In a surprising turn of events that I’m not sure anyone expected from our team, the baseball team I coached won the league championship at the local little league.
It was an interesting experience for me. As the coach, I …
Why We Love the Nutcracker
Many people this holiday season will experience the joy of attending a local performance of The Nutcracker ballet by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. It’s the most implausible American tradition imaginable, an import from fin-de-siècle Russia straight to your hometown. It’s living …
The Blind Brute Blunders Forth
In the Jewish Quarter of Prague, the capital of Czechia, there is a strange-looking, if not bewildering statue. It is the tall figure of a headless, faceless, handless creature – with what looks like a massive, gaping hole where the …
The End of the World at Fort Bragg
Dying throes of US militarism, with post-Covid trauma and malaise, display themselves in Fayetteville, North Carolina, this December as I travel there on a Friday for a Saturday meeting. Fort Bragg is there, which is one of the largest military …
Scientific Meta-Analysis is Broken
All people of good faith should be troubled by the information I lay out below.
It took me eight years to figure out how to describe this problem and it’s massive — it threatens the very existence of humanity.
I.…Lives Unleavened by the Gift of Wonder
Not long ago, I spent a long day in a European capital in the company of a group of young Americans in their 20s and 30s who had been brought together as a result of their elite academic and creative …
Why are Lies so Believable?
Who you gonna believe….me or your own eyes?
In the 1933 classic, Duck Soup, after Groucho Marx left the room, Chico Marx, impersonating Groucho, exclaims to Margaret Dumont when she states he had left the room gives this immortal line. …
ESG, DEI, and the Rise of Fake Reporting
We know that the modern West has developed a jaw-dropping degree of totalitarianism, wherein the bureaucracies of the state and the corporate sector coordinate together to cripple humans outside their power networks and media channels. But what are the mechanics …
We Must Save Ourselves from the Public Health Professionals
Like other aspects of medicine, public health is about dealing with life and death. In the international sphere, this involves big numbers. If, as a group, a few million dollars is allocated here, it may save thousands of lives. Actual …
Independent Voices Sing in Symphony
One of my earliest memories of classical music is accompanying my father and older brother to hear Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony when I was 7. The symphony conveyed pure magic, filling my head with sonorous themes and exquisite harmonies, permeating the …
Living Everywhere in a Carceral Surveillance State
If you live in a Chinese city, or even in London, you are probably so used to surveillance cameras all around you – on lamp posts, the corners of buildings, and so on – that you would hardly bat an …
The Grateful Dead Succumbed to Coronamania, but We Didn’t Conform
I’ve played and have enjoyed hearing others—who are better at it—play live music.
I’ve seen well over 100 shows, including Springsteen (for $6 in 1977), Wilco, Neil Young, Van Morrison, Joan Armatrading, The Pogues, Queen Ida, Lucinda Williams, Pat Metheny, Habib …
The Historian of Decline: Ludwig von Mises’s Relevance Today
[This piece was commissioned by Hillsdale College and presented on campus October 27, 2023]
It’s an impossible task to explain the full relevance of Ludwig von Mises, who wrote 25 major works over 70 years of research and teaching. We …
The dogmatism of common sense
So Esther McVey has been made Britain’s Common Sense Tsar. One can imagine the scene around the Cabinet table, as Rishi Sunak calls on various of his ministers to sketch their plans for the future.
First to speak up is …
The Hypnotic Rhythm of Dependence
“I remember when Friday used to mean something,” said the disheveled man on the bus.
Dependent poverty has a rhythm.
You know the supermarket will be busy on the first of the month because that’s when food stamp cards are …