Tag: immigration

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 158

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.

Before I share this week’s links: yes, I am aware that Antho­ny Kennedy retired from the Supreme Court and think it is like­ly to be one of the most sig­nif­i­cant polit­i­cal devel­op­ments of my life­time. I don’t have any links about it because not much inter­est­ing has been writ­ten about it yet sim­ply because Trump has not nom­i­nat­ed a suc­ces­sor yet. Once he does, please let me know if you find any­thing fas­ci­nat­ing about either his nom­i­nee or the process.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Sus­pect in Stan­ford church mur­der kills self (Palo Alto Dai­ly News): this is a trag­ic and freaky sto­ry. A less hor­rif­ic detail which amused me: “Craw­ford stayed on at Stan­ford until 1976, but he found ways to exact revenge against the uni­ver­si­ty, Her­hold said. ‘He began steal­ing stuff from offices,’ said Her­hold, who added exam­ples, includ­ing a human skull, a walk­ing cane giv­en to uni­ver­si­ty founder Leland Stan­ford and rare books. ‘The kick­er was he went down to a print shop and got a degree from Stan­ford,’ he said, using a blank Stan­ford diplo­ma.”
  2. Ebo­la Deaths Rise As Patients Turn to Mir­a­cles Over Med­i­cine (Grif­fin Paul Jack­son, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Two Ebo­la patients died last month after flee­ing a hos­pi­tal iso­la­tion ward so they could be tak­en to a prayer meet­ing, where they exposed up to 50 oth­ers.” Wow. Bad the­ol­o­gy leads to tragedy. Some­body nev­er taught them Leviti­cus 13:46. If you’re infec­tious, pay atten­tion to the phrase “call for” in James 5:14–16 and ask the elders to come to you. Quar­an­tine Laws and the Bible (Lar­ry Ball, The Aquila Report) is worth read­ing in this regard.
  3. The Span­ish Inqui­si­tion Was a Mod­er­ate Court by the Stan­dard of Its Time (Ed Con­don, Nation­al Review): “Because it was a seri­ous court, metic­u­lous case files and court records were kept. Libraries in Tole­do, Sala­man­ca, and oth­er cities are home to thou­sands of such case files. In the sec­ond half of the 20th cen­tu­ry, Hen­ry Kamen and oth­er his­to­ri­ans were giv­en access to them. What they dis­cov­ered changed the schol­ar­ly under­stand­ing of the Inqui­si­tion. So, what of those dank dun­geons and hot pok­ers? Well, for a start, the jails of the Inqui­si­tion were uni­ver­sal­ly known to be hygien­ic and well main­tained. They were nei­ther built nor run as places of pun­ish­ment. The stan­dard of care that inmates received was high enough that pris­on­ers held by the Crown would often peti­tion to be moved to Inqui­si­tion jails. There are record­ed cas­es of crim­i­nals com­mit­ting pub­lic heresy with the express pur­pose of being held and tried by the Inqui­si­tion, rather than the sec­u­lar courts.” This is not a fringe view among schol­ars, but is def­i­nite­ly con­trary to the pop­u­lar under­stand­ing of the Span­ish Inqui­si­tion.
  4. Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez on her Catholic faith and the urgency of a crim­i­nal jus­tice reform (Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez, Amer­i­ca): “By nature, a soci­ety that for­gives and reha­bil­i­tates its peo­ple is a soci­ety that for­gives and trans­forms itself. That takes a rad­i­cal kind of love, a secret of which is giv­en in the Lord’s Prayer: For­give us our tres­pass­es, as we for­give those who tres­pass against us. And let us not for­get the guid­ing prin­ci­ple of “the least among us” found in Matthew: that we are com­pelled to care for the hun­gry, thirsty, home­less, naked, sick and, yes—the impris­oned.” This, of course, is the social­ist can­di­date who unseat­ed pow­er­ful incum­bent Joe Crow­ley in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry. She is almost cer­tain to become the youngest woman ever elect­ed to Con­gress.
    • Relat­ed: Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ists of Amer­i­ca Mem­ber­ship Surges After Alexan­dria Ocasio-Cortez’s Stun­ning Vic­to­ry (Gideon Resnick, The Dai­ly Beast): “Accord­ing to Lawrence Drey­fuss, a pro­gram asso­ciate for DSA, the orga­ni­za­tion saw a surge of 1,152 new mem­ber­ships on Wednesday—about 35 times more sign-ups than on an aver­age day. The last major mem­ber­ship bump DSA expe­ri­enced was in the month fol­low­ing Pres­i­dent Trump’s elec­tion, dur­ing which time they had about six times more sign-ups than in the pre­vi­ous month.” Note that the orga­ni­za­tion itself is still rel­a­tive­ly small (40,000 mem­bers).
    • Pos­si­bly relat­ed: Democ­rats are los­ing the mil­len­ni­al vote and need to change mes­sage (Cas Mud­de, The Guardian): “a recent Reuters/Ipsos mega poll of 16,000 respon­dents, found that the Democ­rats are los­ing ground with mil­len­ni­als. While mil­len­ni­als still pre­fer the Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty over the Repub­li­cans, that sup­port is tank­ing. In just two years, it dropped sharply from 55% to 46%. Mean­while, their sup­port for Repub­li­cans has remained rough­ly sta­ble in the past two years, falling from 28% to 27%.… their dis­like of the Repub­li­cans should not be inter­pret­ed as a like of Democ­rats.” Caveats apply: this is based on the results of one poll.
    • Def­i­nite­ly relat­ed: Dear Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ists Who Think You’re Hav­ing a Moment: It’s Me, a Lib­er­tar­i­an, Who’s Been Through This. (Rob­by Soave, Rea­son): “Demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism, the ide­ol­o­gy with which Oca­sio-Cortez iden­ti­fies, appears to be hav­ing a polit­i­cal moment. To which I say, as a lib­er­tar­i­an who has been through the whole an-idea-whose-time-has-final­ly-come expe­ri­ence: good luck with that, com­rades. The signs are easy to mis­read.”
  5. Right-to-work laws make unions work hard­er for their mem­bers (Chris­tos Makridis, The Hill): “RTW [Right To Work] laws force unions to become more com­pet­i­tive. When unions are guar­an­teed a per­ma­nent income stream, they don’t need to work as hard to win the hearts and minds of their employ­ees; that is, they face weak­er incen­tives to pro­vide valu­able ser­vices. The adop­tion of RTW laws changes that by mak­ing union dues a vol­un­tary con­tri­bu­tion.” Yes, this is our very own recent­ly-grad­u­at­ed Chris­tos.
  6. Are Satanists of the MS-13 gang an under-cov­ered sto­ry on the reli­gion beat? (Julia Duin, GetRe­li­gion): this is a fas­ci­nat­ing bit of news com­men­tary. My favorite bit: “How does one get out of MS-13? An opin­ion piece in the New York Times this past April gives a sur­pris­ing response: Go to a Pen­te­costal church.” High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.
  7. How The Democ­rats Lost Their Way On Immi­gra­tion (Peter Bein­ert, The Atlantic): “Lib­er­als must take seri­ous­ly Amer­i­cans’ yearn­ing for social cohe­sion. To pro­mote both mass immi­gra­tion and greater eco­nom­ic redis­tri­b­u­tion, they must con­vince more native-born white Amer­i­cans that immi­grants will not weak­en the bonds of nation­al iden­ti­ty. This means dust­ing off a con­cept many on the left cur­rent­ly hate: assim­i­la­tion.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.

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 Chris­t­ian Mis­sions and the Spread of Democ­ra­cy (Greg Scan­dlen, The Fed­er­al­ist): This is a sum­ma­ry of some rather won­der­ful research Robert Wood­ber­ry pub­lished in The Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Review back in 2012: The Mis­sion­ary Roots of Lib­er­al Democ­ra­cy. If it looks famil­iar it’s because I allude to it from time to time in my ser­mons and con­ver­sa­tions. (first shared in vol­ume 14)

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).

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 157

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. These Har­vard Kids Got the Les­son of Their Lives in the Heart­land (Sale­na Zito, NY Post): “I have been a nation­al polit­i­cal jour­nal­ist for near­ly 15 years. When­ev­er and wher­ev­er I trav­el in this coun­try, I abide by a few sim­ple rules: No planes, no inter­states and no hotels. And def­i­nite­ly no chain restau­rants…. Those sim­ple rules are what intrigued stu­dents at the Har­vard Insti­tute of Pol­i­tics (IOP) after hear­ing me speak at a Piz­za and Pol­i­tics event on the school’s cam­pus last fall.”
  2. Don’t Quit the Repub­li­can Par­ty. Stay and Fight (Michael Wear, Time Mag­a­zine): “The prob­lem is that pol­i­tics is not an indi­vid­u­al­is­tic endeav­or. Inde­pen­dents tend to spurn insti­tu­tions gen­er­al­ly, and then feel vin­di­cat­ed when our insti­tu­tions do not reflect their views. But while Inde­pen­dents think they are send­ing polit­i­cal par­ties a mes­sage, polit­i­cal par­ties do not hear them…. In essence, Inde­pen­dents active­ly min­i­mize their impact on elec­tions and par­ty posi­tions. When peo­ple leave (or fail to join) par­ties in protest, they starve those par­ties of ide­o­log­i­cal diver­si­ty, dri­ving them to their extremes.”
    • On Twit­ter the author (a for­mer Oba­ma White House staffer) says “The head­line is mis­lead­ing. My argu­ment is a cau­tion against becom­ing an indy. If you read the arti­cle, I explic­it­ly argue that if you believe the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty more close­ly aligns with your vision of what is best for our nation’s pol­i­tics, you should become a Demo­c­rat.” In case you didn’t know, authors rarely choose their head­lines (or even the titles of their books).
  3. When Chil­dren Say They’re Trans (Jesse Sin­gal, The Atlantic): “ …to deny the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a con­nec­tion between social influ­ences and gen­der-iden­ti­ty explo­ration among ado­les­cents would require ignor­ing a lot of what we know about the devel­op­ing teenage brain—which is more sus­cep­ti­ble to peer influ­ence, more impul­sive, and less adept at weigh­ing long-term out­comes and con­se­quences than ful­ly devel­oped adult brains—as well as indi­vid­ual sto­ries like Delta’s.” This is a long and bal­anced piece which has gar­nered out­rage in some online cir­cles.
  4. The Sin Of Silence (Joshua Pease, Wash­ing­ton Post): “With­out a cen­tral­ized the­o­log­i­cal body, evan­gel­i­cal poli­cies and cul­tures vary rad­i­cal­ly, and while some church lead­ers have worked to pre­vent abuse and harass­ment, many have not. The caus­es are man­i­fold: author­i­tar­i­an lead­er­ship, twist­ed the­ol­o­gy, insti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tion, obliv­i­ous­ness about the prob­lem and, per­haps most shock­ing, a dimin­ish­ment of the trau­ma sex­u­al abuse cre­ates — espe­cial­ly sur­pris­ing in a church cul­ture that believes strong­ly in the sanc­ti­ty of sex…. Roger Canaff, a for­mer New York state pros­e­cu­tor who spe­cial­ized in child sex­u­al abuse, tells me that many wor­shipers he encoun­tered felt per­se­cut­ed by the sec­u­lar cul­ture around them — and dis­in­clined to reach out to their per­se­cu­tors for help in solv­ing prob­lems.”
  5. Con­tra Caplan On Arbi­trary Deplor­ing (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “This is my long-wind­ed answer to a ques­tion sev­er­al peo­ple asked on the last links post – why should we pri­or­i­tize respond­ing to China’s mass incar­cer­a­tion of the Uighurs? Aren’t there oth­er equal­ly bad things going on else­where in the world, like malar­ia? Yes. But I had opti­misti­cal­ly thought we had most­ly estab­lished a strong norm around ‘don’t put minori­ties in con­cen­tra­tion camps’. Resources devot­ed to enforc­ing that norm won’t just solve the imme­di­ate prob­lem in Chi­na, they’ll also help main­tain a cred­i­ble taboo against this kind of thing so it’s less like­ly to hap­pen the next time.”
  6. The Hand­maids of Cap­i­tal­ism (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “Fem­i­nists were divid­ed over sur­ro­ga­cy and com­mer­cial­ized fer­til­i­ty, but the oppo­si­tion to both prac­tices grad­u­al­ly dis­solved, and now only eccen­tric con­ser­v­a­tives notice the weird resem­blances between Cal­i­for­nia-style sur­ro­ga­cy prac­tices and the hand­maids and econowives of Gilead. They were divid­ed over pornog­ra­phy, often bit­ter­ly — but over time the sex-pos­i­tive side increas­ing­ly won out over the Andrea Dworkin­ish dis­senters, even as the online realm was over­run with images and videos that more than jus­ti­fied her argu­ments. They were, and are, divid­ed over pros­ti­tu­tion, but it’s pret­ty clear that the ver­sion of fem­i­nism that sup­ports the rights of sex work­ers to sell their bod­ies in the mar­ket­place has the intel­lec­tu­al momen­tum.”
  7. More on bor­der fam­i­ly sep­a­ra­tions, a pol­i­cy that has been stopped by exec­u­tive order after mas­sive pub­lic out­cry.
    • The Less­er Cru­el­ty On Immi­gra­tion (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “it would be use­ful for every­one if the Trump White House just admit­ted that this pol­i­cy was con­ceived as a deter­rent — trau­ma­tiz­ing a cer­tain num­ber of fam­i­lies in the hopes of bring­ing greater order to the bor­der in the long run. That admis­sion would get us clos­er to the hard prob­lem in migra­tion pol­i­cy. Some harsh­ness, some deter­rence, real­ly is unavoid­able in any immi­gra­tion sys­tem that doesn’t sim­ply dis­solve bor­ders. So pol­i­cy­mak­ers are there­fore oblig­ed to choose tol­er­a­ble cru­el­ties over the intol­er­a­ble one that we’re wit­ness­ing in action right now.”
    • Immi­gra­tion: Was A.G. Ses­sions Right to Quote the Bible in Defense of Fam­i­ly Sep­a­ra­tion? (Bruce Ash­ford, per­son­al blog): “Paul is say­ing, in effect, ‘Look, it’s true that Jesus is the ulti­mate Ruler of a cos­mic King­dom while Cae­sar is only the tem­po­rary ruler of a lim­it­ed earth­ly king­dom. But that doesn’t mean you’re above the law. You should be a good cit­i­zen and obey the law except, of course, when God’s law con­flicts with Caesar’s law.’”
    • A case study in the prop­er role of Chris­tians in pol­i­tics (Michael J. Ger­son, Wash­ing­ton Post): “In the case of child sep­a­ra­tion, some of the most effec­tive resis­tance has come from reli­gious lead­ers — Catholic, Protes­tant main­line and even some evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian (see Car­di­nal Tim­o­thy Dolan and Franklin Gra­ham). It was a case study in the prop­er and pos­i­tive role that reli­gion can play in our com­mon life.”
    • Enforce the Bor­der — Humane­ly (David Frum, The Atlantic): “Ille­gal immi­grants are com­mit­ting no moral wrong. They are doing what we might do in their place—as we, by defend­ing bor­ders, are doing what they would do if they were in ours. Like so many human insti­tu­tions, bor­ders are both arbi­trary and indis­pens­able. With­out them, there are no nations. With­out nations, there can be no democ­ra­cy and no lib­er­al­ism. John Lennon may imag­ine that with­out nations there will be only human­i­ty. More like­ly, with­out nations there will only be tribes.”
    • Our Debate On Ille­gal Immi­gra­tion Is A Nation­al Dis­as­ter (David Harsanyi, The Fed­er­al­ist): “The major­i­ty of kids in care of the U.S. Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices, most often teenagers, are appre­hend­ed because they’re here with­out any par­ents. It’s a grow­ing prob­lem. In 2013, a lit­tle few­er than 40,000 unac­com­pa­nied minors were appre­hend­ed by the Bor­der Patrol. That was a his­toric high. In 2016 there were near­ly 60,000. This year there are like­ly to be more than 80,000.”
    • Amer­i­can Fam­i­lies Should­n’t Be Sep­a­rat­ed, Either (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg View): “Obvi­ous­ly, a case can be made for enforc­ing the bor­der, but delib­er­ate cru­el­ty is nev­er a good idea. Those chil­dren — inno­cent vic­tims all of them — will like­ly be trau­ma­tized for life…. If you agree with me on this, I’d like to push you one step fur­ther. It’s hor­ri­ble to forcibly sep­a­rate law­break­ing par­ents from their young chil­dren, but we do that to Amer­i­can cit­i­zens, too. Accord­ing to one 2010 study, more than 1.1 mil­lion men and 120,000 women in U.S. jails and pris­ons have chil­dren under the age of 17.” This is one of the most intrigu­ing things I read this week.
    • The Rise of the Amnesty Thugs (David Brooks, New York Times): “For cen­turies, con­ser­v­a­tives have repeat­ed a spe­cif­ic cri­tique against state pow­er. Sta­tism, con­ser­v­a­tives have argued, has a ten­den­cy to become bru­tal­ist and inhu­mane because a bureau­cra­cy can’t see or account for the com­plex­i­ty of real­i­ty. It tries to impose uni­form rules on the organ­ic intri­ca­cy of human rela­tion­ships. Sta­tist social engi­neer­ing projects cause hor­rif­ic suf­fer­ing because in the mind of sta­tists, the abstract rule is more impor­tant than the human being in front of them. The per­son must be crushed for the sake of the abstrac­tion.” Astute insights in this op-ed. Rec­om­mend­ed. Also, the title is slight­ly mis­lead­ing.
    • A Twit­ter thread from an immi­gra­tion attor­ney explain­ing how long­stand­ing this prob­lem has been

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 Alco­hol, Black­outs, and Cam­pus Sex­u­al Assault (Texas Month­ly, Sarah Hep­o­la): I think this is the most thought­ful sec­u­lar piece I’ve read on the issue. “Con­sent and alco­hol make tricky bed­fel­lows. The rea­son I liked get­ting drunk was because it altered my con­sent: it changed what I would say yes to. Not just in the bed­room but in every room and cor­ri­dor that led into the squint­ing light. Say yes to adven­ture, say yes to risk, say yes to karaoke and pool par­ties and argu­ments with men, say yes to a life with­out fear, even though such a life is nev­er pos­si­ble… We drink because it feels good. We drink because it makes us feel hap­py, safe, pow­er­ful. That it often makes us the oppo­site is one of alcohol’s das­tard­ly tricks.” (first shared in vol­ume 25)

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).

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 153

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. Fed­er­al Agen­cies Lost Track of Near­ly 1,500 Migrant Chil­dren Placed With Spon­sors (Ron Nixon, New York Times): “…the agency had lost track of near­ly 1,500 migrant chil­dren it placed with spon­sors in the Unit­ed States, rais­ing con­cerns they could end up in the hands of human traf­fick­ers or be used as labor­ers by peo­ple pos­ing as rel­a­tives.” This is an arti­cle from April about kids who arrive alone at the bor­der, but I can’t help but think of it when I hear sto­ries about new poli­cies sep­a­rat­ing kids from their fam­i­lies at the bor­der. If I am read­ing this cor­rect­ly, they lost track of 20% of the minors they placed. Out­ra­geous­ly unac­cept­able. 
  2. The Wrath of God Poured Out — The Humil­i­a­tion of the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion (Albert Mohler, per­son­al blog): this is pure fire. I pray lead­ers in the Assem­blies of God will act with sim­i­lar courage should it become nec­es­sary.  
  3. What Our Iden­ti­ty Search­es Real­ly Reveal (Eric Park­er, Gospel Coali­tion): “the most sig­nif­i­cant ques­tion in under­stand­ing per­son­al iden­ti­ty is not ‘Who am I?’ but ‘Whose am I?’… This one turn of phrase might be the most sig­nif­i­cant turn of thought we could ever make. But since many of us haven’t made that turn of thought, we inhab­it con­struct­ed iden­ti­ties rather than received iden­ti­ties.”
  4. Chi­na’s social cred­it sys­tem has blocked peo­ple from tak­ing 11 mil­lion flights and 4 mil­lion train trips (Tara Fran­cis Chan, Busi­ness Insid­er): “a for­mer offi­cial, Hou Yunchun, is quot­ed as say­ing the sys­tem needs to be improved so ‘dis­cred­it­ed peo­ple become bank­rupt.’”
  5. Why Being a Fos­ter Child Made Me a Con­ser­v­a­tive (Rob Hen­der­son, New York Times): “Indi­vid­u­als have rights. But they also have respon­si­bil­i­ties. For instance, when I say par­ents should pri­or­i­tize their chil­dren over their careers, there is a sense of unease among my peers. They think I want to blame indi­vid­u­als rather than a neb­u­lous foe like pover­ty. They are most­ly right.” The author just grad­u­at­ed from Yale. Worth read­ing regard­less of your polit­i­cal alle­giances.
  6. Mar­riage name game: What kind of guy would take his wife’s last name? (Phys.org): “[The study] found that among men with less than a high school degree, 10.3 per­cent report­ed chang­ing their sur­name. Among men with a high school degree but no col­lege, it was 3.6 per­cent, and among men with any col­lege, only 2 per­cent. None of the men sur­veyed who had an advanced degree changed their name.”
  7. The Racism Tread­mill (Cole­man Hugh­es, Quil­lette): “In an econ­o­my increas­ing­ly based on cog­ni­tive labor, it’s hard to imag­ine a cul­tur­al fea­ture more harm­ful than a social­ly-enforced taboo on aca­d­e­m­ic striv­ing. But wor­ries about the harm caused by the ‘act­ing white’ epi­thet have been met with skep­ti­cism by pro­gres­sives.” The author is an under­grad at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty. 

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 a provoca­tive read, In Defense of Flog­ging (Peter Moskos, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion) — the author is a for­mer police offi­cer and now a crim­i­nol­o­gist at the City Uni­ver­si­ty of New York. This one was shared back before I start­ed send­ing these emails in a blog post called Pun­ish­ment.

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).

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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