I am very fond of Spenser's analysis of twin ways to deceive and rifle the ordinary public, in Faerie Queene 5.2. The canto divides neatly in half: we must pay attention when Spenser does that.

In the first half, there's a narrow bridge over a river that people have to cross,

When I was a small boy, the first present I ever specifically asked my parents for was a dog. They got me one for my seventh birthday. He was a collie runt, and we bought him from the pound in Allentown, for $35. I named him Duke.

In those days, especially in the town where I

It has suddenly struck me:

A people that views criticism as 'making me feel unsafe' and that wishes to eliminate all risk from ordinary life cannot possibly be a people that loves liberty.

What appeal does the workplace have? People complain about it all the time, it often

Somebody says below that it is a 'horrific cruelty' to tell men that they need to be more masculine. Horrific cruelty.

Bringing a dehumidifier to the Sahara. Recommending a fast for the anemic.

When a boy in the Sioux tribe came of age, he and his fellows were made to do the

I read the New Testament and I find two things pressing upon me at all times:

The first is that I am guilty as charged, again and again and again.

The second is that God has not abandoned me, and I may throw myself upon His mercy.

This is why I find political interpretations

You'll get more truth about man in one short story by Flannery O'Connor than in a year's worth of -- well, I don't want to say.
You can't flatter man and tell the truth. The subject will not bear flattery.

Bringing a fire extinguisher to a flood, Catholics dalla sinistra warn us, the most amnesiac and culturally rootless people ever to walk the earth, that conservatives risk trapping themselves in the past.

News flash: every literary, artistic, musical, and cultural revival that I

People tend to spend near to the money they make. It isn't wise, but it's what they do. Now then, when the household has two incomes, it doesn't necessarily mean that there will be a lot more money in the bank; much of the 'extra' income evaporates in a bigger house, extra

Consult Stalinists about human rights? Astrologers about history? Dervishes about equanimity? Englishmen about cuisine? ;)

Sooner any of those than consult a society of baby-snuffing porn-gazing family-carving child-gelders about ANYTHING regarding marriage and raising children.

By far the most accomplished woman I know personally (whose name I won't reveal because I don't want to cause her trouble) recommended that I read Mr. Butker's commencement speech -- she said it was spectacular. This was before I told her that I'd written about it.

There are a

The priest is to be MORE fatherly, not less, than is the father of a family; the religious sister is to be MORE motherly, not less, than is the mother of a family. For the great majority of people, both male and female, the good of the home must be the prime earthly aim of their

On work and the family:

Charles Peguy's farmer, in The Mystery of the Portal of Hope, says that no man works except for his children.

I had a student, one of my brightest and wisest ever, who told me he was planning to go to law school. He had already, in his teens, gotten

On Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion:

I cannot take seriously anybody who says he's all for 'diversity,' but who wants the monstrous public school monopoly to crush the attempts of the charter school movement to provide people with alternatives, and to crush attempts to permit

Today at Word and Song:

No Highway in the Sky (1951), by Anthony Esolen open.substack.com/pub/anthonyeso…

Plato said that the education of the young is fundamentally musical. There's a lot to investigate, there.

Certainly he meant at least this: To be educated is to have the right passions for the right things, as if you were moving the body in accord with the music of a dance.

When I was a small boy, people took a lot of things for granted when it came to obedience.

You obeyed your parents.
You didn't act up in the classroom.
You went to church and you didn't slouch or carry on.
You accepted that certain things were wrong or bad: divorce, for example.

Adam and Eve pray beneath the open sky, by Anthony Esolen open.substack.com/pub/anthonyeso…

Another excellent class at Thales College today, on Mill's Utilitarianism. It's wonderful to teach young people who:

READ what you ask them to read;
Have intelligent QUESTIONS about it;
FOLLOW the points you are making;
CONNECT the reading with other things they have read or

I have never trusted people who talk a lot about their feelings, or who encourage others to talk about theirs.

First, we hardly know what those feelings are.
Second, we are not really honest about them.
Third, they come and go.
Fourth, we have considerable influence over what

In 1945, Major League Baseball was a retrograde institution. It was still for whites only, though its southernmost and westernmost teams were in St. Louis, so this couldn't be blamed on southerners alone.

Then Branch Rickey, one of the great men of the century, broke the color