Several points - 1 if I had my time again I would study ballet. I have been once..The two most beautiful women I have ever met lived ballet
Per Katherine Dee- Default friend. It is women who make up the majority of A.I gf/ bf users
The republican party moved from being the party of New England Wasps- to Dixie Southerners and is fighting to get Catholic ethnics - Irish- Poles - Italians. So it has crossed the Hajnal line
4- Decolonisation is the big blunder of the post war world.
EW: "I've long come around to the idea that the overthrow of Gaddafi was a foreign-policy error of gigantic proportions, worse even than the disastrous invasion of Iraq."
It's not a competition. ;-) Seriously, though, the US and its European satellites (UK included) no longer have any hard-nosed statesmen. It's all a morality play to them, spiced up with personal grudges (remember "the guy who tried to kill my dad"?). That's why you get one foreign policy disaster after another, with no end in sight.
21st c. Western liberalism’s defining capacity is perhaps its capacity for self-delusion. Like the trillions of $ spent funding a phantom Afghan civil administration and army and the billions of $ spent funding ‘intelligence’ services not to notice this phantom. Like its intelligentsia and bureaucracy not noticing that ‘trans issues’ are just another phantom...one not worth a damn.
Ed, you frequently recommend excellent books by throwing in a one line summary to make a point. You obviously read huge amounts and have a lot to say about it.
As a subscriber I think you could improve the experience by publishing a living glossary of your highly recommended reads. 😎
I enjoy the pieces and the round-up - as much as bad news is enjoyable. Nice range of subjects from someone very well read, thoughtful and measured. I am grateful that someone has the time and energy to read long clever books and summarise for those with less time, ability or energy on their hands.
In terms of, err, customer experience, the thing that limits my own reading of this substack is that it is - quite understandably - all about bad news. Call me weak but something of a positive nature now and then would be appreciated.
I for one really like the unrelenting bleakness. No need to sugarcoat civilizational decline. We're Rome in the 4th century AD and it's healthy to face the reality of the situation. Hell, I wish Edward Gorey were still alive so you could bring him on board to illustrate your Substack posts -- he would have been perfect for that.
As far as venues for the next Canon Club go, The Windsor Castle on Francis Street behind Westminster Cathedral (Victoria Station nearest tube) has a large room upstairs and a very large room at the rear of the Public Bar (formerly the billiards room) with a lovely stained glass sky light.
Ed if I weren't so stupidly busy for the rest of the year I'd fly over to Japan at the end of the month just so my trip would coincide with yours and interpret for you haha. My best friend over there (Japanese fellow), like all the best people, also happens to also be an opinion columnist, though I don't think any of his work is in English. I will be going there in 2024 or 2025 on a tourist visa and will stay 30~90 days.
I'm going to hold off on recommending specific things as I haven't been back since 2007, with the exception of the Shinkansen. It's expensive but definitely worth a ride even if you don't need it to go anywhere in particular. I used to live a five minute walk from this BTW: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurikoma-K%C5%8Dgen_Station
Also nice to see John Gray diss the incredibly tedious Bronze Age Pervert phenomenon. If that crap is the future of the right, then it's time for me to maybe grudgingly head back to the Democratic Party that I fled a decade ago. (OK, this is extreme hyperbole, but you get what I mean.) I recently discovered Gray's work and he's great.
Re: Kissin, you should try to go back on his YouTube show -- the episode with you on was one of their (Kissin and Foster's) best. Their deadpan reactions to your blackpilling were hilarious! Kissin was named by (I think) The New Statesman one of the 50 most influential people on the right in the UK which was fun to see.
personally, I can't stand the bronze age pervert stuff on the right (his influence is inescapable, that crap is everywhere) and I wish he would just Go Away
I find the argument by Ian Leslie a bit strange. I mean, he's obviously right to say "If you were a working-class Democrat who had seen both income and status shrink while others got rich, this message had a visceral appeal" but that doesn't mean that Trump started it. Presidents of either party may have "framed their policies - whether tax cuts for the rich or higher welfare - as good for all Americans" but that's clearly not what their policies DID. (Peter Turchin is very good on this in "End Times.")
He may be the first to TALK about zero-sum thinking, but he's obviously not the first to think that way.
And FWIW, I think Trump's message was more like "do you want to carry on losing?" more than it was "I can make you a winner."
But the reality is, there has always been an us and them element to politics, and many people just want to be better off than someone else. Rob Henderson wrote about this:
The "rising tide raises all boats"/one-nation Toryism approach has an appeal, but it's rarely the whole story, and the USA has been moving away from this collectivist ideal for decades. We're not going to see it return soon.
(Shorter me, it wasn't Trump who broke the contract here. He was simply the person who spelled it out. This is downstream of lots of things I until recently thought were pretty much entirely good: meritocracy for one; the collapse of religion is another. People may have believed in "self-made men" and social atomism and all that, but at least they also believed some kind of religious (Christian) community (and as long as they didn't think about these things at the same time, there wasn't a problem). Now the idea of community survives (basically, we're programmed that way; it's not just a hangover from earlier mores which will wither over time) but without the idea of including everyone. Of course, Trump doesn't have any solutions. He can barely articulate the problem, but at least he's aware there is one, and doesn't self-censor.)
I'm inclined to think that the contract was broken under Obama and his infamous clinging to guns and god observation. It was perhaps the first time a presidential candidate spoke openly with clear disdain for a large segment of the American population, and a segment that is typically among the most patriotic. That, to me, is zero sum thinking, introducing a binary of good and bad onto a population in a way that had not happened before in American history since perhaps the 1850s. It also didn't help that Obama was a long time member of a church in Chicago whose pastor railed against America in many ways. Then this was followed with HRC and her deplorables and continues under Biden and his MAGAs.
Notice all the people who have referred friends have nice, normal, traditional English names? Just saying.
One thing that is true of all substacks that I would like to change. The thumbnail picture we see in our inbox is often fascinating but disappears on the actual post. Sometimes I want to see a bigger version than the teasing thumbnail.
I wonder if an (additional) reason Tories and their supporters tend to support Israel over palestine is an aesthetic one. There's too much shouting, weeping and wailing and rending of garments among the Palestinians. It's a bit of a turn-off for buttoned-up Tories, sort of like the unbecoming spectacle of Italian footballers pleading with the ref not to send them off after a particularly vicious foul.
There’s a lot this article gets wrong but when I went to comment on it I could see it would be a waste of time The knives were out for all liberals.
In my (delusional according to these types) opinion liberals are willing to work with & for humanity while conservatives are only out for themselves. OF COURSE poor people will more often be victims of crime relative to rich people. They live crowded together with few resources. The rich insulate themselves & would rather murder the poor than have to deal with them.
And on the subject of “defunding the police”, conservatives found a way to spin the issue completely wrong, but which made it easy to excoriate liberals. The original idea was that, rather than increasing police budgets to buy surplus military equipment (tanks against their own citizens!), that that money go towards social services funding - funding which used to exist but conservatives cut out with their regular attacks on the poor. Yes a few hare brained wanted to get rid of the police all together, but no major politician espoused that view. It would be better to look at what the rich oligarchs are doing. While we fight about small things, they cement their power. Pretty soon there won’t be any services left for “the people” while the billionaires keep all the money for themselves & anoint themselves dictator for life. One day even conservatives will rue the day if they’re not already dead by then.
And I forgot to mention that the police prey on the poor where they can rack up points for arrests on petty things while the oligarchs get off scott free for stealing us blind. And who really wants immigrants to come? It’s the business owners who want cheap labor. Liberals only feel that once they get here we shouldn’t work them to death because they can’t regularize their situation. If we want to “send them back”, we need to do so immediately, not after they create families and the children grow up knowing no other country.
Ed - do you have an Email address I can contact you on? Firstly, while I had a professional commitment in Oxford the evening of the Milton talk, I wanted to reiterate my interest in the Canon Club project and willingness to participate - I have a few ideas, although possibly ones that might work better once it's a more established thing. Secondly, as a Japan person who lived on the verge of the Tokyo conurbation for a few years, I'd be glad to recommend some places you should visit in and around the capital when you're there.
If you're looking for a venue in central London have you considered an independent school like Westminster or St Paul's which have excellent facilities and might be interested in running an event? Just a thought.
I've never seen you link to Bryan Caplan. He's clever, writes clearly, can be funny and has that nerdy/autistic knack of putting his finger on a way of seeing things you've never thought of. And he writes almost daily on his substack, practically all posts appear to be free. What do you think of him?
I like the round up post's.
Several points - 1 if I had my time again I would study ballet. I have been once..The two most beautiful women I have ever met lived ballet
Per Katherine Dee- Default friend. It is women who make up the majority of A.I gf/ bf users
The republican party moved from being the party of New England Wasps- to Dixie Southerners and is fighting to get Catholic ethnics - Irish- Poles - Italians. So it has crossed the Hajnal line
4- Decolonisation is the big blunder of the post war world.
EW: "I've long come around to the idea that the overthrow of Gaddafi was a foreign-policy error of gigantic proportions, worse even than the disastrous invasion of Iraq."
It's not a competition. ;-) Seriously, though, the US and its European satellites (UK included) no longer have any hard-nosed statesmen. It's all a morality play to them, spiced up with personal grudges (remember "the guy who tried to kill my dad"?). That's why you get one foreign policy disaster after another, with no end in sight.
21st c. Western liberalism’s defining capacity is perhaps its capacity for self-delusion. Like the trillions of $ spent funding a phantom Afghan civil administration and army and the billions of $ spent funding ‘intelligence’ services not to notice this phantom. Like its intelligentsia and bureaucracy not noticing that ‘trans issues’ are just another phantom...one not worth a damn.
Ed, you frequently recommend excellent books by throwing in a one line summary to make a point. You obviously read huge amounts and have a lot to say about it.
As a subscriber I think you could improve the experience by publishing a living glossary of your highly recommended reads. 😎
Yes that has been suggested before and I should probably do it
Oh yeah, would be an excellent addition to an excellent Substack.
I enjoy the pieces and the round-up - as much as bad news is enjoyable. Nice range of subjects from someone very well read, thoughtful and measured. I am grateful that someone has the time and energy to read long clever books and summarise for those with less time, ability or energy on their hands.
In terms of, err, customer experience, the thing that limits my own reading of this substack is that it is - quite understandably - all about bad news. Call me weak but something of a positive nature now and then would be appreciated.
Jeez, it's a hard point on history to write that.
I for one really like the unrelenting bleakness. No need to sugarcoat civilizational decline. We're Rome in the 4th century AD and it's healthy to face the reality of the situation. Hell, I wish Edward Gorey were still alive so you could bring him on board to illustrate your Substack posts -- he would have been perfect for that.
As far as venues for the next Canon Club go, The Windsor Castle on Francis Street behind Westminster Cathedral (Victoria Station nearest tube) has a large room upstairs and a very large room at the rear of the Public Bar (formerly the billiards room) with a lovely stained glass sky light.
It's also a beautiful pub.
https://windsorcastle-victoria.co.uk/our-bars-and-dining-areas/
If you are in brum I would love to say hello!
Great. I'll email you when I have a rough date.
Actually I don't seem to be able to get your email. Could you reply to the substack email and I should get it.
Ed if I weren't so stupidly busy for the rest of the year I'd fly over to Japan at the end of the month just so my trip would coincide with yours and interpret for you haha. My best friend over there (Japanese fellow), like all the best people, also happens to also be an opinion columnist, though I don't think any of his work is in English. I will be going there in 2024 or 2025 on a tourist visa and will stay 30~90 days.
I'm going to hold off on recommending specific things as I haven't been back since 2007, with the exception of the Shinkansen. It's expensive but definitely worth a ride even if you don't need it to go anywhere in particular. I used to live a five minute walk from this BTW: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurikoma-K%C5%8Dgen_Station
Also nice to see John Gray diss the incredibly tedious Bronze Age Pervert phenomenon. If that crap is the future of the right, then it's time for me to maybe grudgingly head back to the Democratic Party that I fled a decade ago. (OK, this is extreme hyperbole, but you get what I mean.) I recently discovered Gray's work and he's great.
Re: Kissin, you should try to go back on his YouTube show -- the episode with you on was one of their (Kissin and Foster's) best. Their deadpan reactions to your blackpilling were hilarious! Kissin was named by (I think) The New Statesman one of the 50 most influential people on the right in the UK which was fun to see.
Thanks Ivan, I'll message you more about Japan.
Yes hadnt seen the john gray article, thankyou for the take down.
personally, I can't stand the bronze age pervert stuff on the right (his influence is inescapable, that crap is everywhere) and I wish he would just Go Away
I think it's fair to say that BAP is no john gray
He's embarrassing and dull.
I find the argument by Ian Leslie a bit strange. I mean, he's obviously right to say "If you were a working-class Democrat who had seen both income and status shrink while others got rich, this message had a visceral appeal" but that doesn't mean that Trump started it. Presidents of either party may have "framed their policies - whether tax cuts for the rich or higher welfare - as good for all Americans" but that's clearly not what their policies DID. (Peter Turchin is very good on this in "End Times.")
He may be the first to TALK about zero-sum thinking, but he's obviously not the first to think that way.
And FWIW, I think Trump's message was more like "do you want to carry on losing?" more than it was "I can make you a winner."
But the reality is, there has always been an us and them element to politics, and many people just want to be better off than someone else. Rob Henderson wrote about this:
https://www.robkhenderson.com/p/dominance-disputes
The "rising tide raises all boats"/one-nation Toryism approach has an appeal, but it's rarely the whole story, and the USA has been moving away from this collectivist ideal for decades. We're not going to see it return soon.
(Shorter me, it wasn't Trump who broke the contract here. He was simply the person who spelled it out. This is downstream of lots of things I until recently thought were pretty much entirely good: meritocracy for one; the collapse of religion is another. People may have believed in "self-made men" and social atomism and all that, but at least they also believed some kind of religious (Christian) community (and as long as they didn't think about these things at the same time, there wasn't a problem). Now the idea of community survives (basically, we're programmed that way; it's not just a hangover from earlier mores which will wither over time) but without the idea of including everyone. Of course, Trump doesn't have any solutions. He can barely articulate the problem, but at least he's aware there is one, and doesn't self-censor.)
I'm inclined to think that the contract was broken under Obama and his infamous clinging to guns and god observation. It was perhaps the first time a presidential candidate spoke openly with clear disdain for a large segment of the American population, and a segment that is typically among the most patriotic. That, to me, is zero sum thinking, introducing a binary of good and bad onto a population in a way that had not happened before in American history since perhaps the 1850s. It also didn't help that Obama was a long time member of a church in Chicago whose pastor railed against America in many ways. Then this was followed with HRC and her deplorables and continues under Biden and his MAGAs.
Neoliberalism destroyed the West.
Notice all the people who have referred friends have nice, normal, traditional English names? Just saying.
One thing that is true of all substacks that I would like to change. The thumbnail picture we see in our inbox is often fascinating but disappears on the actual post. Sometimes I want to see a bigger version than the teasing thumbnail.
I wonder if an (additional) reason Tories and their supporters tend to support Israel over palestine is an aesthetic one. There's too much shouting, weeping and wailing and rending of garments among the Palestinians. It's a bit of a turn-off for buttoned-up Tories, sort of like the unbecoming spectacle of Italian footballers pleading with the ref not to send them off after a particularly vicious foul.
Do conservatives stand for anything other than hating others and wanting to go back to some imaginary better period?
I read the terrible article:
https://www.thefp.com/p/two-murdersand-the-cost-of-luxury?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=260347&post_id=137703111&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=4a732&utm_medium=email
There’s a lot this article gets wrong but when I went to comment on it I could see it would be a waste of time The knives were out for all liberals.
In my (delusional according to these types) opinion liberals are willing to work with & for humanity while conservatives are only out for themselves. OF COURSE poor people will more often be victims of crime relative to rich people. They live crowded together with few resources. The rich insulate themselves & would rather murder the poor than have to deal with them.
And on the subject of “defunding the police”, conservatives found a way to spin the issue completely wrong, but which made it easy to excoriate liberals. The original idea was that, rather than increasing police budgets to buy surplus military equipment (tanks against their own citizens!), that that money go towards social services funding - funding which used to exist but conservatives cut out with their regular attacks on the poor. Yes a few hare brained wanted to get rid of the police all together, but no major politician espoused that view. It would be better to look at what the rich oligarchs are doing. While we fight about small things, they cement their power. Pretty soon there won’t be any services left for “the people” while the billionaires keep all the money for themselves & anoint themselves dictator for life. One day even conservatives will rue the day if they’re not already dead by then.
Jeremy you promised me you wouldn't go online today, it is after supposed to be a day of rest.
And I forgot to mention that the police prey on the poor where they can rack up points for arrests on petty things while the oligarchs get off scott free for stealing us blind. And who really wants immigrants to come? It’s the business owners who want cheap labor. Liberals only feel that once they get here we shouldn’t work them to death because they can’t regularize their situation. If we want to “send them back”, we need to do so immediately, not after they create families and the children grow up knowing no other country.
Ed - do you have an Email address I can contact you on? Firstly, while I had a professional commitment in Oxford the evening of the Milton talk, I wanted to reiterate my interest in the Canon Club project and willingness to participate - I have a few ideas, although possibly ones that might work better once it's a more established thing. Secondly, as a Japan person who lived on the verge of the Tokyo conurbation for a few years, I'd be glad to recommend some places you should visit in and around the capital when you're there.
for syre, it's edjameswest@gmail.com
And that's appreciated.
Thanks, I'll be in touch soon!
If you're looking for a venue in central London have you considered an independent school like Westminster or St Paul's which have excellent facilities and might be interested in running an event? Just a thought.
I've never seen you link to Bryan Caplan. He's clever, writes clearly, can be funny and has that nerdy/autistic knack of putting his finger on a way of seeing things you've never thought of. And he writes almost daily on his substack, practically all posts appear to be free. What do you think of him?
If it's not too nosey, why are you going to Japan? Another wedding?
Hi Ed, when are you in Japan?
24 November I arrive.
That’s a shame (for me) as I leave on 23rd. Do you ever visit Singapore?
Have never been!