A Dozen-Plus Stimulants, Gathered for Your Edification and Inspiration
Dear Intelligent American,
He died a martyr’s death by tradition on this day, the 14th of February, in A.D. 270—imprisoned, tortured, clubbed to death, beheaded, buried outside of Rome, a wealthy citizen whose faith saw him become a priest while persecution raged. Valentine—as saints are want to do—has acquired various patronages: Love, beekeepers, against epilepsy and fainting, and against plagues, for happy marriages and the affianced. There may have been three of him—composites happen (for example: Obama girlfriends).
Whatever the true truth of this man of pre-declining Rome, his irresistible legacy has transcended and colored cultures for a millennium and then some. His feast day is one of those few—like Christmas and July 4th and St. Patrick’s Day—that remind us that there is in Providence an expression of love and even merriment.
And chocolate. Dark, if you don’t mind.
So . . . Happy Saint Valentine’s Day. Enjoy it and share it.
And Now, a Sampler of Goodies that Would Make Whitman Envious
1. At TomKlingenstein.com, fan favorite Daniel J. Mahoney, author of the forthcoming book, The Persistence of the Ideological Lie, tells how the totalitarian impulse is a thing very much of the present. From the piece:
Others believed that the revolutions of 1989 and the fall of Soviet communism inaugurated “the end of History” with the triumph of electoral democracy, market economies accompanied by generous welfare states, ever-expanding “human rights” (however novel or spurious), and the near obsolescence of war and serious social strife. Such interpretations were naïve.
In short: the terrible illusions that led to the totalitarian tragedy largely went unexamined and unchallenged, with all-too-predictable consequences. The opportunity to come to terms with the mix of moral nihilism and ideological fanaticism that defined twentieth-century totalitarianism was largely wasted. As a result, new and increasingly virulent strains of coercive utopianism arose in the form of woke fanaticism, the new racialism, “settler colonial” ideology, gender ideology, and other efforts to divide humanity into permanently warring camps: innocent “victims” without moral or political agency, and “exploiters” or “oppressors” said to be beyond redemption.
Thirty-five years after the fall of European communism “the totalitarian impulse,” as I call it, dominates much of progressive politics and discourse, and has been institutionalized in major segments of civil society and in governmental institutions throughout the Western world. Its adherents confuse democracy (and the imperative to “save” it) with such dangerous modes of thinking.
2. At Tablet Magazine, Will Tanner explains why racial politics has South Africa careening towards collapse. From the article:
In short, B-BBEE requires racial preferences in hiring and promotion and handing shares of ownership to Blacks. The state measures compliance with B-BBEE via a scoring system that tracks compliance based on how companies hire Black workers under the B-BBEE racial preferences requirements; promote Black workers to management positions; and give ownership stakes to Blacks. Though the B-BBEE laws don’t directly burden the private sector, they require that the state only engage private companies in procurement contracts and issue licenses and authorizations if they comply with B-BBEE requirements.
As a result, most companies have played along with B-BBEE. That is particularly true of highly regulated entities like Eskom, South Africa’s electric utility, which prides itself on its B-BBEE compliance and recently planned to cut thousands of white engineers and other employees, though it backtracked on those cuts and instead promised to focus on hiring and promoting Black employees. Eskom’s ability to provide electrical power has meanwhile devolved to the point of frequent blackouts and legitimate fears of a total grid collapse.
Eskom is far from the only company to degenerate in the face of South Africa’s race laws. The country’s economy is shrinking while unemployment is crushingly high. South African universities struggle to produce qualified graduates while being known for overt racial discrimination. Corrupt politicians and party-linked, gangsterlike entities use the country’s racial laws to skim profits off the struggling economy. Basic infrastructure like the hospital system has crumbled. Meanwhile, what’s left is being pillaged or frittered away in bribery schemes by some of the most corrupt politicians and civil servants on the planet.
3. At National Catholic Register, Jeremy Beer tries to catch up with an ultra-marathoner who is beating a path to a shrine for martyrs. From the piece:
For Kuplack, that’s a light morning, a way to stay loose as he prepares for the main event. In a few days, he’ll run 35 miles, or thereabouts. He’ll do the same the next day, and the next—for 100 consecutive days. Starting on Jan. 18 at Dana Point, California, he began a run to Auriesville, New York, where his 3,500-mile jog will end at the National Shrine of the North American Martyrs, which was just designated a national shrine by the U.S. bishops.
Why would anyone do this?
For the next 30 minutes, the 36-year-old Kuplack tries to explain. He is passionate, articulate and literate, peppering his speech with quotes from the Bible, Pope Benedict and Dostoevsky. He looks at his listener with intensity. His are the eyes of a man who has seen something, something few of his contemporaries have ever seen—something he desperately needs to convey.
4. At Civitas Outlook, Tevi Troy explains that natural disasters can reshape public policy, and politics. From the piece:
To answer this question, it is helpful to look at history and whether disasters lead to real change or whether government leaders kept stumbling along without improving. As it turns out, some of our nation’s worst disasters have led to needed changes.
In 1969, Hurricane Camille made landfall in Mississippi, killing more than 250 people. Richard Nixon was president then, and he got the federal government more involved than was typical in natural disasters up to that point. According to Nixon, Camille was “probably the worst natural disaster we have had in the century.” He sent 16,500 military personnel to help deal with the crisis and Vice President Spiro Agnew to see what was happening.
In response to Agnew’s report, which indicated citizens' inability to gauge the severity of incoming hurricanes, Nixon requested federal officials develop an improved weather forecasting system. In response, National Hurricane Center Director Robert Simpson and a consultant named Herbert Saffir developed the five-tier hurricane ranking category still in use today.
5. At City Journal, Corbin Barthold warns of the great threat Red Chinese hackers pose to America. From the assessment:
Maybe the most disturbing thing about Salt Typhoon is that, almost a year after discovering it, Washington still doesn’t have a handle on the problem. No one knows if the hackers have been ejected. Some national security officials worry that we may never know.
Then there is “Volt Typhoon.” Since at least 2019, this group of Chinese hackers has been entering, exploring, and preparing to disrupt computers used to run critical infrastructure. We must assume, at this point, that malware lies dormant in the digital underbelly of our railroads, airports, electricity grid, gas pipelines, and more. Though these hidden bugs could be used in many frightful ways, the CCP seems primarily to be laying the groundwork for the conquest of Taiwan. As it launches an invasion, it will seek to ensure that the U.S. military cannot move troops or supplies or communicate with bases or ships, and that ordinary Americans must sit by without water, power, Internet, or transportation. The goal will be to foist on us both military incapacitation and societal panic, the better to defeat us in war and discredit liberal democracy.
While we cannot know what steps the federal government has taken behind the scenes, the Biden administration’s public posture was unequal to the seriousness of the threat. Chinese companies that assist Salt Typhoon, while doing no business here, have nothing to fear from the Treasury Department’s sanctions. The CCP probably laughed when Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security advisor, “sent clear messages” (his words) not about how the U.S. will retaliate for Volt Typhoon now, but about what the U.S. might do if the CCP unleashes its uploaded viruses. That Biden issued an executive order on cybersecurity a mere four days before leaving office underscores his lack of urgency.
6. At The European Conservative, Javier Villamor reports on a new European Union program that claims to battle misinformation but at its core is intent on bureaucratic control of speech. From the piece:
On Wednesday, February 5th, the European Parliament launched the new special committee known as the “European Democracy Shield” (EUDS), an initiative promoted by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen under the pretext of combating disinformation and protecting the European Union’s democratic institutions.
Despite its claims, the composition of this committee and the political maneuvers behind its formation have sparked fierce criticism from conservatives and sovereigntists, who denounce it as a political exclusion operation and an attempt by Brussels to shield itself against the electoral outcomes it views as undesirable.
Von der Leyen formally proposed the EUDS on May 14, 2024, as part of her campaign for re-election as President of the European Commission. In her speech, she warned about the “growing threat of disinformation” and the “need for a more resilient Europe against hybrid attacks.” However, beneath these arguments lies a clear political strategy: reinforcing control over public debate and limiting the rise of political forces that challenge Brussels’ centralizing model.
7. At Commentary, Christine Rosen sizes up the dilemma society poses for the “tradwife.” From the piece:
Tradwife content is feeding a new cultural need as well. Twentieth-century feminism’s end game was equality for women, and by numerous measurements (education, employment opportunities, political and cultural advancement), it achieved this goal. But in doing so, 20th-century feminism also ended up destroying the social contract between men and women—evidence of which is emerging only now, in the 21st century.
Perhaps the reason so many people find the tradwife trend appealing in its retro splendor is that it is so clearly a comforting fiction. Zoom out from the klatch of tradwife influencers online and you will find a society where gender relations are not at all cozy and welcoming, and where no amount of winsome and beskirted women can distract from our uncomfortable reality: Men and women are ideologically and culturally polarized and becoming averse to marriage and child-rearing. Many don’t even want to be involved at all with members of the opposite sex. A 2023 Pew survey of people found that, among those ages 18 to 29 years of age, 63 percent of men considered themselves single compared to 34 percent of women.
That men feel this way much more than women do is an important bit of information. We have lived for decades in a culture that has normalized the denigration of traditional masculinity.
8. At National Review, Dennis McCarthy explains how a Harvard MBA has lost its prestige. From the piece:
Tuition at HBS currently runs at $76,410 annually. Yet when it comes to landing a quality job, this pricey degree seems to have lost much of its cachet. “Going to Harvard is not going to be a differentiator,” one HBS official acknowledged to the Journal. “You have to have the skills.”
That’s an incredible admission, considering that the very purpose of business schools is to transmit “the skills” that lead to top jobs.
If Harvard Business School can’t teach those skills, then who can? And what about the hundreds of undergraduate programs across the country that crank out hundreds of thousands of bachelor’s degrees in business and related fields each year: Is it realistic to expect them to do any better than HBS?
In our volatile economy—where we can’t even predict which jobs humans will still be working in six months, let alone in ten or 25 years—building a college education around the momentary needs of an ever-shifting marketplace is a fool’s errand. Many professions that a college can train students for today will be obsolete tomorrow, and the typical business professor can no better predict the job of tomorrow than any of the rest of us can.
9. At RealClear Education, MacKenzie Price explains that in American classrooms, technology remains underutilized. From the piece:
Too many schools cling to outdated modes of education that fail to meet students where they are—and fail to prepare them for the world they'll inherit.
For example, technology is still dramatically underutilized in most classrooms. In an age where groceries arrive with a tap of a finger and language learning can happen on an app, forcing students into all-day, lecture-based classrooms doesn't make sense. Today's ed-tech tools can tailor lessons to match individuals' strengths and weaknesses—and provide the kind of personalized attention that traditional classrooms cannot.
At the network of schools in Texas and Florida that I run, this approach has transformed learning. High-performing students don't get a free pass to finish early and play games. Instead, they dive deeper into complex material.
At the same time, struggling students are not left behind. Using real-time feedback and adaptive learning tools, we stick with them until that "a-ha" moment happens.
10. More Education: At The Free Press, Frannie Block tells how educators are conning kids. From the article:
In 2024, Oklahoma schools seemed to perform a miracle. In 2022, the Nation’s Report Card scored only 24 percent of the state’s fourth graders as “proficient” in reading. But in 2024 the state reported that 47 percent of its fourth graders were reading at grade level—almost doubling the previous figure.
If that sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is.
In the last year, Oklahoma lowered its “cut scores”—which is the score a student needs to hit on a test to be considered proficient. This happened quietly, without a formal announcement of the move, meaning many Oklahoman parents assumed their kids had vastly improved at math and reading when, more likely, nothing had changed.
This trend is also happening in New York State. After not a single eighth grader in the upstate city of Schenectady (population 68,000) tested “proficient” in math in 2022, state officials lowered cut scores the following year. “We don’t want to keep going backwards,” the co-chair of an advisory committee told a local outlet, justifying the change. “We’re at this new normal.”
11. At Law & Liberty, Richard Reinsch finds that Charles Kesler’s defense of the Founding is a guide to help us recover cherished principles. From the essay:
In the place of either traditionalism or libertarianism, Kesler argues that “what conservatism needs is an understanding of our political tradition that will free it from reaction and open it to action—action for the sake of the genuine love of liberty as expressed in the principles of that tradition.” Therefore, “conservatism, rightly understood, is less a commitment to the past, than a commitment to certain truths, applicable to past, present, and future.” This requires conservatives to understand who they are as Americans in terms of the Declaration of Independence. But this crucial document didn’t drop from the sky or, rather, the mind of Jefferson, nor does it stem solely from the Enlightenment. The Declaration is the culmination of the American Revolution, whose principles Jefferson and Adams stated were firmly implanted in the public mind; they were part of the practical reason and judgment of the statesmen, soldiers, and citizenry who pressed the case for American freedom and independence, that a republican constitution would protect.
Conservatives, Kesler observes, are confident of what they believe while failing to understand how their many ideas and sentiments connect to the truth of who they are as human persons and what this means for constitutionalism and the necessary politics to recover it. The politics of most Republican officials, Kesler argues, is only rarely conceived to be more than a valuable instrument for policy victories. Why is the goal not much higher? The aim should be to vindicate a politics devoted to constitutional citizenship informed by natural rights. Progressives do not neglect in their transformations of our country the goal of leading Americans to new ideas about equality, citizenship, and justice. They articulate publicly how their politics, policy, and leadership redefine the constitutional framework and reshape how Americans understand who they are as citizens.
12. Homeward Bound: At Front Porch Republic, K.E. Colombini reminds us about the attraction of that be-it-ever-so-humble place, found on a map. From the piece:
Here another map memory intrudes. As a new driver, I joined AAA not for the roadside service as much as for its bounty of free maps I could get—even if I wasn’t really planning to go anywhere. Decades down the line, my wife and I (and our four children at the time) planned a cross-country vacation, in part to celebrate my mother-in-law’s 70th birthday with a family reunion. We drove from Sacramento to Chicago, down to Kentucky and over to Washington, D.C. before returning on the northern route via the Badlands, Mt. Rushmore, and Yellowstone. All in all, it was 19 states and 7,000 miles.
For just such a trip the auto club produces TripTiks, narrow spiral-bound map books custom assembled so you can follow the roads you choose and get all the pertinent information. Until GPS became ubiquitous, it was a long-distance driver’s best friend. Our trip was mapped out in three TripTik volumes. That was back in 1999, and now you can do all this online and on your phone or vehicle touchscreen. But these cannot be saved as a memory for decades later when you pull out a shoebox full of precious maps and their memories.
Older and wiser, I have long learned that for all the times I wanted to visit far-away places, there is no place like home, even if it is only here, in the state next-door to Dorothy’s Kansas. Thinking about this Tolkien map above my desk, I remember that, for all their adventures, the hobbits always longed for the Shire—even though those who returned then had to scour it from the evil that befell it.
Lucky 13. At Farmingdale Patch, Michael DeSantis reports on how a Long Island (NY) radio station raised big bucks to battle childhood cancer. From the beginning of the story:
Connoisseur Media’s 103.1 The Wolf (WWWF) raised $165,825 during its first-ever "Country Cares for St. Jude Kids" Radiothon on Feb. 6 and Feb. 7, according to a news release.
The two-day event was successful "thanks to the generosity of loyal listeners and incredible sponsors," the Farmingdale-based radio station shared. The funds will support St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in its mission to treat and defeat childhood cancer. . . .
"For our first year doing this, we had no idea what to expect, but our listeners and sponsors blew us away," Patrick Shea, program director of 103.1 The Wolf, said in a news release. "Hearing these stories firsthand was incredibly moving, and to see our community step up in such a big way proves just how much heart Long Island has. This is only the beginning—we’re committed to making this an even bigger success in the years to come."
Bonus. Though this missive is loath to discuss bare politics, herewith an exception: At Sanity Clause, Joe Klein, famed author of Primary Colors, laments as to what has become of the party of Jefferson and Jackson. From the analysis:
Yes, friends, still crazy after all these years . . . and the encroaching dementia is not benign. Can this party be saved? I have my doubts. The intellectual corrosion is comprehensive; it is only matched by the self-righteous arrogance. But what’s the alternative? I’ve been through Dems in Disarray syndrome multiple times in the past: in 1972, in 1980, in 1988, in 2016 . . . but, gotta say, this is the worst I’ve ever seen it. There is a vast cluelessness abroad in the party. Its prevailing vision of an America based on identity now resides in the outhouse. . . .
. . . The Democrats have twice now enabled a World-Historic Demagogue to be elected President of the United States. One wonders if Trump’s reelection will stand with Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon. The Gaza-like rubble of the Biden Administration is just beginning to come into focus. It probably dates to the days before Biden became President, when he made a deal with the socialist minions of Bernie Sanders to create his new Administration. This was Project 2021, the precursor of Project 2025. It resulted in left-nuttiness below the radar throughout the government. Every so often, the nuttiness would surface—as with the chaos at the Southern border—and Biden would do nothing about it. But usually it was a subdural hematoma, bleeding beneath the surface, like the death-grip the teachers unions held over the Department of Education. And the utter lapse in keeping the Pentagon up to date and funded appropriately. And the espousal, in too many Democratic cities, of releasing shoplifters without bail. (It wasn’t Defund the Police; it was Empower The Thieves.)
For the Good of the Cause
Uno. Chop chop! Next Thursday, February 20, from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. (Eastern), four bigwigs over at AmPhil will advise on what to do when donors get tough, in a Scotch Talk on Navigating Difficult Donor Meetings. You can get complete details, and register, right here.
Due. The Center for Civil Society will be hosting an “In the Trenches” Master Class on Major Gifts on March 20, 2025, via Zoom, from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. (Eastern). You really cannot have a strong nonprofit fundraising program without knowing your onions when it comes to high-level donors. So do attend. Register, and get complete information, right here.
Department of Bad Jokes
Q: What do you call just-married spiders?
A: Newlywebs.
A Dios
’Twas 44 years ago, that blessed day when Mrs. F (then Miss M) did attend a first date. Admittedly, Fort Apache the Bronx was not the most romantic cinematic fare, but that’s what was seen, following a little dinner in “Downtown Worcester,” which once was billed by the local Telegram as the forthcoming “Paris of the ’90s,” which is evidence that sometimes newspaper men drank too much. And on that note, we leave you to sweetheart, and if you have none, well, we offer our services (in of course a Christian way).
Let Us Remember That He Who Abides in Love Abides in God,
Jack Fowler, who also abides at jfowler@ampil.com.
