Thread:

While at a used bookstore yesterday I ran into a big collection of these short "Britain in Pictures" books. These books, more than 100 in total, were produced during and shortly after WW2 by the British government as a wartime morale booster, to remind the public of what they were fighting for. Titles range from "British Dramatists" to "Birds of Britain" to "British Clocks and Clockmakers." They were written by some of the country's top writers, academics, and political figures.

Today, of course, they offer revealing and sometimes heartbreaking look at British culture as it was 80 years ago, before it was utterly transformed by migration and told to despise itself and its history. One of the most interesting titles is "The English People," written by none other than George Orwell and offering his take on what defined the English nation.

Orwell disliked the essay and it's obscure today, but it's a very interesting read and can be found online at archive.org/details/englis…

The TPUSA straw poll from AmFest is out. Thread.

JD Vance won the 2028 nomination straw poll by more than Donald Trump won the 2024 one we did two years ago.
Trump's Cabinet is very popular. Pam Bondi is the only member to have disapproval in the double digits, with about 29% having a negative view.

Justice William O. Douglas was the longest-serving Supreme Court justice and one of its most important liberals in history.

He was also a despicable serial liar and drunk who divorced three times, said he’d had polio (no) but overcame it (no) to join the Army for WW1 (no) and had served admirably in Europe (also no).

At this very moment, Douglas is buried in Arlington National Cemetery among America's greatest war heroes. Why? Because he lied, repeatedly, including in his own autobiography and in the text of a SCOTUS opinion. His headstone lists completely fictitious military service that never happened.

President Trump should have this charlatan dug up.
Douglas fabricated a distinguished war record for his father, when in fact he was a deserter who never saw combat. He claimed he beat polio by "sheer force of will."

In my free time this past summer I read Peter Green’s Alexander to Actium. I was writing up my thoughts on it for some friends but things got a little out of hand.

Fortunately, my favorite book blog, Mr. and Mrs. Psmith, agreed to publish it as a guest post.

Short thread below. Why read about the Hellenistic Age? The first reason is that it’s just really entertaining. “Like a real-life Game of Thrones” is a tedious idiom at this point, but this period actually earns it.

For starters, there’s the widespread royal incest. Also, giant mechanical snails.

With the Voting Rights Act in front of SCOTUS today, it’s worth remembering Nix v. Holder, an obscure legal case from President Obama’s first term.

Many have argued that the VRA primarily exists today to elect Democrats. It’s no theory: Democrats admitted it!

Thread. A town in North Carolina changed its elections via referendum to be non-partisan. The referendum passed easily including in the town’s black-majority neighborhoods. Nevertheless, Eric Holder blocked the law. Why?

Why? Because nonpartisan elections would specifically deny black voters their right to elect Democrats.

The rest of this Nikole Hannah-Jones article is as gross as its beginning. Its purpose is to morally shame anyone who would feel sad for Kirk as a racist and a bad Christian.

She praises a father for intervening after his daughter felt too upset about Kirk's murder, while being sure to repeat the revolting smear that he wanted to stone gays. Later in the piece, NHJ celebrates a professor who "cannot have empathy" for Kirk being murdered, because TPUSA criticized her for by her own admission using her faculty post at a public college to push left-wing politics ("because we dared to advocate for social justice").

Hannah-Jones shames us because a professor is "nervous" there is a TPUSA chapter on her campus, when Charlie Kirk was just murdered in cold blood by someone on the left.