What’s Wrong with the World

The men signed of the cross of Christ go gaily in the dark.

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What’s Wrong with the World is dedicated to the defense of what remains of Christendom, the civilization made by the men of the Cross of Christ. Athwart two hostile Powers we stand: the Jihad and Liberalism...read more

Late autumn Longreads

Christoper Caldwell’s Claremont Review of Books essay on the Brexit drama, while by now somewhat dated, still rewards an attentive read. The general trend of his argument will strike many readers as familiar, but to this he adds a number of penetrating insights with wider application.

An excerpt in The Atlantic of Jack Goldsmith’s new book In Hoffa’s Shadow, rivets the attention and raises numerous fascinating questions. Goldsmith worked as a government lawyer in the GWB administration, and, finding himself thrust into the feverish debates over detention and interrogation of terrorist suspects after September 11th, to say no more made a bit of a name for himself. He also has a family connection to the vanished labor leader Jimmy Hoffa, by which connection he interweaves a related discussion of law enforcement challenges and excesses. Perhaps most fascinating is his analysis of how often legislative efforts, originally designed to check law enforcement excesses, end up producing contrary effects.

Meanwhile, I haven’t read an interview comparable to this in many a long year -- if indeed I’ve ever read one. David Samuels, Literary Editor at Tablet magazine, trades banter, anecdote, analysis and wisdom with Angelo Codevilla, the multi-talented scholar, farmer, polemicist, former Hill staffer and foreign service officer. A reader who could agree with every provocation and insinuation propounded by these two lively men, is a reader rather more comfortable with contradiction than most. Still, an interview better contrived to amuse, uplift and edify strikes me as difficult to imagine.

Finally, the story of the late-20th century US versus Anglo-French commercial race for an economically viable supersonic airliner is not, perhaps, one that immediately perks up the ears of interest. But I can assure you that, on the evidence of this article in Air Power History (scroll down in this PDF to page 5), in this case those unperked ears of interest will have let the reader down. The story amounts to an inherently absorbing one, with lessons and revelations to spare.

(Hat tip to Jack Baruth of Riverside Green for that last link.)

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