A Dozen-Plus Stimulants, Gathered for Your Edification and Inspiration
Dear Intelligent American,
What will come of birthright citizenship? This nonpolitical space makes no commentary on the recent presidential executive order seeking to define, and protect, the meaning of American citizenship—“a priceless and profound gift.”
Is there no room in the inn for birthright? Maybe not. Let the federal lawsuits begin! But do consider reading the order, because just who gets to be an American—a pluribus who helps compose the unum—will define civil society.
Meanwhile, Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow. Expect more shoveling in your future.
14 Suggestions to Hold You Until Valentine’s Day
1. At Ford Forum, the great George Nash reviews the standing of Winston Churchill, discredited of late by so-called historians, in America. From the assessment:
Soon after World War II ended, American perceptions of Churchill entered a third phase. No longer perceived simply as a heroic wartime leader, he was increasingly perceived as a prophet and a sage. If Churchill’s magnificent “Finest Hour” speech of June 18, 1940 was the single most consequential address of his career, arguably the second most consequential was his address in America on March 18, 1946, in which he solemnly told his audience, which included President Truman, that an “iron curtain” had “descended” across central Europe and that the Soviet Union—our recent wartime ally—was behaving in a dangerously threatening manner. He implored the United States and United Kingdom to work in “fraternal association” and unite with other democracies in opposition to Soviet expansion.
Churchill’s dramatic appeal shocked and outraged many on the American Left, who accused him of poisoning relations with the Soviet Union and risking a new world war. But within a few weeks, thanks in considerable part to Churchill’s timely warning, American public opinion swung overwhelmingly in favor of an invigorated Anglo-American alliance in the face of the Soviet threat. Once again Churchill, with his gripping rhetoric, had helped to galvanize the West.
In the ensuing Cold War against the Communists, Churchill became for many Americans a symbol of farsighted resistance to tyranny. His scathing critique of British appeasement of Hitler at Munich evolved into a history lesson that a generation of American political leaders absorbed.
2. At Modern Age, fan favorite Daniel J. Mahoney considers the virtues that are imperative to making a society good. From the piece:
With vivid, even unforgettable words and imagery, Yeats captures the spiritually destructive cumulative effect of a murderous and suicidal European war, the nihilism that both informed it and resulted from it, the trahison of those trusted to be guardians of European culture and civilization, and the emergence of bloody civil war in Ireland and of the specter of a cruel and unprecedented totalitarianism in Soviet Russia. “Passionate intensity,” one might think, can be a force for decency and civilization when it is tied to civilized restraint, but “lack of conviction” is hardly a virtue in any historical circumstance. How then to reconnect restraint and decency with energy and conviction and thus to the “centre” in Yeats’s rich and capacious sense of the word? How are we to overcome the debilitating separation of passion and civilized restraint, a divide that risks making the “best” among us both feckless and ineffective?
Two old friends of mine, the distinguished analytic political philosopher John Kekes (now approaching age ninety) and the political theorist and renowned scholar of French liberal political thought Aurelian Craiutu, have attempted to bridge this gap in two impressive recent books that ought to command our respect. I do not always agree with their arguments and emphases, or the ways that they define “moderate conservatism” and “moderation,” respectively. But erudition, decency, and, yes, moderation shine forth on every page of their books, and both authors do much to illumine thinkers and themes that point to the recovery of what I would call a tough-minded moderation. Together, these books shed much-needed light on the ongoing task of formulating a vigorous public philosophy for a free and decent society, one that is neither pusillanimous nor fanatical, neither excessively hard nor excessively soft.
3. At The Free Press, Alex Ryvchin explains how Jew-Hate is spiraling out of control. From the article:
For 15 months, Australia’s Jewish community has been continuously reeling from attacks like this. On October 9, 2023, two days after Hamas murdered hundreds of Israelis, around 1,000 pro-Palestine activists gathered on the steps of Australia’s most iconic landmark, the Sydney Opera House—which had been lit up with the colors of the Israeli flag to show solidarity—and yelled “fuck the Jews” and “fuck Israel.” Even the organizer of the protest acknowledged that there were “vile antisemitic attendees.” There were also reportedly shouts of “gas the Jews.”
Since then, Australia has seen a huge uptick in antisemitic attacks. For instance, in February 2024, activists and journalists shared the contact details of hundreds of Jewish academics and creatives on social media—details taken from a WhatsApp group set up by and for Jewish professionals in the wake of October 7—in the interest of exposing “Zionists.” (Some of the Jews who were doxxed did not identify as Zionists.) Trolls subsequently used those contact details to harass and abuse Jews. After his name appeared on the list, 33-year-old musician Joshua Moshe received what his wife, Maggie May, described as “a level of hatred that I could never have expected from my community.”
At the time, the couple ran a gift shop together in Thornbury, a hipster suburb of Melbourne. Maggie May, who was converting to Orthodox Judaism at the time, said that they were bombarded with antisemitic abuse “by telephone, by post, by people coming to the store and screaming at us, by email, on both our private Instagram accounts. It was relentless.” Eventually, they relocated their store to another neighborhood.
4. Torn asunder: At The Spectator, Dave Seminara explores the breadth of America’s separatist movements. From the piece:
Within the last several years, some voters in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan wanted to join Wisconsin; conservatives in Maryland plotted to form a new state called Western Maryland; there was an initiative to split the Golden State into six Californias, and an effort to create a state called Jefferson in northern California went nowhere. Recently the East Dakota Secession Movement has sought to establish a new state in western Minnesota; separatists in New York want to establish a new New Amsterdam; and the Second Vermont Republic plans to restore the independent status of the Vermont Republic (1777- 91). And of course, without involving any secession issues, many Democrats still want to make the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico states.
Do any of these movements have a chance to succeed? And what do they say about the growing divide between urban and rural Americans? Congress won’t allow bits of the country to secede without a fight and the consent clause in Article 4 of the Constitution requires a new state to have the “consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of the Congress.” Separatists point to the example of West Virginia, which was allowed to join the Union during the Civil War without the consent of Virginia.
Ryan Griffiths, a professor of political science at Syracuse University who is the author of a forthcoming book on secessionist movements, says the West Virginia precedent is a “stretch” because at the time it was formed, Virginia had seceded from the Union. He says the likelihood of any fifty-first state emerging from present movements is unlikely, but concedes that the popularity of these groups has increased in recent years. “The engine of these groups is the growing polarization in America,” he says.
5. At National Review, Rich Lowry reports on the extensive ties between Mexico’s government and the country’s powerful drug cartels. From the article:
Joshua Treviño of the Texas Public Policy Foundation has long been drawing attention to this issue, and has edited an exhaustive, unsparing report on the relationship between the narcos and the state.
There are strong suggestions that Andrés Manuel López Obrador, or AMLO, Mexico’s populist president from 2018 to 2024 who was a dove on the cartels, was in the pay of the criminal gangs.
This long ProPublica piece on alleged cartel payments worth $2 million to AMLO’s first, unsuccessful presidential campaign in 2006 reads like the treatment for a Netflix series.
“According to more than a dozen interviews with U.S. and Mexican officials and government documents reviewed by ProPublica,” the report notes, “the money was provided to campaign aides in 2006 in return for a promise that a López Obrador administration would facilitate the traffickers’ criminal operations. . . .
As luck would have it, when AMLO was eventually elected in 2018, he pursued a policy toward the cartels of “hugs not bullets,” which has been about as effective as you’d expect.
6. No Photos Allowed!: At Reality’s Last Stand, Elizabeth Weiss reports on the ideological infestation in anthropology. From the beginning of the piece:
Biological anthropology and archaeology are facing a censorship crisis. Censorship can be defined simply as the suppression of speech, public communication, or information, often because it is deemed harmful or offensive. It can be enforced by government agencies or private institutions. Even self-censorship is increasingly prevalent, such as when an author decides not to publish something due to fear of backlash from their colleagues, or the belief that their findings may cause harm.
In these fields, censorship is primarily driven by professional associations like the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and the California Society for Archaeology, academic journals (often produced by these associations) such as Bioarchaeology International, universities, and museums, including the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. The focus of this censorship largely involves the suppression of images—including X-rays and CT-scans—of human remains and funerary objects, which are artifacts found in graves. . . .
Yet, in recent years, the use of photos of human remains and artifacts has faced increasing censorship. For example, the guidelines of the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) and its journals state: “Out of respect for diverse cultural traditions, photographs of full or explicit human remains are not accepted for publication in any SAA journal.”
7. At The Critic, Reid Smith concludes that NATO has fallen out of favor with American conservatives. From the piece:
What explains this negative shift? One might hypothesise that conservatives differ sharply with the alliance’s current raison d’être: namely, aiding Ukraine against Russia. Republicans are unmoved by Democratic talking points— which emerged most fervently from the Biden White House—that the battle for Ukraine and US support for the NATO alliance exists at the frontier of freedom. This divergence has undoubtedly shaped attitudes about the broader transatlantic alliance and Europe’s share of burdens. They also undoubtedly take cues from President Trump.
Meanwhile, a cultural disconnect has developed whereby secular and progressive institutional elites in Brussels scold American conservatives about deeply held cultural priorities. For instance, strongly worded statements from several NATO governments—including France, Germany and the United Kingdom—after the landmark Dobbs ruling (which overturned the US Supreme Court’s earlier Roe v. Wade ruling) obliquely challenged the ritual insistence upon, and strategic necessity of, a collective ethos.
8. At Commentary, Rabbi Meir Y. Soloveichik raises an eyebrow over a non-hymn sung at the late Jimmy Carter’s funeral at the National Cathedral. From the reflection:
This is eloquent, concise, and largely correct; singing “Imagine” at a Christian funeral, in an edifice that is known as a “National Cathedral,” is akin to a cantor singing an anti-Semitic song on Yom Kippur. But, alas, contra Bishop Barron, an insult to the memory of Jimmy Carter it was not. For when, in 2007, the former president was asked to name his favorite song by the Beatles, he responded by citing not a selection from the diverse catalogue of that impactful band, but rather with one sung after it disbanded. “My favorite is ‘Imagine,’” he replied. “When I go to a strange country, Cuba and other places, in some of those nations, ‘Imagine’ has become a national anthem. If you go to Havana, for instance, you’ll see a statue of John Lennon.”
It is a creepy quote, linking the love of a song to hearing it sung not in America, but rather in a regime that was its foe. But the quote is also apt, for it reminds us of who would actually share in the song’s utopian vision of an age in which all religious and national difference disappeared. “Throughout history,” Rabbi Jonathan Sacks once wrote, “utopian thinkers have dreamed of a perfect world in which all individual striving is abolished, its place taken by harmony. That dream has led to some of the worst bloodshed in history.” The playing of “Imagine” at the funeral of the 39th president reminds us that the most enduring image of Carter’s years after the White House will not be his advocacy for Habitats for Humanity, but rather his embrace of, and praise for, tyrants as if they were legitimate leaders. When, in 2008, Carter was asked what he thought of the fact that political leaders in Israel refused to meet with him after he accused Israel of apartheid, he responded with a striking statement: “In a democracy, I realize you don’t need to talk to the top leader to know how the country feels. When I go to a dictatorship, I only have to talk to one person and that’s the dictator, because he speaks for all the people.”
9. At Plough Magazine. Clare Coffey finds that Groundhog Day is not—like other holidays are accused of being—a locus of creeping paganism. From the article:
There are people who see in every popular celebration creeping paganism. Christmas is the major target, and while I can respect the fact that it takes real guts to protest such a universally beloved mass phenomenon, I think they’re wrong. With Groundhog Day, though, they might seem to have a case: After all, here’s a ritual where an animal predicts, if not causes, the weather. He both governs and personifies the ancient, endless turn from winter to spring. He is immortal—according to the Groundhog Club, the same Punxsutawney Phil has been predicting the advent of spring for almost two hundred years. And, in perhaps the most telling sign that we are dealing with a neopagan phenomenon, despite alleged links to medieval practices, the whole thing in its current form was started by men in the late 1880s who wanted an excuse to wear silly outfits.
But if the usual complaints about paganism hinge on the supposed pagan roots of Christian festal traditions, Groundhog Day goes in the other direction. Groundhog Day occurs on February Second every year because the animal weather lore involved was originally a Candlemas tradition.
Candlemas has lost the significance it once had; for most people Groundhog Day is all that’s left. Candlemas commemorates the presentation of Jesus at the Temple described in Luke 2. In the Liturgy of the Hours, the prophet Simeon’s words upon encountering Christ are repeated every night: “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word; for mine eyes have seen thy salvation which thou hast prepared in the presence of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to thy people Israel.”
10. At Civitas Outlook, Geoffrey Sigalet scores the decline and fall of Justin Trudeau. From the analysis:
It is easy to find points of almost comical identity politics and political correctness that stand alongside an incredible history of hypocritical scandals. Much more talented Canadian writers than myself have skewered this dubious legacy of play acting and bragging about socks. This scandalous mixture of woke piety and incompetence has been the subject of most of the American autopsies on the right and the left. But Trudeau’s identity politics antics can distract us from understanding what happened in Canada between 2015 and 2025. Two lessons may be of special interest to American readers.
The first lesson is that Trudeau’s rise to power in the 2015 election was not primarily driven by ordinary Canadians embracing identity politics. This does not mean that Trudeau has refrained from such politics, just that there isn’t much evidence that it was key to his electoral success, as some American progressives still appear to think. The 2015 election was about an electorate that felt comfortable spurning Stephen Harper’s Conservative fiscal discipline (perhaps Canadians felt flush after 10 years of such restraint and the fading memory of the painful austerity necessary to tackle debt in the 1990’s) and culture-war tactics. Many voters were drawn to Trudeau’s promise to reinvigorate the historically dominant but then endangered Liberal party of Canada.
11. At The Cardinal Newman Society, Major General Patrick H. Brady, recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor, prioritizes emphasizing patriotism in education. From the piece:
Over the years, in our visits to hundreds of schools and thousands of students, we noticed some significant shortfalls in these values. All too often, we found that less than a majority of our youth are extremely proud to be Americans. A significant percentage would not sacrifice or defend America. And one in seven young people think we started World War II by bombing Japan. Only one in six Americans can pass a basic test on American history. Not only are many not well-informed, but much of what they are learning is negative. How can you be proud of your country, if you are misinformed about it?
But the most serious shortfall is patriotism. Our country cannot survive if our people are not patriots. By definition, a patriot is not someone who says they love our country; a patriot is someone who proves they love our country by supporting and defending our country. Support and defend are the keywords.
All the sheep and chickens in the world hope that everyone will be vegetarians. That will never happen; there are too many wolves out there. The time will come when support and defense are necessary for survival.
Patriotism is not born in us; we don’t naturally sacrifice ourselves. It must be taught, better yet inspired. The task of every parent, every teacher, all of us, is to make patriots of our children. How? Convince them that we are an exceptional country worthy of the love necessary for the sacrifices that will be essential to our future. But the love comes first, and we may have a shortfall there. You will die for someone or something you love, not so much for something you do not love.
12. Land of the Rising Age: At The American Conservative, Peter Van Buren checks out geriatric Japan. From the dispatch:
At the residence of a Japanese friend in a Tokyo suburb, there’s a daily announcement at 5 p.m. asking everyone in the massive Eastern European–style block apartment complex to look for the handful of Alzheimer’s-afflicted residents who have wandered off during the day. This is treated as if it has always been the case. People look out their windows, and moms at the playground are especially alert, as many of the old people like to gather there to watch the children. It would make you cry if you let it, but no one in Japan lets it.
With a rapidly growing elderly population, Japan has seen an increasing demand for caregiving services. The burden is often placed on family members, particularly women, taking them out of the workforce. The government has been trying to address this with various reforms, including allowing more foreign caregivers to work in Japan, but talk is talk. These improvements feature more on Sunday morning political talk shows than on the street (or on the playground) where they are needed.
Lucky 13. From the Tallahassee Democrat comes the welcome news of how a lawn ornament raised big bucks to help those battling breast cancer. From the beginning of the report:
First Commerce Credit Union and the Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare Foundation joined together with the community to raise an impressive $116,472—and counting—in the fifth year of the #FlamingoChallenge in 2024, which directly benefits local patients battling breast cancer.
The #FlamingoChallenge, held during Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October, reached two major milestones—a record-breaking six-figure total, marking the fundraiser’s highest amount to date, and surpassing $500,000 raised for through the Challenge since its inception five years ago. The totals were announced in January. . . .
The #FlamingoChallenge, launched in 2020 by First Commerce Credit Union and the TMH Foundation, is a fun communitywide fundraiser where businesses, organizations and individuals can show their support for breast cancer patients by claiming a flock of pink yard flamingos to place in front of their home or business, making a pledge to donate or fundraise and posting pictures with their flamingos on social media.
Bonus. At The Hedgehog Review, Alexander Stern keys in on the inherent difficulty of giving advice. From the article:
The German philosopher and critic Walter Benjamin’s essay “The Storyteller,” nominally about the Russian short-story writer Nikolai Leskov, offers a historical reason for this decline: “the communicability of experience is decreasing.” Benjamin tries to get at this shift by way of the decline of storytelling. Storytellers like Leskov, Franz Kafka, and Edgar Allan Poe write in a way that approximates the oral tradition. Their stories are still “woven into the fabric of real life,” and they contain, “openly or covertly, something useful,” whether it is moral, practical, or proverbial. Benjamin gives an example of a story from Herodotus about the Egyptian king Psammenitus, who is defeated and captured by the Persians and forced to watch as his son and daughter are marched toward death or enslavement as part of the Persian victory procession. Psammenitus is unmoved, “his eyes fixed on the ground,” until he recognizes among the prisoners one of his servants—“an old, impoverished man.” Only then does “he beat his fists against his head and [give] all the signs of deepest mourning.”
Benjamin contrasts this kind of storytelling, which is open-ended, puzzling, and thought-provoking, with the novel, which he calls “the earliest indication of a process whose end is the decline of storytelling.” The novel depends on the technology of the book, which allows narrative to detach itself from the oral tradition. It eventually becomes the refuge of an individual sealed off from society and tradition. The main character of the novel is “the individual who can no longer speak of his concerns in exemplary fashion, who himself lacks counsel and can give none.” Benjamin cites the first great novel, Don Quixote, which exhibits an explicit lack of counsel: “the spiritual greatness, the boldness, the helpfulness of one of the noblest men . . . contain not one scintilla of wisdom.”
For the Good of the Cause
Uno. The Center for Civil Society will be hosting an “In the Trenches” Master Class on Major Gifts on March 20th, via Zoom, from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. (Eastern). You really cannot have a string nonprofit fundraising program without knowing your onions when it comes to high-level donors. So do attend. Register, and get complete information, right here.
Due. At Philanthropy Daily, Phil Smaldone explains that the layout of modern cities stifles generosity. Here’s a snippet:
Aristotle’s view of the city seems almost the direct opposite of the contemporary view of American cities. Many Americans (myself included!) dream of buying land for a ranch away from the city, or at least a house in a nicely spaced-out suburban neighborhood. While rural land can cultivate many virtues, it fosters them in a much different way than the busy city Aristotle is depicting, filled with people with different backgrounds, wants, needs.
What causes this divide between us and Aristotle? Why does he view them as essential while so many of us see them as something to flee? Our different views of cities stem from the fact that our cities are wildly different from his, i.e., the ones that facilitate virtue. The layout and architecture are more of a barrier to generosity than an aid.
Department of Bad Jokes
Q: What do you call a beehive with no exit?
A: Unbeelieveable.
A Dios
Next week marks the 216th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. Happy birthday, Abie Baby.
May We Have Malice Towards None,
Jack Fowler, who is splitting logs, or maybe they’re hairs, at jfowler@amphil.com.
