Execupundit.com

Evergreen

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 20:23:37 +0000

"I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the Boston telephone directory than by the 2,000 people on the faculty of Harvard University."

- William F. Buckley, Jr.

Read "The Man with the Miraculous Hands" by Joseph Kessel

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 15:29:04 +0000

Hot Books

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Films About Totalitarianism: A Series

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 10:30:00 +0000

The Man Who Never Sleeps: His Fiction

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 23:21:44 +0000

And the nonfiction list is even longer!

An Odious and Unwise Endorsement

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 17:34:50 +0000

The American Association of University Professors endorsed a political candidate for the first time in its 110-year history.

Its views, long suspected, are now out in the open.

A Crisis in the Humanities

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 16:08:18 +0000

Quillette: Peter Boghossian writes about the rigid orthodoxy on political issues.

Not to worry. They will defend your right to agree with them.

On Writing

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 15:00:42 +0000

When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.

- Kurt Vonnegut

[Read the sample from my novel, Pilate's Magician. The book went through numerous drafts.]

Living with Heat

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 11:15:00 +0000

The hottest day in Phoenix was memorable: 122 degrees in 1990.

Somehow all of the "But it's a dry heat" jokes didn't work then. I opened my front door, and it was like opening the door of an oven.

Stunningly hot.

But living in Phoenix is usually akin, I suppose, to living in Alaska: you adjust to the weather. Most places are air-conditioned and there are times when you are only moving about in an air-conditioned car.

[And the winters are marvelous.]

It is expected that our water bills will climb due to the multistate battles over Colorado River water. Much of that is unfair because Arizona has been far more active with water conservation than California.

There is also the sensitive issue of agriculture. Farming can easily take more water than a sub-division, but the state and the nation will pay a price if the farms disappear.

In the meantime, we're optimistic. The predicted high temperature for today is 104 degrees. Some rain is expected next week.

Hmm

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 11:00:00 +0000

The Paradox of The Information State

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 16:22:38 +0000

And herein lies a central paradox of the information state. The great ills that it seeks to remedy, such as disinformation, are themselves products of the very thing, namely the surveillance- and attention-based Internet, on which the state relies. That is why, throughout all the outcry about the evils done by Facebook or Twitter, the politicians who are loudest in condemning those platforms do not take the obvious step of seeking to make them less powerful. Their aim is not to reform or rebuild the repressive infrastructure of the Internet, only to make it serve their own interests.

- From The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control by Jacob Siegel

The Real Victims of The Long March Through American Institutions

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 11:30:00 +0000

My Substack essay explores how it happened.

[Photo by Colin Lloyd at Unsplash]

"There Will Come Soft Rains"

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 11:00:00 +0000

"August 6, 2026."

A spooky story by Ray Bradbury.

Films About Totalitarianism: A Series

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 02:14:11 +0000

The Arday Scandal

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 14:35:18 +0000

The Free Beacon on the scandal involving the youngest black professor in Cambridge history.

Random Thoughts

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 11:30:00 +0000

A qualified compliment is an alarm bell. ~ Any business lunch that involves Chinese food or BBQ is likely to be well-attended. ~ In general, you should avoid the novels of Graham Greene if you're depressed. ~ Breaking exercise into small segments makes it more difficult to avoid. ~ Whether to replace a trip to a conference with a trip to the mountains or the beach should not be a difficult decision. ~ Before proceeding with a major decision, explore the assumptions. ~ A new word is needed to describe the modern news media's unique blend of incompetence and bias. ~ I wonder if colleges will even have majors in 2030. ~ Let's bring back postcards as a charming way of updating one another. ~ It is easy to work alongside heroes and not realize it, but the same cannot be said of fools. ~ One of the many gifts that Israel has inadvertently given to supporters of Western Civilization is that of shared enemies. ~ Networking events may give you some meaningful connections but volunteer work for the good of the community will definitely do so. ~ How can we preserve the values produced by farm families if farms continue to be replaced by real estate developments? ~ Much of research involves determining which material can be ignored. ~ If you want to be shunned by someone either loan them money or do them a favor. ~ One of the biggest mistakes of people who speak the same language is assuming that they share the same meanings.

There Goes the Neighborhood

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 10:30:00 +0000

Back By Popular Demand

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 17:03:59 +0000

Not That This Would Be Subject to Abuse

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 14:05:49 +0000

Brownstone Institute: The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention considered establishing a national system of quarantine camps.

[HT: Joel Engel]

Read This!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Myron Magnet explores how Rudy Giuliani made New York City great again.

[Photo by Getty Images at Unsplash+]

Films About Totalitarianism: A Series

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 10:30:00 +0000

Slowly Reading. Greatly Enjoying.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 16:01:26 +0000

Fauci and China

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Writing in City Journal, Nicholas Wade (no relation) examines where the blame rests for the pandemic.

An excerpt:

Fauci did not defend the natural origin position at Senator Paul’s hearing. In his long silences—he invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times, despite his 2025 pardon from President Biden—even his supporters could hear a failure to deny some incontrovertible facts. He supported an extensive program of gain of function research without seeking the public advice and consent of independent scientific experts. He let his grantees fund dangerous viral manipulations at the Wuhan Institute in unsupervised and unsafe laboratory conditions. When the SARS-CoV2 virus escaped from the Wuhan lab, as it almost certainly did, he engineered a seemingly independent report that blamed the pandemic on nature instead of on the research that he had calamitously funded. 

First Paragraph

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 10:30:00 +0000

We set off in an open cart drawn by four whip-scarred little oxen and piled high with equipment and provisions. No medieval knight could have been more closely armoured than were Tilly and I, against the rays of the sun. A mushroom-brimmed hat, built of two thicknesses of heavy felt and lined with red flannel, protected her creamy complexion, a long-sleeved white blouse clasped her by the neck, and a heavy skirt of khaki drill fell to her booted ankles.

- From The Flame Trees of Thika: Memories of an African Childhood by Elspeth Huxley

Find Something Beautiful Today

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 11:00:00 +0000

[Photo by Kateryna Hliznitsova at Unsplash+]