Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 236

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. Behind the Great Fire­wall (Thomas Brown, Quil­lette): “The Chi­nese are proud of Chi­na, not just of 5,000 years of his­to­ry and a glob­al­ly rec­og­nized ancient cul­ture, but of mod­ern Chi­na. Chi­na the indus­try leader, Chi­na the pro­tec­tor of Chi­nese busi­ness, Chi­na the pow­er­ful and beau­ti­ful and rich. Chi­na the unapolo­getic. This is a sto­ry the Chi­nese want to hear and they don’t care if orga­ni­za­tions seem­ing­ly deter­mined to only tell the sup­pos­ed­ly bad things about Chi­na are kept out.”
   • Relat­ed: Polit­i­cal and Prac­ti­cal Impli­ca­tions of the Wuhan Virus (Tan­ner Greer, per­son­al blog): “The Chi­nese peo­ple have an inter­est­ing rela­tion­ship with the Par­ty pro­pa­gan­da and cen­sor­ship sys­tem. Chi­nese are well aware that the gov­ern­ment lies to them. What they often have dif­fi­cul­ty dis­cern­ing is what it decides to lie about. Some­times it does not lie. Oth­er times it sim­ply leaves the truth unsaid.”
2. Sun­day Morn­ing With Kanye (David French, The Dis­patch): “As we made our way close to the stage, I was struck by some­thing unusu­al. I didn’t see any mer­chan­dise for sale. There was no Kanye gear. There were no pro­mo­tions for Kanye. There were no pic­tures of Kanye—at least not that I saw. If you’d just walked up, you’d have no clue that one of the world’s biggest stars was about to per­form.”
3. Wokeademia (John Cochrane, per­son­al blog): “The game is no longer to advance can­di­dates who are them­selves ‘diverse.’ The game is to stock the fac­ul­ty with peo­ple of a cer­ti­fied ide­o­log­i­cal stripe, who are com­mit­ted to advanc­ing this cause. Tom Sow­ell need not apply.” The author is an econ pro­fes­sor at Stanford’s Hoover Insti­tu­tion.
4. Why These Young Amer­i­can Chris­tians Embraced Social­ism (Sarah Ngu, Reli­gion & Pol­i­tics): “…their evan­gel­i­cal expe­ri­ences pushed them to take the Bible seri­ous­ly and read it literally—which meant they end­ed up con­clud­ing that being a Chris­t­ian meant car­ing about the poor and dis­trust­ing the state (which, after all, killed Jesus).”
5. On Killing Human Mon­sters (Mark LiVec­chi, Prov­i­dence): “‘The inter­nal con­di­tion of God’s exter­nal expres­sion of wrath,’ writes the the­olo­gian and rab­bi Abra­ham Joshua Hes­chel, ‘is grief.’ To the best I can deduce, there­in is com­mu­ni­cat­ed the com­plex dis­po­si­tion of the just war­rior.… I do not rejoice that I wor­ship a God who kills. I only rejoice that I wor­ship a God who is will­ing to.” 
6. What If We Don’t Have to Choose Between Evo­lu­tion and Adam and Eve? (Rebec­ca Ran­dall, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “If we keep straight what the sci­ence is actu­al­ly say­ing, the sto­ry of Gen­e­sis could be true as lit­er­al­ly as you could imag­ine it, with Adam being cre­at­ed by dust and God breath­ing into his nos­trils and Eve being cre­at­ed from his rib. But evo­lu­tion is hap­pen­ing out­side the Gar­den, and there are peo­ple out there who God cre­at­ed in a dif­fer­ent way and who end up inter­min­gling with Adam and Eve’s descen­dants. It’s not actu­al­ly in con­flict with evo­lu­tion­ary sci­ence.” This is an inter­view with S. Joshua Swami­dass, a com­pu­ta­tion­al biol­o­gist at Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty in St. Louis. The book he wrote has been get­ting rave reviews.
7. The Lost His­to­ry of West­ern Civ­i­liza­tion (Stan­ley Kurtz, The Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Schol­ars): “In Jan­u­ary of 1987, stu­dents at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty chant­i­ng ‘Hey hey, ho ho, West­ern Culture’s got to go,’ kicked off this cul­ture war. The fis­sure that opened three decades ago at Stanford—between the new mul­ti­cul­tur­al way, on the one hand, and tra­di­tion­al Amer­i­can con­cep­tions of his­to­ry and cit­i­zen­ship, on the other—has widened now into a chasm.” This is long and not for every­one. It caught my atten­tion because Stan­ford plays a sig­nif­i­cant role in the nar­ra­tive. The author has a Ph.D. from Har­vard and has taught at both there and at U Chica­go. He is cur­rent­ly a senior fel­low at the Ethics and Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Cen­ter.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Yel­loPain — My Vote Dont Count (YouTube): this is like a mod­ern (non-ani­mat­ed) School House Rock. Four min­utes.
• Coro­n­avirus Polling High­er Than All Pres­i­den­tial Can­di­dates (Baby­lon Bee)
• Dems Who Ran Sham Impeach­ment Hear­ings Shocked As Repub­li­cans Run Sham Impeach­ment Tri­al (Baby­lon Bee)
• Trav­el Is So Reward­ing (Pearls Before Swine) — I know peo­ple who would do this
• The Per­ils of Being Inter­viewed (Dil­bert)
• The Val­ue of Com­plain­ing (Dil­bert)
• Nigel Farage’s dra­mat­ic final speech at the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment ahead of the Brex­it vote (EU Par­lia­ment, YouTube): Five min­utes. I don’t have a strong opin­ion about Brex­it — I’m nei­ther British nor Euro­pean and there’s a lot I don’t under­stand. Hav­ing said that, I thought this was a very engag­ing speech. My jaw dropped at the bit with the flags around four min­utes in.

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Every Place Has Detrac­tors. Con­sid­er Where They’re Com­ing From. (Megan McAr­dle, Bloomberg View): “There is grave dan­ger in judg­ing a neigh­bor­hood, or a cul­ture, by the accounts of those who chose to leave it. Those peo­ple are least like­ly to appre­ci­ate the good things about where they came from, and the most like­ly to dwell on its less attrac­tive qual­i­ties.” Bear this in mind when lis­ten­ing to con­ver­sion tes­ti­monies (both sec­u­lar and reli­gious). (first shared in vol­ume 62)

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