OK, Rebecca, challenge accepted.  Some of my favorite books: The Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian – High adventure on the high seas during the Napoleonic Wars with dashing British naval officer John “Lucky Jack” Aubrey and his friend and companion, Dr. Stephen Maturin.  There are 20-1/3 books in the series – O’Brian left an unfinished fragment at his death – that are widely considered the best nautical novels ever written.  We join Jack Aubrey as he takes his first command of a 13-gun merchant raider, and leave him a battle-scarred veteran in command of a squadron, sailing off to another … Continue reading Books, Books, Lotsa Books

Russell Kirk had an interesting take on the American Revolution.  In his view, it wasn’t a revolution at all, it was a war to restore the status quo of American self-government.  He makes a convincing case.  From the earliest days, immigrants were pretty much on their own and didn’t have much choice but to make their own decisions and run their own affairs.  By the early 18th century, self-government was so well-established that the colonists understood it to be their right rather than a privilege granted by an indulgent overlord.  Thus when, in the middle of the century, changed circumstances … Continue reading Due Process and Nicey-Nice Niceties

Says John Fund of National Review: Two things often happen when a single political party dominates a state the way Democrats dominate California. First, an echo chamber of the dominant party convinces its leaders they can steamroll over any opposition. Second, that conviction leads to political overreach. He was speaking of Democrats’ ill-considered attempt to repeal the state’s Constitutional ban on affirmative action (a ban which is supported by a majority of Californians of every race, ethnicity and party, by the way, and most strongly supported by Asian-Americans).  But Tennessee’s Republicans, who have the same sort of super-majority as the … Continue reading Random Thoughts, End of Lockdown Edition

During this unprecedented quarantine, I’ve kept my brain busy with extra reading. I’m a big reader in general, but regular daily life doesn’t always allow enough time for as many books as I’d like. But the last few weeks, I’ve worked my way through my ever-growing “to read” pile and knocked out at least a dozen. In that spirit, I present the inaugural installment of Rebecca’s Book Club: Recent Favorites. First, for the non-fiction winners…  “The Lincoln Conspiracy” by Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch. This riveting book details the little-known story of the first plot to assassinate the 16th president … Continue reading Books, books, books everywhere…

Agronomist Norman Borlaug is quite likely the greatest American you’ve never heard of.  No equivocation on that; no one in human history saved more lives than he did – conservatively, hundreds of millions, possibly more than a billion.  Which makes the slander of him in the recent PBS documentary, The Man Who Tried to Feed the World, all the more despicable.  How anyone could find what he did less than admirable is perplexing; a world view so warped that it would prefer famine and poverty over food security and growing prosperity borders on the insane. Norman Borlaug was born on … Continue reading The Slander of Norman Borlaug

It’s time for a little Q & A. Shall we? Q: When a husband cheats on his wife, do we say it’s the wife fault for marrying him in the first place? A: Of course not. In fact, we almost universally take the wife’s side and decide the husband is a worthless schmuck. Q: Is a teacher responsible if one of her students beats up another kid on the playground? A: Unless she explicitly instructed him to do so, definitely not. (And everyone would give her the benefit of the doubt that she did not.) Q: If you voted for … Continue reading Whither thou blamest…

The coronavirus epidemic profoundly illustrates that we humans are poor at prediction.  As the proverb says, man makes plans, and God laughs. So you will understand that I am not particularly critical of the President – the current president or any of his recent predecessors – or their administrations for the fact that the nation was not well prepared for COVID 19.  It was an event that no one could have seen coming in spite of everyone knowing that it was inevitable. The same can be said of George W. Bush and the Katrina disaster in New Orleans.  If you … Continue reading Plans and Laughter

Ah!  Bernie! We hardly knew ye!  We were all in for you, only to be thwarted by a party that suddenly came to its senses.  Politics is a cruel, cruel game. Not as cruel, perhaps, as in Putin’s Russia, where disagreeing with the boss gets you killed, often in highly creative ways; or in Xi’s China, where you simply “disappear” after having your organs harvested.  But cruel enough.  Yes, you’ve transformed the Democratic Party that you famously refused to join, but the rest of the U.S. is no closer to socialist utopia than it was during the grand and glorious … Continue reading All In For Bernie! Goes Bust

Makeup and hair dye are harmless vanities for most, and few people other than a handful of latter-day Puritans are opposed to them.  If it enhances a woman’s natural beauty, let’s have makeup and hair dye. Then there’s televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker, later Tammy Faye Messner.  I saw her and then-husband Jim Bakker once in Abingdon, browsing the vendor booths at a summertime festival.  I’d heard the stories and the jokes, and seen the pictures of her crying on TV with mascara streaming down her chubby cheeks, but it was still a surprise to see someone with makeup so thick … Continue reading Partisanship and Politics

Soccer – football to everyone outside the U.S. and Canada – is a wonderful sport.  My boys played, and I got into it as much as they did, playing a bit myself (terribly; no one ever accused me of being an athlete), coaching, refereeing, and helping run the local soccer club.  Due to the lack of scoring it bores a lot of people to death; kick the ball up the field, then down the field, then back up again.  Fall down and pretend to be mortally injured, jump back up again and run like crazy.  Constant swirling action, no apparent … Continue reading Advantage!