In yesterday’s subscribers-only newsletter, I posited that Tommy Robinson is to the Islamo-socialist government of the UK what Lech Walesa was to the communist government in Poland. Through his courage, Walesa managed to knock down the first domino that led to the Soviet Union’s collapse. Robinson’s courage shows signs of doing the same against the UK’s current morally corrupt government, as evidenced by the absolutely massive Unite the Kingdom rally in London today.

The rally wasn’t just humongously large; it was also openly pro-Christian. This Christian element is important because the rally is a pushback against the British government’s open-door policy to mass Islamic immigration (both legal and illegal) and its obeisance to Muslims once they arrive, a policy invariably at the expense of non-Muslim British subjects of all races, colors, and creeds.

It should be said that the British government did its best to shut down the event, and at least one Muslim knew why:

How commonplace is political violence these days? A man shooting at federal officers near the White House as JD Vance’s motorcade passed by was barely mentioned in the papers. Still, the timing could not be better for Noah Rothman’s new book, Blood & Progress: A Century of Left-Wing Violence in America. Ian Haworth returns to the Weekend Beacon with a review.

Since World War II, economists have developed theories to try and explain the business cycle’s ups and downs. They have also identified indicators to give us a sense of what phase of the business cycle we may be in.

“But what if it is the case that there is nothing cyclical at all about the economy’s fluctuations? This is a key question raised by the economist Tyler Goodspeed in his new book, Recession: The Real Reasons Economies Shrink and What to Do About It. A former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers and presently chief economist at ExxonMobil, Goodspeed is an accomplished scholar who has published books on topics ranging from the Keynesian revolution in economics to 18th-century Scottish banking.

“In all these works, Goodspeed integrates attention to economic theory and history with analysis of existing datasets. But he is also adept at deploying language and concepts drawn from other disciplines to add precision to his arguments.

“This way of proceeding is replicated in Recession. The book’s core thesis is that recessions are usually sparked by unforeseen external shocks to the economy in the form of events such as natural disasters, the outbreak of war, plagues, or pandemics. Goodspeed also regards many such jolts as emanating from mistaken government interventions that end up inducing and prolonging periods of economic contraction.

“To make his case, Goodspeed looks primarily at major recessions that have occurred in Britain and America going back to the 18th century. The available data, Goodspeed argues, makes it difficult to discern any business cycle-like patterns to the process of economic growth and contraction. He also maintains that ‘the forecasting record of the business cycle indicators’ initially developed by the National Bureau of Economic Research in the late 1950s ‘is unimpressive.’ This and other critical datapoints illustrate, according to Goodspeed, that the causes of recessions are better described as idiosyncratic.”

We were entirely different people. She was born in Hamburg just after World War II (or 11, as our better public intellectuals might put it). Her father was one of 5,000 or so German survivors of the Battle of Stalingrad, where hundreds of thousands of fellow soldiers died. After the family came to America, her mother got a job at the Tolstoy Foundation, run by the great writer’s daughter. By contrast my dad served in the Pacific theater, then started out his career in a gas station. My mother was a public school teacher.

“Manuela was bright and ambitious. She wrote a few articles for William F. Buckley’s National Review and then, in 1975, joined the Wall Street Journal, where she stayed for over 20 years in various capacities, including book editor. She won a Pulitzer in 1983 for criticism, in which she truly excelled, once writing of a Metropolitan Opera performance that ‘the place was so empty I thought I’d missed an air-raid drill.’

“She also had a heart as warm as a Christmas fire.”

“I had just finished (I hope) rewriting a novel the day Manuela died. I hadn’t talked to her in a while. Her love life had gone bad, her beloved Beagles had died, she’d been battling cancer, and I wasn’t feeling that great myself. I might have dared to send her the title page (Three Clicks Past the Paraclete) to see what she thought.

“I can imagine her response. ‘Shiflett—you’re groping for profundity. Try again. But don’t give up!’

“She now belongs to the ages, and the ages had better watch their step.”

“

Happy Sunday.

Vic Matus

Arts & Culture Editor

Washington Free Beacon