Just woke up in my hotel room, watching NBC’s Today, looks like a beautiful day!

The Norman Conquest was a cataclysm for the English people. After 1066, the country was clenched in a mailed fist. Castles, until then a rarity, sprang up everywhere. Many still stand, handsome and crenelated, their geographical situation advertising their grim purpose. For these were not defences against a foreign foe, but instruments of internal repression, from whose arrow-slits new proprietors peered out at a beaten people. Having put down the North with terrifying savagery, leaving stretches of country depopulated, William began to rule as an absolute monarch. Quite how absolute can be seen from his compilation, some years afterwards, of a comprehensive inventory of the kingdom he now possessed. For there was no question in his mind that England was his to do with as he would. As the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle put it: “So very thoroughly did he have the inquiry carried out that there was not a single hide of land, not even – it is shameful to record it, but it did not seem shameful to him to do it – not even one ox, nor one cow, nor one pig which escaped notice in his survey.” The resulting tome became known as the Domesday Book, for it was said that you might as well try to deceive God on the Day of Judgment as hide your goods or chattels from the king’s officers. William parcelled out almost the entire country among his mercenaries and liegemen. At least 92 per cent of England was owned by men who had been born on the other side of the Channel. Of more than 200 landowners who held their estates directly from the king, only two were Anglo-Saxons: Thorkell of Arden and Colswein of Lincoln. Equality before the law was forgotten as the new aristocracy settled down to enjoy its privileges. Men were required by law to work on their lord’s estates, and forbidden to leave without his permission. Englishness became, almost by definition, a badge of subjugation. Human nature being what it is, people soon began to adopt the names and manners of their overlords. On one English farm in 1114, records Peter Ackroyd, the workers were listed as being called Soen, Rainald, Ailwin, Lemar, Godwin, Ordric, Alric, Saroi, Ulviet and Ulfac. By the end of the century all those names had disappeared. The status of the defeated English is often illustrated with reference to the vocabulary of meat. The Anglophone farmer in the field used plain Saxon words for his livestock: cow, pig, sheep. But by the time these animals found their way onto his Norman master’s plate, they had acquired French-derived names: beef, pork, mutton. More telling, though, is the political vocabulary introduced under the Normans. Out go witan, folkmoot and folkright. In come fealty and homage, fief and vassal, villein and serf. The progress toward personal liberty, free contract and equal access to the common law was suspended. In the words of the early twelfth-century chronicler, Orderic Vitalis: “The English groaned aloud for their lost liberty and plotted ceaselessly to find some way of shaking off a yoke that was so intolerable and unaccustomed”. The idea of “throwing off the Norman yoke” was to animate English radicals for the next seven centuries. Civil War Roundheads spoke of struggling against “William’s lieutenants”, meaning that the landowners of their own time were heirs to the men who had expropriated the English. “Wurðe god se ende þonne God wylle”, says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, lamenting the subjugation of 1066: May the end be good when God wills. The seventeenth century struggles may be seen – were seen by the key actors – as a belated reversal of the catastrophe. It is that reversal which truly deserves to be celebrated.

Dolly Parton and Wendell Berry less than a week apart; so different, and yet both so fully creators of what was best about southern culture and letters in the 20th Century. Giants are leaving us.

I wish I had time to analyze (and write about) the concession speeches of GOP candidates who lose to someone endorsed by Trump. Few end their campaigns as conservative as they ran them.

🚨 Data centers "dug their own grave," per Gov. Greg Abbott, as quoted by @Axios today. He's right about the self-inflicted wounds - and that's coming from a guy who's spent 40 years watching the oil & gas industry navigate the exact same minefield. I lived through the Shale Revolution early in this century. That Revolution ultimately became the first great industrial revolution in the 21st century, but it didn't come easy. 15 to 20 years ago, the exact same anti-development playbook, largely funded by Saudi Arabia and Russia, tried to kill hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling in the Permian, Eagle Ford, Bakken, Barnett, and Marcellus. Local opposition, scare tactics about water, noise, traffic, "industrialization of rural America." Sound familiar? The opposition playbook is now being largely funded by leftwing billionaires and China, but the tactics are exactly the same. So are the talking points. We learned the hard way: you don't just show up, plant a flag, demand incentives, and expect communities to roll over. You earn the social license first, or you pay the price later. Texas courted the AI boom hard. Abbott himself called the state the "epicenter of AI development" and celebrated Google's $40 billion announcement just months ago. Ample natural gas, land, infrastructure, pro-business climate - Texas seemed to be the perfect setup. Data centers need reliable, dispatchable power. Natural gas delivers it. This should have been a no-brainer win for energy abundance, jobs, tax base, and keeping America ahead in the global AI race. Instead, many developers moved too fast, too opaque. Their lack of transparency left themselves open to often false claims about power demand impacts on the grid, water use, construction disruption. Fewer permanent jobs than traditional industrial deals. Tax incentives that looked one-sided. Communities pushed back. Opposition now polls at 61% nationally. We saw similar polls related to Hydraulic Fracturing - "#Fracking" - from 2005 - 2010. Abbott and other politicians have shifted: Now he demands full cost recovery for infrastructure, audits before grid connections, phasing incentives. "They dug their own grave... and that's why they got the backlash they deserve." In all fairness, the Governor isn't wrong. I remain firmly pro-data center development but also recognize that much of the opposition stems from legitimate concerns held by local residents and communities. AI and the power it requires represent the next great American industrial revolution of this century. Constraining it through moratoriums or political panic would be self-sabotage - just like trying to throttle shale would have been. But the industry must stop treating host communities as afterthoughts. Engage early. Be transparent on power needs and costs. Partner on local benefits. Own the impacts. The oil industry figured this out under fire and thrived, but things were tenuous for a few years while companies figured it all out. Data centers can have the same outcome, but only if they learn the lesson before more governors and voters decide the grave is permanent. Build the power. Build the centers. But work your asses off to build the trust first. [Link to Axios story in the next post.] #EnergyDominance #DataCenters #AI #NaturalGas #Texas

We are a constellation held together by association, willfully bowing our rights to one another to elevate all kirkcenter.org/kirk-essays/k…

She gets it.

Lindsey Graham’s Scot-Irish Internationalism providencemag.com/2026/07/li… via @ProvMagazine

BEFORE the birth of our lord and savior, a political economist in India figured out how to drastically reduce government fraud, waste, and abuse. In the 20th century, game theorists rediscovered this ancient wisdom. Here is the story: independent.org/article/2026…

Columbia, South Carolina leading the nation in a godly transfer of power, led by an honest man, and a humble little sister. Not everything is terrible.

This video is getting plenty of attention as it should. Americans across the political and religious spectrum do not fully understand the depth of superstition and climate fear among Europeans. We have nothing quite like it.

40C is 104F for those from a country that has been to the moon.

My edited book, America's Macroeconomy: A Quarter Millennial History, is out just in time for the 250th! Order here: cambridgescholars.com/produc…

What many people don't understand about writing is that it does not consist of putting in words something you have thought through. It consists of thinking through the thing you're writing about by the act of writing--and rewriting and rewriting and rewriting. I have had the privilege of knowing several brilliant writers. I have known only one who wrote brilliantly in his first draft. James Q. Wilson. So if you're on his level, you don't need AI to do your writing. If you're not, using AI forecloses insights that can set your text apart.

Zinn is the overly generic pop history text that gets assigned in "First Year Humanities 101" and that sloppy critics of higher ed mistake as the content of advanced history graduate seminars. Unfortunately, those who teach advanced history graduate seminars often do themselves no favors in correcting this claim because they also instinctively defend Zinn's weaker political claims because they view him as being on the same ideological team. And round and round the two sides go from there.

But my eyes are toward you, O God, my Lord; in you I seek refuge - Psalm 141:8

From the late 1980s til 2000, Marx's Das Kapital averaged about 500 citations per year in scholarly publications. Over the last decade, it has not dipped below 5,000. The explosion of academic Marxism is one of the most significant stories in higher ed in the past 40 years.

Clyde Wilson makes a good case for this, for those who have ears to hear.

And we have to wonder, is this sort of thing the real plumbing of American politics? Not really a “war of ideas” is it?

As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, what role can the Declaration of Independence play in shaping a shared civic identity for the next generation? Hear distinguished historians Gordon Wood and Jack Greene reflect on the Declaration’s enduring significance, its place in modern political thought, and how we ought to commemorate the American Founding this July at 🔗 piped.video/EgDoSHK9U0Y