Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 161

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Trevor Responds To Crit­i­cism From The French Ambas­sador (Trevor Noah, YouTube): this is a wit­ty and insight­ful 8 minute reflec­tion on the inter­play between eth­nic her­itage and nation­al iden­ti­ty and the ways that Amer­i­cans process things dif­fer­ent­ly than the French.
  2. The New York Yan­kees Are A Moral Abom­i­na­tion (David Bent­ley Hart, New York Times): “Real­ly, how does a Yan­kees fan’s pride in all those pur­chased cham­pi­onships dif­fer from the self-delu­sion of a man stag­ger­ing out of a bawdy house at dawn, com­pli­ment­ing him­self on his mag­nif­i­cent pow­ers of seduc­tion?” A fun­ny piece of cul­tur­al com­men­tary in the New York Times writ­ten by a the­olo­gian? Yes, please. This col­umn is about way more than base­ball.
  3. Uncom­fort­able Ques­tions in the Wake of Rus­sia Indict­ment 2.0 and Trump’s Press Con­fer­ence With Putin (Jack Gold­smith, Law­fare): “It is no response to say that the Unit­ed States doesn’t med­dle in for­eign elec­tions, because it has in the past—at least as recent­ly as Bill Clinton’s inter­ven­tion in the Russ­ian pres­i­den­tial elec­tion of 1996 and pos­si­bly as recent­ly as the Hillary Clin­ton State Department’s alleged inter­ven­tion in Russia’s 2011 leg­isla­tive elec­tions. And dur­ing the Cold War the Unit­ed States inter­vened in numer­ous for­eign elec­tions, more than twice as often as the Sovi­et Union.” The author is a pro­fes­sor at Har­vard Law School. The whole thing is fas­ci­nat­ing.
  4. Free Speech, Cen­sor­ship, Hate Speech, Twit­ter (Steven Brust, per­son­al blog): “Here’s the thing: every defense, every anal­o­gy I’ve seen to jus­ti­fy ask­ing twit­ter to shut down hate speech, has come down, in the last analy­sis, to a defense of prop­er­ty rights. And yet, the most casu­al obser­va­tion ought to tell you that we are now locked in a bat­tle between prop­er­ty rights and human rights. If you must resort to a defense of prop­er­ty rights to bol­ster your argu­ment, I beg to sub­mit that you should either take anoth­er look at what you’re defend­ing, or stop call­ing your­self a pro­gres­sive.” A social­ist defense of free speech.
    • Relat­ed: I Was the Mob Until the Mob Came for Me (Bar­rett Wil­son, Quil­lette): “In my pre­vi­ous life, I was a self-right­eous social jus­tice cru­sad­er. I would use my mid-sized Twit­ter and Face­book plat­forms to sig­nal my wok­e­ness on top­ics such as LGBT rights, rape cul­ture, and racial injus­tice…. Then one day, sud­den­ly, I was accused of some of the very trans­gres­sions I’d called out in oth­ers. I was guilty, of course: There’s no such thing as due process in this world.”
    • Also relat­ed: Plan­et of Cops (Fred­die de Boer, per­son­al blog): “The woke world is a world of snitch­es, infor­mants, rats. Go to any space con­cerned with social jus­tice and what will you find? End­less sur­veil­lance. Every­body is to be judged. Every­one is under sus­pi­cion. Every­thing you say is to be scoured, picked over, ana­lyzed for any pos­si­ble offense. Everyone’s a detec­tive in the Divi­sion of Prob­lem­at­ics, and they walk the beat 24/7…. I don’t know how peo­ple can simul­ta­ne­ous­ly talk about prison abo­li­tion and restor­ing the idea of for­give­ness to lit­er­al crim­i­nal jus­tice and at the same time turn the entire social world into a kan­ga­roo court sys­tem.” This is an old­er piece but I saw it for the first time recent­ly.
  5. For Some Gang Mem­bers In El Sal­vador, The Evan­gel­i­cal Church Offers A Way Out (Emi­ly Green, NPR): “Becom­ing a devot­ed mem­ber of an evan­gel­i­cal church at a young age is the only way many ado­les­cent boys are able to avoid being roped into a gang, Cruz says. And it’s also the only way for them to get out of a gang if they’re in it, short of leav­ing the coun­try.”
  6. Sanc­tu­ary amid hous­ing cri­sis (Wendy Lee, San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle): “With no end in sight to soar­ing hous­ing costs, sev­er­al Bay Area faith orga­ni­za­tions have become a sanc­tu­ary of sorts — not just chan­nel­ing dona­tions and dis­trib­ut­ing food, but also offer­ing a safe place for peo­ple liv­ing in cars or RVs. The arrange­ment has some­times grat­ed on neigh­bors, but for pas­tors, it’s sim­ply an exten­sion of their mis­sion to serve human­i­ty.”
  7. Bald­ing Out (Christo­pher Bald­ing, per­son­al blog): “In Chi­na, there are very few peo­ple who I wit­ness live a tes­ta­ment of their belief. Who knows if the Par­ty mem­ber is a mem­ber because he believes in Marx­ism, Com­mu­nism, Xi-ism, or sim­ply wants a bet­ter apart­ment? Who knows if the per­son who claims to be a believ­er in democ­ra­cy but com­plies with the Par­ty actu­al­ly believes that or just tells the for­eign­er? For­eign­ers in Chi­na in posi­tions of influ­ence who claim to believe in human rights but col­lab­o­rate with the Par­ty to deny Chi­nese cit­i­zens rights need to answer for their actions. I have lit­tle idea what peo­ple in Chi­na believe but I know that if the Par­ty ever falls, there will be more than a bil­lion more peo­ple claim­ing they were clos­et democ­ra­cy advo­cates.” An Amer­i­can pro­fes­sor reflects on Chi­na as he pre­pares to leave. Very inter­est­ing, a bit ram­bly.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have This Is What Makes Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats So Dif­fer­ent (Vox, Ezra Klein): the title made me skep­ti­cal, but there are some good insights in this arti­cle (first shared in vol­ume 32 back in 2016).

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it).

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.

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