This entry, from September 2000, captures a moment that made me question the gap between public behavior and private commitment. Reading it now, I still wonder: what do we expect from ourselves? From other people? September 23, 2000. I went to the client on Thursday night. I showed up at the hotel on and the …
I’m surprised at the all the fuss about tariffs. One of the economists I respect and follow said “Trump’s proposed tariffs — or what some are calling ‘Liberation Day — represent a step away from free-market classical economic principles and are harmful taxes during a vulnerable time.” Normally I read and go on to the …
There are three words critical to understanding Roger Kimball’s “Restoring American Culture” essay in the Imprimis, February 2025 issue: common sense, culture, and civilization. Unfortunately, Kimball never defined them. It was a provocative essay – one that makes you think. The piece was adapted from his talk last January at Hillsdale College, the people who …
There’s a lot of smart people in the world. One of them is Kevin D. Roberts, the president of The Heritage Foundation. He recently appeared in IMPRIMIS, the Hillsdale College publication with an essay “Populist Conservatism and Constitutional Order.” I read his essay twice, and was reminded of a blog I wrote in 2012 entitled, …
This site is less a blog than a thinking space. Here I write as Jim Nowakowski — James A. Nowakowski formally — observer, reader, citizen, and lifelong questioner. These pages hold my personal reflections on literature, culture, politics, history, language, and the uneasy intersections between them. Some pieces are analytical, some speculative, some simply forms …
Should you listen to an academic or …? An article by John Fonte published in the June/July 2024 issue of IMPRIMIS, coming out of Hillsdale College, was called “National Conservatism, Freedom Conservatism, and Americanism.” Fonte is a smart guy – degrees in history and a writer for many publications. And while he parses the conservative …
I introduced myself to our Pastor via e-mail. I like to do this to establish a relationship. It was about his homily. I wrote: “Albert Camus once wrote, “One moment of weakness, and everything is lost, theory and practice.” This is one of the guiding principles of my life. Very difficult to be strong all …
Artis-Naples was visited by ghosts from the Swing Era past on Friday night, December 8, 2023. When Dave Bennett took the stage with his quartet comprised of himself (Clarinet, Guitar, Piano and Vocals), Jeff Kressler on Piano, Ed Fedewa playing the Bass and Pete Siers on Drums, the audience was transported into an era long …
The thing about a tradition is that if you stop doing what the tradition stands for, you lose the meaning of the tradition itself. A tradition — the transmission of customs or beliefs from generation to generation — disappears and becomes lost, and everything around that tradition leaves human consciousness. Fortunately, the tradition of honoring …
Republicans haven’t figured out who or what they are fighting, and more important, how to fight who they are fighting. First, what is it that they are fighting? Vince Everett Ellison put it distinctly in Crime, Inc., “…foreign Communist/Marxist governments, through patience and cunning, systematically took over the Democratic Party, thereby infiltrating the federal government …
