Running Iron Report

Americans have a skewed image of what civil war entails, mainly because ours was somewhat exceptional, if not unique. Two vast geographical regions squared off and went at it in a large-scale conventional war featuring classical Napoleonic movement of great armies and titanic battles like Gettysburg, Antietam, Chickamauga and the sieges of Vicksburg and Petersburg. Victory or defeat hinged upon … Read More

Two presidential candidates did a very bad thing last weekend: They are promulgating a false narrative — a narrative that was comprehensively debunked by the investigation and report of the Obama Justice Department in 2015. The report is readily available online. Brown’s killing may have been tragic — nobody wants to see a young man’s life snuffed out — but calling … Read More

South of Adel, Oregon, beyond the diminished headquarters of the MC Ranch, Twentymile Road offers a sharp eastward turnoff onto County Road 3–15.  You take it, hitting the turn signal for no reason at all, pushing through irrigated pastures in the valley bottoms where the humidity is suddenly tropical and the smell of lush orchard grass, alfalfa, and timothy pours in through the open windows of the truck.  You think: a rainforest sprinkled with dust.

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We rolled off Highway 31 into Paisley, Oregon, early on a Tuesday morning.  It was late July and the sun was promising a fine day in the reddish hues of nautical twilight to the east. Paisley, population 200 or so, was just beginning to yawn and stretch and mostly quiet in the long morning shadows, although someone was driving through town on a muddy four-wheeler with a border collie standing up on the cargo rack, a fine-looking dog leaning over the driver’s shoulder with his nose into the wind. … Read More

During summer college breaks back in the mid-1980s, I did some work for my grandparents — the typical light home maintenance stuff on their place in La Cañada, California. My grandfather was on his last legs, his breath stolen by emphysema, which he earned with a heavy smoking habit in his younger days and by working with asbestos and god … Read More

The common denominator in school killings isn’t what you think it is.  It isn’t guns, and it isn’t mental illness.  The only common denominator in mass school killings is long-term, dissasociative exposure to violent media.

Whether its violence in films, violent lyrics, violent television shows, violent novels, violence depicted across social media, or the endless flood of violent imagery in first-person shooter video games, those countless hours steeped in images of interpersonal violence are damaging the minds of our nation’s children.

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“That’s one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind.” — Neil Armstrong, Commander, Apollo 11 July 20 marks the 50th anniversary of one of the most remarkable moments in human history. Astronaut Neil Armstrong opened the hatch of the lunar landing module Eagle and stepped out onto the surface of the Moon. The moon landing, given the … Read More

On February 26, 1911, in a winter so cold across northern Nevada that temperatures dropped to ‑40°, four men rode quietly into the frozen maw of Little High Rock Canyon to investigate the carcasses of cattle recently killed and left in the snow.  Little High Rock Canyon, in 1911, was as it remains today: a long way from anywhere.  Closest to Eagleville, California, LHR is situated in the sagebrush, alkali, and basalt country of northwest Nevada.  It is home to bighorn sheep, many species of raptors, deer, pronghorn, rattlesnakes, chukar, quail, coyotes, horned toads, and wild horses.  Summers are blazing hot, and winters are unremitting.

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Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. — Winston Churchill Regular readers of Running Iron Report know that we consider the Russian Revolution to be a fulcrum of modern history. Taken not as a discreet event but as a part of the great convulsion of the First World War and a precursor event of the Second World … Read More

The new American penchant for tribalism isn’t doing us any favors.  That was on full display at the most recent Democrat presidential debates, where candidates pandered vigorously to their various tribes by promising virtually anything they could think of – from health care to college educations – for free.  The idea that Bernie Sanders, who is still combing his hair with a balloon, and whose pandering is delivered in language taken directly from the All Soviet Congress of 1917, is even on the dais as a candidate should probably cause every thinking American to cringe.

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