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In light of insurrectionary violence on Capital Hill,  weak-sauce platitudes and reckless red meat seem to be the only two offerings on the menu. Unlike the habitual line-steppers whose conditional patriotism perverts our politics, we reason together how best to curb our worst impulses and put politics into proper perspective for the betterment of the Republic and ourselves.Show notes and further reading:Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural AddressThe original context for "habitual line-steppers."Thomas Sowell's Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political StrugglesCharles Murray's Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010Tim Carney's Alienated America: Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others CollapseMichael Malice's The New Right: A Journey to the Fringe of American PoliticsYuval Levin's Fractured Republic: Renewing America's Social Contract in the Age of Individualism and A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American DreamJohnny Cash's "I Am A Pilgrim."Website, email, and Patreon.

While our world drowns in and chokes on technology and social media (listen to the terminology: clouds, streams, and feeds), many people watch shows that gives tips on surviving the apocalypse or a remote wilderness. Wouldn't tips on surviving the technology we use everyday we a tad more relevant?  In this episode, we catalogue the amazing aspects of social media, the obvious drawbacks, and how to best enjoy the former and avoid the latter.

Isolation is a punishment from without; solitude is a choice from within. Solitary Refinement is a podcast where we hope to explore the agonies, ecstasies, and potentialities of single life. Will we choose a single life of seductive but self-defeating hedonism; or grounded, meaningful self-improvement? And will progress in that improvement go to our heads, or temper it with humility? Will we let the loneliness and melancholia win? Or will we choose the harder but better path? As Thomas Wayne taught a young Bruce in Batman Begins: "Why do fall? So that we can learn to pick ourselves up." Join us, as we share the lessons on how to best pick ourselves up and soldier on.