The tumult and turmoil of the past year have sent me back to the 18th century, to the roots of our battered Republic. It’s been a comforting sojourn — but not in the ways one might expect. There’s not much to be gained from revisiting hoary myths of the Founding; the real flesh-and-blood history is much more challenging, […]
About Jim Cornelius
The Politics Of Plowing Driveways
Running Iron Report reader John Dutcher scouted up what may be a perfect example of a worldview that RIR stands against. L.A. Times columnist Virginia Heffernan was knocked sideways by a powerful gust of cognitive dissonance when when she discovered that her Trump-supporting neighbors had done her a kindness. Oh, heck no. The Trumpites next door to our pandemic […]
Racing In The Street
I told a friend the other day that I think Bruce Springsteen’s Racing in the Street may well be my favorite song. Then I had to figure out why. ’Cause it ain’t the cars or the racing. Of course, the song isn’t really about those things at all… * For 40 years, I’ve been haunted by theses lines: Some guys just […]
The Baying Of The Hounds
The hounds are baying for blood. Beware. The leashes that hold them back are frayed, and, once loosed they will rend and tear any caught in their path. * The framers of the Constitution were not idealists and utopians; quite the opposite — they were skeptics of the perfectibility of man. Knowing that a lust for domination […]
Revolution, Riot And Rock-And-Roll — Part II — A Crisis Of Legitimacy
Over the holidays, the House of Cornelius rode down a side trail into the Wars of the Roses. The Wars of the Roses were a series of civil wars that ripped England apart for 30 years from 1455 to 1485. The complexity of those three decades of instability, turmoil and extreme violence has been over-simplified into a dynastic struggle between […]
The Jacobites’ Forlorn Hope
Mark me! Today marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of Charles Edward Stuart. Known as Bonnie Prince Charlie, he kicked off the last Jacobite Rebellion in 1745, in the attempt to see the exiled Stuart Dynasty Restored to the throne of Great Britain. The ’45 ended in disaster for the Scottish Clans that backed his […]
Somebody Bring Me Some Water
A couple of notes in the margin as the speed wobbles get more intense and the American Empire careens along the path to the Crash: The grotesque yet totally predictable spectacle of the Great Post-Election Tantrum has kicked up musings about civil war and secession. Most of this is is hot air from big talkers — […]
Revolution, Riot & Rock-and-Roll — Part I — The Gunpowder Plot
I know, it’s only rock and roll But I like it… — Jagger/Richards Lo, these many years ago — decades, actually, which is disconcerting — my then-girlfriend became Very Upset because her science major roommates scorned her major in English literature. They considered their majors — and therefore themselves — Practical , Useful, and Important. An English […]
The Heroic Age
Twice in the same day I saw the concept of the “heroic” badly misunderstood. When that sort of thing happens, I figure it’s time for a RIR post. The first was in the context of the passing at the age of 81 of Texas songwriting legend and larger-than-life wild man Billy Joe Shaver. “Trigger” the keeper of the […]
You Say You Want La Revolution
Revolutions are a dangerous business. I suppose my instincts are inherently conservative (in the Edmund Burke sense) when it comes to this subject, because when people invoke the “to the barricades!” war cry of revolt and insurrection, I tend to recoil. It’s not so much the tumult and disorder of revolution that creates a sense of dread in me […]
UAW/MF — Incitement To Violence
“I want the entire world to burn until the last cop is strangled with the intestines of the last capitalist, who is strangled in turn with the intestines of the last politician.” — Nathan Jun, Midwestern State University philosophy professor and “mild-mannered and conscientious member of his local community.” We’re back in “Up against the wall, motherfucker!” […]
1619 vs. 1776
“There are two things that I believe to be true. First, that America has a long history of brutal and shameful mistreatment of racial minorities — with black Americans its chief victims. And second, that America is a great nation, and that American citizens (and citizens of the world) should be grateful for its founding. Perhaps no nation […]
