19th Century America If we wish to grasp American life in the 19th century, it’s probably best to start by understanding that when America was young, it had no myth. Once we really understand that,…

(Originally published January 18, 2021.) Aside from a breathless stream of headlines and a few random inputs, I haven’t seen many facts regarding the events of January 6th. Circumstances made things…

America, 1776 The development of the American colonies moved in an arc. They began with a lot of oppression (after the old world model), shook it off as the arc rose toward 1776 and the revolution,…

It’s late summer in Anytown, USA: A small platform stands at the edge of a cornfield. A very average-looking person steps up to a microphone and speaks: Friends, I stand here, not to praise you, but…

When law was sovereign All of us in the modern West grew up believing that we were living under “the rule of law.” The truth, however, is that the rule of law – the sovereignty of law – ended a couple…

In 1999, my friend Henry Lamb mentioned that he had been attending UN meetings. I thought it sounded intriguing and asked for details. After all, reading about an organization is one thing, actually…

In LaTeX, how to insert the Russian letter Sha (Ш, U+0248) and the currency symbol for Bitcoin (₿, U+20BF).

It has become common to speak of Judeo-Christian principles, but that begs the question of precisely what those principles are. And so I searched for a clear set of them, and came up dry. I found…

We all know that parenthood has been publicly trashed over the past half century. The larger culture portrays Fathers as dolts and full-time moms as second class women. These ideas, hammered endlessly…

As far back as we can see in any detail, we find humans creating art. But art is an odd thing, in that people generally create it for internal (and thus hard-to-articulate) reasons, making clear,…