“When you speak to customers, don’t let them know you are the owners.” This was the advice given to my wife and me by the previous owners when we bought a business in 2020. Continue Reading...
Latest Posts
January 11, 2024
Over-Regulation Is Strangling Panama—and the U.S.
Beginning in mid-October, Panamanian activists, led by the militant leftist labor union SUNTRACS, brought much of Panama to a standstill, blocking roads and filling Panama City with daily demonstrations against a copper-mining contract with Canadian firm First Quantum. Continue Reading...
January 10, 2024
The Curse of The Iron Claw
Four decades ago, the American director Robert Aldrich made the most cheerful, companionable, and charitable movie ever produced about professional wrestling. Against all expectations, Aldrich—the grand master of the grotesque on the basis of such cartoonishly misanthropic masterpieces as Kiss Me Deadly, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Continue Reading...
January 09, 2024
A Future Fit for Conservatives
If you wanted to capture the current conservative mood—a surefire way to sell books—you would write a despairing jeremiad that extrapolates from every worrying trend. James Pethokoukis deserves praise for daring to do just the opposite. Continue Reading...
January 05, 2024
Thinking and Drinking with Plato
My favorite back-to-school reading this year has been Alex Priou’s Musings on Plato’s Symposium. I hurry to add that I’ve long been out of school, but I did pick up the habit of reading there, and what’s more American than lifelong learning? Continue Reading...
January 04, 2024
Evangelicals, Trump, and Witnessing for the Truth
Tim Alberta’s new book, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism, opens with the death of his father, Richard Alberta, an evangelical minister in suburban Michigan. Continue Reading...
January 03, 2024
Stop Pulling Punches Against Anti-Racism
One of the most telling quotes I’ve heard regarding the conservative movement on racial issues comes from political commentator Candace Owens’ Twitter bio: “Black people don’t have to be Democrats—still.” It epitomizes the modern conservative disconnect: we are very, very good at criticizing existing political visions and are conversely very, very bad at creating alternate ones that appeal to people not on our side. Continue Reading...
December 28, 2023
An Inferno for Our Times
Dante’s purpose in writing the Divine Comedy is placed in the mouth of Virgil a mere 76 lines into Canto I of the Inferno. The poet questions his charge’s malaise at his seemingly hopeless state: “But you, why are you turning back to misery? Continue Reading...
December 27, 2023
A Fine Primer on Universal Basic Income
Universal basic income (UBI), freedom dividends, permanent fund dividends, guaranteed income … these are all names that have been used over the past 200 years to describe the same essential policy proposition: to provide a permanent income to citizens from their government. Continue Reading...
December 25, 2023
Santa Claus vs. Artemis: A Christmas Story
As we deck the halls with boughs of holly this year, read the story of Christ’s Nativity, sing hymns and carols, exchange gifts, and light our homes in increasingly irrational competition verging on mutually assured destruction with our neighbors, we must not lose sight of the real “reason for the season”: Santa’s victory over the pagan goddess Artemis. Continue Reading...
