Tuesday

Miscellaneous Rambling

Well, summer is here. I had a very good weekend. The forecast called for rain throughout the weekend . . . and we only got a little. Actually, we got quite a bit, but it came at night or in big dumps, so 90% of the weekend was open for outdoor activities.

I got the rest of the fields planted. It took a humongous effort Saturday morning. Even with 30 minutes of help from Marie and Max, I was having troubles moving the rest of the day.

I broke down and bought a new book: The New Right, by Michael Malice. I didn't much care for Malice the first few times I heard him, but I've warmed to him over the past year or so. I can't say I'm a big fan, but I listened to all five episodes of "Michael Malice Week" at the Tom Woods Show and decided I had to buy this book.

I've spent quite a bit of time reading about and studying the conservative movement (the main corpus: The Conservative Mind, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945, and Catholic Intellectuals & Conservative Politics in American 1950-1985), so I figured I needed to have this book in my mental bank as well.

That, at least, is how I justified the purchase in my own mind.

I also bought James Burnham's The Machiavellians. I was shocked to hear Malice say Burnham is a bridge between the Old Right and the New Right (though I'm not sure what he means by "Old Right" . . . to be honest, I'm not even positive he uses that term . . . "Old Right" has traditionally referred to the pre-WWII Spencer-like conservatives in the Albert Jay Nock camp). When I started studying conservative works in the 1980s, Burnham was already an "old man" of the right, basically well past his prime. It fascinated to hear him brought back up. I remember greatly enjoying his classic Suicide of the West, though I can scarcely recall anything about the book in particular, prompting me to take it off the shelf this weekend.