A Dozen-Plus Stimulants, Gathered for Your Edification and Inspiration
Dear Intelligent American,
Maybe it was Instagram or Facebook, but whatever the platform, up popped a stark and powerful video of a pretty young lady, despondent: Her beauty had been marred by a patina of tattoos, black-ink dabblings strewn all over, unnerving (okay, ugly) in the collective, and some individual ones especially—in particular one of a spider located at the center of her throat. The marring of the canvas God gave her now keeps her up at night.
How could I have done this to myself?
Poor thing. Her self-decoration is far worse than a mustache on the Mona Lisa. She deserves prayers. As do others with such regrets—there must be many, and of them, the majority women (as they are the more tattooed than are men).
Tattooing—it seems now generationally sacramental—is more than a lark or the comic prop (“On her back is the Battle of Waterloo, beside it the Wreck of the Hesperus too, and proudly above the waves the Red, White and Blue”) of Groucho crooning about Lydia, oh Lydia. There are serious societal downsides to this craze, and of course despairing individual ones. In City Journal thirty years ago, Theodore Dalrymple began penning his warnings. You can read one of his pieces here.
It should come as no surprise that tattoo removal has become a big and growing business (in the $Billions). If it interests you, read about that here.
Enough with the Sermonizing, on to the Main Attraction
1. At The Classical Teacher, Allison Tuttle explains the two faces of science. From the article:
The first face of modern science, the calm countenance of pious learning, is the face worn by the vast majority of those who study nature today: stargazers, birdwatchers, homeschooling mothers, all children, many armchair philosophers and some professional ones, and a surprising number of field and laboratory scientists. They have learned from Galileo that the moon is made of rocks, from William Harvey that the blood circulates, from Joseph Lister that they ought to wash their hands, and from many scientists many other truths besides. They are comfortable with the periodic table, unafraid of what the geological record may reveal, and even pay a respectful if somewhat quizzical regard to the mysteries of quantum physics. And many of them regularly worship Nature’s God.
The second face of modern science is also widespread, and seems to hold what T. S. Eliot once called “all the most valuable advertising space,” enjoying bully pulpits in academia and the media, from which it trumpets in dreary monotony the dirge of chance and necessity, of the land beyond freedom and dignity, and of the universe without a cause.
What do men of faith require in order to find in that first science the great good of truths lasting and significant? What can men of faith do to offer some measure of composure and peace to those now wearing the anguished and angry faces of that second science?
2. At Catholic World Report, George Weigel performs a forensic study on “human composting.” From the piece:
That crisis comes into sharpest focus when we consider the loathsome practice that goes by the Orwellian moniker “natural organic reduction,” in which thermophile microbes reduce the mortal remains of men and women to compost, which can then be used like the compost you buy at Home Depot. Green proponents of this barbarism claim that human composting has ecological value because it turns dead bodies into nutrients of the soil—which is probably not how the gardeners among relatives of the 73,000 British Empire soldiers killed during World War I’s Battles of the Somme imagined the fate of their loved ones whose remains were never found. Extremist greens thus demonstrate once again that they worship a false god, Gaia.
Human composting is legal in thirteen states (Washington, Colorado, Oregon, Vermont, California, New York, Nevada, Arizona, Delaware, Maryland, Minnesota, Maine, and Georgia). In every instance, the local Church has opposed the legalization of turning the bodies of the dead into fertilizer. Predictably, however, some in the Permission-Slip Subdivision of the Catholic bioethics guild have defended the practice, whose grisly precursors include some of the most grotesque practices of Nazi Germany’s extermination camps, where human remains were turned into bars of soap.
Human composting does not, as some of its Catholic proponents suggest, reflect the biblical teaching that we are dust and to dust we shall return (see Genesis 3:19). On the contrary: it reflects the warped, degraded anthropology that regards humanity as the accidental result of cosmic biochemical forces that, over billions of years, just happened to produce us.
Say What?
Say this: The Center For Civil Society firmly contends it is vital to make much about the Semiquincentennial, for a host of reasons (such as revitalizing our necessary love for civics). Which is why on November 5-6 in Philadelphia it will be hosting an important conference on “Civil Society and America at 250: The Past and Future of What Has Made America Exceptional.” Learn more about it right here. And do sign up!
OK, We’ve Had Our Say . . .
3. At The Catholic Herald, Katherine Bennett finds that acclaimed British singer and actress Lily Allen has been “groomed” by Western culture. From the piece:
As important as it is to remember the ongoing devastation caused by the Pakistani grooming gangs, this is not about them, it’s about life in modern Britain for a young girl.
Western society is one big grooming gang, and Lily Allen (who casually spoke of the numerous abortions she has had), is a victim of it.
She, and many Lilys besides (I’m looking at you Phillips), is the victim of a failed liberalism, a flattened hierarchy, a cancerous rights-based culture and that big win for men, feminism. Would Lily Allen be happier living in Christendom? Undoubtedly, yes.
But, happiness, like love, is a word that has been perverted such that we now use it to mean subjective satisfaction, rather than an eternal reality.
4. At National Review, John O’Sullivan says the late Margaret Thatcher is having a moment. From the reflection:
If Thatcherism is to play a serious part in any revival of the Tory party, the leftist myths about Thatcher’s record will have to be rebutted by serious historians and by party leaders. Her real record is well worth defending. That’s important for the Tories, because Thatcher is one their few remaining serious assets. Keeping her as their sole property is vital for them. Since they lost last year’s election in a landslide, emerging with only 121 seats in a Parliament of 650, they are frequently dismissed as being on their way to extinction. Recent opinion polls have shown Reform to be the most popular of the three leading parties, followed by Labour, with the Tories lagging in third place. In the recent local elections, Reform won hands down, with almost a third of the national total, drawing votes not only from the Tories but also from Labour. It also looked like a more substantial threat to Labour than the Tories, which is a political factor in itself. It negates the main weakness of a new party—namely, that the votes it gains are “wasted” because it can’t win. That fate now threatens the Tories.
One unnoticed factor, however, is that Thatcherism has supporters in both of the conservative parties. Reform’s leader, Nigel Farage, in addition to being a naturally gifted politician, is the nearest thing to the perfect Thatcherite outside her old party. Between now and the next election, both conservative parties will be fighting for predominance in every special election and local election. Only as the election looms will they have the evidence of which is stronger and where, which they need if they are to discuss an electoral pact between them at all seriously. That will be a tall order at any time. But one can’t dismiss ideological sympathy when estimating its chances.
5. At City Journal, Danny Crichton sizes up the backlash to AI. From the analysis:
Though the AI federal preemption measure received broad-based support early on and was included in the must-pass reconciliation bill, it ultimately failed in this extraordinarily lopsided 99–1 vote, even after proposals were circulated to weaken it by shortening it from ten to five years.
How did we get from massive, bipartisan majorities supporting pro-competition, pro-technology measures like the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to an all-but-unanimous vote in favor of ceding AI regulation to the whim of 50 state legislatures and countless municipalities?
The answer is popular backlash. Pew polled Americans back in April on their views about artificial intelligence. The results are among the most striking I have ever seen. There is an extraordinary gap in outlook between the experts building AI and the public as a whole.
Per Pew, only 17 percent of Americans believe that AI will have any positive impacts. A majority said that they are more concerned than excited about its prospects. Less than a quarter believe AI will benefit them at work. AI experts, on the other hand, are wildly more optimistic across all measures.
6. At Front Porch Republic, Holly Stockley makes the appeal for having the plot of land. From the piece:
Some local governments and nonprofits have tried to slow the advance of sprawl through agricultural or conservation easements. But these are typically designed with agribusiness in mind. The assumptions built into the rules favor large parcels and large machinery. They preserve acreage, not culture. And they do almost nothing to restore the relationship between people and the land—not at the human scale, not at the family scale.
But what if we could take the best parts of all these models and recombine them? What if we borrowed Strong Towns’ idea of “thickening”—focusing growth where people already live—and married it to a genuine preservation of farmland? Not just as landscape, or yield per acre, but as a living part of the community: stewarded, productive, and accessible. What if, instead of isolating people on ornamental plots, we offered them a real oikos—a household economy in the truest, oldest sense of the word?
We used to know how to do this—not only in colonial New England villages with their shared commons, or in Puritan towns founded on theological and agrarian unity. Sometimes the pattern was formal. Consider James Oglethorpe’s plan for Savannah, Georgia: each household received a small residential lot within the city grid, a five-acre garden plot outside the walls, and a forty-five-acre farm further out. It was a nested system of care and responsibility—intended to ensure provision, community, and rootedness all at once.
7. At TomKlingenstein.com, Bradley Watson reports from the front lines of the war against managerial rule. From the piece:
For many decades, we’ve been governed by faceless bureaucrats who span our public and quasi-public institutions, not to mention large private corporations. They benefit personally from the obfuscating processes they design and administer and then cloak in “empty public rituals and the meaningless rhetoric of legalism.” These governing authorities form a coherent class for whom actual democracy is an existential threat because it elevates the majoritarian choices of people who do not share elite class interests.
The managers are engaged in a “markedly moralistic project of political and social transformation.” Their core beliefs include “science,” along with the pursuit of material and hedonistic satisfaction. Their conceit is that they are uniquely well positioned to understand and deliver rational goods in a way that the unwashed masses never could. They are therefore at war not only with democracy, but with human nature itself. They see ordinary citizens as raw material for a project that aims at reducing men to a collection of base impulses and economic calculations to be manipulated by the cognoscenti. All traditions, cultures, and old ideas must be overcome in the name of universal progress and homogenization.
8. At RealClear Politics, Peter Berkowitz explains that higher-ed reform may need to take some of its own medicine. From the article:
We need reformers who can explain that liberal education aims to form cultivated human beings capable of exercising wisely the rights and discharging effectively the responsibilities of free citizens.
We need reformers who understand that liberal education must be structured around study of American ideas and institutions; the seminal intellectual achievements—scientific as well as literary—and decisive events of Western civilization; and the languages, culture, and history of other civilizations.
And we need reformers who know that universities don’t in the first place need conservative professors or progressive professors but rather professors endowed with the old-fashioned liberal spirit. Such professors furnish students’ minds with facts and observations, methods and interpretations, and evidence and arguments. And such professors assist students in thinking for themselves by teaching that authors and texts must be understood before one refutes or embraces them, and that understanding an idea or an institution involves examining not only where it breaks down but also how it gained acceptance and why it exerted influence.
9. At Commentary Magazine, Seth Mandel finds media mendacity that distorts a story about humanitarian aid because it does not fit a Hamas-dictated narrative. From the article:
GHF [Gaza Humanitarian Foundation] is the America- and Israel-backed humanitarian distribution firm that feeds Gazan civilians but doesn’t funnel its supplies through Hamas. This way, there is no secondhand market that enriches and entrenches Hamas’s rule.
The launch of the GHF should have been treated as a major step toward ending the war and prioritizing the wellbeing of Gazans over that of Hamas. Instead, the fact that GHF excluded Hamas was treated as a drawback.
Even still, the backlash against a humanitarian organization feeding Gazans was deranged—pro-Hamas NGOs and the anti-Israel media went to war against the humanitarians. The Washington Post article was one example. There would be more.
Last week, the Associated Press published a poorly sourced “investigation” into violence at GHF distribution points. It “found”—according to unverified sources—that GHF contractors were shooting at or near crowds of Palestinians approaching aid sites. The AP published this despite the fact that there was no visual evidence of the alleged abuses, even though Palestinians have been videorecording everything they can. The AP used the sound of gunfire on videos as its proof.
10. At The74, edu-guru Bruno Manno reports on studies that show teens world-wide are having troubles with post-high school transitioning. From the piece:
If students are neither exposed to nor experience career options, they are unlikely to acquire the knowledge, networks and vocational identity needed for adult success. According to the OECD report, students who recall speaking to career professionals or participating in job shadowing are far more likely to have career goals aligned with labor market needs.
So what can state and district leaders and advocates do?
First, start the formal career conversation sooner. Closing the exposure and experience gaps should begin as early as middle school. The longer the wait, the more likely that young people will become lost in transition from school to their next stage.
Second, widen the scope of career education. The focus on college should give way to a menu that includes certificates, two-year degrees, skilled trades, military service, and career and technical education.
11. At Law & Liberty, Josh Appel has advice for conservatives on what to do when they win. From the essay:
Why is it that, despite extraordinary civil rights gains, so many progressives came to insist that racism remained deeply embedded in American institutions? Why, after electing a black president—twice—did Democrats double down on the rhetoric of systemic oppression? It seems, at times, that they were in search of a problem that no longer existed in the same form.
One explanation lies in a deeper cultural shift, as described by the recently deceased philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre in his masterwork, After Virtue. MacIntyre argued that modern moral discourse has become unmoored from the classical and religious traditions that once gave it coherence. In earlier eras, virtue ethics presumed a shared understanding of human purpose and excellence rooted in a deep sense of teleology. But something about modernity erodes those foundations. As a result, words like freedom, liberty, moral, right, and just don’t describe objective truth but are instead reflections of personal preference or emotional appeal.
According to MacIntyre, “What we possess . . . are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts which now lack those contexts from which their significance derived. We possess indeed simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have-very largely, if not entirely-lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, or morality.”
12. More L&L: Hans Eicholz suggests a might-have-been Magna Carta. Too bad, England! From the essay:
Among the unsung, or rarely sung heroes of the American Revolution is John Dickinson. Of the many reasons for this neglect, none is perhaps more pertinent than his refusal to put his signature to the Declaration when the time came. Biographers and historians have long pointed to this as evidence of a conservative disposition and have usually cited his authorship, some 250 years ago this July, of the Olive Branch Petition, the final attempt of the colonists to avoid open warfare with the mother country.
Of all the revolutionaries, it is true, Dickinson was perhaps the most solicitous for reconciliation with England. But he was far from being afraid of assuming great personal risk. Along with the tendering of the Olive Branch to the king, he also co-authored that other great document of the Revolution, The Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms, adopted by the Second Continental Congress on July 6, 1775. This document has received far less scrutiny than it deserves, in large part because it was overshadowed by the Declaration of Independence a year later.
And yet, had reconciliation taken place, this document, along with the Olive Branch, would likely have assumed a place alongside The English Bill of Rights, The Petition of Right, and even Magna Carta as among the great precedents in the panoply of documents composing the imperial constitution. Indeed, given the end sought by Dickinson, The Declaration of Causes would have done for the empire what the Great Charter had done for the kingdom itself: Ensure essential English liberties—in this instance, the liberties of Englishmen to local self-government throughout the far-flung reaches of the empire.
Lucky 13. At The Morning Journal in Lorain, OH, reporter Heather Chapin serves up fundraising news about the happy intersection of ice cream, root beer, and pickleball. From the story:
The Friends of Findley State Park, Inc., hosted a root beer float social July 5 and served more than 100 people in an effort to raise funds for the expansive park.
“We have really big dreams that seem to be pushed back now,” said Tricia Andel, president of the organization, of recent budget cuts at the park.
The event was held from 1 to 3 p.m. on the side of the campground’s shelter house.
The shelter house, which has a concrete pad lined with picnic tables and a roof, was built in 2002 from funds raised by the Friends of Findley State Park, according to Valerie Gardner, the vice president of the group.
Each root beer float was made simplistically with vanilla ice cream and root beer and sold for $2.
Bonus. At First Things, Fr. Clodovis Boff (brother of the infamous “Liberation Theology” guru) tells Latin America’s Catholic bishops there you go again. From the open letter:
And yet, you declare without hesitation that you hear the “cries” of the people and are “aware of today’s challenges.” But does your listening reach deeply enough, or is it merely superficial? When I read your list of today’s “cries” and “challenges,” I see nothing beyond what even the most pedestrian journalists and sociologists already point out. Do you not hear, dear brothers, that from the depths of the world there rises today a formidable cry for God—a cry even many secular analysts hear? Doesn’t the Church and her ministers exist precisely to listen to this cry and respond with the true and full answer? For social cries, we have governments and NGOs. Certainly, the Church cannot remain absent in these areas, but she is not the protagonist there. Her specific and higher field of action is precisely responding to the cry for God.
I know that you bishops are continually pressured by public opinion to self-identify as either progressive or traditionalist, right-wing or left-wing. But are these appropriate categories for bishops? Aren’t you, rather, men of God and ministers of Christ? On this point, St. Paul is unequivocal: “This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God” (1 Cor. 4:1). The Church is first and foremost the sacrament of salvation, not merely a social institution, progressive or otherwise. The Church exists to proclaim Christ and his grace. This is her central focus, her greatest and perennial mission. Everything else comes second. Forgive me, brothers, if I’m simply repeating what you already know. But if that’s the case, why is none of it evident in your message—or in CELAM’s documents in general? Reading them, one can’t help but conclude that the Church’s primary concern on our continent is not the cause of Christ and the salvation he has won for us, but rather social issues like justice, peace, and ecology—which you repeat in your message like a worn-out refrain.
For the Good of the Cause
Uno. On the new episode of the “Givers Doers, & Thinkers” podcast, Jeremy Beer and Professor Patrick Deneen discuss the end of liberalism. Listen here.
Due. At Philanthropy Daily, Howard Husock says National Endowment for the Humanities budget cuts may come with unintended results. Read it here.
Department of Bad Jokes
Q: Why were the strawberry and grape children so upset?
A: Because their mothers were in a jam.
Extra Bad Joke
Q: What do you call someone with no body and no nose?
A: Nobody knows.
A Dios
A mission of the Center for Civil Society is to invigorate voluntary associations, knowing their centrality to this Republic, and favoring charitable engagement that is proximate, rather than distant. This past Sunday, at Catholic services, came a favorite Gospel reading (Luke 10:25-37): the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Connecting the big fat dots between charity and salvation, it commences with the inquiry of how one obtains eternal life, divinely answered by the tale of intense and immediate charity. Nice story, no? Yes, but, actually, it is more than a story, more than an explanation. It is an order. The conclusion: “Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do likewise.’” Sans caveats such as if you feel like it or should the mood strike. Likewise, let us go and do.
May We Share Our Granted Blessings,
Jack Fowler, who is looking for his mites at jfowler@amphil.com.
