A Dozen-Plus Stimulants, Gathered for Your Edification and Inspiration . . .
Dear Intelligent American,
Pardon the old Chico joke.
The new hobby hereabouts is hanging birdhouses outside, and daily replenishing the seeds—a harmless pastime. Why, it even goes with the name (Fowler). There was an old hobby, seasonal: Buying ceramic Santa figurines.
Admittedly, it got out of hand. Very. Over a decade, This Santa Junkie purchased a couple of score, making our home theirs (there were lots of snowmen too). The point of preposterous was reached. She Who Will Be Obeyed had no choice but to issue an order: Don’t.
Maybe marriages should require a sanity clause? Anyway, Yours Truly responded cold turkey. Even when a squirrel gained access one Advent long ago via the chimney, rampaged through the living room, and knocked a few Father Christmases into eternity, there was no chance of splurging to replace those smithereened. Requiescant in pace.
Still, after a decade of sans-Santa shopping, there are abundant Kringles, chez nous, populating all available shelves, mantles, and tables—it’s quite North Polish (insert a Gdańsk joke here). This week past, She Who Decorates Beautifully has freed the figurines (side note: don’t hyphenate that word) from their suffocating basement exile and displayed them for their month-long performance. The mood is merry.
May it be the same for your home.
A Dozen Sugarplums, and Then Some, Commence Dancing . . . Now
1. At Comment Magazine, the late Amy Low considers forgiving, and concludes it does not mean erasing. From the piece:
Back when I was doing my best to move on from the end of my marriage, I understood that a key element to any hope of rebuilding hinged on our common discourse around forgiveness. I knew this language well; I had grown up the daughter of a pastor in a house where this virtue was the cornerstone for all norms. “Do I forgive Don?” I would say to a friend who wondered how I was doing a year after the divorce. “Yes, well, it’s a journey. But of course, that’s all part of the healing.”
I exuded this sleight of hand in my conversations, but it really was just obscuring the fact that my inner thoughts were swarming with obsession as I replayed and replayed and replayed the innocuous moments, painful memories, slights, glories, and devastations within our marriage. I cast myself as the victim of the drama and Don as the broken antagonist—more weak than malevolent. I found oxygen in this narrative: Don was a broken figure, and I was collateral damage. Sure, I’ve forgiven Don, I’d tell myself. I’ve forgiven him for his weakness.
It turns out that forgiveness is far more demanding, mysterious, and intentional—and somewhere in its work, an alchemy disrupter. Much to my shock, in the process of lying vulnerable before his care, I found myself gradually perceiving Don not as the person who had wronged me but as a beautiful child of God, his true, full self fully separate from what he had wrought. Somehow his past actions no longer clouded my vision of him; instead, all I saw was him.
2. At Tablet Magazine, Michael Lind argues that the time has come for degree-obsessed employers to drop such requirements and focus on actual skills. From the essay:
From the employer’s perspective, weeding out job applicants in favor of college graduates on the assumption that at least someone with a B.A. is likely to show up on time and complete assigned tasks may make sense. But wasting four or more years in college at a cost of $100,000 and up is a wildly inefficient way for graduates to prove they are more punctual and harder working than their peers. Worse, using college degrees as a simple sorting mechanism discriminates against the majority of Americans, whether from inner cities or rural areas, whose education ends with high school or some college, for a mix of cultural and economic factors that have no strong relation to either native intellect or the capacity for work discipline.
What if young people could acquire certificates for useful job skills that would encourage employers to waive the four-year-college requirement? For years pundits and policymakers have discussed the need for noncollege pathways to career success, and some firms and government agencies have begun to waive unnecessary college diploma requirements for applicants. The problem is that any attempt to replace four-year degrees with widely recognized skill certificates runs into barbed-wire barriers in the form of existing licensing requirements in many occupations. It is not enough to have a skills certificate, if you must also pass a federal or state licensing exam in order to work.
3. At The European Conservative, Alexander Raikin contends the Tories, having sided with “assisted suicide,” are no longer truly conservative. From the piece:
“The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes,” G.K. Chesterton wrote. “The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.” Labour Home Office Minister Jess Phillips concedes that “the NHS is not in a fit enough state” to administer assisted suicide, but “you cannot stop progress happening.” It should send an immediate shiver through conservatives; instead, it persuaded David Cameron to change his mind to support assisted suicide. Maybe he thinks it is Brexit all over again.
None of the conservative arguments in favor of a rushed and dangerous assisted bill make much sense. David Cameron, for instance, claims that there are “extremely strong safeguards,” prompting a former legal advisor for the Conservatives to ask “with respect” if he has even read the bill. It wouldn’t have changed much if he had. Cameron equally claims that “this proposal is not about ending life, it is about shortening death,” which is almost identical to the World Medical Association’s definition of palliative care.
4. More End-of-Life: At America Magazine, Joseph Vukov warns of playing-God and the nexus of assisted suicide and “transhumanism.” From the piece:
On the internet, YouTuber and social media influencer Bryan Johnson proclaims a message of radical life extension. Johnson, who made millions in Silicon Valley, regularly sports a t-shirt plastered with block letters reading “Don’t Die.” His goal: to slow the aging process. Or reverse it altogether.
Johnson’s fortune, social media accounts and strict daily schedule are all laser-focused on that goal. His day-to-day life includes intermittent fasting, an entirely dark sleep environment, a diet regimen with over 100 supplements a day and painful facial injections. You won’t catch him drinking a beer or bringing donuts to an early morning meeting anytime soon. Or smoking a cigar to celebrate his achievements. Or even regularly staying up too late. More controversially, Johnson receives “fresh blood” transfusions from his teenage son. Cue the metaphors about vampirism and older generations feeding off the younger. . . .
These two phenomena—so-called “death with dignity” legislation on the one hand, and an internet influencer marching under the banner of “Don’t Die” on the other—may seem very different sides of 21st century life. But they are, I believe, two sides of the same coin. They are united, fairly obviously, in their shared fear of and obsession with death. Johnson and his life-hacking followers attempt to flee from death, even as death with dignity legislation attempts to master death and bring it under human control. In both circumstances, humans usurp a role intended for God.
5. At National Review, Jack Butler spotlights the grotesque season’s greetings of Catholics for Choice. From the critique:
Catholics for Choice has been at this kind of thing for some time. In 2021, for example, the organization tweeted, “Abortion is not a sin. It’s okay to get an abortion because you want an abortion.” Perhaps its most ghastly stunt came in 2022, just before the March for Life, when the group projected pro-abortion messages such as, “Pro-Choice Catholics, You Are Not Alone” onto the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. A prayer vigil for mothers and for unborn aborted children was occurring inside the building at the same time.
Such trolling does not deserve to be rewarded with attention. But ignoring it risks letting go unchallenged the group’s message: that Catholics can and should join much of the rest of our culture in celebrating abortion. The Catholics who supported the presidential bid of radically pro-abortion Kamala Harris at least retained enough of the guilt that the religion tends to inculcate in its practitioners (I speak from experience) that they felt the need to render abortion as merely one concern among many, one that other issues can outweigh. There is no such compunction on the part of Catholics for Choice. The group’s website proclaims, “Abortion access is a social justice value.”
6. At Front Porch Republic, Allie Lopez warns against AI in the classroom. From the article:
Paul Kingsnorth suggests that we interrogate the consequences of a particular technology and draw lines. For now, I think the responsible action for educators is to draw an AI line. Teachers do not need to bring AI into the classroom. They do not need to encourage student interaction with ChatGPT. Professors do not need to teach students AI “skills.” And no educator needs to support the expansion of AI across their school’s campus. Instead, adults must ask more questions: Why would this technology be valuable for students? Will this help students flourish in my class and after? How will AI form those who rely on it? Answering these questions will take time. To rush AI into the classroom or into daily life is to put student well-being at stake. And as Kingsnorth reminds us, refusal to accept certain forms of technology can “enrich rather than impoverish.” By refusing AI in educational spaces, students may, in fact, come out better on the other side. In my own experience, the embrace of technology by trusted adults in a trusted place led to more excessive use of those technologies outside of it. Unbeknownst to them, the effects were detrimental.
AI developers, just like anyone else in marketing and advertising, want us to believe that denying ourselves AI would be to deny a rich future filled with possibilities. But as a student, I bore the brunt of unquestioning technological embrace by the adults around me. Only within the last few years have I discovered what a beautiful life exists offline. I spend more time outside, with friends, and reading books. My relationships with myself and with others have vastly improved. I regularly tell my husband that my newfound, healthy relationship with food is nothing short of a miracle. And to think that eight years before I was born, Wendell Berry had already provided an exhortation to limit involvement with harmful technology. Indeed, all of this has been possible because I try (and often fail) to abide Berry’s wisdom. I aim to constrain my interactions with the digital and increase my interactions with the real.
7. At Forbes, edu-guru Bruno Manno highlights a quartet of job-launch pain points found at the outset of careers. From the article:
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Programme for International Student Assessment or PISA is the world’s largest information source on young people’s knowledge of reading, math, and science along with their career aspirations. It surveyed around 600,000 15-year-olds in 79 countries, with 32 countries—including the U.S.—requiring students take a supplementary career questionnaire.
“The data indicate that many young people are intent on pursuing jobs that they have little chance of securing,” write the authors of a PISA report on teenagers’ career aspirations. This aspiration gap is especially pronounced for disadvantaged students. Moreover, when young people do have a clear idea about a future career, they name jobs in a narrow set of occupations. The report concludes, “Young people’s career aspirations are often narrow, unrealistic and distorted.”
8. At National Catholic Register, Solène Tadié shares a delicious piece on eight things one might not know about Notre-Dame de Paris, now reopened. From the article, here is Number 5:
Notre-Dame is the point of origin for all roads in France. While a famous medieval proverb asserts, “All roads lead to Rome,” because Emperor Augustus made it point zero of the Roman Empire’s roads, it is indeed to Notre-Dame that all roads in France have converged for almost three centuries. In fact, it was King Louis XV who, by issuing letters of patent in 1769, made it the epicenter of all the country’s roads. However, it wasn’t until 1924 that this point, from which mileage distances between towns are calculated, was materialized by decision of the town’s administration. The slab, in the shape of a compass rose, can still be seen on the cathedral forecourt.
9. At The Spectator, the great Bill Kauffman goes ye-olde-hoops and sets a pick for six-on-six basketball. From the article:
Iowa, the historic hotbed of girls’ basketball, is hailed today for producing the superb Caitlin Clark, but for most of the twentieth century its hundreds of small-town bandbox gymnasiums were alive with the wonderfully idiosyncratic sporting variant known as six-on-six basketball.
Like the culture of small-town Iowa—and, I might add, like such great Iowans as historian William Appleman Williams, painter Grant Wood and Senator Harold Hughes—six-on-six was “simultaneously conservative and progressive,” as Midwestern historian Max McElwain wrote in The Only Dance in Iowa.
Six-player basketball, which became popular nationwide in the 1930s but survived only in Iowa and Oklahoma by the fin de siècle, posted three girls in the frontcourt—the forwards, who shot the ball—and three guards in the backcourt, where ball-handling and defense were prized. Players could not cross the center line and were limited to two dribbles at a time.
10. At Law & Liberty, Michael Gonzalez pays homage to Churchill’s memoir, My Early Life. From the essay:
My Early Life invites the reader to overcome the challenge of modern cynicism. Churchill presents himself as proof that one can find peaks of human and political greatness to scale even in modernity. He defends the life of aristocratic virtue and ambition against the dismissal of these ideals as anachronistic and vainglorious—mere values. At the same time, what makes Churchill’s account of himself so compelling and urgent is his capacity to accommodate modern conditions while pursuing pre-modern ends. My Early Life is “a picture of a vanished age,” but it is also an invitation for leaders to defend democracy while rejecting mediocrity and the assertion that all ways of life are equally excellent. In this way, My Early Life is a stubborn book that acknowledges the necessity of accepting modernity but aims to ennoble modern political life by directing modern leaders to aristocratic standards in war, politics, and even education.
Admittedly, Churchill is not sanguine about the possibility of great leadership in modern democracy. Equality of conditions is no easy obstacle for the great-hearted to overcome. Yet his example in the Second World War grounds reason for thinking that aristocratic leadership remains possible even in a democratic age. Published ten years before the start of Churchill’s premiership in 1940, My Early Life illustrates the love of excellence and the life of a noble, fighting spirit in a way that an aristocratic soul can emulate even under modern and democratic conditions. Provocatively, the book also sets out Churchill’s idea of an education that touches on both the political life of action and the contemplative life of philosophy—an education whose exemplar is (according to Churchill himself) “a very argumentative Greek” by the name of Socrates.
11. At Modern Age, Rinzen Widjaja argues that the middleman is too important to be cut out—and too misunderstood. From the beginning of the piece:
“Cut out the middleman”: this common idiom reveals the uncomfortable position of the go-between in capitalist economies. The middleman’s position in the market is all too often misunderstood.
That’s particularly the case when he comes from a minority group. Throughout history, “middleman minorities” have been associated with occupations such as retailers and moneylenders, not directly producing goods but performing a vital role in connecting producers to consumers. And yet when these minorities achieve modest prosperity, they are often met with hostility. Jewish communities in the West are notable examples: despite starting with nothing and earning their success, they historically have been wrongly accused of maintaining a stranglehold on economic resources, a myth that continues to fuel antisemitism today.
Jews are not alone in this unenviable position. In an article titled “Is Antisemitism Generic?” the economist Thomas Sowell argues that such anti-Jewish attitudes reflect a broader pattern of persecution toward “middleman minorities.” Other groups that fall into this category include the Chinese overseas, Indians in Southeast Asia, and the Igbo people in Nigeria.
12. Up Saskatchewan way, Mick Favel reports for CTV News that a successful fundraiser for a Regina high school concluded with a camelid kiss. From the beginning of the article:
Students, staff and family members of Imperial Community School gathered to celebrate a successful fundraising campaign for United Way Regina.
As an incentive for the students to reach their fundraising goal, the principal said she would kiss an alpaca in front of everyone.
“It seemed pretty easy in the moment, but as the days got closer, I was definitely thinking about it a lot more,” Danielle Istace, the school’s principal.
The students ended up raising just over $1,000 for United Way Regina, which was more than double their total of $397 from 2023.
Lucky 13. At The Free Press, Michael Lind argues that the time has long come for the government to abolish “race.” From the article:
Why five arbitrary pseudo-races? Why not three? Or 17? Who knows. However, in March 2024, OMB announced that the five official races of the United States will be expanded to seven, beginning with the 2030 census. “Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander” will be separated from the “Asian” category, and a new Middle Eastern or North African (MENA) category will be added.
The seven official races that are scheduled to be identified in the 2030 census are as arbitrarily defined and ludicrous as the former set of five used by OMB and the Census Bureau from 1977 to 2024. Even without the inclusion of Pacific Islanders, the “Asian” category is as absurd as ever, lumping together South Asians with East Asian nationalities like Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese. Jews, Arabs, and Iranians (Iran originating from the word for “homeland of the Aryans”) will cease to be “white” for U.S. government purposes and will now be “non-whites” in the MENA category. The “white” category will continue to exclude blond, blue-eyed Paraguayans of exclusively German descent—they are “Hispanic or Latino,” you see—but will continue to include ethnicities as diverse as Portuguese and Danes.
“Garbage in, garbage out” (GIGO) was a motto in the early days of computer programming. It applies today to the misleading racial statistics that the Census Bureau collects and their equally misleading applications.
Bonus. At City Journal, Nicole Gelinas gives master builder Robert Moses, re-maker of cities, the due that is devil-deserved. From the assessment:
City leaders applauded the Regional Plan. More than 1,500 people, representing 528 civic groups, attended the Manhattan unveiling. Among officials heaping praise were Mayor Jimmy Walker, Governor Roosevelt, and President Herbert Hoover. Labor unions and social-justice advocates approved, with Lillian Wald, head of the Henry Street Settlement, calling it a “milestone.” “Congestion in the central parts of the metropolis will diminish or disappear,” the Times maintained. Almost as an afterthought, the paper mentioned the two highways that would “pass under Manhattan.” In fact, this reporting was incorrect; one expressway, following Canal Street, would cross aboveground to the Manhattan Bridge.
Over the decades, many of the colored maps featured in the Regional Plan moved from paper to reality. They would become familiar to New Yorkers stuck in traffic or breathing in the fumes that the vehicles generated: the Cross-Bronx Expressway and the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway among them. Paul Windels—a former counselor to Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, who, mid-century, served as president of the nonprofit group that the Regional Plan analysts had formed, the Regional Plan Association—would later tally the successes: “four bridges, three tunnels, 11 parkways and expressways.”
Missing from these blueprints was the impress of the man who, for the next century, became identified with them: Robert Moses. In their acknowledgments, the influential Regional Planners thank the Long Island State Park Commission—which Moses chaired beginning in 1924, a position that then-governor Al Smith had rewarded him with for his state-government service—and list dozens of advisors by name. But they omit Moses, who had not yet built his formidable reputation. The first section of the Southern State Parkway, Moses’s first parkway, to the east of New York City across Long Island, opened in 1927, and Jones Beach in 1929, the year the report appeared.
For the Good of the Cause
Uno. At Philanthropy Daily, Shaka Mitchell tells of which two American groups need to get with it on school choice. Read it here.
Due. The Center for Civil Society hosts its important “In the Trenches” Master Class on Strategic Planning this January 30th, from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. (Eastern, via Zoom). Nonprofit leaders who are contemplating the need for, and the benefit of, having an actionable strategic plan would be well advised to attend. Get more information right here.
Point of Personal Privilege
At the New York Post, Yours Truly pens a column recommending some presidential actions that would include a grand monument. Read it here.
Department of Bad Jokes
Q: What did the camel say to the Sahara Desert?
A: Long time, no sea.
A Dios
To get a bit more into the season, may it be suggested that you read A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas? You will find an e-version here on the Internet Archive. Or consider watching some of the well-done films based on Charlies Dickens’s classic. For example, the 1984 version starring George C. Scott as Ebenezer Scrooge is wonderful. Find it here. Or consider the delightful 1938 version, with Reginald Owen as Scrooge and Gene Lockhart as Bob Cratchit—you can find it here.
By the way, Terry Kilburn, the actor who played Tiny Tim, still lives (he’s 98). As does another of the Cratchit children (Belinda), played by the lovely June Lockhart (daughter of Gene). She is 99.
God bless her . . . and Tiny Tim!
May We Receive the Peace We Seek,
Jack Falalalala, who seasonally hangs with his Santas at jfowler@amphil.com.
