September 11, 2001 – history pivoted. Geopolitical history, national history, personal history – all of it pivoted.  Such days are rare and not easily forgotten.  And yet, within a generation, maybe two, they are reduced to a few paragraphs in a history book.  The day is vivid in my memory, and yet for so many it is not a memory, it is merely an event they read about.  Although in this day and age, do they read?  I have written about that day many, many times.  So many aspects, so many experiences subsequent.  I could start writing here and thousands of words later still have more thoughts and reflections.  But

In the movie Roadhouse, Patrick Swayze offers some advice to the bouncers in a very rough bar – “be nice, until it is time to not be nice.”  I have been wondering of late if we, as a society, have forgotten that there are times to not be nice.  “Be Kind” is everywhere as if it will solve all our problems.  And yet I do not find kindness or niceness on the list of virtues, (unless very loosely “translated” from the Latin) either cardinal or theological.  But then does anyone care about virtue anymore?  When I googled “the virtues” I got a bunch on entries about some TV

Everybody talks about “equity” these days, but what they seek when they do so is anything but equity.  They instead seek an advantage of some sort, claiming recompense for some unrelated event, and in so doing they absolutely destroy the rule of law.  When there is always an exception to the rule, the rules become meaningless.  The eventual result will be chaos – the kind of chaos where equity is completely crushed by strength.  We are facing a number of such stories right now.. . .

Alternate Title – “The Limits of “Science.”  Second Alternate Title – “Politics Can Screw Up Anything.”  Someone else has finally noticed that Scientific American is trying really hard to be Politico.  I noticed it long ago and have commented on it since.  A great deal of the problem is, I think, epistemological, not scientific.  Well, that and the fact that some people are just scoundrels.. . .

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, ” Labor Day is an annual celebration of the social and economic achievements of American workers.”  So we have a national holiday to celebrate work.  But we also have an entire national bureaucracy that enables those that don’t work.  It is a fascinating juxtaposition.. . .

Psalm 127 Unless the Lord builds a house, They who build it labor in vain; Unless the Lord guards a city, The watchman stays awake in vain. It is futile for you to rise up early, To stay up late, To eat the bread of painful labor; This is how He gives to His beloved sleep. Behold, children are a gift of the Lord, The fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, So are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them; They will not be ashamed When they speak with their enemies in the

There was an fascinating on-line debate this week over the question of whether the far-left will ever awaken to the damage they have wrought.  Some think they will be horrified, some think them pathologically unable to ever do so,  (HT: Instapundit)  I am in the latter camp, but I also do not think the pathological are the issue.. . .

This morning, for the first time in weeks, none of the stuff I looked through contained a headline about Abdul El-Sayed.  I think that disproves a theory I have been working on.  But it also proves something wonderful about the American people.. . .