Dear Intelligent American,
Apologies to Simon and Garfunkel for the subject line on this Day after Thanksgiving, which sounds better than “Black Friday.”
Below you will find spotlighted an article by Howard Husock on how he created a memory-capturing “growing up tape”—a catalogue of sorts of the tunes that most warmed his youthful heart cockles—and how it turned out that many of the tunes that mattered were those of stories. It got Your Humble Correspondent thinking along similar lines—what tunes of yore does the Casey Kasem in your noodle count as your private American Top 40? And which oldies-but-goodies, and sometimes even -baddies, tell a story?
For example, it would be hard to describe “Billy, Don’t Be a Hero”— released by Bo Donaldson and The Heywoods in 1974—as a work of musical art. But those of a certain age can surely sing every word (“and as he started to go, she said, ‘Billy keep your head low-ow-ow; Billy, don’t be a hero, come back to me’”).
What was it about 1974? That same year Paper Lace released one of the great story-songs of post-Hippie America, “The Night Chicago Died,” and Terry Jacks cut the wanna-tearjerker, “Seasons in the Sun” (“Goodbye Michelle, it's hard to die, When all the birds are singing in the sky . . .”)
A person favorite: “Big John,” Jimmy Dean’s 1961 talk-song, crooned to Yours Truly by family members while someone was still a-diapered.
We shall mirthfully compile a list of narrative tunes and publish the gathering in Philanthropy Daily—it begs your contributions. Would you share your suggestions (and no, please do not include the Brady Bunch theme song)? You will? Good! Kindly email them to jfowler@amphil.com. Declare anonymity if it matters to you.
Now, finish that turkey and get ready for Advent.
There Are No Lumps of Coal in This Stocking
1. At The European Conservative, Sabine Beppler-Spahl decries Germany’s blame-the-Boomers row. From the article:
The debate masquerades as centered on ‘intergenerational justice,’ but it really reflects a toxic mix of anxieties: fear of population aging, public spending concerns, and a general terror of taking responsibility for the future. Germany’s deepest political and moral confusions, it seems, are being refracted through the prism of an artificial ‘generation war.’
Germany’s pension system, introduced in 1957 by conservative chancellor Konrad Adenauer, lifted millions of elderly Germans out of poverty after enduring two world wars. Funded by current contributions and indexed to wage growth, it guarantees retirees 48% of past gross income. Adenauer’s optimistic dictum—”people will always have children”—assumed continued economic growth.
However, with the economy contracting and millions of baby boomers retiring, optimism has turned to pessimism. Germany has the ninth-highest median age in the world and is set to lose around 5 million workers by 2035. The system requires over €100 billion in taxpayer subsidies each year, in addition to pension contributions paid by employees. While six workers financed one pensioner in the 1960s, today it’s only two, and this ratio is set to fall further still.
2. At Echoes from an Old Hollow Tree, Ryan B. Anderson discusses national renewal at a time of widespread institutional failure. From the article:
The cracks in our large institutions (schools, churches, political parties, government writ large) have been apparent for years. The time following the pandemic however exposed how paper-thin they had truly become. Schools struggled to maintain their basic missions during the pandemic despite access to technology and the remote flipped learning model having been popularized for over a decade. Most churches and dioceses, already facing bankruptcies and scandal, surrendered to state mandates leaving parishioners wondering how sacred their sacraments truly were. Civic groups and community organizations lost the participation that once sustained them. The worst and most extreme elements of the political parties told you to either turn your neighbor in to the authorities or disregard their wellbeing altogether.
What’s worse is that in the last five years, these institutions did not seem to learn much from one of the most historic events in their members’ lives; they continue to sleepwalk through the ruins of trust and efficacy as if we are not in a post-pandemic world.
The old structures people relied on feel hollow. They still exist, but their ability to form character, teach responsibility, or create belonging weakened significantly. This decline is real, and ignoring it serves no purpose. We live in a time when a disillusioned people are looking for truth, consistency, stability but as they look to the grand old pillars of yesteryear, there are cracks in the marble and moldering mortar.
3. At Front Porch Republic, Nadya Williams explores that most secret of worlds: Underneath, behind, and between the couch cushions, where there is much theology to be found. From the article:
But not everything is retrieved so promptly. Over the years, upon periodic checking, we have found under the couch cushions lost library books, play cards, pens, pencils, small toys, a toothbrush, orange peels, a number of small coins (American and European, diverse denominations), hair pins, lone socks, the occasional dead bug, baby teeth (some loose, others in a plastic baggie), a flat mixing spatula (the one that proclaims “I love you with every beet of my heart!”), and a whole roll of scotch tape. Treasures, all of them, brought back to face the light of day.
The visible world is not all that there is, theologians and philosophers have insisted for millennia. “All things are full of gods,” proclaimed Thales of Miletus, a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher born in the late seventh century BC. For his ability to defend the reality of things invisible, Thales became known as one of the Seven Sages of Greece. Isn’t it wisdom to admit your limits and humbly recognize that if you don’t see something, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist? All Things Are Full of Gods, echoed modern theologian David Bentley Hart just last year in his book-length manifesto for seeing the immaterial world as no less (and rather quite more) real than the material. (We do not have an official roster of the seven sages of America, but some people I know would submit Hart’s name to it.)
4. At UnHerd, Ryan Zickgraf explains the driven-mad Covidians. From the piece:
To understand that movement, we have to return to 2020.
The institutional failures of the early pandemic are well documented: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s infamous mask flip-flop; the agency’s fixation on surface transmission; missteps on testing; mixed messages about risk; and a possible coverup of the origins of the novel coronavirus. For many Americans, the CDC’s credibility cracked. For people already predisposed to distrust institutions—especially on the far Left and Right—it shattered.
Into that breach stepped the so-called People’s CDC, a self-appointed, grassroots alternative. It was a coalition of activist scientists, public-health researchers, and highly online progressives, united by the belief that only a bottom-up, morally pure movement could save the marginalised. They were united by a shared belief that the official CDC no longer “followed the science” and had been corrupted by MAGA and capitalist institutions, which demanded everyone go back to work to shore up the corporate bottom line. The People’s CDC began issuing biweekly “risk maps” that almost always seemed to point toward continued caution, regardless of the data.
5. At The Lamp, Peter Hitchens relishes memories of youth spent in movie theaters. From the blog post:
About seven years later, my father took my brother and me to London to see Lawrence of Arabia, when it was still new, in one of those theaters where the seats are ranked very steeply, like the inside of a volcano, and you fear you may tumble into the pit if you stop concentrating even for a moment. There were also pretty girls selling ice creams from trays slung round their necks. (Mrs. Hitchens once did this job, and found herself repeatedly watching Lee Marvin in Paint Your Wagon for week after week, because the film was so successful that it stayed and stayed in the cinema where she worked). But Lawrence of Arabia, far larger and more beautiful than anything I had ever seen on screen, overpowered me and I forgot the ice creams. By this stage in our lives, though we were only half aware of it, my brother and I had been largely abandoned by our parents during the school holidays, and had become frequent, undiscriminating cinemagoers, at the Gosport Ritz, the Gosport Criterion, the Odeon North End in Portsmouth and the puzzlingly named Essoldo, somewhere in that rough nautical city. We reached them by bicycle or by bus and ferry, unchaperoned. It was amazing what delights a few shillings could provide. The Ritz, a classic of inter-war ocean-liner architecture, has gone, even though it survived intense German bombing. The Criterion, a gorgeous Edwardian affair of wrought-iron balconies later became a bingo hall. I think I found the lost Essoldo on a nostalgic journey a few weeks ago, but it is many years since a projector has whirred in it.
6. At Forbes, edu-guru Bruno Manno shows how “credentials” are an evolving thing. From the article:
A recent Annenberg Institute analysis shows that the traditional college pathway credential choice model falls short in matching students’ experiences. So conventional credentialing systems must be more accommodating to diverse entry points and flexible progression rather than a single, standardized route.
Together, these signals point to a broader public unease. Many Americans now question whether the traditional markers of a diploma and college degree still reflect the knowledge and skills needed for success.
A recent Gallup poll reveals that Americans’ confidence in K-12 education has reached a record low. Only 35% say they are satisfied with the quality of education that students receive, a decrease of eight points in a single year. Nearly three-quarters believe schools are headed in the wrong direction. Another Gallup survey shows just 35% now call a college degree “very important,” a stunning decline from 70% in 2013. And a 2023 Wall Street Journal/NORC poll reports that 56% of Americans think a college degree is “not worth the cost,” a reversal from 2013 when 53% thought it was.
7. At Quadrant, Paul Monk, remembering his precocious young self, explains why it is important to read history. From the reminiscence:
There were few books in the family home that could inform me about what all these ominous events in the wider world really meant, but I discovered that the local newsagency, owned and run by a gentleman by the name of Mr Forbes, unlike any you’ll find these days, had whole shelves full of serious books on ancient Greece and Rome, modern politics and political biography. It became from that time, until I found more substantial bookstores, a Mecca for me on my way home from primary school. Through the books on Mr Forbes’s newsagency shelves, a wider world of understanding beckoned and I was drawn irresistibly towards it. There I bought my first copy of Livy’s The War with Hannibal and histories of ancient Greece by H.D.F. Kitto and Moses Finley. And there, in late 1968, with two dollars my mother had given me to buy cake to take to the Grade 6 end-of-year party, I bought, for a dollar apiece, Stuart Schram’s life of Mao Zedong and Alexander Werth’s biography of Charles de Gaulle.
I played truant that day, sitting in a park all day utterly engrossed in reading the biography of Mao Zedong. I finished reading it that weekend. When I returned to school on the Monday, my class teacher, a nun in the Josephite order founded by St Mary McKillop, asked me why I had not come to the party the previous Friday. I told the truth. She must, I’ve always thought, have been incredulous; but she told me that my punishment for playing truant was that I would have to give a talk to the class about the Chinese civil war. Now this was my idea of what school should be about. “Do you have a map of East Asia?” I asked. She did and it was rolled out over the blackboard. Equipped with a long wooden pointer, I then proceeded to tell the class about the Chinese republican revolution of 1912, the May Fourth Movement of 1919 and the founding of the Communist Party in 1921, the Northern Expedition, the break between the Nationalists and the Communists in 1927, the Japanese invasion of China in 1931, the Long March of the Red Army, the war with Japan and, finally, the Communist victory in the late 1940s.
8. At National Review, Daniel McLaughlin will not sit by idly while documentarian Ken Burns concocts and contrives the argument that America’s Founding is indebted to the Iroquois. From the review:
You can’t make this mistake by accident. Few people in history have left behind a richer record of what they were thinking than the American Founders. They debated, in closed sessions and open newspapers and pamphlets, the drafting and ratification of 13 new state constitutions (14, counting Vermont’s 1777 constitution as an independent republic), the Articles of Confederation, and the ultimate federal Constitution. James Madison took copious notes at Philadelphia in 1787, which were published after the death of everyone involved.
In all of this vast corpus, there were only the most glancing of references to the governing systems of Native Americans. The Federalist Papers were directed to the people of New York, the home base of the Six Nations. Madison and Hamilton considered many examples not only of democracies and republics but of confederations throughout history drawn from unions of many different kinds of governments. In Federalist No. 9, Hamilton discussed the ancient “Lycian confederacy, which consisted of twenty-three cities or republics,” and Montesquieu’s assessment of it. In Federalist No. 18, 19, and 20, Madison reviewed at great length the history of confederacies, covering ancient Greece, Germany from before Charlemagne to the Peace of Westphalia, Poland, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. Native American confederacies even within New York’s own borders were unmentioned.
9. More NR: The great George Nash reflects on the enduring relevance of William F. Buckley Jr. From the piece:
As we think about Buckley’s legacy and its continuing relevance, it is important to recognize the context in which he made his intrepid move. In the early 1950s, the American right was a hodgepodge of uncoordinated intellectual and journalistic figures who fell into three categories that did not often overlap: “traditionalist” conservatives like Russell Kirk, author in 1953 of The Conservative Mind; classical liberals and zealous free marketeers; and determined, anticommunist Cold Warriors. Moreover, in 1955, there was no weekly conservative journal of opinion in the United States. There were a few right-wing publications, to be sure, like the newsletter Human Events, but nothing comparable in prestige or influence to such left-of-center magazines as the New Republic. It became Buckley’s daunting challenge to forge a movement out of the discordant elements on the right and (as he put it) to “revitalize the conservative position.”
Buckley’s success at this was substantial, although the waters through which he sailed were often choppy. First, and crucially, as a conservative Christian, an ardent “individualist,” and an unwavering anticommunist, he shared common ground with each component in the nascent coalition. Like the conductor of a choir, he worked to blend the different voices together. He did so, in part, by encouraging a modus vivendi and philosophical framework that became known as fusionism—that is, a fusing or reconciliation of the competing paradigms of the libertarians and the traditionalists. He also learned from his friend and hero, the ex-communist Whittaker Chambers, that (in Chambers’s words) “to live is to maneuver”—which to Buckley meant steering prudently between the demands of ideological purity and the perceived constraints of political reality.
10. At The New York Sun, Howard Husock tells of his gathering favorite songs to create a “growing up tape,” and finds that many of his selections are “small masterpieces of story songs.” From the article:
Then there were my obscure African-American gospel favorites, among them “Til We Meet” as sung by Willie Neal Johnson and the Gospel Keynotes. In a powerful introduction to the old hymn, Johnson recalls his youth in the small town of Galilee, Texas, not far from Tyler.
There, he recites, “some of the people had cars, but my daddy didn’t have a car.” To get to the little sanctified church where neighboring small farmers would gather on Sundays, his family used “two mules and a wagon.” Mules, I explained, were long used to drag plows through fields before farming became mechanized.
In “Poor Boy from Mississippi,” a gospel legend, Reverend Cleophus Robinson from the Delta town of Canton, recalls how he “used to walk two miles to school, with my books piled on my back”, and later used his last two dollars to take a bus to Jackson and on to Chicago. A blues harmonica wails as he thanks the Lord “who’s been so good to me.” It’s the occasion to discuss the Great Migration North of the descendants of slaves—and the life of sharecroppers.
Although my own favorites were usually country, blues and gospel—emotional Southern music—the tape was not limited to those. Bob Seger’s “Making Thunderbirds” recalls his youth (maybe a summer job) on a Detroit assembly line—and the prosperity and confidence of the pre-Rust Belt era, circa 1955. “We filled conveyors, we met production. Foremen didn’t waste words. We met production. We were young and proud. We were makin’ Thunderbirds.”
11. At The National Interest, Cheryl Benard explains that Europe can be fixed, but the time to do so is running out. From the assessment:
The effort to conquer Western civilization was twice repulsed at the Gates of Vienna, but now, aggressors have realized that the prize can be won so much more easily, that entry and conquest can be so much simpler. Instead of frontally attacking your target’s fortified walls, maneuver yourself inside and then leverage the vulnerabilities of your adversary to paralyze his defense. In this case, two vulnerabilities are key: first, the European mindset, a mixture of guilt and smugly prideful masochistic liberalism. Second, their modern lifestyle is not family-conducive. The combination of many single parents and dual-career couples, a belief in personal self-fulfillment, and in female equality creates great practical difficulties for the rearing of one, let alone several, children. Those are fine and excellent values, except that Western European modernity failed to develop in parallel some effective new ways also to accommodate the human and societal basics of family and reproduction.
Enter the Afghans, Pakistanis, Syrians, Iraqis, Chechens, Somalis, and others who have no such issues. They happily produce 3-6 children per non-self-fulfilled, non-equal woman. And like the Israeli state, Western European governments too had in the past set up programs to reward multiple childbirth with multiple financial benefits. The policy was aimed at their own young couples, but money—especially in the modest amounts offered—was not the principal obstacle, so that didn’t work. Now, though, it is creating a rentier class of foreign men living off the wombs of their women.
12. At City Journal, Nicole Neily reports that nonprofit education programs are injecting pro-terrorist propaganda into California K-12 classrooms. From the articles:
MECA’s Teach Palestine lesson plans reach up to 160,000 American teachers who go on to share those materials with young, impressionable students. The curriculum, distributed under the auspices of both Rethinking Schools and the Zinn Education Project—a progressive nonprofit publisher and advocacy organization, respectively—whitewashes Hamas terrorism and promotes anti-American narratives.
Forget reading, science, and arithmetic—the new fundamentals are revolution, systems of oppression, and anti-Semitism.
In California’s Sequoia Union High School District, an ethnic-studies teacher, whose 2023 lessons on the Israel-Gaza war sparked widespread community backlash, attended an in-person MECA event, “Palestine in our classrooms,” in January 2024, which focused on “building content knowledge about Palestine, including history and culture, and provid[ing] pedagogical approaches and resources.” An email invitation from organizers noted that “Palestine is not just the subject of an ongoing colonial project; it has a rich and beautiful culture that should be shared. In the face of ongoing domestic attacks against the inclusion of Palestine in K-12 curriculum and instruction, we believe we must also practice resistance, resilience, and sumood in our dedication to bring Palestine into our classrooms.”
Lucky 13. At Heartland College Sports, Joe Tillery reports on a rival football team’s massive donation to a local food pantry. From the beginning of the story:
BYU hasn’t played a snap against Cincinnati yet, but the Cougars already made a major impact off the field this week.
Ahead of Saturday’s game, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints delivered a massive 27,000-pound food donation to the Bearcats Pantry, Cincinnati’s on-campus food support resource for students in need. And no, that’s not a typo. Twenty-seven thousand pounds. The school confirmed it’s the largest donation the Pantry has ever received.
That’s a big-time move, and it goes way beyond gameday niceties. The Bearcats Pantry serves students dealing with food insecurity, and this donation is going to help them restock shelves for months. Most schools talk a big game about “student-athlete wellness” and “community,” but BYU’s church straight up sent over a truckload of food and said, “Here, let’s help out.”
Bonus. At The University Bookman, William Meehan—on the eve of the centennial of the late William F. Buckley Jr.—profiles the modern conservative movement’s founder as a literary figure. From the piece:
When it came to getting about by train, plane, or boat, few could keep pace with William F. Buckley Jr. Moreover, when it came to describing his travels, few rivaled him. Buckley was a master storyteller who skillfully balanced the devices of fiction with the elements of reporting to create entertaining travel pieces suffused with exuberance and authority. With a flair for literary journalism and passion for fun, the notable jet-setter whose travel writings, published in every major magazine, broaden the scope and deepen the significance of his oeuvre, while perpetuating his legacy in this centenary year of his birth.
Buckley’s travel writings fall into two categories: narratives and commentary. The narratives delight, holding a reader’s attention with fast-paced plots similar to one of Buckley’s best-selling Blackford Oakes spy novels. Typical of the autobiographical nature of travel writing, Buckley is an active participant in the action with a talent for writing himself into the story but not dominating it, all while arranging a mise-en-scène that heightens the lively atmosphere. On the other hand, the commentary, usually one of his thousands of syndicated columns, illustrates Buckley’s witty reviews mainly of the airline and railroad industries or of travel in general about something “that boils the blood of free men.”
The mystique of the sea is a prominent theme in Buckley’s travel writings. He published more articles for periodicals devoted to sailing and yachting than for any other category, and two of his four sailing books registered his best sales. In addition, the longest section of his memoir, Miles Gone By: A Literary Autobiography, pertains to sailing, a sport he took up at the age of thirteen. Buckley competed in ocean races early in his career, but he preferred recreational cruising, when he insists on BWT, or Buckley Watch Time, which means setting watches one hour ahead so that “cocktail hour comes one hour sooner” and “you get an extra hour of sleep before the sunlight hits you in the eye.”
For the Good of the Cause
Uno. On Thursday, December 11th, Yours Truly will host a Center for Civil Society webinar on “The Beauty and Importance of the Declaration,” in which Hillsdale College scholar Matthew Spalding will be one-on-one interviewed about his important new book, The Making of the American Mind: The Story of Our Declaration of Independence—another feature of the Center’s ongoing “America at 250” project. The webinar is free, via Zoom, and will take place from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. (Eastern). Matt is soooo smart—you will want to attend and learn. Register here.
Due. In the latest episode of Jeremy Beer’s meaningful “Givers, Doers, & Thinkers” podcast, our Intrepid Host and guest Peter Murphy discuss the growing movement for education freedom and school choice in America, the new federal “Educational Choice for Children Act,” and much more. Do listen here.
Tre. At Philanthropy Daily, Matthew Keeny has an important take on deploying the word “generous.” Read it here.
Department of Bad Jokes
Q: What are the least-favorite Thanksgiving leftovers?
A: Relatives who won’t leave until Monday.
A Dios
Advent is upon us. In some traditions, it is a time for penitence, Lent’s first cousin. In others, it comes as an opportunity for eating, drinking, and making merry. A suggestion: Pray for mercy so the balance can be best struck. After all, gluttony remains one of the seven deadlies.
May We Embrace the Ways of Nicholas and Wenceslaus,
Jack Fowler, who is still gnawing on a drumstick at jfowler@amphil.com.
