A brief list of what was underrated in 2025:
- David Zweig’s An Abundance of Caution. There were many courageous journalists during the Covid era, and many of them were slimed. But I can’t think of a journalist who made more important contributions to actually breaking the spell over liberal group-think, and ending the strictures in blue states than David Zweig, who wrestled with the data and tried to get the best of it printed in influential outlets like The Atlantic. Zweig’s book is an essential accounting of that era and its costs.
- Pre-Internet Pop Culture. So much of it was junk. But in an age of streaming media, I’m shocked by how much content we still consume that was made before 2012. My children experience culture. They shout “6-7!” and know what a “rizzler” is. But the set of studios, record companies, and media brands that created a national popular culture in which nearly everyone could participate are all dashed on the rocks.
- Leisure. The philosopher Josef Pieper said that leisure was the basis of culture. “Leisure, it must be remembered, is not a Sunday afternoon idyll, but the preserve of freedom, of education and culture, and of that undiminished humanity which views the world as a whole.
- Rest. Relatedly, the cult of productivity is partly an offense against a divine mandate to rest. We are actually supposed to enjoy things, the fruits of our labor. And slow down, give ourselves time to figure out a “why” for the rest of our ceaseless activity. Scrolling is not resting. Researching is not resting. Being in the presence of loved ones can be.
- Civil engineering. At the risk of being called a statist. I just don’t think we appreciate how important good civil engineering is. The reason you can breathe around the River Thames or the Lower Hudson without catching a deadly disease is sound civil engineering. The reason Chernobyl isn’t slowly poisoning Eastern Europe is good civil engineering.
- William F. Buckley Jr. Obviously, he’s the hometown hero in National Review. But his legacy is widely misunderstood by admirers and haters alike. The man was primarily a movement builder. The vast majority of the kind of “police work” he did behind the scenes was to keep factions together, not to tear factions out of the movement.
- France. Reports of its death or disappearance to the contrary, France is still there, and very French. And very lovely. I have no doubt France has some great gift left yet to give Western civilization in a period of renewal.