Creative Circling
I tend to start my essays with A and then go to M and then perhaps back to C and D and then forward to U and V because, the entire time, I am circling the subject and trying to find the best way to find its core, so to speak, and that is the trick.
It is a way of learning by doing. So much of the time is spent determining the real topic.
How can I do that unless I write about it?
[Photo by hayleigh b at Unsplash]
Monday, March 23, 2026
Love the Balance
From todays' New York Times coverage of the French elections:
The party held on to its traditional strongholds along the Mediterranean coast and in the north of France and won a significant number of small cities in the far north and far south. But that would not be enough to triumph in a presidential election, said Jean-Yves Camus, an expert on the far right at the Jean Jaurès Foundation, a left-leaning think tank based in Paris.
Erasing Cesar Chavez
Vanessa Mares is raising the question of whether the rapid erasure of Cesar Chavez is wise.
I would feel much better if more time was devoted for study and scrutiny and, yes, for hearing counterarguments.
Remember when people supported the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue by noting that it would be moved and not destroyed?
It was later melted down.
I wonder if many of those who oppose the historical symbols want to remove them all.
There will soon be, no doubt, a similar move against Martin Luther King, Jr.
Are statues to be reserved for saints?
Sunday, March 22, 2026
Saturday, March 21, 2026
Practical and Important
Ask someone to memorize ten random facts; they quickly forget them. Ask them to remember a story with those same facts, and retention rises sharply; the human brain evolved to think in cause-and-effect narratives, not isolated data points.
- From How to Be a Storyteller by Nicholas Bate
[Note; This book just came out. I wish I'd learned its key lessons long ago. They would have made a positive difference in how I studied while in school.]
Friday, March 20, 2026
White Guilt: A New Documentary
I read Shelby Steele's book years ago, never dreaming how far the White Guilt infection would spread.
Carl Sandburg: "Happiness"
Happiness
I asked professors who teach the meaning of life to tell me what is happiness.
And I went to famous executives who boss the work of thousands of men.
They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though I was trying to fool
with them.
And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along the Desplaines river
And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with their women and
children and a keg of beer and an accordion.
Sandburg, Carl. Chicago Poems. New York, N.Y.: Henry Holt, 1916.
Thursday, March 19, 2026
Nicholas Bate
Nicholas Bate has long been an inspiration for many of us.
I've often joked that he is The Man Who Never Sleeps because he is prolific and profound.
His decision to begin writing novels was a serious influence when I decided to follow in his footsteps.
But I have a long way to go to catch up with Nicholas.
As always, both his example and his kindness are deeply appreciated.
Wednesday, March 18, 2026
Solid Hit Below the Waterline
“For a moment, let’s turn the situation around and assume a situation in which the United States is under attack from a major enemy. And that enemy is ranging freely over our skies with no resistance, bombing at will, sending missiles at will, attacking our vessels, attacking our ballistic missile systems, attacking our aircraft at will. That they have wiped out, they’ve kil|ed the president and wiped out his Cabinet, and countless officials in the echelons below. And we have responded as the United States by shutting off a major waterway that we need for our economy — yes it harms other economies as well. Do you think anyone would be saying that this is, as Walter Russell Mead put it today, a stalemate? I don’t think so.”
- Brit Hume
Tuesday, March 17, 2026
White Guilt
A new film about the force that has weakened modern civilization is coming soon from Shelby and Eli Steele.
Here's the site. You can sign up for updates.
Ungracious Immigrants
Victor Davis Hanson on the changed nature of America's immigrants.
An excerpt:
We are the Dr. Frankensteins who asked nothing of immigrants, in a complete break from our nation’s past.
And we got our wish for a new, quite different class of immigrants, who treated the U.S. the very way they were taught to do by the Left: as an evil entity that deserved what it got.
Monday, March 16, 2026
Oscars
I didn't watch the Oscars because of several reasons: I have not been following the latest movies, the awards show takes far too long, the political jabs are too dumb, and the entire event make me long for the days when films such as To Kill a Mockingbird, Lawrence of Arabia, My Fair Lady, and The Godfather were contenders.
A final reason is that the film industry seems to have a bizarre death wish causing it to make an active effort to offend a large chunk of the customers.
How does it get beyond that?
[Photo by Mirko Fabian at Unsplash]
Sunday, March 15, 2026
Saturday, March 14, 2026
Street Smart
Do you know how I stopped getting protesters to my events at universities?
I held them in the morning.
- Jordan Peterson
Attacks By Their Cultural Elite
City Journal: Joanna Williams explores the attacks on British culture.
[Photo by Lewis Dohren at Unsplash]
Friday, March 13, 2026
Moral Clarity
Commentary magazine: Seth Mandel looks at the leadership of German chancellor Friedrich Merz.
One of the greatest German leaders since Adenauer.
From the Letters of Lord Chesterfield
To know mankind well, requires full as much attention and application as to know books, and, it may be, more sagacity and discernment. I am, at this time, acquainted with many elderly people, who have all passed their whole lives in the great world, but with such levity and inattention, that they know no more of it now, than they did at fifteen. Do not flatter yourself, therefore, with the thought that you can acquire this knowledge in the frivolous chit-chat of idle companions; no, you must go much deeper than that. You must look into people, as well as at them. Almost all people are born with all the passions, to a certain degree; but almost every man has a prevailing one, to which the others are subordinate. Search every one for that ruling passion; pry into the recesses of his heart, and observe the different workings of the same passion in different people; and when you have found out the prevailing passion of any man, remember never to trust him where that passion is concerned. Work upon him by it, if you please; but be upon your guard yourself against it, whatever professions he may make you.
- From the letter of Lord Chesterfield to his son, October 4, 1746
[Samuel Johnson, an enemy, said that Chesterfield's letters reflect "the morals of a whore and the manners of a dancing-master."]
Thursday, March 12, 2026
The Tribes of Car People
Are we losing our car culture?
And are we likely to lose even more?
[Photo by Mark Duffel at Unsplash]
Pilate's Magician Update
The paperback version is now up at Amazon.
A completely unbiased source says, "Spread the word!"
Wednesday, March 11, 2026
Britain Needs a Revolution
Replacing Churchill with a badger on the banknotes is worse than a tax on tea.
Let that proposal be put to a vote.
[Photo by Hans Veth at Unsplash]
Car Culture
My next Substack essay will be on the decline of the car culture.
Think about how our relationship with cars has changed.
And ponder a culture without the drive-in commentary of Joe Bob Briggs.
[Photo by Dominique Hicks at Unsplash]
Tuesday, March 10, 2026
Pilate's Magician is Out
The e-book version of my novel is up on Amazon.
The paperback version should be out by the end of the week.
Will keep you posted.
Thanks for spreading the word!
Highly Recommended
If I were able to arrange the widespread distribution of a single book on American society and politics, it would be this one.
An excerpt:
"China is an engineering state, which can't stop itself from building, facing off against America's lawyerly society, which blocks everything it can."
Monday, March 09, 2026
Sunday, March 08, 2026
Saturday, March 07, 2026
The Swamp: A Sharp View of DC Politics
City Journal: Check out Ilya Shapiro's essay on what it's like to work in a place where self-esteem is oxygen and therapy sessions take place in cab rides.
[Photo by Santeri at Unsplash]
Friday, March 06, 2026
Mind-Boggling
There are numerous assertions on X and other places that a submarine which sinks an enemy ship is legally and morally obligated to rescue the survivors.
There are even trained journalists who appear to believe that a submarine which sinks a troop ship that held thousands of troops is obligated to rescue the survivors.
Our schools need to teach more about the nature and inherent risks of warfare.
[My late father-in-law was an American soldier on a ship that was sunk during World War II. He dove into the water and was eventually rescued. I can only imagine his expression if I'd asked about the German efforts to rescue the American survivors.]
Prohuman Ambassadors
Check out the Prohuman Ambassadors Program at the Prohuman Foundation.
It's a very impressive program. Applications have a due date of March 26.
[I taught a class in their last academy and was very impressed with the caliber of the group.]
Thursday, March 05, 2026
Novel Schedule
My novel should be up on Amazon by no later than the start of next week.
Will keep you posted!
Wednesday, March 04, 2026
What's Your Blues Name?
Cultural Offering has your combination.
I guarantee it.
I may have found a new career.
Jailhouse Bad Boy Bailey
Novels on Dictatorships
Since we’re anticipating the fall of the Iranian theocracy, here’s an assortment of novels with insights on dictatorships.
The First
Circle by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
The Comedians
by Graham Greene
Mendelssohn Is
on the Roof by Jiri Weil
Life with a
Star by Jiri Weil
The Wall by
John Hersey
The Fox in the
Attic by Richard Hughes
Christ Stopped
at Eboli by Carlo Levi
The Wizard of
the Kremlin by Giuliano da Empoli
The Last King
of Scotland by Giles Foden
The Zone of
Interest by Martin Amis
Life and Fate
by Vasily Grossman
The Conformist by Alberto Moravia
Ship of Fools
by Katherine Anne Porter
Berlin Stories
by Christopher Isherwood
The Autumn of
the Patriarch by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
I, Claudius by
Robert Graves
Tuesday, March 03, 2026
Iran is Falling but Islamism Spreads
Ayaan Hirsi Ali has a warning.
Will Britain address the threat before it's too late?
Pick Up That English Book
The future belongs to the word people.
The engineers didn’t see it coming because they were too busy calculating.- Peter Thiel
Monday, March 02, 2026
Nazis with Turbans Are Beyond Diplomacy
What to do about a suicidal evil empire.
Some wars cannot be avoided.
We Shall Fight on the Pie Charts
The history of great management and leadership accomplishments is always the history of an individual's special qualities. Prime Minister Churchill did not rally Britain by showing the people pie charts, opinion surveys, or grids of competitive analysis.
- Theodore Levitt
Sunday, March 01, 2026
Saturday, February 28, 2026
Free Iran!
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.
The Ideal, Well-Rounded Person
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."
Friday, February 27, 2026
Odd Man Out
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.
Thursday, February 26, 2026
To Be Re-Read Soon
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.
The Age of Trump
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.
Wednesday, February 25, 2026
Bear With Me
Novel writing day.
Many drafts to be finalized.
I expect that the manuscript will be done very, very, soon.
Tuesday, February 24, 2026
Short and Long Term
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]
Monday, February 23, 2026
First Paragraph
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
Sunday, February 22, 2026
Saturday, February 21, 2026
Censorship Within the Library
FAIR for ALL: Catherine Simpson on the dangers that arise when librarians become gatekeepers.
"To Boldly Ride in the Back Seat"
Dave Barry describes his Waymo adventure.
I see lots of Waymos every day.
Freedom of Expression in Britain
Law professor Jonathan Turley on the question of John Cleese and British laws limiting freedom of expression.
And the clip below, for pure entertainment:
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