Sorry it’s been a while since the last one of these, been busy with other things.

Watch this great interview with Keli’i Akina of the free-market Grassroot Institute, which is surprisingly favorable to a restoration:

Student activists pulled down the U.S. flag at UH-Hilo and raised the Kingdom’s flag

Dampier on Puerto Rican exit

Michael Tomasky says dump the South. (Please oh please Br’er Fox, don’t throw us into the briar patch!) Chris Bray responds at TheDC.

Confederate flag comes down in Pensacola, along with all others the city has been under except the federal one.

Citadel’s Confederate flag places bowl game in peril

Related: the real winner of 2014 — the Klan.

Meanwhile, SPLC writer murdered by thugs

Congressional Black Caucus holds up Pamunkey tribal recognition because of a probably-inoperative part of their tribal law forbidding miscegenation with black people. (A big part of the story of why it’s taken so long is the Pamunkey initially negotiated its treaties with the Crown.)

Of nanobreweries and free staters

National anarchists are for Long Island secession

Defense bill takes away tribal lands

Political art upsets Iowa SJWs

*****

Why Hong Kong needs to wake up

ISIS releases sex-slavery pamphlet. Indonesian news editor satirizes ISIS, then is summoned before a court under the country’s blasphemy law. Indonesia is the most populous Muslim country, and they are, in effect, protecting the honor of one of the most vicious groups of savages in the world. So tell me again how ISIS is far out on a limb and no real Muslim supports what they do?

Why fight ISIS?

The politics of Modi’s vegetarianism

Tibetan man jailed for cautioning travelers not to worship Shugden, per the Dalai Lama’s proscription

China proposes banning the veil in Xinjiang

Bitcoin and micronations. More micronation porn

Strong majority supports holding an independence referendum in Basque country

Political power for independents in Tonga. (More on poets in Tonga)

Prospects for constitutional democracy in Anguilla

Valdostan Union fears for Aosta Valley’s autonomy amid Italian administrative reform

Economist worries about nationalism in Europe

The legality of Barotseland secession

*****

Leaving the social justice cult

David Mills says conservative Catholics are giving up on capitalism

Wesley’s five questions on secession

Patrick Deneen on the liberal arts:

While a number of voices on the right continue to look back to the period in the mid-twentieth century when it seemed that programs devoted to study of the great books could take the place of the religious missions and affiliations of colleges and universities, we must now recognize this as a transition from the classical and Christian conception of liberty to the modern form of liberty that stresses, above all, autonomy and the need for endlessly-increasing human power. We are now decisively and with ever-greater conformity entering a new phase of higher education where Left and Right agree that the main end of higher education should be devoted to the modern notion of liberty. They differ only in means, and in fact both approaches coexist with relative peace and even compatibility on most campuses today.

Esotericism and the myth of progress

Gerry Neal on Puritan theocracy

Curt Doolittle has been interesting lately

*****

The world’s as the world is; the nations rearm and prepare to change; the age of tyrants returns;

The greatest civilization that has ever existed builds itself higher towers on breaking foundations.

Recurrent episodes; they were determined when the ape’s children first ran in packs, chipped flint to an edge.

I lie and hear dark rain beat the roof, and the blind wind.

                           In the morning

   perhaps I shall find strength again

To value the immense beauty of this time of the world, the flowers of decay their pitiful loveliness, the fever-dream

Tapestries that back the drama and are called the future. This ebb of vitality feels the ignoble and cruel

Incidents, not the vast abstract order.

                            I lie and hear dark rain beat the roof, and the night-blind wind.

In the Ventana country darkness and rain and the roar of waters fill the deep mountain-throats.

The creekside shelf of sand where we lay last August under a slip of stars

And firelight played on the leaning gorge-walls, is drowned and lost. The deer of the country huddle on a ridge

In a close herd under madrone-trees; they tremble when a rock-slide goes down, they open great darkness-

Drinking eyes and press closer.

                Cataracts of rock

Rain down the mountain from cliff to cliff and torment the stream-bed. The stream deals with them. The laurels are wounded,

Redwoods go down with their earth and lie thwart the gorge. I hear the torrent boulders battering each other,

I feel the flesh of the mountain move on its bones in the wet darkness.

                      Is this more beautiful

Than man’s disasters? These wounds will heal in their time; so will humanity’s. This is more beautiful….at night….

— Robinson Jeffers, Night Without Sleep (h/t Tom Clark)