Will it survive, or is it too far gone?
Category Archives: War Commentary
The Iranian Theocracy
How much longer can it hold out?
A Tale Of Two Enlightenments
I often wonder if there would have been a Marx if there hadn’t been a Rousseau.
The Anglo-Scottish Enlightenment – the real antidote to Rousseau and Voltaire
— Krzysztof Szczawinski 🇵🇱 (@Kristof_Poland) July 11, 2026
The French Enlightenment and the Anglo-Scottish Enlightenment happened simultaneously, in the same century, reading the same books, arguing about the same questions. They reached completely opposite… https://t.co/RUPK08vPlD pic.twitter.com/kmUCgSQ7rz
[Update a few minutes later]
This was actually the previous part:
Voltaire – the fake antidote to Rousseau
— Krzysztof Szczawinski 🇵🇱 (@Kristof_Poland) July 10, 2026
He is the most entertaining man of the eighteenth century and the most seductive trap in Western intellectual history. He seems like the cure for Rousseau. He is the other half of the disease.
1. Where Rousseau is emotional, Voltaire is… https://t.co/qvIS8dQkey pic.twitter.com/ObD72Gw96y
The Nature Of The Regime
I hope that Trump has finally figured out that the Islamic Republic of Iran is not an entity with which he can do a deal. If he can keep the strait open, and oil prices down, he won’t have to wait until after the election to get back to the business of ending it.
[Update a few minutes later]
Iran is already begging for a deal; don’t give them one.
Moloch Returns To The Middle East
A piece that I’d forgotten I’d written, over seventeen years ago, that is just as relevant today.
One Of History’s Greatest Monsters
Rousseau was at the root of much of the collectivist evil.
— WG MORROW (@WGMorrow) July 9, 2026
How Iran “Won”
The Iranian tankers in China are full because IRAN has no place to put the oil. They were dumping it into the sea right before the ceasefire after they ran out of storage.
— Matt Forney (@mattforney) July 9, 2026
Prices were never better than they were during the ceasefire. The demand for Iranian oil is gone. It was… https://t.co/jRIklCxOfk pic.twitter.com/iwubxaXhtR
The Mullahs are screwed, but sadly, unless the Iranian people can finally overthrow them, they are as well.
Trump’s Anti-Communist Manifesto
It was nice to see a president finally stand up to them.
“…the record is pretty suggestive for Mamdani and Avila Chevalier. But it’s not that way for the other DSA candidates who won recently — Claire Valdez, Melat Kiros, Janeese Lewis-George, and others. On the other hand, all of them are members of the Democratic Socialists of America, and the word “socialist” has always been a key part of the vocabulary of communism, in the 20th century and today. So one could say that Trump’s accusation is reasonably true for some of the DSA comrades who have defeated Democratic candidates and at least adjacent to the beliefs of some others. In other words, it’s close enough for a political campaign.”
Most people forget, or never knew, what the second “S” in USSR stood for.
[Update a while later]
Yes. Socialists should be disqualified for public office for simply being socialists.
I noted on X right after Chevalier’s election that it was hard to see how she could honestly take the oath of office.
And as someone (von Mises? Hayek?) once noted, if socialists understood economics, they wouldn’t be socialists.
Nuclear Weapons In Space
The Iranian Problem
At this point, it looks like the administration is just trying to manage things to get past the mid-terms, after which they will have (in Barack Obama’s words to Vladimir) “more flexibility.”