Brian

[Brian @Briguy]

Rulers lord, but the Lord rules.

[Brian @Briguy]

@RickDeVos With impunity, I might add.

[Brian @Briguy]

If
(c. 1895)
Rudyard Kipling

[Brian @Briguy]

The American
(2026)
Jef Bourgeau

[Brian @Briguy]

European bee-eater in Sierra de Grazalema Natural Park, Cádiz, Spain
© Andres M. Dominguez/Nature Picture Librar

[Frontierism @frontierism]

“Your honor, this is only his first murder”

[Brian @Briguy]

Yes.
And we should ask: if our high-tech world - where everyone carries a supercomputer in their pocket - results in less accountability for ignorance of basic facts, then what are we doing?

[River Page @river_is_nice]

You can’t tell voters that not knowing things is a moral failure

[Brian @Briguy]

Humility comes before honor.

[Steve Sailer @Steve_Sailer]

It's almost as if Donald Trump is quite adept at organizing high-end construction and maintenance projects, and he should be encouraged to focus more on those rather than on starting foreign wars.

[sonch @soncharm]

The best form of government except for all the others is one where you neutrally poll the public whom they prefer to lead them, and then, on top of that, whichever side is able to boost their number most from there using bureaucratic shenanigans is selected to lead.

[sonch @soncharm]

Can there possibly be any better mark of legitimacy to lead a modern government than demonstrating superior ability to engage in bureaucratic shenanigans. Unironically the answer is no

[Brian @Briguy]

Charlie here may have the wrong idea. He thinks he’s witnessing the aftermath of a “knife attack” instead of the attempted public beheading with children onlookers, which it was.

[GB News @GBNEWS]

'I saw things tonight I didn't think I would see in the United Kingdom'.

@CDP1882 compares scenes of rioting in Belfast to a 'war-torn country', after seeing families urgently pack their belongings into their cars to escape the violence.

[Walter Kirn @walterkirn]

Moving from votes to "ballots" resembles in some ways moving from the gold standard to fiat currency. The ballot becomes more of an object in itself than a receipt for an underlying thing that's intrinsically valuable. A free-floating abstraction in an increasingly abstract game.

[Brian @Briguy]

The state of American elections is like Quidditch. Mail-in ballots are the parking lot frog.

[Adam Wren @aswren]

When people on TV defend multiculturalism they say that they’re proud we’re a ‘tolerate’ country.

I’ve always found it perplexing because you don’t ‘tolerate’ good things. I don’t have to ‘tolerate’ Jewish bakeries or Japanese restaurants. We ‘tolerate’ moments like this

[Brian @Briguy]

Until this moment I admittedly was one of (I presume) many, who, when they hear the name “Gordon Wood,” think of the Good Will Hunting scene.

Happily, for me, no longer. What a heartening tribute.

[Bob Elder @southernphd]

I never met Gordon Wood, but I have a story about him.

In one of my grad school seminars, we read Wood’s Creation of the American Republic. The sheer erudition and evidentiary depth of the book bowled me over.

Back then, before kids and before life accelerated to warp speed, I used to call my mother every Sunday to catch up. Lots of times, we ended up talking about what I was reading that week in my grad seminars or for leisure. Mom had an omnivorous mind, and she was always looking for something else to read. She was a true intellectual—curious about almost everything, always eager to integrate new arguments or ideas into her existing schemas of how the world worked or to have those schemas challenged and changed.

When we talked that particular Sunday, I think I tried to describe to her part of Wood’s argument about the relationship between the state constitutions during the Articles of Confederation era and the federal Constitution. Maybe I was tired, maybe I didn’t completely understand her questions, but the end result of the conversation was that Mom had questions about Wood’s argument that I didn’t answer satisfactorily. I told her that she should probably just read the book, and we said goodbye.

She did eventually read the book, but the next Sunday, Mom started our conversation by saying, “Well, I had a lovely conversation with Gordon Wood this week.” For a split second, I thought she was joking, but then I remembered who I was dealing with. I started to sweat. “How?” I asked. A whole variety of unlikely scenarios in which the foremost historian of the American Revolution and my mother, who lived in Wichita, Kansas, might have met ran through my mind. “Oh, I just looked up his office phone number on Brown’s website and called, and he picked up!” Mom said. I decided I would have to find another profession.

As it ended up, Gordon Wood spent about an hour on the phone with my mother answering her questions about the Constitution. Ever since, I’ve had a soft spot for the man when I imagine him picking up the phone in Providence and finding Becky Elder from Wichita on the other end of the line. His generosity in that moment spoke very well of him.

Rest in peace, professor.

[Brian @Briguy]

🔁

[Auron MacIntyre @AuronMacintyre]

We can no longer even pretend to trust in princes

It's the thin edge of the divine will or nothing at all

[Brian @Briguy]

Rulers lord, but the Lord rules.

[Ken Farnaso @KLF]

Every fountain turned back on brings Washington, DC, a little closer to Pierre L’Enfant’s vision of the capital: not just a place for government, but a grand public city worthy of our country’s great ambitions.

[Brian @Briguy]

Oh that national anthem RULED @torikelly

[Brian @Briguy]

Combine the Emmy’s won by Friends (6) and Seinfeld (10), double it, and you still would not reach Frasier (37)

[Ramin Nasibov @RaminNasibov]

What historical fact sounds fake but is true?

[Brian @Briguy]

A rich man without charity is a rogue; and perhaps it would be no difficult matter to prove that he is also a fool.

Henry Fielding