A Dozen-Plus Stimulants, Gathered for Your Edification and Inspiration
Dear Intelligent American,
Maybe this missive gets a little too religious—liturgical—for some, and if that applies to you then please be patient, because there he goes again.
Last Sunday’s reading was about the adulteress, the Pharisees, and the question to Jesus about whether Moses’s prescription for stoning was correct. The Lord’s response (John 8:7) in the current translation is “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”
What happened to “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone?”
Wasn’t that more beautiful? Doesn’t it resonate better? Maybe memory, maybe the familiar, maybe the want to claim privilege—that the old, common, memory-seared way should prevail. But the new line—“throw a stone at her”—seems much less artful. Flat. Like what it must be: the product of liturgical bureaucrats who justify their existence by the constant tinkering and futzing with vernacular verse, who are indifferent to the fact that it has motivated our ancestors.
What profit it a liturgist to cast away the cast? Well, in a few days the palms will beckon, and Passion Week commence. Prepare.
A Gathering of Wonderful Suggestions Is a Stone’s Throw Away
1. At Law & Liberty, Richard Alan Ryerson launches a forum on the prevailing consequence of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, as their 250th anniversary approaches. From the essay:
But the potential for escalating armed conflict was just beginning. Governor Gage was determined to assert British authority over the rebellious province, and on September 1, he sent a few soldiers to seize ammunition stored in a small powder house a few miles from Boston. The reaction was explosive. Rumors spread through nearby towns that the British were going to attack the civilian population of Boston, and the next day thousands of armed militiamen gathered in Cambridge, determined to attack the British army in the city. Only the spirited appeals to restraint by the province’s Patriot leaders, and their expression of gratitude to the militiamen for their resolve to defend the province’s liberty, persuaded the men to return home. Had they assaulted Gage’s forces, the outcome, for the militia, for the British army, and for the civilian population of Boston could not have been good.
In the following week, Patriot leaders from several towns near Boston drafted and endorsed the Suffolk Resolves, which declared that the province had no obligation to observe the Coercive Acts or to obey General Gage’s commands. And they formally put their militia on a wartime footing and designated a portion of each town’s militia as an elite corps of “Minutemen,” who would assemble quickly to defend the community. The Patriot rider Paul Revere was immediately dispatched to Philadelphia with the Resolves, where the First Continental Congress promptly approved them. Massachusetts now had an intercolonial endorsement for its preparation for armed rebellion.
But the militia’s willingness to attack Gage’s regiments in September prompts our third question: Why did Massachusetts soldiers, and after Lexington, the soldiers of a dozen other colonies to the north, south, and west, believe they could face and defeat the British army? In part, their conviction of the rightness of their cause emboldened them (just as Abraham Lincoln would assert eighty-five years later, in his Cooper Union address defending the Republican Party’s campaign to limit American slaveholding, that “right makes might”). And by 1774 many Patriot leaders had thought about the challenge before them, and had taken measure of their own strength.
2. At The 74, edu-guru Bruno Manno suggest five ways the Trump administration can bolster K-12 public school educational choice by using grant programs and other legal means. Here’s one way:
New School Models. The pandemic led parents to seek new learning environments for their children, including microschools and learning pods. Microschools are a modernized version of the one-room schoolhouse, offering intimate, personalized learning environments. Around 6% of microschools receive public school funding. Learning pods are small groups of children typically, organized by parents and teachers, who come together to learn and socialize. Consistent with the executive order, the Department of Education could allow states and local districts to utilize existing programs, such as Title I dollars for low-income students, special education dollars under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act or other funding sources, to support these new school models.
3. At The National Interest, Ryan Crocker makes the case for removing the Middle East Broadcast Networks from the DOGE chopping block. From the piece:
The Middle East is tough terrain. I should know. I’ve served as the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Kuwait, as well as Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Much of the Middle Eastern conversation—Arabs talking to Arabs in Arabic, much of it via state-sponsored television—is intensely hostile towards the United States, filled with hate and false information about Israel, and biased against Christians and other religious minorities. This is not so with MBN’s television channels and digital platforms.
American taxpayers can be proud of what MBN has done to advance U.S. interests. MBN’s journalism counters anti-American narratives and forms a thorn in the side of America’s adversaries. Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and other terror groups detest Alhurra for a reason.
This is no time for America to surrender unilaterally. We cannot afford to yield the Middle Eastern media space to those who want to destroy us, recruit converts to their cause, and attack the American values that offer a beacon of hope for a more stable and secure region.
4. At Tablet Magazine, Moshe Cohen-Eliya warns that America’s “deep state” has nothing on Israel’s. From the beginning of the piece:
The Israeli government’s decision to dismiss Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar against the warnings of its attorney general arguably marks the most dangerous inflection point yet in Israel’s long-simmering constitutional crisis. On Sunday the Israeli government unanimously passed a vote of no confidence in Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara herself, a first step toward dismissing her. The Supreme Court, which last year struck down a constitutional amendment to overhaul the Israeli judicial system, has now intervened to block Bar’s dismissal—a ruling the government says it intends to defy. So the question is no longer whether Israel has a judicial problem. The question is: Who actually governs the country?
Outside observers, particularly in the West, often describe Israel’s legal crisis as a power grab by a radical right-wing government. The truth is the opposite. For years, unelected officials in Israel’s judiciary, security services, and legal bureaucracy have amassed extraordinary powers to override elected decision-makers. Israel has become the only Western constitutional democracy in which judges have veto power over judicial appointments to the Supreme Court, the attorney general controls the government’s legal voice, and intelligence chiefs act as constitutional guardians. The result is a crisis of legitimacy—and a growing confrontation between the institutions of popular sovereignty and what can only be described as a deep state.
5. At Heterodox STEM, Anna Krylov explains that DOGE’s spotlight on scientific research funding may prompt a revolution that will overturn the bureaucratic stranglehold on grant-making. From the beginning of the analysis:
There is considerable anxiety—even panic—among academics regarding the recent White House actions on science policy and funding. The cutting of overhead rates on federal grants, the massive layoffs in funding agencies, the suspension of operations at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the freezing/auditing of some programs have created financial uncertainty and disruption for many researchers. Doomsday forecasts for the future of American science abound and crowds are taking to the streets to “march for science.” So is American science dying at the hands of DOGE? The disruption and uncertainty created by the recent measures are undeniable and cause for concern. Yet, I also see an opportunity to address a deeper systemic problem plaguing science: American science is dying from bureaucracy—and if the DOGE crew can channel their energy into yanking science from the grip of this malady, we will all end up in a better place. What follows is a report from the trenches—what it is like to carry out research at an American university. I focus on various aspects of securing funding (using the National Science Foundation (NSF) as an example) and carrying out routine tasks of research administration.
6. At Comment Magazine, Michael Wear rethinks the “public-private divide.” From the essay:
Importantly, it is not simply that goodness forms in private and shows up in public. The private and the public are not so tidily separated. The will to good is always personal, but it is not located in the public or the private alone. Goodness is often formed in public and realized in private, and also grows the other way around.
The second false distinction is to cast public life as the realm of performance and hypocrisy, while private life is the place where we are finally safe to be authentic and genuine. These assumptions deserve scrutiny. Public life isn’t dishonest because it is mediated. There is an idea that, in order to be truly honest, our public life must reflect how we act in the privacy of our own homes, the intimacy of our own families. But the fact that our public life can mediate our private impulses—that there is a separate decision that is made between thinking a thing and saying it, writing a thing and posting it—can be a gift. Our public life could be composed, not of our refuse, not of the worst we have to offer because we think our public life needs it or we think we can get away with it, but of that which we choose to contribute to it, that which we think is for the good of the public.
In public we are not wholly other, and in private we are not more truly ourselves. People deceive themselves just as readily as, if not more than, they deceive others. Just because something is kept private does not mean it is kept pure. What lies we tell ourselves about those who are out there, in the public, and how we flatter ourselves with our criticisms from the sidelines, hidden from all but God. Public life is not dishonest; we are.
7. At National Review, Jessica Hornik, ardent amateur birder, travels to Nebraska to catch the cranes, in record numbers. From the piece:
The bridge soon was lined with people, most with binoculars slung from their necks, some with cameras with long-range zoom lenses as formidable as cannons; a few were in wheelchairs or using walkers; there were children (and dogs) in strollers; whole families and solitary types. We basked in the late sun and took in the porcelain blue river and golden grasses.
As we waited for the flocks to arrive—“What if they don’t come?” goes through your mind; “what if I flew 1,500 miles for this and they don’t show up?”—we got to talking with the other crane seekers. Birders are a sociable lot, eager to swap stories of notable sightings and help each other spot good birds. A retired couple from Manitoba and a young man from Sioux Falls, S.D., became our friends of an hour. The young man helpfully corrected my ID of a pair of shorebirds: “Not lesser yellowlegs—those are greater yellowlegs.” The Manitoba husband spotted what he thought was a golden eagle on the wing; I missed what would have been a lifer. He was sincerely stricken at not having alerted me.
Darkness was coming on, and so were the cranes—waves of them in the spacious skies. A concatenation of small and large groups endlessly shifting course. The cacophony of crane calls, clicks, and trills grew so loud, you could only laugh in sheer amazement.
8. At Frontier Centre for Public Policy, John von Heyking is worried that Canadian patriotism might not survive the collapse in civic literacy. From the essay:
A recent study reported nearly 40 percent of Canadians have no recollection of learning civics education in school. Seventy-five percent of teachers said they lacked any training in civics, and nearly that same proportion of teachers either don’t want to teach or think they’re unqualified to teach civics. The same study showed a correlation between lack of civic knowledge and unwillingness to discuss controversial issues. The crisis of civic education in Canada seems to produce apathetic, politically timid, and polarized citizens who are ill-equipped to practice the virtues of political liberty.
The recent upsurge of patriotic sentiment in response to Donald Trump comes at a time of historic lows in patriotism and civic knowledge. Pride in our national hockey team is barely sufficient for addressing these deeper problems. Its sentimental nature suggests it’s an inadequate basis on which to base effective political action, including responding to Mr. Trump.
The apparent upsurge shows Canadian patriotism is sentimental and disconnected from political liberty and the ideas that inform our constitutional order. Alexis de Tocqueville, perhaps our best guide on liberal democracy’s sense of patriotism and sense of belonging, contrasts the patriotism one finds in absolute monarchies with that of liberal democracy. The former is sentimental, instinctive, and childlike, as befitting a subject who looks up to their monarch as their parent. Conversely, he characterizes liberal democratic patriotism as “more rational than that one; less generous, less ardent perhaps, but more fruitful and more durable; this one arises from enlightenment; it develops with the help of laws; it grows with the exercise of rights; and it sends up merging, in a way, with personal interest” (Democracy in America I.ii.6).
9. At The Frank Forum, Frank “Double F” Filocomo urges civic engagement before a silver screen. From the article:
But, as I've said before, people—young people, especially—are yearning for a return to community.
We see this in the form of hip dine-in theaters like the Nitehawk Cinema in Brooklyn (this place is always packed with zoomers), and drive-in theaters, which are still present all over the country.
Look, I understand that the times are changing—I don't mean to sound like a hopeless reactionary—but it's perfectly reasonable to point out the tradeoffs of "progress." Expediency, for instance, comes at the price of interpersonal interactions. We've seen this with the emergence of self-checkout kiosks.
But, while we can't go back to yesteryear, we can keep some old traditions alive.
So . . . will you go to the movies with me?
10. At Public Discourse, Matthew X. Wilson argues the time has come for political progressives to engage in some self-reflection. From the essay:
Here, I want to draw on some insights from contemporary liberal political philosophy to illustrate for progressives where the political rhetoric and cultural developments they championed over the past several years have fallen short of what a democratic society’s public discourse requires. Specifically, I will argue that two key principles found in modern liberal philosophy—public justification and mutual respect—mean that movement progressives owe their fellow citizens much more in the way of non-dogmatic public reasons, and of substantive (i.e., non-superficial) respect, than they have given in recent years.
Modern theories of political morality take almost for granted that, for political action to be morally legitimate, it must be publicly justifiable—that is, articulable with reasons that all citizens can be reasonably expected to understand, even if some of those citizens might disagree with the precise action being taken. Of course, the normative content that makes political action and political arguments publicly justifiable is a subject of perennial debate. The magisterial liberal philosopher John Rawls, for example, maintains that publicly justifiable reasons for political action—public reasons—must not be derived from sectarian and incommensurable comprehensive doctrines that all reasonable citizens cannot be expected to endorse. (Such doctrines might include Islam, Marxism, Catholicism, utilitarianism, or even an ideologically normative liberalism—i.e., a liberalism that is derived from a comprehensive account of human goods and flourishing.) Given the empirical fact of reasonable pluralism that persists in contemporary democratic societies, Rawls argues that political actors have a moral duty to ensure that their arguments and activities be articulable in a currency of basic principles of justice and basic political values—which themselves are meant to transcend the incommensurable components of (at least a plurality of) comprehensive doctrines.
11. A joint report—“Treating Infertility: The New Frontier of Reproductive Medicine”—by the Ethics and Public Policy Center and The Heritage Foundation, overseen by Natalie Dodson, advocates “Restorative Reproductive Medicine,” or RRM. From the report’s Introduction:
For many symptoms of reproductive health conditions or diseases, the medical professions’ instinctive response is pharmaceutical Band-Aids to mask and ignore the symptoms for as long as possible. Likewise, for infertility, the common response is in vitro fertilization (IVF), which circumvents the infertility by producing the child outside of the body without attempting to treat the underlying cause of the infertility. Both approaches fail to restore health and may instead contribute to worsening health for all patients involved. As some of this section’s authors describe, circumventive technology often sells couples a pervasive yet ineffective promise. While ART can produce an embryo outside of the uterus, it cannot guarantee successful implantation or live birth of that child. The reproductive dysfunction persists with ART, often leading to unsuccessful IVF cycles and repeated heartbreak for couples.
RRM is a comprehensive approach to addressing the symptoms and causes of reproductive dysfunction. Rather than treating reproductive or bodily dysfunction in a piecemeal manner, RRM examines the whole body and the multitude of conditions or comorbidities that may contribute to the symptoms patients experience. Once the underlying causes of the symptoms are identified, often through fertility awareness-based methods (FABMs), RRM protocols treat them through hormone-balancing, dietary and nutritional adjustments, environmental changes, and, in some cases, surgery.
Rather than suppressing or circumventing distressing symptoms of reproductive health conditions with pharmaceutical Band-Aids or ART, RRM treats the conditions and seeks to return the individual to peak health. While conventional reproductive medicine offers inadequate options to women suffering from symptoms of reproductive health conditions or couples struggling with infertility, RRM does not sell women or couples quick fixes. Instead, RRM requires the difficult yet necessary work of treating the underlying diseases, conditions, and dysfunction.
12. At First Things, Fran Maier ponders the passions of the anti-aging craze and the apostles of Methuselah. From the article:
And yet I can’t get the issue of “why” out of my head. Healing disease and improving the quality of life obviously serve human dignity. But why would I, or anyone else my age and in sound mind, want to live in this fractious world for another seventy or seven hundred years? [Futurist Ray] Kurzweil has argued that we’d never get bored with endless earthly life because things would always be changing. They’d be getting better and more interesting all the time. When our bodies wore out, we’d simply download our consciousness into sleek new models of the same old you and me. Except, of course, we wouldn’t really be the same old you and me. We’d be different. We’re fundamentally carnal creatures, a blend of spirit and flesh, each essential to and penetrating the other. The body is key to who we are. It’s not a disposable meat sandwich. Simply put: Nothing in the history of human behavior suggests that any of Kurzweil’s imaginings are plausible.
Science produces results, which is why we venerate it. It’s a tool to subdue and manipulate nature. Thus inevitably, in the words of Leon Kass, “victory over mortality is the unstated but implicit goal of modern medical science, indeed of the entire modern scientific project”—including the anti-aging movement. The trouble is that science, however benign, cannot produce purpose. And humans cannot live without the kind of higher purpose that gives life meaning and makes its burdens bearable.
Lucky 13. At the Am-Pol Eagle, staff report that the good people of Buffalo helped raise emergency funds to replace a church boiler gone kaput. From the article:
The Friends of Corpus Christi announced that the fundraising campaign launched in January for replacing the boiler in the Pauline Fathers’ monastery building on Clark Street in Buffalo has been successful. The campaign brought in $40,100 for the new boiler as well as funds to cover other associated installation expenses. Donations came from parishioners and friends of Corpus Christi, and from other donors from near and far who have a love for Corpus Christi Church or a history with the parish.
Lucy Ederer, president of the Friends of Corpus Christi Inc., reported that donations came not only from local donors but also from donors in Virginia, California, Florida and Texas, to name a few. Even a parish in a distant diocese sent a sizeable donation.
Ederer also observed that the most gratifying part of the fundraiser was the numerous notes people sent with their donations recounting stories from their past at the parish and offering encouraging words.
Bonus. At Golf, Michael Arkush, author of the new book, The Golf 100, tells why he assesses Phil Mickelson as Number 13 on the all-time linksmen list. From the piece:
On the other hand, when the gambles paid off—and even (especially) when they didn’t—there was no one more exciting to watch than Mickelson and no one has been that exciting since.
He was a trapeze artist. Without a net.
Take the shot from the pine straw on No. 13 in the final round of the 2010 Masters. His ball roughly 200 yards from the green, Mickelson, leading by one, could have punched out into the fairway to set up a wedge for his third.
But he didn’t. Of course he didn’t.
Out came the 6-iron, the Rae’s Creek tributary be damned. It paid off, leading to his third green jacket.
Maybe we can’t have it both ways.
Maybe taking the gambler out of the man would have removed the soul.
For the Good of the Cause
Uno. At Philanthropy Daily, Alice Nye finds civil society alive, well, and sipping tea in Charleston, thanks to the community’s churches. Read it here.
Due. On Thursday, April 24th, Yours Truly will host a “Givers, Doers, & Thinkers” webinar—the first of a series of Center for Civil Society efforts to mark the forthcoming America 250 celebration—with renowned political philosopher Daniel J. Mahoney (author of the forthcoming book, The Persistence of the Ideological Lie: The Totalitarian Impulse Then and Now) on “The Divergent Causes and Consequences of the French and American Revolutions.” The free, via-Zoom event will take place from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m., Eastern, and discuss the competing visions of newly born America and guillotine-worshipping France for the relationships between man, the state, and the Creator, and how one nation’s choice led to exceptionalism, while another’s spawned a doctrine of totalitarianism that persists today. Learn more, and sign up, right here.
Point of Personal Privilege
At National Review, Yours Truly tells of an exceptional Texas nonprofit, a story worth recounting at a time of increasing nonprofit chicanery. Read it here.
Department of Bad Jokes
Q: What do you call a line of men waiting to get their haircuts?
A: A barberqueue.
A Dios
The wedding was lovely. Thanks for the prayers and well-wishes.
May We Contemplate Fiercely the Days Ahead,
Jack Fowler, who is penitential at jfowler@amphil.com.
