Running Iron Report

“This war is not the end but the beginning of violence. It is the forge in which the world will be hammered into new borders and new communities. New molds want to be filled with blood, and power will be wielded with a hard fist.” — Ernst Jünger (1918) The dramatic events of recent weeks — President Trump’s abandonment of … Read More

Our hometown of Sisters celebrated the reading life this month. The inaugural Sisters Festival of Books October 18–20 was a success on every level. Craig Rullman and I were honored to be asked to participate in the kickoff  event, which featured a dozen local authors. There are few things more worthy of celebration than books and the strange and wonderful … Read More

It’s interesting that so many politicians and bureaucrats, apparently lacking the strength of their convictions, are assuming noms de plume and making their little pithy appearances in the digital realm. Romney’s “Pierre Delecto” is a particularly daft touch, joining some other recent classics such as James Comey’s “Reinhold Niebuhr” and Anthony Weiner’s “Carlos Danger” as instant splashes of cowardice and evidence of … Read More

The quality we admire most at The Running Iron Report is resilience. Nobody escapes the injuries, the wrecks, the traumas big and small that life dishes out. The 21st century therapeutic culture, which often valorizes victimhood, has led us astray from old, heroic virtues, and indeed casts them in a negative light. But those are the virtues and qualities that … Read More

This is maybe the best story I know. It’s an antidote to cynicism, a case study in the ways in which vision, patience and mutual respect can create outcomes that benefit everybody involved — and enhance the health and beauty of this sweet old world. This story originally appeared in The Nugget’s publication Celebrate. Because if anything is worthy of … Read More

In this case the question came from a young person, and they can be forgiven the crudity of their curiosity, even if it is backloaded with tired assumptions force fed by bad television, video games, abysmal schools, and that grandest of American traditions:  the full criminal embrace.  While the characterization of cops has migrated from the Officer Friendly types on … Read More

There is nothing more stirring and romantic than a people’s fight for independence. Who cannot be moved by an underdog taking up the rifle to make a stand and be counted in the community of nations? And yet the reality of revolution — and the civil war that it seems must almost inevitably follow — is grim, violent and often … Read More

Cattle have long been the bogeymen of environmental extremists, blamed for almost every eco-horror imaginable, but people need to eat, and despite sustained misinformation campaigns by detractors, they like to eat beef.  This year, the average American will consume 217 pounds of beef, and what’s missing from the traditional formulas, Hobbs says, is the long-term health and productivity of the … Read More

The president is a man of tremendous and highly sensitive ego, and he feels himself under constant and bitterly unfair attack. The world is full of tumult — and Fake News. The year is 1798. The French Revolution has plunged Europe into bloody conflict. The fledgling United States is itself embroiled in an undeclared maritime shooting war with revolutionary France, … Read More

Editor’s note: Running Iron Report is proud to support the efforts of our friend and contributor Greg Walker, who wrote this piece, in “fighting the good fight”. In 1962, my grandfather on my father’s side took his own life. This after killing his estranged wife. His murder-suicide shook our immediate and extended families to the core. I was just eight … Read More