Paul Babiak and Robert Hare, Snakes in Suits
"An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come."
Victor Hugo, Histoire d'un Crime
"The barbarian hopes — and that is the mark of him, that he can have his cake and eat it too. He will consume what civilization has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort, but he will not be at pains to replace such goods, nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being. We sit by and watch the barbarian. We tolerate him in the long stretches of peace, we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence; his comic inversion of our old certitudes; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond, and on these faces there are no smiles.
The real interest of watching the Barbarian is not the amusement derivable from his antics, but the prime doubt whether he will succeed or no, whether he will flourish. He is, I repeat, not an agent, but merely a symptom, yet he should be watched as a symptom. It is not he in his impotence that can discover the power to disintegrate the great and ancient body of Christendom, but if we come to see him triumphant we may be certain that that body, from causes much vaster than such as he could control, is furnishing him with sustenance and forming for him a congenial soil—and that is as much as to say that we are dying."
Hilaire Belloc, This and That and the Other
"It is very odd that the unhappiness of the world is so often brought about by small men."
Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front
Stocks were reaching for a high note today, and managed to go out near the highs.
Gold and silver were sharply higher.
The Dollar gained.
The VIX declined.
Mixed signals indeed.
Storm warnings.
Have a pleasant weekend.
