FRIDAY short TAKES.

Baptist Baseball Fans Torn Between Rooting For Team Named After Devil Or Team Named After Beer.

Friday is for fish fries in Wisconsin.  Just spitballin'.

Between the World Series and a communications upgrade at Cold Spring Shops (internet connected to the fiber backbone, landline phone number migrated to a mobile, old emergency mobile to be discontinued at the end of October) this compilation of Friday short takes is another emergency clearance of bookmarks.  Longer-form essays are likely to resume sometime next week.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

The World Series field is taking shape.  No Braves.  No Dodgers.  No Yankees.  No Red Sox.  Hey, Chicago, whaddaya say?  No White Sox.  No Cubs, no.  What the heck is a uniqlo, anyway?

The entire three-peat dream was built on the idea that this rotation was unbeatable in October. In 48 hours, Milwaukee solved it.  "They may have a bunch of Hall of Famers, but we've got a bunch of gamers.  And the gamers won this week."

The following meme is not authorized by the Milwaukee Brewers or any sports broadcasting outlet.

The compilation of pithy elaborations on traditional Cold Spring Shops themes is a way of clearing out assorted bookmark entries.  I do not intend to resume weekly Friday short takes.  By all means follow the links.

HERE COMES THE WEEKEND.

Let's go into the weekend and see January off with a collection of encouraging headlines all posted recently.

1.  UN Chief Guterres Warns of ‘Imminent Financial Collapse’ as Trump Pulls Funding.
2.  Alberta Separatists Accused of ‘Treason’ After Secret Meetings With Trump Officials.
3.  Protest Culture Is Annoying and Un-American.
4.  (Related to 3) Visiting Wacko World.
5.  (Understanding 3 and 4) 'Suicidal Empathy': Is the West Committing Suicide-by-Compassion?
6.  (Related) The Yappy Little Dog Syndrome.
7.  The ‘Doomsday Clock’ Ticks Down Again — Here’s Why That Is Good News.
8.  A Proper Insurrection.
9.  Goodbye, California.

Follow the links if you want elaboration.

WE'VE ALWAYS BEEN UNGOVERNABLE.

Emory's Mark Bauerlein, who knows a thing or two about teaching English, looks at historic and fictional famous figures and concludes, "One begins to suspect that the true American tradition is less that of our Fourth of July orations and our constitutional law textbooks . . . than, quite simply, that of riding somebody out of town on a rail."

Well, yes, as we noted in response to another of his essays,

Reality, which is emergent, tends to be socially conservative,  And the snooty-ass gentry have, inter alia, erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our People, and eat out their Substance; declaring themselves invested with Power to legislate for us in all Cases whatever; and excited domestic Insurrections among us.  And they fret about the Incomprehensible Others thinking of torches and pitchforks.  It is the Right of the People to Alter or Abolish.

Which means, as the professor notes, sometimes you bet on emergence and light out for the territories.

Anyone who took up arms against the Crown had to have a streak of defiance somewhere in his character.  We should appreciate it as an essential part of the American personality.  In the panorama of our history, we see this brash “Damn the torpedoes!” attitude surface again and again, sometimes in our most hallowed figures, and not as an accidental feature.  Ben Franklin begins his adult career as an outlaw, fleeing Boston and legal servitude to his brother, sneaking into Philadelphia with little money and no prospects.  John Adams is a great statesman, Sam Adams is not, nor are the vandals of the Boston Tea Party.  “Give me liberty or give me death!” is a tempestuous outcry.  The first pioneers on the frontier bet their lives on an uncertain future.

Other times, you protect your vision of the future by breaking out the tar and feathers.

FUN TRIGGERS THESE LOONS.

Thus did Pajamas Media's Stephen Kruiser expand on yesterday's observation about joyless footie fans.

Dems have been heavily invested in misery since long before Trump came on the political scene, though. Their core political beliefs can only be sold to people who are deeply unhappy and wallowing in despair to the point that they believe only the seemingly benevolent hand of a politician can save them.

Even the ones who are making millions off the grift are cheerless; you can see it in their faces. When your sole function is to try and make people feel awful, it rubs off on you. Look at Bernie Sanders's face. Elizabeth Warren is always yelling. Squeaky is the most constipated-looking young woman I've ever seen in politics.

Had George W. Bush been the Republican president who wanted to build a White House ballroom, the reaction would have been almost as laden with hysteria.

With Hallowe'en coming at the end of next week, no doubt the guilt-tripping both political and cultural will proliferate along with the house decorations and the defrosting of Mariah Carey.  This Badger Herald alum from the days when that paper epitomized campus dissent endorses succeeding generations of Normals in their "laughing the rabid Left into impotence."

FRIDAY short TAKES.

I think this is a low key secret thing that hurts Democrats in politics. We're always calling to take away people's straws, light bulbs, e-cigarettes, shower heads, etc. We're the party of You Can't Have What You Want, and voters remember that and choose the other guys. https://t.co/sz0nUbXGxK

— Dilan Esper (@dilanesper) July 7, 2025

It is soft tyranny, and we see it. "One side believes in pushing us towards what the state decided is morally right. In contrast, the other side treats us like adults and lets us make our own decisions."  We can mock them.  "Democrats are constantly warning that people will die if Republicans win elections. But they rarely act as if they really believe that nonsense. It's just a bunch of bullshit they say because they can't exactly run on being the party of obnoxious scolds who want to make your daily life more annoying."

We have the pictures.  "I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump were involved in documents related to Epstein, given that he had known the man for years; the rich often frequent similar circles. It’s knowing what belongs in the creep city pile and what doesn’t that liberal media and Democrats don’t seem to get."  That creep city pile is large.  "Epstein was a fixture of elite East Coast social circles in the 1990s. It would be strange if Trump didn’t know him."

The weekly round-up of mostly pithy elaborations on traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

Your reminder that every media figure in the past 10 years who posed as the defender of democracy just meant “I want libs to win elections and court cases.” https://t.co/j7gvajO364

— Tim Carney (@TPCarney) June 28, 2025

Well, why not?  "Liberals who claim 'democracy is dying' seem to view democracy as getting what you want when you want it."  Stated bluntly!  "When they referred to 'our democracy,' Democrats always meant 'our hegemony.'"  Deviate from that hegemony at your peril.  "It's always the 'we must protect our democracy' people who don't like the Constitution or institutions like the Supreme Court when they don't rule the way they want."

Thanks, feminists.  "The partisan gender gap, begun some 40 years ago as feminists decried toxic masculinity, has been widening in recent years as bros recoil at toxic femininity."

The weekly round-up of mostly pithy elaborations on traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

Donald Trump Is Not Gonna Bomb Iran. (Never mind.)  We finished the job.

The eternally unpleasant.  "My people don’t fly the American flag. In fact, we hate the flag and what it represents: a deeply flawed nation. And we don’t like the Americans who proudly wave it either. Patriotism has always been for other people, or other generations."  Read it in full, she gave up on the people she thought of as "my people."

Winning.  "Biden is quoted as saying, 'Many of the things I worked so damn hard, that I thought I changed in the country, are changing so rapidly.'  You can almost hear everyone who voted for Trump answering, 'Yes, that’s the point.'"

Political economy is hard.  "Republicans once talked seriously about aligning taxes and spending.  They cared about economic distortion, simplicity, and broadening the tax base.  Now, too many just want the sugar rush of tax cuts without fiscal discipline.  Meanwhile, Democrats want to vastly expand the state and pretend that billionaires alone can foot the bill.  Both sides are wrong.  The math doesn't work, and the morality of the reckless spending is worse."

A lot can happen in three weeks.  The resumption of pithy elaborations on traditional Cold Spring Shops themes will focus today on the more timely topics.  The mix of pessimistic labels is deliberate.

FRIDAY SHORT TAKES.

Emergence is like that.  "Taking out the leadership of Iran is likely the easy part. Controlling what happens after that is not so easy."  Best case scenario: the young women break out the mini-skirts and summer tops, the men in their lives or who would like to be in their lives stand up to what's left of the mullahs' morality police, and Israel and the United States enforce a no-fly zone.  What follows will still be interesting.

Reality is like that.  "They have become too accustomed to relying on American leadership and guidance and have been inculcated in the notion that the means to resolving disputes is through toothless multinational organizations like the UN. They have deluded themselves into thinking that 'soft power' is a substitute for fighting. Altogether, they need to wise up. Bullies aren’t impressed by words. They are cowed by well-timed punches."

The weekly round-up of mostly pithy elaborations on traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

Ann Coulter's perfect petri dish.  "The chaos in Southern California could have been designed in a lab to exploit Democratic weak spots, combining the issues of illegal immigration, crime, and public disorder."  It's funny in a way.  "Riots and criminal disorder erode faith in government and, accordingly, 'the party of government.'"  Democrats have a soft spot for rioters.  The violence preceded the mobilization.

Well, NBC. "Fox News paints L.A. as war zone while protests remain largely peaceful."

The weekly round-up of mostly pithy elaborations on traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

Bet on emergence.  "If jazz were a society, it would be a liberal one." From the same essay, trade unites.  "Commerce may make people less parochial, but this is hardly the same thing as destroying local communities. In fact, commerce seems to undermine the worst tendencies of localism: exchange across communities and borders leads to more cooperation, tolerance, and peace with a wider array of people."  Well, yes.

What constitutes a fulfilling life?  "While the US and Europe share a broad commitment to classical Liberalism, and Democracy, we have very different definitions of the Public Good, which means different views of what we want out of life, and what we consider fulfilling.  In broad and simplistic terms, the US emphasizes material wealth, opportunity, and individual liberty while Europe values community health, a shared common good, and a sense of place.  From the European perspective the US has a cult of the individual, and that's why it has too many guns, obscenely large cars, can't build a public transportation system, and has dysfunctional public spaces.  From the US perspective Europeans are unmotivated unproductive slackers who would rather sip coffee all day than work, and their idea of a shared common good means stealing from the successful to give to the losers."

When "your truth" is a lie.  "You cannot have identity politics on the Left, valorizing non-white people and granting them special, race-based privileges, without calling up demons on the right. They either didn’t see it – perhaps thinking that all white people were like the milquetoast liberals they knew from campuses and newsrooms – or they were so drunk on the thrill of transgression that they didn’t care.  Well, now that demon is here, and it is not the fault of conservatives who warned them."

The rigged glass bead game.  "It’s an open secret that the pressure to produce a constant flood of papers that are publishable and, better yet, interesting enough to spark headlines leads to corner-cutting, 'data torture' and overclaiming — or, sometimes, outright fraud.  The result is an expensive self-licking ice cream cone of grant applications and publications, but the actual contribution to human knowledge is often lacking."

The weekly round-up of mostly pithy elaborations on traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

It is time to be serious.  "If using the people of Ukraine as cheap disposable pawns to fight a proxy war against Russia and Putin has been the end game from the start, simply admit it. Don’t pretend you are trying to save the people of Ukraine or that nation’s infrastructure."

"Doing something" includes doing nothing.  "Change may be necessary, but change for its own sake is not reason enough. And it certainly isn’t conservative. In short, conservatism is a way of making decisions, which includes deciding to do nothing."

The weekly round-up of mostly pithy elaborations on traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

Government must do something.  This is something.  "Markets thrive on predictable rules and organic adaptation, not capricious, whipsaw meddling from politicians.  Businesses facing White House micromanagement will respond with risk aversion and curtailed investment, undermining the very economic dynamism Trump claims to champion.  The American conservative tradition properly recognizes that prosperity emerges not from top-down directives but from establishing conditions where individuals can pursue their ambitions. True flourishing, then, requires humility about our predictive powers—a quality conspicuously absent in this administration’s current economic approach."

Bet on emergence.  "The lesson here isn’t that we should fight harder to protect Essential Air Service.  It’s that we should have built a town that didn’t need it.  Strong towns are resilient.  They don’t bet everything on federal money and fragile systems.  They grow from the bottom up, incrementally, with a feedback loop between public investment and community value.  They don’t build for prestige.  They build for people."

True patriot love.  “My country, right or wrong — when right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be set right.”

The weekly round-up of mostly pithy elaborations on traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

The weekly round-up of mostly pithy elaborations on traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

The higher learning.  "These schools helped create this situation in the first place--it was only a few decades ago that state and federal money weren't even a part of their budgets.  They wanted this money, and were confident that their influence with lawmakers would shield them from political influence they didn't like.  They had their cake and ate it too--they railed against America, Americans, and capitalism.  They then deposited huge sums of money from the very governments and taxpayers for whom they professed hate and against whom they trained their students to destroy."

Liberating tolerance, until it's unlawful.  "To be clear, this is not a free-speech issue, it is a conduct issue.  Trespassing is conduct, not speech.  Vandalism is conduct, not speech.  Blocking entrances is conduct, not speech.  Spitting on police is conduct, not speech.  Stopping traffic is conduct, not speech.  Disrupting commencement is conduct, not speech.  Tagging benches with graffiti is conduct, not speech.  Barricading yourself in a building is conduct, not speech.  Taking over a meeting is conduct, not speech.  Attacking someone is conduct, not speech."

Reap what you sow, David Brooks.  "It was those excesses, and others that Brooks has implicitly endorsed for the past four years, that led to the greatest political comeback in American political history, the re-election of Donald Trump.  Now, just three months into the comeback that Brooks unwittingly helped to facilitate, he wants to overturn the election because Trump is doing what he promised.  He wants an uprising?  Sounds like insurrection to me.  Then again, if you think law firms, nonprofits, and civil servants are the cornerstones of Western civilization you have bigger problems than Donald Trump."  Bet on emergence.  "All these government programs that regulate and control, they institutionalize mediocrity at best."

It can play in no other way.  "When outsiders are rude to insiders, it often plays as righteous rebellion against an insolent system.  When insiders are rude to outsiders, it inevitably plays as haughty arrogance.  I know there are many who believe the same applies to Trump and Republicans, now in power and currently making a mess of the economy.  It doesn’t matter.  Americans instinctively understand progressives to forever hold the whip hand in matters of culture, even political culture — which explains far too many of the excuses for Trump’s own behavior now floating around.  Only opponents can break those rules without suffering consequences, not the people who are defending the status quo."

Being mean or telling the truth is indistinguishable to far too many people. Thus:  High School Never Ends—Especially in Washington.

The weekly round-up of mostly pithy elaborations on traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

The left made it easy.  "The left really did purge conservatives from universities and other cultural power centers. The left really did valorize a 'meritocratic' caste system that privileged the children of the affluent and screwed the working class. The left really did pontificate to their unenlightened moral inferiors on everything from gender to the environment. The left really did create a stifling orthodoxy that stamped out dissent. If you tell half the country that their voices don’t matter, then the voiceless are going to flip over the table."

The political bundles are too big.  "Democrats have had conflicting messages. On the one hand, Trump is an existential threat to American democracy and it is everyone’s duty to rally against him. On the other hand, much of the leadership remains committed to pushing the envelope on progressive policies that make it harder to attract the support of the sort of people who voted for John McCain and Mitt Romney but find Trump repugnant. It would seem intuitive that the mere existence of Trump, the most unpopular President ever, as the leader of the opposition would render the only viable alternative—the Democratic Party—popular. But it hasn’t worked out that way."  Well, no, after the way the vanguardists of Hope and Change treated candidates McCain and Romney, there are tables that should be flipped over.

Vacuous pejoratives.  “'Globalism' (a.k.a., free trade) is to those on the political right what 'trickle-down economics' (a.k.a., free markets) is to those on the political left.”  Loose translation: “Somewhere on Earth, buyers and sellers are engaging in voluntary trade and minding their own business AND WE HAVE TO STOP THEM.”

Tear down all the walls to get at the Devil.  "Governmental authority, once unleashed, recognizes no ideological master."  The Devil turns upon you.  "The left, fixated upon uniform outcomes, consistently undervalues the power of voluntary cooperation and cultural persuasion.  Their shortsightedness has delivered into the hands of their opponents the very instruments of coercion they forged, vividly confirming an enduring truth: the power you grant government today will inevitably be wielded tomorrow by your adversaries."

That power was not wielded well during the corona tyranny, was it?  Evergreen.  "The so-called expert class was not particularly expert in this instance, which is to say that the damage it did was predictable and therefore preventable."  Illusions shattered.  "I’m not interested in handing the reins of government over to supposed experts because, well, we saw how that went in 2020. I’m not up for a replay of that particular flavor of stupid."  Stupid leavened by groupthink.  "U.S. policy didn't reflect the scientific evidence."

The semiquincentennial has not been all seashells and balloons.  "Americans who fear a rancorous plod toward America’s 250th birthday should remember: 250 years ago, the nation knew much worse. Then it healed, passed through the furnace of another civil war, then resumed its zigzag but upward path toward a more perfect union. Atkinson’s reminder is that the birth of this nation, like that of a baby, was painful but worth it."

My fellow Americans, the Bears still suck.

The weekly round-up of mostly pithy elaborations of traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

None dare call it censorship?  "Massive federal subsidies for America’s bloated and wasteful higher-education sector have proven to be a mistake. Taxpayers are getting nowhere near their money’s worth—and in many cases, are subsidizing institutions that actively undermine Western civilization. University leaders now routinely highlight scientific advances to justify continued public funding, but these achievements cannot obscure the broader failure."

Why not reject the money, and the censorship?  "Harvard has no problem with an activist federal government, as long as it is a liberal one forcing all sorts of Title IX or DEI initiatives on private and Christian colleges that apparently lost their autonomy by accepting federal money. It has said nothing when state and federal governments in the past gratuitously hounded Hillsdale.  So, Harvard loudly can set itself free by permanently pursuing its agenda on its own $50 billion, in the same manner Hillsdale does quietly with its $1 billion"

Recognize who has broken the social compact.  "The right honors the compact; universities have bailed on their role as stewards of intellectual and moral order—including the implicit contract to uphold civil rights law in exchange for public monies."

The weekly round-up of pithy elaborations on traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

CAN WE PLEASE STOP TALKING ABOUT 2028 ALREADY???

The world is about to get really fair, very fast.  America is done apologizing for its interests.

Buckle in. "If Trump can pull this off, he has an excellent chance of winning the contest of the century."  Destruction is easy.  There are no utopias.  "Overall, we are far better off and stronger than the doomers will tell you."

Politics, on the other hand, can be hard.  "Trump supporters have enjoyed a heady three months of action on DEI, antisemitism, energy, NGOs, deregulation, border control, Hamas, Houthis, and more, but solidifying those changes will require a strong economy, support from friendly nations, and continued Republican control of Congress."

The weekly round-up of mostly pithy elaborations on traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

The Constitution belongs to the people, not to sophists.  Establishment Republican leaders lost control of their party because they failed to serve their base.  Politicians work for the people.  "Today’s popular leaders like Donald Trump and Marine La Pen are not the people’s last chance. They are the globalist’s last chance."  It's probable that the ban on Marine La Pen running for office will backfire.

The weekly round-up of mostly pithy elaborations on traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

The Battle of the Sexes rages on.  "Democratic Party policies, failures, and condescension are what drove young men away."  Barstool conservatism.  "The Democratic Party has convinced many young males that it hates them."  South Park conservatism.  "The Democratic Party has been in thrall to a cultural vibe that is maximally off-putting to young dudes."  Thanks, feminism.  "Suggesting all young men are predators in waiting is destructive."

The Gods of the Copybook Headings limp up to explain it once more.  "When you have women who have been trained not to like men, to consider babies immoral, who get their emotional fix from work and friends, and who feel that they have endless choices...well, a genuine, imperfect man, one who forgets to put the toilet seat down, belches after he drinks a soda, and smells rank after a day of physical labor...doesn’t stand a chance."

The weekly round-up of mostly pithy elaborations on traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.