Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 206

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. 30 Years After Tianan­men, a Chi­nese Mil­i­tary Insid­er Warns: Nev­er For­get (Chris Buck­ley, New York Times): “…Ms. Jiang’s deci­sion to chal­lenge the silence car­ries an extra polit­i­cal charge because she is not only an army vet­er­an but also the daugh­ter of the mil­i­tary elite. Her father was a gen­er­al, and she was born and raised in mil­i­tary com­pounds. She proud­ly enlist­ed in the People’s Lib­er­a­tion Army about 50 years ago, and in pho­tos from her time as a mil­i­tary jour­nal­ist, she stands beam­ing in her green army uni­form, a note­book in hand and cam­era hang­ing from her neck.”
  2. Clarence Thomas’s Dan­ger­ous Idea (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “And in any oth­er area of pol­i­cy Thomas’s point about how legal abor­tion appears, in the aggre­gate, to act in racist and eugenic ways would be tak­en as an indi­ca­tor that some­thing more than just eman­ci­pa­tion is at work. ”
  3. If you have not been fol­low­ing it, a remark­able argu­ment has devel­oped in the world of reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tive intel­li­gentsia. The quick­ness with which oth­ers have jumped into shows that there’s a real divi­sion here.
    • Against David French-ism (Sohrab Ahmari, First Things): “Pro­gres­sives under­stand that cul­ture war means dis­cred­it­ing their oppo­nents and weak­en­ing or destroy­ing their insti­tu­tions. Con­ser­v­a­tives should approach the cul­ture war with a sim­i­lar real­ism. Civil­i­ty and decen­cy are sec­ondary val­ues. They reg­u­late com­pli­ance with an estab­lished order and ortho­doxy. We should seek to use these val­ues to enforce our order and our ortho­doxy, not pre­tend that they could ever be neu­tral. To rec­og­nize that enmi­ty is real is its own kind of moral duty.”
    • What Sohrab Ahmari Gets Wrong (David French, Nation­al Review): “I firm­ly believe that the defense of these polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al val­ues must be con­duct­ed in accor­dance with scrip­tur­al admo­ni­tions to love your ene­mies, to bless those who per­se­cute you, with full knowl­edge that the ‘Lord’s ser­vant’ must be ‘kind to every­one, able to teach, and patient­ly endure evil.’”
    • What A Clash Between Con­ser­v­a­tives Reveals (Alan Jacobs, The Atlantic): “It’s impor­tant to note that Ahmari sees the dif­fer­ences between him and French as root­ed, ulti­mate­ly, in their dif­fer­ent Chris­t­ian tra­di­tions: Catholi­cism for Ahmari—who recent­ly pub­lished a mem­oir of his conversion—and evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tantism. But whether this is indeed the heart of the mat­ter, the dis­pute so far hasn’t fall­en out that way. Some Catholics are with French, some Protes­tants with Ahmari.”
      • A fol­low-up piece Jacobs pub­lished on his own blog, well worth read­ing on its own. Fair Play To You (Alan Jacobs, per­son­al blog): “Con­science exemp­tions ain’t what they used to be — about that there is sure­ly no dis­agree­ment. The dis­pute is sim­ply whether that’s good or bad.” This post con­tains a beau­ti­ful imag­i­nary dia­log which I high­ly com­mend to you — read that if you read noth­ing else.
    • The Ahmari/French debate: A read­ing list (Joe Carter, Acton Insti­tute): the lev­el of debate this has kicked off is amaz­ing. Click here to see all the ins and outs.
  4. These Men Say the Boy Scouts’ Sex Abuse Prob­lem Is Worse Than Any­one Knew (Eliana Dock­ter­man, Time): “‘They were reporting…that they were a whole­some orga­ni­za­tion,’ says Tim Kos­noff, one of the attor­neys, ‘when they were kick­ing out child moles­ters at the rate of one every two days for 100 years.’”
  5. Deep­fake Pro­pa­gan­da Is Not A Real Prob­lem (Rus­sell Bran­dom, The Verge): “In any of these cas­es, attack­ers had the motive and the resources to pro­duce a deep­fake video. The tech­nol­o­gy is cheap, eas­i­ly avail­able, and tech­ni­cal­ly straight­for­ward. But giv­en the option of fab­ri­cat­ing video evi­dence, each group seems to have decid­ed it wasn’t worth the trou­ble. Instead we saw news arti­cles made up from whole cloth, or videos edit­ed to take on a sin­is­ter mean­ing.”
  6. There was a con­tro­ver­sy recent­ly when Trump showed up at a church and the pas­tor prayed for him.
    • On Pray­ing for the Pres­i­dent (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “What’s remark­able about this prayer is not that it hap­pened, but that it shows how thor­ough­ly the Trump era has opened the way for cyn­i­cism and out­rage over even mun­dane, pre­dictable Chris­t­ian behav­ior.”
    • David Platt Asks God to Grant Trump ‘All the Grace He Needs to Gov­ern’ (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Platt is in an inter­est­ing posi­tion. For years, he’s preached against the Amer­i­can focus on “self-advance­ment, self-esteem, and self-suf­fi­cien­cy” and “indi­vid­u­al­ism, mate­ri­al­ism, and uni­ver­sal­ism.” And now he’s the pas­tor of a sub­ur­ban Wash­ing­ton con­gre­ga­tion full of Chris­tians who work on the Hill, a place once deemed ‘a holy des­ti­na­tion for GOP sen­a­tors and Bush aides.’”
    • Prayer For The Pres­i­dent (David Platt): this is Platt’s let­ter to the con­gre­ga­tion explain­ing his actions. “At the end of my ser­mon at the 1:00 wor­ship gath­er­ing, I stepped to the side for what I thought would be a cou­ple of moments in qui­et reflec­tion as we pre­pared to take the Lord’s Sup­per. But I was imme­di­ate­ly called back­stage and told that the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States was on his way to the church, would be there in a mat­ter of min­utes, and would like for us to pray for him.”
    • In case you’re won­der­ing, I would 100% have done what Platt did. And I would have done it for Oba­ma, Clin­ton, Bush, or who­ev­er. I would have done it for Nero. I can­not under­stand how this is con­tro­ver­sial or is being per­ceived as par­ti­san.
  7. Asym­met­ric Weapons Gone Bad (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “Every day we do things that we can’t eas­i­ly jus­ti­fy. If some­one were to argue that we shouldn’t do the thing, they would win eas­i­ly. We would respond by cut­ting that per­son out of our life, and con­tin­u­ing to do the thing.” This entire series of arti­cles (this is the fourth, the oth­ers are linked at the top of it) is 100% worth read­ing. It’s a very inter­est­ing way to think about the lim­its of rea­son and the wis­dom hid­den in tra­di­tion.

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 Ian McE­wan ‘dubi­ous’ about schools study­ing his books, after he helped son with essay and got a C+ (Han­nah Fur­ness, The Tele­graph): this is a real arti­cle. First shared in vol­ume 151.

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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. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

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