Jozef Brandt, Return from Vienna, 1883.

3,350 words

I’m a pretty cold-hearted realist, but after such a buildup of how the Right has been losing again and again for over a century, I expected something perhaps a bit more stirring. Some call to arms, or flowering prose. Instead, you essentially offer “Who knows? Our luck may change; stranger things have happened.” (more…)

Ludwig Wittgenstein

1,938 words

Don’t use the rules.
They’re not for you,
They’re for the fools.
And you’re a fool
If you don’t know that.

So, here’s the rules
You stupid fool.

— The Clash, “Cheat” (more…)

2,289 words

Anyone who remembers the 1980s can recall exactly what they were doing when the space shuttle Challenger exploded just 73 seconds after lifting off on January 28, 1986. People at the Florida launch site openly wept, pounded their fists on the hoods of their cars, and held each other. Schoolchildren looked at the televised images of the disaster with horror. The news media went into a frenzy, and President Reagan delivered a televised eulogy that evening that was probably his best speech ever. (more…)

8,516 words

Thomas R. Pegram
One Hundred Percent American: The Rebirth and Decline of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s
Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2011

The Ku Klux Klan suffers from a positively radioactive reputation, even among fellow Rightists. During the infamous family dinner scene in American History X, at which Edward Norton’s Derek Vinyard assaults his sister and displays his swastika tattoo to the Jewish teacher dating his widowed mother, (more…)