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Learning Curve

Mainly, but not exclusively for foil Being able to assume en garde correctly. Being able to advance and retreat correctly. Being able to hold one's weapon correctly. Being able to make an extension correctly. Being able to land a touch correctly with one's opponent standing still. Being able to make a parry correctly. Being able to retreat while making a parry correctly. Being able to see an attack coming after it has started. Being able to see an attack as it starts. Being able to parry an attack. Being able to make a riposte. Being able to initiate an attack. Being able to feel the difference between an attack and a counterattack. Being able to feel the correct distance for making an attack. Being able to see an opening for making an attack. Being able to understand priority. Being able to tell the difference between a stronger and a weaker fencer. Being able to finish one's attacks without trying to take a parry. Being able to be patient, not rushing one's attacks. B...
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Medieval History 101: The Unauthorized Version

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Welcome to my Random Laypersons ! Welcome to the VFM, welcome to the Dread Ilk, welcome to the Reprehensibles, welcome to the Unauthorized , and welcome to the Bears!  This is the History Course you have been waiting for!  Or, rather, it will be, as soon as I get some feedback from you. I was greatly encouraged when Vox asked you the other night about whether you would be interested in such a course and so many of you said, “Yes—as long as it is real  history!” As Fencing Bear would put it, “ Three cheers !”  We are thinking about having a video a week, starting this summer.  The first question that I have is about format. What kind of format would make for a good course online?  What I do not want is to have these videos simply be lectures, the canonical professor-talks-while-the-students-doze lectures you get in the movies before the professor starts encouraging the students to stand on their desks.   I wan...
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Hot Button Issues, No. 4: Talking Politics

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At all.  As my liberal friends on Facebook have made me abundantly aware these past several weeks every time I have posted even the mildest endorsements of the candidate running against our incumbent.  As my family has made clear as a condition for visiting at Thanksgiving.  Talking politics in and of itself is a hot button issue.  Unless, of course, you simply agree with me. Why should this be?  (I know, it's me being naïve again, but here we go.)  "Don't talk religion or politics except to very intimate friends," or so Lily Haxworth Wallace advised way back in 1941 in her New American Etiquette .  On that count, however, I have no intimates, at least politically.  Or the ones that I do have are all at the National Review .  Plus Barry (hi, Barry!), my oldest friend in the world (albeit three months younger than me), and Prof. Mondo , whom I know only from the blogosphere. And maybe you, if you're reading this now.  (Maybe.)  ...
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Make Culture Christian Again

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Everyone agrees. The West has a problem. For good or for ill, what we used to call “Western civilization” is crumbling. The monuments of its past are being pulled down. Its heroes are being wiped from the public memory. Efforts at stemming the loss are vilified as “racist” and “white supremacist.” Nobody in polite society wants to be associated with its institutions and ideals anymore. Particularly not with Christianity. Even in so-called conservative circles, to call oneself “Christian”—as opposed to “Judeo-Christian”—is something of a faux pas . A bit gauche. Definitely lowbrow. Not particularly intellectual. Certainly not something a rational thinker would wholeheartedly embrace. Well, perhaps it is okay to be Christian in the circles I frequent online, but then I have never been invited to the right cocktail parties. Not that I would have any idea how to behave. Then again, as they say, turnabout is fair play. I’m a Christian, and Christianity has always been a bit embarras...
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How to Be God-Right

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I have had a fair amount of fall-out thanks to the video that I did with my friends about Vox Day’s book on Jordan Peterson . If you have watched the video, you know that I agree with Milo and Vox in their critique of the Good Professor. Like Milo and Vox, I do not see Jordan as on “our” side . Quite the reverse. I became wary of Professor Peterson about this time last year, after spending over a month trying to make sense of what happened in his interview with Cathy Newman. I became increasingly suspicious as I watched his interactions with Ben Shapiro and Dave Rubin on their shows , and I lost all faith in him as an ally when he threw Milo under the bus rather than argue with Bari Weiss about whether Milo was “possibly [a racist].” By the time Professor Peterson made his Kavanaugh tweet, the camel was already on the ground, crippled and unable to rise. I do not think Professor Peterson  believes in God by any definition that I would recognize . ( Hint : If you care more a...
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