Dear Intelligent American,
As the lyric goes, Mr. Paul McCartney ponders if door-locking will come as punishment if the protagonist was “out till quarter to three.” At 64? Was I late coming home for my nap? We are talking about the afternoon, right?
Your Humble Correspondent has hit that mark, which, let us admit, is just another number, and a few days prior, having need of a haircut, saw another evident sign of aging: The chopping done, the barber circles behind with the mirror, like a maestro having finished the portrait, asking proudly, “OK?”—but all the clipped man in the chair sees reflecting back is the expansion of flesh on the top of the noggin.
Hair today, gone tomorrow. Going, anyway.
There were once glory days. A decade and more ago, the barber (Tanka, who played the scissors like castanets) would comment on the depth, fullness, plentitude of the locks, all such complimenting leading to pleasant hirsutean thoughts about Samson and Fabio and Chia Pets. But then one day, as Yours Truly headed home from National Review, rushing along Lexington Avenue to Grand Central Station because the skies were about to open up . . . a drop fell. It fell unfiltered by strands, a direct hit, on flesh. Meaning only one thing: And So the Balding Begins.
It continues apace, but seriously, it’s all quite tolerable, if You will still need me, and feed me, when I’m 64.
64 Excerpts, Links, and Recommendations—Give or Take 50—Await
1. At City Journal, Andrew Hartz studies the studies on race bias and mental illness, and finds a persistent (anti-) white wash. From the article:
Our knowledge of the problem is, admittedly, limited. Research into the psychological damage caused by racial aggression toward other groups is extensive. But there’s almost no empirical literature—case studies, treatment modules, theoretical papers, and so forth—that empathically explores aggression against white Americans. I am aware of no trainings about this topic, and I know of no therapists or clinics specializing in it.
Most researchers seem to insist that antiwhite hate matters less than other forms of racial aggression. They argue that the victims of these attacks “have privilege,” so their suffering is less important. Some privilege: an inability to get support and a widespread refusal to acknowledge their experience or address the dynamics that created it.
In my clinical work, I’ve found that targets of antiwhite hate seem to lack a kind of psychological immune system to respond effectively. Because white people were a large majority in the U.S. for so long, they don’t have cultural tools and frameworks to respond to attacks. It can take them a long time to understand what happened, contextualize it, and learn to stand up for themselves assertively and non-hatefully.
2. At Law & Liberty, the great Bradley “Double B” Birzer reflects on the importance of The Killing Fields on the film’s 40th anniversary. From the beginning of the piece:
In 1984—my sophom*ore year of high school—the movie The Killing Fields changed my world. Thanks to a brilliant mom, I had been raised in a very pro-Goldwater and pro-Reagan household, and I already wore my conservative libertarianism rather blatantly and, at times, obnoxiously, on my sleeve. Even at age 16, I was a deeply committed anti-Communist. I devoured anti-totalitarian novels, works, and essays by Ray Bradbury, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Leon Uris, Milton Friedman, Henry Hazlitt, and Robert J. Ringer. Even my music tastes reflected my anti-totalitarianism as the rock band Rush had also just released its brilliant anti-dystopian album, Grace Under Pressure. At the time, I was just encountering William F. Buckley, Jr., and his National Review cohort as well as Reason magazine. On top of it all, my hero Ronald Reagan was at the height of his abilities and popularity as he challenged the inhumanity of the Soviet Union.
As much as I had read by the fall of 1984, however, nothing prepared me for the visual brilliance and brutality of Roland Joffe’s The Killing Fields, a film that surprisingly won three Academy Awards despite its anti-Communist message. It follows the true story of the Cambodian New York Times journalist and photographer, Dith Pran, 1973-1979, and his intensely isolated struggle against the communist overseers, the Khmer Rouge. Indeed, except for its truly wretched ending and a slightly confusing last act, The Killing Fields is pretty much a perfect film. To this day, I always show my Hillsdale College sophom*ores the twenty-minute segment of the Cambodian gulag to remind them that communism, along with Nazism, was the greatest evil of the twentieth century.
3. At National Review, Joseph Bottum sounds another alarm about the hollowing out of America’s mainline churches. From the essay:
Or maybe the 1909 red-brick Congregational Church in Fort Pierre, S.D., with its spireless tower and pews curved to fit its square space. Or the wooden 1876 Methodist church in Pokagon, Mich. (where the popular hymn “The Old Rugged Cross” was first sung), remodeled from a hop barn. Or the 1858 First Presbyterian Church in Macon, Ga., with its dark-brown pews and plain white walls.
Take any of these or thousands of others. This was America, once upon a time: a land of churches one after another down the leafy streets of small towns. Or the run of churches up 16th Street NW, in Washington, D.C., from the White House to the Maryland border. Or the many spires that slip by along the Main Line railroad (the original reference in the phrase “Mainline Protestantism”) that connects Philadelphia to its wealthy northwest suburbs.
In 1965, churches affiliated with these Mainline denominations claimed around 50 percent of the American population. Today (according to the religious statistician Ryan Burge, working his way through reams of 2020 numbers, the most recent complete data available), the old Mainline has fallen to 9 percent. Seven denominations that once formed the core of American Protestantism have numbers that are nearly invisible in national totals: the northern Baptists, the Disciples of Christ, the Congregationalists (later merging with a set of German Reformed churches to create the United Church of Christ), the Episcopalians, the Lutherans, the Methodists, and the Presbyterians.
4. More Religion: At The American Conservative, Doug Bandow finds that, globally, governments are ratcheting up restrictions on religion. From the piece:
Nineteen states had “very high” restrictions on religion. Fifteen were majority Muslim nations. The rest were various forms of autocracies. The list of discreditables: Afghanistan, Algeria, Azerbaijan, China, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Maldives, Myanmar, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
The list of “very high” social hostility was much shorter, just seven nations. Four were majority Muslim: Afghanistan, Egypt, Pakistan, and Syria. Two were mixed, one Muslim-Christian (Nigeria) and the other Jewish-Muslim (Israel). The last was majority Hindu (India). Four others dropped out of the “very high” category from 2020, all Muslim: Iraq, Libya, Mali, and Somalia.
In terms of restrictions, harassment was the broadest problem, occurring in 190 of 198 countries studied. This returned to the 2019 peak. Government harassment increased from 178 to 183 countries. Private harassment stayed the same in 164 nations. In 157 of them harassment was both public and private. In 137 harassment was physical, including attacks on people and damage to property. Also counted were public verbal assaults. There were killings in 45 nations, assaults in 91, detentions in 77, displacements in 38, and property damage in 105.
5. At The European Conservative, Rod Dreher asks an important question: Are civilizations not worth dying for also not worth living for? From the commentary:
The collapse of Christianity as the animating force in Western civilization has brought us to this point. Secular values are simply not enough to motivate a people to live sacrificially to perpetuate their social order—whether it’s making the sacrifices necessary to defend the nation in war, or even the sacrifices necessary to sustain the nation’s population. People need to feel that their lives are part of a transcendent order, suffused by ultimate meaning.
This is why in his best-known novel, Submission (2015), Houellebecq has a demoralized and spiritually exhausted France turn to a Muslim political party to govern la République. For the French, those people, the Islamists, are a kind of solution. The novelist’s point is not that Islamist government is desirable, but that the future inevitably belongs to people who believe in something greater than sex, shopping, and material pleasures.
6. At Tablet Magazine, Shabbos Kestenbaum describes the realities of being a Jew at Harvard University. It ain’t pretty. From the article:
Even as I took my seat at commencement, I was handed a newspaper, The Harvard Crimeson (a pun on the country’s oldest newspaper, The Harvard Crimson) which accused Jews of racism for arguing that calls for an intifada are a direct call for violence. The 10-page paper went on to defend chants of “from water to water Palestine is Arab,” “from the river to the sea,” and “globalize the intifada.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, just the week prior, dozens of students and faculty gathered by the gates of Harvard to gleefully exclaim “intifada, intifada, coming to America.”
This of course followed an almost monthlong illegal encampment of students and professors in the center of Harvard Yard demanding a complete and total divestment from “the Zionist entity.” Although the participants used bolt cutters in an attempt to break open Harvard’s gates, depicted our Jewish President as a devil replete with horns and a tail, violated all time, place, and manner restrictions, called for the violent destruction of the Jewish state, and established a self-appointed security system that monitored and recorded Jews like me on our way to class, they were handsomely rewarded.
7. At The Free Press, Robert Pondiscio explains how our public schools became ideological boot camps. From the piece:
Earlier this year, The Free Press’s Francesca Block broke news that PS 321 in Brooklyn, New York, sent kids home with an “activity book” promoting the tenets of the Black Lives Matter movement, including “queer affirming,” “transgender affirming,” and “restorative justice.” The book was not authorized for classroom use either by the NYC Department of Education or Brooklyn’s Community School District 15. It appears to have begun its journey into students’ backpacks at the massive “Share My Lesson” website run by the American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s second largest teachers union.
The site claims 2.2 million members—more than half of all U.S. public school teachers—and hosts “more than 420,000 resources” that have been “downloaded more than 16 million times.” Lee & Low Books, the publisher of What We Believe, the BLM activity book, is a Share My Lesson “partner” and includes the book in its “anti-racist reading list for grades 3–5.” Other Share My Lesson partners include Amnesty International, the ADL (the Anti-Defamation League), GLSEN, and the Southern Poverty Law Center—all producing free lesson plans and materials for classroom use.
The advocacy group Parents Defending Education has documented over a thousand incidents of schools teaching lessons on race, gender, or other hot-button issues that parents deemed inappropriate or upsetting. They are seldom traceable to formally adopted school curriculum. But there are 75 different lesson plans and resources for conducting “privilege walks” and more than 100 lessons and resources on “preferred pronouns” at Teachers Pay Teachers, another lesson sharing megasite.
8. At National Affairs, John G. Grove reflects on “national conservatism” and its elevation of locality, but finds its theorizers fail to articulate the importance of “place”—and calls for an injection of Scrutonian wisdom. From the essay:
In another sense, national conservatives’ embrace of federal power is very much in keeping with their understanding of the nation. In their account, similarities in cultural characteristics give rise to the nation, but a hierarchical understanding of loyalty and honor ultimately consummates and maintains national cohesion. Once tribes form a nation-state and give the national collective political life, the central state directs that life and maintains—by force, if necessary—the loyalty of the parts. This view is evident in some national conservatives’ embrace of the imperial judiciary and the living constitution, at least insofar as they promote national cohesion and the common good. Whatever the original parameters of the constitutional agreement between the states or the intentions of those who ratified the Constitution, for national conservatives, establishing the national state puts it in command of the collective.
Though he lived in Sperryville, Virginia, for several years, Scruton never devoted much focused attention to the American political tradition; his discussion of home largely takes place in a very English context. Scruton valued how, in England, "locality was deeply entrenched in the whole system of government," with real authority that was not delegated from above, but cultivated organically from below. Such a structure enables individuals to defend local prerogatives against centralizing tendencies.
Indeed, by grounding the nation in the way of life emerging from a particular place, Scruton renders it impossible to disconnect a desire for freedom and self-government from the localities where we live. If the hierarchical lines of authority extending up to the nation-state extend to faraway places that most citizens have never seen, much less lived, and to people whose life is not only different, but foreign, those lines of authority must be severely attenuated for any sense of national attachment to be realistic. If one conceives of the hierarchical authority of the nation-state as emerging from cultural continuities, it is only natural that the authority will be challenged, and the loyalty to the nation questioned, if that underlying continuity no longer exists.
9. At The Spectator, Michael Hann finds country music is growing in popularity—and in another country. From the article:
Whether country sounds like country is the great faultline through the modern genre. In America, traditionalists bemoan the state of country radio stations across the US using identical playlists that promote music that sounds less like country than pop, rock or hip-hop with a bit of pedal steel and fiddle dropped on top. The style known as “Bro Country” (in which men sing about trucks and beer over a modern rock backing) has attracted particular disdain, but has produced some of the genre’s biggest current stars, among them Luke Bryan and Jason Aldean.
What used to be called country—serious-minded songs played on more traditional instruments — is now known as Americana, largely for marketing reasons. And even in the UK, mainstream country and Americana attract very different audiences. Bridgewater mentions going to see the singer Tyler Childers, who has quietly ascended to playing Hammersmith Apollo on his last visit to London. “It was noticeable that the crowd was the ‘bridge-and-tunnel’ element,” he says. “It’s the UK redneck crowd.” Certainly, as I wrote in these pages at the time, when the breakout star Oliver Anthony played in London earlier this year, it was not at all the typical London gig crowd—Shepherd’s Bush Empire was full of people singing “Joe Biden’s a pedo.”
The non-metropolitan element matters. “There’s a rural, working-class value to it,” says Ross Jones, editor of online country magazine Holler. “These artists come from small towns and they’re working on ranches and fishing—and I’m from Devon and I feel like I get that. People like songs about working hard.”
10. At Comment Magazine, Mary Grace Mangano finds that the lonely human heart’s ache for a home calls for intentional building of community. From the piece:
The policy researcher Thomas O’Rourke writes for the Institute for Family Studies that although we are “increasingly focused on loneliness and social isolation, we may have neglected to realize that Americans’ bridging networks are in crisis.” The term “bridging networks” is taken from Robert Putnam’s book Bowling Alone. It refers to connections that link people across things such as race, class, or religion that typically divide. “Bonding social capital” is also important for Putnam, and this involves connections within a community where people have a sense of shared identity and belonging.
What O’Rourke finds in his research is that, increasingly, Americans distrust their neighbours and do not even know them. Our bonding social capital has decreased, creating fewer bridging networks. If we aren’t even connecting with people in our immediate community, we’re not likely to do so with those of a different race, class, or religion. All of this is connected to the rise in loneliness—which has only grown after the pandemic—and it means fewer people feel they have a place where they belong. A home.
There are efforts to change this growing isolation, of course. Putnam himself visited places where people are investing in their communities in unique ways and trying to renew them. He wrote about it in a follow-up to Bowling Alone, called Better Together, in which he offers ideas for people to connect with others in their neighbourhoods.
11. At Commentary, Arthur Herman believes America should be fighting a Cold War with Communist China over artificial intelligence. From the analysis:
Among all the AI technologies, China places the top priority on unmanned combat systems and equipment, along with other advanced military innovations. As the war in Ukraine has demonstrated, unmanned technology has been rapidly changing the face of warfare: Some have even dubbed it the most recent revolution in military affairs, akin to the advent of gunpowder. Unmanned equipment is also one of the first options that military leaders are looking to for future combat equipment.
Since President Xi took office, he has emphasized the importance of unmanned systems for China’s future dominance. In 2020, when he met students at the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force Aviation University, Xi declared, “Drones are profoundly changing war scenarios. It is necessary to strengthen drone-combat research, education and training, and accelerate the training of drone pilots and commanders.”
The revolution brought by unmanned systems expands exponentially with AI and machine-learning applications, especially when military operations and strategy depend more and more on the gathering and interpretation of information, at which AI and unmanned systems excel.
12. At The Spectator, Louise Perry has the grim news: Eugenics is back. From the commentary:
Relatively mild flaws, as they go. But still, these aren’t traits I’m eager to pass on. Our three-year-old already shows a tendency for nightmares that sometimes makes me wince with guilt. Not that it’s my fault, of course. We don’t get to choose which of our genes we pass on. Every conception is a roll of the dice.
But soon that will no longer be true. In fact, it’s already not quite true, at least for those who have the means and determination to load the dice. Emerging technology is about to present parents with a set of ethical questions that make the usual kinds of debates—breast milk or formula? Nanny or daycare?—seem trivial. We have always had the power (more or less) to control our children’s nurture. Before long—perhaps in just a few years—any parent who can afford to will have control over the minutest details of a child’s nature too.
The crucial change set to turn our lives upside-down is called “preimplantation genetic testing for polygenic disorders” (PGT-P), hereafter “polygenic screening.” Testing a fetus or embryo for some conditions is now a routine part of the modern pregnancy experience. Prenatal Down’s Syndrome tests, for instance, are so widespread that in some Scandinavian countries almost 100 percent of women choose to abort a fetus diagnosed with the condition, or—if using IVF—not implant the affected embryo. The result is a visible change to these populations: there are simply no more people with Down’s to be seen on the streets of Iceland and Denmark.
Lucky 13. At Plough Quarterly, Haley Stewart argues that fairy tales should not be sanitized. From the essay:
Hans Christian Andersen’s classic fairy tales have also been adjusted over the years for a more sensitive audience. When I found his version of “The Little Mermaid” at the library as a young girl, I was surprised but fascinated by the stark differences from the Disney film. The prince in Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid” marries someone else. And the mermaid’s bargain with the sea-witch results in a desperate choice: die when the sun rises after his wedding night or murder her beloved in his bridal chamber. While there are moments of suspense and danger in Disney’s The Little Mermaid, it’s hard to imagine bubbly Ariel with her bouncing red bangs and a knife in hand, trying to decide whether to fatally stab lovable himbo Prince Eric. Such a dark scene, although not uncommon in the realm of classic fairy tales, would have been considered too distressing for young viewers. In an effort to make the story more palatable, Disney’s Cinderella does not include the details of Cinderella’s stepsisters chopping off their heels and toes to fit their bloody, mutilated feet into the glass slipper in greedy pursuit of the throne or getting their eyes pecked out by birds in a final stroke of justice, as the Grimms’ version describes. But is this Disneyfication of these tales a good or a bad thing?
Fairy tales are stories that are told to children and set in a world of magic. As twentieth-century educator Annemarie Wächter put it, “Children and fairy tales are inseparable—one cannot be imagined without the other.” Fairy tales are beloved by children partly because they are tales of action. Rather than revolving around the inner thoughts and motivations of nuanced characters, they are concerned with what happens next, what the characters (often archetypes) do. They are more than mere fables with a snappy moral (think Aesop) because their meaning transcends clearcut lessons. Instead, they are full of mystery. There is room inside these tales for the child to explore fairyland: a strange and dangerous world in which she can practice overcoming her fears by journeying alongside the hero. And at the end of the tale, everything is set right. As Wächter puts it, “Fairy tales can often be brutal and cruel—people and animals die—and yet, despite everything, the positive powers always win. There can be no other ending.”
Bonus. At The American Mind, fan favorite Daniel J. Mahoney reviews the European Parliament elections and susses the consequences of big wins for conservative parties. From the analysis:
Macron’s electoral gamble has created an unprecedented political crisis. The Republicans and Reconquest are torn apart, with centrist Republicans vowing never to cooperate with the National Rally, and Zémmour implacably hostile, more on personal than political grounds, to any electoral or political pact with Marine Le Pen’s party. In contrast, all the leftist parties have rallied to a “New Popular Front,” much more radical than many of its constituent parts and tending to confuse 2024 with 1933. Alain Finkielkraut, a French Jew and deeply thoughtful man of letters who has courageously stood up to ideologues of the Left and Right, recently told the French weekly Le Point (as reported by Unclassified) that he may end up voting for the National Rally, because a Left directed increasingly by the ideologues of France Insoumise combines reckless leftism with implacable “hatred of Israel and Zionists.” About that he is no doubt correct. . . .
One has to acknowledge that the National Rally is an imperfect vehicle for French national self-affirmation. Economically the party remains too statist, and socially it concedes too much to the new morality pushed by progressive elites. Unlike Reconquest and elements of the Republicans, it has little feel for the “Christian mark” (the phrase is Pierre Manent’s) of the France and Europe it purports to defend. Still, its populism rightly resists what Manent has also called “the fanaticism of a center” that no longer knows how to defend the old nations of Europe against the administrative despotism and postnational ideology of the European project in its present form. The leadership of a weak and humiliated Europe, open to everything but its own traditions and the sovereign will of its peoples, complains constantly about the dangers of a “desperate nationalism.” But as Manent argues, Europe’s present discontents owe less “to the demagogy of the populisms” and more to “the fanatical globalization of the parties of the center” who openly fear and aggressively resist the democratic will of European peoples and nations. Whatever the European project is in its present form, it is hardly “democratic” or “liberal” in any recognizable sense of those terms. That is a truth one will never learn from mainstream politicians, academics, activists, or intellectuals.
For the Good of the Cause
Uno. A new season of the Center for Civil Society's “Givers, Doers, & Thinkers” podcast is upon us. So listen up, as Jeremy Beer and Jeremy Tedesco have the back of free speech, even if Corporate America doesn't. Catch it here.
Due. Hey you Givers, Doers, and Thinkers: TheCenter For Civil Society, mother ship of this missive, announces formally its consequential conference on K to Campus: How the Education Reform Movement Can Reshape Higher Ed. The shebang takes place at Pepperdine University in Malibu, CA, from October 23rd to 24th, and just about every bit on info you want/need to know can be found here. Except maybe this: The kick-off event will be Yours Truly interviewing the great Victor Davis Hanson. The agenda is super, and yes, besides the what’s-wronging, there will be plenty of inspiration on tap. Be there.
Tre. “We need to do a capital campaign. By the way, what is a capital campaign?” Good question, one among many that will be answered at the Center for Civil Society’s “In the Trenches” Master Class scheduled for Thursday, August 8th, via Zoom, from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. (Eastern). If you’re a nonprofit worker bee, or even trustee, that is noodling the idea of a capital campaign, you’ll regret not attending. So sign up. Do that, and learn more,right here.
Quattro. At Philanthropy Daily, Jack Salmon explains how tax policy impacts charitable giving. Read it here.
