Atlanta, GA

April 9, 2026

“We appreciate beautiful things not for their utility only, but also for what they are in themselves; or more plausibly, for how they appear in themselves.”

- Roger Scruton

Brittain Hall is what a college building should be. Its neo-Medieval tower, Gothic cloister, and dormitory wings anchor East Campus at Georgia Tech.

Set back from the street, it’s approached across a classic lawn and a traditional quad. Doric pillars adorn the forecourt. On each, a corbel bust depicts a scientist or artist representing the subjects taught at Tech when Brittain Hall was built.

Several Tech departments collaborated on the construction. The School of Ceramics manufactured tiles that formed the tower floors, the Textile College made the tapestries gracing the President’s Dining Room, and Mechanical Engineering provided wrought iron fixtures in the main hall.

The Architecture department, led by Harold Bush-Brown, designed the building. One of its students created the stained glass for the south window, and carved the sculptures extolling Tech’s advocacy of science.

Bush-Brown was a bridge, from the architectural equivalent of charming Parisian side streets to that of an expressway wiping out an urban waterfront.

Apogee of Architecture

Classical education considered architecture an art. Beauty was not only the objective; it was objective… using symmetry, harmony, proportion, and balance to convey internal essence thru external forms.

Two prominent Atlanta firms were largely responsible for Georgia Tech’s earliest edifices. Bruce and Morgan was known for distinctive towered county courthouses around the region, which likely inspired Tech Tower. Within a few years they produced renditions at Samford Hall at Auburn, Tillman Hall at Clemson, and the Bell Tower at Agnes Scott.

Beside Tech Tower sits the stately Carnegie Building of 1906, designed by Morgan and Dillon to house the school library. Among the more elegant edifices on campus, this Beaux-Arts building was among many monuments to Andrew Carnegie’s desire to fund eponymous libraries.

Featuring dignified ornament, noble inscriptions, and classical accents, Bush-Brown’s Guggenheim Aeronautics Building epitomizes the historicist style and Jacobean aesthetic of the original campus. Unfortunately, it’s about to be replaced by something resembling a glass semi-trailer .

Elegance and refinement predominated at Tech and around Atlanta between the wars. They were mostly inspired by one man.

Francis Smith, who at 23 was younger than many students today, oversaw the nascent years of Tech’s School of Architecture. In retrospect, his tenure inspired the apogee of architecture at Georgia Tech… and coincided with its final flowering around the West.

Smith arrived in Atlanta six years before the guns of August. As it did to much of civilization, the First World War shattered conceptions of beauty, and whether it was worth pursuing. Smith insisted it was. With him, Georgia Tech welcomed the Beaux-Arts curriculum from the University of Pennsylvania where he studied.

Smith fathered the Southern School of Classicism. Professional paternity included student Philip Shutze, who designed (among countless gems across north Georgia) the Swan House and the Temple in Atlanta, the Atlanta Academy of Medicine, the East Lake Golf Clubhouse, and Hirsch Hall at the University of Georgia.

Shutze, whom Henry Hope Reed called “America’s greatest living classical architect”, essentially rebuilt Atlanta during the 1910s and 1920s. Setting a precedent that persisted several decades, Smith and his faculty designed many structures at Georgia Tech.

His legacy includes the original campus architectural plan in the classic style of the Beaux-Arts era. Among his heirlooms was his initial conception… the Whitehead Infirmary erected in 1911.

Smith’s Students produced elaborate renderings worthy of the Grand Prix competition at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Dr. Elizabeth Dowling… who was one of my professors when I studied architecture at Tech… compiled many of these drawings in One Hundred Years of Architectural Education: 1908-2009, co-published with Lisa Thompson.

Architectural Revolutionaries

Bush-Brown retained the tradition… until the Second World War, after which Modern architecture mauled the West. This was when the “International Style” emigrated from Europe. Carrying its baggage were Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, and other cultural Jacobins who despised the bourgeois (whatever that was).

At Georgia Tech, Paul Heffernan led the revolution. A Tech graduate who returned after earning a Masters under Gropius at Harvard, Heffernan presided over the Modernist conquest of Tech’s style. After being trained in (and awarded for) Beaux Arts design, Heffernan began littering the campus with Bauhaus eyesores.

Established at Weimar the year the Treaty of Versailles was signed, the Bauhaus School arose from the rubble of the First World War… among the first artistic compounds of the Avant-Garde. Seeing the shambles the war made of Germany, its young architects were essentially ordered to start from scratch.

Millions were dead, the Kaiser had fled, the Czar was toppled, and the Hapsburgs were deposed. Revolution was in the wind. In the midst of upheaval, bourgeois was out… which stripped rebuilding of antebellum beauty.

And why not? To these architectural revolutionaries, the bourgeoisie caused the catastrophe. The last thing the young socialists wanted was to replicate the culture that caused the war.

“The intellectual bourgeois”, Walter Gropius proclaimed, “was unfit to be the bearer of German culture”. He’d tailor a new architecture to clothe the proletariat.

Gropius founded Bauhaus, which infiltrated Tech when the Institute hired several professors who’d been his students. Its International “Style” (if that’s the right word) relied on rigid lines, austere aesthetic, bland color, and extreme emphasis on function over form. What Roger Scruton called “the cult of utility” was taking over.

Gables, pitches, cornices, and eaves were out - discarded as emblems of “crowns” and nobility that had been swept away. Structural elements remained exposed, unblemished by decorative ornament, appealing facades, or attractive features that exalted the spirit.

Like God, the spirit was dead. Bauhaus buried it. Its acolytes emphasized a grinding “equality”, often expressed in harsh angles, sheer facades, and flat tops (hardly “functional” under heavy precipitation). Gropius detested high ceilings and wide halls, which he considered wasteful grandiosity modernity must (literally) suppress.

“Columns” connoted classicism, so were redesigned and rebranded as “pilotis”, or “piles”, which sounds more workmanlike. Grand entrances were non-existent. Instead, nondescript openings offered almost surreptitious access… as if to sneak entrants into a dystopian speakeasy.

Extolling the efficacy of modern materials, exterior walls went unclothed, boasting the naked prowess of concrete, glass, and steel. To the modernist, “beauty” and “truth” lay in unconcealed architecture… industrial assaults on the visual sense. Fittingly, the actual Bauhaus compound resembled a prison.

Ostensibly constructed for the proletariat, Bauhaus buildings seem deliberately designed to repel people. Even its skyscrapers are squat boxes of sheer walls and stale palettes. Yet we’re all supposed to pretend these sensual affronts aren’t hideous.

Modern architects subjugate form to function. Historically, as in soaring cathedrals, cloistered convents, airy universities, or stately banks, form connoted function. But it wasn’t buried by it. Building design reflected the activity inside, so that passers-by knew what it was… and were enticed by beauty to want to go in.

Particularly in the post-war era, everything changed. Beauty wasn’t “useful”, so it became irrelevant, and had to go. Even (or especially) the upper crust went along. Corporate chieftains, political potentates, and society’s dignitaries accepted whatever glass box, corrugated concrete, ribbon-windowed outrages celebrity “starchitects” told them to inhabit.

Frying Pan to Fire

When Heffernan became architectural chef at Georgia Tech, one of his first recipes was an awful kitchen. The Architecture Building is a Bauhaus abomination. As one who had to study in that place, I wondered if maybe it were built to show students what “style” to avoid.

Heffernan would add other soul-crushing atrocities, including the Hinman Building, Rich Computer Center, Gilbert Library, and Textile Building (mercifully razed a couple decades ago) that anchored his “Academic Village”.

Across from the library, the Skiles Classroom is a modernist hate crime committed by Thomas Bradbury. Bradbury designed many awful edifices around Atlanta, mostly bureaucratic buildings surrounding the State Capitol. But considering the source, his Greek Revival Governor’s Mansion is somewhat respectable.

From the Bauhaus frying pan, Tech fell into the Brutalist fire. Monstrous bunkers like the Chemistry compound and mammoth Physics building were windowless penitentiaries for overstressed students.

This was an age when design was wayward around the West. Not only was Atlanta not immune; one of Tech’s “illustrious” alums did considerable damage to the center of the city.

John Portman’s hulking hotels with enclosed gallerias and towering atriums are people-repellent blights that turn their backs on central cities their existence helped exterminate.

His Peachtree Center in Atlanta and its Embarcadero twin in San Francisco, the Renaissance Center in Detroit and the Bonaventure in Los Angeles, are black holes that suck pedestrians off the sidewalks.

To ensure they stay inside, Portman incorporated Le Corbusier’s “streets in the sky” as hamster chutes connecting his insular enclaves. Often filling entire city blocks, his mammoth buildings feature extended stretches of stark street-side walls.

Portman’s interiors are disorienting and isolating, often featuring circumferential balconies soaring hundreds of feet toward receding ceilings. Glass elevators connect concrete floors, which hover over lobbies laden with retail and restaurants that keep inhabitants from engaging with the city fabric these structures do so much to destroy.

Fortifying the Frontiers

Yet there are signs of revival at Georgia Tech and around Atlanta. An expansive green replaced the demolished Textile building. East of campus, Tech has watered Midtown and facilitated its flowering. Its colleges fertilized businesses, residences, and hotels in an area that was a den of derelicts when I was a student.

Like ancient Rome fortifying its frontiers, Tech has spent recent decades securing these surroundings. Carrying Fifth Street from the main campus, a landscaped bridge is an esplanade to an urban village Georgia Tech has built (and continues to construct).

At the far end, Philip Schutze’s Neo-Georgian Biltmore Hotel… now owned by the Georgia Tech Foundation and renovated since I was in school… is a nod to history and a worthy object to which neighboring buildings can aspire.

Unfortunately, they don’t. Most Midtown edifices replicate the boxy hives of glass, concrete, and steel that make cities sterile and indistinguishable… rectangular silos of corporate offices, academic dens, or luxury apartments stacked thirty stories into the sky.

But unlike many enclaves that tarnish downtowns, these structures redeem themselves by facilitating exchange with the street. For one thing, people live in them. Shops and cafés adorn ground level, facilitating foot traffic to and from surrounding sidewalks.

Midtown Atlanta is bustling, which is a debt it owes Georgia Tech. At a time when the wider culture seems to be seeking dead-ends, Tech’s architecture may have turned a corner. I hope that’s a harbinger.

Ears and Eyes

Humans are instinctively attracted to harmony, symmetry, ornament, and order. Modern architecture upends (and insults) all of that. It detests beauty, and abhors true art. Its practitioners strive to be esoteric, to baffle the bourgeoisie (a word they loved to wield), and to reject the notion that a light touch can do heavy lifting.

Most design since the Second World War wasn’t demanded or desired; it was inflicted and imposed. The whole point was to flaunt “novelty”, perplex the proles, and revolutionize the public realm. Architects (like most modern artists) aimed less to uplift and inspire than to shock, disorient, or disturb.

One needn’t be an “expert” to recognize obvious beauty. Mozart symphonies, Michelangelo sculptures, and Shakespearean sonnets don’t need pretentious symposiums or academic tracts to convince us of their value.

Only ugliness requires dissertations and lectures. Beauty simply seduces ears and eyes, and captures hearts that long to feel.

JD

Atlanta, GA

March 23, 2026

This afternoon, while forlorn passengers spent hours herding thru the Atlanta airport, languishing outside, cattle-chuting around baggage claim, and corralled toward a “security” oasis on a distant horizon, legislators in Georgia were distracted by something inconceivably stupid.

There’s no mess politicians can’t make worse, espe…

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Atlanta, GA

March 8, 2026

We didn’t used to need governments to tell us the time. For millennia the sun did it for us, enabling our ancestors to get thru the day.

Medieval clocks added some precision. But their main “improvement” (if we want to call it that) on the ancient sundial was they enabled us to tell time at night.

Not that many people cared. In those days, most of them were wise (and tired) enough to use darkness as a signal to sleep.

It wasn’t till the 19th century, when time-pieces proliferated, that businesses, households, and personal pockets began acquiring clocks… and becoming slaves to them.

Around the world, each town kept its own time, based off the moment the sun was directly overhead. Brooklyn ran ahead of Manhattan. It was slightly earlier in Ostia than in Rome. Oakland ate breakfast a few minutes before San Francisco ordered coffee.

Zones of Time

It wasn’t till human locomotion outpaced Apollo’s chariot that the patchwork of times became a problem. That happened when the trains arrived.

But it was tough to keep them running on time. For anyone to know when that meant, the railroads needed a schedule.

To enable coordination among local patchworks of minutes, competing lines agreed on zones of time… based loosely on the position of the sun. Most government officials were beholden to the industry, and went along.

But train time was a lie, which was patently obvious to any idiot under the sun. Despite being told it was noon, the average person knew his shadow was too long. Something wasn’t right. Yet there was no hole to which he could retreat.

“Progress” had arrived. Rather than establish a “universal time” (like GMT) from which to set schedules while leaving local time to catch natural rays, government-backed railroad monopolies inflicted the top-down time zones we endure today.

These were agreed upon in 1889, and given force of federal law in 1918. As a result, the time we tell by ignoring nature remains… like flickering shadows on Plato’s cave… a pale reflection of unrelenting reality, further distorted by biannual changing of erroneous clocks.

“Sunshine Protection”

Last night, as happens each year, our hour was taken. As is their wont, a lot of legislators don’t want to give it back.

Even when government tries to do the right thing, it does it the wrong way. A few years ago, the Senate voted to repeal the biannual ritual of adjusting clocks. But it did so by keeping the wrong time.

Standard Time – denoted as such because it more closely follows our natural rhythms and the solar cycle – would’ve disappeared. Or, more accurately… as with the local hours from an earlier age… it’d still be there. We’d simply have ignored it, and suffered the consequences.

Fortunately, a few years ago the “Sunshine Protection Act” withered in Congress, proving that even a stopped clock is right twice a day. But, like a Spring allergy, it keeps coming back.

The notion that an act of Congress can “protect sunshine” is as ludicrous as the concept that passing laws can control the weather, that pulling inches from a foot can make us taller, or that putting more ounces in a pound can reduce our weight.

The “Sunshine Protection Act” is like most legislation. The only thing dumber than the name is the stupidity of the idea. The biannual time change needs to go. But the solar clock needs to stay.

Our sense of reality is already too warped, and time is among the least of the distortions. But it’s a potent symptom of endemic delusion.

At this moment, where I write, the official time is almost two hours ahead of where the sun actually sits. Atlanta lies at the western edge of the Eastern Time Zone, so our local clock always outpaces the stubborn sun.

But “Daylight Savings” compounds the problem. This morning, as if to assert it isn’t wrong enough, our government placed an additional hour between ourselves and the sun.

(If you want to know how wrong time is where you are, you can check this link).

Indulging Fantasies

This isn’t the first effort to enforce this farce. Congress imposed perennial “Daylight Savings” in 1974, but abandoned the two-year experiment even before it was set to expire. As children stood at dark bus stops and circadian rhythms became confused, people realized they hated the unnatural attempt to monkey with time.

If this latest effort passes, Arizona and Hawaii will be the only states where the clocks are (somewhat) correct. All others will permanently pretend to be part of the time zone immediately to their east (some, like the New England states, probably should be).

But this isn’t surprising. We live in a world that’s filled with phoniness to indulge our fantasies. Don’t like how light it is at 6p? Just pretend it’s 7p! If nothing else, Happy Hour will start that much sooner.

Solar Schoolmarm

Yet each day, like every coin, has two sides. We think we’d enjoy the sun setting after dinner. But will we like it rising a couple hours before lunch? Will we want to begin each day in the middle of nature’s night? Is it healthy to do so? Do we even care?

And do we really want the sun, like a humorless hall monitor, watching over us so deep into the day? A setting sun is a signal. Time to retreat home from a hectic day…perhaps to open a window in the summer, or light a fire in the winter. We lift our feet, pour some wine, and loosen our limbs. We relax, and let our hair down.

These natural inclinations are less instinctive with a solar schoolmarm standing over us. She has her place. But it’s in the morning, to roust us awake and get us going. We don’t need an intrusive day hanging around at night, when we gather at the table or round the hearth, to talk about it behind its back.

From ancient sundials to atomic clocks, devices to track time are intended to tell the truth. But as night follows day, many of us prefer the lie.

Envisioning an extra hour of evening light, they cheer the deception. It’s easier to see the light than to envision the dark. But no matter how much they finagle their clocks, they’ll get both… and more of each than they think they’d prefer.

In a couple weeks, on the Vernal Equinox, they’ll come in equal measure. Around the world, the solar scale will stand in balance. But the more we try to tip it toward us, the greater the chance we fall off.

JD

PS - For those interested as much in place as in time, perspectives on many of them can be found in my new book that’s now available by clicking the image below:

Atlanta, GA

January 21, 2026

These days, mentions of ice produce reflexive panic or instinctive praise… depending upon political persuasion.

But this week we won’t worry about government agents demanding papers or busting down doors. Instead, we brace for slick roads, empty shelves, and lost power.

This afternoon I made a brief trip to the local grocer. It would take longer than I’d thought. The parking lot was packed. From the store came a parade of carts laden with bottled water, loaves of bread, and cases of beer.

I’d come for a few items we happened to need. Seeing the scene, I began to recalibrate. But after a few seconds, I decided we were all set.

Forecasts call for snow and sleet Saturday and Sunday. With our cellar stocked, firewood stacked, and outside air cold enough to preserve what’s in our fridge if power fails, we should be fine. But winter memories send chills up local spines.

“Snowmageddon”

A dozen years ago next week, Atlanta suffered “snowmageddon”, a confluence of snow and ice that paralyzed the city. Unfortunately, the storm arrived during the day, with employees and students trying to race home to beat the weather.

Millions of them lost.

Fewer than three inches coated the capital. But the slush froze as temperatures fell. I was working in Midtown at the time. Fortunately, my younger son’s school decided early to end classes for the day.

When I received the call, I left my office. It was just before noon. I may have been the last one to make it out.

Flakes started falling as I left the city. Snow was heavy when I reached the school. Home was only a few miles away. But the trek was already becoming treacherous.

On our winding two-lane roads, ice was forming and pavement was slick. Several cars were stuck on the sides of streets or at the base of hills.

On each decline I’d try to pick up speed, to ensure I had enough momentum to mount the next ridge. It worked. We skidded home and settled in.

Or so I thought. My elder son was stuck at his school. Fortunately, it was only a couple miles away. Worst case, he could walk home.

But some of the buses were able to make it out. Our son hopped on, and rode as far as a neighboring neighborhood.

At one of the stops, the bus released some kids… and spun its wheels. At a low point on the road, it wasn’t going anywhere. Every child disembarked, including my son, who walked the rest of the way home.

But my wife still wasn’t there. She wouldn’t be for a while. Working for the power company, she planned to camp downtown for several days to help restore widespread outages that had already begun.

It could’ve been worse. For millions, it was. As streets iced and freeways froze, stalled cars stranded drivers under descending darkness, falling snow, and frigid air. Many abandoned their cars and chose to walk. Several friends made that choice, and have since ensured they keep emergency provisions in their cars.

Some didn’t have the option to flee. One woman was on her way to the hospital to give birth. She didn’t make it. Instead, Amy Anderson delivered her daughter on the Atlanta Perimeter.

Slopes and Swales

Atlantans catch a lot of grief for their inability to drive on frozen roads. That’s understandable to some extent, albeit a very limited one.

Half this city is relocated Yankees. What’s their excuse? As it happens, it’s the same one the rest of us have.

A friend who transplanted from Chicago once confided to me during an earlier episode when snow shut the city, “no one in Chicago can drive on ice either.”

In north Georgia it’s especially difficult. Nestled in the leafy lap of the Appalachian piedmont, Atlanta undulates on slopes and swales in a vast forest.

Ice is tricky enough when the surface is flat. But even Sonja Henie would have trouble skating uphill over fallen limbs. With inadequate speed, cars would be trapped in the trough. Many were.

Atlanta had no crutches when it was crippled. Because winter storms are relatively infrequent, the city lacked tools to manage them.

When “snowmageddon” hit, Atlanta had little salt or brine to defrost the roads… and few trucks to dispense the scarce treatments. It now has a couple million gallons of brine and ample salt, with the ability to make 50,000 gallons an hour as needed.

The state also has hundreds of trucks and plows to clear ice and remove snow. Unlike the calamity a dozen years ago, this winter weather will arrive on a weekend. Like Daylight Saving Time, this nuisance will arrive when most of us are asleep.

At least this annoyance doesn’t return every year. And the clouds that bring sleet are encased in a lining of serenity. They leave us no choice but to slow down, even (or especially) if the power goes out.

Inclement weather can restrict mobility or deprive us of power. It can force us from our screens, to coax us to grab a book or converse with each other. When snow falls, ice forms, and roads freeze, many receive the enviable option of staying home, and enjoying the blessings of those they love.

JD

PS - While today’s musings relate to Atlanta, I often wander further afield. From Brazil to the Baltic, California to France, and Central America to East Africa, I reflect on the historic, political, cultural, and personal aspects of various places in a new volume you can grab here.

Atlanta, GA

October 5, 2025

Earlier this week, my cousin told me her teenage daughter is planning to visit Japan. She was compiling podcasts for the flight, and asked if I had any to recommend.

To her credit (and knowing who she was asking), my cousin said she welcomed episodes with viewpoints opposing hers.

Today I decided to pick up the gauntlet.

While I …

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Atlanta, GA

September 19, 2025

After offering thoughts a few hours after Charlie Kirk was killed, I decided to wait for some facts before providing more opinions.

Nine days later, I realize if I keep doing that I may never say anything (which most readers would probably appreciate).

This incident was obviously tragic. But it strikes closer to home, and further afield, than I initially knew.

Insulting Assumption

While I was familiar with Charlie Kirk, I wasn’t his target market. As I noted last week, I’d heard a few interviews and seen some clips.

Before I did, my impression was he was a run-of-the-mill conservative who made his name debating college kids… like a less abrasive Ben Shapiro.

After listening to more of him the last few days, I rescind that insulting assumption. For one thing, he was more pleasant and thoughtful than Shapiro. And his knowledge, intellect, and style were far superior to the standard Fox News mouthpiece or neocon shill.

My elder son (a recent college graduate) was a fan. But apparently he was more than that. The assassin took one of his admirable heroes. And Lord knows young men need more of those.

Not that Alexander agreed with everything Kirk said. But he respected how and where he said it… on college campuses, addressing opposing views with amicable debate. For doing so, Charlie Kirk lost his life.

Another Exception

How did this tragedy happen? Obvious analogs are Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and the Kennedys. My son made the King comparison, which I initially considered a reach.

But I reacted too soon. After watching the overwhelming response since last week, I think Alexander had a point.

In our hubris, we tend to overrate the historic importance of current events. But the last decade we’ve witnessed many momentous occurrences and pivotal phenomena. This seems like another one.

I have no idea who killed Charlie Kirk, or why. But I doubt whatever the “authorities” say… if only because they’re saying it.

After years of “Russia collusion”, “two weeks to slow the spread”, “safe and effective”, “insurrection”, “unprovoked invasion”, “Epstein hoax”, and “we’re all in this together”, it’s prudent to instinctively distrust whatever government officials tell us.

For a decade, conservatives have been smeared as “fascists”, “Nazis”, “white supremacists”, “Hitler”, and “extremists”. So have people like Donald Trump, who twenty years ago would’ve been indistinguishable from a conventional Democrat. Because that’s what he was.

Tactically, hurling these absurd epithets has had the intended effect. To those who stoke culture wars to sow division and distraction, reasonable voices are the greatest threat. Like Charlie Kirk, they can be more persuasive (and therefore dangerous), especially to the extent they sway young minds.

Inoculating the Flock

The Left has long viewed juvenile brains as fertile terrain. That’s why public schools are so important, and a reason they encourage most kids to go to college.

With chapters proliferating at high schools, Turning Point USA was infiltrating their field and inoculating the flock. Kirk, a college drop-out, was famous for telling high schoolers that, for most of them, college is a mistake.

By doing so, he steered some sheep from academic wolves. But he was most known for grabbing his staff, and trying to shepherd those who joined the pack.

Kirk posed a threat because he was decent, powerful, and determined. He proved that last year. The 2024 election featured an unprecedented swing in the youth vote, a bloc Democrats typically took for granted. Donald Trump lost it by 25 points in 2020; in November the deficit was only four.

The shift was most notable among young men, who favored Trump by 14 points in 2024 while opposing him by the same amount four years earlier. This dynamic was particularly dramatic among young Latinos, who supported Trump by 44 points after favoring Biden by forty.

Some of this is due to the staggering deficiencies of the Democratic ticket. Few candidates have ever been as awful as Kamala Harris. But in most years, young people would’ve rejected such an insulting offering by not voting at all. Thru extraordinary effort, Charlie Kirk convinced many of them to cast a ballot for Donald Trump.

Barely thirty years-old, Kirk had established himself not only as a polished spokesman, but as an outstanding organizer. The one he built was much larger than I’d realized.

Before Kirk was killed, Turning Point USA had affiliates on 2,100 campuses representing a quarter of a million students. Immediately afterward, applications soared… for 32,000 potential new affiliates (about 4M students).

It’s unlikely Donald Trump would’ve won without him, which is probably why so many cheered Kirk’s murder. They also (thought they) knew what this meant for the future.

But among Kirk’s many talents was selecting lieutenants. Whoever felled his tree may have fertilized his forest. When young people are energized, they tend to be active. The current crop has ample motivation, which Kirk unveiled and unleashed.

In certain quarters, this made him dangerous.

Revealing Reactions

He spoke with and for a disgruntled generation that’s inherited debt and inflation from its predecessors, was told to keep borrowing to pursue worthless degrees, and is made up of millions who can’t afford to start families or buy a home (average age for having a first child is almost 28; for first-time home-buyers is 38). Unlike Kirk (at least till recently), they also oppose arming Israel to obliterate Gaza.

How will his audience react to losing their champion? So far, they’ve done so as we’d expect… with prayers, vigils, mutual support, and shared condolences. In many places, they’ve erected memorials, which the usual savages (the types who praised torching and looting when George Floyd overdosed) have tried to destroy or deface.

Since the killing, reactions have been revealing. That of the Left has been revolting, with some pockets praising the murder.

Many were called out, and lost their jobs. That’s good (obviously). It’s bad enough to applaud this assassination. But to film your glee and post it online shows a lack of humanity and judgment that should cost you not only a job, but any respect from civilized society.

That fired employees were surprised at their fate reflects the echo chambers into which they sealed themselves. Their cultural segregation had clearly convinced them that “reasonable” people shared their warped opinions. Otherwise, why post such incriminating filth for all eternity to see?

Illegitimate Power

Others commentators indicted Israel… about which Kirk was becoming more circumspect. To downplay this, Benjamin Netanyahu - who apparently tried to buy (or at least buy-off) TPUSA - cynically waved letters proclaiming Kirk’s affection for Israel, used his death to urge strengthened US support, and implied (as always) his country was somehow a victim.

Predictably, the US government is using Kirk’s killing to assert illegitimate power. Attorney General Pam Bondi promised to “target” people for “hate speech”, particularly “antisemitism”.

As far as we know, antisemitism has nothing to do with Kirk’s murder. But wielding the Left’s “hate speech” hammer is particularly appalling. That notion has no place in American law.

Neither “hate” nor “speech” are crimes, and the US government has no right to “target” people for them. Any official promising to do so should (at the very least) be out of a job. A president accommodating such threats should be impeached.

As the Biden Administration muscled companies to impose its covid edicts and DEI demands, the Trump bunch is pressuring businesses to do its bidding. It seems to have done so with Disney, which just ousted the loathsome Jimmy Kimmel.

If Disney wanted to dismiss Kimmel for repulsive comments (which they were), that’s its prerogative. Companies should be able to fire employees for whatever reasons they want. If that’s what Disney did, it has nothing to do with the First Amendment.

But was that what happened? As when the Biden Administration leaned on social media companies to stifle dissent, the Trump team certainly appears to be threatening voices it doesn’t like.

Here’s FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr before the firing, making an offer Disney couldn’t refuse:

“This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney. We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

This is obviously unconstitutional. The U.S. government has no authority to prohibit or influence what anyone says, nor to urge employers to ensure no one says it. Even without overt force, government “encouragement” is implicit coercion.

Broken Dam

Many observers have punned that Kirk’s killing is a “turning point”. I agree, and it’s reasonable to wonder which way we’ll go.

But the better question is whether all of us should head the same direction. Like a train with engines at each end, Americans have been pulling apart for twenty years.

Unlike the tumultuous 1960s or the fractious 1850s, the United States are filled with people who not only don’t get along; they don’t want to. With no shared values or common culture, political opponents detest each other.

Like Sunni and Shia, their worldviews are irretrievably incompatible. Forcing them together is futile, and perhaps fatal.

Rather than expect them to swim together in the same current, these fish belong in separate streams flowing different directions. That’s a sensible solution, and the humane one.

At some point, it’s probably inevitable. But that doesn’t mean it’s imminent. The killing of Charlie Kirk seems more like Harper’s Ferry than Ft Sumter: an overture to something ominous… with ramifications few foresee.

It’s been said repeatedly since the shooting that the assailants murdered the “moderate” voice. That’s true. As Michael Malice said of Donald Trump, Charlie Kirk wasn’t the river.

He was the dam.

JD

Atlanta, GA

September 14, 2025

This essay (linked here and below) was originally published in Crisis Investing, edited by Doug Casey, Matt Smith, and Lau Vegys. Since Matt and I wrote the article in May 2023, events have repeatedly recalled its relevance. That’s again true over the last week.

Doug Casey's Crisis Investing

You've Been Played

Shakespeare was right…

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3 years ago · 33 likes · 6 comments · JD Breen and Matt Smith @ Crisis Investing

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Atlanta, GA

July 24, 2025

A couple weeks back, we lamented the fall in fertility in the Western world and noted a few reasons it’s occurring.

Among them are the proliferation of women in the workforce, the prevalence of government programs obviating the need for offspring to provide elder care, and a pessimistic perception that the world is too awful a place to bring a child.

But underlying everything is the notion that having kids costs too much money.

Eight years ago, the Department of Agriculture calculated that about $230K was required to raise a child. To account for inflation, the Brookings Institute recently upped the estimate to $310K. This averages to $18K annually… excluding college expenses.

Sounds daunting.

I don’t doubt the data from these studies are factual. But are they truthful? Is this really what it costs to raise a child? Or does it reflect more what parents decide to spend than what they need to pay?

Having raised two children, I know kids aren’t cheap. But they also aren’t prohibitively expensive… or needn’t be. The perceived burden on pocketbooks often comes from flawed assumptions and misplaced priorities.

Many of the presumed expenses of raising kids are for items or activities parents purchase to improve other people’s perceptions. I don’t necessarily blame them. Most of us succumb to these same influences. I did. It can be hard not to.

Parents want what’s best for their kids, and are convinced to equate that with the “finest” school, “nicest” neighborhood, “safest” car, or latest gadget that garners peer approval. But children don’t need a huge house, a fancy car, or an expensive education. Oftentimes, these are costly luxuries they and their families are better off without.

Genuine Challenges

This isn’t to minimize genuine challenges. For most middle class families, taxes alone consume more money than houses, food, and fuel combined. Larcenous monetary policy has transferred wealth to those who already own assets, while wrecking purchasing power of the people being plundered.

Holding the bag after fifty years of inter-generational theft, today’s prospective parents inherited greater financial obstacles than recent generations endured (I’ve discussed some of those extensively, including here). When they notice they’ve been robbed, they’re regularly ridiculed as lazy whiners by oblivious elders who benefited by the heist.

Yet this doesn’t mean children are “unaffordable”, or that they must cost as much as recent studies suggest. That’d be like saying people shouldn’t get married because weddings are too pricey. They can be. But couples don’t need a luxurious rope to tie the knot. The bond is just as sturdy (and often stronger) with more modest material.

“Affordability” is relative. In many cases, it reflects personal priorities and individual preferences. Everything becomes less affordable when we devote our scarce resources to something else.

No one denies that people spend more today than they did fifty years ago, or even at the turn of this century. But they also buy more, often borrowing to do it.

U.S. Consumer Spending (1970 - 2023)

Popular propaganda (which eagerly touts how much kids cost) rarely discourages this. If anything… as with student debt, car payments, or home mortgages… loans are lauded as ways to enhance affordability and availability (which aren’t the same thing).

For a society that supposedly can’t afford anything, consumption has run rampant. Americans are less frequently referred to (or treated like) “citizens” than as “consumers”. Some have earned the moniker, forgoing their first born to facilitate frivolity.

Yet many genuinely fear they can’t afford kids. They’re honestly overwhelmed. When they’re told it requires $300K to be a parent, their concern isn’t unreasonable. But is it legitimate?

It’s Own Impetus

Being “unable to afford a child” isn’t unusual. Historically, most parents were when they first had one. Or at least they thought they were. But almost all of them figured it out. They still do.

Kids undeniably increase costs of certain things, tho’ not necessarily of expenses overall. New parents shift spending patterns, reducing consumption of other items after children arrive.

More important, becoming a father can be its own impetus for enabling men to afford being one. Statistically, having kids increases a man’s earnings. It also tends to mature him (the same is true for women, but they tend to be more mature anyway).

It’s no coincidence that married men with children tend to make more money. Being a father extends horizons, prompting him to save more, invest often, and squander less.

Having kids encourages delayed gratification. This reduced time preference prompts savings, increases wealth, and enriches the family. Many parents become more diligent about their health, which alleviates financial burdens later in life.

But what about expenses after their child arrives? The “kid cost” studies collated child-rearing costs into several buckets. Let’s dip into a couple, and determine if they need to be so deep.

The Biggest Burden

Housing was considered the biggest burden, consuming almost 30% of assumed outlays to raise a kid. Relative to income, these costs have clearly accelerated in recent years.

In nominal terms, the median residence fetches about ten times as many dollars as it did fifty years ago… and almost twice what it did at the start of this decade. As I previously detailed here, real earnings have fallen too. There’s no denying that wages have lagged the price of real estate:

The Brookings study estimated parents pay about $5,500 annually for housing. But this expense isn’t because of children, and having them doesn’t necessarily make it worse.

Potential parents have housing expenses anyway. They need a place to live whether they have kids or not. Having one doesn’t mean they must move.

Likewise, things like elaborate nurseries aren’t necessary. As with many expenses blamed on children, these projects are mostly to enhance the (self-)image of the parents. So long as a room is quiet and warm, babies couldn’t care less about fancy furniture, cute accessories, or the color of the walls.

As families grow, more space may be desirable. But it usually isn’t essential. If anything, it’s probably a signal to shed stuff. Unless a couple lives in a cramped studio in a crowded city, a newborn rarely requires a new house. Two kids typically don’t either.

My paternal grandparents raised nine children, most of them in a modest ranch house in south Tampa. Of course, not all lived there at the same time. Older kids left before the youngest were born. But the place was usually crowded.

Up to five siblings shared one bathroom and several bedrooms. Friction and fights were common among that Irish Catholic brood. But it was fine, and probably preferable to the loneliness many kids now lament. Older siblings also offered free babysitting and hand-me-downs that helped alleviate expenses.

This wasn’t that long ago. Even now, Latin American families continue to raise many children in confined spaces. Grandparents are often part of these multi-generational arrangements.

Yet they’re as happy as American counterparts who have small or fractured families with much more money. The Latin Americans recognize the importance of family bonds, social engagement, and tight-knit community.

Not that they shun money. They obviously don’t.

But they retain perspective on its purpose. It’s a means to wealth, not wealth itself… a tool to nurture a family and keep it together, not a prize they’d exchange their family for.

Most Americans would claim to agree. But when they refuse to have children because they’re convinced they’re too costly, that’s essentially what they’re doing.

Childcare and Education

“Childcare and education” are estimated at $3,000 annually, about 16% of the assumed cost to raise a child. Some analyses (which themselves are dated) put expenses as high as $10K for those who hire third-parties to watch their children.

Childcare costs assume both parents are working. In some cases, they must… as single parents obviously do. But for many, it’s a preference. Regardless, there are alternatives to these exorbitant expenses.

One parent could choose to stay home. Everything we do involves opportunity costs. This one obviously entails a loss of income. But a chunk of that is taxed, and much of the balance goes to paying people to care for kids. If the second salary is too high to forgo, then (in most cases) affording children shouldn’t be a burden.

Another recourse is moving nearer to family who can help. If more children arrive, older siblings can look after younger ones… which is another argument for more kids. Combining or exchanging care duties with friends is another option. There are more.

The “cost of a kid” studies excluded college costs from their calculations, tho’ many might argue those expenses can’t be wished away.

Why not? For most people, they probably should be. But even if they aren’t, small, regular savings started during pregnancy or after childbirth will compound into enough money for a good college. Or for whatever the child decides on instead.

As has become obvious in recent years… with student debt leaving millions destitute, ideological indoctrination making many of them morons, and the financial reward often revealed as a mirage… overpriced academia often does more damage than good.

Not that college is never a good idea. I went. My sons did too. One is till there. But it’s best suited to certain pursuits. For engineering, medicine, law, and hard sciences, a university education makes sense.

But even then, it rarely does so right away.

Most kids should probably apprentice before they enroll, ideally in several places that expose them to different disciplines and a wider network of potential mentors. Gaining practical knowledge is nice. But exposure to a variety of people of differing experience is essential.

Few eighteen year-olds know what they want to do. How would they? When asked, they say what sounds good. Their parents and peers are impressed at the idea of them being an engineer or a doctor, so that’s what they study.

Many would be better off spending a few years traveling, working, and learning skills (I recently wrote of one young man who’s doing this). This helps affirm (or refute) what they think they want before (or instead of) spending four years and tons of money finding out.

The Other Side of the Ledger

Childhood includes countless costs that may not be necessary, but that parents are taught to take for granted.

Designer clothes, expensive parties, new cars, overscheduled activities, detrimental electronics. Most of these expenses can be reduced or eliminated by simply saying “no”. This has the benefit of saving money by making your child (and yourself) a better person.

This is wisdom borne of experience. We raised our sons doing a lot of the things I’ve said aren’t necessary. Because they’re not. That doesn’t mean they were “wrong”… for us or anyone else.

But they’re also not right for everyone. They aren’t. In retrospect, some probably didn’t make sense for us.

Each family has unique circumstances warranting different ways of raising kids. Many are discovered as we go. But it’s important to realize viable options are there, and to welcome the mistakes that’ll be made along the way.

Errors are unavoidable. Not making them is probably the biggest one. We live and learn, compiling lessons we often forget and that our kids will ignore. But maybe potential parents can abide them, and not let misleading statistics persuade them to reject the greatest joy life can bring.

Our culture encourages couples to focus on one side of the ledger, where kids are a litany of liabilities that induce fatigue, frustration, and strained finances.

Occasionally, they are.

But children are also an asset. This should go without saying. If nothing else, the human race can’t survive without them.

In a way, human beings can’t either. As kids grow, their parents do too. Many people don’t fully mature till they get married and have children. That’s because kids shrink parental time preference, which is the indispensable impetus for people to prosper.

Children extend the lens, encompassing a horizon beyond our lives. Focus shifts from passing fancies and fleeting fads to a line of descent that makes us immortal.

No parent denies that having kids entails sacrifice. Anything worthwhile does. But there are many ways to do almost everything, especially the most essential role in the world.

As more people avoid being parents because they think kids too costly, those who already are can’t imagine life without them. They wouldn’t retroactively return their offspring to alleviate costs, or to retrieve whatever financial flexibility they may once have been reluctant to forgo. The very thought is preposterous and abhorrent.

This is the best evidence children aren’t expensive. After babies are born, parents would give up everything to not lose their kids. They don’t wonder if they can afford to have children.

They know they can’t afford not to have them, and wonder how they ever did.

JD

Atlanta, GA

July 7, 2025

Is there a pernicious plot to depopulate the planet?

I don’t know.

But among global “elites”, political opportunists, and weather wackos, there’s a general consensus that there are too many people. Yet while much of “the West” frets about an influx of foreigners, most countries are culling themselves.

Around the globe…behind the scenes in plain sight…people are pruning their progeny. In ways subtle and sly, overt and obvious, we’re consistently nudged to reduce reproduction.

The propaganda is thick. A drumbeat of popular culture and major media pounds home the high cost of kids and how tough they are to raise. But we rarely hear about the immense joy they bring, which usually lasts a lifetime… and lingers long after the challenges of their childhood slip from memory.

Why? Cui bono?

Phenomenon of Fruitlessness

Family (which is prioritized before government) and religion (which lies above it) are the two great obstacles to an all-encompassing State. For more than a century, ruling regimes have implemented policies that undermine both.

Contraception, abortion, no-fault divorce, same-sex “marriage”, and an alphabet soup of aggrieved deviants are among the relentless brigades suppressing births.

From central banks, diluted dollars diminish future-orientation. Flabby with the empty calories of fiat money, few in the West plan beyond next Wednesday. Insecurity rises as savings suffer and wealth erodes. Reduced purchasing power delays marriage and defers maternity, perhaps permanently.

Potential parents are urged to “wait till they’re ready”, as if that moment ever really arrives. There’s almost always some reason to postpone having kids. As often as not, the best time is “now”.

Additionally, under the warped influences of our narcissistic age, couples are discouraged from (or chastised for) wanting to bring children into this “rotten world”… as if we weren’t living in the easiest era to ever be alive.

Much of the phenomenon of fruitlessness derives from our high time-preference society. Family and faith, Church and children, are intrinsically long-term, low time-preference endeavors reaching beyond the realm of our earthly lives.

Multi-generational families were once required not only to help raise infants, but to care for elders. With the advent of state-run medical “insurance” and Ponzi “pension” schemes, children are perceived as less necessary to prospective parents who now expect to be supported by frayed nets until they die.

For decades, women have been subtly coaxed to have fewer kids. And many men are urged to avoid marriage as a pointless endeavor doomed to fail.

Artificial contraception…once broadly considered abhorrent…is now taken for granted, and actively encouraged. The pill, initially lauded as a capsule of “liberation”, has become the suicide tablet of a decadent West.

Abortion, universally reviled till late last century, is widely accepted as a licit way to “terminate a pregnancy.” Meanwhile, most countries that once comprised Christendom have legitimized relationships from which conception is impossible.

Unplanned Childlessness

Reduced fertility doesn’t derive primarily from more people wanting smaller families. It comes mostly from fewer women having kids. But it’s not that they don’t want children. They just don’t want them yet.

The percentage of “childless by choice” women is rising. Almost half of Millennial women will exit their fertile years without giving birth. But regret often sneaks up on them.

How?

Materialistically, many of them find it hard to justify having kids. Education is among the strongest correlates with reduced fertility. Statistically, going to college pushes women below replacement.

Women with degrees tend to participate in the two-income system, especially if they’ve racked up debt. Working women (and the childcare workers they require) also benefit the State by increasing the number of taxpayers.

Female careers consume time and displace other interests. Which may be fine. But many women won’t realize what they’ve lost till it’s gone. Yet the proportion of them who (say they) don’t want kids… or “want children, but not now”… continues to rise.

For various reasons they don’t anticipate, many will regret waiting. According to some demographers, most childless women didn’t plan (or want) to be without kids.

The most common cause of unplanned childlessness is lack of a “suitable” husband. Women tend to want guys who make more money and are better educated than they are. But such men are harder to find as female incomes rise.

Although it’s happening later in that decade, their twenties is still when most women get married and have kids. But that’s also the time they launch their careers. Even into their mid-30s, many ambitious women still want to wait five years to start a family.

This is possible. But often unrealistic. Socially and physiologically, it’s usually too late. Meeting the right man takes time (especially as women get older). Getting to know him takes longer. And female fertility declines with age. If a woman is childless at 30, it’s as likely as not she always will be.

Empty Train

Most people have no idea how big, broad, or consequential the implications of sub-replacement birth rates are. Why would they? For decades, they’ve been convinced fewer kids are a viable “solution” to some purported “problem”.

But even among those who acknowledge the calamity of an approaching cliff, applying the brakes can seem pointless. There’s little anyone can do about it, at least for the foreseeable future.

Even if a baby boom began tomorrow, we can’t make more five year-olds appear today, or create more thirty year-olds a quarter century from now. An empty train is steaming down the track, with brakes out and wheels greased. A deficit is coming whatever we do.

And it almost doesn’t matter where we look.

Seventy percent of the world’s population lives in a country with declining replacement population. Africa is the only continent where it’s increasing, and most of that is south of the Sahara:

The total fertility rate (TFR) tells a more ominous tale. The TFR assumes the total number of babies born this year will be the same every year from now thru the rest of each woman’s life. It then projects how many children each woman will have.

Aside from Sub-Saharan Africa, parts of the Middle East, some of central Asia, and swaths of India, the world is below the 2.1 TFR required to replace population. Even in Latin America…the ostensible reservoir for an evaporating US…the tide is going out.

In many places, metrics are especially foreboding.

The “birth-gap” compares the number of fifty year-olds to the number of newborns, who in a couple decades could (presumably) care for their elders.

In Japan that ratio is 2:1. Italy there are 56% fewer newborns than fifty year-olds. In South Korea, where sixty percent of people are over forty, it’s 70%. The TFR in Korea is under 0.8, implying only six great-grandchildren for every 100 current Koreans.

This portends a reduction of Koreans comparable to the Black Death in Europe or akin to the decimation of American Indians from imported disease. Without immigration, Italy’s population will halve by the end of the century. The song is the same throughout most of Europe, and the overture is sounding in the United States.

But this decline doesn’t merely imply similar demographics with fewer people. Countries will be much older, more infirm, and less able to provide necessary support to those who need it.

Receding Tsunami

The Rising Sun sheds some light. For three decades, Japanese growth has stagnated, and debt soared. The Nikkei still hasn’t eclipsed its bubble peak in 1989.

The Nipponese archipelago has 8.5 million abandoned homes. As taxes rise, working hours go up…and wages fall. And a declining population has difficulty sustaining a surplus of seniors.

And now this receding tsunami is crossing the Pacific.

In 2040 the United States will have more nursing homes than day cares. By 2080, more Americans will die than be born. In the US, about half of all women over thirty will be single and childless at the end of this decade.

The decline is about twenty years behind the collapse in Korea. If US fertility maintains the rate from the last decade, there will be about four great grandchildren for every hundred Americans alive today.

Leaving aside cultural implications (even assuming the economic ones made sense), importing people isn’t a solution. To paraphrase Margaret Thatcher, the problem with relying on immigration to solve the problem is you eventually run out of other people’s people.

Immigrants are also reproducing below replacement. As the tide recedes on both sides of the border, new arrivals can’t refill the pond.

Even if they could, by backfilling the decline with an inundation of outsiders, native cultures will soon disappear. Without Italians, Italy won’t be Italy. Sweden sans Swedes isn’t Sweden. There’s no France without the French. And absent Americans, the United States go away.

An Open Door

In most of these places, this is becoming obvious already. It’s almost as if cultural destruction is the true intent. By opening the gates, denigrating traditions, eradicating history, and discouraging fertility, it’s like Western countries are hiring foreign mercenaries to conquer themselves. Because, in many cases, they are.

To many of our overlords, that’s OK. Many of them admit they want billions of people to disappear. And I’m sure they do, even if they never volunteer to go first. After all, they don’t like the hoi polloi trekking the Tetons, meandering Machu Picchu, or skiing in Gstaad.

But after half a century of anti-human propaganda, they’re now pushing on an open door. Not that they didn’t do all they could to lift the latch.

Our anointed busybodies aren’t shy about implying “the planet” is over-burdened with people. Or, rather, with other people. When the world-improvers wring their hands over too many mouths, it’s never their own faces over which they propose to press the pillow.

What they’re essentially saying, as PJ O’Rourke once put it, is there’s just the right amount of themselves…but way too much of everyone else.

Existential Crisis

To the extent US growth continues, it’s in the heartland. Coastal populations are dwindling. Crime, expenses, and wackiness are pushing people out of once appealing places like San Francisco, New York, and Chicago.

The average American aged 50 has only about $300K saved for retirement. But the median nest-egg is under $120K. Even at age 70, those figures are just $600K and $200K. Over a couple decades, this goes nowhere. And if (de)population trends continue, it’ll get there fast.

About half of net household wealth is in real estate, and most of that is on leverage. What happens when most homes become depreciating assets, as is now happening in many places?

Currently, two US workers support one American elder. That will reverse by the end of this century. When it does, every couple will support four seniors. On this trajectory, either young people will be enserfed, or old ones will eat kibble.

Unlike hyped-up scams exploiting normal climate fluctuations, this is an existential crisis. It implies population declines more severe than during the devastation of Italy after the fall of Rome.

A millennium later, Italy recovered. But it was no longer Rome. Will America recover? Will Europe? When? And if they do, what will they be?

JD

Atlanta , GA
June 29, 2025

Has any century started worse than this one?

I recently heard someone pose this question, a narcissistic lament typical of our short-sighted, self-centered, attention-seeking age. The answer is obvious, and can be found by looking only a hundred years into the rearview mirror.

There we see…closer than they appear… objects like Theodore Roosevelt, the San Francisco Earthquake, the Federal Reserve, the income tax, the direct election of Senators, Woodrow Wilson, the Great War, the Russian Revolution, the Spanish Flu, the Treaty of Versailles, the Black Sox, and… to ensure these wounds were suffered as painfully as possible… Prohibition.

The war ended (or, rather, took a twenty-year pause), San Francisco was rebuilt, the flu dissipated, baseball recovered, and prohibition was repealed. But like herpes, most of these disasters didn’t go away, and the effect of all of them echoes in our time.

But let’s give our most recent two decades their ignominious due. They have their own litany of self-inflicted calamity, exacted by meddling sculptors and busybody painters whose only tools are jackhammers and spray guns. And, to be fair, their work isn’t done.

Refrain of Disaster

In retrospect, the 1990s might have been Peak America…the blowoff top of a great bacchanal. The Soviets fell, peace triumphed, and prosperity reigned. History was at an end. The party was on.

The US then succumbed to what economics calls the law of diminishing returns, and approached what Calculus refers to as the limit. After running up the credit card and hitting the casino, it raided mom’s wine cellar and ransacked dad’s liquor cabinet.

Then it passed out on the lawn, empty bottles and smoldering cigarettes strewn across the yard as morning sprinklers sprayed its face. It’s been hungover and searching for its car keys ever since.

Along the way, it tripped and stumbled into several awful errors: rigged markets, stupid wars, universal surveillance, the cult of “Science”, perpetual bubbles, fake wealth, real depression, “transitory” inflation, police brutality, mass immigration, cultural disintegration, mandatory medication, urban riots, tyrannical lockdowns, “climate” scams, LIV Golf, and the designated hitter in the National League.

And many Americans seemed just fine with this refrain of disaster that resembles a classic Bradbury book or a bad Billy Joel song. The Fourth Turning seems to be upon us.

Not only is the pretense of liberty vanishing; the desire for it seems to be as well. To each his own is not for us. Live and let live is dead. We love to mind each other’s business. And, unlike our benighted ancestors of a hundred years ago, we have just the tool to do it.

I’m holding it in my hand, and most of you are holding it in yours. It’s the smartphone, the most iconic example of which was launched eighteen years ago today.

Amplifying the Flames

This century, we have become an hysterical people. Everything is over the top, overdone, overblown, and overreacted to. Even (or especially) regarding people we never met and would never care to meet, or things we know nothing about and about which, in a sane world, we’d not be able to care less.

The smartphone brings such “news” to us the way a magnifying glass transmits sunlight to an ant. It hits us more intensely, and less beneficially, than we initially believe.

The torrent allows little or no time to think, and often leaves us worse off than had we not been exposed at all. We receive so much information that we usually know less than we did before it arrived.

Public opinion can be defined as what everyone thinks everyone else thinks, which inevitably influences what people think they are supposed to think. The smartphone amplifies these flames, which often burn out as quickly as they ignite.

Before smartphones, public opinion was less contagious (and more contained) than it is today. Political opposition, alternative views, and dissident perspectives were more easily quarantined.

But propaganda can no longer be concentrated in a controlled conduit of three networks and a few newspapers. As during the Russia-gate hoax, the climate swindle, the covid con, or innumerable lies that whip-up wars, the smartphone helps dilute, circumvent, and refute fiendish fibs meant to keep us in line.

But we need to be careful. In most cases, we see what we’re supposed to see. In an era of slick editing, selective algorithms, and deceptive AI, we should distrust any text, voice, or video we’re fed electronically… particularly information that affirms “facts” we’re inclined to believe.

Social media and instant news are not conducive to subtlety and nuance, but rather to emotional manipulation, hot takes, and lots of noise. Smartphones stunt reflection and shorten time horizons. Contemplation can wait. Responses are expected immediately. Stupidity thrives, hysteria abounds, perspective retreats.

Push and Pull

It seems appropriate that “silent” and “listen” are spelled with the same letters. But in social settings, our phones facilitate the former while discouraging the latter. They “connect” us superficially from a distance, yet push us apart in proximity.

Isolation reigns, even when we’re together. A random buzz, beep, post, photo, like, link, text, or tweet is sufficient pretext to disrupt a conversation or ignore a friend. The phone in your hand takes priority over the people in your presence.

Digital correspondence takes precedence. The world of the real, the tangible, and the personal fades into the background. And, after wading mindlessly thru the self-selected cheer, artificial abundance, and self-assured certainty of other people’s posts, it often feels inadequate.

Don’t get me wrong. The smartphone is one of the most useful, powerful, consequential, disruptive, convenient, informative, miraculous, and remarkable inventions of all time.

But in some ways, it’s among the worst. Like most anything else, it just depends how we use it. And whether, every once in a while, we opt not to.

JD

Atlanta, GA

March 2, 2025

Ninety-two years ago, the Golden Gate Bridge began to go up. Sixty years later, my job was to help ensure it stayed standing.

Soon after the Loma Prieta earthquake struck San Francisco, I worked as a civil engineer on that iconic crossing.

The bridge held up in 1989, but would suffer significant damage if another 1906 quake happened to hit. Our primary responsibility was to retrofit the span to withstand such a shock. And that’s what we did.

So far so good. But the strengthened structure hasn’t been tested by a severe shaking. It’s only a matter of time till it is.

Dreary Eyesores

Sadly, the City it serves succumbed to self-inflicted convulsions the last several years. But San Francisco’s iconic emblem retains its grandeur.

Working at the Golden Gate, I was always grateful for this beautiful bridge. Had it not been built when it was, it’s highly unlikely it would be there now.

Not that something wouldn’t span the strait. The technology obviously exists to construct a bridge that’s both functional and appealing. It was done once, so it could’ve happened later.

But it’s improbable a structure so elegant would’ve gone up. Like most architectural “art” since the Second World War, a dreary eyesore would doubtless scar the scene, mercifully obscured by a daily blanket of San Francisco fog.

Around the Western world, architectural atrocities offer ample evidence for this counterfactual hypothesis. Hard angles, bare materials, raw concrete, and monochrome color besmirch landscapes from Los Angeles to London.

San Francisco wasn’t immune. The Embarcadero Freeway severed the City from its beautiful bay. It wasn’t removed till the quake that brought me west pulled it down. But modern architecture remains a scourge.

Brutalist buildings were bad enough in communist countries where we’d expect no more. After all, these were places where regimes persistently pounded their people into obedient dust. Individuals were inconsequential nonentities, to be dwarfed by oppressive structures of inhuman scale.

But why did the “developed” West emulate these errors?

While we ponder the question, we realize it could also be asked about the collectivist imposition of Keynesian “economics”, bureaucratic “science”, administrative “education”…or any other discipline that’s been completely corrupted by the technocratic State.

The particulars may vary. But, in a broad sense, the answer is the same: since the middle of last century, the West’s aesthetic sense is almost entirely gone.

Where did it go? Who took it? And why?

Indelible Essence

Aristotle said the aim of art is not to represent outward appearance, but inward significance. Beauty is the visible expression of invisible nature. Like any art, architecture should reflect the indelible essence of what’s being depicted.

It’s fine for a warehouse to merely restrain the weather. Such a building has a pedestrian (if important) purpose that few tend to see. And most don’t care how the crates are stored.

But such a mundane function is insufficient for, say, a Catholic church. Sacred spaces should lift us up as they keep the elements out. Yet these days, many of them keep almost everything out…except the passing fads that make political points.

Half a century ago, few could walk into (or past) a Catholic church without knowing exactly what it was. Even non-believers would be moved by the heavenly messages sacred architecture sent.

But most “houses of worship” built since the 1970s are indistinguishable from Moose lodges, lecture halls, or community theaters. And many are used in similar fashion. They are more meeting house than holy space.

Churches aren’t unique in their swift descent to abhorrent banality. Even many public schools were once somewhat graceful and inviting, with sculpted walls, high ceilings, and tall windows welcoming natural light.

It was an ambience that invited thought (even if it didn’t always engender it). But the last fifty years, academic architecture appeared intent on stifling study and impeding speculation.

Newer schools devolved into depressing edifices. They became squat bunkers intended to imprison the inmates, keep them in line, and move them along.

Similarly, even in minor cities, main libraries were usually magisterial and serene, worthy repositories of a noble heritage. Many now look as durable and desirable as cardboard boxes deposited beside strip mall dumpsters.

And why not? If they aren’t preserving anything worth saving, what’s the point of erecting them as timeless vaults?

Which brings us to banks. These used to be stately and sturdy…sound structures conveying safety and strength. That made sense when the money they stored was backed by gold (or when they still wanted us to think it was).

But, as with much else the last half century, the money was degraded and all pretenses dropped. Indeed, the dilution of money is the main cause of decline in everything else.

And banks no longer “store” money anyway. By making loans, they conjure currency from thin air. If that’s all you’re doing, why not be in a flimsy building a steady breeze could blow away?

Because security and confidence hardly matter, marble and gold have vanished from banks…most of which occupy slight structures resembling a Dunkin’ Donuts (which many may become after they inevitably go bust).

Architecture should give artistic voice to the condition of a culture. For better or bitter, it still does. And what it says is cause for concern.

A Concrete Dog

Ugliness is everywhere. Municipal “art” is a horror.

Across San Francisco from the Golden Gate Bridge sits the Villancourt fountain, a vile pile that architectural critic Allan Temko described as a dropping from the square intestines of a concrete dog.

Even most art museums are awful. The new ones are almost universally abominable. And many older ones are being indiscriminately defaced, as if to eradicate uplifting remnants of a more refined age.

The Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto is a case in point. The original building is just over a hundred years old. It’s dignified Italianate façade graces one of the more prominent corners in Canada’s largest city.

But about fifteen years ago, architectural vandals grabbed their weapons and went to work. Like a tumor on a healthy organ, they appended a “crystalline” carbuncle that couldn’t be more atrocious.

If it could blush, even the Louvre’s appalling pyramid would be embarrassed by this hideous monstrosity. IM Pei’s blemish on the Cour Napoléon is more out of place than unappealing (tho’ it’s that too).

But at the Royal Ontario, the host edifice looks like it’s being devoured…which inadvertently makes a revealing point. By their awful addition, the architectural assailants provided an apt analogy to the rabid Revolution that consumes our culture.

Malignant Growths

Before the 20th century, important structures featured architectural elements that appeared to be alive, and were consciously organized into a cohesive whole. Now, like kudzu or cancer, they’re malignant growths…enveloping cities they seem determined to destroy.

How did this happen?

Starting in the Enlightenment, and certainly by the end of the 19th century, the notion that we should have faith in things that couldn’t be measured had substantially subsided.

“Reason” reigned, and “Science” was supreme. Pragmatism preached that form should follow function. The Platonic ideal dissipated. Classical ornament was superfluous. Machine motifs and industrial imagery were the main sources of modernist symbolism.

Architraves, columns, and pediments featuring love, leaves, and life-affirming forms gave way to hammers, wheels, chisels, bars, and beams. Buildings became monuments to industrial might and Economic Man. They reflected the age, but were revolting to the eye.

Architecture, like any art, should organically evolve with changing times. But its modern variant seems more revolutionary than evolutionary; more imposed than developed.

Like politicians or public school teachers who send their children to private institutions while inflicting government “education” on everyone else, modern architecture looks like something its exponents do to other people.

Remedial English

But how could the victims allow this to happen? It’s almost as if the perpetrators made this part of the plan. Come to think of it…they probably did. Over time…from the turn of the twentieth century and accelerating after the dawn of this one…liberal education became state indoctrination.

Students used to learn Greek and Latin in high school. Now they’re taught remedial English in college. And most don’t read or recognize the classical legacy their own heritage bequeathed. Why would they? The teachers don’t know it either.

If art is an outward expression of an inherent nature, how can that essence be preserved if we’ve forgotten what it is? Much of it is intentionally (and aggressively) shunned, because it reflects the oppressive rantings of dead white men.

But when cultural literacy is lacking, social comprehension goes mute. A civilization loses its moorings when it forgets where it’s been.

We wouldn’t expect someone who knew nothing about China to design buildings for Beijing. Anyone who hadn’t learned English couldn’t write the sonnets of Shakespeare.

But we have generations of Westerners who’ve been stripped of their heritage. It’s no wonder the society bequeathed to them no longer reflects their honorable legacy.

Most of the thieves are the sort who take pleasure in lording moral superiority over bourgeois simpletons wedded to anachronistic notions. Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder…but when everyone is blind, there’s nothing to see.

Abstraction Ascendant

The Golden Gate Bridge is a miracle. Not only of engineering, but of art. It spanned distance, depths, currents, and terrain once thought unconquerable. And it did so while somehow improving a scene that was irreproachably sublime.

In fairness, the original design wouldn’t have done so. It would’ve traversed without elating. A bulky cantilever-suspension was initially planned to bridge the strait. Fortunately, it was ultimately rejected for the Art Deco ornament we enjoy today.

While (perhaps) the most prominent example, the Golden Gate Bridge wasn’t the only architectural treasure of that era. The Chrysler and Empire State Buildings enhanced Manhattan a couple years earlier. Rockefeller Center also rose during this period.

It was a time of federal funding and make-work jobs. During the decade, beauty began to recede. Because the modern architect could no longer provide reasons for ornamental beauty, whatever he retained was made abstract…left to the viewer to figure out for himself. After the war, abstraction was ascendent.

The quality of art reflects the condition of a culture. It should exalt and enhance rather than degrade and demoralize.

In our debased society, rap fills radios while Mozart languishes at lower frequencies. In our impatient era of fiat money, that makes sense.

Classical music takes time to appreciate. But in our instant-gratification world, we can’t take a few moments to appreciate abiding genius. Bach is a novel; Taylor Swift is a text. Which is the one most people will read?

In a disposable society, few want to read anyway. Journalism, posts, and tweets are the most perishable “literature”. And the most popular. But like any fad, they are passing. When the cycle shifts, we’ll welcome resuscitation of common sense, instinctive symmetry, and healthy skepticism.

Till then, we’ll strive to retrieve these treasures, and use them to build bridges to places we need to be.

JD

Atlanta, GA

February 9, 2025

To the cheers of some and chagrin of others, the Kansas City Chiefs are once again on center stage.

Six years ago, when this game was in Atlanta, we attended the annual Super Bowl breakfast. At it were an assortment of NFL big-wigs…players, coaches, movers,…

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October 26, 2024

Ninety-one years ago, the Golden Gate Bridge began to go up. Sixty years later, my job was to help ensure it stayed standing.

Soon after the Loma Prieta earthquake struck San Francisco, I worked as a civil engineer on that iconic crossing.

The bridge held up in 1989, but would suffer significant damage if another 1906 quake happ…

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September 17, 2024

Early one morning came a knock at the door. That’s not unusual. We often receive deliveries during the day. But this one was unexpected.

As I turned the knob, our two cats took to their heels. The dog growled and bared his teeth. A moment later, I understood why.

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July 20, 2024

Before it’s leaders made it an uninhabitable sh*thole, San Francisco was one of the greatest places in the world.

I loved the City, absorbed its history, and couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. I considered it my “adopted home town”.

It was beautiful. And it still is. From afar. Like a washed-up woman at the end of a Bourbon Street bar.

But till it sobers up, takes a shower, and gets some help, it’s best to keep our distance. Yet I’m glad I knew it when I did.

An Odd Curiosity

Like any normal person, I abhorred its politics. But at that time, its politics didn’t seem to mind me. I was an outlier, but not a villain.

Besides, as a southern Catholic, I knew what I was getting into when I chose to live in “Baghdad-by-the-Bay”. I moved there of my own accord, willing to endure some unsavory side dishes to enjoy the succulent entrée. Sometimes I felt like I was the main course.

But even to the paragons of “diversity” who demand uniformity, I was thought of more as an odd curiosity than a lethal threat. I was welcomed into political forums and onto local radio programs, as a strange token of weird ideas. But there were no hard feelings.

I made great friends. Many of them disagreed with me, which was fine. And fun. Unlike the tense, angry disputes today, those debates were invigorating, and enjoyable. Occasionally, minds were changed and lessons were learned.

We’d argue politely, if earnestly…which was still the custom just thirty years ago. We might meet each other’s opinions with bemused laughs, furrowed brows, and rolled eyes. But then we’d pour another drink, grab some dinner, and wonder or worry about things that really mattered.

Every Sunday for several years, a like-minded friend and I would host such symposia over grilled steak, red wine, and dry martinis. Those days are gone, and I miss them, as I do the people who were there.

The Mortal Sin

Not because my youth is gone; but because civility is. Amicable disagreement seems virtually impossible, or vanishingly rare. Even among family, political discussion is actively discouraged. When I was growing up, such debate was the whole point! No more.

These days, unless you express the approved opinions, those you hold are usually best kept hidden. Not only to preserve relationships, but to protect your career. And it’s not merely that the rancor is inordinately severe. It’s often over things that are monumentally stupid.

Idiotic conflicts over which no one was dumb enough to argue even during the atavistic era of the Obama administration now cause such consternation that jobs are lost, families are separated, and friendships are severed for the mortal sin of making statements that are undeniably true.

To take one egregious example, the obvious assertion that men can’t get pregnant…the denial of which would’ve made someone certifiably insane ten minutes ago…is enough to cast the “bigoted” dissident from “respectable” society.

Soon, even suggesting that a couple dudes should have the decency to at least get “married” before one them knocks up the other will seem a quaint echo of a benighted age.

This is but a single sample of the incessant imbecility we’re commanded to accept. More serious ones (from which the more publicized absurdities are intended to distract us) include the dangerous delusions that counterfeit currency creates prosperity, that political pseudoscience can squash a virus, or that government arrogance can control the weather.

The Root of All Evil

To paraphrase St. Paul, funny money is the root of all evil. Without it, the madness being foisted on us would be impossible. At the very least, it’d be unsustainable…and it probably is. As Herbert Stein said, if something can’t go on forever, it will stop. The question is “when?”

Just because something is inevitable, doesn’t mean it’s imminent. But perhaps this jalopy is nearing the cliff. While prices for what people own are falling, the cost of what they need increases. Shelves empty, lines lengthen, the walls close in, and the mob rises up. Or…before the disappointing complacency during Covid…so you’d think.

In many places, like the wonderful City where we used to live, acquiescent residents rallied ’round the regime that covered their face and confined them to quarters. Now, they are paying the price…whether they admit it or not.

When we lived in San Francisco, the streets bustled. They were “eclectic”, and alive. Even in the Tenderloin, they were generally safe. Now, they’re filled with bums, needles, tents, and excrement.

Broken windows adorn many parked cars. Boards cover high-end shops, elegant establishments, and street-side cafes. That such a great City could be brought so low is an indicting embarrassment and an abominable disgrace.

The worst disaster to befall San Francisco had been the Great Quake of 1906. But that was the fruit of an inherited disease. Born on a fault, San Francisco is susceptible to the shakes. That comes with the territory. Literally.

What it suffers now is a slow suicide, and it’s picking up speed. I once worked at the Golden Gate Bridge, but I never thought its own City would act so anxious to jump off.

The last time I was in the City I loved, I officiated a wedding. I don’t know when I’ll return.

Possibly to attend its wake. But I’m afraid I already missed the funeral.

JD

May 27, 2024

Amid reckless wars, rampant inflation, rising crime, and rotting culture, we’re assured by those inflicting this ruin that a single affliction is our greatest scourge:

“White Supremacy.”

Academic …

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May 17, 2024

“[B]efore we even attempt to fix any of the issues plaguing society, we must first get our own house in order…”

-Harrison Butker

Last week, I imagined the commencement address I might’ve delivered…

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March 4, 2024

"Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the aeroplane, the pessimist the parachute.”

- George Bernard Shaw

Something’s wrong. Many of us have sensed this insti…

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January 26, 2024

Yesterday, looking out the front window, our dog began to bark. He usually does when a stranger approaches. But no solicitors, mailmen, or Mormons were anywhere in sight. 

Yet something else was. Narrowing my gaze, I spotted a French bulldog strolling the lawn. Evidently, our neighbor’s pup had gotten loose. Before he could wander away and get lost in the woods, I grabbed a leash and ran outside. 

I found him sniffing a tree beside the house. He seemed shocked when he saw me, and timid as I approached. Crouching down, he patiently waited while I found his collar.

He recoiled a bit as I attached the leash. Once I did, he started to relax. I walked him toward our neighbor’s house, imagining their relief that I’d rescued their “Frenchie”.

But as we approached, the little bulldog began to resist. He tugged ardently in the other direction. This was odd. Did he not desire to go home? Had he wanted to flee? 

I started to wonder if I’d foiled his plans. Was this a role reversal, where I was a human tracker who’d sniffed a fugitive canine? What happened to make him run away, and be so reluctant to return? Maybe he’d be happier if I didn’t bring him back?

But after a few minutes, he relented…and came with me to the door. When it opened, my neighbor looked down at the dog, then beamed at me.

“Oh my God!”, she rejoiced, kneeling down to pet the pooch.

Basking in glory, I was more than willing to let her proceed with her praise. So she did:

“Congratulations! You got a dog just like ours. When did you get him?”

Huh?

My brow rose and smile faded. “This isn’t your dog?”, I asked.

“No. Mine is inside. He’s not yours?”

Uninvited Visitors

I was starting to think he might be, whether I liked it or not. But what to do with this impetuous intruder?

It’s a question many Americans are starting to ask. Especially as millions of “migrants” stream over the border, and spill (or are poured) across the land. And the only leash being applied is the one the U.S. government places on anyone trying to stem the flow.

A few months ago, as the disaster in the Ukraine continued and the one in Gaza began, President Biden condescendingly assured us that “we” could fight multiple wars at one time. After all, he asserted, “we’re the United States of America.”

Not for long.

As if to reinforce Biden’s point, his own government has added America to the list of foes it’s willing to fight. Earlier this week, the Supreme Court provided air cover for the ongoing assault.

In a 5-4 decision, it declared that the state of Texas can’t defend itself. Not only from a relentless invasion, but from a U.S. government insisting the onslaught should continue. 

The Court and Administration aren’t merely derelict in their duty to defend the border. They’re actively undermining any entity that tries to do so. 

The Lone Star State is being attacked from north and south. While “migrants” flood from Mexico, US agents descend from DC…to ensure the alien hordes have an unimpeded path!

With the U.S. government turning the Rio Grande into a nomadic deluge, the state of Texas installed razor wire to stem the tide. The Biden Administration said the barrier should come down, as it prevents “border personnel from doing their jobs.”

Exactly.

Because “their jobs” are apparently to entice as many trespassers as possible. And, like stray dogs thru a suburban subdivision, the interlopers are going everywhere.

Overwhelmed “Sanctuaries”

“Sanctuary cities” swarm with illegals, forcing sanctimonious mayors to admit their errors without explicitly saying they were wrong. They lament having insufficient resources to handle the influx, yet blame border-state governors for taking them up on their self-righteous offers.

Immigrants infest the city of Denver, where hospitals, hotels, and shelters burst at the seams. In Chicago, at least 200 illegals recently covered concourses at O’Hare Airport. According to footage, mattresses were placed in sectioned-off areas to temporarily house the “migrants”.

In New York, hotels are converted to makeshift shelters. And, as the catastrophic Covid response proved, kids are the last priority of “public officials.” So, naturally, the city’s high schools become barracks for uninvited vagrants. 

A few weeks ago, James Madison High (how does it still have that name?) in New York was converted to a vagabond ghetto. While it was, its students were consigned to the “virtual schooling” that worked so well during the “pandemic” panic. When the kids returned, they were given cleaning materials to help sanitize classrooms that were converted into encampments for two thousand “asylum seekers.”

The last three years, more than six million illegal immigrants have overrun the US, a rate that’s rapidly increased the last few months. The invaders inundating America aren’t only, or even mostly, from Mexico. Or even Latin America. They’re from everywhere (with the notable exception of Europe). 

Many are from the Middle East, Africa, and other places the U.S. has repeatedly agitated with bombs, invasions, and occupations that induce ire and inspire revenge. It’s only a matter of time till one of the infiltrators decides to get it.

A Weasel Gets it Right

The governor of Texas is a renowned weasel. He’s known to run in front of a parade to pretend he’s leading it. But after the Supreme Court decision, he issued a welcome announcement denouncing the Administration for not fulfilling its duties, and for inhibiting his state from doing its job. From his letter:

“…visionaries who wrote the U.S. Constitution foresaw that States should not be left to the mercy of a lawless president who does nothing to stop external threats like cartels smuggling millions of illegal immigrants across the border. That is why the Framers included both Article IV, § 4, which promises that the federal government “shall protect each [State] against invasion,” and Article I, § 10, Clause 3, which acknowledges “the States’ sovereign interest in protecting their borders.” Arizona v. United States, 567 U.S. 387, 419 (2012) (Scalia, J., dissenting).

The failure of the Biden Administration to fulfill the duties imposed by Article IV, § 4 has triggered Article I, § 10, Clause 3, which reserves to this State the right of self-defense. For these reasons, I have already declared an invasion under Article I, § 10, Clause 3 to invoke Texas’s constitutional authority to defend and protect itself. That authority is the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary. The Texas National Guard, the Texas Department of Public Safety, and other Texas personnel are acting on that authority, as well as state law, to secure the Texas border.”

Good.

When the US government violates the Constitution, resistance is the rightful remedy. The Supreme Court can offer opinions. It’s an arbiter of what the Constitution says. But it’s not the only one, nor the final one. Nor necessarily the most important one.

The states are the parties to the constitutional compact. The US government is their creation, not the other way around. As such, each state has the right (and responsibility) to interpret the Constitution, and to ignore unlawful edicts that subvert its intent.

The states established the central government to be their servant. It has few powers, and they’re well defined. But defending borders is one of them.

Yet in a transparently political effort to distort demographics and erode the culture, the Administration throws rose petals at the feet of millions of “migrants” who may be hostile to their hosts.

This isn’t the way immigration should work. Immigrants are guests. And guests are welcome only if private property owners invite them. Otherwise, they’re intruders. Not that they don’t do so all the time, but governments can’t rightfully authorize anyone to enter property other people own.

Governments shouldn’t “own” property, or decide who should. Governments shouldn’t exist at all. But since they do, they’re responsible to taxpayers who fund them. 

Just as they wouldn’t (or shouldn’t) allow drug-addled derelicts in a public school, governments shouldn’t permit illegal aliens on territory taxpayers pay for. From the perspective of American citizens, letting everyone enter is more oppressive than letting no one in. It’d be as if I were compelled to keep every lost dog that wandered onto my land.

If anything, the dog I’d found had more of a claim than these immigrants do. At least he had an ID! After my neighbor said the dog wasn’t hers, I looked again at his collar. On the tag was a faded phone number I initially hadn’t seen.

After I dialed it, a relieved voice picked up. It was a woman driving nearby, seeking what I had. Within a few minutes of me giving directions, she pulled up beside me, and retrieved her dog. Everyone was happy. 

I felt good about how I’d handled the vagabond. After seeing him where he shouldn’t be, I checked his credentials, and sent him back where he belongs. 

That shouldn’t be so hard to do.

JD

January 10, 2024

Aristotle said the aim of art is not to represent outward appearance, but inward significance. Beauty is the visible expression of invisible nature. Like any art, architecture should reflect…

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