Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 188

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. Assess­ing Bet­sy DeVos’s Pro­posed Rules on Title IX and Sex­u­al Assault (Jean­nie Suk Ger­son, New York­er): “The truth is that there is much to crit­i­cize in DeVos’s pro­pos­al but also much that would help to make schools’ process­es for han­dling sex­u­al mis­con­duct fair­er to all par­ties.” Ger­son, a Har­vard law prof, con­sis­tent­ly offers insight­ful per­spec­tive on issues sur­round­ing cam­pus sex­u­al assault.
  2. Cru­el and Unusu­al Pun­ish­ment (Lionel Shriv­er, Harpers): “The con­tem­po­rary impulse to rebuke dis­graced cre­ators by van­ish­ing their work from the cul­tur­al mar­ket­place exhibits a mean-­spirit­ed­ness, a venge­ful­ness even, as well as an illog­ic. Why, if you catch some­one doing some­thing bad, would you nec­es­sar­i­ly rub out what they’ve done that’s good? If you’re con­vict­ed of break­ing and enter­ing, the judge won’t send bailiffs around to tear down the tree house you built for your daugh­ter and to pour bleach on your home­made pie.”
  3. How I Knew the #Cov­ing­ton­Boys Video Was Click­bait (Clair Pot­ter, Pub­lic Sem­i­nar): “I think the most under­re­port­ed sto­ry about #Cov­ing­ton­Boys is how it got to us in the first place. It orig­i­nat­ed with a piece of click­bait that was cho­sen and edit­ed, by per­sons unknown, to pro­duce out­rage on the right and the left. Orig­i­nat­ing in a fake account, and pro­lif­er­at­ed by oth­er fake accounts, it was part of a pro­fes­sion­al social media cam­paign intend­ed to dis­rupt.”
    • Relat­ed: Bad, Press (Charles Cooke, Nation­al Review): “For a neat illus­tra­tion of how far­ci­cal things have become, take a look at the Wash­ing­ton Post’s most recent ‘fact check,’ which help­ful­ly informs its read­ers that the claimed ‘one thou­sand burg­ers’ Pres­i­dent Trump bought for the Clem­son foot­ball team were not, in fact, ‘piled up a mile high’ because, ‘at two inch­es each, a thou­sand burg­ers would not reach one mile high.’ Democ­ra­cy dies in dark­ness, indeed.”
  4. Imag­ine Nations Were Selfless—It’s No Par­adise (Brad Lit­tle­john, Prov­i­dence): “We hear often today about how we live in “a glob­al soci­ety” and have to take up the respon­si­bil­i­ties of “glob­al cit­i­zen­ship.” But what these exhor­ta­tions miss is that the expo­nen­tial growth in human knowl­edge over the past cen­tu­ry has not been matched by near­ly as rapid growth in human agency. It is now pos­si­ble for a house­wife in Ten­nessee to be aware of a rape in Bangladesh with­in hours or min­utes, but she is only mar­gin­al­ly more able to do any­thing about it now than she was 100 years ago.” The arti­cle as a whole is not great, but it makes a very inter­est­ing argu­ment: patri­o­tism is a nec­es­sary way to make our empa­thy pro­duc­tive.
  5. In polar­ized Wash­ing­ton, a Demo­c­rat anchors bipar­ti­san friend­ships in faith (Jack Jenk­ins, Reli­gion News Ser­vice): “A bridge builder with Repub­li­cans, Coons is known for help­ing cre­ate rare flick­ers of bipar­ti­san agree­ment. Part of his secret, it seems, is reli­gion…. Coons, who grew up attend­ing Red Clay Creek Pres­by­ter­ian Church in Hockessin, Del., explained that his faith has not only pro­vid­ed ground­ing for his own life but has also emerged as a point of con­nec­tion with Repub­li­cans, with whom he has forged last­ing rela­tion­ships — and leg­is­la­tion.”
  6. What The Estab­lish­ment Right Doesn’t Get (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): this essay, a large part of which is actu­al­ly com­men­tary from a read­er, is like a flamethrow­er. “…those who preach the bour­geois virtues can’t get a hear­ing if there is no sta­ble employ­ment for peo­ple who do the right thing. And, if those who do the right thing (by which I mean play by the rules: live lives of hard work, fair play, and self-dis­ci­pline) can find every­thing kicked out from under them all of a sud­den, it desta­bi­lizes the entire soci­ety.”
    • The fol­low-up, Lib­er­ty, Equal­i­ty — But Where’s The Fra­ter­ni­ty? is also stim­u­lat­ing.
    • Read­ing the lat­ter one brought to my atten­tion a very short essay by G.K. Chester­ton. I high­ly rec­om­mend it. “The Eng­lish peo­ple as a body went blind, as the say­ing is, for inter­pret­ing democ­ra­cy entire­ly in terms of lib­er­ty. They said in sub­stance that if they had more and more lib­er­ty it did not mat­ter whether they had any equal­i­ty or any fra­ter­ni­ty. But this was vio­lat­ing the sacred trin­i­ty of true pol­i­tics; they con­found­ed the per­sons and they divid­ed the sub­stance.”
  7. 4 Facts Every Amer­i­can Should Know About Third-Trimester Abor­tions (Joe Carter, Gospel Coali­tion): “As I not­ed in an arti­cle last week, Demo­c­ra­t­ic leg­is­la­tors in places like New York and Vir­ginia are mov­ing to cod­i­fy abor­tion rights in state law to pre­pare for the day when Roe and Doe are over­turned. When the Supreme Court throws the abor­tion issue back to the indi­vid­ual states, third-trimester abor­tions will still be pro­tect­ed in states that reit­er­ate Doe’s stan­dards for ‘via­bil­i­ty’ or ‘health.’”

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 No Food Is Healthy. Not Even Kale. (Michael Ruhlman, Wash­ing­ton Post): Peo­ple can be healthy. Food can be nutri­tious. This is a won­der­ful essay about how we mis­use lan­guage to our detri­ment. If you’re sur­prised I includ­ed this, I believe that our cul­ture has a qua­si-reli­gious rela­tion­ship to health and to food, and I also believe that the use of lan­guage is pro­found­ly moral and that our cul­ture is a lin­guis­tic mess (to which I know of no fin­er guide than The Under­ground Gram­mar­i­an). (first shared in vol­ume 33)

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). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent.

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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