Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 286

some very strong arti­cles in this roundup

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.

This is the 286th of these roundups. 286 is a tetra­he­dral num­ber, which basi­cal­ly means you could stack 286 mar­bles into a three-sided pyra­mid (four sides if you count the base).

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Cal­i­for­nia Is Cleans­ing Jews From His­to­ry (Emi­ly Benedek, Tablet Mag­a­zine): “Kaplan, 53, a Bay Area moth­er of two grown chil­dren who describes her­self as a life­long Demo­c­rat, was fur­ther sur­prised to dis­cov­er that a list of 154 influ­en­tial peo­ple of col­or did not include Dr. Mar­tin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, or Supreme Court Jus­tice Thur­good Mar­shall, though it includ­ed many vio­lent rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies. There was even a flat­ter­ing descrip­tion of Pol Pot, the com­mu­nist leader of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge, who was respon­si­ble for the mur­der of a quar­ter of the Cam­bo­di­an pop­u­la­tion dur­ing the 1970s.” THIS IS WILD.
  2. The New Nation­al Amer­i­can Elite (Michael Lind, Tablet Mag­a­zine): “…from the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion until the late 20th cen­tu­ry, the Amer­i­can elite was divid­ed among region­al oli­garchies. It is only in the last gen­er­a­tion that these region­al patri­ci­ates have been absorbed into a sin­gle, increas­ing­ly homo­ge­neous nation­al oli­garchy, with the same accent, man­ners, val­ues, and edu­ca­tion­al back­grounds from Boston to Austin and San Fran­cis­co to New York and Atlanta. This is a tru­ly epochal devel­op­ment.” Lind is a pro­fes­sor at UT Austin in the school of pub­lic affairs, and I fea­tured anoth­er arti­cle by him recent­ly.
  3. In Which I Final­ly Lose My Mind (Poli­Math, Sub­stack): “After a rea­son­able amount of time for the vac­ci­na­tion to pro­duce an immune response (aim for 2 weeks), you are not in dan­ger and you are not a dan­ger to oth­ers. Yes, wear a mask for social cohe­sion or to fol­low the rules or just gen­er­al­ly to be polite. Wash your hands, use your com­mon sense, and ignore the news writ­ten by peo­ple who seem to want this cri­sis to last for­ev­er. Make it a pri­or­i­ty to get your sec­ond dose on sched­ule. Once you are vac­ci­nat­ed with the sec­ond dose, this cri­sis is over for you.” The author is
  4. The Reli­gious Roots of Our Free Enter­prise Sys­tem (Alan Wolfe, New York Times): “What does an eso­teric con­cept like Calvin­ist sote­ri­ol­o­gy have to do with the rise of mod­ern eco­nom­ics? Does lais­sez-faire have its roots in the arcane Quin­quar­tic­u­lar Con­tro­ver­sy? Can one find the ori­gins of the wel­fare state in post­mil­len­ni­al­ist escha­tol­ogy? Ques­tions like these, accord­ing to the Har­vard econ­o­mist Ben­jamin M. Fried­man, are essen­tial to under­stand­ing his dis­ci­pline today.”
  5. How Red­di­tors Beat Hedge Funds at Their Own Game(Stop) (Eric Levitz, New York Mag­a­zine): “Anoth­er less-than-pop­ulist aspect of this dra­ma is that the hedge fund that’s been hard­est hit — Melvin Cap­i­tal — did not become the favored tar­get of Wall­Street­Bets on account of its unique avarice or unscrupu­lous­ness, but rather, its excep­tion­al trans­paren­cy.… Thus, for Wall Street, the upshot of all this is going to be: Nev­er let reg­u­la­tors or the pub­lic know what your short posi­tions are. Which doesn’t seem like a huge win for ‘the 99 per­cent.’”
    • A youth pas­tor inter­viewed about the stock mar­ket on MSNBC (Twit­ter): I’ve men­tioned before that some Chris­tians are too ten­ta­tive when speak­ing about the gospel in high-pro­file media envi­ron­ments. Not this guy. He just throws down some Bible. He’s the youth pas­tor at Beach­point Church in Orange Coun­ty.
    • The GameStop Fias­co Proves We’re in a ‘Meme Stock’ Bub­ble (James Surowiec­ki, Medi­um): “The point, then, is that even though GameStop’s cur­rent stock price is utter­ly irra­tional — it will nev­er make enough mon­ey to jus­ti­fy a $6 bil­lion mar­ket cap — the way Red­di­tors and oth­ers have dri­ven its price up has been quite smart.”
    • The GameStop Reck­on­ing Was a Long Time Com­ing (Kevin Roose, New York Times): “If you can get past the all-caps luna­cy and strange inside jar­gon, the Red­di­tors make some good points. Big banks and hedge funds real­ly do play by dif­fer­ent rules than retail investors. Wall Street banks real­ly did get bailed out after the 2008 finan­cial cri­sis while Main Street home­own­ers suf­fered. M.B.A.s in fan­cy suits are prob­a­bly no more like­ly to give you good invest­ing advice than guys on YouTube with names like ‘Roar­ingKit­ty.’ ” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  6. What Thomas Jef­fer­son Could Nev­er Under­stand About Jesus (Vin­son Cun­ning­ham, New York­er): “In the years before eman­ci­pa­tion, the best argu­ments against slav­ery were also argu­ments about God.… Jefferson’s Jesus is an admirable sage, fit bed­time read­ing for seek­ers of wis­dom. But those who were weak, or suf­fer­ing, or in urgent trou­ble, would have to look else­where.” This is quite an arti­cle. Rec­om­mend­ed.
  7. Two Stan­ford-rel­e­vant arti­cles:
    • Edi­tor’s Note: The Twi­light of Stan­ford (Anni­ka Nordquist, Stan­ford Review): “Stanford’s rep­u­ta­tion, which attract­ed me and count­less oth­ers to the Uni­ver­si­ty, offers stu­dents a stake in the birth­place of Sil­i­con Val­ley, the world’s epi­cen­ter of cre­ativ­i­ty and risk. Stan­ford stu­dents are less elit­ist than our East Coast peers, and more well-round­ed: Stan­ford offers ameni­ties, like Greek life and com­pet­i­tive ath­let­ic teams, absent in ear­li­er iter­a­tions of the pres­ti­gious Amer­i­can uni­ver­si­ty. The university’s unstruc­tured cur­ricu­lum expects its stu­dents to either suc­ceed at the high­est lev­el in their own are­nas, or cre­ate entire­ly new spheres for suc­cess. Stan­ford rev­els in non­con­for­mi­ty and exper­i­men­ta­tion. It was through these char­ac­ter­is­tics that Stan­ford gained its pres­tige. I do believe that this Stan­ford once exist­ed. But it is close to destruc­tion, has­tened by a caste of admin­is­tra­tors, par­a­sites who jump from one top uni­ver­si­ty to anoth­er, who care only for rais­ing Stan­ford’s rank­ings, and lack an inti­mate under­stand­ing of what makes Stan­ford spe­cial.” Anni­ka is a stu­dent in Chi Alpha.
    • The Edu­ca­tion of Josh Haw­ley (Ruairi Arri­eta-Ken­na and and Emi­ly Cadei, Politi­co): “Oth­er class­mates, how­ev­er, say that while Haw­ley was ardent­ly against abor­tion, his faith dur­ing col­lege seemed less an obvi­ous moti­va­tion for his polit­i­cal aspi­ra­tions and more a guide for his social inter­ac­tions. Friends of Hawley’s told POLITICO they didn’t ever see Haw­ley drink, smoke or ‘bring a girl back’ to his dorm room. By many accounts, he pre­ferred to stay in and study on week­end nights than to go out and par­ty.” I found this arti­cle fas­ci­nat­ing. His evan­gel­i­cal ethics were so incom­pre­hen­si­ble to some of the peo­ple quot­ed in this arti­cle (the bit about the danc­ing girl was par­tic­u­lar­ly strik­ing). Also, I won­der why it focus­es on his time at Stan­ford and not Yale.

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 Con­ser­v­a­tives Clash on the Goal of Gov­ern­ment (Jonathan Lee­man, Prov­i­dence): “There is no neu­tral­i­ty. The pub­lic square is a bat­tle­ground of gods. Our cul­ture wars are wars of reli­gion. For the time being, lib­er­al­ism keeps us from pick­ing up sixteenth-century swords for those wars, which is no small achieve­ment. But don’t assume it won’t con­trol us with the sub­tler tools of a twenty-first cen­tu­ry legal total­i­tar­i­an­ism.” Insight­ful reflec­tions on how Chris­tians should form their polit­i­cal posi­tions. First shared in vol­ume 218.

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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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