Tag: elite colleges

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 215

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 1619 Project (many authors, New York Times Mag­a­zine): “…[many believe] that 1776 is the year of our nation’s birth. What if, how­ev­er, we were to tell you that this fact, which is taught in our schools and unan­i­mous­ly cel­e­brat­ed every Fourth of July, is wrong, and that the country’s true birth date, the moment that its defin­ing con­tra­dic­tions first came into the world, was in late August of 1619? Though the exact date has been lost to his­to­ry (it has come to be observed on Aug. 20), that was when a ship arrived at Point Com­fort in the British colony of Vir­ginia, bear­ing a car­go of 20 to 30 enslaved Africans. Their arrival inau­gu­rat­ed a bar­bar­ic sys­tem of chat­tel slav­ery that would last for the next 250 years. This is some­times referred to as the country’s orig­i­nal sin, but it is more than that: It is the country’s very ori­gin.” The link is to a PDF of the entire issue.
    • A pos­i­tive lib­er­al reac­tion: A Brief His­to­ry of the His­to­ry Wars (Rebec­ca Onion, Slate): “For the sake of our col­lec­tive car­dio­vas­cu­lar health, we would do bet­ter to rec­og­nize these skir­mish­es over Amer­i­can history—in which con­ser­v­a­tives demand that a pos­i­tive vision of our nation’s past, stud­ded with suc­cess­es, inven­tions, and ‘great men,’ take pride of place in our pub­lic culture—as recur­rent episodes in a par­tic­u­lar decades-old front of the cul­ture wars. That way, we could stop wast­ing our good faith on old, dead-end con­ver­sa­tions.”
    • A neg­a­tive lib­er­al reac­tion: The New York Times sur­ren­ders to the left on race (Damon Link­er, The Week): “Through­out the issue of the NYTM, head­lines make, with just slight vari­a­tions, the same rhetor­i­cal move over and over again: ‘Here is some­thing unpleas­ant, unjust, or even down­right evil about life in the present-day Unit­ed States. Bet you did­n’t real­ize that slav­ery is ulti­mate­ly to blame.’ Lack of uni­ver­sal access to health care? High rates of sug­ar con­sump­tion? Cal­lous treat­ment of incar­cer­at­ed pris­on­ers? White record­ing artists ‘steal­ing’ black music? Harsh labor prac­tices? That’s right — all of it, and far more, fol­lows from slav­ery.”
    • A com­pli­cat­ed con­ser­v­a­tive reac­tion: How slav­ery doomed lim­it­ed gov­ern­ment in Amer­i­ca (Philip Klein, Wash­ing­ton Exam­in­er): “A num­ber of con­ser­v­a­tives react­ed to the project by brand­ing it as anti-Amer­i­can. But I don’t think that’s fair, at least based on the lead essay I read from Nikole Han­nah-Jones. In fact, her piece is quite the oppo­site. Sure, it chron­i­cles the bru­tal­i­ty of the insti­tu­tion of slav­ery and the cen­tu­ry of oppres­sion, insti­tu­tion­al­ized dis­crim­i­na­tion, and racist ter­ror­ism that fol­lowed. Yet the piece is ulti­mate­ly about how she rec­on­ciles that his­to­ry with her patri­o­tism and comes to under­stand her own father’s love of a coun­try that treat­ed him so poor­ly.”
    • A neg­a­tive con­ser­v­a­tive reac­tion: How To Dele­git­imize A Nation (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “But who we imag­ine our­selves to be today shapes who we will become tomor­row. If The 1619 Project were mere­ly about expand­ing our com­mon under­stand­ing of the Amer­i­can ori­gins, who could object? It arrives, though, in the midst of an epic cul­ture war over who we are, and who we are going to be.”
    • Relat­ed: Black Amer­i­can His­to­ry Should Give Evan­gel­i­cals a Sense of Per­spec­tive — and Hope (David French, Nation­al Review): “If men and women have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to speak and pos­sess the courage to tell the truth, they have hope that they can trans­form a nation. What was true for black Amer­i­cans (includ­ing the black Amer­i­can church) in the most dire of cir­cum­stances is still true for con­tem­po­rary Chris­tians in far less try­ing times”
    • In response: In Defense Of Evan­gel­i­cal Cul­tur­al Pes­simism (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “This, I think, is a dis­tinc­tion that makes a big dif­fer­ence re: French’s argu­ment. You can’t cease to be black; you can cease to be Chris­t­ian, or at least mean­ing­ful­ly Chris­t­ian.” This piece is way too long but makes some good points.
  2. Don’t Use These Free-Speech Argu­ments Ever Again (Ken White, The Atlantic): “If you’ve read op-eds about free speech in Amer­i­ca, or lis­tened to talk­ing heads on the news, you’ve almost cer­tain­ly encoun­tered emp­ty, mis­lead­ing, or sim­ply false tropes about the First Amend­ment. Those tired tropes are bar­ri­ers to seri­ous dis­cus­sions about free speech. Any use­ful dis­cus­sion of what the law should be must be informed by an accu­rate view of what the law is.” White is best known under his inter­net alias Pope­hat. Rec­om­mend­ed to me by a stu­dent.
  3. The Real Prob­lem at Yale Is Not Free Speech (Natalia Dashan, Pal­la­di­um): “The cam­pus ‘free speech’ debate is just a side-effect. So are debates about ‘diver­si­ty’ and ‘inclu­sion.’ The real prob­lems run much deep­er. The real prob­lems start with Mar­cus and me, and the masks we wear for each oth­er…. In a world of masks and façades, it is hard to con­vey the truth. And this is how I end­ed up offer­ing a sand­wich to a man with hun­dreds of mil­lions in a for­eign bank account.” I liked this one a lot.
    • Relat­ed: ‘Lux­u­ry beliefs’ are the lat­est sta­tus sym­bol for rich Amer­i­cans (Rob Hen­der­son, New York Post): “…as trendy clothes and oth­er prod­ucts become more acces­si­ble and afford­able, there is increas­ing­ly less sta­tus attached to lux­u­ry goods. The upper class­es have found a clever solu­tion to this prob­lem: lux­u­ry beliefs. These are ideas and opin­ions that con­fer sta­tus on the rich at very lit­tle cost, while tak­ing a toll on the low­er class.”
  4. How Life Became an End­less, Ter­ri­ble Com­pe­ti­tion (Daniel Markovits, The Atlantic): “Escap­ing the mer­i­toc­ra­cy trap will not be easy. Elites nat­u­ral­ly resist poli­cies that threat­en to under­mine their advan­tages. But it is sim­ply not pos­si­ble to get rich off your own human cap­i­tal with­out exploit­ing your­self and impov­er­ish­ing your inner life, and mer­i­to­crats who hope to have their cake and eat it too deceive them­selves.” The author is a Yale law pro­fes­sor. I found his diag­no­sis more per­sua­sive than his prog­no­sis.
  5. The Com­ing Migra­tion out of Sub-Saha­ran Africa (Christo­pher Cald­well, Nation­al Review): “The pop­u­la­tion pres­sures ema­nat­ing from the Mid­dle East in recent decades, already suf­fi­cient to dri­ve the Euro­pean polit­i­cal sys­tem into con­vul­sions, are going to pale beside those from sub-Saha­ran Africa in decades to come.” Fas­ci­nat­ing.
  6. Why Nice­ness Weak­ens Our Wit­ness (Sharon Hodde Miller, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “We exist in a world that swings between sweet­ness and out­rage, two behav­iors that seem to be at odds with one anoth­er. In real­i­ty, they are two sides of the same coin: a lack of spir­i­tu­al for­ma­tion. When our civil­i­ty isn’t root­ed in some­thing stur­dy and deep, when our good behav­ior isn’t spring­ing from the core of who we are but is instead mere­ly a mask we put on, it is only a mat­ter of time before the façade crum­bles away and our true state is revealed: an entire gen­er­a­tion of peo­ple who are real­ly good at look­ing good.” I agree with the sub­stance of this arti­cle, but the title both­ers me. 
  7. Fact-Check­ing Satire — Is Snopes Seri­ous? (Bill Zeis­er, Real­Clear­Pol­i­tics): “the Bee’s founder and minor­i­ty own­er, Adam Ford, took par­tic­u­lar excep­tion to the tone of the Snopes assess­ment. In a lengthy Twit­ter thread, he called Snopes’ han­dling of the piece on Thomas ‘par­tic­u­lar­ly egre­gious’ and ‘dis­turb­ing.’ He point­ed to a sub­ti­tle that cas­ti­gat­ed the Bee for ‘fan­ning the flames of con­tro­ver­sy’ and ‘mud­dy­ing the details of a news sto­ry’ to the point that it was unclear if the piece qual­i­fied as satire. Ford com­plained that through­out the Snopes sto­ry, sup­pos­ed­ly an ‘objec­tive fact check,’ the assess­ment ‘veered towards pro­nounc­ing a moral judg­ment,’ seem­ing­ly accus­ing the satir­i­cal site of will­ful decep­tion. It is cer­tain­ly under­stand­able how Ford could feel this way: Snopes referred to the Bee’s ‘ruse’ and offered that ‘the Baby­lon Bee has man­aged to fool read­ers with its brand of satire in the past.’”

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 How the State Serves Both Sal­va­tion and Reli­gious Free­dom (Jonathan Lee­man, 9 Marks): “Two basic kinds of gov­ern­ments, then, show up in the Bible: those that shel­ter God’s peo­ple, and those that destroy them. Abim­elech shel­tered; Pharoah destroyed. The Assyr­i­ans destroyed; the Baby­lo­ni­ans and Per­sians, ulti­mate­ly, shel­tered. Pilate destroyed; Fes­tus shel­tered. And depend­ing on how you read Rev­e­la­tion, the his­to­ry of gov­ern­ment will cul­mi­nate in a beast­ly slaugh­ter of saint­ly blood. Romans 13 calls gov­ern­ments ser­vants; Psalm 2 calls them imposters. Most gov­ern­ments con­tain both. But some are bet­ter than oth­ers.” First shared in vol­ume 165. 

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 195

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. Elite Col­leges Con­stant­ly Tell Low-Income Stu­dents That They Do Not Belong (Clint Smith, The Atlantic): “The priv­i­leged poor are stu­dents who come from low-income back­grounds but attend­ed wealthy pri­vate high schools, giv­ing them a lev­el of famil­iar­i­ty with and access to the social and cul­tur­al cap­i­tal that tend to make peo­ple suc­cess­ful at elite uni­ver­si­ties. The dou­bly dis­ad­van­taged are stu­dents who arrive at these top insti­tu­tions from neigh­bor­hood pub­lic schools, many of which are over­crowd­ed and under­fund­ed. They are schools where these stu­dents have excelled, but that are ill-equipped to give them the socio­cul­tur­al tools nec­es­sary to under­stand the nuances of how these elite col­leges oper­ate.”
    • Relat­ed: The Scan­dals of Mer­i­toc­ra­cy (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “The ‘more mer­i­toc­ra­cy’ argu­ment against both lega­cies and racial quo­tas implic­it­ly assumes that apti­tude — some elixir of I.Q. and work eth­ic — is what our elite pri­mar­i­ly lacks. But is that real­ly our upper class’s prob­lem?”
  2. Evan­gel­i­cals Show No Decline, Despite Trump and Nones (Ryan Burge, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The fact that evan­gel­i­cals’ share of the pop­u­la­tion remains rel­a­tive­ly sta­ble over the last decade is strik­ing giv­en the con­tin­ued rise of the nones. Evan­gel­i­cals have been able to replace loss­es as fast as they are occur­ring, at least for now.”
  3. Reli­gion’s health effects should make doubt­ing parish­ioners recon­sid­er leav­ing (John Siniff and Tyler J. Van­der­Weele, USA Today): “Sim­ply from a pub­lic health per­spec­tive, the con­tin­u­ing diminu­tion of reli­gious upbring­ing in Amer­i­ca would be bad for health. This is not pros­e­ly­tiz­ing; this is sci­ence.” The Har­vard epi­demi­ol­o­gy pro­fes­sor  last made an appear­ance here back in vol­ume 65.
  4. Why The Bible Ain’t Woke (Toby Sumpter, per­son­al blog): “…it is sim­ply not enough to note that Jonathan Edwards, the puri­tans, or the founders of South­ern Sem­i­nary owned slaves. Far more work must be done to demon­strate that these men sinned in their treat­ment of their slaves. And fur­ther­more, even where sin can be clear­ly demon­strat­ed, there must be a bright and shin­ing light of demar­ca­tion between dis­qual­i­fy­ing sin and the endem­ic sins of the human race.” He has unde­ni­ably inter­est­ing things to say, but read his arti­cle in con­junc­tion with the con­tent from Peter Williams and Glenn Miller I shared back in vol­ume 76.
  5. The Reck­on­ing of Mor­ris Dees and the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter (Bob Moser, New York­er): “For those of us who’ve worked in the Pover­ty Palace, putting it all into per­spec­tive isn’t easy, even to our­selves. We were work­ing with a group of ded­i­cat­ed and tal­ent­ed peo­ple, fight­ing all kinds of good fights, mak­ing life mis­er­able for the bad guys. And yet, all the time, dark shad­ows hung over every­thing: the racial and gen­der dis­par­i­ties, the whis­pers about sex­u­al harass­ment, the abus­es that stemmed from the top-down man­age­ment, and the guilt you couldn’t help feel­ing about the legions of donors who believed that their mon­ey was being used, faith­ful­ly and well, to do the Lord’s work in the heart of Dix­ie. We were part of the con, and we knew it.”
  6. The need for intel­lec­tu­al diver­si­ty in psy­cho­log­i­cal sci­ence: Our own stud­ies of active­ly open-mind­ed think­ing as a case study (Stanovich and Toplak, Cog­ni­tion): “it is impor­tant that psy­chol­o­gy main­tain its cred­i­bil­i­ty as a neu­tral arbiter—a cred­i­bil­i­ty that has been vast­ly erod­ed in recent years by empir­i­cal evi­dence of the ide­o­log­i­cal bias in our sci­ence (Ceci and Williams, 2018, Craw­ford and Jus­sim, 2018, Duarte et al., 2015). There is a need for greater intel­lec­tu­al diver­si­ty in all areas of psy­chol­o­gy, but par­tic­u­lar­ly in those that inter­face with pol­i­tics and socio­cul­tur­al beliefs. Greater intel­lec­tu­al diver­si­ty in our own lab years ago might have pre­vent­ed us from con­tin­u­ing to use items in our AOT scale that inflat­ed neg­a­tive cor­re­la­tions with reli­gios­i­ty.”
    • tl;dr — researchers real­ized that a well-known psy­cho­log­i­cal tool they devel­oped years ago was biased against reli­gious believ­ers, and they con­clud­ed this prob­a­bly hap­pened because their lab was “over­whelm­ing­ly sec­u­lar.” They humbly repent­ed and wrote a paper about their mis­take. Kudos to them.
  7. Athe­ism Is Incon­sis­tent with the Sci­en­tif­ic Method, Prizewin­ning Physi­cist Says (Lee Billings, Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can): “I hon­est­ly think athe­ism is incon­sis­tent with the sci­en­tif­ic method. What I mean by that is, what is athe­ism? It’s a state­ment, a cat­e­gor­i­cal state­ment that express­es belief in non­be­lief.” This is from an inter­view with Marce­lo Gleis­er, Dart­mouth physics prof. Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Sad­ly, I got noth­ing this week. In lieu of awe­some links, here’s a mediocre joke: “What’s the best thing to put in a cook­ie? Your teeth!”

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have On Polit­i­cal Cor­rect­ness (William Dere­siewicz, The Amer­i­can Schol­ar): a long and thought­ful arti­cle. “Selec­tive pri­vate col­leges have become reli­gious schools. The reli­gion in ques­tion is not Method­ism or Catholi­cism but an extreme ver­sion of the belief sys­tem of the lib­er­al elite: the lib­er­al pro­fes­sion­al, man­age­r­i­al, and cre­ative class­es, which pro­vide a large major­i­ty of stu­dents enrolled at such places and an even larg­er major­i­ty of fac­ul­ty and admin­is­tra­tors who work at them. To attend those insti­tu­tions is to be social­ized, and not infre­quent­ly, indoc­tri­nat­ed into that reli­gion…. I say this, by the way, as an athe­ist, a demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist, a native north­east­ern­er, a per­son who believes that col­leges should not have sports teams in the first place—and in case it isn’t obvi­ous by now, a card-car­ry­ing mem­ber of the lib­er­al elite.” (first shared in vol­ume 92)

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 172

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.

I did­n’t think I’d be able to send the email this week because I’m preach­ing in rur­al Alas­ka with­out reli­able WiFi, but I was able to grab a bit this morn­ing. As a result, this edi­tion feels a bit big­ger than nor­mal to me — com­pil­ing the list is quick because when­ev­er I read a good arti­cle I throw it on the pile, but edit­ing it down takes time I don’t have today. So here you go. Enjoy!

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. First, a bit about Supreme Court nom­i­nee Brett Kavanaugh. I’ve had less time than nor­mal for read­ing this week, so I am cer­tain there are inter­est­ing and insight­ful arti­cles I nev­er stum­bled upon. Send me things you think I missed! Of one thing I am con­vinced: the lev­el of fury on both sides over this nom­i­na­tion is off-the-charts, and both sides seem to under­es­ti­mate just how out­raged the oth­er side is.
    • Only the Truth Can Save Us Now (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “even more than before the hear­ings, my feel­ing after over eight hours in pur­ga­to­ry is that I still real­ly want to know the truth. And sur­pris­ing­ly, I left the long day of tes­ti­mo­ny con­vinced that for all the years that have passed since the sum­mer of 1982, the truth might actu­al­ly be acces­si­ble, and there are obvi­ous ques­tions and avenues of inquiry, unpur­sued by both par­ties, that could bring us clos­er to under­stand­ing which of the two wit­ness­es were telling the real truth.”
    • I Know Brett Kavanaugh, but I Wouldn’t Con­firm Him (Ben­jamin Wittes, The Atlantic): “Faced with cred­i­ble alle­ga­tions of seri­ous mis­con­duct against him, Kavanaugh behaved in a fash­ion unac­cept­able in a jus­tice, it seems pre­pon­der­ant­ly like­ly he was not can­did with the Sen­ate Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee on impor­tant mat­ters, and the risk of Ford’s alle­ga­tions being clos­er to the truth than his denial of them is sim­ply too high to place him on the Supreme Court…. As much as I admire Kavanaugh, my con­science would not per­mit me to vote for him.” This makes the most thought­ful case against Kavanaugh. See last week’s edi­tion for a sim­i­lar piece that comes to the oppo­site con­clu­sion.
    • The Rachel Mitchell Memo -“A ‘he said, she said’ case is incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to prove. But this case is even weak­er than that. Dr. Ford iden­ti­fied oth­er wit­ness­es to the event, and those wit­ness­es either refut­ed her alle­ga­tions or failed to cor­rob­o­rate them….I do not think that a rea­son­able pros­e­cu­tor would bring this case based on the evi­dence before the Com­mit­tee. Nor do I believe that this evi­dence is suf­fi­cient to sat­is­fy the pre­pon­der­ance-of-the-evi­dence stan­dard.” This is the report writ­ten by the sex-crimes pros­e­cu­tor who inter­viewed Dr. Ford on the Repub­li­cans’ behalf in the Sen­ate hear­ing.
    • A Non-scan­dalous, Non-ide­o­log­i­cal Case Against Brett Kavanaugh (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “I do wor­ry about a Supreme Court where lit­er­al­ly all nine mem­bers received their respec­tive legal edu­ca­tion at either Har­vard or Yale Law.”
    • Con­ser­v­a­tive Women Are Angry About Kavanaugh—And They Think Oth­er Vot­ers Are, Too (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “These women are infu­ri­at­ed with the way the sex­u­al-assault alle­ga­tions against the Supreme Court nom­i­nee Brett Kavanaugh have been han­dled. They are not con­vinced by Ford or any oth­er woman who has come for­ward. They resent the impli­ca­tion that all women should sup­port the accusers. And they believe that this scan­dal will ulti­mate­ly hurt the cause of women who have been sex­u­al­ly assault­ed. Above all, these women, and the women they know, are ready to lash out against Democ­rats in the upcom­ing midterm elec­tions.”
    • The Per­ni­cious Dou­ble Stan­dards Around Brett Kavanaugh’s Drink­ing (Megan Gar­ber, The Atlantic): “There’s been a lot of talk about dou­ble stan­dards of late—rightfully so—and here is one more: the assump­tion that alco­hol is one thing for men and anoth­er for women.” This one comes rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus. For the record, you should not get drunk regard­less of your gen­der. Eph­esians 5:18, “Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauch­ery. Instead, be filled with the Spir­it.”
    • Poll: Amid Kavanaugh Con­fir­ma­tion Bat­tle, Demo­c­ra­t­ic Enthu­si­asm Edge Evap­o­rates (Domeni­co Mon­ta­naro, NPR): “While Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans are now equal­ly enthu­si­as­tic about the midterms, the sto­ry is very dif­fer­ent for key Demo­c­ra­t­ic base groups and inde­pen­dents. While 82 per­cent of Democ­rats say the midterms are very impor­tant, that’s true of just 60 per­cent of peo­ple under 30, 61 per­cent of Lati­nos and 65 per­cent of inde­pen­dents.”
  2. On the broad­er impli­ca­tions of the Ford/Kavanaugh dra­ma.
    • Six Broad­er Insights From the Kavanaugh Saga So Far (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg): “Most men are not abusers, yet very large num­bers of women have been abused. So if a man is an abuser, there is a good chance he has abused a fair num­ber of women. That means many well-mean­ing men expe­ri­ence sex­u­al abuse as a rel­a­tive­ly rare phe­nom­e­non. They haven’t done it, and most of their male friends haven’t either. At the same time, most women have abuse, rape or #MeToo sto­ries, and they expe­ri­ence these phe­nom­e­na as rel­a­tive­ly com­mon and often life-alter­ing. Prob­a­bly they also have heard mul­ti­ple such sto­ries from their female friends. This struc­tur­al asym­me­try of per­spec­tives is cru­cial to under­stand­ing the dis­course and the often fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ences in opin­ion.”
    • An Age Divid­ed By Sex (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “the cul­ture war as we’ve known it since has not been a sim­ple clash of con­ser­v­a­tives who want to repress and lib­er­als who want to eman­ci­pate. Rather it’s been an ongo­ing argu­ment between two forces — fem­i­nists and reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tives — that both want to remor­al­ize Amer­i­can soci­ety, albeit in very dif­fer­ent ways.”
    • The Mer­i­toc­ra­cy Against Itself (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “the whole mer­i­to­crat­ic game… depends on a repro­duc­tion of priv­i­lege that pre­tends to be some­thing else, some­thing fair and open and all about hard work and just deserts. In this game the peo­ple whose priv­i­lege is par­tic­u­lar­ly obvi­ous, the board­ing school­ers and New York toffs and Bethes­da coun­try club­bers, play a cru­cial­ly impor­tant role. It’s not just that their par­ents pay full freight and keep the eco­nom­ics of tuition viable for every­one. It’s that the eliter-than-elite kids them­selves help cre­ate a pro­vi­sion­al inside-the-Ivy hier­ar­chy that lets all the oth­er priv­i­leged kids, the ones who are mere­ly upper-upper mid­dle class, feel the spur of resent­ment and ambi­tion that keeps us run­ning, keeps us com­pet­ing, keeps us sharp and awful in all the ways that mer­i­toc­ra­cy requires.” This is not real­ly about Kavanaugh, but it is cer­tain­ly about the world most of you inhab­it at Stan­ford.
    • See this insight­ful response: Brett Kavanaugh and the Lim­its of Social-Class Priv­i­lege for Con­ser­v­a­tives (David French, Nation­al Review): “The social bat­tles of the elite col­lege rep­re­sent the squab­bling of men and women at the tip of the priv­i­lege spear in the most pow­er­ful nation in the his­to­ry of the plan­et. But as real as these pet­ty resent­ments were and are, they pale in com­par­i­son to the most impor­tant thing. They miss the real roots of Ivy rage. Brett Kavanaugh’s true sin isn’t his con­nec­tions, his pop­u­lar­i­ty, or his prep school. His true sin is that he’s a con­ser­v­a­tive. And now he’s a par­tic­u­lar kind of con­ser­v­a­tive — a con­ser­v­a­tive who mat­ters, a con­ser­v­a­tive who will have the pow­er (and might actu­al­ly have the con­vic­tions) to threat­en one or more of the most sacred ele­ments of pro­gres­sive jurispru­dence. He can poten­tial­ly affect the law and the cul­ture in a pro­found way. So what we’re watch­ing is the sys­tem­at­ic revo­ca­tion of his elite priv­i­lege.”
    • One of the Best Speech­es You Will Ever Hear from the Sen­ate Floor (Justin Tay­lor, Gospel Coali­tion): “I believe that we have a wide­spread lega­cy of sex­u­al assault in this coun­try. I believe we don’t have much of a shared sex­u­al eth­ic right now—and we haven’t for quite some time—and I think hor­ri­ble stuff has hap­pened, and con­tin­ues to hap­pen. I’ve wept with the vic­tims of sex­u­al assault, and I believe the advo­ca­cy groups’ data that between one-fifth and one-third of Amer­i­can women have been sex­u­al­ly assault­ed at some point in their lives. And giv­en that most women have many oth­er impor­tant women in their lives—a mom, and a daugh­ter, sis­ters, and a cou­ple of close friends—it means that the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of Amer­i­can women have been deeply affect­ed, deeply hurt, by the tragedy of sex­u­al vio­lence.” The speech is by Ben Sasse, a for­mer sem­i­nary pres­i­dent now serv­ing as a sen­a­tor from Nebras­ka.
    • Rage Pol­i­tics On The Left (R. R. Reno, First Things): “Of the utopi­an dreams of the 1960s, only the sex­u­al rev­o­lu­tion has attained cul­tur­al dom­i­nance. To a great degree, we as a soci­ety believe in the promis­es of that rev­o­lu­tion: that sex can be safe; that men and women can enjoy sex­u­al free­dom to the same degree and in the same way; that sex need have noth­ing to do with chil­dren; that sex is pure­ly pri­vate. These promis­es are back­stopped by abor­tion, the con­sti­tu­tion­al sta­tus of which fuels the urgency sur­round­ing the Kavanaugh appoint­ment.”
      • In a sim­i­lar vein: Believ­abil­i­ty Is The Road To Nation­al Ruin (Bret Stephens, New York Times): “When pol­i­tics becomes sole­ly a mat­ter of ‘I believe’ ver­sus ‘I believe,’ it descends into a raw con­test for pow­er. His­tor­i­cal­ly, it’s been fas­cists, not lib­er­als, who tend to win such con­tests.”
    • I was sex­u­al­ly assault­ed and thought it was my fault. It’s past time for a 1980s reck­on­ing. (Kirsten Pow­ers, USA Today): “There is a prob­lem, though, and it’s this: The cul­ture failed to give us the lan­guage to describe such vio­la­tions, and made us feel that talk­ing about what hap­pened to an author­i­ty fig­ure would only make things worse for us. For­tu­nate­ly for women, what hap­pened in the 1980s isn’t stay­ing in the 1980s. It’s a reck­on­ing that is well over­due.”
  3. Steel­man­ning the NIM­BYs (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “San Fran­cis­co is easy to hate. Even a lot of the peo­ple who already live there hate it. They hate the streets piled with dis­card­ed nee­dles and human waste. They hate the traf­fic (fifth worst in the world) and the crime (third most prop­er­ty crime in the US). They hate liv­ing five peo­ple to a three-bed­room apart­ment. They hate hav­ing aggres­sive peo­ple scream incom­pre­hen­si­ble things at them on the side­walk. They hate the var­i­ous mutu­al­ly hos­tile tran­sit sys­tems that inter­lock in a sys­tem I would call byzan­tine except that at least you could get around medieval Con­stan­tino­ple with­out check­ing whether the Muni and Cal­Train were mys­te­ri­ous­ly fail­ing to con­nect to each oth­er today. They hate that every­one else in the city hates them, from vis­i­ble KILL ALL TECHIES graf­fi­ti on their com­mute to work, to a sub­tle mood of seething resent­ment from every­one they meet. They hate the omnipresent bill­boards expect­ing them to have strong opin­ions on apps. I’m not say­ing every­one in San Fran­cis­co hates it. There are peo­ple who like all sorts of things. Some peo­ple like being tied up, whipped, and elec­tro­cut­ed by strangers. And a dis­pro­por­tion­ate num­ber of these peo­ple live in San Fran­cis­co. I am just say­ing this isn’t a coin­ci­dence.”
    • Steel­man­ning refers to the oppo­site of attack­ing a straw man argu­ment. Instead of mak­ing your opponent’s argu­ment weak­er, you strength­en it as much as you can.
    • Coun­ter­point: YIMBY! (Scott Sum­n­er, Econ­Lib): “Think of it this way. Lots of par­ents don’t let their kids play out­side by them­selves, because oth­er par­ents don’t let their kids play out­side. If you choose to be the excep­tion, then (unlike dur­ing the 1960s) your kid is the only one avail­able for pedophiles to prey upon. Lots of the anti-NIM­BY feel­ing comes from a false per­cep­tion of what the real estate mar­ket would look like if com­plete lais­sez-faire were adopt­ed, based on the cur­rent dis­tort­ed mar­ket.”
  4. The Dis­ap­pear­ing Con­ser­v­a­tive Pro­fes­sor (Jon A. Shields, Nation­al Affairs): “Pro­fes­sors are even less tol­er­ant of evan­gel­i­cals, whom they asso­ciate with social con­ser­vatism. Near­ly 60% of anthro­pol­o­gists, 50% of lit­er­a­ture pro­fes­sors, 39% of polit­i­cal sci­en­tists and soci­ol­o­gists, 34% of phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sors, and 29% of his­to­ri­ans say they would be less inclined to hire evan­gel­i­cals. Yancey fur­ther found that female pro­fes­sors expressed more anti-con­ser­v­a­tive bias than men, per­haps in part because female pro­fes­sors tend to be more pro­gres­sive than their male peers.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of gov­ern­ment at Clare­mont McKen­na.
  5. The Big Hack: How Chi­na Used a Tiny Chip to Infil­trate U.S. Com­pa­nies (Jor­dan Robert­son and Michael Rieey, Bloomberg): “Nest­ed on the servers’ moth­er­boards, the testers found a tiny microchip, not much big­ger than a grain of rice, that wasn’t part of the boards’ orig­i­nal design. Ama­zon report­ed the dis­cov­ery to U.S. author­i­ties, send­ing a shud­der through the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty. Elemental’s servers could be found in Depart­ment of Defense data cen­ters, the CIA’s drone oper­a­tions, and the onboard net­works of Navy war­ships. And Ele­men­tal was just one of hun­dreds of Super­mi­cro cus­tomers. Dur­ing the ensu­ing top-secret probe, which remains open more than three years lat­er, inves­ti­ga­tors deter­mined that the chips allowed the attack­ers to cre­ate a stealth door­way into any net­work that includ­ed the altered machines. Mul­ti­ple peo­ple famil­iar with the mat­ter say inves­ti­ga­tors found that the chips had been insert­ed at fac­to­ries run by man­u­fac­tur­ing sub­con­trac­tors in Chi­na.”
    • This bit made me chuck­le: “Two of Elemental’s biggest ear­ly clients were the Mor­mon church, which used the tech­nol­o­gy to beam ser­mons to con­gre­ga­tions around the world, and the adult film indus­try, which did not.”
  6. How Do Chris­tians Fit Into the Two-Par­ty Sys­tem? They Don’t (Tim Keller, New York Times): “Chris­tians are pushed toward two main options. One is to with­draw and try to be apo­lit­i­cal. The sec­ond is to assim­i­late and ful­ly adopt one party’s whole pack­age in order to have your place at the table. Nei­ther of these options is valid.”
  7. Are You a Young Evan­gel­i­cal? We Want to Hear From You Ahead of the Midterm Elec­tions (Eliz­a­beth Dias, New York Times): “If you are an evan­gel­i­cal born after 1980, I’d love to hear about the rela­tion­ship between your faith and pol­i­tics today. And if you grew up evan­gel­i­cal and your views are shift­ing, feel free to share that, too. We may pub­lish a selec­tion of the respons­es.” Take a few min­utes and respond to this — you might get print­ed in the New York Times.

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  Book Review: See­ing Like A State (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “Peas­ants didn’t like per­ma­nent sur­names. Their own sys­tem was quite rea­son­able for them: John the bak­er was John Bak­er, John the black­smith was John Smith, John who lived under the hill was John Under­hill, John who was real­ly short was John Short. The same per­son might be John Smith and John Under­hill in dif­fer­ent con­texts, where his sta­tus as a black­smith or place of ori­gin was more impor­tant. But the gov­ern­ment insist­ed on giv­ing every­one a sin­gle per­ma­nent name, unique for the vil­lage, and track­ing who was in the same fam­i­ly as whom. Resis­tance was intense.” This is long and amaz­ing. (first shared in vol­ume 95)

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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