Dear Intelligent American,
The glasses tinkled a little, the chandelier did a slow-motion dance, the lawn chair fell over. Alas, not much damage came to the Mid-Atlantic states last week when a small earthquake—kid stuff to Californians, a novelty to New York drama queens (where were you when . . .) who finally got to tweet Richter-scale data and brace for aftershocks. All this occurred while many Americans and astrological tourists were preparing for a rare solar eclipse—of course the topic was beaten to death by cable-news talking heads. A certainty: They will beat even deathier the story of the massive cicadageddon coming in its aftermath to the Midwest and Border States.
Truth be told, that one does have the makings of a horror movie. Dig the Newsweek headline: “Over 100 Trillion Cicadas to Emerge After Solar Eclipse.” Another trillion and we’re talking plague! (Surely there’s some Davos/EU-inspired Department of Agriculture cow-hating bureaucrat who is seeing that bounty of cricket-cousin carcasses as a year’s worth of school lunches.)
Golly, there is so much Nature happening, no?!
(Almost forgot: There was a ‘tumblemageddon’ that rolled into, onto, and over Utah and Nevada last month!)
On to the excerpts and links, but not until we fulfill last week’s promise: The St. Louis University Billikens beat the Minnesota Golden Gophers, 69-50, to take the Women’s NIT Championship, while in the dudes’ NIT division, Seton Hall beat Indiana State in a 79-77 thriller.
Fourteen Recommendations to Emerge after Solar Eclipse
1. At The Public Discourse, Michael Lucchese reflects on conservative icon Whittaker Chambers, foe of communism but lover of the land. From the piece:
There is something deeply conservative—perhaps even Platonic—about this agrarian dimension of Chambers’s thought. In his Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke, the founder of conservatism, said that society is an eternal contract, “linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible and invisible world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all physical and all moral natures each in their appointed place.” For Chambers and his family, Pipe Creek Farm became one of these spiritual links between the high and the low, the visible and the invisible, the living and the dead.
In Witness, Chambers goes on to use religious language to describe what he loves about Pipe Creek Farm. It is a kind of family altar. “To it each day we bring our faith, our love for one another as a family, our working hands, our prayers. In its soil and the care of its creatures, we bury each day a part of our lives in the form of labor,” he said. “The yield of our daily dying, from which each night in part restores us, springs around us in the seasons of harvest, in the produce of animals, in incalculable content.”
Much like his writing, then, Chambers intended the farm to stand as a witness—specifically, “a witness against the world.” “By deliberately choosing this life of hardship and immense satisfaction, we say in effect: The modern world has nothing better to give us.” Such a witness may be “unrealistic,” Chambers said, with the crush of modern forces and mass effects weighing down on his family. But it was no less necessary.
2. More from TPD: Elizabeth Corey makes the case for admiring the ordinary. From the essay:
Still, though, the disconnect between our desire to read about sensational, dramatic events and to live peaceful, well-ordered lives continues to bother me. Having served on the board of a magazine for about a decade, I know that the stories that “get more eyeballs” are almost uniformly provocative or controversial. Does this mean, as I thought thirty years ago, that the daily and the ordinary are simply not that interesting?
I don’t think it does. Some of the freshest writing right now comes from outlets like Public Discourse, Plough, Local Culture, The Hedgehog Review, and Comment, where writers consider topics that haven’t always been given their due: nature, music, disability, marriage and dating, the lives of children, friendship, even food and farming. Not that anyone should cease writing about religion, politics, and war: but it is worth noting that this well-worn triumvirate does not exhaust human experience.
It also turns out that ordinariness does not mean mediocrity. Ordinary life offers many opportunities for excellence, and as “ordinary people” we may indeed desire to be very good. The end of George Eliot’s Middlemarch captures just such a vision. In her famous concluding sentences, Eliot writes of the book’s heroine, Dorothea, that “the effect of [her] being” was “incalculably diffusive.” For, Eliot continues, the “growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
3. At the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, Sherman Criner grades the idea of teachers handing out F’s an A-plus. From the piece:
As an undergraduate myself, I can attest to the stress and anxiety caused by potentially earning a failing grade. In our credentialist society, one’s college transcript can determine whether one gets a dream job or settles for a monotonous career one would never wish on one’s worst enemy. As cumbersome as these fears may be, students should not simply be appeased by their teachers. When they enter the professional environments their universities should be preparing them for, their bosses will not be so kind. Swaddling students in a warm bundle of academic satisfaction prevents their learning a valuable life and academic lesson: how to respond to failure.
Take the case of Evergreen State College, which implements a “narrative grading system” that substitutes traditional letter grades with an “academic statement.” The university instructs students to revise their statements throughout their college careers. Such a system flips the conventional structure of higher education by tailoring educational outcomes to what students want, not what they earn. This approach coddles students instead of challenging them to rise to meet rigorous academic standards. It robs them of the opportunity to learn resilience and perseverance in the face of failure, skills vital for success in any professional field after graduation.
4. At Minding the Campus, Ernest J. Zarra III argues that an antidote to progressivism is classical Christian education. From the analysis:
CCE is the most effective model to counter progressive education for several compelling reasons, but here are just four. . . .
Fourthly, empirical data supports the effectiveness of CCE, as evidenced by studies conducted by institutions like Notre Dame University, the Association of Classical Christian Schools, and the Habersham School of Savannah, Georgia. These studies revealed that graduates of CCE schools excel in various life outcomes, including college and career success, Christian commitment, independent thinking, cultural influence, and overall outlook on life. The research also underscores the importance of CCE in equipping students with essential survival skills for the 21st century, such as critical thinking, collaboration, adaptability, communication, information analysis, and curiosity.
Underpinned by its steadfast adherence to Biblical truths, cultivation of critical thinking, promotion of genuine belonging, and substantiated empirical success, CCE is a robust counterforce against progressive education. These facets collectively position CCE as a formidable educational paradigm that not only imparts knowledge but also nurtures character, equipping students with the tools and perspectives necessary for the 21st century.
5. At National Review, Roy Nothstine says saving American democracy requires saving its core: federalism. From the piece:
Democracy is not tribalistic spectating but requires civic education, self-government, local problem-solving, and caring for our communities. Limiting governmental power is most feasible and successful when Americans are engaging with neighbors on important issues, protecting the rights of the minority, and elevating the rule of law and equality under the law.
In contemporary American politics, candidates, even bad ones, are less a threat to democracy than a symptom of its illness. And some of the causes of that illness can be found in trends that undermine citizen self-governance. They include the increasing centralization of power at the federal level and accompanying administrative state overreach.
Unelected administrative-agency officials ruling by decree on issues such as education, crime, energy, and human sexuality is fundamentally antidemocratic. If unaccountable bureaucrats can issue commands to fit an agenda unencumbered by elections, our democracy suffers. “Unless bureaucracy is constantly resisted it breaks down representative government and overwhelms democracy,” declared Calvin Coolidge. Similarly, James Madison warned in Federalist No. 47 against the accumulation of all powers of the separate branches of government into many or a few hands, calling it “the very definition of tyranny.” In the Declaration of Independence, the English Crown is denounced because King George “erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.”
6. At National Affairs, Frank DeVito calls for greater protection of religion—essential to the success of the Republic—by the states. From the essay:
It is not the province of government to manufacture religious belief among Americans: The state has no authority to ensure that its citizens have faith, pray, form religious organizations, or engage in charitable works. Our government is bound by the First Amendment requirement that the state shall neither establish any religion nor prevent its free exercise. Given these constraints, lawmakers may wonder whether there are any appropriate ways for government policy to promote faith among citizens and private associations.
Leaders, of course, can and should follow the examples of Adams, Lincoln, and Eisenhower by using their platforms to highlight the importance of faith. But there are also more practical steps that policymakers—especially at the state level—can take to promote religion in the public square.
The law can help or hinder the ability of religious organizations—defined here as faith-based non-profit organizations that have federal 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status — to function. Adopting measures of the former type while reforming or repealing those of the latter would create a legal environment in which religious organizations can more easily flourish and contribute to the common good.
7. More Religion: At The American Mind, fan favorite Daniel J. Mahoney finds Christianity’s holiest day profaned by the adulation and celebration of progressive gender causes. From the piece:
Until not so long ago, America was a democratic republic that saw itself as a Christian or “Judeo-Christian” nation, and it would be unthinkable for politicians of any party to insult Christians on the holiest of feast days. But that America is increasingly on life support as the religious “nones” (those with no religious affiliation or identification) proliferate, particularly among the young, and as secularists grow both more ignorant and hostile to all the old religions and to religiosity as such. American progressives grow ever more contemptuous of what used to be called the “moral law” (the Decalogue and its secular derivatives), or even of the idea of a human nature that in decisive respects doesn’t change. The venerable old distinction between good and evil has largely been replaced, in elite circles and beyond, by the fundamentally ideological distinction between “progress” and “reaction.” With it comes an accompanying non-judgmentalism, a relativism that turns out to be more coercive, authoritarian, and intolerant than the old morality and the old religions. . . .
To affirm the non-arbitrary reality of men and women, as someone like Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling has done with no great fanfare, to show respect, or even esteem, for the essential complementarity of men and women, biological or otherwise, is to risk ridicule, cancellation, and social oblivion. A denial of the most elementary realities is now a precondition for being tolerated by those who adhere to the new morality and who control the commanding heights of our society. In decisive respects, it was safer to be a (discreet) atheist in medieval Europe.
8. At Tablet Magazine, Andrew Nutting says Yugoslavia, fueled by tribal/ethnic antagonisms marinated in Marxist-Leninism, and obsessed with victimhood, was a precursor to the American Left. From the piece:
Coincidentally or not, American Marxist academics began championing the racial branch of wokeness known as critical race theory in the late 1980s, at the same moment when Milošević was using Serb nationalism and a series of well-timed angry mobs to stage a hostile takeover of Yugoslavia’s political institutions. Perhaps word travels fast in Marxist circles. Or perhaps the fall of communism required ideologues in both the East and the West to come up with new formulations by which to maintain their imagined centrality within the historical process, and to assemble new ranks of followers within the ruins of their former projects.
Milošević had been a high-ranking member of Yugoslavia’s League of Communists, and a drab, cookie-cutter Brezhnevian bureaucrat spouting communist clichés about the dangers of ethnic nationalism, until he abruptly embraced impassioned Serb nationalism in an April 1987 power grab. That cynical, opportunistic transformation means that Milošević, once labeled “The Face of Evil” by a Newsweek magazine cover, is a key historical link between orthodox Marxism and so-called “cultural Marxism,” which replaces theories of bourgeois-proletariat class conflicts with theories of ethnic, racial, and other identity-based conflicts as the motors of history. It is notable that Milošević and the media he controlled maintained the veneer of Marxist-Leninist jargon after embracing Serb nationalism, vilifying political opponents of Albanian and Slovenian ethnicity as “counterrevolutionaries” in lieu of more straightforward ethnic slurs. Legendary Yugoslavian anti-communist dissident Milovan Djilas explained Milošević’s reinvention by quipping, “Yugoslavia is the laboratory of all communism.”
9. At The American Conservative, Christopher Brunet reports on the threat an ideological state attorney general poses to nonprofits that hail from elsewhere on the political spectrum. From the piece:
VDARE has not been charged with any crime, yet has “fought NYAG Letitia James, at a cost of up to $1 million, for nearly three years.” An onslaught of onerous subpoenas marks not a quest for justice but an orchestrated attempt to financially and morally bankrupt those who dare resist the liberal creed.
Letitia James’s electoral platform was built on this very promise: she vowed to “shine a bright light into every dark corner of [Donald Trump’s] real estate dealings,” just like she promised to “take tougher legal action on organizations that engage in . . . online hate speech against protected classes.” Except, James cannot actually take legal action against VDARE for their “hate speech against protected classes” because everything that VDARE writes is protected by the pesky First Amendment.
So she has been digging for a reason, any reason, to bring them both down, desperately searching for anything that could be construed as a misstep. “If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men,” said Cardinal Richelieu, “I will find something in them which will hang him.”
10. At UnHerd, Kathleen Stock offers a grim report from the front lines of the euthanasia wars, and finds so-called mercy killing is killing it. From the analysis:
Or to put it another way: the real reason why the activists’ rhetoric eventually will prevail is that, without prior commitment to some deeply felt theological or philosophical principle about the intrinsic value of human life, all that is left for most of us are vague intuitions and orphaned remnants of moral reasoning inherited from a formerly Christian outlook. And these are no match against the powerful lure of a vision of preventing personal physical suffering in future, or the suffering of loved ones, via the offering of a serene and painless death. . . .
As a matter of fact, though I myself cannot manage it, a full-throated and enthusiastic endorsement of utilitarianism and of the cumulative value of the collective over that of the individual might well knock the arguments of both Parris and Rantzen on the head. For, once introduced at scale and firmly embedded into existing social systems, the constant presence of the psychological possibility of assisted dying might easily wreak more quantifiable havoc than it prevents, in exactly the ways anticipated by critics: guilt-tripping those who feel like burdens into premature endings; tempting the already depressed towards easy oblivion, and so on. But to make this case convincingly would require a positive belief in something; and for many of us, real ardour for the principle of utility is just as hard to conjure up as a sincere belief in a Christian God. Those who want to see the back of assisted-dying laws had probably better start praying harder, though I wouldn’t hold out any hope.
11. At The Hedgehog Review, Martha Bayles reminds us that if you want a good literary character, you need a good plot. From the piece:
The most important of these insights is that plot is the key to character. Aristotle did not reach this conclusion because he thought character unimportant. Rather, it was because, as he argued in the Ethics, the only way for one human being to discern the true character of another is to observe the other’s actions over a long period, preferably a lifetime. In the theater, where such lengthy observation is not possible, tragedy forces the issue by taking “a man like ourselves,” who despite his good intentions stands “between the two extremes” of “eminently good and just” and “vice and depravity,” and subjecting him to at least one wrenching, agonizing “reversal of fortune.”
Thus, Aristotle defines tragedy as “an imitation of an action that is complete, and whole, and of a certain magnitude,” in which the “plot . . . is the first and most important thing.” He further states that a “well-constructed plot” needs a beginning, middle, and end—and that the best plots are “complex” in the sense of including various heart-stopping twists. These include “Reversal” (peripeteia), in which a key event turns out to mean the opposite of what is expected; “Recognition” (anagnorsis), in which a new discovery changes everything; and “Scene of Suffering” (pathos), in which a character experiences emotional distress, physical agony, or violent death (or all three).
12. At The Daily Yonder, Eliza Blue documents the travails of the accidental rancher, who, like any other human, lacks mastery of the weather (or of livestock!). From the article:
Until this last week, that is, when I came up against the only hard and fast rule I know about ranch life: Even if you expect the unexpected, you will still be surprised pretty regularly. With this in mind I went to check the sheep, and I knew I was going to see something crazy, because nothing crazy had happened in far too long. We were overdue. But, despite this premonition, was I still flabbergasted when the crazy thing I saw was a tiny, black-and-brown lamb leaping and jumping between and beneath the legs and the wooly bellies of the rest of the flock? Yes. Yes, I was.
My mind immediately started flipping through the rolodex of possibilities while simultaneously counting backwards through the calendar. “Five months before today would be early September . . . did the ram get out in September and I forgot?” I asked myself.
No, I was pretty sure it wasn’t that. Early September was when we’d weaned the previous spring’s lambs, however. We castrate most of our boy lambs, but I wanted to keep one intact as he was the last baby my oldest shetland ewe will have (she is now officially retired) and I wanted to ensure her genetics remained strong in the flock. I slowly counted forward from the middle of May, when that ram lamb was born, to the beginning of September. Was it possible this surprise baby was the progeny of a barely three-and-a-half month old father?
Lucky 13. At The Music Universe, Buddy Iahn reports on a . . . concerted . . . effort by a Big Voice to raise big bucks (Johnny Cash?) for a big country-music charity. From the big story:
Blake Shelton knew exactly how to impress on the final night of his 2024 Back to the Honky Tonk Tour by leaning into his roots and calling up his friends. The Ada, Oklahoma, native’s Saturday night (Mar 30th) performance at Tulsa’s BOK Center was brimming with guest performers, all fellow Okies.
The special occasion was Oklahoma Is All for the Hall, a fundraiser for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. The event raised nearly $800,000 for the nonprofit museum’s education programs, making it the most successful All for the Hall benefit offered outside of Nashville to date. Even Gwen Stefani showed up to sing. . . .
[Vince] Gill began the All for the Hall series of fundraising concerts in 2005 by suggesting that country music artists donate the proceeds from one annual performance to the nonprofit Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. Proceeds from Shelton’s Saturday show support the museum’s educational initiatives, including its flagship Words & Music program, which allows students to tell their stories by writing original song lyrics while developing language arts skills. The museum’s educational offerings directly served more than 230,000 people last year through in-person and virtual programs.
Bonus. At Quillette, Julia Friedman contemplates how narcissism is a driving force of our culture and time. Narcissism for All:
Sigmund Freud’s 1914 paper “On Narcissism” emphasized that very point. Freud’s concept of narcissism described self-love as a withdrawal of libidinal interest from the outside world. Freud was not the first psychiatrist to describe narcissism, but he was the first to relate his definition to wider society. This connection was later developed in an earlier bestseller by Christopher Lasch. Published in 1979, The Culture of Narcissism went through multiple editions, and was reprinted most recently in 2018. Over four decades since its initial release, Lasch’s book now seems prophetic. The titles of its chapters and sub-chapters read like a bullet list of the current narcissistic zeitgeist: “the awareness movement and the social invasion of the self”; “the narcissistic personality of our time”; “the banality of pseudo-self-awareness: theatrics of politics and everyday existence”; “ironic detachment as an escape from routine”; “schooling and the new illiteracy”; “the atrophy of competence”; and “paternalism without the father,” are a few of the topics he tackled.
Lasch’s exposition of the “denial of the past, superficially progressive and optimistic” but proving “on closer analysis to embody the despair of a society that cannot face the future” anticipates 21st century revisionist movements that range from dumbing down the curricula to rebranding commercial products deemed insufficiently sensitive:
In a narcissistic society—a society that gives increasing prominence and encouragement to narcissistic traits—the cultural devaluation of the past reflects not only the poverty of the prevailing ideologies, which have lost their grip on reality and abandoned the attempt to master it, but the poverty of the narcissist’s inner life.
For the Good of the Cause
Uno. The Center for Civil Society hosts an important webinar on Thursday, April 25, on “American Jews, Philanthropic Traditions, and Harsh New Realities.” Your Humble Correspondent will interview a trio of experts—Alexandra Rosenberg, senior director of development at Tikvah, Rebecca Sugar, author and longtime leader in Jewish philanthropic management, and Rabbi Rob Thomas, cybersecurity expert and philanthropist—about an ancient faith and its unique practices—and philosophy—of charity, conducted in and contributing to the tapestry of a country supposedly intolerant of intolerance, but now stained by repeated examples of elite antisemitism. You’ll want to register (the webinar is free, takes place, via Zoom, from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m., Eastern)—easily done right here.
Due. It’s almost here: The new AmPhil “Scotch Talk” will be coming at you (via Zoom) next week on Tuesday, April 16, from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. (Eastern), with the quartet of Jeremy Beer, John LaBarbara, Jason Lloyd, and Boaz Witbeck on hand to share buckets of wisdom about finding and fostering Major Gifts. Get the ice, the tumbler, and the libation ready—but make sure you sign up, which you can do right here.
Tre. Save those dates! October 23-24. And mark the location! Pepperdine University in Malibu, CA. Why? Because that’s when and where the Center for Civil Society will be hosting its 2024 Givers, Doers, & Thinkers conference, this one on “K to Campus: How the Education Reform Movement Can Reshape Higher Ed.” Agenda and speakers will be announced soon, but registering, getting info, and all such stuff can be done and found right here.
Quattro. At Philanthropy Daily, Andrew Campanella explains why expanding school choice enhances civil society. Read it here.
Department of Bad Jokes
Q: What do they serve for breakfast at the Vesuvius Diner?
A: Panquakes.
A Dios
Locusts, the dark sky . . . maybe it’s time to crack open Exodus and get a refresher on the plagues (frogs . . . boils . . . flies . . .).
May Our Hearts Be Not Hard like That of Pharaoh,
Jack Fowler, who is open to being plagued by emails at jfowler@amphil.com.
