My latest at the Pipeline. Maybe we can save the world better through the process of debate rather than through the acceptance of official doctrine.
China Syndrome
My latest at PJMedia VIP. The population doomsters may have prevented the rise of China by persuading Beijing to kill its children. How people become valuable again.
From Useless Eaters to the Stuff Dreams Are Made On
Through some cosmic accident, Stanford entomologist Paul Ehrlich, author of “The Population Bomb,” may have saved American power by sabotaging the rise of China. The trouble was, China listened to him. Early editions of the 1968 book began with this grim vision of an overpopulated world starving itself to death:
The Holy Ghost
New at the Belmont Club. Why has religion frequently been viewed as a threat by worldly leaders? Something to be repressed, replaced or derided?
Dark Waters
My latest at the Belmont Club. With the battlefront static, the war in Ukraine has become a war of logistics in which deep strikes are critical. This creates a problem for Washington: do they embrace stalemate or try to break it?
Belmont Club: Is the Black Sea Fleet Still a Factor?
Is the Black Sea Fleet no more? Recent attacks by drones and missiles have whittled it down to a shadow of its former self. Grant Shapps, the UK secretary of state for defense, said, “Putin’s continued illegal occupation of Ukraine is exacting a massive cost on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet which is now functionally inactive. Russia has sailed the Black Sea since 1783 but is now forced to constrain its fleet to port. And even there Putin’s ships are sinking!”
A Change in Priorities
We Promise You Hell On Earth
Our Secret History
My latest at the Belmont Club. The Western world thinks of itself as secular and rational. But is it?
Belmont Club: Monsters We Have Known
One of the controversies surrounding the coverage of the chaos in Haiti has been the reluctance of mainstream outlets to mention such matters as voodoo and cannibalism in connection with gang violence, as if the influence of the occult and barbaric were somehow anti-black or racist. But it is universal. Ironically, the idea of the “zombie,” derived from African word “zonbi,” was popularized by William Seabrook, an ex-reporter at the NYT who was a friend of English occultist Aleister Crowley. “Seabrook had a lifelong fascination with the occult, which he witnessed and described firsthand both in Third World countries, as documented in The Magic Island (1929) and Jungle Ways (1930).”
The Narrow Ways
My latest at PJMedia VIP. In the last few years both maritime traffic and navies have been challenged in the Black Sea and Red Sea. The world waits with bated breath for a similar challenge in the South China Sea.
The Challenge of the Littoral
The Russian Black Sea Fleet may have just lost another ship to the Ukrainians. “Ukrainian intelligence says seven people have been killed and six more injured after a Russian patrol ship was hit and sunk in a sea drone attack,” the BBC is reporting. “The Sergei Kotov was allegedly hit in the early hours of Tuesday morning.” The Kotov is a Project 22160 patrol ship belonging to the Russian Navy. From Wikipedia:
None So Blind
New at the Belmont Club. Why Woke censorship is so powerful and so dangerous.
Belmont Club: Why DEI Is So Powerful
The biggest threat posed by censorship is the objective effect of suppressing the facts, which is far more consequential than any resentment a dissident group may feel. Censorship is like plucking out the eyes of an individual but multiplied by millions because it affects not merely a single person but a whole population.
Second Anniversary
New at the Belmont Club. The long war in Ukraine. The second anniversary of what pundits reckoned would last two weeks.
Belmont Club: The Surprising Indeterminacy of the War in Ukraine
It’s been two years since the beginning of the war in Ukraine and the big news is there has been no battlefield decision, something few would have predicted in 2022. It’s hard to say who is even winning. Putin wants victory more than Biden, a fact reflected by Russia’s huge war production of arty ammo and manpower mobilization but the Kremlin is paying for it by starving its economy and military of innovation investment.
The Lure of the Perfect
My latest at PJMedia VIP. Everyone should want World Government to fix Climate Change and to obtain Global Justice, right? That’s what all the visionaries tell us. But nothing could be more dangerous.
The Conqueror and the Prophet
Imagine you are teaching high school and ask the question: “Who has more authority: the World Government Summit or the World Economic Forum?” What answers would you expect to get? Probably that whatever authority these had it was not enough. World government is one of those evergreen ideas that was popular in both ancient times and in science fiction but never realized in the present. As an historical concept it has taken many forms, from the Chinese “all under heaven” to res publica totius orbis, the “republic of the whole world.” In sci-fi “well-known examples include the ‘World State’ in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, the ‘Dictatorship of the Air’ in H. G. Wells’ The Shape of Things to Come, the United Nations in James S. A Corey’s The Expanse, and United Earth (amongst other planetary sovereignties and even larger polities) in the Star Trek franchise.”
America Version 2
New at the Belmont Club. The end of history won’t last forever. But will America risk creating the successor to its own unipolar moment?
Belmont Club: Taking a Chance on Risk
It’s been nearly 40 years since the Berlin Wall collapsed and the end of history arrived. While most people welcomed the peace and prosperity the interim has brought, the organic evolution of the world has been stunted, forced into a straitjacket and grown misshapen. Our predicament is that we fear the bad old 20th century and yet the shoes we walked out of its ruins with are pinching our 21st century feet. No one feels the contradiction more than the hegemon itself. Is there any way for America to relax the reins on the world order stagecoach without risking a team of runaway horses?
The Type 1 Civilization
Waiting for the Election
My latest at PJMedia VIP. The world of 2024 is a collection of crisis tribes waiting for a sign, sure something big is coming though nobody knows what it is. On the day of the Big Reveal, which unusual person do you prefer in the Oval Office?
Normal Lions and Abnormal Donkeys
Nations are supposedly led by the Best and the Brightest. In the well-known words of the Duke of Wellington, “the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton,” the natural aristocrats. In a stable civilization with established values, the superior man is often manifestly obvious.
Who Wins a Slapping Contest?
My latest at PJMedia VIP. When the goal of White House policy is not to cross Iran’s Red Lines even when they cross yours, winning and losing become slippery concepts.
The Limits of Tit for Tat
Andrew McCarthy takes up a subject I have discussed before, proportionality. He writes in the National Review: “For about the millionth time, the law-of-war concept of proportionality does not hold that a response to an attack has to be on the same scale as the attack itself.”
Bird Box
New at the Belmont Club. The media debates whether it is safe to broadcast live coverage of Donald Trump, lest unsuspecting viewers be poisoned by his raw speech.
Belmont Club: A Glimpse of the Gorgon
Media is agonizing over the moral dilemma of showing Trump live on TV, since his appearance might cause harm to audiences. “Even as Donald Trump seeks his third straight Republican presidential nomination, his live appearances still present an unsolved riddle for many news outlets: How do you cover him?”
The Power of Bad Luck
My latest at PJMedia VIP. In late 2021 Joe Biden told the UN: “as I stand here today, for the first time in 20 years the United States is not at war.” Then it began to fall apart.
A Reversal of Fortune
Nine months into his first term in 2021 an elated Joe Biden told the UN: “as I stand here today, for the first time in 20 years the United States is not at war. We’ve turned the page.” Biden had just pulled out of Afghanistan. All seemed good. Although the big news was still Covid which precipitated a global chip crisis, an energy crunch and a worldwide supply crisis the pandemic was expected to fall before the new vaccines. The expectation was that the world economy would soon recover. There were murmurs about migrants flooding across the US-Mexico border but the media played it down. So in this sunny interlude Joe’s priority was pledging $11B toward fixing the Climate Emergency, the existential challenge of the progressive age.
The End of Control
Half a decade ago the trustees of the future were confidently planning the global tomorrow. Then pandemic, war and deglobalization covered the crystal ball with mystery. 2024 may reveal what’s ahead. My latest at The Pipeline.
Tomorrow Beats Today
New at the Belmont Club. Nothing is more real than the inevitable future. What’s going to happen is more important than what’s happening.
Belmont Club: Earth Vs The Flying Saucers
Recently the WHO and World Economic Forum have been making headlines about the need to prepare for “Disease X”, which is a hypothetical pandemic. How one might ask, does one prepare for something that doesn’t exist yet? Well this anticipatory preparation has been happening for some time and it is part of the phenomenon of the inevitable future.
Endless Bummer
My latest at PJMedia VIP. When wars can be created but not destroyed.
War As A One Way Street
The Russians, according to some pundits, are fighting beyond the point of reason in Ukraine. Anne Applebaum writes in the Atlantic: “Kremlin officials are now telegraphing to everyone — to Western politicians and journalists, to Ukraine, to the Russian people — that they can absorb 300,000 casualties and massive equipment losses.” This unreasonableness is forcing the Ukrainians and potentially their Western allies to match the Kremlin’s grim steps; to move past the splendid volunteerism of the early days to conscription, nonstop production and all the coercive apparatus of total war.