We all have enough strength to bear the troubles of other people.  -La Rochefocauld   Call someone an isolationist or an anti-war activist, call it a sin tax or a progressive tax, call it an incenti

"Any fool can lampoon a king or a bishop or a billionaire. A trifle more grit is required to face down a mob, or even a studio audience, that has decided it knows what it wants and is entitled to get

"Taste is relative" is the excuse adopted by those eras that have bad taste. -Nicols Gmez Dvila A man gave his coat to a homeless bum and the homeless bum up and stole his wallet as thanks.

Happy Easter! I discuss the enslavement of perhaps 1,000,000 white/Christians by the barbary pirates and the man who finally brought that trade to an end. "And the more I considered Christianit

Seems like just yesterday Conan O'Brien et al were telling us about what a lovely place Haiti was, on account of Trump said it wasn't. As the corpses are roasting in the streets, join me on a stroll

It has been said critically that there is a tendency in many armies to spend the peace time studying how to fight the last war. January-February 1929, The Military Engineer, Some Notes on the Wor

Utopian ideologies invite genocide for two reasons. One is that they set up a pernicious utilitarian calculus. In a utopia, everyone is happy forever, so its moral value is infinite. Most of us agree

We dance round in a ring and suppose, But the Secret sits in the middle and knows. -Robert Frost. "The Secret Sits" (1942) @psychiconfire makes a good point on Twitter. Sometimes it is impos

Out of the crooked timber of man, no straight thing was ever made.-Immanuel Kant A Welsh slave was once given a direct order by his captor and notorious butcher of men, sultan Moulay Ismail of Mo

"How many times it thundered before Franklin took the hint! How many apples fell on Newton's head before he took the hint! Nature is always hinting at us. It hints over and over again. And suddenly we