Welcome to my little abode on the internet. I regularly post the letters I send to my dear friend Francis. You are welcome to read them. The letters cov...
Dear Francis, Cheerio! Pray tell, how are you? And how is the weather? We have now entered June, and the weather here is of half a mind to embrace summertime. I say "half a mind" because on some days the thermometer will climb into the 90s, and on others it will plummet into the 60s. The weather is being mightily indecisive, but I find I am okay with that. As a radical centrist, I am happiest when…
Dear Francis, I am writing to you today with momentous news. My dear wife delivered our son, our first child, at the beginning of April, automatically transmogrifying me into what anthropologists call a "dad." Mom is in fine fettle, at least as much as can be expected considering what her body went through. I will write more in the future about fatherhood and all the attendant challenges and…
Dear Francis, Merry Christmas to you and yours! 'Tis the season—the season of resolutions and habits and promises. The new year is barreling toward us, and on Jan. 1, 2026, humanity will release into the atmosphere an untold number of little pledges, most of which will vanish into the unknown like so many escaped balloons at a children's birthday party. Not my commitments, mind you. I intend on…
Dear Francis, I hope this letter finds you in good spirits. My spirits, as I'm sure you've heard, have been flagging of late. The sudden and unexpected loss of my sister—whom you knew distantly—at the beginning of the year has been unbearably hard for me. Through the stupefaction and tears, I realized, almost apologetically, that I went 36 years on this Earth without experiencing a real tragedy.…
Dear Francis, By now, I am sure, you have seen the news—Donald Trump will once again assume the American presidency. I know you are a bit of a Luddite, preferring dusty tomes to flashy gadgets and the instantaneous delivery of news. That's all for the good, and I admire your commitment to keeping "the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through" your mind, as C.S. Lewis once wrote . But…
Dear Francis, Natural law of the sort to which America's Founding Fathers appealed compels most men 1 in their 30s to develop a keen, almost single-minded focus on one of several historical wars. This is one step in the process by which the universe creates dads. Although this force is ineluctable, like gravity, Nature's God has thankfully seen fit to provide men with a few choices. The…
Dear Francis, I'm afraid I haven't got much time at the present, and so I must keep this epistolary brief. This letter's singular purpose is to allay what I imagine is your growing—and, if I'm being honest, pretty reasonable—suspicion that I am, in fact, dead. Forsooth! Nothing could be further from the truth. I remain in the land of the living, and feel in rather fine fettle. So, there's that.…
Dear Francis, Hail fellow well met! I trust my letter finds you well on this lovely Saturday mornings. How have things been for you? I am going to keep this letter brief, for I have quite a bit to do today. This morning, I have been cogitating on an argument liberalism's most tireless critics—scholars like Patrick Deneen, for example—make for why the post-liberal era is not only inevitable but…
Dear Francis, Contrary to the promises I made to you only a few weeks ago, I have been dilatory in writing to you in the Year of Our Lord 2024. My only consolation is that even prolific epistolists like Adam Smith were negligent from time to time in their correspondences, and so I am in good company. In 1744, Smith, living in Oxford, wrote the following to his mother: I am quite inexcusable for…
Dear Francis, The first contest of the 2024 presidential contest happens this Monday, in Iowa, and the baltic weather should keep things at least somewhat interesting. If Monday were nothing more than a bog-standard winter day, the only people tuning in would be politicos and reporters with nothing better to do. The outcome of Iowa's Republican caucus is, almost, foreordained. Maybe a particularly…