Dear Intelligent American,
Who’d a thunk that pugilism would get caught up in chromosomal battles? But, as has been lamented in previous editions of this weekly missive, should we really be surprised?
Somewhere in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, there is a brief account of wishful-thinking chess masters who fancied they were safe in their game’s enclave, because what could ideology have to do with Black Knight takes White Bishop?
To Marx, Lenin, and their spawn, everything. Yep, ideology has to do with everything. And everybody. There is no off-the-grid, let-me-be, or own-business-minding, no sabbaticals or monasteries of the mind or time off, because Big Brother and Sister are always watching, listening, and demanding approved responses to interrogations. Ideology demands access to every nook and cranny, every institution and neighborhood, every thought and tweet and movement. No sieg heiling was as much an act as was refusing the salute; allowing a lawn sans a BLACK LIVES MATTER or IN THIS HOUSE WE BELIEVE sign was evidence of your bigotry (by the “Silence Is Violence” standard), and while millions wept when the sadist Kim Jong Il kicked the bucket, woe to the dry eye (that resulted in a labor camp ticket).
(More Gulag: The man who was the first to stop clapping at Stalin’s 1937 speech to the Communist Party was awarded 10 years in the Soviet hellhole.)
And so, courtesy of the Olympic Games, virtue-signaling about XX and XY chromosomes and archaic categories such as “Men” and “Women” has come to the ring, serving as the latest reminder that the enemies of our civilization do not play by the Marquess of Queensberry rules.
The bell being about to ring, know that Civil Thoughts will come out swinging.
In This Corner, Weighing 14 Excerpts . . .
1. At National Catholic Register, Richard Todd explains how “Christian” investing must challenge ESG and be guided by faith and its teachings. From the article:
Our role in evaluating investment products is to determine if a manager’s track record is quality and whether it is repeatable. For any good investment consultant, this requires an intensive analysis that is both qualitative and quantitative. The next step is to determine whether the manager has a solid process in constructing a Catholic values-based portfolio.
Catholics may be drawn to social or ESG products, but in most cases, the objectionable areas such as abortion, pornography, child labor, embryonic stem-cell research, contraception, and others are not screened from the portfolios. Surprisingly, many Christian products are hit and miss on what they screen. Based on our research of Christian and Catholic mutual funds, the screening of key areas is mixed at best.
Anecdotally, we were vetting a product with Catholic in its name. We discovered that a top holding in the portfolio was a Chinese hospital, an almost certain violation of any Catholic value portfolio. Their explanation was that the portfolio was “primarily” Catholic. We did not find this answer acceptable. Thankfully, this manager has adjusted its thinking and now adheres more strictly to its Catholic methodology.
In conclusion, Catholics and Catholic institutions need to do a better job as asset managers, fiduciaries, and stewards of God’s resources. The “cancel culture” has been a wake-up call for most Christians, but the details behind the ESG movement and conflict with the Church has not been as apparent. With better Christian investment products, managers and vendors along with understanding the influence that we can have in the marketplace, it is time to evaluate investment programs. We are also confident that these improvements can be made with no investment return “give-up” in a renewed Christian solidarity.
2. At City Journal, Heather Mac Donald reports on the girling of the Boy Scouts. From the essay:
Does it matter, then, that the Boy Scouts of America has now extirpated the last use of “boy” found in its entire portfolio—the “boy” in “Boy Scouts of America,” the name of the parent organization? It does. That the Boy Scouts cannot tolerate even an atavistic use of “boy” reveals how powerful the impulse is to efface males from our culture. The transformation of the Boy Scouts of America into Scouting America is an object lesson in the incapacity of traditional institutions to withstand progressive takeover.
The need for an entity that valorizes males, or that merely acknowledges their existence, is greater today than when the Boy Scouts was founded in the early twentieth century. The British war veteran Robert Baden-Powell despaired at the lost boys he saw in London’s slums, seemingly deficient in the Victorian virtues of honesty, hardiness, and self-reliance. Baden-Powell envisioned an organization that would combine boys’ craving for heroism with a code of chivalry, wrapped in the lure of the outdoors. He and his North American counterparts understood masculinity as self-sacrificing and ennobling. Chief Scout Citizen Theodore Roosevelt reminded the American Boy Scouts in 1915 that “manliness in its most rigorous form can be and ought to be accompanied by unselfish consideration for the rights and interests of others.” Baden-Powell wrote that the Scout must ask himself, when forced to choose between two courses of action: “ ‘Which is my duty?’ that is, ‘Which is best for other people?’ ”
3. At The Blade of Perseus, Victor Davis Hanson argues that Americans have been treated like lab rats. From the essay:
Indeed, for those reliant on muscular jobs and the production of the material essentials of life—agriculture, fuels, construction, assembly, timber, mining, and services—their livelihoods were often xeroxed abroad. Millions of their jobs were offshored or outsourced to third- and second-world countries with cheaper labor, abundant natural resources, and less overhead that made investment “wiser” and more profitable.
Anointed Americans in the “soft” or informational economy achieved levels of wealth never seen before in history. Meanwhile, Americans in the “hard” or concrete sectors saw stagnation in wages, job losses, and the erosion of middle-class life itself.
That the universities, the media, the administrative state, entertainment, high tech, and the federal government were mostly on the coasts became a geographical force multiplier of the growing economic and cultural divide—perhaps in the manner that the Civil War became not just an ideological conflict but one of definable geography as well.
4. At Capital Research Center, Thomas Pack and Robert Stilson examine how the Ford Foundation changed entertainment. From the piece:
Not every Ford Foundation film grant further is a left-progressive ideological agenda. In fact, and in full disclosure, one of the authors of this article works for a family film business that has received Ford funding for a decidedly un-woke and not-at-all progressive film. Ford would say that all the money they spend advances their mission, but their mission isn’t exclusively ideological. That said, the vast majority of Ford’s total film spending appears to go directly toward advancing an identifiably left-wing worldview.
One key aspect of the Ford Foundation’s film funding strategy appears to be longevity. Ford is massive, and its endowment ensures that it can exist indefinitely. Indeed, its lofty goals for the future of society necessitate a long-term vision. Ford adheres to many of the same axioms common to forward-thinking Hollywood investors: try lots of different things, fund many projects, don’t be afraid to fund flops, and don’t be discouraged if success isn’t immediate. Ford has funded many successful, high-impact films, but for each of those there are scores of projects that founder in obscurity. Such patience is key to a film funding strategy, something that Ford seems to keenly appreciate. By contrast, donors who are unaccustomed to long-term film funding and instead fund the occasional film project on an ad hoc basis are often disappointed when they don’t see an immediate impact.
Also crucial is that Ford’s vision is much more expansive than film production alone. There appear to be at least three important prongs to its film funding strategy: direct support for films, an appreciation for the importance of film festivals, and fostering a broader filmmaking infrastructure—such as through education, outreach, and networking. These pillars all serve to augment the successes and ultimate impact of Ford’s favored filmmakers, who benefit from an entire ecosystem that is designed to cultivate effective left-progressive storytelling.
5. At The Liberal Patriot, eduguru Bruno Manno offers an education and training agenda for working-class families. From the article:
An agenda with these two themes—shifting education power from vested interests to parents and shifting from a focus on college to other career pathways and training programs—can be called opportunity pluralism (a topic I’ve discussed in this publication). Opportunity pluralism affirms that there are many different ways to prepare individuals for social roles, jobs, and economic opportunities—not just the traditional K-12 school to college to job path.
It is based on a simple equation: Knowledge + Networks = Opportunity. As the adage goes: it’s not only what you know but who you know.
The building blocks of opportunity include useful individual knowledge and strong personal relationships. For example, Harvard economist David Deming has studied the economics of skill development—including the relationship between knowledge and social networks—and finds that the importance of cognitive skills has declined as a predictor of wage success while the importance of building relationships, networking, and social skills has increased. These social skills include communication, cooperation, collaboration, social intelligence, and conflict resolution. Deming concludes that after age 35, wage growth is actually greater in jobs that require these important social skills.
6. At National Review, Dan McLaughlin embarks on a history of vice-president-choosing, reflecting on the good, bad, and ugly. From the piece:
John Tyler (William Henry Harrison, Whig, 1840): Few political parties have suffered more from a single poor choice of running mate than the Whigs have from Tyler. Harrison was not just a military man; he was deeply invested in his party’s ambitious agenda for policy and for taming the executive branch. He entered office with big Whig majorities in both houses of Congress, a trifecta the party would never have again. Harrison’s infamously lengthy inaugural address, at which he caught the chill that may have led to his death, laid out this agenda. No president had ever died in office before, and the selection of Tyler—a former Jacksonian turned Jackson critic who was only a Whig in the most nominal sense—was simply for ticket balance. When Harrison died on April 4, 1841, a month into his term, his reported last words, intended for Tyler, were, “Sir, I wish you to understand the true principles of the government. I wish them carried out. I ask nothing more.”
They weren’t. Tyler vetoed much of the Whig agenda, and the party formally and publicly expelled him on September 13, 1841. He spent the rest of his tenure as a man without a party, which is why the Senate repeatedly thwarted his Supreme Court nominations during his final year in office. His legacy, opposed by many Whigs, was the annexation of Texas that led not long after to the Mexican War. The Whigs would never recover their one opportunity to put the stamp of their philosophy on American government. Tyler, for his part, ended his days as a member of the Confederate Congress and was buried in 1862 with a Confederate flag draping his coffin.
7. At Commentary, Arthur Herman declares the threat from AI comes not from the Silicon Valley but from Red China. From the article:
China is ramping up AI investment, research, and entrepreneurship on a historic scale. Its generative AI spending is set to reach 33 percent of the world’s AI investment by 2027, up from 4.6 percent in 2022. Those investments will probably reach $13 billion by then, according to a new report from research firm IDC.
Money for AI start-ups is pouring in from Chinese venture capitalists, tech juggernauts, and the Chinese government. Chinese students have become adept at AI, enrolling in advanced-degree programs and streaming lectures from international researchers on their smartphones. Start-up founders are furiously pivoting, reengineering, or simply rebranding their companies to catch the AI wave.
We’ve never faced an opponent like this, with the will and the means to transform the world into what it wants. The Soviets tried it during certain phases of the Cold War, but they never had the scientific, technological, or economic means to carry it out.
China does. Indeed, what is happening to the Uighurs is just the first bitter sip from the cup that Beijing and President Xi have in store for the rest of us.
8. At Public Discourse, Richard Doerflinger warns that the states of Washington and Oregon show the assisted-death slope is indeed very slippery. From the article:
“[T]he evidence suggests that cases of coercion are extremely rare.”
There is no such evidence. Only prescribing medical providernewmans may report on the patient’s competence and voluntariness (when they choose to do so). The provider may request an evaluation of possible impaired judgment by a mental health professional, but almost never does so. The Oregon Health Department has said this provider’s account could be “a cock-and-bull story,” but the state must accept it at face value. In Washington, the provider has submitted no evidence that the patient ever signed a request for the drugs in at least 279 cases—and over half of these cases, as well, occurred in the last four years. Such cases violate the Act and are subject to prosecution for promoting a suicide attempt, a felony—but again, the state lists these cases as valid under the Act.
So there is little concern for competence or voluntariness when the drugs are prescribed. Assisted suicide groups maintain that many patients do not decide to take their lives at that time, but may only want the drugs as a last resort in case their suffering worsens later—and indeed, it seems that many patients never take them. So it is especially important to protect against coercion and undue influence when the decision to administer the lethal dose is actually made. But no such protection exists. The prescriber is the only person authorized to report on this, and is seldom present. The people in charge are the patient’s informal caregivers—and/or the members of an assisted suicide advocacy group. End of Life Washington has said it is directly involved in 95 percent of the cases in that state.
9. At The Catholic Thing, the great Fran Maier explores how best to understand our present moment. From the essay:
Like a lot of young boys growing up, I had an appetite for works of fantasy and science fiction: the storytelling of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, obviously, but also of Ray Bradbury. I devoured Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles, Dandelion Wine, There Shall Come Soft Rains, and Fahrenheit 451.
But the Bradbury book that left the deepest impression on me was his Something Wicked This Way Comes. He borrowed the title from a line spoken by a witch in Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth, and the plot is simple. A lightning-rod salesman shows up one late October day in a small Midwestern town. He warns that a storm is coming, and a traveling carnival promptly arrives in the night. But it’s no ordinary circus; Halloween has come early. The carnival owner is a demonic Mr. Dark with a taste for the grotesque and an appetite for capturing and ruining souls.
Mr. Dark has an uncanny ability to read people’s deepest desires and grant them–for a price. Every selfish wish is satisfied, and every selfish wish is a trap. A woman desperate to be younger is returned to her childhood . . . but left friendless and miserable. Along with its blandishments, the carnival turns everything it touches into division, conflict, and despair.
Look around at American life as we now know it. If we don’t see at least a few grasping and fractious parallels, we haven’t been awake.
10. At Strategika, Ralph Peters explains the deadly opportunity cost of a military love affair with “elegant, expensive weaponry.” From the analysis:
We denied the enduring need for deep reserves of raw destructive power. Exemplified by the artillery corps’ anti-historical infatuation with limited numbers of low-yield precision munitions (and the ever-appealing fantasy of minimally destructive war), we forgot what it takes to win existential strategic conflicts (hint: It’s more than striking a few nodes on an electrical grid or blocking a dictator’s favorite porn site). Now, in the farm-team contest in Ukraine, NATO is running out of artillery shells; our own reserve stocks have revealed themselves as alarmingly shallow; and Vladimir Putin’s will to win through massive destruction is furthered by huge volumes of cheap shells available to his otherwise-shabby forces. The wastelands of eastern Ukraine are but a mild preview of what it could take to prevail on future battlefields, of what a full-up war would look like, once our sleek new toys broke down or proved more vulnerable than their peacetime champions promised.
We also shy from the human reality that fighting to win takes a lot of merciless killing—but our alternate-universe conviction that good manners are the key to victory is too complex and ingrained to address here.
On-the-ground reality throughout history tells us that poor-but-smart enemies learn to undo the initial advantages of self-satisfied, wealthy opponents. What made the funding-starved U.S. Army and Navy of the 1930s the foundation of global victory in World War II was poverty: When generals and admirals can’t spend, they are forced to think.
11. At The Spectator, the talented Bill Kauffman opines on scenes that foul up otherwise great movies. From the column:
From the same era, Sam Peckinpah’s beautifully elegiac western Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973)—the one with “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” and a score by Bob Dylan, who plays an enigmatic knife-thrower named Alias—breaks its mood with a sore-thumb episode in which the compromised lawman Garrett (James Coburn), taking a break from pursuit of his erstwhile friend Billy, frolics with five whores. (Thank God this is The Spectator so the w-word won’t be replaced by the Department of Labor-laundered term “sex workers.”) According to Peckinpah scholar Paul Seydor, the cast and crew begged the director to tone down this stupid romp, but Peckinpah, master of the balletic bloodbath, stuck to his guns.
William Wyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), a deeply affecting account of the readjustment problems of returning World War Two veterans, makes a cheap political point in a diner scene in which a vile boor badgers a handless vet (played by Harold Russell) for his sacrifice. The rude creep—who bears a possibly noncoincidental resemblance to Thomas E. Dewey, GOP standard-bearer in 1944 and 1948—is Hollywood’s idea of an “isolationist”: that is, someone who prefers the US to stay out of foreign wars. Written by playwright and FDR speechwriter Robert E. Sherwood, this depiction fits into a deplorably long national practice of caricaturing Americans who oppose any of our many wars as beady-eyed enemy symps rather than pacific patriots who have a sincere disagreement with government policy.
12. At The Daily Signal, Rachel Greszler is concerned that America remains underemployed. From the piece:
If another part of the decline were a shift from formal paid employment to more non-paid work caring for children and aging parents or volunteering, that would make the steep decline in employment less concerning. But the employment-to-population ratio of prime-age workers—ages 25 to 54—has actually increased slightly since the beginning of 2020, as has that of workers with children.
The particularly troubling decline has been a 2.4 percentage point drop in the employment-to-population ratio of young Americans, ages 20 to 24, from 68.2 in Feb. 2020 to 65.4 today. This loss of 500,000 workers ages 20 to 24 is even more problematic when factoring in a 1.3 million decline in college enrollment since 2019.
Idleness during the prime years of gaining education and experience can have lifelong consequences. Economic studies show that long periods of unemployment have lasting negative impacts on workers’ opportunities and earnings, their physical work capabilities and stress levels, and even their fertility. Long periods of unemployment and idleness also increase the likelihood of spending a lifetime on Disability Insurance instead of working.
Lucky 13. At the Warren, PA, Times Observer, Spencer, Erin, Luke, Grace, and Graham Kondak tag team to note the baton-passing of a beloved community business, and offer some love to the folks. From the article:
Our parents, Kurt and Beth Kondak, purchased Kondaks Community Market in October of 1988, just about one month after they were married. Just in their mid-20s, they risked a lot to invest their lives into this small grocery store and catering business located on the main street of Clarendon.
Prior to purchasing the store, Kurt worked for the previous owners—two Italian brothers, Joe and Sam Montore—from high school onward. The building itself was built back in 1920, originally as a bank. You can still see the large bank vaults that have been converted into walk-in coolers. The grocery store dates back over 70 years, owned by Dale Meddock and then by the Montores. After running the store for 35 years, Joe Montore unexpectedly passed away; Kurt and Beth purchased it soon after, continuing the legacy.
Both of our parents have always been heavily involved in the day-to-day workings of the business, and from a young age, the five of us siblings saw all that our parents poured into it. We all had automatic jobs at the market when we were old enough, and became familiar with the inner workings of the business and its regular customers. We also saw how our parents demonstrated dedication to our community and faithfully served it day after day, year after year. Even when they were tired or felt burnt out, they consistently provided beautiful and delicious meals for those who needed them. They were always quick to offer a helping hand, whether that meant carefully coordinating meals for families who had just lost a loved one, donating food items to community causes, or deferring payment for groceries for those going through hard times until the next month.
Bonus. At Front Porch Republic, Wietske Merison finds a puzzling way to give piece a chance. From the reflection:
When my birthday came around, my housemate bought me a gift: a jigsaw puzzle. I cannot describe the childlike joy I felt opening the box. We didn’t have a table big enough to make the puzzle, so instead, we made our own from a large panel we found in our building’s garage. In the absence of a television, this newly built puzzle table became the centerpiece of our home. I lost count of the amount of puzzles we solved whilst sipping tea. Our days progressed with the rhythmic intermission of regular ‘puzzle breaks’ as we connected in the heart of our home, in silence, or in honest conversation, sharing whatever was on our hearts and minds.
There is a deep beauty and comfort in helping puzzle pieces find the place where they belong; in watching clarity arise from confusion, and harmony from chaos. As we worked through the puzzle, we also worked through the puzzles of our own lives. We worked through confusion, grief, delusion, depression, and fear. At times, our pieces found their proper place. At times, we got to see the bigger picture of our lives more clearly.
In my mother tongue, ‘to puzzle’ is a verb. In our Angeleno household, we created space within the English language for me to feel at home. And so, we ‘puzzled’. At times, whilst puzzling, we experienced a looming sense of guilt. After all, there were so many books left to read, and papers left to write. There were emails to be answered, calls to be returned, events to be attended, and problems to be solved. But amidst the limitless demands and stellar expectations, we found our peace, piece by piece.
For the Good of the Order
Uno. Central to a nonprofit’s successful development program is having “major gifts” clicking on all cylinders, or even some. Crazy, no, that this is an area of fundraising where many organizations flub. To quote the great Alfred E. Neuman: “What, me worry?” Maybe you should. But maybe you can do something more—something constructive—than worrying. The good news: There’s wisdom to be had and courses to be corrected, and fixing and u-turning and up-buffing will happen September 4–6 in Washington, D.C., when the Center For Civil Society will host its acclaimed, intensive, in-person “Major Gifts Training Seminar,” where a quartet of AmPhil experts will larn wise participants on how to set goals, find major donors, secure visits, and so much more (including a planning-giving primer). Attend! Or don’t, and instead find yourself a seminar that will teach you how to craft end-of-year excuses for falling short of your fundraising goals. Get complete information right here.
Due. At Philanthropy Daily, Alice Nye offers nonprofit fundraisers an important lesson: It’s about the donor. Find her wisdom here.
Tre. Attention, all Givers, Doers, and Thinkers: C4CS will host a consequential conference on K to Campus: How the Education Reform Movement Can Reshape Higher Ed. It takes place at Pepperdine University in Malibu, CA, from October 23 to 24, and just about every bit of info you want/need to know can be found here. Fun fact: The kick-off event will be Yours Truly interviewing the great Victor Davis Hanson. The agenda is super, with plenty of inspiration on tap. Be there.
Quattro. The archives open for the “Givers, Doers, & Thinkers” podcast, this week highlighting a profound conversation on moral intuitions (and so much more) between Jeremy Beer and Jonathan Haidt. Listen here.
Point of Personal Privilege
Yours Truly reports in National Review on an aging federal case about NYC Jewish public-college professors who seek SCOTUS relief from being trapped in an antisemitic government union. Read it here.
Department of Bad Jokes
Q: How do billboards talk?
A: In sign language.
A Dios
Covid struck. Again. And it will again. It’s a tale we all of us can tell about this thing made in China, paid for by your tax dollars, courtesy of an ego in a white jacket, and certain to be with us to the last syllable of recorded time. This is what happens when the godless play at God.
May We Not Avoid the Wideness in His Mercy,
Jack Fowler, who will try to avoid any uppercuts thrown at jfowler@amphil.com.
