A Dozen-Plus Stimulants, Gathered for Your Edification and Inspiration
Dear Intelligent American,
This communiqué frequently addresses America’s higher-education problems and challenges, but sometimes there is good-and-interesting news to share. Whatever its criteria, The Princeton Review annually composes “best of” and “most” listings of colleges and universities—as in the “Most Conservative College.” Atop that category this year sits Thomas Aquinas College, a jewel of traditional Catholic and Great Books education, with campuses in Santa Paula, California, and Northfield, Massachusetts.
Numbers two through five are Hillsdale College, Grove City College, College of the Ozarks, and Taylor University in Upland, IN.
Some lists are those (“Most Expensive,” “Least Friendly,” etc.) to which institutions desire no inclusion. But we will presume there are no tears shed by the leaders of TAC that it takes the primo position on the catalogue of the unwoke. Kudos.
The Magnificent 7, Followed by The Return of the Magnificent Seven
1. At Providence Magazine, Elizabeth Spalding assesses the anti-Communist presidency of Harry S. Truman. From the article:
The brewing Cold War was ever present. In between V-E and V-J Days, Truman cabled back and forth between Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin and Churchill in an attempt to prevent the USSR from taking more territory, directed his presidential advisor to convey American disapproval of Soviet actions (especially in Poland) at a Moscow meeting with Stalin, and made several comments about the need for the postwar economic rehabilitation of Europe. Before the Potsdam Conference from mid-July to early August of 1945, though, Truman thought certain actions were impermissible against an official ally that pledged to fulfill its wartime commitments.
Before his departure for Potsdam, Truman was informed of the 1940 Katyn massacre of Polish officers and intellectuals, which reinforced for him that the Communists were as bad as the Nazis. While at the conference, he decided that the United States needed the Soviet Union to help defeat the Japanese, but he determined that the Kremlin must not take control in Japan as it was in the process of doing in Eastern and Central Europe. Like the rest of the world, he bid farewell to Churchill and greeted Clement Atlee as the new British prime minister. Truman’s experience at Potsdam disabused him of any notion of Stalin’s goodwill, even being then unaware of Soviet espionage on the Manhattan Project.
2. At Claremont Review of Books, fan favorite Daniel J. Mahoney offers an insightful look into the early writings (and readings) of Winston Churchill. From the essay:
“A man’s life,” writes Churchill, “must be nailed to a cross either of Thought or Action.” James Muller persuasively argues in his introduction to My Early Life that Churchill exhibited a rare capacity to combine the two. His true formation began at the end of his 22nd year, when he was stationed as an officer in the southern Indian city of Bangalore (now known as Bengaluru). In the all-important chapter titled “Education at Bangalore,” he explains that he “aspired to understand human nature and the world around him,” to “excel as a thinker” as well as a statesman. Writing served as a bridge between these two activities or “parallel aspirations,” as Muller nicely calls them. Reflection on fundamental questions came to inform Churchill’s use and understanding of rhetoric, as well as his own dedication to a life of principled action.
He “had picked up a wide vocabulary,” no doubt through his early reading and the company he kept, but he remained “wanting in even the vaguest knowledge about many large spheres of thought.” He found himself using many words “the meaning of which” he could not “define precisely.” He also recalls having a conversation before he left England, in which a friend of his proclaimed that “Christ’s gospel was the last word in Ethics.” “This sounded good,” Churchill thought, “but what were Ethics?” . . .
The figure who most fascinated him was the enigmatic Socrates. He “wanted the Socrates story” that could explain this “very argumentative Greek who had a nagging wife and was finally compelled to commit suicide because he was a nuisance!” Why, Churchill asked, “had his fame lasted through all the ages? . . . Evidently Socrates had called something into being long ago which was very explosive. Intellectual dynamite! A moral bomb!” Churchill longed to know more. “But there was nothing about it in The Queen’s Regulations.” So he turned to books great and good, sent to India at his request by his mother.
Stop the Presses!
On Tuesday, September 16th (from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m., Eastern) the Center for Civil Society will broadcast another in its series of “Givers, Doers, & Thinkers” America 250 webinars, this one on “Religious Freedom, Civil Society, and American Exceptionalism on the 250th, in which Yours Truly will pose questions about the nexus of the Founding and the free exercise of faith to a trio of experts: historian Richard Brookhiser, Wyoming Catholic College professor Pavlos Papadopoulos, and legal scholar Garrett Snedeker. Join us as we get to the root of how foundational religious freedom was to the civil society that emerged from the Revolution. The via-Zoom webinar is absolutely free and commands your presence. Sign up right here.
Re-Start the Presses!
3. At Tablet Magazine, Gadi Taub explains the contorted use and abuse of October 7th. From the analysis:
October 7 presented the Israeli left with a daunting challenge: how to prevent the Hamas massacre from sounding the death knell of its most cherished dream, the so-called two-state solution. Having witnessed the vast majority of the Palestinian public cheer Hamas’ savagery, the last thing Israelis wanted to hear was plans for future partition of their land, never mind a peace agreement. Faced with this popular rejection of its central platform, the left first had to focus on preventing the right from consolidating its growing majority, to avert total collapse.
But how could the left leverage an event that showed its side was wrong in its fundamental assumptions about Israel’s neighbors against the right, whose position was vindicated? The answer is simple: Lay Oct. 7 at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s feet.
And so, the left launched a campaign to blame the man who had presciently warned that Israel’s disengagement from Gaza in 2005 would give rise to a terrorist “Hamas state.” Netanyahu’s accurate understanding of Israel’s neighbors didn’t matter. All that mattered was that Oct. 7 happened on his watch.
4. At Front Porch Republic, Jessica Burke recounts parenting across the digital generational divide. From the reflection:
I don’t know if more time was spent doing anything than playing outside. The kids spent countless hours bouncing around from one thing to the next, coming up with wild ideas as kids are prone to do. They’d make bike city, designating who was the bike police. When one child was upset to have been arrested, the bickering would morph into a game of tag which would end up at the tree swing where they’d decide to do the spin of death on someone by winding up the swing as much as they could and then letting go so they’d, well, spin to death. (No child has ever actually died in the Spin of Death, though I doubt my ability to survive it if I were subjected to such torture.)
When I became a mom nineteen years ago, smartphones didn’t exist. Cartoons were still limited to designated times when they were broadcast on television or to a DVD and its player. The most advanced baby monitor technology that existed looked like a walkie-talkie. It could travel with you across your home so you could hear the baby waking up, regardless of what room you were in. International phone calls were still expensive and had poor sound quality.
By the time my toddler was born two years ago, it was rare for me to see a child in a restaurant who wasn’t watching a cartoon on his own tablet. Instead of the clunky audio-only monitors, technology has advanced to offer a video feed for you to watch from your smartphone anywhere in the world where you have internet. The world was in your pocket when my youngest was born, and you could connect with people from every corner of the planet at any time of day through text, email, social media platforms, and video calls.
5. At American Reformer, Pavlos Papadopoulos explains the ways to teach Independence as America nears its Semiquincentennial. From the article:
In what follows, I propose a framework for teaching the Declaration of Independence with these components in mind: culture, crisis, and creed, in that order. And I suggest a fourth, which is valuable though not as essential: commemoration, or the ways in which eminent Americans have reflected back on the Declaration in the intervening centuries.
Teachers of any level are invited to take up this framework and adapt it to their particular circumstances, expanding and contracting as needed. They can fit it to the level, character, and identity of their school and students, and supplement where necessary.
I recommend only primary sources from the Founding period, which are easily and freely accessible, that can stand more or less alone as teaching documents. Some historical context will be useful, but the documents themselves indicate with which incidents teachers and students should be familiar.
Of course, one could begin with American political sermons, or the early modern political philosophers, or Reformation divines, or Magna Carta, or even a survey of the classical political historians most beloved by our Founders—Polybius, Livy, and Tacitus—as deeper backgrounds to the American Founding. None of this would be time wasted. I am fortunate to teach at a college that supplies much of this context in courses that precede our study of America. But often, much of these earlier texts and themes cannot be included given the practical limits of the classroom. What I present is a brief syllabus, strictly focused on illuminating the Declaration of Independence, that will stand on its own if need be, and serve as a readily expandable core for more ambitious programs.
6. At Catholic World Report, Sara S. Frear tells of her conversion story. There was nothing linear about it. From the piece:
In my spare time, something inspired me to re-read the books I had loved growing up. There were the fantasy epics: C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series, J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, and Lloyd Alexander’s The Chronicles of Prydain. There was Margery Sharp’s silvery-white mouse heroine, “Miss Bianca,” a role model for me as a child because she combined elegance and kindliness.
Dodie Smith’s One Hundred and One Dalmatians also worked a gentle magic on me. The novel contains an entrancing account of the Dalmatian heroes’ stay at an ancient country house on their way to rescue their kidnapped pups. The house is built of “mellow red brick” and has diamond-paned windows that twinkle in the early winter sunshine. Although it seems deserted at first sight, it is inhabited by an elderly gentleman and his courtly, grey-muzzled black spaniel. The spaniel invites the Dalmatians in and surreptitiously arranges for them to dine on hot buttered toast and to sleep by the fireside. Their human host, aware that he is nearing death, mistakes his canine visitors for the ghosts of the Dalmatian dogs he had loved as a boy, and is delighted. That episode never made it into the Disney movie, but it glows in my memory as the most luminous chapter in the book. I can hardly say why. Perhaps it is because the mansion is a hidden place of beauty and healing.
And then, there were the novels of Frances Hodgson Burnett. I identified with Sara Crewe, the heroine of A Little Princess, although I thought she was sometimes pretentious. When her father’s death shatters her privileged life and reduces her to ragged servitude, Sara retains her dignity by imagining herself a princess. She reminded me that even the name my parents gave me means “princess.”
7. At Plough Magazine, James Mumford, addict, wants to break the cycle. From the piece:
In the wake of my separation and divorce, I found a highly respectable, sympathetic drug dealer within the discreetly brass-plated Harley Street drug-den that is my beloved private doctor’s office.
I needed this because the local NHS clinic in East London had let me down. They had refused to prescribe me Zopiclone and Valium. I needed that medicine, I insisted, to regulate sleep and manage anxiety. That’s what I told them. That’s what I told myself. But shortsighted and resource strapped as socialized medicine is, the NHS wasn’t having any of it.
Easier to manipulate was my tall, languid, private doctor in his Henry Poole double-breasted suit with his double-barreled name. He was a far cry from Tuco Salamanca, the short, psychotic, gold-toothed drug kingpin in Breaking Bad. My man was charming and obliging and seemed to have all the time in the world for me. The leisurely appointments were a delight! We got on famously, breezily discussing all manner of topics. (Why is the Unites States so polarized? Which is the best independent school in London?) I wouldn’t be having these kinds of conversations with this kind of person if my life were falling apart, if I were the kind of person whose life could fall apart. My new confidante—I counted him a friend, really—was willing to listen for hour upon billable hour.
8. At Civitas Outlook, Tyler Turman looks for the roots of urban renewal, and finds them in Paris. From the article:
Paris’s drastic transformation, often termed “Haussmannization,” was unprecedented in scope. It featured a new architectural uniformity, where buildings were treated as pieces in a broader urban landscape reminiscent of the systematic, rectilinear grid urban planning of the Romans. Haussmannian buildings obeyed strict building codes featuring five floors, extended balconies, four-sided mansard roofs at 45-degree angles, and a maximum height set at 17.55 to 20 meters. This new, sleek, elegant, stone building style, coupled with wide axial avenues and treelined percees, cut diagonally through the city’s massive blocks of housing and radiated from the city’s cultural centers, like the Arc de Triomphe. These broader patterns of development are known today as “Haussmann Blocks.”
Over the next several years, Haussmann and his army of 60,000 workers demolished 20,000 buildings containing 120,000 lodgings and razed entire quarters of the city. In their place arose ‘Haussmann-style’ buildings, 70 schools, 50 churches, two large hospitals, seven markets and public attractions, and 215,000 lodgings.
To combat the scarcity of green spaces, Haussmann constructed 2000 hectares of public parkland. To relieve the city’s notorious congestion and barricade-prone alleyways, he bulldozed Paris’s cramped, winding streets lined with medieval buildings and built 85 miles of wide boulevards and avenues along with 400 miles of new pavements. To eradicate the stench and disease bred by waste left on the streets, he laid 240 miles of sewers, aqueducts, and waterways. To improve nighttime visibility and safety, he raised 15,000 new gas lamp posts. To improve the city’s transportation infrastructure, he constructed numerous public transit stations, such as a rebuilt Gare du Nord, Gare Saint-Lazare, and Gare de ‘l'Est. To reinforce Paris’s cultural identity, he built several opulent landmarks, like the Opéra Garnier and Saint-Augustin, and refurbished numerous others, like Les Halles and the Hôtel-Dieu de Paris.
9. At UnHerd, Kathleen Stock gets triggered by trigger warnings. From the commentary:
It’s not just experimental dramas that now come bristling with disclaimers; more canonical productions are taking a risk-averse approach too. Famously, Chekhov told aspiring playwrights that if they decided to hang a rifle on a wall during the first act, it should have been fired by the end of the story. Viewers of the forthcoming star-studded production of The Seagull are spared any remaining suspense in this regard: the ticket site advises that there will be “gunshot sounds and references to suicide”. At Glyndebourne this season, The Marriage of Figaro came with the information that “at several points, characters of lesser status are subject to unwanted sexual advances and physically aggressive behaviour”—almost as if Beaumarchais’s mordant class satire was just a regrettably outdated accompaniment to some nice singing.
As Wittgenstein might have asked: what is this language game of trigger warnings, and what is it really doing? The philosopher told us not to take words at face value, but to look and see how they are actually being used. An early point to note is that, in fact, the fashion is now for “content warnings”, not “trigger warnings”. One can only assume that this is to stop people being triggered by the word “trigger”, with its grim intimations of gun-based violence. At the moment, the sinisterly foreboding “warning” survives unscathed; but it is surely only a matter of time before it too is replaced with something more relaxed and low sensory.
10. At Law & Liberty, Elizabeth Grace Matthew wonders what happened to norms, and asks, should we be surprised that humaneness has vanished too? From the essay:
Why are there so few men in the restaurants, bars, and coffee shops where the women like to recreate? This is the question posed by Rachel Drucker, 54, in the recent New York Times “Modern Love” column, Men, Where Have You Gone? Please Come Back. Drucker is a veteran of the 1990s sex positivity who worked for Playboy and its “affiliated hardcore properties,” and has plenty of experiences and exes to her name. She implores men to re-engage women like her as friends and lovers.
Perhaps the saddest, most evocative lines of her lament are these: “There was a time, not so long ago, when even a one-night stand might end with tangled limbs and a shared breakfast. When the act of staying the night didn’t announce a relationship, just a willingness to be human for a few more hours.”
If we think of sexual mores like a Goldilocks story, Drucker feels that she and her contemporaries came of age when everything was “just right.” The implied interpretation of events goes something like this: In the olden times, a relationship (or, in very olden times, an engagement or even a marriage) was a prerequisite for sharing a bed overnight. Today, with easy access to pornography and male resentment of women’s empowerment, people have lost interest in “be[ing] human.” It’s apparently too much even to ask a man to show up to dinner before asking to come upstairs.
Where, a bewildered Drucker wonders, did the happy medium of her own experiences go? What happened to the casual sex that nevertheless entailed an intimate decency, which to some extent belied and delimited its “casual” moniker?
11. At Public Square, Robert Steuteville tells of the reinvention of strip-mall space on Cape Cod. From the piece:
It was like putting a genie back in a bottle. The strip mall had lacked the streets, trees, public spaces, mix of uses and activities, architectural history, cultural diversity, and human inhabitation that one would expect on a historic main street. That’s how commercial centers were built since the 1950s, and nobody had attempted what is now called suburban retrofit.
Mashpee Commons has developed over the years—now it is the picture of a small New England downtown comprising approximately 10 blocks, a diverse mix of buildings and public spaces, and a network of streets. It is being built incrementally, without tearing down the original strip mall, retaining the businesses that were useful to the town while becoming its social and cultural hub. “For over 35 years it has provided the surrounding 23-square-mile suburban Cape Cod community of Mashpee, Massachusetts, its walkable urban core,” explains Xavier Iglesias of DPZ.
Today, it is much more than the original 65,000-square-foot grocery-anchored shopping center. There are 53 stores, providing daily needs and specialty goods, 26 food and beverage establishments, a wide range of entertainment options (cinemas, bowling, mini golf, ceramics studio, music academy, art gallery/teaching studio, immersive games experience), wellness services, and civic facilities such as a library, post office, and church. The 78 living spaces include apartments, townhouses, live-works, and duplexes. Regular outdoor events include a concert series, outdoor movie nights, and festivals.
12. At Comment Magazine, Timothy deVries finds there’s nothing childish when it comes to reading kids’ literature. From the article:
Children’s books are not inferior to any other forms of writing. Any parent who has witnessed how a book can captivate the attention of a young child—or who has been captivated themselves—can attest to that. Invariably, children have a prerogative to choose the books they like best for their nightly story times, which leads to parents reading the same stories over and over again. Like listening to a favourite album, frequent repetition leads to a warm appreciation for the subtleties of character, plot points, and illustrations. For this reason, an interest in high-quality children’s books is better for everyone involved. . . .
As a discipline, aesthetics encapsulates a set of principles concerned with the nature and appreciation of beauty, especially in art. Children’s books have an aesthetic quality, and reading a children’s book is, at least in part, an aesthetic experience. Yet, as I was reminded in a recent sermon, God’s creatures have always had a precarious relationship with aesthetics. We observe this in Scripture. Whether it is when Eve sees that the fruit is “a delight to the eyes” in Genesis 3:6 or when the “sons of God [see] that the daughters of man [are] attractive” in Genesis 6:2, aesthetic delight appears to be construed as a deception that leads away from God. The aesthetic awareness represented in these passages seems hard-baked not only into the origins of sin but into the very distinction between those who “find favour” with God and those who do not. The favour that Noah finds with God is “in the eyes of the Lord,” suggesting that, unlike humans, God’s eyes delight in and are attracted to righteousness. This may be why the Reformed tradition, of which I am a part, imbues aesthetics with a sense of God-breathed conditionality that humans must respond to.
Lucky 13. At Woodworking Network, Dakota Smith reports on a Wisconsin fundraiser that helps many nonprofits. From the article:
Ashley for the Arts has successfully concluded another memorable weekend of live entertainment and family-friendly activities. The annual three-day music and arts festival, held August 7-9, attracted tens of thousands of attendees who enjoyed a world-class lineup of performers, diverse art and craft vendors, numerous food options, an inflatable air park, interactive art experiences, street performers, fireworks, and much more. Most importantly, the event raised over $715,000 to benefit nearly 70 participating nonprofit organizations.
"We're deeply thankful for our amazing fans, dedicated volunteers, generous sponsors, and the wonderful community that made this year's festival one to remember," said Cole Bawek, event director. "Despite the challenging weather, the entire weekend was filled with incredible energy and unwavering support from everyone. This truly is a one-of-a-kind event that exemplifies our mission of bringing together art, music, and people in the most meaningful way."
Bonus. At The Giving Review, Michael Hartmann reports from the battlefield of Big Philanthropy and its populist foes. From the introduction to the analysis:
- Philanthropy has been getting bigger.
- Big Philanthropy has been getting more liberal and progressive, overwhelmingly so in the policy- and advocacy-oriented context.
- Relatedly, it houses and funds a democratically unaccountable and monoculturally progressive managerial elite.
- It’s been getting more politicized and more partisan.
- It’s always had a tenuous place in America’s social contract.
- It doesn’t much appreciate the additional scrutiny to which it’s being subject once again.
- If you’re a taxpayer, you contribute to the pool of funds that incentivizes its growth and maintenance.
- The conservative and progressive populist reaction against Big Philanthropy is not going to go away.
For the Good of the Cause
Uno. The Center’s important upcoming “Givers, Doers, & Thinkers” webinar—ace training (via-Zoom, and free!) for fundraising professionals—takes place on Tuesday, September 9th, from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. (Eastern), and will focus on digital fundraising, especially on how to bringing in grass-roots donors. Handy tips will abound for writing email copy that wins over donors, setting realistic goals and analyzing results, and much more. Are you attending? Of course you are. Find out more, and register, right here.
Due. At Philanthropy Daily, nepo-writer Andrew Fowler finds philanthropy—and the need for new benefactors—on a trip to Western Ireland. Read it here.
Department of Bad Jokes
Q: Why did the chicken cross the playground?
A: To get to the other slide.
A Dios
Visiting a family member on the dementia ward, a ruckus broke out nearby when a resident began hurling terrible insults and her breakfast oatmeal—at nurses. Then a retired priest stopped Yours Truly and demanded medical advice—later he almost came to blows with another lady resident—for who knows what reason. At least no punches were thrown (which can’t be said for the oatmeal!). Strange moments these—there’s a touch of humor when it comes to throwing food—but then there is the harsh reality of the dementia mind’s prison and torment. It’s beyond sad—maybe even soul-crushing, if you are too long spectating. But then there is the offsetting fact of the decency many caregivers show in how they treat the afflicted. Patience with patients is abundant. We are blessed that such people exist.
May He Who Heals Dispense His Plentiful Mercy,
Jack Fowler, who is ducking oatmeal at jfowler@amphil.com.
P.S. This November 5th and 6th, in Philadelphia, at the historic Union League Club, C4CS will host its Semiquincentennial conference on Civil Society and America at 250: The Past and Future of What Has Made America Exceptional. You will want to attend (just look at that terrific agenda), so do sign up—and by Sunday (August 31st), using the code EARLYBIRD25, to save yourself a cool couple of clams. Register here.
