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History is bunk, said Henry Ford on a famous occasion.  His sentiments were echoed, as Forrest McDonald reminded a conservative audience, by President George H.W. Bush, who would anyone who lost a political squabble with him with the phrase, “He’s history,” as if to say that they were without significance.

My father used to say, always with a note of sadness in his voice, that the curse of politics had even come between the two Sons of Zebedee.  Their father—who would be my great-grandfather—had been strongly influenced by his mother, a Scottish woman from Canada, who had communicated some of her reverence for the British Empire to her older son.  She had died when James was only eight, and all the boy could recall of his mother was a sickly old woman who complained of the noise he made.  When his wife died, her husband lost his loyalty to the...

I think I listened to this on an Audibe book the second night in the hospital. A real cheerer-upper, as Holden Caulfield would say Alfred. Lord Tennyson From “The Lotos-Eaters”) Hateful is the dark-blue sky, Vaulted o’er the dark-blue sea. Death is the end of life; ah, why Should life all labor be? Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast, And in a little while our lips are dumb. Let us alone. What is it that will last? And things are taken from us, and become Portions and parcels of the dreadful past. Let us alone. What pleasure can we...

Most recipients of this message will know that I have been held in durance vile, for the past six days, as a prisoner of the International Medical-Industrial Complex. Yesterday after the lunch I did not eat, I returned home from Swedish-American Hospital. Please no jokes about “Da Swedish Surgeon.” Miracle of miracles I am walking—slowly and briefly— around the ground floor of the house, using only walker or cane. I even ate a breakfast of one half an English muffin, with yoghurt cheese, a glass of grapefruit juice, a small fruit cup, and my first cup of coffee since last...

To produce the tough and resolute men who create, sustain, and defend civilization requires a discipline that more resembles Parris Island than the Fantasy Island schooling in America that leaves no whim unfulfilled, no vicious tendency unstimulated.  Imposing academic rigor and tough discipline may be the most difficult challenge faced by home-schooling parents, even those less indulgent than Michel’s father.  None of us, probably, has had the success we planned for.