But we owe it to future generations to stand up for our constitutional republic so that Americans may continue to live free for centuries to come. Preserving liberty means telling the Republican Party and the Democratic Party that we’ll no longer let them play their partisan game at our expense.

Today, I am declaring my independence and leaving the Republican Party. No matter your circumstance, I’m asking you to join me in rejecting the partisan loyalties and rhetoric that divide and dehumanize us. I’m asking you to believe that we can do better than this two-party system — and to work toward it. If we continue to take America for granted, we will lose it.
— Read on www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/justin-amash-our-politics-is-in-a-partisan-death-spiral-thats-why-im-leaving-the-gop/2019/07/04/afbe0480-9e3d-11e9-b27f-ed2942f73d70_story.html

“That book was a very useful gift,” Anderson says now. “But it wasn’t the only one that I read back then on the general topic of Britain’s history of folklore. The countryside too provided me with some influence. Our countryside is quite rich in different traditions and cultures, and elements of fantasy and fable. Songs From The Wood also drew on my background of listening to other kinds of music than rock. I’ve never really been a fan of rock music. I was trying to stick to musical references that arose when classical composers fooled around with the vulgar folk music forms. Beethoven, for one, knew a good folk tune when he heard it.”
— Read on www.loudersound.com/features/lets-party-like-its-1399-the-story-behind-jethro-tulls-songs-from-the-wood

In graduate school—at Indiana University-Bloomington—I first encountered the dreadfully dull and dreary political correctness of the New Left. Prior to IU, I had encountered a number of left-wing academics, but they had all been interesting, on fire, and ready to listen to a variety of viewpoints. Indeed, they still believed in free exchange and the free and open debate of ideas. At Indiana, though, I found something quite different. There, certain opinions—sometimes explicitly stated and sometimes implicitly—were becoming orthodox. Those students who defended them did so with sincerity but not verve. This became especially obvious when the politically-correct leftist debated an anarchist or a black power supremacist. Usually, the more radical tore apart the PC, recognizing intellectual weakness for what it was. The politically-correct of IU had become so comfortable in their own opinions that they failed to develop them with any serious standards. I found them boring, frankly, but pervasive. Few things can be duller than a number of similarly-minded folks sitting around a table for two-and-a-half hours to agree and disagree upon all of the same things… but to do so with what could only be considered the Scandinavian white sauce of the culinary world!
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/06/roots-of-political-correctness-bradley-birzer.html

Microsoft made the announcement in April that it would shutter the Microsoft Store’s books section for good. The company had made its foray into ebooks in 2017, as part of a Windows 10 Creators Update that sought to round out the software available to its Surface line. Relegated to Microsoft’s Edge browser, the digital bookstore never took off. As of April 2, it halted all ebook sales. And starting as soon as this week, it’s going to remove all purchased books from the libraries of those who bought them.

Other companies have pulled a similar trick in smaller doses. Amazon, overcome by a fit of irony in 2009, memorably vanished copies of George Orwell’s 1984 from Kindles. The year before that, Walmart shut down its own ill-fated MP3 store, at first suggesting burn their purchases onto CDs to salvage them before offering a download solution. But this is not a tactical strike. There is no backup plan. This is The Langoliers. And because of digital rights management—the mechanism by which platforms retain control over the digital goods they sell—you have no recourse. Microsoft will refund customers in full for what they paid, plus an extra $25 if they made annotations or mark-ups. But that provides only the coldest comfort.
— Read on www.wired.com/story/microsoft-ebook-apocalypse-drm/

People really love the iPad mini, so Apple’s updated it with Pencil support and a fast new processor. It’s great.
— Read on www.theverge.com/2019/3/21/18274477/ipad-mini-2019-review-apple-ios-pencil-lightning-specs-price-tablet

N.B. Patel is excellent. Voice and cadence. Enjoy.

Whatever his exact reasons for adopting a more Stoical approach to life, Cicero unwittingly (but perhaps gracefully?) prepared Rome for Christianity in ways that other pagans and paganisms could never have allowed or done. That generation of Stoics, including Virgil and Seneca, expected, amazingly enough, the human incarnation of the God of gods. It is little wonder, then, that so many of the early Church fathers—such as Jerome, Augustine, and Ambrose—considered Cicero to be a pagan Christian, more related to Christ and his teachings than not. Most certainly, his martyrdom on December 7, 43 BC, did not hurt his cause among Christians, either.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/06/cicero-republic-on-duties-bradley-birzer.html

Daily coverage of the pop culture products industry, including toys (action figures, models and statues), anime (anime, manga, and Japanese imports), games (collectible card and roleplaying games or ccgs and rpgs), comics (comics and graphic novels), and movie and TV (licensed) merchandise. We feature business news, and in-depth analysis for retailers, publishers, manufacturers, distributors. Trade properties we cover include Star Wars, Star Trek, X-Men, Gundam Wing, Dragonball Z, Pokemon, Akira, Lone Wolf and Cub, Magic the Gathering, Dungeons and Dragons, Mage Knight, Superman, Spider-man, JLA, Batman, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, J.R.R. Tolkien, Sailor Moon, Sandman, Harry Potter. Genres we cover include fantasy, science fiction, horror.
— Read on icv2.com/articles/columns/view/43504/brands-live-brands-die

Adam surprises Leif with the reMarkable tablet and asks him to do a quick writing test versus the Apple Pencil to see what he thinks of the ‘paper like’ experience.
— Read on www.macworld.com/video/96307/remarkable-vs-apple-pencil-first-impressions

Most diabolically, it had become—quite truly—a false religion. Founded by the former Baptist and Unitarian minister, Charles Francis Potter’s humanism went public at the very beginning of the fall of 1929 when he delivered a homily to 244 New Yorkers, having turned away well over 400 to meet the fire code. “Just as Protestantism was an offshoot of Roman Catholicism, and Liberalism, as represented by Unitarianism and Universalism, was born of Protestantism, so also Humanism has come forth from Unitarianism.”[1] Blatantly taking the name of his new faith from Babbitt and More (whom he thought would be allies in his new religion) he asked his congregants to give up their primitive “deity obsession.”[2] Only from man, Potter claimed, could one find true dignity. “Out of the heart of man have arisen all his noble impulses and aspirations.”[3] Babbitt and More, horrified, condemned the new movement, and the scare almost certainly moved More toward Anglican orthodoxy. Potter, however, with the aid of the effete John Dewey and bizarre Harry Elmer Barnes, founded the American Humanist Association and issued the Humanist Manifesto in 1933. To be sure, the word “humanism” has never recovered.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/06/irving-babbitt-influence-humanism-bradley-birzer.html

One could easily denounce George Washington for ‘retrograde’ White Supremacist views. But Washington’s views on race changed and advanced over his lifetime. Similarly, Lincoln lived and had a political life in a world in which “Universal Suffrage” meant “White Male” universal suffrage only. Lincoln explored many policies and points of view but the truth is throughout his life, like Washington Lincoln’s views evolved yet were always based on the natural rights doctrine of equality found in the Declaration. In 1859 Lincoln wrote “the principles of Jefferson are the definitions of a free society. And yet they are denied, and evaded with no small show of success. One dashingly calls them “glittering generalities; another bluntly calls them “self-evident lies” and still other insidiously argue that they apply only to “superior races.” Lincoln rejected White Supremacy and said, “those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves, and under a just God can not long retain it.” Lincoln said, “I have only to say let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man and that race and the other race being inferior, and therefor must be placed in an inferior position, discarding our standard that we have left us. Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout the land until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal.” Robert Sherwood in his Pulitzer Prize winning drama Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1938) pushed Jefferson’s and Lincoln’s abstract truth a bit more when he had Lincoln say should we read the Declaration as “all men are created equal, except negros, foreigners, catholics and Jews.” Lincoln did not in fact refer to the Jews at that time but who could doubt that Lincoln would have defended the Jewish people? I have studied Churchill’s life and writings for over 50 years Never at any time did Churchill express admiration for dictatorship, arbitrary government, or extreme authoritarianism. Quite the contrary. Washington and Lincoln lived in slave owning societies and yet progressed beyond the simple prejudices of their time. Churchill was a Victorian aristocrat by birth and education and yet the reason he is so interesting and compelling character is that he progressed beyond the Social Darwinism and Laissez Fair capitalism of his time to embrace a more liberal, pragmatic social policy and a more liberal attitude towards Woman’s suffrage. We should make a grave error if we slip into presentism and an obsession with politically correct nomenclature. Churchill, must be judged by the entirety of his life, his works and his writings not by quibbles or his use of old-fashioned terms -it seems to us- like “Civilization” or “Christian Civilization” rather than “Judeo-Christian Civilization”. Churchill was, without a doubt as Andrew Roberts has demonstrated, the greatest defender of liberty, natural rights, rule of law, due process of modern times. It is not too much to say Churchill was the savior not only of his nation but the cause of national independence and freedom all over the world, Churchill, more than any other individual put Fascism, anti-Semitism and the racial supremacy of the Nazis to the sword leaving that doctrine defeated and destroyed and completely discredited. All honor to Sir Winston Churchill, Lincoln and Washington.