I turn fifty-eight this Wednesday. I have been planning for retirement with something closer to obsession than diligence: watching accounts I cannot influence, building calculators to predict a future that has no obligation to cooperate with them, and treating Social Security as the floor beneath the floor. I never trusted the state enough to loveContinue reading “The Body as Verdict”
Tag Archives: Roosevelt
July 4, 2026
Normally I would append this personal observation as a coda. My post on the Imperial Presidency below is too clean, too intellectual; a register I hide in when I need to process something that has not yet resolved itself emotionally. For all the veneer of historical distance, the current public discourse feels shallow to me,Continue reading “July 4, 2026”
Herbert Hoover and Moral Engineering
Yesterday (October 3, 2025), Heidi and I visited the Hoover–Minthorn House in Newberg, Oregon. The house, built in 1881 by Jesse Edwards, the Quaker founder of Newberg, stands behind a white picket fence, its clapboard walls repainted in pale yellow. Murray Rothbard had already set my prejudice against Hoover, so the visit was a sardonicContinue reading “Herbert Hoover and Moral Engineering”
Protective Arts 