Dear Intelligent American,
If God does not have His Mercy in the celestial drydock, the forthcoming elections will be resolved promptly, and the last days, months, years of relentless political onslaught—that being nowhere near as bad as the ideological one we’ve been tormented by these past several decades—will cease.
Wishful thinking! Margo Channing famously promised it was going to be a bumpy night. Ahead for all of us are likely many more nights and years of bumpage.
Maybe we should take solace in another well-known one-liner, this of biblical origin: The Kingdom of Heaven is not unto this earth. No it most definitely ain’t. But getting there, wherever its un-earthly location, happens through charity.
From that, none of us have an exemption. For inspiration in engaging in ways to help, and how to direct your mites—surely you have more than the Widow?—of generosity, do make turning regularly to Philanthropy Daily a habit.
Now, strap yourself in, because we’re going on a trip to visit excerpts and links, and Civil Thought’s driver has a lead foot.
Second Star to the Right, and Straight on Till Morning.
1. At Stanford Social Innovation Review, edu-guru Bruno Manno puts a dunce cap on the idea of “college for all.” From the piece:
Instead of the singular goal of college for all, Americans want multiple pathways for their children to succeed. This opportunity pluralism affirms that there are many ways for young people to thrive, not simply by obtaining a four-year degree. The addition of the apprenticeship pathway makes the nation’s opportunity structure more pluralistic and egalitarian.
Unlike most college students, apprenticeship students have a job and earn a living, learn from a workplace mentor and in the classroom, and receive a credential with little to no student debt. This learn-and-earn model is spawning new forms of apprenticeships.
More than 9 in 10 (92 percent) Americans view apprenticeships favorably, while more than 6 in 10 (62 percent) say apprenticeships make people more employable than going to college. When parents are asked to choose between a full-tuition college scholarship and a three-year apprenticeship leading to a good job, nearly 6 in 10 (56 percent) opt for apprenticeships. And almost two-thirds of Gen Z high schoolers say post-high-school learning should be on the job through internships or apprenticeships.
2. At The Yost Post, Zachary Yost and Dan Klein crunch the numbers and declare, to the likely disappointment of libertarians, that there is no “uniparty.” From the beginning of the analysis:
A reason libertarians cite in favor of not voting Republican is that both parties are the same. We are stuck with a “uniparty,” some say.
In “Libertarians Need to Get Real About Politics,” published by Fusion, we said otherwise. We replied to libertarian commenters in “Fear Not Lesser Evil.”
Here we lay out demonstrative empirical evidence that the walks walked by the two parties differ greatly. An establishment of entrenched interests exists; a uniparty does not.
When it comes to libertarian concerns, comparing Democrats and Republicans is not always simple. On some issues, the libertarian position is paradoxical. What if a policy reform—open borders?—is direct-liberty augmenting but overall-liberty reducing?
Our implied reader is a libertarian—not because we equate libertarianism with the good but because we plead with libertarians.
3. At Tablet Magazine, Shalom Goldman explains how two renowned Christian apologists, G.K. Chesterton and Jacques Maritain, made the case for Israel. From the essay:
Two of the most influential Catholic thinkers of the 20th century, G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) and Jacques Maritain (1882-1973), were deeply engaged in reshaping the Catholic Church’s relationship to Judaism and Zionism. These writers and their Jewish interlocutors helped the church and the Zionist leadership arrive at an uneasy but slowly evolving understanding—one that would lead, at the end of the 20th century, to full Vatican diplomatic relations with the State of Israel. The process that led to the transformation of the Vatican’s attitudes toward Israel was complex and burdened by the historical past.
Maritain, like Chesterton, was a Protestant convert to the Roman Catholic Church. He was brought up in a secularized Protestant family and joined the Catholic Church as a young man. As the author of many philosophical works and a scholar of St. Thomas Aquinas’ works, Maritain wielded great influence. By the 1950s and 1960s Maritain’s influence extended to the Vatican and the papacy. His teachings were decisive in changing both official and unofficial Catholic views of the Jews. Maritain helped formulate the Vatican II response to the Shoah and influenced the Vatican’s reformulation of attitudes toward the State of Israel.
Both Chesterton and Maritain also exerted considerable influence on Catholic intellectuals in the United States, particularly on the issue of Zionism. Chesterton, who lived in England, visited the United States in the 1920s and recorded his impressions in What I Saw in America. His influence in the United States has grown greatly in the post-World War II period. And his books for a general readership, such as the Father Brown series, remain popular. Maritain, who was born in France, lived in the United States for long periods between 1940 and 1960, part of that time as a professor at Princeton University. In his long teaching career he made a dual contribution to Catholic intellectual life, first in the more narrowly focused area of the history of ideas, particularly Aquinas studies, and then in the more general liberalization of Catholic attitudes toward other religions, a change reflected in the innovations of Vatican II.
4. At The American Conservative, Joseph Addington focuses on how new president Claudia Sheinbaum, avowed leftist, will handle Mexico’s brutal drug cartels. From the piece:
Controlling the cartels will undoubtedly be one of Sheinbaum’s biggest challenges. Organized crime in Mexico has proven extremely difficult to root out. During his presidency, Felipe Calderón attempted, without success, to destroy the cartels by force during the Mexican Drug War—the principal result of which was a massive increase in murders as cartels militarized in response, a development that continues to haunt Mexico to this day. Successive presidents have tried adjustments and alternative strategies to little avail. Sheinbaum’s predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (popularly known as AMLO), famously advocated a somewhat softer approach, proclaiming that cartel violence must be solved with “hugs not bullets” by addressing the root social causes, although he less conspicuously continued to deploy the armed forces against organized crime in affected areas. The result was a modest decline in the homicide rate during his term in office, little consolation in a country whose raw numbers remain near historical highs.
Sheinbaum’s security strategy builds off that of her mentor, but adds some promising new elements to the mix. It consists of four points: solving the root social causes of organized crime, reforming the National Guard, increasing cooperation with state and local governments, and the strengthening of state intelligence and investigative services through the creation of a new national intelligence coordination agency.
5. At American Habits, Patrick O’Hannigan declares that Ray Charles was his civics teacher. From the article:
Charles understood that cultural appropriation always pays homage to localism. If you’ve ever sung along with “Seven Spanish Angels” on oldies radio, then you know that Ray could make even a gunfighter ballad sound sublime. Neither he nor Willie Nelson, his duet partner in that song, had any ethnic claim to south-of-the-border material, but it didn’t and doesn’t matter. Similarly, one of the funniest scenes in the 1987 comedy “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles” shows affable Canadian actor John Candy pantomiming saxophone and keyboard riffs from Ray Charles’ 1957 hit, “Mess Around” while he drives recklessly down a dark highway.
Brother Ray’s profoundly American success story was made possible in part because he grew up in an era when this country was more confident than it is now. He even told us so, in his idiosyncratic but stirring version of “America the Beautiful.” Have you noticed that Ray starts with a middle verse rather than the first verse? Snare drums and trumpets introduce the song, but then his Hammond B-3 organ sounds like a puppy in the grass. Ray warms up with church arpeggios like the “Baptist piano roll” that Paul Simon lifted for “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” and swings warmly into the vocal line for “Oh beautiful for heroes proved in liberating strife. . .”
He knows that verse is little-known and even less often sung, so afterward he drops into conversational mode without losing the beat, and says “You know when I was in school, we used to sing it something like this. Listen here:” Then he makes good (no, great) on the spacious skies and amber waves of grain. Point being, he used to sing “America the Beautiful” in school. How many people today can say that? It’s the kind of education that would help to bind our country’s wounds. And if it provides a formative memory for another musical genius or two, that would be icing on the proverbial cake.
6. At The European Conservative, Paul Coleman reports on a shocking British criminal case, of a man with the temerity to pray silently. From the article:
That a judgment from the law courts of England seriously assessed a man’s “slightly bowed head” and “clasped hands” when determining criminal liability is utterly farcical. Moreover, the focus on posture prevented the court from getting to the root of the matter: If we truly have the right to freedom of thought, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion, can silent prayer in a public place ever be a crime? Or are we now meant to accept that we have those rights, but not in public places and certainly not with bowed heads?
Adam’s conviction is horrific for him and for his family. His criminal record, his finances and his professional reputation are all impacted by the content of his silent thoughts and prayers. But even more broadly, Adam’s conviction is horrific for the UK, and represents a dark stain on our nation.
We know legal restrictions on Christian beliefs exist in other countries around the world in order to protect the dominant religion, for example, through blasphemy, apostasy, and anti-conversion laws. But in recent years the West has adopted its own secular versions of these laws, protecting the dominant secular ideologies of our day. This process has moved so quickly that head tilting and hand clasping have become part of the legal argumentation. And with the legislative proposals of the new government, the process shows no signs of abating.
7. At Plough Quarterly, Alan Rubenstein hails an old teacher and fellow word detective. From the piece:
As friends outside the classroom, I was now to call him Bob. But after that Seder, there was a long gap before I saw Bob again. My path led me to a job with an organization devoted to Jewish education, bringing the great ideas from Jewish texts into productive conversation with the great ideas from other Western sources – from the “Great Books.” That is when I began to think about reconnecting with Bob. But, alas, I was too shy to write or call for a couple years.
What changed things was a visit to a bookstore where I saw the title Beginning Biblical Hebrew: Intentionality and Grammar by Robert Sacks on display. I had no idea that this book existed. But reading it reminded me of its exceptional author’s fascination with language, and how he had inspired my own.
Though it sounds like a simple book for learning Hebrew, it is in fact a work of constructive philosophy. For its author, words – and the bits and pieces of words that most people simply call “affixes” or “inflectional markings” – are really sedimented thoughts that invite recovery (he liked to call them “ghosts”). What was once a lively and creative invention that served a communicative need becomes so routinely used that it hardens into a dead formality. To see that there was once a vibrant thought where there is now just a grammatical marking is to see that thing between order and chaos that allows one to really have a question.
8. At Modern Age, the great Bill Kauffman finds “anarchism” a most American, and misunderstood, word. From the article:
The abolitionist ranks included a number of anarchists, among them the wealthy New York Congressman Gerrit Smith, who made an exception to his antistatism by advocating the prohibition of alcohol. Smith might appear a hypocrite, but with a nod to Emerson’s counsel about hobgoblins and little minds, the inconsistency of American anarchists has been one of their charms. Systematic anarchists weaving their elaborate schemes have usually been bores, men just as trapped in webs of abstraction as the statists against whom they rail. Their influence within the broader culture has been nil. American anarchism has been more a tendency than a philosophy; the most appealing anarchists have been literary men deeply dyed in the American grain. . . .
Yet echoes of native anarchism may be heard throughout American history: in the warnings of the Anti-Federalists about the centralizing thrust of the new Constitution; in the Garrisonian abolitionists who reviled any government that countenanced slavery; in the Populists of the 1890s, with their attacks on chartered corporations and paper wealth; in the Old Right of the 1930s, which saw the New Deal as potentially totalitarian; in the New Left of the 1960s, which denounced the military, the university, and the corporation as dehumanizing; and among contemporary libertarians, especially those influenced by the economist and anti-imperialist Murray N. Rothbard. But except for the anarchist-tinged Industrial Workers of the World, the radical labor union that reached its zenith in the early twentieth century, anarchists have never been adept organizers. For the most part anarchy in the United States has been a literary-political tendency. A very partial list of American men and women of letters who have described themselves as anarchists includes Henry Adams (a “conservative Christian anarchist”), Paul Goodman, Norman Mailer, Robinson Jeffers, e. e. cummings, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Ursula Le Guin, William Saroyan, Dwight Macdonald, and Edward Abbey. Abbey’s novels, especially The Brave Cowboy (1956), The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975), and The Fool’s Progress (1988), feature merry anarchist heroes who live by Abbey’s anarchist creed: “Be loyal to your family, your clan, your friends, and your community. Let the nation-state go hang itself.”
9. At Law & Liberty, Elizabeth Grace Matthew makes the case against gentle parenting. From the essay:
At bottom, gentle parenting discards the very concepts of truth and authority, in deference to the capricious tyranny of both parents’ and children’s feelings. The approach requires that parents model the kind of facility with emotional language that we want children to have. That’s why it is considered a good example of gentle parenting to say: “When you don’t get ready on time, it hurts my feelings and makes me anxious. Why are you having a hard time?”
There are two problems with a statement like this one, in a situation where a parent is trying to get out the door: First, the problem with not getting ready on time is that it is inconsiderate, inefficient, and disrespectful of others’ time; whether I “feel anxious” about it is wholly immaterial. Second, “why you are having a hard time being on time” is a conversation we by definition do not have time for in this circumstance. By beginning such a conversation in this moment, I am being inconsiderate and disrespectful toward whomever we are not on time for.
In other words: what’s right is right and what’s wrong is wrong, no matter how either the child or the parent feels about it. This is why any civilization that carves an ordered society out of the harsh barbarism of nature is built on rules, laws, and mores that incentivize and reward what is right while stigmatizing and penalizing what is wrong.
10. At Verily Magazine, Kris Ann Valdez reveals how to master the art of consignment. From the article:
Most people take their unwanted clothes to the thrift store, but I prefer to consign first and donate the rest. In brief, consigning your clothes (or other goods) means making an agreement with a shop that says they can offer your items for sale in their establishment. They may or may not buy your items up front, but if an item finds a buyer, you both get paid. It’s not necessarily a way to make quick money, but the investment of your time can pay out well.
In consigning my clothing, I trade pieces I’m not wearing for money, store credit, or new-to-me attire that feels fresh, practical, and/or better fits my current needs. Occasionally, I find something in a consignment shop I drool over, which ends up taking its place as the crème de la creme of my closet. And the best part is that most of the time I don’t even remember what I traded out for my new favorite item.
Perhaps you’ve tried consigning your wardrobe without luck. Nothing is worse in a consignment shop than hearing, “Unfortunately, we couldn’t take anything today.” A flush crosses your face, you swipe your unwanted bags, and you dart out with your head down. Yes, it’s embarrassing. And yes, it’s happened to me.
11. At Front Porch Republic, LuElla D’Amico mines Little Women and finds good gossip. From the article:
The first chapter of book two of Little Women is aptly titled, “Gossip.” Between the publication of books one and two, actual gossip about Alcott and her characters abounded. After all, the somewhat unexpected, instant success of book one can be attributed to, as scholar Anna South writes, Alcott’s “richly imaginative and visually lively characterization,” a characterization that makes readers feel as if they are “saying farewell to old friends” at the end of book one.[1] In the interim between books one and two, Alcott famously receives letters from readers gossiping about her characters and what she ought to do with them next. It is no accident that Alcott addresses her readers directly, then, at the beginning of book two, in a chapter titled “Gossip.” . . .
“Gossip” is an invitation to moral conversation. As a friendly narrative guide, almost a maternal one herself like Marmee whom she likens herself to, Alcott uses gossip to dissuade readers from any ill-conceived conceptions they may have had from the previous book. These are the stories you need to know about the characters, she says, and this is how you should interpret them. As an omniscient narrator, but one who inserts herself into the story, it is possible to argue that she acts as a “godparent of sorts” for her readers, who have become her friends and her characters’ friends, using gossip to direct readers as to how the narrative, both past and future, should be interpreted. That is, she is the reader’s “god-sibling,” offering her audience gossip about the Marches, but she does so with love—and tells them not to consider what’s been told before in a negative light, such as “too much lovering,” for instance.
12. At The Hockey News, Tim Neschis reports on an NHL player who has scored a hat trick of millions in the fight against cancer. From the story:
New York Islanders captain Anders Lee revealed his annual Jam Kancer event raised over $227,000.
This was his fifth Jam Kancer event, and it was by far the most successful, beating last year’s event by a total of $155,000. . . .
The Kancer Jam was held on Sep. 16 at Northwell Ice Center, the Islanders practice facility in East Meadow. . . .
Lee has been holding this event since 2017 and has now helped raise around $3 million.
Lucky 13. At The Free Press, Kat Rosenfield tells of American women and their growing affection for hallucinogens. From the article:
And then, Rachel takes a generous dose of magic mushrooms, or sometimes MDMA, and—there’s really no other way to say this— spends the next several hours tripping balls.
“Everything feels incredible. Everything tastes incredible. All your sensory experiences are really intense. Sex is incredible as well,” she told me. “If you take MDMA with a partner, it feels almost like you can accomplish what you would in, like, five years of couples counseling, in a night.”
In American popular culture, psychedelic drugs are probably best known as recreational substances beloved by the sort of dreadlock-sporting, patchouli-marinated, camper van–dweller who takes sound baths instead of actual baths and just wants to free his mind, man. But their use has sharply risen in the last decade or so; one study published in July 2024 found that the percentage of adults aged 35 to 50 who had used hallucinogens within the past year was seven times what it was in 2014. And it’s not just hippies driving the trend.
Bonus. At National Review, James Lileks shows he may be the best friend of Man’s Best Friend. From the beginning of the piece:
Anyone who thinks modern politics is too nasty hasn’t seen a dog fight a raccoon. No quarter, no rules. If you slash off a hunk of your opponent’s nose, there is no clarifying tweet the next day that apologizes for sentiments expressed in the heat of the moment.
You cannot blame either combatant for its deplorable actions, unlike in modern politics. They are operating by instinct: The raccoon is lumbering around like an idiot full of rabies, looking for something to eat, and the dog is fiercely protecting the pack from a creature that might get in the house and eat the Milk-Bones. There is no dissuading the dog, since honor and safety are at stake; all you can do is turn on the hose, which makes the dog stop and think, Wait, I’m protecting the kibble, and you think this is time for a bath? You want to do my nails next?
At the end of the struggle, our dog did not raise a paw in victory, because that is not their way. He limped inside and had his wounds cleaned and daubed with unguent. I told him he would live in the annals of combat and be sung about like Hector and Achilles. The incident was quickly forgotten, just like the time when he consumed an entire rabbit and spent a day immobile as his innards labored to move the thing to the haunch-trembling conclusion, an event that required X-rays and a dinner of charcoal. I know it was forgotten because he ate another rabbit the next week.
For the Good of the Cause
Uno. “DAFs”—the acronym for donor advised funds—is the subject of a Center for Civil Society via-Zoom free webinar (to be hosted by Your Intrepid Correspondent) on Tuesday, November 19th, from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. (Eastern). The three experts who will tell their DAF war stories are Gabe Conger, president of the Bradley Impact Fund, Peter Lipsett, vice president of DonorsTrust, and Cecilia Diem, director of donor advisory at AmPhil. You can get complete information, and complete details, right here.
Due. At Philanthropy Daily, Stephanie D’Anselmi adds to the ongoing “Works of Mercy” series with a piece on visiting the sick. Read it here.
Tre. Nonprofit worker bees who have a hand in writing grant applications should avail themselves of the Center for Civil Society’s forthcoming “In the Trenches” Master Class on “Elements of Grant Writing.” The invaluable three-hour training takes place Thursday, December 5th. Get complete information, and register, right here.
Department of Bad Jokes
Q: Where do pirates get their hooks?
A: At second-hand stores.
A Dios
Halloween—rightly known as “All Hallows’ Eve”—brings out the Old Man in Your Humble Servant. As religiosity declines, as the worship of All Saints free-falls, the esteem of this day—once the exclusive province of trick-or-treating kids—amongst adults grows annually. Is it a sign of the permanent adolescence increasingly defining our society? The court rules: Pahhh-thetic!
Now get off my lawn!!
May We Give Candy Generously,
Jack Fowler, who is carving pumpkins at jfowler@amphil.com.
