TONIGHT, DATE WITH DESTINY? Brownstone Institute Inaugural Midwest Supper club

January 13, 2025

I’ve long enjoyed the immensely sensible, even-handed essays by Jeffrey Tucker, the founder, president, editor, and author of the Brownstone Institute. For example, this, from late 2023.

The Year that Expertise Collapsed

Indeed, I’ve enjoyed them so much that I wished I personally knew people here like him! Life in academic Bloomington Indiana in 2025, like other “blue” cities and academic towns, does not seem to attract people of a more open-minded persuasion.

Either that, or, like me (mostly), they prefer to keep the peace by remaining silent. Thus my usual refrain around here:  “Let’s just stay with what we have in common.”

(However, one need only drive five miles out of town in any direction to discover rural (red) Indiana!)

Brownstone Institute, a 501c3 which aims to be bi-partisan, sponsors several “Supper Clubs” in various places in the eastern part of the U.S. Of course I couldn’t help but dream that I could somehow get to one of these events, in Hartford or Philadelphia . . .

But drive there? Too far. Fly there? I really don’t want to fly anymore, especially for a single evening’s event!

So imagine my surprise when, about a week ago, I came upon this! WHAT??!?

Notice, as of today, there are still three tickets left. The day I signed up, there were six. Obviously, this event didn’t attract all that many folks here. I wonder if they will be coming from other places in the midwest?

6:30 to 9:30 PM. Three hours, including dinner! I’m going to walk down there (about two miles), and then ask someone in our Green Acres Village to pick me up at the end. (No longer drive at night if possible; and parking places are hard to find with all the dirty banked snow. The sidewalks through the IU campus, however, are clear. And Lennie’s is only a block from the western edge of campus.

Excited!

Will report on my experience tomorrow.

 

Victor Davis Hanson, 5th Generation California resident, on the LA Fires

January 12, 2025

Victor Davis Hanson, a 5th generation life-long resident of the Central Valley of California, warns us that the LA conflagration, if such horrendous events are allowed to continue, will lead to the total collapse of our civilization.

 

And here’s a richly descriptive and contextualized VDH post from 2014, detailing how California’s brilliantly designed, engineered, and operating water storage and distribution systems were systematically destroyed, one by one, by so-called “environmentalists,” making the ongoing horror-show now, predictable.

The Scorching of California

Nicole Shanahan weighs in.

Comparing recent FIRE and WATER events: Remember that most of those (so far) affected in California fires are wealthy, with second homes elsewhere, and plenty of other backup resources. People along the rivers in North Carolina however, tell an entirely different story. These two current events symbolize, for me, the accelerating death of the middle class, leaving only the wealthy and the impoverished, with, apparently, the latter class scheduled for depopulation.

Did you realize that FEMA kicked out homeless people from hotels and motels, on the eve of a cold snap. Old people, mothers with small children . . .