From LRC

• When national myth uproots local stories. An example from what used to be the American South: a rally PC-ified and twisted to serve the feds. Of course local culture has long been the norm: lots of little countries like Liechtenstein and San Marino, not conglomerates like Germany and Italy. A story from the Italians I know, the oldest of whom are from Brooklyn, are in their 70s and one of whom is a first-language Italian-speaker. He literally married the girl next door – in 1962 – and his father, from Catania, and her grandparents, from Calabria and Sicily, could not understand each other speaking their local languages even though the languages were related (not dialects of Italian, languages). Standard Italian and English must have been the go-between languages. (Before WWII many people didn’t normally speak standard Italian.) Anyway the South of course is part of the ongoing story of America’s British culture/classes: the Scots in the New World – the NASCAR South – ended up like the ones in the Old, going for independence and being smacked down, looked down on and cannon-fodder manipulated shamelessly in the empire’s (the dominant liberal English who know what’s best for everybody) wars. BTW in my time in the South, in another yankeefied state capital, I was struck how Reconstruction had rewritten their history. No Confederate monuments at the statehouse. A Catholic take: such nationalism and globalism are both like fake universal churches.
• Not a personality/leader cult: Ron Paul happens to be right about essentially everything in American politics. When a mainstreamish person like Stossel says it, you know you’re making a little headway. I’m pretty sure that white guilt will hand Obama another term but it’s still a good sign. The old American republic is not dead at least in the hearts of its people.
• Car care: what and what not to cheap out on.
• Perennial topic: is college often worth it?
• Another: why our money’s not real.
• RIP Peter Falk. Columbo.
• Brave new world: from Gary Lewis, the Monkees and the Archies to this, the ultimate manufactured pop star, a computer composite of six people. Ultimate so far anyway. Not surprising now and is anybody else not surprised that this came from Japan?