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1 week ago | 
stevehayward.substack.com | Steven Hayward
It’s that day of the week again: two-fer podcast Saturday, back in full strength in which only my Burkean virtues (I am still in Ireland, after all—the birthplace of Burke) restrained me from full beatdown mode on John and Lucretia for their attempted coup in last week’s “unplugged” episode, where they took advantage of my absence to completely misbehave. I went full moog synthesizer instead. So listen here, or download the episode when the link goes live at Ricochet.
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1 week ago | 
stevehayward.substack.com | Steven Hayward
Your Three Whisky Happy Hour hosts were busy this week, with a flood of publications coming out all at once. Let’s start with National Affairs, the quarterly journal of the American Enterprise Institute.
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1 week ago | 
stevehayward.substack.com | Steven Hayward
It will not be news to most of our readers that most Middle East studies departments in higher education long ago succumbed to the whole “de-colonial” ideology when they aren’t outright anti-semitic. Most of them should simply be shut down, and their radical anti-Israel/anti-American faculty summarily dismissed. So it is with considerable pride and pleasure that it is possible to announce an alternative in the field.
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1 week ago | 
stevehayward.substack.com | Steven Hayward
I don’t have that much in the way of original analysis or news on the Israel-Iran War. There’s a flood of it right now, some it very good, and much of it wrong or misinformation. (Social media, in particular, is an abyss for war news you can rely on.)But the unfolding scene brought to mind my great teacher of grand strategy and international relations—the late Harold W. Rood.
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2 weeks ago | 
stevehayward.substack.com | Steven Hayward
Another Saturday, and a podcast and a half. I was able to turn up for the Ricochet podcast with Charles C.W. Cooke and guest Andy McCarthy, chewing over Israel’s shock and awe campaign in Iran, the rioting in LA and Trump’s moves to control it, and recollections of Brian Wilson and the glory days of the Beach Boys. As usual, listen here, download from Ricochet:Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade.
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2 weeks ago | 
stevehayward.substack.com | Steven Hayward
• I guess Iran won’t be celebrating TACO Tuesday any time soon. The latest leftist taunt of Trump is that “Trump Always Chickens Out.” Maybe on tariffs, but not, it seems, on Iran, which may have paid too high a price for the view that Trump was so totally war-averse that he would not let Israel attack. Can anyone, under any imaginable world, conceive of this ever coming from Obama or Biden:As I say, real change.
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2 weeks ago | 
stevehayward.substack.com | Steven Hayward
For some strange reason, earlier today my mind ran back to Jan & Dean, the Beach Boy imitators (though some say percursor) that were, in my neighborhood at least, equally big news.
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2 weeks ago | 
stevehayward.substack.com | Steven Hayward
I’ve joked before that things happen so fast in the second Trump Administration that it needs to be measured in dog years, and doesn’t the Trump-Musk breakup seem like it happened two years ago? It helps to have a completely incompetent opposition party to work with. To paraphrase Will Rogers, it’s no trouble succeeding as President Trump when you have hordes of TDS sufferers working for you for free.
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2 weeks ago | 
stevehayward.substack.com | Steven Hayward
• From the annual report of the president of Harvard University, 1974-75: “In a few short years, universities have been encumbered with a formidable body of [federal] regulations, some of which seem unnecessary and most of which cause needless confusion, administrative expense and red tape.” The report went on to say that Harvard faculty and staff spent a total of 60,000 hours a year complying with federal regulations during the academic year. The cost ran to nearly $8 million a year.
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3 weeks ago | 
stevehayward.substack.com | Steven Hayward
As usual, it’s another twin podcast Saturday morning, even though I am somewhere in the far north Atlantic Ocean, with snow coming down. Ricochet listeners will be glad to know that Charles C.W. Cooke is recovering from a respiratory malady that had felled him for the last two weeks, and with James Lileks away in Italy, I host this week and catch up with Charles on everything from the Trump-Musk divorce to the new huge authorized (but defective) biography of William F.