A Dozen-Plus Stimulants, Gathered for Your Edification and Inspiration
Dear Intelligent American,
Why do we see what we see on social media? All those videos about marinating steak, or mowing lawns of poor people, or train-crossing disasters: Why is it that they’re populating this or that feed? X is serving up a stream of posts about Y, but nada about Z—pour quoi?
And besides posts that seem about hobbies and fascinations and dogs doing goofy things, there are dicier ones that come unsolicited and (often commencing with “BREAKING” and a flashing-red-light emoji) seem newsworthy—but who else sees them, a multitude, or only a select few? And: Has the topic picked me, or vice versa? When there were only three networks and a handful of national magazines, one could be confident believing that many or most Americans knew of this ballgame, that movie, this scandal. This is news to no one: There was a far more common culture that paralleled an identity founded on e pluribus unum. Now we endure atomized information that seems to go hand-in-hand with multiculturalism.
Are we whistling past a graveyard? It seems like a good time to become more active locally, where the soundness of commonality may still indeed (and need to) exist.
Herewith Some Darling Buds of May
1. At Civitas Outlook, Titus Techera pans the new Animal Farm flick. From the review:
We live in a brave new world nowadays, so this year on May Day, we received the first Animal Farm adaptation that has completely betrayed Orwell’s story, to say nothing of yawning at the problem of Communism. In 1999, Communism and tyranny were at least the background of the story. In 2026, Andy Serkis, famous for playing Gollum in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings, directed a new story, written by Nicholas Stoller, in which the villain is capitalism, for its surveillance and corruption of the truth. A vulgar comic villain replaces Stalin. Serkis reportedly believes Orwell would think so today, so he wanted to update the story! . . .
All of this is very bad news, but if I may imitate Orwell and close on a depressive note, the movie is distributed by Angel Studios, which markets itself to the public as a conservative Christian production house, yet seems more eager to corrupt children than most liberal studios. It’s very hard to explain how such a project was ever produced or distributed. Perhaps it was the climate of hysteria and wokeness after 2020. Then again, we are in the midst of hysteria and left-wing political violence nowadays, too, so this may be more a portent of the future than a relic of the past. We should restart reading Animal Farm with children and show them the old animation. We have a generational struggle ahead of us again if we are to defend the cause of freedom from tyranny.
2. In a special issue of the St. Austin Review, Lee Congdon explores Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s history of Russia, The Red Wheel. From the essay:
Two centers of power emerged from the collapse of the Tsar’s government— the Provisional Government appointed by the Duma (parliament) and the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. From the first the latter wielded greater power. In the West, the February Revolution was regarded as a tragically aborted attempt to create a democratic Russia. In fact, it unleashed chaos and violence in the streets, brought the incompetent Aleksandr Kerensky to power, prolonged the war, and prepared the way for the Bolshevik coup d’état.
In March 1994, as he prepared to end his twenty-year exile in the West, Solzhenitsyn penned “The Russian Question” At the End of the Twentieth Century. In the preface, he told his Russian readers that if they hoped for a better future, they could not lose sight “of the numerous blunders in our past”. The book recounts wrong turns he believed his country had taken since the seventeenth century. An expert on the history of the Russian Revolution and the Soviet regime, he relied for earlier times on the work of two distinguished historians: Kliuchevsky (1841–1911) and Sergei Solovyov (1820–1879), author of the twenty-nine volume History of Russia from Ancient Times and tutor to the future Alexander III.
The history of Russia that Solzhenitsyn set forth in “The Russian Question” and other works taught lessons for his nation—and all nations (“It is impossible to imagine a nation which throughout the course of its existence has no cause for repentance. Every nation without exception . . . has at one time or another contributed its share of inhumanity, injustice and arrogance.”) The spiritual life of a people is far more important than its political life. The inner health of a nation must always take precedence over external ambitions, especially con quest and empire building. Foreign policy should be informed by the national interest and “prudent self-restriction”. Patriotism means “unqualified and unwavering love for the nation”, while at the same time acknowledging its sins. A people’s national consciousness is essential to its life. Most important perhaps: History is radically contingent. Nothing except change itself is inevitable in human affairs.
3. At National Review, Noah Rothman wonders if climate activists ever truly meant their claptrap. From the article:
Ah, the Green New Deal. Remember that? It’s easy to forget how central that suite of policy proposals was to the progressive project. Indeed, its one-time promoters probably hope you have forgotten.
As Semafor’s David Weigel reported in March, climate-focused activist networks such as the Sunrise Movement have abandoned the cause that was once their raison d’être. But because the progressive soul craves a salvific mission, that organization has evolved. It now caters to the progressive fringes who have replaced anxiety over climate with anxiety over Israel and the pernicious influence of Americans who support the Jewish state and its defensive military priorities.
The movement’s rapid adaptation says as much about the progressive left’s paranoia over the Jews in Israel as well as the Diaspora (the “toxic” lobbying outfit AIPAC, which the left seeks to anathematize as a foreign influence operation, is managed and funded by Americans) as it does their bygone climate hysteria.
But even though the Green New Deal’s loudest champions have quietly shelved their impossible dreams, it’s worth reminding them that they once insisted that their agenda was of such importance that our very lives depended on advancing it.
4. At World Magazine, Theresa Abell Haynes profiles America’s most famous Christian cake baker, Jack Phillips, target of progressives. From the piece:
Phillips has not always had such strong convictions.
He was driving home from work in the spring of 1979 when God came into his car. That’s how he describes the experience. He felt a presence so strong it was as if another person were sitting next to him.
“I was pretty confident in myself,” Phillips recalls. “I was successful at my job. My boss loved me. I loved what I was doing. I was paying my bills. I was married with two little kids. Everything was good, but when God came into my car, which sounds weird, but I can’t explain it any other way, He convicted me of my sin. And all the good things that I was doing, you know, marriage and raising kids, weren’t enough. As a sinner, I needed a Savior, and that was Jesus Christ.”
Phillips remembers arguing with God, telling Him he could clean up his life, become a better person, and then become a Christian, but God said, No, you can’t.
The struggle continued until Phillips surrendered. Now, more than 47 years later, Phillips still becomes emotional when he retells the story. “You’re right,” he says, his eyes watering and his voice cracking with emotion, “I’m yours.”
5. At Tablet Magazine, Kara Jesella tells the tale of Gloria Greenfield, ex-feminist. From the profile:
But Greenfield isn’t a feminist anymore. She does not regret her pivot, not just away from the movement, but from the entire left. “I am a conservative,” she says, unhesitatingly. For 10 years she was a Democrat, but she increasingly did not appreciate the party’s loose attitude toward sex—the subject of many arguments with her then-young children at her Shabbat table—nor its diminishing support for Israel. She credits her increasing knowledge of Jewish thought, including Hasidic thinking, for her “understanding life in a different way.”
Greenfield finds a common thread between the Soviet Union’s war on the West, corruption at the United Nations and in human-rights organizations, the history of antisemitism, and more in a way that helps explain the contemporary creep of Islamism. Meanwhile, her erstwhile colleagues in the feminist movement eagerly embrace what was once a Soviet-sponsored conspiracy theory that portrays the Jewish state as the root of all global evil. . . .
Given her foresight about antisemitism in the women’s movement, Greenfield’s predictions about Diaspora Jewry are alarming, to say the least.
6. At Quadrant, Logan Lamont argues that defending civilization is not an option but an obligation. From the essay:
Most importantly, however, the West must recover confidence in its own civilisation. No civilisation can survive while teaching its children that its history, traditions and cultural inheritance are fundamentally shameful. The modern Left has spent decades undermining confidence in Western culture while simultaneously demanding endless accommodation from the societies it critiques. Patriotism is treated with suspicion. National identity is framed as exclusionary. Traditional family structures are weakened. Religion is mocked. Historical achievement is recast almost exclusively in terms of oppression and guilt.
Enough!
The West has every right to defend its civilisation, traditions, culture and social norms. It has every right to preserve the values and institutional inheritance that produced freedom, prosperity, scientific advancement and stable democratic societies unmatched across most of human history. This does not require historical denial or blind nationalism. Mature societies can acknowledge historical failures without descending into permanent self-hatred. Education should teach inheritance, responsibility and civic confidence rather than perpetual grievance and cultural self-loathing. Family formation should be strengthened through taxation and social policy rather than steadily undermined through cultural hostility and economic pressure.
7. At National Interest, Luke Coffey explains why Gibraltar is important to the USA. From the article:
Even though the United Kingdom has controlled the rock longer than Spain ever did, Madrid has repeatedly sought to regain it through military pressure, diplomacy, and economic coercion, including through multiple sieges and an economic blockade that lasted until the early 1980s. More importantly, the people of Gibraltar have repeatedly made clear that they want to remain British. In referenda, Gibraltarians have overwhelmingly rejected Spanish sovereignty and reaffirmed their British identity.
This matters for the United States. America has relied on Gibraltar since the earliest years of the republic. During the First Barbary War from 1801 to 1805, Gibraltar served as a forward base for the US Navy as it fought piracy off the coast of North Africa. It played a similar role during the Second Barbary War in 1815. Even during the Spanish-American War, Admiral George Dewey stopped at Gibraltar in 1899 to resupply after the Battle of Manila Bay. In 1909, the Great White Fleet made its final overseas stop there before returning to the United States.
8. At Plough Quarterly, Alydia Catherine Ullman sojourns to rekindle her love for the poet William Wordsworth. From the essay:
The poem, “Tintern Abbey,” as it is commonly called (though the abbey never appears in the text), is the story of Wordsworth’s evolving relationship with nature and beauty. It is a long poem, composed like a symphony, with repeated melodies woven throughout.
In the poem, a twenty-eight-year-old Wordsworth returns to a hill above Tintern Abbey with his younger sister Dorothy and reflects on the familiar and beautiful landscape he had last seen five years before. He meditates on the nature of beauty, how through recollection, its powers can instill hope, engender good deeds, and transform the heart. Wordsworth recalls his understanding of nature as a young man, how he was short-sighted, fear-driven, and full of “aching joys” and “dizzy raptures.” He then turns to the present, setting forth a matured vision of how the divine works through nature to enlighten his mind, instruct his moral being, craft his perception, guide his heart, and acquaint him with the sublime force that “rolls through all things.” Finally, Wordsworth turns to Dorothy and teaches her how to reconcile the great evils and sadnesses she will encounter with the great beauty and goodness before them.
After returning home from this first trip to Tintern, I wanted a way to remember all that I had seen and learned. The words of the poem, my professor’s pointed lecture, the beauty of the Wye Valley, and the towering ruins of the old abbey formed the Romantic bedrock that I use to face the world. Wordsworth tells Dorothy their “cheerful faith” is “that all which we behold is full of blessings.” This became my creed of hopefulness and renewal.
9. At Front Porch Republic, Lenny Wells pays tribute to the small-town local hardware store. From the article:
The big box stores may offer some of the same products on their shelves as the local hardware. You can probably even conveniently order them online from the big stores, perhaps even cheaper. Both the big stores and the local hardware stores want to make a profit. The difference exists in how they go about it and what the effects of those two very different approaches are for the community. The big store is there, ultimately, because the corporation has run the analytics and discovered that this community has enough people to support the company’s profitability. They won’t change what they sell or how they serve the customer based on the needs of the community. They want the customer to have a positive experience so they will return to buy something else. But there is a limit to how far the company will go to do this. After all, there are formulas for how this must be done. It must all work out on paper, and within the company the customer can easily become just another number in that formula. If the community won’t fit its formula, the corporation may cut its losses, close this version of the store down, and move on to greener pastures. The hardware store on the other hand, along with its owners and employees, lives here and that is the difference.
This living in and with requires the local hardware to take into account what one of my favorite philosophers, Sheriff Andy Taylor, once described as “the human equation.” What the fictional good Sheriff of Mayberry was referring to is the need to consider the individual, the context of a situation, common sense, and local understanding over impersonal and bureaucratic corporate protocols when dealing with people and communities. Increasingly, that human equation is what we are all desperately searching for in a world that is quickly becoming more artificial, impersonal, cold, and unrecognizable to many. Communities are not meant to be fed into a spreadsheet with the desired result spit out the other end in cookie-cutter fashion. They are made up of people, and they must therefore operate on a human scale.
10. At Portico Quarterly, Barton Swaim is wistful about his hometown. From the reflection:
Myrtle Beach was for me then a magical place, a realm of snow cones and pancake diners and pop songs playing from boom boxes in the sand. When my school friends and I reached our mid-teens, we became too cool for the touristy stuff. By then it lay unseen in the background, except in the summers, when most of us took jobs as waiters and lifeguards and golf course groundskeepers.
As I grew older, and especially in the years after I left, I began to hate the place. The tawdriness and vulgarity of it all, the billboards for the Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Museum and PirateLand Family Camp Resort, the sleeveless T-shirts and the theme parks. Who wants to be from a place like that?
For years, when people asked me where I was from, I would find ways to avoid saying Myrtle Beach. I might say Greenville, where I lived with my mother until age twelve, or just South Carolina and hope that would suffice. When I felt this pretension in me, I would remember my father, who loved the place, and feel ashamed. He disliked his own hometown, Randleman, North Carolina, which he associated with smallness and his own poor health as a child. For him, the move to Myrtle Beach, which his parents and their two sons undertook, when Dad was a boy, as a curative to his acute asthma, was an escape to the city and freedom and commerce. I’m not convinced that the “ocean air” ever did anything for his asthma, as his doctor in Randleman advised, though Dad would have said it did. Myrtle Beach, for him, was where a man could make lots of money and meet people from other parts of the country. Not many outsiders passed through Randleman. Over the years I pondered Dad’s affection for the city and wondered if my contempt for it revealed something defective in me.
11. At The New Criterion, James Piereson reviews the history of America’s (deadly, to JFK) relationship with Castro’s Cuba, pertinent once again. From the essay:
Edward J. Epstein, the late historian and intelligence expert, pointed out that Castro (as he himself later acknowledged) was told of the threat Oswald issued while visiting the Cuban embassy in Mexico City. Nevertheless, the Cuban government approved Oswald’s application for a travel visa. Castro was also aware of Kennedy’s continuing plots to assassinate him or to overthrow his government, as demonstrated in his interview with the Associated Press reporter during which he threatened American leaders.
Did someone in the Cuban embassy connect the dots between Castro’s threat and Oswald’s visit a few weeks later? Did Oswald connect the dots for them in making his threat against President Kennedy when he visited the Cuban embassy in September? Did Cuban officials encourage Oswald or, more alarmingly, renew contact with him in some way after he returned to Dallas? It is possible and even likely that Castro knew that Oswald lived in Dallas and that he might act on his threats when he learned President Kennedy planned to visit the city. If so, it was a possibility that Castro would have welcomed.
President Johnson believed, as he told aides privately, that Kennedy’s efforts to “get” Castro backfired when Castro managed to get to Kennedy first. Johnson did not necessarily mean that Castro personally ordered a “hit” on President Kennedy, but that someone close to Castro’s revolution carried out the assassination. Johnson, despite public comments suggesting that bigots or right-wingers were behind the assassination, believed that the event was connected to Castro in some way. It is interesting, then, that, despite believing this, Johnson pivoted U.S. policy away from Cuba and toward the escalating conflict in South Vietnam and did not retaliate against Castro. But if Johnson believed that Castro was involved in the JFK assassination, why did he stop applying pressure on Cuba? And why did he claim that right-wingers were responsible for the assassination?
12. At Brownstone Institute, Thomas Harrington warns about broad public accusations aimed at men (and not only men). From the essay:
No more than I am denying—as I suggested with the deliberately provocative passages of this essay—that in today’s universities, with their ever more female-dominated administrations and HR departments, reputational destruction aimed at sidelining or destroying the professional trajectories of rivals for power and privilege within the system is an overwhelmingly female-on-male form of violence, or that one’s chances of being an object of violence are clearly statistically greater in predominantly black areas of the US than in predominantly white ones.
But as I suggested earlier no one, quite rightly, would ever think of using public monies to alert others to the dangers they might face from these two genetically determined sub-categories of human beings in these circumstances.
However, given the tomb-like silence on the matter in our public discussions, it seems most are just fine with having the government signal citizens with the genetic trait of being male as constituting a special threat to public comity.
As I have often said, it is never a waste of time to try and intuit the goals and methods of the small class of fabulously rich people who seem obsessed with constantly increasing the enormous level of control they already exert over the lives of the great mass of the population.
Lucky 13. At RiverBender.com in Alton, IL, Jackie Duty reports on a Jerseyville school whose students raised a bundle to assist women in need. From the story:
The 7th and 8th grade students at St. Francis Holy Ghost school have proven that young people can make an extraordinary difference in their community. Through more than 15 creative and entrepreneurial projects completed throughout the school year, students collectively raised an incredible $21,676 to support women, babies, and families across the region.
The students organized and lead a wide variety of fundraising initiatives from October 2025 to May 2026, including: handmade craft sales, auctions, entrepreneurial business projects, product sales, raffles, shoe drives, farm work, sports lessons and camps, community events, and other innovative campaigns designed to make a meaningful impact. Their efforts demonstrated teamwork, leadership, compassion, and a strong commitment to serving others. Regardless of how much each project raised individually, all required students to give up their time and talent to help the most vulnerable of God's people. It really is both humbling and amazing to see how students’ creativity, ingenuity, and effort can make such a huge difference to others.
Bonus. At National Review, Kathryn Jean Lopez remembers the late Bob Woodson as a hero. From the column:
Woodson could diagnose what ailed American inner cities as well as, or better than, his peers. But it was his hope—rooted in supernatural virtue and practical experience—that set him apart among leaders in politics and civil society. Our Achilles’ heel has forever been ideology. Most figure that you must surrender to it, at least to some degree, in order to secure funding or to achieve office and to be among the sophisticated. Woodson didn’t care about any of that as much as he cared about enabling men to flourish rather than think of themselves as helpless and angry victims. . . .
Woodson nonetheless critiqued some of the leaders of the civil rights movement. Earlier this spring, Woodson quoted an infamous essay by Jesse Jackson published in Ebony in 1978. Jackson had written: “Morally weak people not only inhibit their own personal growth, but finally contribute to the politics of decadence. . . . A generation of people lacking the moral and physical stamina necessary to fight a protracted civilizational crisis is dangerous to itself, its neighbors and to future generations.” Woodson wrote that “this was the true spirit of the civil-rights movement: moral uprising, not mere political maneuvering.” Jackson, at one time, had been a “moral reformer.” That was before politics took over. Woodson concluded: “At his best, Jackson confronted not only injustice from without, but the moral failures within our own communities. He spoke of responsibility and self-determination and challenged wounded people not to surrender to victimhood. Many of us respected him for that. I certainly did.”
For the Good of the Cause
Uno. On the new “Givers, Thinkers, & Doers” podcast, Jeremy Beer and Romanita Hairston discuss building stronger nonprofits through regional philanthropy. Listen or watch here.
Due. More GDT: Jeremy and Herzog Foundation director Sadie Elliott discuss the new playbook for Christian-school funding. Listen or watch here.
Tre. At Philanthropy Daily, Joshua Fredrickson explains how AI is like a hedge clipper. Read it here.
Department of Bad Jokes
Q: Where did the Society of Morticians hold its annual cruise?
A: On the Dead Sea.
A Dios
Who knows what exhausted Michael’s spirit and made the gift of life—the thing to which we are created in God’s likeness and image—a burden, a thing of no consolation that echoes despair’s darkness. Whatever the suffering question, why was suicide the answer? It is every day for, per studies,134 Americans, the choice made.
We live by and in and through time and its framework, so there are moments, defined and specific. God, so we believe, transcends time. Can we not believe then that maybe prayers made now for acts committed yesterday—moments with eternal consequences (salvation or damnation)—will still be applicable? May our prayers for those who chose suicide as an escape have merit and usefulness? If you believe so, say one please for Michael.
Let Us Seek Hopefulness,
Jack Fowler, who despairs not at jfowler@amphil.com.
