…for the appalling state of American political discourse? For the sudden popularity of socialism among people whose knowledge of history, civics and economics is more likely shaped by TikTok than anything written by dead white males (other than Marx)?

The intentional destruction of standards to make the children of the lowest economic quintile largely incapable of rising, forever dependent on the largesse of white liberals for whom they must vote in perpetuity, is a systemic criminal conspiracy. The rise of AOC, Bernie and Zohran Mamdani feels a bit like the revenge of all those education majors we laughed at decades ago because of their appallingly low average SAT scores.

“The personal strengths and weaknesses of a leader are no true indication of the worth of his cause.”
-Roger Zelazny in Lord of Light

I’ve loved fantasy author Roger Zelazny’s work since I was a teenager. He revolutionized the genre of science fiction, but he did it by being an amazing writer. He is most famous for the Amber novels, which were really just a lark for him. In his other work, he experimented with forms, voices and structure. And he could never resist a pun.

The Democratic Party has been moving left non-stop for over 30 years. Polling by Pew Research from 1994 to 2017 showed a lurch to the left for the median Democrat.

I’ve posted before about how we live like kings nowadays — actually, better than kings. Since we are out in a rural area, we have a water well instead of being connected to a municipal water system (the picture is of our main water storage tank). Now, our system is quite complicated. An underground pump fills the tank as required.  The water feeds into a pump house where it’s boosted to household pressure and then connects to the house with a pressure tank in line. Various lines run underground for power and controls.  We have added some extra sensors to keep the pumps from running dry (a great way to burn up a pump).

This week one of the sensors notified us that the well pump wasn’t filling the tank all the way. Our service guys came out Friday afternoon and had to replace a relay in one of the control boxes. We are now back in business. This is where I was headed with my title: that relay is easily 20 years old and has functioned as designed for all that time. It probably activates at least once a day that we are here, and it takes no maintenance and isn’t particularly expensive. The same goes for the boost pump controls and pressure tank. We live in an age of marvels that we ignore and forget about because we are used to them.

When we moved in, we had a copper phone line providing service to the house with a dial-up modem. Now we can choose between two fiber options via the power company and phone company. It’s so inexpensive that I suspect it may be government-subsidized.

Tuskegee University now prohibits durags and revealing clothing, and encourages students to dress as they would in a professional business setting. Cell phones are barred in class without the professor’s permission. Faculty and staff have been empowered to call out students who do not meet the new standards. Students are expected to prepare a resume two years before graduation, to seek internships, and not miss classes.

If not outright fascism, it sounds a lot like generic “whiteness,” especially if punctuality is imposed.

The older I get, the more I think that the main driving force in human affairs is not greed or lust, still less anything positive like charity or piety: It is wishful thinking. I want it to be so; therefore it must surely be so! A survey of history suggests that all great civilizations were strongly averse to some aspect of reality; and that the aversion was, in each case, a contributing factor in civilizational downfall.

— John Derbyshire

In this special crossover edition of Secrets of Statecraft and Uncommon Knowledge, I interview historian Andrew Roberts, Baron of Belgravia. Roberts explains why great individuals still shape history—and why Winston Churchill remains history’s ultimate example. Roberts also confronts attacks on Churchill’s record, explains Britain’s decision to fight Hitler in 1940, and discusses tyranny, Brexit, socialism, immigration, Donald Trump, and Britain’s future. Roberts also despairs of the decline of literacy and historical memory, and reveals both the world leaders he admires today and the source of his own podcast’s title, derived from Winston Churchill’s enduring advice: “Study history, for therein lie all the secrets of statecraft.”

My brother and I got into a discussion the other day, and we disagreed a bit. The Lindsay Clancy trial prompted the conversation. The discussion centered around the claim of “insanity,” for lack of a better term, and the allegations that one juror didn’t want to follow the judge’s instructions, resulting in a mistrial. Though only loosely familiar with the details of the Clancy case, I have some experience with deliberations over this controversial defense.

Some years ago, I was on a jury trial and even served as the foreman. The facts of the case were as follows: an individual stole a police car late one night and drove it around until finally the police found him, began following him, and attempted to pull him over. As soon as the police turned their lights on, he took off, driving at a high rate of speed until he crashed the car in a field. Fortunately for him, nobody was hurt, not even himself.

I recently wrote about the wretched experience of trying to access a medical referral by using a medical portal that required various security gyrations, which in turn would grant me access to yet another portal with a fresh set of requirements before I could have a look at the actual referral.

Alas, the first portal’s requirements proved too much, and I had to abandon the effort because I can only spend so much time coming up with a password that requires 16 characters, an Egyptian hieroglyph, the maiden name of my third-grade teacher’s mother-in-law, an unpublished Hemingway manuscript, and one character not currently recognized by any code known to man, before going full Lizzie Borden on an iMac. 

Besides, my doc needed some information from a previous doctor in another city, and I happened to have stumbled on the contact information for that doctor. So I looked at a couple of paper documents, scanned them in and emailed them to the guy and asked him for more information that I could provide to my current doctor. The result? Silence.   

It’s 9/11 again. And I could be morose… again. Friends of terrorists are ascendant. Friends of the West are written off as Islamophobes and white supremacists. But I’ll steal a lyric from Leftist David Crosby’s Almost Cut My Hair … “I’m not giving in an inch to fear. ‘Cause I promised myself this year. And I feel, like I owe it … to someone.”

So instead of gloom and doom, I’m celebrating the liberation of Vienna from a 140,000-strong Ottoman Army on Sept 12, 1683. Vienna had been under siege for months. The Ottoman Empire was trying…again…to kick in the back door to Europe, and Vienna was all that barred the door. Finally, a relief army arrived, commanded by King Jan Sobieski of Poland. The iron fist of that army was the Polish heavy cavalry, the Winged Hussars. Calling the Winged Hussars an anachronism is being kind. Recall, 1683 is squarely in the age of gunpowder. There were more than 200 cannons at Vienna. But the Winged Hussars were old-school mounted armored knights. They were slow, expensive, and very much a one-trick-pony. You’d get no reconnaissance, harassment of the enemy, scavenging for supplies, or lightning flank maneuvers from the Winged Hussars. They did one thing and one thing only — they broke massed infantry.

The relief army arrived outside Vienna on the morning of Sep 12th. Units engaged as they came up on the field and remained on the fighting ground all day with no clear victor. Then the Winged Hussars arrived. If you have seen the Lord of the Rings films and watched the Ride of the Rohirrim scenes, you have some idea of what it was like. Director Peter Jackson was inspired by the history of what happened at Vienna when the Winged Hussars hit the massed Ottoman infantry at the gallop, with 16-foot lances extended. It was over in 20 minutes.