Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 271

I’m just glad there’s a mag­ic video at the end

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. The Lan­guage of Priv­i­lege (Nicholas Clair­mont, Tablet Mag­a­zine): “So, in the end, the ques­tion raised by wok­e­ness is a sim­ple one: Doesn’t it actu­al­ly just favor rich peo­ple?”
  2. The Stu­dents Left Behind by Remote Learn­ing (Alec MacGillis, ProP­ub­li­ca): “But it was not hard to see how par­ents could have got the impres­sion that chil­dren were at great risk. Towns and cities had closed play­grounds, wrap­ping police tape around them. Peo­ple in heav­i­ly Demo­c­ra­t­ic areas were wear­ing masks even on emp­ty streets. There may have been an implic­it­ly polit­i­cal dynam­ic at work: the greater the threat posed by COVID-19, the greater Trump’s fail­ure in not con­tain­ing it.”
    • This is a very long but absolute­ly engross­ing arti­cle. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed that you at least skim it.
  3. Lib­er­al­ism and Its Dis­con­tents (Fran­cis Fukuya­ma, Amer­i­can Pur­pose): “Democ­ra­cy itself is being chal­lenged by author­i­tar­i­an states like Rus­sia and Chi­na that manip­u­late or dis­pense with free and fair elec­tions. But the more insid­i­ous threat aris­es from pop­ulists with­in exist­ing lib­er­al democ­ra­cies who are using the legit­i­ma­cy they gain through their elec­toral man­dates to chal­lenge or under­mine lib­er­al insti­tu­tions.” The author directs the Cen­ter on Democ­ra­cy, Devel­op­ment and the Rule of Law at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty. This is from the inau­gur­al issue of a promis­ing new mag­a­zine.
    • Relat­ed: Sui­cide of the Lib­er­als (Gary Saul Mor­son, First Things): “One some­times hears that ‘the pen­du­lum is bound to swing back.’ But how does one know there is a pen­du­lum at all, rather than—let us say—a snow­ball accel­er­at­ing down­hill? It is unwise to com­fort one­self with metaphors. When a par­ty is will­ing to push its pow­er as far as it can go, it will keep going until it meets suf­fi­cient oppo­si­tion.” The author is a human­i­ties prof at North­west­ern.
  4. Diver­si­ty At the Oscars (Fil­ip Mazur­czak, First Things): “At a time of declin­ing read­er­ship world­wide, and because of the mag­i­cal con­nec­tion hun­dreds of mil­lions have to the movies, film is per­haps the most effec­tive medi­um with which to edu­cate peo­ple about his­to­ry. Cer­tain top­ics, such as the Armen­ian Geno­cide or com­mu­nist crimes, deserve a defin­i­tive epic on the scale of Schindler’s List or Sav­ing Pri­vate Ryan. But iron­i­cal­ly, the Academy’s new diver­si­ty rules will make it even less like­ly for such top­ics to receive the sil­ver screen treat­ment they deserve.” The author is a Ph.D. can­di­date in his­to­ry.
  5. Arme­nia is under attack by Azer­bai­jan. Hear­ing that is as dis­tress­ing as hear­ing that a Ger­man politi­cian is mak­ing loud com­plaints against the Jews.
    • Arme­ni­ans Fight to Hold Ancient Home­land With­in Azer­bai­jan (Jayson Casper, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Fierce fight­ing has bro­ken out in the Cau­ca­sus Moun­tains between the Caspi­an and Black Seas, pit­ting Chris­t­ian Arme­ni­ans ver­sus Mus­lim Azeris. But is it right to employ their reli­gious labels?”
    • Defend­ing Chris­t­ian Arme­nia (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “Most Amer­i­cans have no idea that in the 20th cen­tu­ry, the Turks waged a true geno­cide against the Armen­ian Chris­t­ian peo­ple. The book to read is 2019’s The Thir­ty-Year Geno­cide: Turkey’s Destruc­tion of Its Chris­t­ian Minori­ties, 1894–1924, by the Israeli his­to­ri­ans Ben­ny Mor­ris and Dror Ze’evi. I had to put it down — a lot — because its record of the atroc­i­ties the Turks wrought on inno­cent Arme­ni­ans in the eth­nic and reli­gious cleans­ing of Turkey was too much to bear.”
    • Turkey is Nor­mal­iz­ing Mil­i­tant Jihadism (Armen V. Sahakyan, Prov­i­dence): “Ankara’s desta­bi­liz­er-in-chief Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan has now extend­ed his men­ac­ing mil­i­tary involve­ment to the South Cau­ca­sus, where Turk­ish army per­son­nel are assist­ing Ankara’s satel­lite state Azer­bai­jan in a mas­sive inva­sion against Art­sakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) and Arme­nia. But what grabbed inter­na­tion­al head­lines are the appalling reports of Turkey’s delib­er­ate mis­use of the ‘reli­gious card’ in the Art­sakh-Azer­bai­jan con­flict and its trans­port of 4,000 jihadist ter­ror­ists in Syr­ia to fight against Chris­t­ian Arme­ni­ans.”
  6. I’m going to link to some polit­i­cal arti­cles which inter­est­ed me, some of which are extreme­ly par­ti­san. If you only have time to read one, please read one whose slant you dis­agree with. Giv­en that I could not pos­si­bly agree with all of these arti­cles, I hope it is clear that the stan­dard dis­claimers apply even more than usu­al.
    • What Makes A Vote Moral or Immoral? The Ethics of Vot­ing (Jonathan Lee­man, 9 Marks): “…I think I would be pas­toral­ly over­step­ping were I to tell you how I think you pos­i­tive­ly should vote, assum­ing there is more than one per­mis­si­ble option (which includes not vot­ing, vot­ing for a third par­ty, writ­ing in a can­di­date, or even civ­il dis­obe­di­ence if you live in a coun­try with com­pul­so­ry vot­ing). At most, I think a pas­tor can, from time to time, warn you against paths you should not take. Sel­dom if ever should he tell you which path you should take, assum­ing that doing so clos­es down oth­er moral­ly per­mis­si­ble paths.”
    • 7 Rea­sons Why It Is Pos­si­ble for Chris­tians to Vote for Trump in 2020 With­out Get­ting a Defiled Con­science and/or Los­ing Their Soul (Dou­glas Wil­son, per­son­al blog): “So the pro­pos­al that fol­lows is intend­ed to enable you to go and vote for Trump, ide­al­ly with­out a mask, and not give way after­ward to any temp­ta­tion to flush red or laugh a lit­tle furtive heh heh if asked about it. You are not a crim­i­nal. You are not insane. You are not a fas­cist. You are not a haz­ard to the repub­lic. You are not try­ing to ring in The Handmaid’s Tale. You have good rea­sons, oh ye eas­i­ly gaslit evan­gel­i­cals.”
    • Chris­t­ian Wit­ness Demands That We Defend Truth—and Reject Don­ald Trump (O. Alan Noble, Pub­lic Dis­course): “By its very nature, false­hood breeds chaos. To sup­port Trump would require me to sup­port four more years of epis­te­mo­log­i­cal chaos. I fear that if I were to sup­port his reelec­tion, even grudg­ing­ly, even­tu­al­ly I would find myself apol­o­giz­ing for his lies, and then excus­ing his lies, and then defend­ing his lies, and final­ly believ­ing his lies. Bet­ter men and women than I have grown con­fused in just this way since 2016.”
    • Vot­ing for Life (Ramesh Pon­nu­ru & Robert P. George, Nation­al Review): “Nei­ther of us has endorsed Don­ald Trump. Both of us have been intense­ly crit­i­cal of him on issues of per­son­al char­ac­ter and, in some cas­es, pub­lic pol­i­cy. We do not claim, as some have claimed, that Catholics and oth­er pro-life cit­i­zens have an oblig­a­tion to cast their bal­lot for him. The premis­es of the argu­ment against abor­tion do not by them­selves com­pel such a stance. Peo­ple who share the view that the abor­tion license is a pro­found injus­tice on a mas­sive scale that must be res­olute­ly opposed can reach dif­fer­ent con­clu­sions about whether Trump deserves their vote. If, how­ev­er, the con­sid­er­a­tions we have adduced in this essay are sound, they prac­ti­cal­ly pre­clude a vote for Biden.”
    • A new group of evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers forms in sup­port of Biden (Sarah Pul­liam Bai­ley, Wash­ing­ton Post): “The group favor­ing Biden, set up by long­time evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers Ron Sider and Rich Mouw, includes sev­er­al lead­ers who have since retired from major evan­gel­i­cal insti­tu­tions. Among them is John Huff­man, who was board chair of Chris­tian­i­ty Today mag­a­zine, a life­long Repub­li­can and for­mer pas­tor to Pres­i­dent Richard Nixon. He is plan­ning to vote for a Demo­c­rat for the first time.”
    • “You’re hired” Mul­li­gan review (John Cochrane, per­son­al blog): “For in much of the rhetoric about ‘sci­ence,’ and ‘experts,’ we are exhort­ed to ignore every day truths and the scat­tered infor­ma­tion of actu­al peo­ple, and sur­ren­der to unac­count­able tech­nocrats, who chat and social climb with each oth­er, but who have been wrong about so much late­ly.” The author is a senior fel­low at Hoover. I learned more from this book review than I do from many books.
  7. Scar­let fever mak­ing a come­back thanks to a tox­ic virus, researchers say (Hol­ly Richard­son, Aus­tralia Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion): “Pro­fes­sor Walk­er said while one might expect that a virus infect­ing a bac­te­ria was bad for the bac­te­ria, this was not always so. ‘In this case, the bac­te­r­i­al virus is car­ry­ing three new tox­ins and because it’s car­ry­ing those tox­ins when it infects the bac­te­ria, it gives the bac­te­ria this extra vir­u­lence poten­tial.’” 👀 This is like two supervil­lains team­ing up.

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 An MIT Pro­fes­sor Meets the Author of All Knowl­edge (Ros­alind Picard, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “I once thought I was too smart to believe in God. Now I know I was an arro­gant fool who snubbed the great­est Mind in the cosmos—the Author of all sci­ence, math­e­mat­ics, art, and every­thing else there is to know. Today I walk humbly, hav­ing received the most unde­served grace. I walk with joy, along­side the most amaz­ing Com­pan­ion any­one could ask for, filled with desire to keep learn­ing and explor­ing.” First shared in vol­ume 194.

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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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