I have alluded to the ancient Chinese thinker, Sun Tzu’s treatise on The Art of War before, but have not illustrated at some length how his most famous saying (no. 18 of the section, Laying Plans, in the treatise) – …
Who Is Tim Walz?
In April of 2020, our portly, red-faced Aw, shucks governor, Tim Walz, was my hero.
He’d closed the public schools in our state on March 15th, but spoke—this former teacher and coach—with solemn grace. “I want to be very clear …
Rate Cuts Will Achieve Nothing
Here is the result of the Fed’s misbegotten pro-inflation policy since it officially adopted its 2.00% target in January 2012. According to our trusty 16% trimmed mean CPI, the price level is up by +41% since then, and was still …
Time to Connect the Dots
It was an otherwise normal day in 1969 when I found the book. I was a student in Vienna for my junior year of undergrad. Like most students, I had a room with a Hausfrau, normally an elderly lady who …
Herd or Hero, Body or ‘Soul’
Along the high street where I live, there is an advertisement on the side of one of the bus shelters. It features a woman, heavy-set and pictured from behind. The text reads Get Your and then On Board, placed so …
Toward an Archaeology of Anger
Last week, Brownstone Journal published an excerpt from Julie Ponesse’s book, Our Last Innocent Moment, titled: Our Last Innocent Moment: Angry Forever?
In this piece Ponesse treats, in a refreshingly well-rounded and down-to-earth way, the complex subject of anger. Few …
What’s Really Happening with Mpox
The Mpox Emergency
The World Health Organization (WHO) acted as expected this week and declared Mpox a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). So, a problem in a small number of African countries that has killed about the same …
How to Defeat the Censorship Industrial Complex
One of my colleagues, a medical doctor, that I often “tour” with on what many refer to as the “freedom” circuit, texted me a meme a while ago that I just love. Well, to be honest, I actually despise it …
The Trajectory of Emergency Lands on Price Controls
The US’s serious bout of inflation – mirrored in many countries in the world – was set in motion in the first week of March 2020, like much of the rest of our ongoing emergency. This was a fortnight before …
Lessons from Poland: Elites and the Bonds We Forge
One of the great gifts of my life was wandering into a class on Contemporary Poland in college taught by a humane and deeply knowledgeable man named James T. Flynn. There, for the first time, I was forced to address …
The New York Times: Latest Descent into Madness
I. The Descent into Madness
The New York Times really outdid itself this past weekend. On Sunday, the it published an Op Ed titled, “A Bat Flew Into My Bedroom and Reminded Me of All We Take for Granted.” I …
Our Government’s “Whole-of-Society” Rule
Last year, Jacob Siegel at Tablet magazine published a long investigative piece on the censorship-industrial complex, “A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century,” which is well worth reading. More recently, he published a superb follow-up essay, “Learn This …
The UK Riots: Misinformation Causes Everything
A massive attack on civil liberties is underway in the wake of a week of rioting in the UK. For politicians, the media, NGOs, and academics our old friend “misinformation” shares a large portion of the blame. It is the excuse that keeps …
The Stasi: Masters of PsyWar
From 1950 until the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Ministry for State Security (German: Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, MfS), commonly known as the Stasi, operated as the main security service of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany or GDR). In terms of …
The Broken Life of Matthew Thomas Crooks
Matthew Thomas Crooks, age 20, who attempted to assassinate former president Trump on July 13, resembles–with his shy, mischievous grin, pale skin, and acne–countless young males who have sat in front of me in English classrooms over the years–at community …