Paris, France

July 10, 2026

In a world drowning in disunity, it’s comforting to find a sense of order - a consistency of style leavened with variety in detail.

We appreciate trees lining streets like soldiers in formation, shielding pedestrians from summer sun and passing cars. Grand boulevards blending with cobblestone streets and hillside steps. Façades on buildings tastefully tall, that exude symmetry to exalt beauty. Low-slung bridges crossing the Seine, linking quais and quartiers that remain distinct on both banks, adorned with emblems and statuary exalting heroes that glorified France. Dozens of neighborhood churches and museums, any of which would be reason enough to visit most American cities, are almost afterthoughts amid the abundance.

But the greatest monument in Paris is the city itself. There’s no other like it. It’s the suave sister its urban siblings long to be. But reconstructive surgery was required to evoke their envy.

Ramshackle City

At the time of Philippe Auguste in the late twelfth century, Paris was a city of wooden shacks and muddy streets. Its original Roman name, Lutetia, was an apt appellation (“marsh” sounds much better when translated into Latin).

Philippe, appalled by the offal and filth that marred “roads” along the Seine, ordered all paths paved with stone. During his reign Notre-Dame’s façade was finished, and the Louvre was built as a fortress guarding the Seine.

All this helped… but not much. Under Philippe Auguste, Paris became permanent capital of France. But much of the city remained ramshackle. For several centuries, plague, war, and religious turmoil kept it mired in dilapidated chaos.

Even the arrival of the Renaissance focused affluence and art more along the Loire than beside the Seine. While Valois chateaux rose between Blois and Tours, Paris bided its time.

At the turn of the 17th century, the Bourbons began beautifying the city. The Protestant Henri IV decided Paris was worth a Mass, and became Catholic to be crowned king.

During his reign the Pont Neuf and Grande Galerie du Louvre were completed. But his greatest bequest was the Place des Vosges, the former jousting ground that graces the Marais. Tall privacy walls and large wooden doors shield exquisite mansions, museums, and corporate headquarters on the other side.

Venus from a Cesspool

Despite decamping to Versailles, the Sun King continued making improvements to Paris that his grandfather began. The Place Vendôme was his most significant development.

Started by the architect-developer Jules Hardouin Mansart in 1686 as a for-profit townhouse ploy, the project began to wobble. Louis XIV was importuned to rescue it by putting the royal mint and other offices along the site.

At first, Mansart had erected only the building façades… as a Potemkin gimmick to entice buyers. When the scheme failed, they were torn down and the plaza was redesigned in 1699 to the familiar octagon it is today.

The Place des Victoires was a more successful private venture, a 127-foot-diameter circular plaza, also by Mansart, focused on an equestrian statue of the king.

But the main problem persisted. The Royal purse couldn’t sustain both Versailles and the city. So Parisians suffered cramped streets, filthy slums, awful sanitation, and inhuman housing for much of the populace.

But like Venus from a cesspool, beauty occasionally popped its head above the mire. The marvelous dome and complex of Les Invalides rose in 1671 as a soldiers’ hospital and home in a rural quarter on the Left Bank.

Across the river about the same time, Lenôtre laid out the Champs-Élysées. The boulevard became an elaborate entrance to Paris and a formal approach to a Tuileries Palace that rarely saw the Royals.

Touristy and a bit tacky today, when it opened the avenue was essentially a grand, expansive road through the woods. Development around it would mostly wait till after the Revolution.

As trees were depleted in the 17th century, virtually all new buildings were combinations of dressed stone, brick, or stucco. In 1667, the crown attempted to place height restrictions on Parisian houses, limiting them to five stories plus an attic. These caps were loosely enforced and often ignored.

Pebble in a Pond

The beautification (and sanitation) of Paris would wait till after the wreckage of the Revolution, and of a few that followed in the next half century.

The re-design was (literally) the surface achievement of the Second Empire. Emperor Louis Napoleon styled himself a “second Augustus”, envying how the first one made Rome “a city of marble.” With Haussmann as his prefect, he “ripped open the belly of Paris”.

During the operation, the entire abdomen was removed. The patient was in rough shape. For three centuries the population of Paris had exploded, with hordes of unskilled workers drawn from the stingy soil of a harsh countryside to the Medieval maze of Parisian streets.

The Seine had become the city’s main sewer. Streets were a fetid stew of pestilence, trash, and excremental deposits from hundreds of horses and thousands of men. Tenants piled into dilapidated structures that rose up to six stories above the street, with residents’ wealth declining inversely with distance from the ground.

Like a pebble in a pond, the new Paris radiated outward from the Arc de Triomphe. The number of avenues extending from l’Étoile rose from five to twelve.

Their names recall famous Frenchmen and Napoleon’s victories. The two exceptions are the Champs Élysées and the Avenue de la Grande Armée that extend each direction from under the arch.

Haussmann oversaw destruction of about 20,000 buildings lodging more than 100,000 people, particularly along the narrow streets in the center of the city. The outlines of demolished structures and streets remain marked on the Parvis de Notre-Dame, the open plaza in front of the cathedral.

Some argue that the tight Medieval maze made Paris tough for authorities to control, prompting the emperor to open it up to crack down. Perhaps.

But sanitation was terrible, with trash, human waste, and animal excrement ubiquitous, flowing thru streets to streams, and into the septic system known as the Seine.

At mid-century fewer than 5% of the city’s dwellings had running water, none of it clean. It came from wells that fermented fatal diseases. Cholera outbreaks were common, and became more likely as crowding continued. Some alleys retain the camber that once carried sewage down their center.

Haussmann tapped springs from the Champagne region as sources of clean water, and appointed Eugene Belgrand to expand a subterranean sewer system for Paris. He harnessed the hydraulic power of waste and rainwater to propel flow thru his expanding network of underground pipes.

Horizontal Sutures

At the surface, Haussmann’s grand boulevards served as horizontal sutures after reconstructive surgery, with unifying apartment blocks featuring friezes and balconies as horizontal seams.

Adorning these immeubles haussmanniens, a couple stories below the Mansard roofs, transition lines of cast-iron verandas and decorative friezes are civilizing influences, using geometry to accentuate urban order thru architectural unity.

Immeubles can’t be taller than seven stories. The cut-stone façade is their distinctive feature. All floors and windows are set at the same level, giving the buildings an appealing cohesion that helps stitch the urban fabric.

Entrances are often double doors between shops or businesses on the ground level. These establishments usually have high ceilings and a narrow mezzanine corresponding to a second floor.

Parisian buildings exude decorum. Aside from monumental government or religious structures, they don’t strive to awe the bourgeois with bold statements. They’re unified by elegance and understatement, with diversity reserved for storefronts on the ground floor. Other than the occasional flair enlivening the entrance, Parisian edifices tend to be dignified backdrops to activity on the street.

Most of these streets, and particularly the grand boulevards, are also deliberately assembled. Even wide avenues convey the intimate sense of cozy corridors. Most Parisian streets predate the automobile, many by centuries. Some, like the Rue St Denis or roads to Montmartre, were once country lanes leading out of Paris.

But the city has done an admirable job accommodating the car. Parisian boulevards are pieced together in an elegant way, allowing motor traffic, parking, and pedestrians to share the corridor in an amenable manner.

Even the widest roads, which are usually garish and revolting in the United States, are pleasant thoroughfares in the heart of Paris. This is because of conscious coordination among constituent parts.

Small medians typically line each side, hosting series of identical trees formally planted at equal spacing and standard height. These form an emphatic line along the street, making it look less wide than it actually is, while also separating side (local) lanes with parallel parking from the main flow of traffic, and offering shade and a psychological shield to pedestrians.

Streets are very ordered, with disciplined architecture featuring rusticated neoclassicism, with arched doorways and cut stone incised into a uniform array of outer walls. The ensemble is bound by beautiful buildings of appropriate height, with façades fronting the edge of the sidewalk, and often anchored at either end by a terminating vista of an iconic edifice.

Paris reminds us that appealing urban places are contingent on the ability to shape space with public buildings. In its plazas, parks, avenues, alleys, and promenades, Paris does this.

Shops, bars, and bistros line sidewalks and surround plazas, with waitresses, patrons, and pedestrians flowing in and out of adjacent buildings. This scene is common all over Paris.

In this city, as in much of Europe, people congregate because the setting is inherently appealing. Concerts, games, and gimmicks aren’t needed to attract them to town.

Geometry, Proportion, and Scale

The French place greater emphasis on geometry, proportion, and scale than their English-speaking counterparts. They employ these elements to infuse order and unity into public spaces. This is particularly evident in their parks.

With some notable exceptions, such as the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont on the east side of the city, most Parisian parks retain the Baroque formality of Lenôtre. Unlike informal “green spaces” in England and America, Parisian parks respect their purpose to present a peaceful part of a civilized place, not to pretend to be wilderness in the middle of a city.

Urban greenery is necessarily formal. Parisians understand this, and don’t use parks as palettes to replicate the rural. Like Parisian streets, the city’s gardens are layered. Just like the people they were designed to please.

But no place is perfect. Like any of them, Paris makes mistakes. Tomorrow we’ll take a look at some of the few things it’s done wrong.

JD

Verdun, France

July 8, 2026

[NB: Previous installments are linked here, here, and here]

“But here in this graveyard that’s still No Man’s Land
The countless white crosses in mute witness stand
To man’s blind indifference to his fellow man,
And a whole generation who were butchered and damned.”

- Eric Bogle, “The Green Fields of France” (1976)

Every village in France has a monument to the dead… morts pour la patrie. About a million and a half French soldiers went to early graves between the Guns of August and the Treaty of Versailles.

This death toll exceeds what America suffered in the War Between the States and both World Wars… combined. Of eight million men France mobilized during the Great War, almost six million became casualties.

Traversing the green fields of northeastern France, the traveler can’t imagine that beneath sunflowers swaying under gentle breezes were pestilential pits resembling waiting rooms in Hell.

The ruts were deep enough to stand, but precluded their captives seeing over the top. Drudgery, disease, lice, fleas, flies, rats, excrement, flooding, and filth were the daily lot for millions of young men who’d barely escaped being boys. Many others never would.

With much of the front below sea level, trench depth assured soldiers’ shoes (assuming they had any) were always in mud. Water oozed from the walls. For more than half the year it fell from the sky.

Excepting seasons when it froze, bailing the seepage was a full-time job. During battle, emptying the trench wasn’t possible.

Even without rain (which was often relentless and torrential), the pits became open sewers that submerged torsos enduring enemy fire.

Along the front, battlefield mud was almost alive, with an insatiable appetite that consumed any man, machine, weapon, or horse that had the misfortune to step or fall into the hungry mire. Accounts relay that whatever did rarely got out.

The typical British, French, and German soldiers weighed less than 150 pounds. The average American may have contained 10-20 more.

But they wore, carried, or bore clothes, packs, and guns that could add another 100 pounds of soaked gear thru mud up to their knees and water over their waist. Trench foot joined shell shock as maladies indelibly linked to the First World War.

Ubiquitous Death

Incoming artillery often arrived in a deluge akin to drops of rain in a summer storm. Some might’ve welcomed the barrage of bullets, to provide eternal release from this abhorrent existence.

When fighting occurred, the troughs became muddy medical units and makeshift morgues. Stacked corpses reinforced sodden walls that otherwise caved at the slightest touch. As they became desensitized to ubiquitous death, soldiers used dead bodies as stepping stones, supporting props, or temporary tables within the trench.

This nightmarish existence persisted for years amid armed conflict at a scale no soldiers had ever endured. Artillery barrages were relentless in persistence and scope, with many shells emitting the yellow pall of poison gas.

The carnage was unfathomable. France suffered almost 300,000 casualties in the two-week massacre known as the Battle of the Marne, including about ten percent of her officers. And this was a French victory… still referred to in France as the “Miracle on the Marne” for how it was “won”.

In the first five months of fighting, France mourned three quarters as many dead as the Britain buried during the entire Second World War. Almost 30,000 Frenchmen fell on the first day of the Battle of the Frontiers.

It got worse. The British army suffered 60,000 casualties (20,000 dead) on the first day along the Somme… a battle that lasted four more months. That single offensive would claim more than a million casualties.

Numb Disbelief

We spent the day in and around the village of Verdun. Few places are as simultaneously solemn, harrowing, lovely, and revolting.

Between the first Battle of the Marne and Ludendorff’s last assault before the Americans arrived, Verdun joined Ypres as the sites of the only German offensives on the Western Front. The focus of fighting was the fortress of Douaumont on the right bank of the Meuse.

Verdun was the longest battle in modern history, and among the deadliest of all time. Vegetation has reconquered what was once a moonscape of mud, masonry, and human remains in which whole companies were buried alive.

Four hundred thousand Frenchmen were killed or wounded at Verdun, of which about 160,000 went under the earth. At Verdun, forty times more lives were lost in the battle than lived in the town.

The tower and crosses of the Douaumont ossuary guard the remains of 130,000 unknown soldiers in shared granite tombs. Down the road, we walked thru tunnels under the fortress French and Germans fought over for most of a year. After the fighting, the only upshot was destroyed towns, scorched terrain, and hundreds of thousands dead.

On the site of Fleury-devant-Douaumont, a village that vanished under the Battle of Verdun, the façade of a memorial chapel is graced by a Madonna. The Chapelle Notre-Dame-de-l’Europe mourns the town that died for France.

For France, the “victory” was “glorious”… yet Pyrrhic. Its devastating losses essentially assured defeat a generation later.

The Western Front carved these peaceful fields like a seismic fault that kept slipping. Within northeast France, the devastation and death were so extensive that they still evoke numb disbelief.

The Second Battle of the Aisne cost France 180,000 casualties. Unsurprisingly, within weeks of that slaughter (and after three years of senseless butchery), men began to mutiny.

They attacked their officers, decoupled engines from trains, and implored entire divisions to refuse to fight. Within a month, the insurrection afflicted half the French army.

General Pétain restored order before the Germans found out. He reassured his forces by letting them wait “for the Americans and the tanks.” U.S. intervention would tip the balance of this war, and press the scale to assure another.

The collapse of Russia relieved German forces in the east. Ludendorff made a final push to crush the Allies before more American doughboys arrived. This “Spring Offensive” claimed another 1.5 million casualties.

Pea Gravel

That summer, the Spanish Flu made its appearance, ultimately claiming more lives than the entire war. Through the infection, the fighting persisted.

German forces came within sixty miles of Paris before being repelled in the Hundred Days Offensive. This final campaign carried the war to its conclusion, with another two million killed, wounded, or unaccounted for by the time the Armistice ended the carnage.

Or did it?

East of the Rhine, communism was ascendant, revolution was in the wind, and ancient animosities erupted among ethnic tribes fighting over the carcasses of fallen empires.

To the West as well, “peace” was a passing illusion… a pause in a gruesome Thirty Years War. But France welcomed the respite to lick its wounds.

The catastrophe cost the country seven percent of its population. As with the British and Italians, more French were killed in the First World War than in the Second.

Even the late-arriving Americans, who (aside from the usual financial interests and munitions makers) had no stake in the outcome of the slaughter, lost men at a faster clip than in the War Between the States.

This afternoon, we paid respects to some of the dead. It’s almost impossible to see each of the thousands of cemeteries bearing bones of soldiers sacrificed in that worthless war.

We chose the French National Cemetery around Douaumont Ossuary, the tower of which depicts an artillery shell. Over 16,000 French soldiers lie here, plus those of a couple thousand Muslim colonists. Within the nearby fort, hundreds of German soldiers are also entombed.

Like pea gravel on a park path, tombstones and crosses pack together across northeastern France. After four years of incessant carnage, ten million men quietly screamed beneath the earth.

But while wreaths on their graves were still green, leaders in countless countries above the ground had already discarded what they had to say.

JD

PS - One of the best songs about this worthless war was written by Eric Bogle, and the Dropkick Murphys gave one of its most poignant performances (which, I grant, is not how Dropkick Murphys performances are usually described):

Reims, France

July 7, 2026

[NB: Previous installments are linked here and here]

Three centuries after Christ, the Roman Empire was coming apart. But fourth century Gaul was among the more materially prosperous, intellectually advanced provinces of the western realm.

The rising Franks had arrived from the east, pressed west by encroaching Huns. They were a hardy race that reveled in being free. That’s (ostensibly) what their name meant. They were enfranchised after liberating themselves by repelling Roman rule.

Though they could be fearsome fighters, they waged war less often than our own enlightened leaders. The Franks also left legislation that preserved relative prosperity and general peace.

These prescriptions were inscribed in the Salic Law. Though wide-ranging, its most consequential code proscribed Salic land being inherited into female hands.

A millennium later, this clause kept English King Edward III from capturing the French crown thru his French mother. That slight launched the Hundred Years’ War.

In the fifth century, a possibly apocryphal Frankish ruler called Merovech spawned a dynasty, and had a grandson who essentially founded France.

Clovis (a Merovingian version of “Louis”, the origin of eighteen French monarchs of that name) was fifteen when he took the throne as the “first” Merovingian, and consolidated his kingdom by grabbing northwestern Gaul. A few years after his death, the Burgundians abandoned Arianism for Catholicism, and succumbed to the Franks.

Clovis’s conquests reached Brittany and the Loire. They also included Clothilde, a Christian woman who became his queen… and converted him to the Faith.

Baptized by St Remi at Reims, Clovis set a precedent for his successors. After 1027, most French kings were crowned in that city’s cathedral.

For some, it took a while, which undermined their legitimacy. During the third phase of the Hundred Years’ War, the English invasion precluded Charles VII from receiving his crown at Reims.

After lifting the siege of Orléans, Joan of Arc led Charles to Reims to legitimize his reign. The tide of war turned, the English were ousted, and Reims retained a soft spot in French hearts. As does its cathedral, which has been our companion and guide since we arrived.

From the window and balcony of our hotel room, it fills the scene and awes the senses. From a distance, it’s a benchmark and compass: its eastern orientation provides direction; the twin towers become looming beacons that bring us home.

Style and Structure

Like the Scholastic summae of the Middle Ages, Gothic architecture synthesizes preceding traditions rather than exclusively adopting or rejecting previous forms. It represented systematic construction, creating overall coherence from individual components.

The cathedral often dominated Medieval cities. In Reims, which is now home to almost 200,000 people, it still does. After visiting it, we can see why.

With counterparts at Amiens and Chartres, Notre Dame de Reims is one of three major Marian cathedrals from the 13th century. The cathedral that preceded the current masterpiece burned down in 1210, when building began on the Gothic gem for which the city is now known.

Twin towers (which originally featured spires) entice the pilgrim as he approaches from the west. The front tympana boast rose windows that let evening light flood the nave. Though these heavenly filters replace sculpture that often adorns space above doors, statuary abounds around the façade.

More statues grace Reims cathedral than any other church in France. Thousands of saints, angels, prophets, demons, bishops, and kings fill archivolts and pediments, surmount columns, and consume space between the towers and beside the doors.

I’ve not seen flying buttresses as systematic and dramatic as they are at Reims. That’s because architectural ingenuity makes them hard to see at all. Their bases are capped with ornate spires that grace engineering with the gift of art, becoming decorative turrets that strengthen the structure.

Gothic vaults push outward against the walls. Flying buttresses redirect that lateral thrust into vertical piers on the exterior. But horizontal thrust combines with the weight of the pier to create a diagonal force. If that force’s vector tilts too far from vertical, it exits the base of the buttress, tempting it to topple outward.

The heavy stone spires atop the piers steepen the force vector, pulling it vertical so it stays within the middle of the buttress’s footprint. Because masonry is excellent in compression but very weak in tension, keeping the thrust-line centered prevents the joints from opening on the outer face.

The pinnacles atop Reims buttresses are unusually tall and elaborate. Many house tabernacles with statues of angels. That extra mass isn’t merely an ornamental flourish.

The added weight permits slimmer, more daring buttresses while still resisting wind loads and the thrust from the high vaults. In a partnership that was once an aspiration of architecture, style and structure perform supplemental functions.

The roof superstructure is a concrete copy of the wooden original destroyed in the First World War. To supply flexibility, oak pegs secure the reinforced concrete beams.

With the new roof being more structurally stable and less susceptible to fire, visitors are allowed to wander under the rafters - a space resembling an overturned hull of a concrete ship. We were proud to learn that American donations made this restoration possible.

A proliferation of immaculate stonework reflects admirable attention to detail. These craftsmen were indifferent to our inability to detect defects from the distant ground. Sculptures are everywhere. Angels, demons, gargoyles, beasts, and anonymous men make an appearance in stone.

Uncredentialed Expertise

Interiors of Medieval cathedrals are typically distinguished by a light choir and darker nave. But Reims offers the opposite effect, primarily because the stained glass windows were removed from the nave yet remain in the choir.

Reims features a three-part elevation of aisle, triforium, and clerestory windows. Verticality defines the nave, with bay pillars topped by intricate capitals.

Looking up, standard four-part vaults support a distant ceiling that recedes toward the sky. The triforium arches are sharply pointed, consistent with those connecting the aisle to the nave. Elaborate capitals enhance the columns, and epitomize the uncredentialed expertise that created these gems.

In most cathedrals, a wall separates the altar from the ambulatory. Reims does too. But the wall is low enough to permit a view thru the candelabra toward the west entrance. It’s astonishing. A pair of stained glass rose windows represent the interior of the tympana over the central doors.

About fifty statues surround the lower rose, including depictions of John the Baptist, Old Testament prophets, and the story of Melchizedek giving bread and wine to Abraham, with the patriarch dressed as a Medieval knight.

The choir windows are original, and the stained glass is a remarkable arrangement reflecting apostolic succession. The apostles grace the upper tiers, with assorted bishops (including the Archbishop of Reims and his subsidiaries) featured below. Reims cathedral itself is also shown, emphasizing its perceived primacy in the annals of France.

Ravages of War

Leaving the church, we glance again at the jamb statues around the central west entrance. Most notable are depictions of Mary and Elizabeth during the Visitation. Their graceful disposition differs from most stiff Medieval sculpture. The facial expressions and garment folds betray familiarity with the ease and flow of Roman forms and Greek art.

The “smiling angel” Gabriel has for six centuries greeted visitors at the west front portal. But he was forced from his post for a dozen years. The statue was decapitated during the First World War. The Germans had taken the town, and converted the cathedral into a hospital.

When the occupiers abandoned the city, the church received their heaviest artillery. Some of it hit the rear of the building, igniting pine scaffolding that was emplaced around the edifice.

Flames consumed Medieval rafters and beams supporting the roof. The heat caused some of the stones to crack, and severed the head from the neck of the smiling angel.

At the time there wasn’t much to smile about. By the end of the Great War, over 90% of Reims was in ruins.

Of a population of 115,000 that heard the guns of August, fewer than 2,000 remained to appreciate the Armistice. Many had hidden in Champagne cellars honeycombed beneath the city.

A sizable post-war sentiment wanted to leave Reims in wreckage as a memorial to the ravages of war (much as Oradour-sur-Glane was embalmed after the next world war). Fortunately, that inclination didn’t last.

Reconstruction commenced, and though the cathedral didn’t re-open till 1935, the smiling angel retrieved his head almost a decade earlier. Around the façade, other saints and angels attest the horror of war with their missing limbs.

What Matters Most

Before the First World War, Reims rivaled Chartres in the glory of its stained glass. Most of it succumbed to German shelling in the first months of fighting. The transparent panes are bandages on war wounds that never healed.

An exception is in the apse behind the altar, a set of 20th century stained glass in intense deep-blue: a deliberate nod to the lapis hue that’s common to Gothic glass.

But the images depicted in the panels… the Tree of Jesse, a mingling of the story of Abraham with the life of Christ, and the coronation of French kings… intentionally reflect modern influence, to remind viewers what was lost.

When we learned these panes were by Marc Chagall, a favorite artist of my wife’s late father, we were consoled that what matters most will always be with us.

JD

Reims, France

July 6, 2026

[NB: The previous installment is linked here]

“When a man say no to Champagne, he say no to life.”

- Julien Grinda in The Deer Hunter

“The magnum is the best format for two people… when one of the parties is not drinking”

- Winston Churchill

Seventeen years after the Nazis surrendered in Reims, its cathedral was selected for a ceremony presided by Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer, to celebrate reconciliation between France and West Germany.

They picked a city with ample fuel to fill their glasses. The Benedictine monk Dom Pérignon is the reputed creator of the beverage named for this remarkable region. But no one really knows.

Family Business

Another Benedictine, historiographer and theologian Dom Thierry Ruinart, lived amid the aristocracy of Paris in the age of Louis XIV. Among them he witnessed a fascination for “wines with bubbles” from his home region of Reims.

He shared his perception of commercial potential with his family, but died two decades before his nephew, Nicolas Ruinart, started the business. Demand grew so quickly that within a decade Nicolas abandoned his textile ambitions to sell champagne.

Established in 1729 atop the Butte Saint-Nicaise southeast of Reims, Maison Ruinart is the oldest producer of champagne in Champagne. The cellars are spectacular, accessed thru enormous underground rooms, excavated from the surrounding chalk down to forty meters under the earth.

It was these caves that sixth-generation owner Andre Ruinart opened as shelter to locals when Reims was razed by German guns. Today his descendants opened them to us.

Almost 140 steps burrow into a five-mile network of tunnels carved thru the soft stone. Subterranean walls reveal marks third-century Romans made when they quarried chalk from tapered crayères resembling conical flasks, which Ruinart adapted to ferment and age his fine champagne.

Much as I shun dark enclosures, part of me resisted entering these confined spaces. But the chalk walls lend a light airiness that alleviates claustrophobia. And I had to go when I learned Thomas Jefferson ordered cases from these underground vaults. On our way out, we did too.

Twenty-four Grand Marques, hundreds of cooperatives, and thousands of small independent producers dot the rolling hills around Reims. Machine picking isn’t allowed on any of them.

In Champagne, all grapes must be picked by hand. Each August, a hundred thousand of workers take a couple weeks to relieve the vines of ripe fruit.

About a half hour from town toward Épernay, past the village of Bouzy, Ambonnay nestles in the valley of the Marne.

Ostensibly established by a third-century Roman who gave his name to the town, Ambonnay is now home to Champagne Dominique Foureur, where vigneron Gaëlle Foureur and her brother manage a small estate her ancestors started in the 1850s.

Gaëlle guided us thru the tunnels and workshops of the family business she now runs. Producing about 15,000 annual cases from her ten acres of vineyard, Foureur makes champagne from her own grapes, and sells excess supply to other operators.

She emphasizes environmentally-minded viticulture, grassing over the vineyard rows to avoid herbicides (a common practice among producers in Champagne, including Ruinart).

Biological controls displace insecticides to alleviate pests. Among Gaëlle’s techniques are applying moths’ pheromone so males can’t locate females, which disrupts reproduction without spraying poison on the vines.

Against caterpillars that eat the buds, she deploys a naturally occurring bacterium emitting a protein toxin that afflicts caterpillars, but that leaves people, animals, and other insects unimpaired.

She demonstrated manual and mechanized methods of yeast extraction, cork installation, and label application during the bottling process, then welcomed us to her small tasting room to share results of her tireless effort.

Window to Heaven

France is famous for the fruit of the vine. It pours into millions of homes, bistros, cafes, and bars. But even in a country where faith is fleeting and many churches serve as municipal museums, some wine still fills the occasional chalice.

Remnants of Christian culture remain in Reims, most emphatically in ecclesiastical edifices that embellish the town. Notre-Dame de Reims anchors the area. But the nearby Basilica of St Remi was built first.

This eleventh century abbey replaced a sixth century chapel from which remains of St. Remi were moved. Though it survived the Revolution, the basilica suffered extensive damage during the First World War, and was assiduously refurbished during subsequent decades.

Smaller and darker than the nearby cathedral, the basilica is more peaceful and intimate than that popular church. Because of its blend of styles, it’s in some ways more architecturally interesting.

Begun as a Benedictine abbey built in the 11th century, the Basilica of St Remi is the largest Romanesque church in northern France. As with most ecclesiastical architecture surviving from the Middle Ages, it accrued additions and upgrades in subsequent eras.

As well as any structure, the abbey epitomizes the transition from Romanesque to Gothic. It also reflects the Catholic notion… derived from Pythagoras and Plato… that mathematics reveals the world’s relation to God. Geometry in particular was perceived as humanity’s window to Heaven, a cosmic blueprint connecting man to the Divine.

Ecclesial architecture in the High Middle Ages was a mathematical depiction of theologic principles and celestial order that exemplified symmetry, proportion, harmony, and beauty. The 13th century choir at St-Remi Basilica epitomizes this devotion to geometric consonance.

St Augustine believed God ordered everything “according to measure, number, and weight”. This influence is obvious to anyone entering the choir, a masterpeice of Trinitarian symbolism. Triple windows light three levels of the main apse. Multiplying the eleven bays in the elevation by the three stories of the choir yields the number of years Christ spent on earth.

The basilica is a transitional structure bridging architectural eras. Consecrated by Pope Leo IX in 1049, the transepts intersect a galleried nave extending 125 feet. As the original part of the building, this Romanesque core features the hulking walls, rounded arches, and thick pillars typical of that sturdy style.

The magnificent choir, radiating chapels, pointed arches, and groined vaults rode the Gothic wave of the next couple centuries. The stained glass gracing the apse and transepts also dates from this period. But lower levels retain the Romanesque aversion to large windows that jeopardized structural stability before later buttresses relieved lateral thrust.

Nave windows are correspondingly small… or (along the north aisle) blocked to preserve strength in the walls. Inside, elevation guides the transition from Romanesque to Gothic. Roman arches ascend toward groined vaults above the rounded windows of the clerestory. Similar cross vaulting supports the ceiling above the aisles.

An interior wall near the north transept reveals the architectural groping of those who built the abbey. Several windows appear to have been sealed, likely to enhance structural support for the Gothic Rose above the doors. Remnants of a column protrude about halfway up, presumably to support the pointed arches around prior windows.

The basilica houses remains of St Remi, the fifth century bishop and patron saint of Reims who baptized Clovis as first King of the Franks. The tomb of Clovis is also here, as is the Holy Ampulla - the glass vial containing the chrism that anointed the kings of France.

When Remi baptized Clovis in 496, the ampulla was ostensibly brought from heaven by a divine dove. It was found in St Remi’s sarcophagus in the 12th century and first used to coronate Louis VII in 1131.

As with almost everything else they touched, Revolutionaries destroyed it in 1793… though fragments were preserved and used again when Charles X assumed the throne in 1825.

Three French kings were anointed at St Remi, all before the cathedral was constructed. Since that structure was completed, such ceremony has mostly shifted from this church.

The “new” cathedral warrants its praise. But the old basilica deserves a toast.

JD

Reims, France

July 5, 2026

Atlanta boasts having the “World’s Busiest Airport”, as if that’s something to brag about. Why not remind everyone how awful the traffic is too?

Friday afternoon, we made it thru both, onto our flight, across the ocean… and into France the morning of the Fourth.

The airport at Charles de Gaulle isn’t great either. It’s busy, hectic, and (as we were reminded) can be quite disorganized. But at least it’s easy to escape.

Or so we’d assumed.

French trains are comfortable, fast, and frequent, and radiate from Paris like traffic from L’Etoile. But not all of them take us where we need to go. We had to board one to find that out.

Plane, Trains, and Automobile

As expected in summer, Parisian stations are packed… particularly at Charles de Gaulle. Around the atrium chairs were full. Walls propped the backs of prospective passengers, while luggage and floors supported their butts.

Overhead screens flipped train schedules like a hyper-caffeinated croupier. Yet the one to Reims never appeared. Within thirty minutes of departure I began to worry.

But then my SNCF app gave the signal. Our train would depart from platform 6. Relieved, we grabbed our bags and went toward the gate.

We weren’t the only ones. The mob moving out of the atrium resembled the evacuation from Dunkirk. The train to Champagne remained disconcertingly absent from the smorgasbord of cities blurring the board. But I trusted our app, and led my wife into the crowd.

We found our gate, and showed our tickets to the first agent we saw. With an indifferent smile she waved us forward.

Still uncertain as we inched toward an escalator that supposedly descended to our train, I asked another person wearing official colors. Then another. And another. Each assured us we were where we should be. But none could explain why schedules revealed no train to Reims.

“It’s OK”, the last one lied. “Ça viendra à voie B.” Well, if “it will come to track B”… then off to track B we’d go!

Once again, we hauled our bags thru the throngs, and wound our way to the appointed spot. Assured we were finally in the right place, we grabbed a seat, caught our breath, and began to relax as we awaited our ride.

A few minutes later, a train arrived. Because it was bound for Montpellier, we stayed put. Almost everyone else climbed aboard. But like giving financial assistance to a Nigerian prince, what we’d done didn’t make sense.

The platform was empty, our train was already supposed to have arrived, and our destination was still AWOL from any announcements. Something was off… almost eerie. I decided to ask another agent. When I did, his eyes widened and his voice rose.

“This is it!”, he insisted, pointing at the Montpellier train which had been sitting idle several minutes. “Get on! Get on! Now! It’s about to leave!”

I ran back to my wife, and told her (in what I’m sure was a very calm, composed tone) “LET’S GO! WE HAVE TO BOARD!!”

As we hustled, I wondered what I was doing. I knew where Montpellier was. That it was about 500 miles in the wrong direction should’ve fazed me. Yet I’d followed orders like an idiot, assuming a stranger in a uniform could’ve cared less where we were trying to go.

For all I knew, he and friends were buckled over laughing at making a moron of an American. But this one needs no help.

We clambered aboard, and the train started moving. Once it did, I again felt like I’d left the iron on. Going to Languedoc to get to Champagne didn’t seem right.

On a whim, fatigued and frustrated, I showed our tickets to another attendant.

“Oh no”, she gasped.

Uh oh.

“We’re on the wrong train?”, I sighed.

“No”, she said. “You’re in the wrong car.”

“But it’s the right train?”, I pleaded… enlisting hope as my only strategy.

“Oui”, she promised. “But you need to take another one.”

(What?)

“Get off at the next stop and go to platform 3. Take the train to Strasbourg. It will stop at Reims.”

At that moment it hit me what happened. Our tickets included our departure time, assigned seats, and final destination. Yet they kept an important step a secret. We were supposed to change trains at Marne-la-Vallée Chessy. It was like booking a flight from Pittsburgh to Paris and not being told about the connection in Atlanta.

At the next station, we hopped off, hauled our bags, and hurried to the Reims train. Assured we were on the right one, we sought our seats… which two people were in.

I showed them our tickets. They showed me theirs… which looked just like mine. They were in the right seats. A helpful passenger took a glance, and pointed out a familiar mistake.

“You’re in the wrong car.”

I started looking for Alan Funt.

But then I realized he was right. I’d been looking at our return ticket. For this trip, we needed to be one car up. There we found (our) two empty seats, and enjoyed a comfortable ride the rest of the way to Reims.

From the station we took an Uber to the hotel.

War Room

The Hotel Caserne Chanzy is centrally located, part of the modern façade of an ancient city.

The suicide of the West known as the First World War destroyed most of Reims. German bombs turned almost 90% of it to rubble and ash.

Because the damage during the Great War was so extensive, Reims was a fortuitous site for Allies to receive the German surrender after the sequel.

This was a common pattern since the Prussian war, after which the victorious Teutons proclaimed a unified Germany in the hall of Versailles. The French demanded the same spot to exact vengeance after World War I, which had ended with an Armistice at Foch’s rail car in Compiègne. Two decades later, Hitler chose Foch’s car in Compiègne for the French to submit when the Occupation began.

We wanted to see where this pattern persisted. After checking into our hotel and dispatching our bags, we decided to walk. Under warm skies of unblemished blue, we strolled toward a nondescript structure across the river from the center of the city.

The brick building once housed the Collège Moderne et Technique, but that purpose was paused when Eisenhower used the logistical advantages of Reims to make the school the regional base for the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF).

For several minutes, my wife and I stood alone in the place where the war in Europe came to an end.

In a dark room below Ike’s old office, large maps fill each wall, depicting the Allied stranglehold on the Reich. These were irrefutable arguments to anyone in the room, and surrounded a long rectangular table hosting sixteen chairs.

Three are isolated on one side. In them sat delegates of the defeated regime, who asked that German officials and citizens be treated with respect. From the other side of the table, the request was met with the silence of disdain.

The Allies wanted unconditional surrender. When the document demanding it slid under his pen, Alfred Jodl had no choice but to sign. The next day in Berlin, Wilhelm Keitel ratified the capitulation.

Eisenhower was too contemptuous of the Nazis to share the room with their three representatives, so he let Bedell Smith procure their signatures. When the Germans left, Eisenhower met Jodl on his way out.

He had only two questions. Did Jodl understand the conditions, and was he prepared to carry them out? Jodl said “ya”, accompanied by a submissive bow.

Eisenhower warned Jodl he’d be held personally responsible if terms were violated. Then the General walked away, and never shook the German’s hand.

Works of Fire

War has always afflicted Reims. The Remi tribe arrived a few decades before the Romans. They were still settling in when Caesar showed up. When he did, his new subjects secured his favor by helping suppress restless Gauls.

Originally called Durocortorum to denote its configuration as a “rounded fortress”, the settlement soon adopted the name of its tribe.

The city is delightful. Elegant edifices mingle with Roman ruins and Gothic influences. Beneath modern Reims the second-century Porte de Mars (the widest surviving Roman arch in the world) and the half-buried cryptoporticus at the Place du Forum are relics of Durocortorum.

Notre-Dame Cathedral and St Remi Basilica are the most obvious Medieval mementos. Around them are blocks of Art Deco decor with classical flair, reflecting the era when the city was rebuilt: after bombardment of the First World War, but before the architectural assault inflicted after the Second.

The Art Deco building in which our hotel is housed celebrated its hundredth anniversary Saturday night. Red carpets, Jazz Age ornaments, and ladies adorned in period dress welcomed singers, musicians, and dancers to a champagne party along the cobblestone block.

Our Fourth finished with lots of music, plenty of light, and genuine fire works. A fire-eating flame twirler dazzled attendees as they swigged champagne.

Les sapeurs-pompiers were honored as saviors of the city, with a few of these firefighters using our hotel balcony to descend to the street. By the time they did so, the works of fire were doused, the music ceased, and the cathedral bells tolled a new day.

JD

PS - a firefighter preparing to leap from our balcony ledge, as your correspondent snaps a photo while sipping champagne:

Paris, France

July 4, 2026

“[W]henever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.”

- Declaration of Independence

“Thomas Jefferson still survives.”

- John Adams, July 4, 1826

Two hundred years ago today, Thomas Jefferson died. A few hours later, John Adams joined him on the eternal journey. Fifty years earlier, the Declaration of Independence was adopted.

As we’ve repeated in several recent essays (e.g., here and here), today isn’t a “birthday”; it’s an anniversary. Lincoln notwithstanding, nothing was born, founded, or established in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776. State governments already existed, and no central one was created.

Natural rights and Enlightenment language provided rationale for the Declaration. But they weren’t its purpose - which was to sway the “opinions of mankind” (especially those of France, the country they most needed to persuade) while “proclaiming the causes that impel the separation”.

But it would require a vicious war to earn acceptance, and a vital alliance to ensure victory.

French Connection

Across the ocean, The Marriage of Figaro was forbidden in France, as an insurrectionary play that threatened the regime. As time would tell, the King and Queen were right to be worried.

But not yet.

The play’s author, Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, ran a sham trading company… secretly funded by the French government… that covertly funneled muskets, gunpowder, and uniforms to the Continental Army. He enthusiastically urged Foreign Minister Vergennes to support the seceding states.

An aristocratic monarchist, Vergennes was wary of the colonial uprising. But because of their opponent, he found it difficult to suppress a smile or withhold assistance.

France had lost its North American colonies after succumbing to Britain in the Seven Years War, and was anxious for revenge. It was also worried that a British victory would further strengthen the Royal Navy, which could cripple French shipping and capture its colonies in the Caribbean.

An expectation of French aid encouraged the colonists to issue the Declaration. When the document was adopted, France welcomed it. During the preceding century, its philosophers helped seed the ground from which it grew.

Voltaire, Diderot, Montesquieu, and Rousseau had influenced American thinkers, and prepared the French Enlightenment to support the colonists. The philosophes were elated when the Declaration was translated into French and printed in Paris.

Many of France’s military were eager to help. Silas Deane noted that he was “harassed to death with applications” from French officers wanting to fight in America.

The Marquis de Lafayette slipped out of France to do so under Washington. He was nineteen, married to a pregnant wife, yet (or therefore?) he snuck away to serve without pay. The Comte de Rochambeau led the French Expeditionary Force, and Admiral de Grasse cornered Cornwallis in Chesapeake Bay.

After Gates’s victory at Saratoga, implicit sympathy became overt assistance. France recognized the new states, and joined the war as their ally. This assistance was indispensable to the Americans… yet fatal to French regime.

Not a Revolution

At Versailles, sober minds issued words of warning that were mostly ignored. Turgot insisted that joining the war would be ruinous. Jacques Necker trembled for a budget he’d been struggling to balance.

To his later regret, King Louis reluctantly brushed them aside. While understandably (and prophetically) worried about assisting a “revolution”, the monarchy was more concerned with harming Britain than with sustaining itself.

Nietzsche said that which is bound to fall deserves to be pushed. The War for Independence was the shove that sent the Ancien Regîme over the edge.

Within a decade of the Treaty of Paris, bankrupted by more than a century of extravagance and war, the Royal Treasury collapsed, the Bastille fell, Versailles was stormed, the monarchy toppled, and the royal couple was decapitated.

The French Revolution probably would’ve happened anyway. But France’s meddling in America shortened the fuse.

Unlike the later upheaval in France, the American War for Independence wasn’t a “revolution”. The colonists cherished English liberty embodied in the Magna Carta and Bill of Rights, and accused Parliament of violating their inherent prerogatives as British citizens.

They wanted to preserve the tradition of self government, not to rip it out by the roots and replace it with cut flowers of contrived customs, central authority, and egalitarian ideology.

Day of Tiles

The difference is illustrated by a 1788 event in Grenoble, more than a year before the Bastille fell. The local parlement had refused to obey a royal edict. The king’s soldiers were deployed to enforce the orders, yet were commanded not to shoot.

But the locals attacked the troops by tossing tiles at them. One regiment reflexively fired without orders, killing two people, including a 12 year-old boy.

The mob paraded the victims’ blood-soaked clothes thru the streets, and rang the tocsin of the cathedral to stoke alarm. The rioters destroyed property, assaulted innocents, and propelled the instigators into the new National Assembly.

Like the Boston Massacre, the Grenoble “day of tiles” was a spark that led to a larger conflagration. But compare how the two events were handled.

When the British troops fired on rowdy Bostonians, John Adams (who’d be among the main proponents of independence) defied popular opinion, defended the soldiers in court, and obtained their acquittal under established law.

The whole point of the French Revolution was to ditch tradition and overturn established law. Had John Adams tried to uphold centuries of custom during that uprising, he’d literally have lost his head.

The Declaration of Independence didn’t intend to invent new principles. It was simply an announcement of, and justification for, the simultaneous secession of a dozen states that already existed (Rhode Island had separated from Britain two months earlier).

The document was, as Jefferson called it, “an expression of the American mind”, of sentiments shared by thirteen separate societies submitting “the common sense of the subject” to the rest of the world.

The Treaty of Paris ending the War for Independence didn’t recognize a new American “nation”. No such thing existed, nor was it widely desired. Britain recognized thirteen sovereign states, each no different than Spain, France, Sweden, or Russia. That’s why they were called “states”.

“My Country”

With the war over and independence won, Thomas Jefferson spent five years in France. He recalled them fondly as among the happiest in his life.

He famously said that among countries, France must be everyone’s second choice after his own. But by “his own”, Jefferson didn’t mean an amalgamated “United States”.

He meant Virginia, which he always called “my country”. That’s how most Americans felt. The idea that their home state was subordinate to an abstract “union” the states created would’ve seemed absurd. Centralized consolidation and distant overlords is what they were fighting against.

But when he returned from France, Jefferson was appalled. The philosophical wind had shifted while he was gone. Prevailing attitudes and the new government seemed to undermine the principles of the Declaration he wrote.

Shay’s Rebellion had been hyped-up to scare delegates in Philadelphia into replacing the Articles of Confederation with a new Constitution. With talk of debt consolidation, a “national” bank, and standing armies, centralizing tendencies were in the air. In ensuing decades and centuries, it would get worse.

From his perch in Paris, Jefferson had been apprehensive about the new Constitution. In correspondence with James Madison, he offered reluctant endorsement, but only if a Bill of Rights were added.

It was a nice thought. But it didn’t work. To the central government, like a raging river to an expanding ocean, has come a steady stream of more power, almost all of it illegitimate.

Jefferson resisted early currents with the Kentucky Resolutions, among the best things he ever wrote. In them he asserted the sovereignty of the states, and their right to nullify unconstitutional laws within their borders.

This seems like common sense. But the author of the Declaration of Independence is now mostly condemned for that sensible opinion, despite being consistent with the famous document Americans claim to revere.

Given the confusion about what the Declaration of Independence really means, it’s probably time to issue another one. But how many Americans would still know what to say?

JD

Atlanta, GA

July 2, 2026

This weekend Americans mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Most of them mistakenly call its adoption their “nation’s birthday”.

But as we’ve explained before, no “nation” was founded on July 4, 1776, nor was any new government born. Thirteen of them already existed. That was the point.

The States proclaimed their independence, not their creation (and certainly not the establishment of one country). They seceded as sovereign entities, distinct from Britain… and each other. Secession is a (perhaps the) quintessential American idea. It’s the only reason the United States exist.

But the Fourth of July is a day not only to celebrate secession, but to mourn its demise. Today, we’ll do both.

“A Happy Talent”

On the Fourth, as on any momentous occasion, myths mingle with reality. Even the date we’re supposed to remember was initially in question.

Congress voted for independence 250 years ago today, two days before it was formally declared. John Adams always thought July 2 the more appropriate day to celebrate, and expected it would be the perpetual date to do so. There was some merit to his argument, and more than a little envy that prompted it.

As relations with Great Britain deteriorated and war raged to the north, separation seemed inevitable (albeit to only about 40% of colonists). Adams suggested to Thomas Jefferson that Jefferson write a declaration of independence.

Adams viewed the document as something of a press release, and certainly nothing epochal. After the tumult passed… either with new states on the world scene or a hangman’s noose around signatories’ necks… few would remember it. The actual vote was what mattered.

Jefferson was reluctant, and wondered why Adams shouldn’t write the announcement himself. Other than Robert Livingston, Jefferson was the youngest member of the committee of five assigned by the Second Continental Congress to draft a rationale for independence.

How was he qualified?

Jefferson brought unique ability… what Adams called “a reputation for literature, science, and a happy talent for composition”, as well as a “peculiar felicity of expression.” Adams then elaborated, with three additional reasons he preferred to defer to his younger colleague.

“Reason first”, he began, “you are a Virginian, and a Virginian should be at the head of this business.

“Reason second”, he continued, “I am obnoxious, suspected, and unpopular. You are very much otherwise.

“Reason third”, he concluded, “you can write ten times better than I can.”

Adams was right, and won that battle. But Jefferson won the war. From then on, the former always thought the latter had run away with the revolution. With a bit of retrospective bitterness, Adams continued to think July 2 was the date that truly mattered.

The Declaration ended up meaning more than Adams thought it would (or should), and the date atop the document became the one the rest of us would celebrate. That Adams and Jefferson both died on July 4… fifty years to the day after independence was declared… further cemented its mystique, reinforced their reputations, and gave us a day to remember.

And to misconstrue.

A Dirge for an Idea

This week front porches, lamp posts, and parade floats will flaunt patriotic bunting and fluttering flags. As they should.

People should have pride of place and love where they live, even (or especially) if they don’t understand why. True affection for our country is akin to what we feel for our mother. We don’t need a “reason” to love her. Who she is is reason enough.

Chesterton chided Kipling for admiring England because she was “strong”. As Chesterton put it, “we admire things with reasons, but love them without reasons. [Kipling] admires England because she is strong, not because she is English.”

As Chesterton said elsewhere about Rome, we don’t love America because she’s great. She’s great because we love her.

But who is “America”? Does she still exist?

Or should black veils, crepes, and arm bands accompany bunting, banners, and fireworks, to grieve a bequest its beneficiaries wasted? Between strains of America the Beautiful and the Star Spangled Banner, we spare a dirge for a departed idea.

The relatively inconsequential central government of the original union has become the most powerful regime the world has ever seen. It surveilles its citizens, pilfers their property, prescribes and proscribes which substances they ingest, and tells them who they can’t or must associate with. It’s perpetually at (undeclared) war, relegates the states to provinces, and has debased the culture and economy by destroying the money.

This weekend may not honor a birthday, but it commemorates a funeral. Sixteen decades ago… four score and seven years after the Declaration was adopted… the federal republic of the founders was laid to rest. A few months later, the undertaker came to Gettysburg to give the eulogy.

The battle he memorialized was devastating. But the mortal wound was inflicted further South the following day.

About the moment Pickett’s charge was failing in Gettysburg, General Pemberton asked Grant for terms. The next day Vicksburg fell. It was July 4, 1863. Like this year, it was a Saturday.

The defenders were reluctant to capitulate on Independence Day, thinking it would amplify their humiliation and provide fodder for Yankee propaganda. General Pemberton conceded the point, but offered a competing one.

Tho’ a Confederate general, Pemberton was a Pennsylvanian who knew the Northern mind:

“I know my people”, he assured objectors on his staff. “I know their particular weaknesses and their national vanity. I know we can get better terms from them on the Fourth of July than on any other day of the year. We must sacrifice our pride to these considerations.”

Fighting persisted almost two more years, with unspeakable carnage inflicted on the South. But the fall of Vicksburg severed the Confederacy, and effectively decided the war that extinguished the republic.

Separate and Equal

The meaning of this day, as Jefferson put it, is to recall the right of free people “to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them.”

The final paragraph of the Declaration removed any doubt:

“We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these [note the plural] United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States.”

These states seceded as “separate” sovereignties, no different than Finland or France. “State” and “country” were synonymous. Jefferson regularly used the latter appellation when referring to Virginia, as most founders did regarding their own states.

Their people wanted to be left alone to manage their own affairs, without interference from external busybodies. Similar to the Catholic notion of subsidiarity, the idea was to enable empowerment at the most local level… to prioritize family over community, precinct over town, city over state, state over union. This is the core and essence of Jeffersonian philosophy, and of self-government.

Worthy Remedy

The notion that states had a right to self-determination was precisely Jefferson’s argument in his Summary View of the Rights of British America. The states never yielded their sovereignty to a central government.

This was obvious under the Articles of Confederation. But even under the Constitution, states simply delegated specific powers they remained free to reclaim.

The state ratifying conventions were emphatic about this, with advocates for the Constitution assuring skeptics that fears of usurpation were overblown… and that the document included adequate provisions to thwart any attempts.

As is abundantly evident in our own day, these safeguards weren’t good enough. But when they fail, the Declaration of Independence remains a welcome reminder of a worthy remedy.

JD

Atlanta, GA

July 1, 2026

Even the best allocators make mistakes. What made Warren Buffett unique was that he made so few. Until he suddenly started making so many.

Shareholders didn’t buy Berkshire Hathaway for quarterly payments. They bought it because of Warren Buffett, and assumed he’d multiply their money better than anyone else.

For several decades, they were right. From the late Sixties to the turn of the century, Berkshire Hathaway was among the greatest capital compounders the world had ever seen. Warren Buffett was the reason.

Changed Temperament

No investor has been as glorified, lionized… even deified… as Warren Buffett. With good reason.

But it’s not primarily because of the stocks he picked. The impetus for his success was the model he established, the leverage he used, and the structure and discipline that let him sustain these processes.

As Porter Stansberry asserts in Warren’s Mistakes, Warren Buffett had an undeniable genius. However,

“the genius wasn’t the stock picking…. The returns of the last 60 years can be replicated. You do not need to be Warren Buffett. You need the low-cost float, you need the institutional resiliency, and you need the investment discipline to only invest in the world’s best, lowest volatility stocks when they’re cheap - and hold forever. The problem is, Buffett lost that discipline about 25 years ago…”

How he did so is the lesson of the book. Using verified data and peer-reviewed research from half a century of Berkshire results, Stansberry makes a compelling case for when and why Buffett went awry, and how Berkshire can replicate its previous outperformance.

With his acumen as entrepreneur and equity analyst, Stansberry is a great storyteller. He also has a reputation for being brash and arrogant. I can see why, but don’t agree with that superficial assessment.

He is forthright and assertive, which I find refreshing. But I’d describe him less as conceited than confident. Why wouldn’t he be?

During two decades becoming one of the more prominent voices in the financial publishing space, Stansberry built a large fortune, lost most of it (or had it taken), then made much of it back within a few years. And his investing record has been stellar.

But who is Porter Stansberry to question Warren Buffett? As this book makes clear, for a quarter century, someone needed to. Yet almost no one did.

About a decade ago, Porter Stansberry started doing so. He didn’t question the model Berkshire had used to become the greatest wealth compounder in public markets. He extolled it, and still does.

As Stansberry observed, Buffett “was not running a model. He was running a temperament.” But just before the turn of the century, the temperament changed. As did what Berkshire bought.

Buffett’s framework relied on leverage from disciplined underwriting and insurance float to provide “free” funds to buy public stocks. The businesses he bought were moated, market dominant, capital efficient, low-Beta, shareholder friendly, underpriced “Inevitables” that would compound for generations.

The formula worked. Spectacularly. It still does. But for some reason, Berkshire Hathaway abandoned it during the 21st century.

Till then, shares in public companies comprised about three quarters of its investment portfolio. Now, the proportion is reversed, with wholly-owned subsidiaries comprising most of Berkshire’s book.

This has trapped cash in inefficient, low-growth businesses that consistently lag performances of public market analogs. Berkshire has become the type of “empire-building” conglomerate Buffett used to lambast.

Ominous Harbingers

Stansberry provides countless examples of this degenerative bloat. Berkshire purchased General Re and NetJets in 1998 with Berkshire shares Buffett considered undervalued, in bizarre defiance of Gresham’s Law. About the same time, Buffett acknowledged his mistake selling shares of McDonald’s to buy Dairy Queen outright… acquisition also partially made with Berkshire stock.

When these acquisitions happened, these seemed more like odd deviations than ominous harbingers. But Buffett still deserved the benefit of the doubt, and General Re at least kept feeding the float. Besides, anyone… even Warren Buffett… can make a mistake. In the case of McDonald’s, at least he acknowledged it and would learn from it.

Except he didn’t. He began compounding it. Buffett adopted a habit he’d rightly condemned… of avoiding public market “Inevitables” to acquire wholly-owned albatrosses.

Stansberry describes a quarter century of these errors, how they were made, the (substantial) opportunity cost they imposed, and how the fawning media looked the other way. In isolation, none of these mishaps was fatal, but all were crippling.

But few ailments are more destructive than a flawed philosophy. Based on his actions around the turn of the century, Warren Buffett’s changed. After thirty years of unparalleled prosperity using float to buy “Inevitable” stocks, he decided to become what he’d rightly despised.

Like any investor worth his salt, Porter Stansberry is a longtime admirer of Warren Buffett. But as a critical thinker, he’s not a sycophant. Stansberry respects his subject enough to hold him to account, just as Warren Buffett once did with executives who led the businesses he trusted them to run. As Stansberry relays from Berkshire’s 1984 Annual Letter:

“Managers of high-return businesses who consistently employ much of the cash thrown off by those businesses in other ventures with low returns should be held to account for those allocation decisions, regardless of how profitable the overall enterprise is.”

In the same publication a couple years earlier, Buffett reiterated one of his core principles:

“We will not issue shares unless we receive as much intrinsic business value as we give. Such a policy might seem axiomatic. Why, you might ask, would anyone issue dollar bills in exchange for fifty-cent pieces? Unfortunately, many corporate managers have been willing to do just that.”

With the acquisitions of NetJets, General Re, Berkshire Hathaway Energy, Precision Castparts and BNSF, Buffett became one of them.

The problem with these subsidiaries isn’t that they lose money (they usually don’t). It’s that they entailed punishing opportunity costs, incarcerated capital, accrued excessive debt, and were partially acquired with undervalued stock.

Perhaps Buffett assumed whole-business acquisitions were the only outlet big enough for his ocean-sized balance sheet? Maybe.

But for each of these purchases, Stansberry provides obvious public market stocks that easily outperformed… the type businesses Buffett always advocated (and often owned)… without the expense and hassle of running a business.

An Expensive Boast

Buffett’s biggest mistake may have been one of omission. It didn’t derive from a 21st century change in philosophy, but from one he weirdly cultivated during his initial decades running Berkshire Hathaway.

Homespun “simplicity” is part of Buffett’s (carefully orchestrated) brand. For whatever reason, he decided his image should include an ignorance of technology, a self-deprecation that for half a century has helped define his reputation… and cost his shareholders a lot of money.

Among Buffett’s wise aphorisms is to not invest in what he doesn’t understand. That makes sense. But that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t try to understand, especially about the most indispensable component of a successful business. As much as any other investor, Warren Buffett was well-positioned to do so.

Yet for half a century, every world-changing company of the computer age and Internet era eluded his investment. Most of them probably should have. But all of them?

It’s as if Buffett’s image as a “tech” novice was more important than his performance as a steward of capital. His folksy reputation became an excuse to completely ignore the most energetic part of the market. Being ignorant became something of a boast.

A very expensive one, which Buffett himself belatedly acknowledged. He eventually made Apple his largest holding, purchased shares of Google, and admitted it was “stupidity” that kept him from buying Microsoft.

Proven Track Records

This book isn’t just Stansberry spouting off. Assertions are cited and documented throughout the text or in the appendix. The book doesn’t merely describe; he prescribes.

After chronicling a quarter century of blunders that turned Berkshire into the type business Buffett once censured, it concludes with remedies to reverse the decline. These recommendations are based on proven track records, especially that of Berkshire itself.

If Warren Buffett can screw up, the rest of us certainly will. Among the best ways for investors to minimize mistakes is to understand the many things Buffett did right, and to see what happens when that discipline is abandoned.

Stansberry wrote this book to give us a look. Anyone with money in the market should be glad he did.

JD

Atlanta, GA

June 24, 2026

“Let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of [our] rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.”

- Thomas Jefferson to Roger Weightman, June 24, 1826

Today is the 200th anniversary of the last letter Thomas Jefferson wrote.

He’d been asked by Washington, DC Mayor Roger Weightman to join the surviving sign…

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Atlanta, GA

June 20, 2026

Doug Casey observed you can say things in fiction you could never utter in non-fiction. That’s probably true. But regardless the genre, Casey’s never been shy speaking his mind.

He’s made a career, and a fortune, denouncing or defying prescribed opinions we’re expected to parrot. Casey isn’t always right. Few of us are, which is j…

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Atlanta, GA

June 12, 2026

Sometimes we need someone else’s eyes to see our blessings.

Most of us view the world thru distorted filters. Everyone reading this has a digital colander that sifts facts to console preconceptions.

Images from across the country or around the world form or reinforce certitude about ambiguous (and mostly irre…

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Sea Island, GA

June 7, 2026

During the warming period of the Pleistocene, sea levels were fifty feet above… and the shoreline eighty feet west of… the current Georgia coast.

Glaciers never covered this state. But their northerly retreat deposited offshore dunes along the south Atlantic coast.

Adjacent to St Simon’s, Sea Island is among the newer buffers shi…

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JD

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Sea Island, GA

June 6, 2026

“Dost thou love life? Then do not squander Time; for that is the Stuff Life is made of.”

– Benjamin Franklin

It’s easy to fear the worst or feel sorry for ourselves. A select few have the fortitude to resist. But most of us don’t.

We waste time ruminating about what’s already been, or fretting what’s yet to come (but that usually …

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Savannah, GA

June 4, 2026

A soft breeze lifts the mist from the Savannah River. As the sun ascends, its light reveals a glorious day.

My office this morning is the Gallery Espresso, a charming café off Chippewa Square. I arrived before the rush, grabbed a cappuccino, and nestled comfortably into my al fresco seat.

I was here yesterday too, when the eclectic…

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Savannah, GA

June 3, 2026

Saturday we attended an outdoor party at a nearby pub. My shirt sported a Georgia Tech logo. When I saw someone else wearing the same emblem, I introduced myself.

“Wait,” his wife wondered after hearing my name. “Do you have a Substack?”

Uh oh.

Who was this and why did she want to know? And how would she know?

“Maybe…”, I hedged, unc…

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Atlanta, GA

May 28, 2026

The best big cities are essentially assemblages of small towns knitted together. Like San Francisco’s districts or the arrondissements of Paris, they’re dozens of unique neighborhoods quilted into a cohesive whole.

America has few cities of such fabric. New York is an obvious exception, with dozens…

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Madison, GA

May 24, 2026

Fifty years ago, the Bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence was a big deal. The celebration sparked a patriotic wave that saturated the culture.

Flags waved, bunting was everywhere, commemorative quarters were issued, and pop culture embraced the event. The theme of independence infused everything. As it often did in those days, Coca-Cola captured the mood:

As we approach the 250th anniversary, the occasion has been much more subdued. Many seem unaware it’s happening. Some are almost hostile, as if the Declaration of Independence shouldn’t be celebrated.

Millions have no idea who wrote it, or why. Since Lincoln, most have emphasized the “self-evident” truths of the second paragraph. It’s a beautiful sentiment that’s almost always (often intentionally) misinterpreted.

When the Declaration was written, what mattered most wasn’t the elevated overture, but the closing crescendo: the salvo affirming independence, after the list of grievances that justified the divorce.

Civil, Peaceful, and Humane

Contrary to conventional platitudes, the Declaration didn’t “found a new nation”. It asserted the sovereignty and secession of thirteen countries, and proclaimed their “separate and equal station”… “among the powers of the earth”.

Great Britain later agreed, by “treating with them” in the Treaty of Paris as “free sovereign and Independent States”. The states that signed the Declaration became their own countries, like France, Spain, or Sweden. That’s why they were called “states”.

The Constitution later maintained a confederation rather than create a “nation”. It didn’t reconfigure the states into a consolidated blob. The state ratifying conventions would’ve rejected the Constitution had they known it would produce the “United State” we have today, and Constitution’s advocates assured them such fear was unwarranted.

It wasn’t.

In the early years, states still remembered what the Declaration meant. They guarded their sovereignty and were willing to assert it.

At the Hartford Convention of 1814, the New England states considered seceding. Few denied their right to do so, or would’ve used force to stop them. That would’ve seemed preposterous to a people whose fathers left Britain less than forty years earlier.

During the Missouri Crisis at end of that decade, some Southern states threatened to leave the union if Missouri weren’t admitted as a state; several Northern ones said they’d go if it was. Almost no one wanted leave, but not many thought secession would precipitate a war.

Why should it? It simply means going separate ways. Few acts are more civil, peaceable, and humane.

If secession is illicit, the Declaration of Independence… the most prominent secession document in world history… shouldn’t be celebrated; it should be denounced.

The Main Problem

But if misunderstanding the Declaration explains some of the indifference toward its semi-quincentennial, it’s not the main problem.

It’s not like most people in 1976 were devoted Jeffersonians who considered the Bicentennial a celebration of secession. Like today, few thought of it that way. Americans just knew they loved the country, and wanted to honor it.

Now many of them aren’t so sure… some for political reasons, others because of historical ignorance, cultural illiteracy, or societal grudges. Others may be reluctant to cheer the upcoming anniversary for fear receiving “racist” aspersions.

A few decades ago, demographic grievances were subsiding. But in recent years, they were revived and orchestrated (and new ones invented) to pit Americans against each other. Many believe the Declaration doesn’t matter because they’ve been told it doesn’t apply to them.

Up for Grabs

In 1976, the founders were almost universally admired. Washington and Jefferson were unambiguous heroes. But in subsequent decades, they’ve been “contextualized” into theiving genocidal bigots half the country has been trained to hate.

By definition, any place Thomas Jefferson or George Washington isn’t welcome isn’t America. That now includes certain government buildings, college campuses, and public squares. Across the US several years ago, their statues were toppled, plaques removed, and names effaced.

No wonder there’s ambivalence about the Declaration. It’s almost like that’s the intent!

Half a century ago, in the midst and wake of Vietnam, urban riots, stagflation, and Watergate, tumult was rampant and political differences ran deep. But most Americans still claimed to cling to Jefferson’s observation that “every difference of opinion isn’t a difference of principle”.

Now they barely bother with the pretense. These days, principles are the basis of disagreement. It’s not that disputants have competing proposals to get to a place we all agree we need to go. They want to go entirely different directions.

The very meaning of America is up for grabs: Maybe this place isn’t so great… and never was.

To Have a Country

There are many reasons for this disillusion. Smartphones and social media algorithms have helped shatter society into isolated shards. Fifty years of fiat money has distorted the economy and warped the culture, stunting time preference, undermining trust, and pitting those who receive first infusions of cash from those who must subsist on the crumbs.

These major disruptions would’ve been significant at any time. But they’re stirring a demographic stew that’s nothing like it was five decades ago.

The immigrant floodgates had re-opened only ten years before the Bicentennial, so most Americans were still descended from families that had been here several generations.

They’d imbibed a shared history, common culture, and unifying traditions… which is what it means to have a country. The coalescence of communal myths (many which are true) is essential to formation and sustenance of a cohesive society. In 1976, the United States still had one.

Of about 220M Americans in the mid-70s, almost 90% were of European descent, with blacks comprising most of the rest. Less than 5% of the population was born overseas. Christians comprised 90% of the country. About 60% were Protestant and almost a quarter were Catholic.

Whites are now less than 60% of the population, with this decade featuring the first sustained numerical (not just proportional) decline in American history. The black population has inched up a couple percentage points, to about 14%.

Hispanics rose from under 5% to about 20% of Americans, with Asians rising to 6% from under 1%. Almost 15% of today’s Americans were born overseas. Tens of millions of foreigners are here illegally, so the actual percentage of whites and blacks is lower than official data suggests.

Only 60% of Americans now call themselves Christian, with about 40% being Protestant. Catholics fell from ~25% to around 20%; Muslims and Hindus are about 6%. But almost 30% are “unaffiliated” (up from ~5% in 1976), or claim no religious belief.

Papayas in Oslo

This clearly isn’t the same country as it was in 1976. But not in the way America changed between 1926 and 1976. Or even from 1876 to 1976. New tendencies, evolving styles, and technological advances are inevitable (and healthy) in any society.

Organic changes in sensibility and technology affect what people do, the way they do it, and how they treat each other. But they don’t abruptly alter who they are.

During the half century till 1976, immigration and naturalization rates were (by law) relatively low… and almost entirely from Europe. Since the Bicentennial, the source has shifted and the pace picked up.

Fewer than 150,000 people were naturalized annually in the 1970s. The rate is seven times higher this decade, and the composition is completely different from the Ellis Island influx.

Migrants from Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Eastern Europe often clashed with the original English stock (and each other), but they at least shared a Western heritage that’s alien to many recent arrivals. And closing the gates for forty years allowed exposure and experience to meld ethnic animosities into a more amicable America.

The flood of recent entries comes mostly from Mexico, India, China, the Philippines, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, El Salvador, Korea, and Guatemala. The UK is the top European source of US immigrants, but about fifteen countries rank ahead of it.

And this excludes tens of millions of illegal aliens and legal residents who aren’t citizens, each of whom amplifies the extent to which America has changed in such a short time. How many of them have a Jeffersonian pedigree?

After a couple generations, their descendants might. But that takes time. For some (not all) people from certain cultures, there may never be enough. Planting papayas in Oslo is unlikely to ever bear Norwegian fruit.

Common Sense

This isn’t a criticism of immigrants who don’t instinctively grasp the philosophical and cultural traditions of the communities they enter. How would they?

I couldn’t expect to move to Munich and become Bavarian or suddenly be a Sikh because I settled in the Punjab. Why would anyone think someone plopped into Minneapolis from Mogadishu would be an instant Minnesotan?

New immigrants don’t quickly absorb local interests, knowledge, rivalries, or grievances simply because they were hired, bought a house, or got a driver’s license in a certain state… especially (like most recent arrivals) if they came from cultures incompatible with (or antithetical to) Western Civilization. That’s why periodic pauses are needed to let them do so.

To Jefferson, the Declaration of Independence was “an expression of the American mind” that voiced "the common sense of the subject". But if an “American mind” no longer exists, there’s unlikely to be a “common” sense (or shared enthusiasm) of any subject.

Especially the ones that matter the most.

JD

Atlanta, GA

May 21, 2026

“We are forced to recognize our inhumanity / Our reason co-exists with our insanity / And though we choose between reality and madness, it’s either sadness or euphoria.”

- Billy Joel: Summer, Highland Falls

I caught some flak for a recent essay indicting the smartphone as a scourge. But that diagnosis isn’t what raised the ire of se…

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Atlanta, GA

May 19, 2026

For months, foreign forces have attacked a rural district in northern Kentucky. Mariam Adelson, John Paulson, Paul Singer, and other out-of-state interests have heaved $25M over the wall, the most artillery ever unloaded on a congressional primary. The unprecedented barrage doesn’t reflect who the outsiders want in; it…

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