On any website or blog, those who leave comments make up a minute fraction of the readership. Those who spend hours a day composing sundry and bizarre screeds are even more rare, though their presence is more pronounced. One should never presume that one could gage anything about a website’s general readership from the hysterics of a tiny minority. As one … [Read More]

How did Matt Welch, who knows nothing about libertarianism, ever get in the position of becoming editor of Reason, the emblematic libertarian magazine? It is a position, after all, that has a bit of history to it, one that covers the life span of the modern libertarian movement from its very inception. It is a position, therefore, of some honor, … [Read More]

I originally planned to devote this blog to three books that had crossed my desk, none of which will likely receive the publicity it deserves. These worthwhile books are Terrence Zuber’s study of the piecemeal, defensive character of German war planning before World War One, Inventing the Schlieffen Plan (Oxford University Press, 2002); Harry Redner’s learned and highly civilized examination of … [Read More]

This morning, a bottle hit the Manhattan island shore, containing a rather distressing log from The Weekly Standard‘s annual Caribbean Cruise. It seems that things have gone terribly awry aboard the dreadnaught HMS Hegemonic. Bimini: Great news—no going back to Fort Lauderdale. The good ship Hegemonic has just been bought by some Greek tycoon who thinks we deserve a longer vacation! … [Read More]

In response to security concerns arising from recent Al-Qaeda threats to the person of the Holy Father, and equally to the alarming news that the number of Moslems worldwide has just exceeded (for the first time) the number of Catholics, researchers at the Vatican’s high-tech Apostolic Institute for Experimental Laboratories—a Jesuit congregation founded in 1692—have announced plans to “update and entirely … [Read More]