Dear Intelligent American,
This missive is mailed on October 31st, All Hallow’s Eve, which is followed by All Saints’ Day, in turn followed by All Souls’ Day. The first of the “Autumn Triduum” seems to have become a de facto national holiday, when Gen X, Y, and Z adults, further extending their prolonged adolescence, increasingly steal the spotlight from little kids in “celebrating.” (Admittedly, given demographic charts and declining fertility rates, there are less tykes to ask for Kit Kats and candied apples.)
The second day remains an actual national holiday in many Christian countries, including those (Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium to name a few) where most people don’t attend Church.
The third is of much interest to this Penitential Scribbler and admitted papist, who, as he nears the glue factory, wonders keenly about Purgatory, and the souls there (“Holy Souls” by tradition, as they will eventually reach Paradise, but not before purging, hence the name). More tradition: On November 2nd, their torments are said to find temporary relief when the Mother of God joins their sorrowful company and brings solace.
Is all / any of this true? Such are the thoughts that can keep one awake at night. Or is insomnia better blamed on the belly full of trick-or-treat Snickers. If it’s a sin to throw food away, that must apply to Baby Ruths, Almond Joys, and all else left inside the plastic pumpkin!
Herewith Some Brain Candy
1. At Plough, Christopher Scott Carpenter tells of a monk who is obliged to fish while his brothers pray. From the article:
Between sips of the juice and bites of the sandwich and chocolate bar I engage in light conversation. I learn his name is Father Ieremías (“Jeremy, for you,” he says with another smile). Since nobody can be born on Athos, a peninsula that forbids women, he, like all monks, had to come from somewhere else. I learn he was born in Thessaloniki, and pursued a career as a teacher. His subjects were first history, then theology. This, he says, is why he knows some English, though he admits he rarely has the chance to speak it.
I point to the photo of him and the tuna. He nods and reveals his primary role within the monastery Stavronikita is that of fishermonk, a portmanteau I hadn’t considered before, but an obvious one nonetheless. Monks are allowed exclusive rights to fish in the 500 meters of sea surrounding the peninsula. They utilize rods, nets, and small, sometimes motorized boats. The guiding ethos on the peninsula is sustainability; after all, the monasteries grow and source their own food, and each monk reduces his net consumption to near-nil, using only what is needed and eschewing the rest.
As we continue to talk, Father Jeremy doesn’t strike me as being like the rest of the Holy Community. While the rest of the brotherhood rises in the very early morning to perform the daily liturgy, Jeremy rises to perform the duties of a fisherman. Solitude is a shared experience for all monks, but Jeremy prefers solitude amidst rolling waters, or talkative birds. The chess board, the tools, the fishing rod—devotion comes in many forms.
2. At Claremont Review of Books, Christopher Flannery checks out a book (by John McWhorter) on America’s pronoun problem. From the review:
It is because pronouns are so important, our “linguistic basal ganglia,” that they stir up so much trouble. New nouns, verbs, and adjectives are the norm, but “there are never” new pronouns, writes McWhorter, and almost never new prepositions, conjunctions, or articles for that matter. In his studies of a language called Kusunda, spoken fluently by just one person in Nepal at the time of his writing, McWhorter finds a strong example of how enduring pronouns tend to be compared with other elements of human language. “People really, really like their pronouns to stay the same.”
As testimony to how quickly and bigly language can change, especially where pronouns are not concerned, one of our editors told me the other day that his 15-year-old regularly says things like “cap,” “goated,” “mad buss,” and “low-key selling.” I didn’t know what any of these things meant until I Grokked them. I didn’t know what Grokking was until a few months ago. It didn’t exist, except as a little-known verb coined by Robert Heinlein in his novel Stranger in a Strange Land (1961). I can remember when “cringe” as an adjective sounded completely new and foreign to my ear. Even now, I couldn’t use the term without sounding like an old guy trying too hard to be with it. It sounds normal and established when I hear young friends throwing it around among themselves, but my guess is they would feel a little self-conscious or uncertain using it when addressing an oldster like me.
3. At World, Emily A. Ibrahim spotlights how genetic testing can mean doom for Down Syndrome babies. From the article:
Once reserved for high-risk pregnancies, genetic testing—especially NIPT—is now becoming standard across all risk categories. With an increase in testing has come an increase in terminated pregnancies, particularly for those diagnosed with DS. With NIPT forecasted to continue expanding, Christians must consider the tragic effects this could have on babies with DS.
When doctors deliver news of a DS diagnosis to parents, the focus is often on the limitations of DS, yet the accomplishments of individuals with DS are numerous and varied. They are actors, athletes, artists, entrepreneurs, motivational speakers, college graduates, and even politicians. We should genuinely rejoice in these accomplishments and fervently work to support people with DS to reach their full potential, yet we must not confuse accomplishments with value.
The adult with DS who needs full-time care is just as valuable and worthy of life as the famous athlete or motivational speaker. The worth of individuals with DS is not dependent upon what they can or cannot achieve, but rather on the fact that they are humans created in the image of God. Such a life is to be celebrated, not lamented.
4. At Quadrant, Ian Callinan explores some of the 20th Century’s great trilogy authors. From the piece:
Gardam, like her near contemporary Mary Wesley, another excellent author whose novel The Camomile Lawn was both a literary and television triumph, was long lived. Born in 1928, Gardam died in April this year. By then she had written many books and short stories. In these times of political correctness, a male reader or reviewer might be regarded as disentitled to express any opinion about female sensitivities and sensibilities; nonetheless it seems to me that to read Gardam’s work is to enter into the mind of a female of her times and gain some understanding of the vulnerabilities, and obstacles, in the lives of middle-class women.
Gardam’s Old Filth trilogy was not as well received as some of her other books and as it should have been. My opinion might be peculiar because there are several features of the trilogy which, to use that overworked word nowadays, resonated with me. The first is the name of the principal character, the lawyer Sir Edward Feathers. Feathers seems to be exactly the sort of name that a lawyer might have. I performed my duties, admittedly imperfectly, as an article clerk in a firm called Feather, Walker & Delaney. Sir Edward Feathers is a tall, distinguished looking barrister and subsequently a judge, always impeccably turned out and unmistakably an old boy of one of the Great Public Schools in Britain. A second feature was Feathers’s career, which reached its inevitable height when he was appointed a judge of the highest court of Hong Kong towards the end of empire. In another life I think I would like to have lived and practised in that exciting city.
5. At Forbes, edu guru Bruno V. Manno populates the spectrum of major assessments of the consequence of AI, ranging from horror to hosannah. From the article:
To cut through the noise, here are five AI and jobs story lines on a spectrum from “machines take over” to “humans level up.” This spectrum approach may help us communicate with each other in more nuanced ways rather than arguing past each other.
1) Displacement: The Job Apocalypse Story This is the starkest view. As AI becomes cheaper and more capable, it replaces people across a widening set of tasks, eliminating roles faster than new ones appear. Advocates point to junior white-collar jobs—coders, writers, analysts—where entry-level work overlaps with what AI can now draft or debug. The fear isn’t just layoffs. It’s a robot future that breeds fatalism. It can lead to structural unemployment and widening gaps between those who own or orchestrate AI technology and those who don’t. This perspective is helpful as a warning label. It pushes us to build sturdier safety nets and ask who captures the gains.
6. At National Review, Iain Murray reports on the Oxford Union controversy around a president-elect who had rotten things to say about the murder of Charlie Kirk. From the piece:
While the Union has a reputation as a conservative institution, it goes through radical, even left-wing phases. In the 1930s, for instance, the Union famously passed the motion “This House would in no circumstances fight for King and Country,” much to the outrage of the Society’s alumni, who attempted and failed to have the motion expunged from its records. In the 1960s, as Hitchens related, it adjourned sine die for the only time in its history, owing to a riot over the Vietnam War, in the presence of the then foreign secretary (a former officer of the Union himself.)
Yet throughout all of this, there were two constants, an at-times grudging respect for one’s political foes (even if rivalries formed in the Union’s back rooms carried on into Parliament and beyond) and a respect for what the Union represented at Oxford and in the United Kingdom both—a promise of a venue for the peaceful yet cut-and-thrust exchange of views crystallized in vigorous debate. To this end, the Union had rules of debate that make Roberts’ Rules of Orders look as if they’ve been scribbled on the back of a napkin.
Much of this seems to have collapsed in recent years. One thing that struck me when examining the term card (the booklet that lays out the society’s activities for the term) for Michaelmas is that, like Britain as a whole, the Union has become bureaucratized. Where previously the president and three junior elected officers ran the place, supported by elected committee members with a few appointed committees where expertise was necessary (such as the Library and Rules Committees on which I served), the current Union administration has no fewer than 18 “senior appointed” officers.
7. At City Journal, Benjamin and Jenna Storey explain why schools of “Civic Thought” matter. From the article:
Enter the Schools of Civic Thought. Schools of Civic Thought are entirely new academic units, with the same powers as other departments, dedicated to offering university-level civic education. Since citizenship is always exercised in a particular time and place, their curricula focus on the American political tradition. The University of Florida’s Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education, for example, offers a course called “What Is America For?” The University of Tennessee’s Institute for American Civics offers “Construction and Reconstruction of the American Republic.” While similar courses were once taught in history or political science departments, they have fallen largely out of favor.
Most of these schools contextualize the development of American ideals and institutions within a broader framework about the challenge of governing ourselves. The School of Civic Leadership at the University of Texas at Austin, for example, requires majors to take a course in “Perennial Problems in Civic Thought.” Such a broad vantage makes sense; after all, human self-government stretches back through British constitutionalism to classical republicanism, which itself has roots in a story that spans East and West.
Some Schools of Civic Thought are integrating the social sciences into their offerings. This work is underway at Ohio’s State’s Chase Center, which incorporates sociology and anthropology into its curricula, and the University of Texas’s aforementioned School of Civic Leadership, which combines offerings in economics with constitutional theory and moral philosophy. Such efforts at unifying disciplines are rare in the fragmented modern university.
8. At The Spectator World, Alexander M. Bielakowski argues that the army still needs its horses. From the commentary:
You may have seen the Army’s recent decision to eliminate all its horse-mounted ceremonial units in a cost-saving measure. Many will immediately attribute this decision exclusively to President Trump and the Department of Government Deficiency (DoGE). I know better, and so does anybody who served in the Army but retained a healthy sense of skepticism. While there has certainly been an emphasis on cost-cutting and savings, this decision was made by someone much lower in the food chain. Some one- or two-star general or some Deputy Assistant Undersecretary of the Army for God Knows What decided that for a mere $2,000,000 of savings (the Department of the Army’s total annual budget for 2024 was $165.6 billion), the Army would eliminate one of its few historical vestiges and an example for relatively cheap positive public relations.
Every other branch of the armed forces has its quirks. The Air Force has been described as an organization staffed with businessmen in flight suits. The Navy is an organization that will sacrifice anyone to save face (do a Google search on how often ship commanders are relieved because of a “loss of confidence.”) The Marine Corps not only takes pride in being the physically toughest branch of service but also seems to enjoy suffering in an almost strangely masochistic way. The Army, however, owing to its status as the first American armed force and almost always the largest, doesn’t seem to have a true ethos of its own.
9. At The Wall Street Journal, Scott Walter argues that any investigation of leftist nonprofits must be done carefully. From the op-ed:
Compared with tax-law cases, criminal prosecutions of nonprofits or their donors would rightly face a much higher bar, because it must be proved that they intended to facilitate lawbreaking. Investigations in this area should begin by focusing on people who commit crimes before expanding outward to target any nonprofits or donors for aiding criminal acts.
Again, such charges won’t be easy to prove. Aiding and abetting a crime entails knowingly and intentionally assisting in its commission, while a conviction for conspiracy requires proving that a defendant intentionally entered into an agreement to commit a crime, and then an overt act in support of the conspiracy was carried out. If the Open Society Foundations’ claims of innocence are true, they have nothing to fear.
On the other hand, some nonprofit observers point to examples like the shutdown of streets surrounding Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport last year by the radical anti-Israel group A15 Action. Those blockages arguably violated federal civil-rights law. A Tides Center group advertised online in advance that it was raising money to bail out any A15 members who were arrested, which arguably makes Tides an accomplice or conspirator to the crimes that led to arrests.
10. At The European Conservative, Kristen Ziccarelli seeks a MAGA revolution—Monarchy and God Again. From the piece:
One of the greatest errors of modern Western culture is its misconstruing of the monarchy—both the monarchs themselves and the institution. Louis de Bourbon’s words, and the grounds on which he stakes his offer, are a testament to the virtue of his position—even though centuries have passed since his ancestors (who include the guillotined King Louis XVI) were removed from royal office, he feels an overwhelming attachment to his people and to his lineage—to a culture of duty. This instinct of service oriented towards unity is a bold contrast with the French Republic’s factionalism and short-sightedness.
The argument for ‘monarchy and God again’ (i.e., a Catholic monarchy) derives from centuries of church thought and tradition—it is not a self-justifying power. It is an office conferred by God and affirmed by church leadership (or, in some cases, credibly disaffirmed). Importantly, the monarchy demands high standards of honor, sacrifice, and service, and its legitimacy flows from this service ordered toward the sacred, not from popularity or consent alone. Given the record of human frailty and notoriously corrupt monarchs across the centuries, it would be naïve to claim that monarchy is intrinsically virtuous in practice. Yet the Church never taught that it must be. Monarchs are often unworthy of their office; still, the offices themselves are necessary. Both serve as visible signs that authority is not appointed but anointed by God. The failings of kings do not disprove the form; they prove the need for transcendent grace to animate it.
11. At Tablet Magazine, Jeremy England finds that AI adoration may be modern idolatry worshipping. From the essay:
Moreover, the newness appears ominous as it reminds us of the limitations of both our biological and psychological capacities. Futurists are quick to point out what slow and unreliable cogitators we are, in supposed contrast with the superhuman robo-brains that soon may conquer us. But an equally grave and less fantastical question is this: Do we even trust ourselves to stay sane in the face of on-demand access to whole, synthetic, audiovisual worlds and personalities that we can craft and control for our own amusement? How can people thrive in, or even continue to maintain a grip on, the real world once they become addicted to all they can experience in a fake world?
Weighing against the frantic feeling is the reassuring wisdom of Solomon: There is nothing new under the sun. Granted, details make every moment and every human creation unique, but rather than focus on the nuts and bolts of how computers work, let us consider the various ways people may seek to relate to AI as it becomes more powerful. Some want a companion, an interlocutor who can listen and respond appropriately. Others need to solve practical problems in the real world and want AI not only to suggest solutions but also perhaps to implement them robotically. Perhaps most disturbingly, some have suggested lately that AI algorithms will soon be so much more intelligent than people that their recommendations will enable better decision-making than reliance on our own judgment, even to the extent that we will feel obligated to follow their instructions.
12. At Frontiers in Mental Health, Dean McKay finds there is a profound fear of being cancelled. From the analysis:
As society becomes increasingly polarized, people are being pressured to align themselves publicly with the currently accepted political narrative. It is not surprising that self-reported anxiety states are rising. In this essay, I will be arguing that these punishing social conditions are now in danger of generating new mental health disorders. In this essay, I argue that one particular anxiety disorder variant is becoming apparent, characterized by an irrational fear of being canceled. I am therefore naming this “akyró̱no̱phobia,” derived from the Greek meaning “to nullify.”
Anxiety disorders are highly prevalent in the general public, with estimates suggesting that close to 20% of the public will have had serious anxiety within the past year and that just over 34% will experience it during their lifetimes (Szuhany & Simon, 2022). Although the current diagnostic manual lists obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in a separate category, that condition is also marked by significant anxiety and afflicts around 2% of the population (Pampaloni et al., 2022). Collectively, this means that approximately 66 million Americans will suffer from an anxiety disorder or OCD in the next year.
Experts in anxiety disorders and OCD have begun to recognize a specific manifestation, marked by intense and exaggerated fears of being canceled. I recently engaged colleagues on an expert network regarding how frequently they have treated individuals with fears of being canceled. This informal polling showed that of 187 colleagues, 147 reported anywhere from two cases to dozens who report this specific fear. The symptoms associated with this fear have included such diverse behaviors as avoiding social interactions and online conversations, destroying emails received from others if the individual remotely suspects it has upsetting content, and seeking reassurance from past consensual sexual partners that their intimacy was, in fact, appropriate. This is not an exhaustive list, but one common thread is that the sufferers generally possess personal qualities that make them particularly low risk for committing any act that might be deemed suitable for cancelation in the online social ecosystem. Specifically, most people with OCD typically have higher levels of neuroticism, a personality trait that makes people risk-averse (Barlow et al., 2014).
Lucky 13. At Modern Age, James Gwartney explains how private property is central to freedom, and how government ownership is a threat to such. From the article:
In contrast with communal rights, private ownership grants individuals and private groups the exclusive right to control, benefit from, and transfer property as long as their actions do not harm the property of others. Each party is free to do what he wants with his private property as long as his use does not violate the property rights of another. While often associated with selfishness on the part of owners, private ownership would more properly be viewed as a means by which owners are protected against the selfishness of others. Private ownership provides legal protection against the seizure of one’s property via theft, violence (or threat of violence), or fraud by another party.
Finally, property may be owned by governments. The government ownership may involve either direct title to property or indirect ownership via taxation and regulation of property nominally owned by private parties. While state-owned property technically belongs to all, this does not mean everyone has the right to use it. In contrast with communal property, government ownership provides for exclusive use by designated parties. The political process determines how, by whom, and under what conditions government property may be used. Essentially, government ownership substitutes the decision-making of government officials and the political process for the choices of private owners.
Bonus. At Front Porch Republic, T.M. Moore sings the praises of the notebook. From the piece:
Entries in my journals over the years have included—doubtless like many of you—quotes from my reading, comments on quotes, book summaries, observations from creation, outlines of study projects, insights and meditations, lists and questions, notes from sermons, reflections on events or issues, poetry sketches, and ministry activities. These have been scattered throughout many notebooks without, alas, any effort to organize them.
In recent years I have been working to become more systematic in my notetaking, as Le Corbusier did with his. In my course “The Writing Pastor” I teach students to keep four notebooks going—on Scripture, Insights and Reflections, Quotations, and Study Projects. Students have found these four to be a good place for testing ideas and practicing their writing, as well as paying more attention to God’s self-revelation.
Lately, I have begun organizing my own notebooks into four categories (in addition to my Scripture notes): Ramblings, Reflections, Creation’s Praise, and Daily Ministry. I keep a pocket notebook at the ready, for capturing thoughts or observations. Entries in this notebook can be fleshed out later and recorded in one of the four notebooks mentioned above. I review my notebooks with some regularity, and this is often fruitful in a variety of ways. During a recent review, I came across a Paul Tournier quote from the early ’70s which was perfect for our daily newsletter. A current project is to integrate notebooks from previous years into these four categories, to arrange my entries chronologically and index them all. I’m hoping this will make my insights and observations more readily available for teaching and writing.
For the Good of the Cause
Uno. On the new “Givers, Doers, & Thinkers” podcast, Jeremy Beer interviews Pastor Corey Brooks, fighting for urban transformation. Watch it here.
Due. On the previous GDT podcast, Jeremy chats with Cary Sanders of JumpStart and Ralph May of St. Vincent de Paul in Boise to talk about what it really takes to break the cycle of incarceration. Watch it here.
Tre. At Philanthropy Daily, Genevieve Bianco penned a great piece on Panda Cares’ massive gift to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. Read it here.
Department of Bad Jokes
Q: Why was the ghost an alcoholic?
A: He was filled with boos.
Point of Personal Privilege
Son Andy in the New York Post on the local-political left’s use of “nazi.” Read it here.
A Dios
Pray for the dead and the dead will pray for you.
May the God of Mercy Be Gentle on Our Souls,
Jack Fowler, who is eating candy corn at jfowler@amphil.com.
