President Biden went to Northern Ireland on the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, which, as a report from the Associated Press noted, “brought peace to this part of the United Kingdom.” In December 1998, two men received the Nobel Peace Prize for that agreement. These were upright men and canny politicians.

Uprightness and canniness: a fine combination in life.

The Nobel laureates were John Hume and David Trimble. In a history of the peace prize, I wrote,

Hume was a Catholic and nationalist — but a reform-minded, democratic, and peaceable nationalist. The description usually applied to him was “moderate nationalist.” He was the leader of the SDLP, the Social Democratic and Labour Party. Urging work for peace instead of the old enmity and strife, he would tell schoolchildren, “We must spill our sweat together, not our blood.” Trimble, a Protestant, was the leader of the UUP, the Ulster Unionist Party. He had no tolerance of extremists and killers, wherever they came from, but he was ready to deal when a deal was to be had. Both Hume and Trimble were despised by extremists: seen as compromised, because compromising.

Extremists will always despise such as Hume and Trimble. It is important that the Humes and Trimbles win out, in the end.

In his Nobel lecture, Trimble said, “What we democratic politicians want in Northern Ireland is not some utopian society but a normal society.” I have long loved that line. What a beautiful dream, a high aspiration: a normal society.

As Kevin D. Williamson likes to remind us, “utopia” means “nowhere.”

• Under the AP report I linked to, there is a correction. I smile at this correction: “This story has been corrected to show Biden and Sunak drank tea, not coffee.” If I could whistle, I would whistle “Rule, Britannia.”

• An article out of San Francisco:

One of the largest supermarkets in Downtown San Francisco — the Whole Foods Market at Eighth and Market streets — intends to shut down at the close of business Monday, just a little more than a year after the store opened . . .

“We are closing our Trinity location only for the time being,” a Whole Foods spokesperson said in a statement. “If we feel we can ensure the safety of our team members in the store, we will evaluate a reopening of our Trinity location.”

A City Hall source told The Standard the company cited deteriorating street conditions around drug use and crime near the grocery store as a reason for its closure.

In September 1990, there was a headline in the New York Post, which became famous: “Dave, Do Something!” (The mayor of New York was David Dinkins.) More fully, the front page read as follows: “Crime-ravaged city cries out for help: DAVE, DO SOMETHING!”

Yes, “do something!”

• Daniel Hannan, because he understands economics, is an advocate of free trade. In this column, he urges the United States to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Joining the TPP “would serve to make Americans richer,” he says. “It is one of the few ways in which the U.S. can reassert its power and become better off for its pains.”

He also quotes Ronald Reagan: “Instead of ‘protectionism,’ we should call it ‘destructionism.’ It destroys jobs, weakens our industries, harms exports, costs billions of dollars to consumers, and damages our overall economy.”

These days, people on the right snort at “zombie Reaganism.” But here’s the reality: The things that Reagan said, about trade and other issues, were true before he said them and remained true after.

On some issues — though not all, of course — you may as well talk about “zombie math.” Do you know what I mean?

• Here is an article out of Tallahassee, which begins,

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday promised a new round of action against Disney in his ongoing dispute with the entertainment giant, including looking at the taxes on Disney’s hotels and imposing tolls on roads that serve its theme parks.

In a recent conversation with me, a colleague used an interesting phrase: “muscle memory.” We were talking about Ukraine. He said that the “muscle memory” of conservatives — even if they have adapted to the nat-pop era — tells them that it is probably right to stand up to expansionist aggression from the Kremlin. But “muscle memory” applies to other areas as well.

I suspect that many conservatives sense, in their bones, that a governmental vendetta against a company is wrong. I am speaking of older conservatives, mainly. The younger ones have known pretty much nothing but nationalism-populism. But I wonder whether some old-timers are uncomfortable with what DeSantis is doing, even if they cheer in public, as the gubernatorial golden boy “owns” the Mouse.

• Hey, talk about “do something!”

Excellent.

• Let’s have a little language. For many years, I have inveighed against the misuse of the word “international.” It used to mean — and ought to mean — “between nations.” But, for the past several decades, people have manipulated it into a substitute for “foreign.” Because “foreign” is bad, goes the thinking (or non-thinking).

On the PGA Tour, foreign players are called “international players.” (What, do they have two passports? Do they come from Trieste, maybe?) On American campuses, foreign students are called “international students” — which is so weird.

I have been a student abroad. I was a foreign student. And loved it.

Anyway, Jon Rahm won the Masters last Sunday. He is from Spain (Swiss ancestor). There are now more Masters champions from Spain than from any other foreign country — any country other than the United States.

Commentators at CBS Sports tried to convey this information. But they could not. One fellow said that Spain now has more champions than has any other “international country.”

“International country”? Czechoslovakia? Yugoslavia? The USSR?

Ay, caramba, as they say in that international country. (Or is that just a Latin American thing? I don’t know.)

I thought of the Winter Olympics in 2002. Vonetta Flowers, that wonderful woman, won a gold medal in the bobsled. She is an American. She was the first black woman to win a gold medal in a Winter Olympics. But personnel at NBC Sports could not convey this information. They were apparently not allowed to say “black.” So they were reduced to saying, “the first African-American woman from any country to win a gold medal.”

Ay, caramba, again.

Political correctness is, among other things, a curse on language.

By the way, a little Googling tells me that Ms. Flowers was actually the first black person, male or female, to win a Winter gold. Her name is etched in history.

• Here is Jorge Luis Borges, the great Argentinian writer (1899–1986), on the glories of the English language. He is in conversation with William F. Buckley Jr. I doubt that any two men have ever appreciated language more.

• A little music? Here is a review of Champion, at the Metropolitan Opera. Champion is an opera (2013) by Terence Blanchard (libretto by Michael Cristofer). It concerns a real-life boxer, Emile Griffith, who lived from 1938 to 2013.

• On Easter morning, Central Park was nicely decked out:

Here is Victor Herbert, amid the blooms. He was the principal cello in the Metropolitan Opera orchestra. He composed many operettas, including Babes in Toyland and Naughty Marietta. They used to be famous works. They now gather dust. But Herbert himself is looking pretty good on that pedestal, I think.

Thanks for joining me today, everyone. Talk to you soon.

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