Stillwater Runs Deep

Dear Intelligent American,

Pray your forgiveness for an announcement, a tad personal: that the good people at The St. Croix Review—which considers itself, rightly, “A thoughtful review for thoughtful people”—has asked Yours Truly to speak at the quarterly journal’s annual dinner, which will be held on Thursday, October 8^th, at the Lowell Inn in Stillwater, MN, said to be the birthplace of the Land of Lakes. (Of interest: It was here, in 1921, that the pop-up toaster was invented; we who worship Pop-Tarts revere it.)

If you are in the region and wish to attend the dinner, or at least learn more about it, visit here. A talk will be given, about the importance of small journals of opinion and about the man who founded a big small one—old National Review boss William F. Buckley Jr., about whose passion for gratitude, a virtue of which too little is seen in the Land of the Free, Yours Truly will speechify.

 

A Baker’s Dozen, with a Caboose

 

1. At The Free Press, Douglas Murray reveals deep disappointment over 9/11 jurisprudence. From the beginning of the essay:

In a corner of Cuba, a group of men are dying of old age. Their beards have grayed. Their eyesight is dimming. They are the men who organized, planned, financed, and facilitated the 9/11 attacks. After a quarter of a century, they have still not faced justice.

Throughout all of the recent 25th anniversary events, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) and his colleagues were barely mentioned. That may be because acknowledging their presence should remind us all of the terrible inadequacy of our legal systems in the West to bring our terrorist enemies to justice.

Like many other people, I used to spend considerable amounts of time following the progress of the dozens of al-Qaeda detainees originally held in an American military prison in Guantanamo Bay. The first of them were brought into what was then called Camp X-Ray in 2002. The first images released of the prisoners, shackled and in orange jumpsuits, caused a significant backlash in public opinion as audiences recoiled at their sometimes harsh treatment. But the U.S. could have quickly overcome any unease about these detentions if the terrorists had swiftly faced the full force of American justice. The families of their victims were promised that they would live to see that resolution. But after 25 years and five presidential administrations in Washington, most of the accused are still—unbelievably—in the pretrial phase.

 

2. At The Human Life Review, publisher Maria Maffucci unearths a remarkable 1979 conversation between Malcolm Muggeridge and Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, orchestrated by the journal’s founder, James P. McFadden. From the transcript:

Muggeridge: So that a man like Evelyn Waugh, his heart could be broken by seeing that this Church, that the social implications of it, which are expressed in Brideshead Revisited, and so on, that they’re not going to come to pass, and the whole thing has let him down. And in Graham’s case, that the magic doesn’t work; that it’s not enough just to be able to take the Sacrament and then this and that happens. That isn’t the thing that’s the basis of it. That’s probably the reason. And then if you do that, then this boredom would come in because there would be no—I mean, the anti-boredom is this living relationship with Christ which makes each human being a wonderful person, whoever they may be. Mother Teresa says every single person is Christ, but of course she is very funny, really, because she doesn’t believe you should abuse people, which I rather enjoy doing [laughter] but she doesn’t. But when she wants to abuse anybody, she says of someone, “He’s Christ in very distressing disguise.” [laughter] Wonderful.

Sheen: Isn’t that beautiful! Many of course in the Church, they know about Christ, but they don’t know Christ, and particularly the Passion of Christ, the Cross . . . I find that when St. Paul went to Athens, he prepared that discourse because he quoted two of their poets.

Muggeridge: So it was a set piece.

Sheen: Yes. And not only that, he reviewed the lessons of psychology that said, Start with something familiar to them, and so he spoke of their statuary and so forth. He spoke of creation, providence, government of nations, resurrection as an anastasia, whatever that was. He never mentioned Christ on the Cross.

Muggeridge: And it was a flop.

Sheen: It was a flop!

 

3. At First Things, Dan Hitchens investigates the making of the late Roger Scruton. From the piece:

People who knew Scruton in his early years have sometimes asked themselves the question Hoffman now puts to herself: What on earth happened to him? Within a few decades, the kind, sweet-natured, and apolitical young man had become perhaps Britain’s most hated thinker, a granite-faced provocateur known for his fierce conservatism, his sympathy for Mrs. Thatcher, and his taste for foxhunting. Peter Findlay, good friends with Scruton at secondary school and then Cambridge, felt his public remarks were “hard to forgive,” and they drifted apart. Bron Grillo, Scruton’s first girlfriend, found herself nodding along when Private Eye denounced him. Hoffman, who became a successful author, once wrote to The Observer after a particularly mischievous Scruton piece about feminism. She wondered whether he saw the letter and remembered her.

The question of Scruton’s intellectual development has a broader interest, too. His mind was formed by the experience of the 1960s, the decade in which the modern world came of age. And Scruton is, without compare, the intellectual renegade of Europe’s ’60s generation—progenitor of a highly sophisticated conservative philosophy not only of politics, but of law, religion, culture, sex, music, architecture, the environment, the nation, and a dozen other subjects. No author has done more to shape the imagination of the European right, from Viktor Orbán and Giorgia Meloni to much of the leadership of both Reform U.K. and the Conservative Party. From where, one wonders, did this extraordinary and unique figure—“a rebel against rebellion,” as he called himself—emerge?

 

4. At Paradoxically Speaking, Robert Bork Jr. explores the media invention of his famous father. From the critique:

The latest effort at shadowboxing a ghost comes from Alex Wagner in The Atlantic, in an excerpt from her new book about the conservative legal movement. Wagner returns to the first Federalist Society conference at Yale in 1982, where my father spoke alongside Antonin Scalia, whom casts as the architect of a plan to capture the judiciary, curtail constitutional rights, and use originalism to restore conservative values.

The actual text of Bork’s speech, “Federalism and Gentrification,” survives in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. This isn’t a matter of reconstructing what was said from memory or hostile summary. Reading it makes Wagner’s version unsustainable.

She writes that Bork told the students academia and the press had become overwhelmingly liberal, that the Supreme Court was inventing rights, and that he then laid out a conservative doctrine of originalism grounded in a “strict” or “textualist” reading of the Constitution and the intentions of the Founding Fathers. The first two points are certainly in the speech. The rest is Wagner’s reconstruction. Bork never uses the word “originalism.” He doesn’t call for a strict interpretation, doesn’t call himself a textualist, and doesn’t invoke the Founding Fathers. Those are Wagner’s words, not his.

 

5. At The Imaginative Conservative, Bradley “Double B” Birzer argues with scholar Patrick Deneen’s assessment of the Founding. From the article:

From my perspective—having written extensively on the founding and having had the grand privilege of teaching the history of the American Revolution every fourth semester over the past 28 years at Hillsdale—the American Revolution is deeply radical and deeply conservative, but it is rarely liberal. Yes, to be sure, Locke played a role in the Founding, a huge role. Yet that role had limits. It must be remembered, that about 99% of white colonists were not just Protestant, but, as Burke noted sagaciously, the most Protestant of Protestants. As such, they simply dismissed the part of Locke that dismissed original sin and claimed a Tabula Rasa. Their Locke was a quasi-Anglican Locke—anti-Catholic, to be sure—the Locke of natural rights and of usurpations and a long train of abuses. Between February 1761 and July 4, 1776, as the crowning work of the extraordinary Don Lutz demonstrated, Locke was one of the single most cited figures in the founding. Only St. Paul topped him (but, importantly, he topped Locke by a huge amount), but after July 4, 1776, Locke is mentioned only very, very infrequently. The Locke that inspired the Declaration had absolutely nothing to offer for the creation of a legitimate government, either by the Articles of Confederation or the 1787 Federal Constitution. His rise was meteoric, but so was his fall.

 

6. At Tablet Magazine, Izabella Tabarovsky reminds of the nefarious Soviet stooge who once led the United Nations. From the article:

From the moment he moved into his office on the 38th floor of the Glass Building—the U.N. headquarters housing its administrative arm, the Secretariat—Waldheim proved unmistakably subservient to Moscow. With him at the helm, the Soviets expanded their intelligence footprint at the Secretariat, planting hundreds of additional KGB agents under diplomatic and bureaucratic covers. Under his watch, they completed a mission they had begun years earlier: turning the United Nations into a weapon in their long-running campaign to pit the world against Israel—America’s main ally in the Middle East—and Zionism, which, especially after 1967, the Soviets regarded as a major ideological threat. Observers took note of Waldheim’s spinelessness. By 1978, French intelligence had concluded that Waldheim was “an agent of influence under Soviet control.”

For the Soviets, eventual revelations about Waldheim’s Nazi past were, in all likelihood, old news. For them, he had been a known quantity since 1947, when he spent a month in Moscow as part of the Austrian delegation negotiating the country’s sovereignty, as the World Jewish Congress’s Eli Rosenbaum—a former federal prosecutor who would later lead the Department of Justice’s Nazi-hunting unit and who revealed Waldheim’s Nazi past in 1986—detailed in his book Betrayal. Stalin’s intelligence services would have pored over every detail of his biography in search of compromising information, both as a matter of their invariable practice and because a Nazi past was a dream piece of leverage to have over upwardly mobile Europeans.

 

7. At Civitas Outlook, David C. Rose explains why civics needs economics. From the article:

If you were asked to create a civics curriculum for a communist nation, you would explore that nation’s history, how its governing institutions work, and what a communist system is and how it works. You would teach Marxist economic theory so you could explain why the communist economic system is better than the free market economic system. You would do that because it’s obvious that the communist economic system is the crux of a communist society.

But while those who teach American civics today also talk about our nation’s history and how our governing institutions work, they spend very little, if any, time teaching what a free market economic system is and how it works. Therefore, there is no reason to teach the free-market economic theory needed to explain why free-market economies are better than socialist or communist economies. But isn’t a free market economy the crux of a free market society? Moreover, understanding the economic concepts that underpin it easily calls into question much of what passes for domestic policy.

America’s free market economic system, supercharged by a highly cooperative culture and institutions, is a defining characteristic of America. It is something to be awed by, grateful for, and proud of. But to understand why our free market economic system is actually a multilayered cooperative system, one must first learn the economic theory of cooperation. This begins with learning some basic economics.

 

8. At World Magazine, Katy Faust explores the moxie needed to pass on attending a family gay wedding. From the column:

I know parents who held that line. They did not attend their child’s wedding, and they explained why. Their daughter wasn’t surprised. Years of consistency had already made their “regrets” a foregone conclusion. What surprised her was what came after: Her parents stayed as close as she would allow them. Vacations. Birthdays. Babysitting the children who inevitably joined the household. They never pretended to bless what they hadn’t blessed, but they also never let her go.

Years later, the marriage collapsed. A custody dispute followed and their daughter’s access was trimmed to a handful of days per month. Their daughter, grieving and disoriented, called home.

The friends who had stood and cheered at the wedding could only offer a shallow sadness, because for them nothing but adult feelings had changed. Her parents could mourn with her fully, because they had said from the beginning that this was a misalignment of who she was made to be, not a moral verdict on her worth. They were the only voice that had been consistent the whole way through, and it was that consistency, not the wedding they’d skipped, that their daughter remembered when everything else broke.

 

9. At National Review, David Ibsen urges America not to fear AI policy. From the article:

Too many policymakers want the promise of AI while resisting the data centers and energy systems that have made our modern life and the rise of AI tools possible. This is the technological equivalent of wanting air travel without airports or online commerce without warehouses.

Data centers are not new. They already support banking, streaming services, health records, logistics, cloud storage, cybersecurity, and countless other parts of modern life. AI did not create the need for data centers; our world already depends on them.

When responsibly built, data centers can deliver meaningful local benefits, including construction jobs, permanent technical and facility jobs, and substantial property-tax revenue that can fund schools, public safety, infrastructure, and other community priorities. It is true that like every other piece of modern productive infrastructure, data centers require electricity to operate. But if New York faces limited energy supply, the answer is faster permitting for energy projects and a stronger grid, not blocking creation of the infrastructure of the next economy.

 

10. At Law & Liberty, Elizabeth Grace Matthew deciphers the complexities of the late Gloria Steinem. From the essay:

Since we’re purportedly talking about women’s rights to legal and cultural equality with men, this question is worth asking: What do we think of a man who abandons his fiancée and child in service of his own fledgling ambitions? Words like selfish, shallow, and infantile come to mind. Indeed, the misogynistic manosphere, rightly deplored by progressive feminists like Filipovic, is filled with stories of faux-macho neo-bums celebrating exactly this kind of banal self-centeredness. When men evince solipsistic irresponsibility, we justly deem it immoral and unseemly. When women do the same, we’re supposed to consider it empowered, brave, and heroic.

Talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations.

Unfortunately, thanks in large part to Steinem’s exceptional wit and charm, a patronizing, sexist view of women and female heroism came to define our popular culture for generations of American girls. Moreover, we’ve made it seem falsely axiomatic that women (unlike men) should pay neither a personal nor a societal price for the moral relativism and ultimate nihilism of simply “doing what I want with my life.”

 

11. At the Wall Street Journal, William McGurn again sounds the cry for Jimmy Lai’s freedom. From the column:

Before departing for Beijing in May, Mr. Trump again called Mr. Xi “a friend of mine” and “somebody we get along with.” But his “friend” made sure he left China largely empty-handed. Meanwhile, the buttering up risks making Mr. Trump look like a chump if the Chinese don’t give him something in return.

Then there’s Jimmy Lai. He doesn’t carry a U.S. passport, but he believes America is the best friend the Chinese people have. And he has always said so, in person and in his publications.

Long before Mr. Trump made it a slogan, Jimmy believed America was great—a force for good in an imperfect world. He defended U.S. military interventions. He thought the First Amendment a gift to the world. And he defended Mr. Trump up to the moment when Jimmy was arrested.

 

12. At Public Discourse, Gleb Tsipursky discusses where education should focus after its AI remodeling. From the piece:

Consider the first draft of an analytical memo. Writing the draft may force a novice to organize evidence, notice gaps, distinguish a claim from its support, and confront uncertainty. If AI writes it, the organization may receive a better document sooner and the novice a useful example of stronger work. Whether this counts as progress depends on what happens next. Does the analyst have to explain the reasoning in his own words, identify the strongest reason the draft could be wrong, trace important claims to evidence, and defend the recommendation against objections? Or does he simply forward polished prose that has never become knowledge? The same visible output can represent either accelerated formation or borrowed performance.

Schools face the same choice. Requiring students to reproduce every old technique would confuse tradition with formation. Letting them bypass every demanding cognitive step would confuse performance with learning. A sensible AI policy therefore asks which experiences cultivate judgment and then redesigns those experiences around the new tool. A novice programmer might study an AI-generated solution, explain each step, predict what will happen when an assumption changes, and then solve a related problem without assistance. Research on scaffolded generative-AI coding support suggests that structured guidance can improve coding performance while supporting metacognitive self-regulation. The aim is to move difficulty to the place where it forms the capacities that still matter.

 

Lucky 13. At Breaking Babel, Mark T. Mitchell wonders how much bluster is part of the AI conversation. From the article:

All the “unprecedented” and “ground-breaking” and “revolutionary” language used to describe our current situation masks a more significant fact: we’ve been here before. What if the AI doom scenario is just the latest in a series of global events that turn out to be, at best, highly exaggerated fear factories that, intentionally or not, served to consolidate political and economic power as a plausible means of assuaging a world-wide dread? Was not the threat of climate change precisely that? Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth launched a tsunami of desperate calls for immediate and dramatic action, and he continues to double down on the apocalypse. In 2019, AOC asserted that “the world will end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.” So massive action is needed. The governments must mobilize, and international organizations must facilitate a world-wide response. Apparently, though, “the science” was wrong or incomplete or over-stated. But this much is true: climate hysteria was an effective means to gin up fear, money, and control.

It’s remarkable, though, how quickly the “existential threat” of climate change has been eclipsed by the perils and promises of AI. Now attention has shifted and resources are being poured into the construction of massive data-centers. Without these centers the AI boom will be stymied by a limitation of storage capacity. The energy and water requirements of these data-centers is breath-taking. The so-called “carbon footprints” are enormous. If climate change was truly an existential threat and not a conjured one, the data centers would not be going up with reckless abandon and cheered on by the same people who only yesterday were pushing carbon neutrality as a way to save the planet.

 

Bonus. At Daily Signal, Jay Richards concludes that America’s disease crisis is of man’s own making—so it’s reversible. From the article:

An idea called “discordance” helps make sense of this trend. Human bodies and minds were shaped for a different world, one built on whole foods, natural light and dark, heat and cold, regular movement, tight-knit families, and modest, slow-changing tools. In a few decades, we traded that world for one built on ultra-processed carbs, constant snacking, screens and blue light at night, chemical exposures, and quick medical fixes that have long-term downsides. We’re now out-of-sync with an environment we’ve created. This mismatch scrambles our biology and drives chronic disease.

Start with food. For most of human history, people ate real foods: meat, eggs, fish, roots, and seasonal plants. Sugar was rare. Today, added sugar and refined grains are cheap and ubiquitous. Ultra-processed Frankenfoods now supply most calories for most kids. These foods spike blood sugar, trigger insulin resistance, and promote fat storage and inflammation.

Over time, that pattern leads to obesity, metabolic syndrome, and type 2 diabetes—even in the young. Industrial seed oils, promoted for decades as a “heart-healthy” swap for natural fats, add another layer of trouble by tilting diets toward omega-6 fats that likely fuel inflammation. We also graze all day. This robs our bodies of the fed–fasted rhythm that once built metabolic flexibility.

 

For the Good of the Cause

Uno. At Philanthropy Daily, Brandon Chrostowski tells of an exceptional program training ex-cons in the restaurant trade. Read it here.

Due. More PD: The wise Whitney Athayde gets into the nitty-gritty benefits of text fundraising. Download the wisdom here.

Tre. Even More PD: Melanie Torres finds the charitable essence of the late Dolly Parton. Read it here.

 

Department of Bad Jokes

Q: What does the candy bar do after telling a joke?

A: Snickers.

 

A Dios

The Good Book frequently touches, directly and sideways, to philanthropy and giving and charity. Take the parable from Matthew about the landowner who hires laborers throughout the day, paying them all the same, creating animus from those who worked from sunup to those who commenced in the late afternoon—most famous for its teaching that “the last shall be first, and the first shall be last.” Said the landowner to the grumbling: “Or am I not free to do as I wish with my own money? Are you envious because I am generous?”

Yes, Mr. Moneybags, you are indeed free to dispose of your bounty as you wish, if you wish—and kudos to those who do so wish and spend it in generosity. Of course, the biblical protagonist was free not to dispose of his holdings—a hard position taken by many of God’s creatures, who justify being miserly even though possessing many a mite more than had by the widow.

Enough! If there is a moral to this newsletter-concluding blathering, it is this simple: Like the hero of this parable, do be generous.

May Graces That Inspire Benevolence Come This Way,

Jack Fowler, who between naps at jfowler@amphil.com asks anyone not yet subscribed to this newsletter to do so at www.civilthoughts.com.

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