Happy to greet you from Minot, North Dakota, where I’m in town for the Norsk Hostfest. Made it safe and sound.
I have a new piece up in The American Spectator today. It’s a sort of review of The Lorenskog Disappearance, which I’ve written about here before.
The American Spectator posted my latest article on Sunday. You can read it here. It’s all about the disadvantages of high intelligence, a subject about which I know nothing at all.
Also, I’m going to be at the Norsk Hostfest in Minot, North Dakota Wednesday through Saturday, God willing. If you happen to be there and want to see us Vikings, we’ll be in the Flickertail building which is (I think) south of the main hall at the state fairgrounds.
The American Spectator was kind enough to publish my essay, “The Northman and the Truth,” on Sunday.
I’ve been waiting all my life for a good Viking movie. One with a plot that’s not laughable, with historically authentic costumes and sets. The Northman is that movie at last. I could nitpick about this and that, but by and large they did a good job of delivering a reasonably authentic film that commands respect as a work of art.
Still, it’s not the movie I wanted.
Read it all here.
Suddenly, I have lots of translation work. For a day or two, anyway.
This helped divert my thoughts from the impending verdict in the Chauvin trial. This was of particular interest to me, since my city was likely to burn if the “wrong” decision was made.
But the verdict was just announced. Guilty on all counts. I’m pretty sure at least part of it is unjust, and likely to be overturned on appeal. So I have the uneasy sensation of being relieved, due to what looks like a lynching.
Of this I am ashamed.
I wrote down some thoughts for The American Spectator Online here. They are not happy thoughts. Though some are clever, I think.
Today I have a piece in The American Spectator Online that expands on my earlier post here, concerning Col. Hans Christian Heg, whose statue in Madison, Wisconsin was destroyed by rioters recently.
One of my ancestors knew Abraham Lincoln. All right, that’s not strictly true. He was a collateral ancestor of mine, half-brother to my great-great grandfather. An early Norwegian settler in Illinois, he was active in the Republican Party. His obituary called him a “friend of Abraham Lincoln.” I take that to mean he was acquainted with Lincoln through party business.
But this story isn’t about him. There was nothing remarkable in an Illinois Norwegian being a Republican. You’d have had to search pretty hard to find one who wasn’t in those days. Antislavery feeling ran high among them, and they were eager volunteers for the Union Army when the war broke out.
Read it all here.
I have a new piece up at The American Spectator Online today. I was worried it was a little too personal for the venue, but the editor told me it was “the best piece I’ve read in a long time.” Which is always nice to hear.
Anyway, it’s about the Lockdown and living in fear. Because fear is a subject I know all about.
I hope I’m open-minded enough to listen to experts. However, when an “expert” starts telling me the only way to prevent Gotterdammerung is to increase the size and power of government, I start reaching for my skeptic’s hat. I wear that hat a lot nowadays.
I’m not an epidemiologist, as you’ve probably guessed.
But I do know about fear.
And what troubles me most about our current predicament is that we’re being governed on the basis of fear.
Read it all here.
I have a new column up at The American Spectator Online today. This one (written before the Plague descended) considers the old TV show, “The Adventures of Jim Bowie” in light of the New York Times’ “1619 Project.”
In fact, America has a long history of self-criticism when it comes to Native American issues. Sticking to popular culture, I can cite a few examples out of my own limited viewing and reading.
Read it all here.
They posted another of my articles at The American Spectator Online on Sunday. It’s called A Message to the Young: Beware the Groove.
It was around 1973, and I was attending a small Midwestern college. This being the ’70s, the school was already busy debriding itself of its past Christian tradition and regenerating as a sort of flyover Dartmouth.I was in a Christian Ethics class, listening to presentations on the topic of sex. A young woman had already informed us that the Roman Catholic Church saw no value in women except as baby factories — I was kind of pleased with myself for asking her how she accounted for nuns.
Read it all here.
I have a new column (as of Sunday) at The American Spectator Online. It’s the article on Hans Nielsen Hauge I’ve been warning you about.
I had the chance to meet a scholar recently, a woman from Norway. I went to hear her talk about a historical figure I’ve written about on this site before — Hans Nielsen Hauge (pronounced “HOW-geh”), the early 19th-century Norwegian lay revivalist.
In conversation after the lecture, someone brought up an undocumented but well-attested story — that it was a tradition at a nearby liberal seminary for some of the students to celebrate the anniversary of Hauge’s death with a drinking party where they would make fun of him.
The speaker said this surprised her. “In Norway,” she said, “Hauge is a hero to both sides. The conservatives admire him for his religious activities. The liberals admire him for being one of the founders of their movement.”
I’m in the American Spectator Online again today, with an article on my ambivalent “relationship” with Donald Trump. I wasn’t even aware they posted on Saturdays.