Sane people throw themselves into politics only when the state has made normal life impossible, and by then it is too late.
Feb 022022
Remembering
The obscurest epoch is today.
—Stevenson
Feb 012022
Any man who was not a Whig a hundred fifty years ago had no heart, and any man who is one today has no brains.
Jan 132022
Institutions are never repaired, only replaced.
Jan 032022
Things were so much better when you were.
Dec 312021
What has disappeared, with the decline of formal religion, is not religion but formality.
Dec 162021
Privacy was ephemeral, almost accidental, springing up here and there in that fleeting century between poverty and universal surveillance.
Sep 212021
No political ideology, according to its advocates, has ever really been tried.
Sep 102021
To choose a side of history is to excuse implicitly the atrocities committed in its name.
Jun 012021
Atrocity, A Natural History
1. It didn’t happen.
2. It was much smaller than you think.
3. It was entirely justified.
4. What we need is more such atrocities.
May 262021
The map used not to be the territory: to make it so has been the great modern project.