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Jun 14, 2026

Forensic anthropologists identify 17 dictatorship victims in Córdoba military field

The judiciary revealed the list in a press conference alongside their relatives. ‘Today, we feel free,’ one of them said

Forensic anthropologists identify 17 dictatorship victims in Córdoba military field

Martina Jaureguy

The Argentine Team of Forensic Anthropology (EAAF, by its Spanish initials) identified 17 people who were killed and buried in a military field in Córdoba during the last dictatorship.

The finding adds to 12 identifications announced in March, as part of an excavation and remains analysis work the EAAF has been carrying out since 2025 at the compound where Córdoba’s largest and deadliest clandestine center of detention, torture and extermination, La Perla, operated.

The Córdoba judiciary announced the list of names of the identified victims in a press conference on Tuesday after notifying their relatives, who were also present at the briefing.

Over 2,000 people were kidnapped and disappeared by Argentina’s last dictatorship at the infamous “La Perla” death camp but, until last year, no bodies had ever been found there.

The EAAF, a world-renowned NGO, carried out a 20-year investigation at the site. Their findings confirm that the area of Loma del Torito inside the La Perla compound was used as a mass grave, like many witnesses described throughout the past decades.

During the press conference, Córdoba Judge Miguel Hugo Vaca Narvaja said that “it is possible that there will be more identifications.”

While there are no estimations of the total number of individuals who were buried at the site, the judiciary stated that “a great number of human bone remains” were found scattered there.

The judge announced the names of only 16 of the victims, as one of the families asked for the name of their relative to remain anonymous. The list includes several couples who were buried together, including Ester Felipe and Luis Mónaco; Nélida Noemí Moreno de Goycochea and José Luis Goycochea Escudero; as well as Rosa Cristina Godoy de Cruspeire and Carlos Cayetano Cruspeire

The rest of the list names Gilberto Néstor Lellin D’Francesco, Graciela María de los Milagros Doldan, Juan Carlos Navarro Moyano, Adrián José Ferreyra Rivero, Víctor Carlos Díaz Rinero, Marta Susana Vera Ledesma de Comba, Silvia del Valle Taborda, Gustavo Daniel Torres, Edelmiro Cruz Bustos, Oscar Segura Ranieri.

A moving homage

Relatives of several of the identified victims thanked the EAAF and all those involved in the process, deeply moved after finally learning what happened to their loved ones after almost five decades.

“Today I’m not here to say ‘goodbye’ to my dad. Today, I can finally say ‘hello,’” said Ernesto Ferreyra, son of Adrián José Ferreyra, who was a psychology student and member of the Revolutionary Workers’ Party (PRT). Ernesto was born 11 days after his father was kidnapped in March 1976.

“When I became a father, I understood what he must have felt when he was not able to meet me,” he said.

Luis Navarro, brother of communist militant and industrial worker Juan Carlos Navarro, thanked all those who were involved in finding him and the rest of the identified victims. “When we asked about our relatives, we were told that if there was no body, there was no crime, and we couldn’t do anything,” he lamented in tears.

“Today, I call for justice to be made, and for punishment for those who murdered my brother, like many others,” Luis pleaded. “It is my wish they find many more.”

One of the daughters of Oscar Segura Ranieri highlighted the importance of the identifications, stating that “families are finding their loved ones after 50 years, and they can finally grieve and have a wake.”

Another woman, daughter of Juventud Radical member Edelmiro Cruz Bustos, cited a passage of the Bible her mother used to read to her: “‘You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’ And today, we feel free,” she said.

Cover image credit: EAAF

https://buenosairesherald.com/economics/dollars-under-the-mattress-the-holy-grail-of-argentine-governments

stephenkmacksd.com/

Jun 14, 2026

Juan Marcos Pollio

Dollars under the mattress, the holy grail of Argentine governments

Since taking office in late 2023, Javier Milei has tried, in more ways than one, to get Argentines to pull their dollars out from “under the mattress” — that is, to bring them into the formal economy.

The first initiative was the Asset Regularization Regime, a tax amnesty that allowed Argentines to declare previously hidden assets. It launched on July 18, 2024, and its final phase closed on May 8, 2025, with more than US$32 billion brought into the open.

Although experts considered it a major success, it wasn’t enough for the Milei administration. In 2025, Congress passed the Fiscal Innocence Law, allowing Argentines to use their undeclared dollars under a presumption of innocence before the tax authority.

That wasn’t enough either. Earlier this month, Economy Minister Luis Caputo sent Congress a revamped and expanded version of the law, making it even easier for taxpayers to regularize undeclared dollars.

One of the bill’s most notable changes is that it scraps the wealth and income ceilings for joining the regime — meaning that, from now on, “large taxpayers” will also be able to benefit.

Milei’s is hardly the first government to try to get savers to declare their dollars. If anything, it’s the norm: the administrations of Alberto Fernández, Mauricio Macri, and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner all did the same, with varying degrees of success.

That’s because the amount of dollars Argentines hold outside the system is enormous. According to official INDEC data, the estimated total at the end of 2025 was US$254.9 billion, up 4.5% from a year earlier.

For comparison, the loan the International Monetary Fund (IMF) extended to Argentina in 2018 — the largest in the institution’s history — was US$45 billion.

Dollar demand isn’t letting up

Despite the stability of the exchange rate, Argentines’ appetite for buying dollars hasn’t eased. According to Central Bank data, between January and April of this year, foreign-currency purchases by individuals with no specific purpose reached US$8.5 billion.

Christian Naud, senior economist at the research firm ACM, told the Herald that this early-year demand for dollars comes down to several factors.

On one hand, “there’s precautionary demand and a rebuilding of dollar portfolios, made easier by the normalization of access to the foreign-exchange market since April of last year.”

But there are also transactional uses: “Card payments, tourism, services abroad and, in general, greater household demand for imported goods and services,” he said.

Naud said the real value of the exchange rate “helps explain part of this dynamic.”

When the dollar is “lagging” in real terms, it becomes cheaper for the middle and upper classes — it loses value against the peso, which fuels demand.

Naud noted that in May, the dollar’s real value sat just below its May 2017 levels and 11% below the January-April 2018 average.

That reference is no accident: April 2018 marked the start of the currency crisis that would end with Argentina’s return to the IMF, triggered by a heavy outflow of foreign capital that had been in the country doing carry trade — cashing in on high peso yields.

Looking ahead to next year, Naud said “precautionary demand can be expected to gain weight as the 2027 election starts to come onto the market’s radar.”

For years, pre-election periods in Argentina have come with a surge in dollar demand — a time-honored defensive strategy by savers against inflation volatility.

In September 2025, for instance — the month of the Buenos Aires Province election, in which Milei was defeated — Argentines bought US$5 billion, the most since 2018.

Naud expects similar pressure on the dollar in the run-up to the October 2027 presidential election.

“Uncertainty over the continuity or reversal of the current economic program will probably increase dollar hedging,” he added.

A brief history of Argentina’s dollar ‘obsession’

Horacio Augusto Pereira, senior researcher at the Center for International Strategies of Governments and Organizations (CIG) at Universidad Austral, told the Herald that the Argentine economy suffers from “a chronic disaster: high inflation, devaluations every other minute, distrust of the peso.”

“What do people do in the face of that? Rationally, they take refuge in dollars to survive,” he said. “Every time inflation takes off, demand for dollars to hoard goes up. That drains reserves, pressures the exchange rate and ends up creating the very scarcity we then try to manage with currency controls.”

Economic historian Julián Zicari told the Herald that until the 1930s, the U.S. dollar “was just another currency” — the pound sterling and even gold mattered far more.

That would change after World War II, as the United States cemented its position as the dominant Western superpower.

Locally, the shift took hold because “Argentina’s economic crises, from the second half of the 20th century onward, would be tied to a shortage of dollars.”

Economic sociologist Ariel Wilkis told the Herald that “over the past eight decades, Argentines’ relationship with the dollar has changed over time,” and pointed to a handful of moments that steadily pushed the dollar to the center of economic life.

He singled out “the great devaluation of the 20th century — the 1958 one, under Arturo Frondizi’s government,” adding that “throughout the 1960s, devaluations were constant.”

Frondizi devalued the peso by 68.2% in late 1958, sending inflation past triple digits — 113% — for the first time in Argentine history.

Another moment Wilkis highlighted was the last military dictatorship, a period that combined “a policy of economic opening” with “a huge availability of dollars in the financial system.”

A new turning point came with the hyperinflation under Raúl Alfonsín’s government in 1989. Wilkis said that crisis “spread the use of the dollar to extreme levels — in everyday payments, for example” and “created the conditions for the convertibility policy of the following decade,” which pegged the peso one-to-one to the dollar.

Under Carlos Menem’s presidency, through the 1990s and until January 2002, Argentina lived under that convertibility regime, in which one peso was worth exactly one dollar.

“The paradox of that decade is that, on one hand, the dollar disappears from public life — the currency peg means we stop paying attention to it — and at the same time it becomes a formalized currency in financial life: opening dollar bank accounts, taking out dollar loans, paying debts in dollars, and so on,” Wilkis said.

The sociologist noted that while other countries have gone through crises similar to Argentina’s, they didn’t necessarily turn the dollar into a “popular currency.”

The Argentine difference, he argued, rests on two complementary dynamics: one sociopolitical, the other sociocultural.

The first is “a systematic accumulation of failures by governments, decade after decade, to build a strong national currency.”

The second is “the social learning around the importance of the dollar — how to use it, how to read it, and how to gain a financial edge from it,” the product of one economic crisis after another.

Dollars under the mattress, the holy grail of Argentine governments

Martina Jaureguy.

stephenkmacksd.com/

Jun 14, 2026

Argentines’ trust in the government fell for the sixth consecutive month in May, dropping by 1.6% from April and 18.7% year-on-year, according to an index compiled by the Torcuato Di Tella University.

The cumulative decline so far in 2026 stands at 19%, amid a series of corruption scandals involving senior officials, particularly illicit enrichment allegations against Chief of Staff Manuel Adorni.

The index, compiled monthly by the University’s School of Government, is measured on a scale of 0 to 5 based on public opinion surveys.

In May, it stood at 1.99 points, the second lowest score since the start of Javier Milei’s government in December 2023.

This brought the president’s overall average trust score since he took office to 2.41 points, the lowest in the series, although the index has “remained relatively high during Javier Milei’s presidency,” the university’s report stated.

Scandals

The lowest level of trust remains September 2025, when the index stood at 1.94 points after a scandal involving alleged ties between then-libertarian candidate José Luis Espert and businessman Fred Machado — who was under investigation for drug trafficking in the United States — forced Espert to withdraw from the legislative race.

The sharpest decline in trust over the past six months came in April, when the index fell by 12%, coinciding with the peak of the allegations against Manuel Adorni.

The chief of staff has faced scrutiny since March, when reports revealed he had purchased two luxury properties since joining the administration as presidential spokesperson in December 2023 that were not included in his asset declarations. He also came under fire for several costly trips allegedly paid for in cash and U.S. dollars.

In addition to the allegations against Adorni and Espert, the government also faced serious turmoil when Milei’s sister, Presidency Secretary Karina Milei, was accused of spearheading a bribery scheme within the now-extinct National Disability Agency, involving supposed large illegal payments in exchange for providing state contracts to pharma and medical companies. The judicial investigation continues.

The government regained some of the trust it had lost after winning the 2025 legislative elections, but the Adorni scandal in March, in addition to worsening living conditions, appear to have reverted the situation.

The index

In May, three of the five categories taken into account to calculate the trust index suffered a decrease: the government’s capability (-5.6%) — the lowest for the current administration — concern about the country’s general well-being (-2.5%), and honesty (-1.6%).

However, the segments regarding a general evaluation of the government, as well as efficiency, went up by 3% and 0.5% respectively.

If divided by gender, the overall trust figure marked a new decrease among women, but was higher than last month among men, and also among people above the age of 50.

Trust in Milei government drops for sixth consecutive month

Poets are the Arbiter of Worlds!

stephenkmacksd.com/

Jun 14, 2026

Diljit Dosanjh: Morni | The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/lf9CbQwCsCc?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

Walt Whitman

1819 – 1892

The past and present wilt—I have fill’d them, emptied them.

And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.

Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?

Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,

(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.

Who has done his day’s work? who will soonest be through with his supper?

Who wishes to walk with me?

Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?

stephenkmacksd.com/

Jun 14, 2026

David Rowe’s take

Newspaper Reader

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Jun 14, 2026

Britain | Bagehot

British politicians are racing to the hard right

Amid riots in Belfast, Restore promises to put “murderous third-world savages to death”

https://www.economist.com/britain/2026/06/10/british-politicians-are-racing-to-the-hard-right

When a Sudanese refugee was caught attacking a man in Belfast on June 8th, Restore, a far-right party, pledged: “A Restore Britain government will put murderous third-world savages to death.” Tragedy brought clarity: the British right is moving right. Ideas that were until recently extreme, whether capital punishment or mass deportations, are now mainstream. Small parties, such as Rupert Lowe’s Restore, may attract low single-digit support in polls. Yet they are pulling Reform UK and the Conservatives further to the right with a simple remorseless logic: that there is no limit to how nasty the British public can be.

What was once taboo is now up for debate. After footage of the attack in Belfast emerged, Mr Lowe pledged to have the accused executed “with the British people’s approval”. Thanks to his party’s surprising breakthrough in Makerfield, which soon faces a by-election where Restore is expected to come third, way ahead of the Conservatives, these sweeping threats are now read out on BBC Radio 4 as just another political opinion. Others are more coy. The death penalty will “be back within the next decade as an issue of major national debate”, said Nigel Farage, Reform’s leader, last year, passively. It is something that will bubble up naturally. If so, runs Mr Farage’s logic, so be it.

Calls for execution were soon replaced by calls for mass deportations. “Deport them all,” said one anchor from GB News, a right-wing channel ostensibly regulated by Ofcom. “Nothing else will stop this.” A once-lonely demand by Mr Lowe that “millions must go” has become a key policy for Reform, which sits at the top of the national polls. It is a remarkable lurch right. In late 2024 Mr Farage still cowered from the idea of mass deportations. “I’m not going to get dragged down the route of mass deportations or anything like that,” he said. Skip forward a year and his tune had changed. Standing in front of a mock airport-departures board with the destinations of “Sudan”, “Afghanistan” and “Yemen”, Mr Farage launched an Illegal Migration (Mass Deportation) Bill.

Editor: The first three paragraphs are the product of fear and hysteria about ‘the other’ in its various guises. Since the Fall of the Empire and the seminal Windrush Generation, and other forms of Migration, from various and former British Protetorates, Colonies!

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The final paragraphs:

https://www.economist.com/britain/2026/06/10/british-politicians-are-racing-to-the-hard-right

Fundamentally, the British right has bet that the British public are, for want of a better word, bastards. Mr Lowe expanded on this philosophy in a podcast: “When you’re called a racist, or you’re called a bigot, or you’re called right-wing—which I don’t even think we are, I just think we’re the common-sense party—the three key words are: ‘I don’t care’.” But what if people do? There is a reason the first line of defence is always “I’m not racist, but”, rather than “I am racist, and”. It is an irony of British populism that those politicians who claim to speak for the people are often furthest from them.

Once the fever breaks, support for the death penalty wilts as people are grilled on who should actually be put to death. The idea of “mass deportations” is a bold one in a country where the mistaken deportation of a few dozen British citizens led to the fall of a home secretary and a years-long scandal that still shames the state. Punitive sentences for those who burned down houses in Belfast will be cheered by voters, who will care little for the rioters’ motivation. That politicians are willing to discuss the idea of civil war—never mind race war—reveals a political elite utterly disconnected from the daily frustrations of British voters.

Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough

The right’s base instincts fill the airwaves in part because there are few willing to fight them. Britain is cursed by a prime minister incapable of meeting this particular moment, as high-profile crimes blend with ridiculous fantasy. Never has a prime minister proved less willing to use their pulpit. While his opponents preach anarchy, Sir Keir Starmer is mute, surrendering to the right’s idea that the public are irredeemable. Fatalism has infected Labour when it comes to dealing with Reform, which, though first in the polls, is only roughly as popular as Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives, who enjoyed their worst-ever result in the 2024 general election.

It is after a heinous crime that the right’s low expectations of hard bigotry become clear. The British right is offering a world in which criminals are put to death; where “millions must go”; where pogroms are the inevitable result of a country in which white people are now second-class citizens. It is increasingly clear what the likes of Mr Farage and Mr Lowe are selling. The hope is that British voters will not buy it. ■

Editor: The final paragraphs of this iteration of a ‘Usable Bagehot’, in the political present, seeks to employ a mirage, in place of what the ‘Historical Bagehot’ was in actuality?

Walter Bagehot

British economist and journalist

https://www.britannica.com/money/Walter-Bagehot

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https://www.economist.com/britain/2026/06/10/british-politicians-are-racing-to-the-hard-right

stephenkmacksd.com/

Jun 13, 2026

Tucker Responds to Mark Levin’s Turn on Trump

stephenkmacksd.com/

Jun 13, 2026

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/iRV-XdwRkO4?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

Stephen K. Mack.

stephenkmacksd.com/

Jun 13, 2026

American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a private nonprofit American institution of research founded in 1943 by American industrialist Lewis H. Brown. One of the oldest and most-influential think tanks in the United States, it supports limited government, private enterprise, and democratic capitalism. Its headquarters are in Washington, D.C.

AEI originally consisted of 12 resident thinkers who set up the institute to serve as an advocate for big business and the promotion of free enterprise. It became a major research organization and think tank in the 1970s, under the leadership of William Baroody, Sr., who served as president of the institute until 1978. During his presidency the AEI expanded to 145 resident scholars, 80 adjunct scholars, and a large support staff.

From its founding the AEI played a prominent role in politics in the United States, and people affiliated with the organization have served in influential government positions. Its influence grew stronger during the administration of Pres. George W. Bush, in which Dick Cheney, an AEI member, served as vice president of the United States. Also, because most of the AEI’s board of directors are typically CEOs of major U.S. companies, the organization can also exercise considerable influence through its connections in the business world.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/American-Enterprise-Institute

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Editor: Does Mr. Brands 4012 word essay move any reader to pay close attention to this political monstorsity, as it evolves in the telling? Reader the only course open to the reader is Selective Quotation from this exercise in __________? Or should that Reader think of The Age Of Feacture? as a possible or even an attemp at considerations beyond his ken?

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‘The Age of Fracture’ in its European context. Philosophical Apprentice comments Posted on October 20, 2017 by stephenkmacksd

Posted on November 30, 2025 by stephenkmacksd

Editor: My comment from October 20, 2017.

stephenkmacksd.com/

Nov 20, 2025

Polemic is a discourse of conflict, whose effect depends on a delicate balance between the requirements of truth and the enticements of anger, the duty to argue and the zest to inflame. Its rhetoric allows, even enforces, a certain figurative licence. Like epitaphs in Johnson’s adage, it is not under oath.

Perry Anderson

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v15/n20/perry-anderson/diary

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Headline: After Catalans, Italian regions step up autonomy call

Sub-headline:Northern League uses Lombardy and Veneto referendums to push for special status

Its not just the European Project that is under threat from the dreaded Populist Monster , but the Nation State, the very foundation of Monnet’s Coal and Steel cartel, that suffers from the pretensions of Democracy, as it has evolved. First the long historical evolution of Catalan, and now the lukewarm votes in Lombardy and Veneto for ‘more autonomy’, approved by the Italian Constitutional Court.

This ambiguous position is reflected in Sunday’s referendums, which are consultative and non-binding. They are carefully phrased to ask voters if they want more “autonomy” without threatening “national unity”. Unlike the Catalan vote they have been approved by the Italian constitutional court.

As informative as this news story by Rachel Sanderson is, as to the political actors in the Italian politics of the present, should the reader look to Daniel T. Rogers’ book ‘Age of Fracture‘, written in an American political/historical/economic context, for a telling simile/metaphor for the evolving European crisis? That describes both the EU and the Nation State, caught in the rip tide of history, exacerbated by the utterly failed Neo-Liberal Dispensation?

A link to Prof. Rogers book:

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674064362

Philosophical Apprentice

https://www.ft.com/content/c2712ffa-acd9-11e7-beba-5521c713abf4

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By Hal Brands

Foreign Policy is a global affairs magazine offering diverse perspectives on issues shaping nations and the world.

The war in the Persian Gulf has created global shock waves—by roiling the world economy, unsettling U.S. alliances, creating epic disruptions to freedom of navigation, and bringing the nuclear nonproliferation order to a tipping point. But one of the most important and potentially destabilizing implications of this conflict has been to throw U.S. strategic insolvency into harsh relief.

The war has featured impressive tactical feats by the United States and Israel, such as the killing of dozens of high-ranking Iranian officials in the opening hours of the fight. The capabilities on display over Tehran—and U.S. President Donald Trump’s penchant for military risk-taking—have surely been sobering for Washington’s adversaries in Moscow and Beijing. Yet the war has had more ambiguous, sometimes damaging, strategic outcomes. It has also caused an alarming depletion of key U.S. weapons stockpiles while ripping capabilities away from other dangerous theaters. In short, the conflict has badly strained a military that has been trying to do too much with too little for far too long.

There’s a saying in the Defense Department that every U.S. war plan is an existential threat to all the other war plans. A draining conflict in the Middle East may make it harder for Washington to deter a far more devastating fight in the Western Pacific—and usher in a dangerous period in which an overtaxed U.S. military struggles to respond to surging global risks.

Danger doesn’t have to bring disaster: It’s possible that the United States will navigate the coming years without a catastrophic failure of deterrence. Crises can have silver linings: If this crisis catalyzes greater, sustained urgency in closing the gap between the Pentagon’s sprawling commitments and its all-too-finite capabilities, it may have a salutary strategic effect. But the period immediately ahead looks menacing. The world is getting more violent and more disordered—just as Trump’s war has made Washington’s chronic overstretch more acute.

Trump didn’t create the problem of U.S. military and strategic overstretch. It has been building across multiple presidencies.

Over the past two decades, the global threat environment has gotten uglier and more crowded. A country that once towered over adversaries now faces challenges from revisionist great powers, angry rogue states, and tenacious nonstate foes. Looming above all other dangers is a new cold war—with the risk of a catastrophic hot war—against a relentlessly arming China. Yet the United States has sought to handle what increasingly looks like a perilous prewar situation with a post-Cold War approach to military spending. U.S. defense budgets, typically between 3 and 4 percent of GDP, have remained low by historical standards. Fatigue from long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11 made the politics of defense more difficult. The predictable result has been a growing mismatch between Washington’s global commitments and its military resources—a mismatch that one nonpartisan expert commission after another has identified and that one administration after another has tried and failed to fix.

The seemingly perpetual pattern is one in which each new administration promises to better apportion scarce resources through stricter prioritization—only to end up intervening in precisely those places it aimed to avoid. Barack Obama promised a pivot to the Pacific but ended up mired back in the Middle East. The first Trump administration touted the return of great-power rivalry but was then consumed by crises with North Korea and Iran. Joe Biden sought to stabilize relations with Moscow and Tehran so that the Pentagon could finally gear up for China. But then Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and the Middle East exploded a year later. The desire for focus and the divestment of lesser problems has consistently collided with the realities of a messy world in which Washington still has global interests. Trump’s second term was supposed to fix this problem but made it much worse.

…

Stephen K. Mack

stephenkmacksd.com/

Jun 12, 2026

Justice Scalia and American Political Romanticism

Posted on January 4, 2011 by stephenkmacksd

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/03/scalia-women-discrimination-constitution_n_803813.html

Let me disagree with the characterization of Marcia Greenberger in regards to the comments of Justice Scalia as ‘shocking’. There is nothing ‘shocking’, prima facie, in the comments of Scalia regarding women, women’s rights etc., they are in fact totally predictable and Ms. Greenberger doesn’t use the opportunity to speak to the intelligence of her audience but panders to level of propaganda; the stilted language of the ‘press release’. Scalia is a political romantic and his ‘philosophy’ flows from the concept of unbridled male power and its care and maintenance. ‘Originalism’ then grows out of that romanticism as simply a reification of his naturally felt and expressed superiority. What counts here is not appealing to an utterly bankrupt press but to historically verifiable actualities. Conservatism is by its very nature about the privileging of male power as beyond the appeals of reason or even the changing nature of our political/ethical world as it evolves into the future: heedless of the political or moral will of a minority of ‘thinkers’ and ‘activists judges’ who resemble King John ordering the tides to cease: this being a definition of the utter futility of the sovereign male in all his guises.