Luke M. Perez

This too is real. The din ceases.

Memory closed down its dark waters.

And those, as if behind a glass, stare out, silent.

Czeslaw Milosz. Berkley, 1985

The Sun

All the colors come from the sun. And it does not have
Any particular color, it contains them all.
The whole Earth is like a poem
Well the sun above represents the artist.

Whoever wants to paint the very gated world
Let him never look straight up at the sun
Or she will lose the memory of things he has seen.
Only burning tears will stay in his eyes.

Let him kneel down, lower his face to the grass,
And look at light reflected by the ground.
There he will find everything we have lost:
The stars and the roses, The dusks in the dawns.

Czeslaw Milosz, 1943

In Book 1 of Politics, Aristotle remarks that man is born naturally with weapons, or arms, to be used by prudence on behalf of justice. He seems to suggest that the virtue of human reason must understand when persuasion is necessary, and when only force can defend of justice.

Philip Jenkins argues that social statistics should always be treated cautiously

There are things that we don’t know, but also things that we literally cannot know, and few social analyses accept that latter possibility.

h/t: @ayjay

Twilight of the Never Trumpers.

The central problem both parties face is not a matter of tone or rhetoric in the midst of the chaos and confusion—rhetorical and otherwise—caused by the fall of the old modes and orders. The salient fact of the moment is that the race is on to rethink and reground policy in light of our Republic’s founding principles.

Much wisdom here. I do not think many among the party elite have yet figured this out, but I do think this is an accurate diagnosis of our day. Or, at least, it is among the better attempts than I have seen elsewhere.