On this day:
1099
First Crusade: 15,000 starving Christian soldiers march in a religious procession around Jerusalem as its Muslim defenders look on.
1497
Vasco da Gama sets sail on the first direct European voyage to India.
1709
Great Northern War: Battle of Poltava – Peter I of Russia defeats Charles XII of Sweden at Poltava thus effectively ending Sweden’s role as a major power in Europe.
1896
William Jennings Bryan delivers his Cross of Gold speech advocating bimetalism at the 1896 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
1947
Reports are broadcast that a UFO crash-landed in Roswell, New Mexico.
1970
Richard Nixon delivers a special congressional message enunciating Native American Self-Determination as official US Indian policy, leading to the Indian Self-Determination Act.
2011
Space Shuttle Atlantis is launched in the final mission of the U.S. Space Shuttle program.
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"To the BELOVED REPUBLIC under whose equal laws I am made the peer of any man, although denied political equality by my native land, I dedicate this book with an intensity of gratitude and admiration which the native-born citizen can neither feel nor understand."
Dedication to Andrew Carnegie's Triumphant Democracy (Scribner's, 1886)
***
President Donald Trump said Wednesday he believes the ceasefire and interim agreement to end the war with Iran are now “over” as the two sides traded strikes after Tehran was accused of attacking three commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
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What kind of people would advance or accept the idea of a man like Platner being a credible national leader?
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From 2021 to 2025, five Trump-family ventures reached public investors: Trump Media, World Liberty Financial, Trump’s memecoin, Melania Trump’s memecoin and American Bitcoin.
Trump Media shares are down 89% from their peak. World Liberty tokens have fallen 82%. The president’s memecoin is off 98%. Melania’s version has dropped 99%. Shares of American Bitcoin are down 95%.
The Trumps cashed out $1.9 billion and are still up $3.1 billion overall, according to Forbes' calculations. Their supporters are down an estimated $7 billion.
***
Norway has a sovereign wealth fund known as Norway’s Oil Fund. By early 2026 it held assets worth more than $2 trillion, spread across roughly 7,200 companies, and stood as the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world. Split a little over $2 trillion among 5.5 million citizens, and each notional share comes to roughly $385,000 on paper.
Vasco da Gama sets sail on the first direct European voyage to India.
1709
Great Northern War: Battle of Poltava – Peter I of Russia defeats Charles XII of Sweden at Poltava thus effectively ending Sweden’s role as a major power in Europe.
1896
William Jennings Bryan delivers his Cross of Gold speech advocating bimetalism at the 1896 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
1947
Reports are broadcast that a UFO crash-landed in Roswell, New Mexico.
1970
Richard Nixon delivers a special congressional message enunciating Native American Self-Determination as official US Indian policy, leading to the Indian Self-Determination Act.
2011
Space Shuttle Atlantis is launched in the final mission of the U.S. Space Shuttle program.
"To the BELOVED REPUBLIC under whose equal laws I am made the peer of any man, although denied political equality by my native land, I dedicate this book with an intensity of gratitude and admiration which the native-born citizen can neither feel nor understand."
Dedication to Andrew Carnegie's Triumphant Democracy (Scribner's, 1886)
***
President Donald Trump said Wednesday he believes the ceasefire and interim agreement to end the war with Iran are now “over” as the two sides traded strikes after Tehran was accused of attacking three commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
What kind of people would advance or accept the idea of a man like Platner being a credible national leader?
***
New York State lawmakers recently rejected a bill that would have added “caste” to the state’s anti-discrimination code. Had it passed, it would have made New York the first state—following a failed attempt in California—to enshrine the Indian system of social hierarchy in its law, adding yet another category to the ever-growing list of DEI concerns.
The battle, however, is far from over. Thanks to activists pushing this latest identity category, Seattle has already added caste to its anti-discrimination law, and universities including Brandeis, UC Davis, Brown, Columbia, and the California State University system have added caste to their nondiscrimination policies.
The battle, however, is far from over. Thanks to activists pushing this latest identity category, Seattle has already added caste to its anti-discrimination law, and universities including Brandeis, UC Davis, Brown, Columbia, and the California State University system have added caste to their nondiscrimination policies.
From 2021 to 2025, five Trump-family ventures reached public investors: Trump Media, World Liberty Financial, Trump’s memecoin, Melania Trump’s memecoin and American Bitcoin.
Trump Media shares are down 89% from their peak. World Liberty tokens have fallen 82%. The president’s memecoin is off 98%. Melania’s version has dropped 99%. Shares of American Bitcoin are down 95%.
The Trumps cashed out $1.9 billion and are still up $3.1 billion overall, according to Forbes' calculations. Their supporters are down an estimated $7 billion.
***
Norway has a sovereign wealth fund known as Norway’s Oil Fund. By early 2026 it held assets worth more than $2 trillion, spread across roughly 7,200 companies, and stood as the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world. Split a little over $2 trillion among 5.5 million citizens, and each notional share comes to roughly $385,000 on paper.
Is the government a good and unbiased investor?
***
A fascinating, admittedly soft, correlation from a large study: the closeness of people’s relationships with their own parents predicts almost nothing about how many children they want. The average family size of peers matters about twice as much as the respondent’s own number of siblings in childhood.
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A fascinating, admittedly soft, correlation from a large study: the closeness of people’s relationships with their own parents predicts almost nothing about how many children they want. The average family size of peers matters about twice as much as the respondent’s own number of siblings in childhood.
***
Socialism and Free Association
The drift towards tyranny is always with us; like gravity, there is always some man or idea spreading an attracting field. Energy is always necessary to prevent a people from being pulled into the tyrant's orbit.
Anne Applebaum, in Iron Curtain, details Stalin's dynastic efforts in Eastern Europe, first as a Nazi partner, then as an independent totalitarian contractor. It contains some interesting observations on tyranny as practiced by real experts, first Hitler, then Stalin. Hidden in it is some practical advice for free people.
She references the historian Stuart Finkel, who had the startling observation that communists have always acted more forcibly to undermine free association than to undermine free enterprise. When Lenin launched the New Economic Plan in the 1920s, Applebaum notes, the "systematic destruction of literary, philosophical, and spiritual societies continued unabated." Similarly, in Poland under the Nazis, Germany's war aims were not completely military."The object of the German occupation of Poland," she writes, "had been to destroy Polish civilization." After signing a pact to divide up the region between them, both Hitler and Stalin invaded Poland in September 1939. Under Hitler, much of the country's upper class was executed or sent to concentration camps. Stalin recognized a master when he saw one. The Soviets committed Nazi-style mass murders, most infamously the Katyń Forest massacre, which saw 22,000 Polish officers and other prisoners of war executed. "The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were, for twenty-two months, real allies," Applebaum writes. At the end of the war, there was almost literally nothing left of Warsaw.
After the war, the Soviets in Poland continued this broad cultural warfare. They attacked anti-Nazi groups(!) and the Polish Boy Scouts, for example. Catholic Church groups were a high priority with their close-knit communities and their international connections. Some organizations were absorbed. The Polish Women's League, a group of earnest volunteers set up to feed refugees in train stations, was infiltrated by Soviet bureaucrats and turned into a mouthpiece for party dogma.
What Hitler and Stalin later did in Eastern Europe was not an attempt at a simple military victory. Both were attempting to destroy a people, to obliterate the social fabric, to deconstruct the very infrastructure that people used to live and work. Why? Because tyranny can be resisted by a people who see themselves as a people, as an entity. The nucleus of a "people" is hard to control. If you are looking for attempts to undermine a state, look for attacks on its socially shared beliefs.
The Left, which fuels the fire of homicidal rage through group identification and antagonism, fears the self-alignment of groups. This may be more than ironic. Recent studies connect the decline in births not to the lack of desire to have children but to the lack of social support groups.
It seems a country that cannot produce friendship will not produce much of anything else.The drift towards tyranny is always with us; like gravity, there is always some man or idea spreading an attracting field. Energy is always necessary to prevent a people from being pulled into the tyrant's orbit.
Anne Applebaum, in Iron Curtain, details Stalin's dynastic efforts in Eastern Europe, first as a Nazi partner, then as an independent totalitarian contractor. It contains some interesting observations on tyranny as practiced by real experts, first Hitler, then Stalin. Hidden in it is some practical advice for free people.
She references the historian Stuart Finkel, who had the startling observation that communists have always acted more forcibly to undermine free association than to undermine free enterprise. When Lenin launched the New Economic Plan in the 1920s, Applebaum notes, the "systematic destruction of literary, philosophical, and spiritual societies continued unabated." Similarly, in Poland under the Nazis, Germany's war aims were not completely military."The object of the German occupation of Poland," she writes, "had been to destroy Polish civilization." After signing a pact to divide up the region between them, both Hitler and Stalin invaded Poland in September 1939. Under Hitler, much of the country's upper class was executed or sent to concentration camps. Stalin recognized a master when he saw one. The Soviets committed Nazi-style mass murders, most infamously the Katyń Forest massacre, which saw 22,000 Polish officers and other prisoners of war executed. "The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were, for twenty-two months, real allies," Applebaum writes. At the end of the war, there was almost literally nothing left of Warsaw.
After the war, the Soviets in Poland continued this broad cultural warfare. They attacked anti-Nazi groups(!) and the Polish Boy Scouts, for example. Catholic Church groups were a high priority with their close-knit communities and their international connections. Some organizations were absorbed. The Polish Women's League, a group of earnest volunteers set up to feed refugees in train stations, was infiltrated by Soviet bureaucrats and turned into a mouthpiece for party dogma.
What Hitler and Stalin later did in Eastern Europe was not an attempt at a simple military victory. Both were attempting to destroy a people, to obliterate the social fabric, to deconstruct the very infrastructure that people used to live and work. Why? Because tyranny can be resisted by a people who see themselves as a people, as an entity. The nucleus of a "people" is hard to control. If you are looking for attempts to undermine a state, look for attacks on its socially shared beliefs.
The Left, which fuels the fire of homicidal rage through group identification and antagonism, fears the self-alignment of groups. This may be more than ironic. Recent studies connect the decline in births not to the lack of desire to have children but to the lack of social support groups.
7/8/26
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