The Federalist Papers were written to urge the adoption of the American Constitution at a time when there was the very real fear that the states might choose to continue the highly ineffective Articles of Confederation.
The Federalist Papers are packed with insight, and Federalist Paper No. 10 has become one of the most cited.
Read this and you'll see its timeless warning.
Dowd’s essential belief is that not only do the homeless have every right to spend their days in libraries but that librarians should view their needs as a critical part of the job. He believes librarians should be trained to dispense Narcan. One of his seminars is called “Jerks with Homes: How to Deal with Members of the Public Who Are Being Jerks About Homeless Folks.” His scripts for addressing problematic behaviors include examples like, “Hey, I don’t care if you urinate on the Harry Potter books, but the politicians have a no-urinating policy. Therefore, I have to ask you to stop."
Read the rest of The Free Press article by Zac Bissonnette.
We would be a better nation if more people visited The Hammock Papers.
[Photo by Ed Robertson at Unsplash]
"The Founders of the American Nation were one of the most creative groups in modern history. Some among them, especially in recent years, have been condemned for their failures and weaknesses - for their racism, sexism, compromises, and violations of principle. And indeed moral judgments are as necessary in assessing the lives of these people as of any others. But we are privileged to know and to benefit from the outcome of their efforts, which they could only hopefully imagine, and ignore their main concern: which was the possibility, indeed the probability, that their creative enterprise - not to recast the social order but to transform the political system - would fail; would collapse into chaos or autocracy. Again and again they were warned of the folly of defying the received traditions, the sheer unlikelihood that they, obscure people on the outer borderlands of European civilization, knew better than the established authorities that ruled them; that they could successfully create something freer; ultimately more enduring than what was then known in the centers of metropolitan life."
The official Execupundit Novel of the Year - Pilate's Magician - is at:
- Michael Shellenberger
His father was ever a man of few words, even when Liam is on the other side of the world, with a new name and unfamiliar clothes, facing a committee of robed men who have come to sit in judgment of him, he will be able to recall the astonishing day that turned his father garrulous.
- From Land: A Novel by Maggie O'Farrell
One June weekend, Washington collected Hamilton and Jefferson, neither yet sufficiently acquainted with the other to regard him as an enemy, and went fishing off Sandy Hook. If they discussed the assumption of state debts or where to locate the nation's capital permanently, it went unrecorded. Instead, the president returned with a large haul of sea bass and warm praise for his "able coadjutors, who harmonize extremely well together."
- From Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation by Richard Norton Smith
The Free Press: Larry Sanger, a co-founder of Wikipedia, on being banned from Wikipedia.
Many thanks to serpentinesheldonserpentine and to Cultural Offering for their kind mention of my recent Substack post on Books for America's 250th Anniversary.
Many thanks also to Nicholas Bate, A Large Regular, and A Layman's Blog for their mentions.
They are deeply appreciated.
[Photo by David Kovalenko at Unsplash]
Consider your average workday. How much of it is consumed by distractions? How much more work could you get done if you reduced them?
Now for the brutal part: How many of those distractions are chosen by you and not inflicted by others?
My guess is that it's a large amount so here's the assignment:
Set aside 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the afternoon for those self-chosen distractions. No other time can be devoted to them.
A rigid application of that regimen will make a big difference.
[Photo by Bradley Andrews at Unsplash]
Books for America's 250th Anniversary.
An improved and enlarged list is here. Bear with me.
[Photo by Max Sulik at Unsplash]
I have found that email messages have become so common that they are often ignored. If there ever were a resemblance to the old-fashioned paper, envelope, and ink version, it is long-gone.
That's one reason why text messages are far more likely to be read. Although techie, they are more personal and, like email, the recipient has the ability to choose when to respond.
Still, there was an intensely personal aspect to the old paper and envelope approach.
I follow a ritual and use a letter opener: a miniature samurai sword that a friend brought me from Japan.
The ritual is surprisingly enjoyable. As the process unfolds, one can study the type of stationary, the nature of the signature, and even the stamp.
All are evidence that a real person took the time to send me a message.
I recently received a letter that had a William F. Buckley Jr. postage stamp on the envelope. The hand-written postscript said:
"I want you to know that not everyone merits that stamp."
Nice touch.
Big smile.
Try that with an email!
Various commitments drew me away today.
Not only can I now attend to desk work, but I can also continue with The Simplification of My Office.
The boxes of items that going into a storage area are multiplying.
If in doubt, throw it out.
August, 1931 - The port town of Veracruz is a little purgatory between land and sea for the traveler, but the people who live there are very fond of themselves and the town they have helped to make. They live as initiates in local custom reflecting their own history and temperament, and they carry on their lives of alternate violence and lethargy with a pleasurable contempt for outside opinion, founded on the charmed notion that their ways and feelings are above and beyond criticism.
- From Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter
"[White House deputy national security adviser] Ben Rhodes seemed to enjoy boasting about his power over people he considered beneath him. That did not make his assessment of the media landscape wrong. 'The average reporter we talk to is twenty-seven years old,' he noted. 'Their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That's a sea change. They literally know nothing.' The depth of reporting and institutional experience built into the twentieth-century print model was dead. Something else that was easier to manipulate had taken its place.
- From The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control by Jacob Siegel
The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.
- Warren Bennis
[Photo by NOAA at Unsplash]
There was a multitude of optimism and genius in the musicals of Rodgers and Hammerstein.
Unlike many recent musicals where there may be one or two memorable songs, you'll find an array of great songs in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals.
Oklahoma and South Pacific are grand examples.
Another powerfully creative duo was Lerner and Loewe. Their genius can be found in My Fair Lady and Camelot.
It's unwise to assume that such talent will always be with us.
An interesting quote about a bargain getaway in Spain:
"We stumbled across Lloret de Mar on a hike up the coast from Barcelona. It was five miles from the railroad, set in the half-moon of a wide, sandy beach under the foot-hills of the Pyrenees. Tess liked it at once. So did I. We found a furnished house on the beach - three storeys, ten rooms, two baths, central heating. When the proprietor said the price would be fifteen dollars a month, we paid the rent for a year. Our expenses, including rent, have averaged sixty dollars a month."
Sounds great, but it comes from William L. Shirer's memoir, Berlin Diary, and the date was January 11, 1934.
Tough times were ahead.
City Journal has an excellent article on the Justice Department's new policy on disparate impact discrimination cases.
Although employers had a possible defense against such cases in the past, the easiest way to reduce risk was to avoid disparate impact in the first place. In many cases, that meant lowering employment standards.
The key test, of course, is whether the courts will agree with the Justice Department's new criteria.
Many people experience some shame or guilt when they dislike a literary classic.
Please don't.
I confess to enjoying Ernest Hemingway's short stories while finding his novels to be very hard going. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is another slog for me and yet, of course, many people love it.
Here's my list of some that I set aside but which I'll give a second chance:
- Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
- The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Scoop by Evelyn Waugh
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
- Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
- The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
On the other hand, I know people who cannot stand Moby-Dick and I'm in the process of re-reading it. Another re-read on my list is Bleak House.
Which classics have you set aside?
[Photo by Tom Hermans at Unsplash]
It's cold on the Wall. That's the first thing everybody tells you, and the first thing you notice when you're sent there, and it's the only thing you think about all the time you're on it, and it's the thing you remember when you're not there anymore. It's cold on the Wall.
- From The Wall by John Lancaster
A novel of special interest to those who are intrigued by religion, law, Roman history, decision-making, crisis-management, ethics, and courage.
Or Jesus, Pontius Pilate, Tiberius, and the Sanhedrin.
It's about the most famous trial in world history but be forewarned:
It's not about Pilates.
- Totalitarian Studies Are Sorely Needed
- The Day the Music Sorta Died
- Let's End the American Cultural Revolution with Some Candor
- History's Personally Revealing Anecdotes
- Evil's Apologists Are Always Out There
- Memories of the Job Search Jungle
- To Get the Saw Dust on the Floor, We Need to Read the Writing on the Wall
Liza Libes on "Why Contemporary Publishing is Broken."
There is a reason why recent years have seen a jump in self-published books.
No one who takes up a copy of The Federalist Papers ever forgets the way Alexander Hamilton opened the first of that remarkable series of commentaries on the new American Constitution, published five weeks after it was signed in 1787 in Philadelphia. “It has been frequently remarked,” Hamilton began, “that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.” It was a decision to which he did not hesitate to attach world significance, since “a wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind.”
Read the rest of historian Allen Guelzo's essay in Commentary magazine.
Here's a short poem by A. E. Housman with enough punch to floor a prizefighter.
[Photo by Rob Wingate at Unsplash]
The best reorganizations are the ones we do to the environment within the work environment.
Files reduced.
Goals clarified.
Phone calls made.
Key meetings set.
Those are fine.
But the real breakthroughs are when we take time for serious meditation on what is, and is not, important.
[Photo by Mathilda Khoo at Unsplash]
Military Times has a look at the initial design for the Global War on Terrorism Memorial.
It's sort of mind-bogglingly bad.
[But it might make a suitable skate-boarding park.]
City Journal: Wilfred M. McClay on the significance of the Declaration of Independence. An excerpt:
We are thinking a lot about remembrance, with the 250th anniversary of American independence approaching. How, in this contentious time, should we remember this event? How should we observe the occasion? Do such things really matter?
The last question is the easiest to answer. Yes, they matter, because looking forward necessarily entails looking backward. The two vistas are symbiotically connected in the human soul. Edmund Burke captured this truth when he famously remarked: “People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.” We must connect with both if we are to have a stake in either. We are better able to imagine, and work toward, a future for our children when we remember, with gratitude, that we ourselves are the embodiment of our predecessors’ tomorrows.
In 1815, there was an intriguing editorial shift as Napoleon returned to France following his exile on Elba.
Le Moniteur Universel, which was the official government newspaper, reported:
In the voting booths, it's a historic realignment. For the first time in modern history, anti-system parties are simultaneously leading in the three major economies of Europe. Reform is crushing everything in the UK with a Starmer at -61 net popularity. The AfD ahead of the CDU. The RN higher than ever. Italy governed. Austria, Portugal, the Netherlands tipping. Trump reelected. Milei turning Argentina around live.
I have just learned that today, June 10, is designated not as Father's Day but as:
National Black Cow DayThey died on the same day. And it was no ordinary day. It was the Fourth of July, 1826, exactly fifty years from the date the Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence. This, "our fiftieth anniversary," as Daniel Webster exclaimed, was "the great day of National Jubilee."
- From Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson by Gordon S. Wood
Author/Journalist and All-Around Nice Guy Joel Engel has launched "Classical Boys Music" on YouTube showing large machinery combined with classical music.
For boys of all ages.
[Photo by Marius Le at Unsplash]
People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
In a just world, Father's Day would join Mother's Day by being scheduled at some point during the school year so fathers could get the traditional loot produced by grade school students when they are learning how to draw on plates or coffee mugs.
It is, of course, held at a much more obscure time, but the general culture offers hope of recognition.
Consider these role models from the movies:
1. Atticus Finch (To Kill a Mockingbird)
2. Vito Corleone (The Godfather)
3. Pa Kettle (The Egg and I)
4. Bryan Mills (Taken)
5. Marlin (Finding Nemo)
6. George Banks (Father of the Bride)
7. Chris Gardner (The Pursuit of Happyness)
8. Darth Vader (Star Wars)
Well, all lists have a few exceptions.
[Photo by atelierbyvineeth... at Unsplash]
Then, starting in November 2025, Rush allegedly did something astonishing, more striking than anything he had done before. According to the affidavit, “Rush made several requests to the U.S. Government to obtain a significant quantity of foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold bars for work-related expenses.”
Read the rest of Byron York's report in the Washington Examiner.
Don't miss Created Equal, the book of the same name by Michael Pack and Mark Paoletta. It is composed of the documentary's transcripts.
An excerpt: My grandfather understood that education was the key because he didn't have it, and that's what had held him back. He wasn't going to let that happen to his boys. And he said that he went to third grade, but school was three months out of the year because you had to work. Education wasn't some social experiment. It wasn't a lot of this drivel you hear today. It was the key. It was something that had to be done. Reading, writing, arithmetic, and, by golly, you are going to learn it. You were never going to miss a day of school. And he made that very clear. Remember now, I am seven years old, my brother is six, and he says to us, "You are going to go to school every day. And if you are sick, you are still going, and if you die, you will go. I will take your body for three days and make sure you're not faking." And he meant it. The thing about it is, it's one thing if somebody says that and you think they're exaggerating. He wasn't that kind of guy. In your mind you knew he had laid down a marker. You were going to go dead or alive. Well or sick. And that's the way we went.
I completely share Nicholas Bate's cogent concerns about PowerPoint.
It is a debilitating device that creates a rigid barrier between the presenter and the audience.
Long-time readers of this blog will know my preference for flip charts and overhead projectors. [I love those old projectors with the acetate roll that you can crank whenever a new page is needed.]
Both of those facilitate spontaneity and conversation.
With PowerPoint, the fancier it gets, the worse it is.
Nicholas is Old School with all of the virtues that implies and it's great to hear that we can expect another book from him in September.
