Tag: Israel

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 164

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. Two con­trast­ing per­spec­tives on who is real­ly win­ning in Amer­i­ca, both inde­pen­dent­ly pub­lished by smart peo­ple in the same high-pro­file mag­a­zine:
    • Why the Left Is So Afraid of Jor­dan Peter­son (Caitlin Flana­gan, The Atlantic): “There are many legit­i­mate rea­sons to dis­agree with him on a num­ber of sub­jects, and many peo­ple of good will do. But there is no coher­ent rea­son for the left’s oblit­er­at­ing and irra­tional hatred of Jor­dan Peter­son. What, then, accounts for it? It is because the left, while it cur­rent­ly seems ascen­dant in our hous­es of cul­ture and art, has in fact entered its deca­dent late phase, and it is deeply vul­ner­a­ble.”
    • Con­ser­v­a­tives Are Scared, Even Under Trump (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “While lib­er­al activist groups paint Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s Wash­ing­ton as an unmit­i­gat­ed for­ward march of con­ser­v­a­tive vic­to­ries, con­ser­v­a­tive activist groups—including Weber’s—don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly per­ceive things the same way. Rather, some of these groups see the next few years under Trump as a brief win­dow of oppor­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate defens­es against a cul­ture that is mov­ing away from them. In parts of the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment, the long-game strat­e­gy is to defend their posi­tion by devolv­ing pow­er away from the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and the Supreme Court, using the momen­tum of the Trump years to bat­ten down the hatch­es against the inevitable cul­tur­al storms ahead.”
  2. Final text of Jew­ish nation-state law, approved by the Knes­set ear­ly on July 19 (Raoul Wootliff, Times of Israel): “The law for the first time enshrines Israel as ‘the nation­al home of the Jew­ish peo­ple.’ The law becomes one of the so-called Basic Laws, which, like a con­sti­tu­tion, guide Israel’s legal sys­tem and are usu­al­ly more dif­fi­cult to repeal than reg­u­lar laws.” Unlike most arti­cles, this includes the full (trans­lat­ed) text of the law, and it is worth read­ing if you’ve only seen it excerpt­ed. It’s not long.
    • I believe this is the Israeli law that infu­ri­at­ed Stan­ford stu­dent Hamzeh Daoud (see last week’s install­ment for details).
    • Israel’s New Law: A Tale of Two Nation-States (Robert Nichol­son, Prov­i­dence): “The Pales­tine Basic Law (2003) defines Pales­tine as part of the Arab world and Arab uni­ty as a sin­gu­lar goal of the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple. The law also defines Ara­bic as Palestine’s offi­cial lan­guage, Jerusalem as its offi­cial cap­i­tal, and Islam as its offi­cial reli­gion. This basic law serves as a tem­po­rary con­sti­tu­tion for the Pales­tin­ian Author­i­ty until a sov­er­eign State of Pales­tine is estab­lished. In the mean­time, the law gov­erns dai­ly life inside the West Bank and to some extent Gaza. On July 19 the Israeli Knes­set passed a sim­i­lar basic law.” This was incred­i­bly help­ful con­text to me.
    • Under the Law: Israeli Chris­tians Wor­ry About Sec­ondary Sta­tus in Jew­ish Nation-State (Jayson Casper, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “‘This law out­lines that Israel’s demo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues are sec­ondary for non-Jews,’ said Sha­dia Qubti, a Pales­tin­ian evan­gel­i­cal liv­ing in Nazareth. ‘It sends a clear mes­sage that my lan­guage is not wel­come and con­se­quent­ly, nei­ther is my cul­tur­al and eth­nic iden­ti­ty.’”
  3. A Bet­ter Way to Ban Alex Jones (David French, New York Times): “The good news is that tech com­pa­nies don’t have to rely on vague, mal­leable and hot­ly con­test­ed def­i­n­i­tions of hate speech to deal with con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists like Mr. Jones. The far bet­ter option would be to pro­hib­it libel or slan­der on their plat­forms…. Pri­vate cor­po­ra­tions can ban who­ev­er they like. But if com­pa­nies like Face­book are eager to nav­i­gate speech con­tro­ver­sies in good faith, they would do well to learn from the cen­turies of legal devel­op­ments in Amer­i­can law. When cre­at­ing a true mar­ket­place of ideas, why not let the First Amend­ment be your guide?”
    • His fol­low-up: A First Amend­ment Peace Plan for the Twit­ter Wars (David French, Nation­al Review): “As I dug down into objec­tions to my pro­posed First Amend­ment frame­work, I often found that the objec­tions were ulti­mate­ly based on a desire to dis­crim­i­nate on the basis of view­point, on a desire to use the pow­er of the plat­form to priv­i­lege some voic­es and sup­press oth­ers.”
  4. A Kind of Home­less­ness: Evan­gel­i­cals of Col­or in the Trump Era (Melani McAl­is­ter, Reli­gion & Pol­i­tics): “Yet the head­lines about ‘evan­gel­i­cal’ sup­port for the pres­i­dent and his agen­da mean that evan­gel­i­cals of col­or can seem to be an invis­i­ble community—rarely acknowl­edged by jour­nal­ists even when they go to the same church­es or claim a sim­i­lar the­ol­o­gy. White evan­gel­i­cals are numer­i­cal­ly dominant—although declining—but their opin­ions dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly dom­i­nate U.S. media report­ing on how the­o­log­i­cal­ly con­ser­v­a­tive Protes­tants think, vote, and believe. At one lev­el, the racial dif­fer­ence is emi­nent­ly pre­dictable. Sure­ly the white­ness of white evan­gel­i­cals is cru­cial to under­stand­ing their polit­i­cal beliefs and their vot­ing pat­terns. As Janelle Wong shows in her new book, Immi­grants, Evan­gel­i­cals, and Pol­i­tics in an Era of Demo­graph­ic Change, although evan­gel­i­cals of any giv­en race are more con­ser­v­a­tive than the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion of that race, evan­gel­i­cals of col­or over­all are far less con­ser­v­a­tive than white evan­gel­i­cals. Indeed, they are less con­ser­v­a­tive than white peo­ple over­all.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of Amer­i­can Stud­ies and Inter­na­tion­al Affairs at George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty.
  5. How Trump Rad­i­cal­ized ICE (Franklin Foer, The Atlantic): “By the begin­ning of Barack Obama’s sec­ond term, immi­gra­tion had become one of the high­est pri­or­i­ties of fed­er­al law enforce­ment: Half of all fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tions were for immi­gra­tion-relat­ed crimes. In 2012, Con­gress appro­pri­at­ed $18 bil­lion for immi­gra­tion enforce­ment. It spent $14 bil­lion for all the oth­er major crim­i­nal law-enforce­ment agen­cies com­bined: the FBI; the Drug Enforce­ment Admin­is­tra­tion; the Secret Ser­vice; the Bureau of Alco­hol, Tobac­co, Firearms, and Explo­sives; and the U.S. Mar­shals Ser­vice.” ICE is much, much big­ger than I real­ized. This is a real­ly impor­tant arti­cle.
  6. Oh, The Human­i­ties! (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “…the years since the Great Reces­sion have been ‘bru­tal for almost every major in the human­i­ties.’ They’ve also been bad for ‘social sci­ence fields that most close­ly resem­ble human­is­tic ones — soci­ol­o­gy, anthro­pol­o­gy, inter­na­tion­al rela­tions and polit­i­cal sci­ence.’ Mean­while the sci­ences and engi­neer­ing have gained at the expense of human­ism…”
  7. Bethel Church Sur­vives Red­ding Carr Fire, But Still Faces Heat (Grif­fin Paul Jack­son, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “For Bethel’s part, staff said the church could not act as an evac­u­a­tion zone because of its prox­im­i­ty to the blaze and because there is a sin­gle entry and exit point to the cam­pus, which is itself sur­round­ed by brush. The Red Cross said Bethel offered to be an evac­u­a­tion site, but was turned down because of the campus’s near­ness to the fire…. The church has, how­ev­er, flexed its con­sid­er­able min­istry mus­cle and finan­cial resources, encour­ag­ing dona­tions to aid relief efforts. Bethel is also part­ner­ing with the Red Cross and the Sal­va­tion Army in response to the Carr fire, Far­rel­ly said.”
    • Relat­ed: Osteen’s church was sim­i­lar­ly crit­i­cized after Hur­ri­cane Har­vey, also with what seem to me to be scant fac­tu­al grounds. Dis­cussed back in vol­ume 116.
    • Also (ten­u­ous­ly) relat­ed: Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Dev­as­tat­ing Fires Are Man-Caused — But Not In The Way They Tell Us (Chuck DeVore, Forbes): “ In the 1850s and 1860s, the typ­i­cal Sier­ra land­scape was of open fields of grass punc­tu­at­ed by iso­lat­ed pine stands and a few scat­tered oak trees. The first branch­es on the pine trees start­ed about 20 feet up—lower branch­es hav­ing been burned off by low-inten­si­ty grass­fires. California’s Native Amer­i­can pop­u­la­tion had for years shaped this land­scape with fire to encour­age the grass­lands and boost the game ani­mal pop­u­la­tion. As the Gold Rush remade mod­ern Cal­i­for­nia, tim­ber was har­vest­ed and replant­ed. Fires were sup­pressed because they threat­ened homes as well as burned up a valu­able resource. The land­scape filled in with trees, but the trees were har­vest­ed every 30 to 50 years. In the 1990s, how­ev­er, that cycle began to be dis­rupt­ed with increas­ing­ly bur­den­some reg­u­la­tions. The tim­ber har­vest cycle slowed, and, in some areas, stopped com­plete­ly, espe­cial­ly on the almost 60% of Cal­i­for­nia for­est land owned by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment.”

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 Mak­ing Sense of the Num­bers of Gen­e­sis [pdf link] (Car­ol Hill, Per­spec­tives on Sci­ence and the Chris­t­ian Faith): “Joseph and Joshua were each record­ed as dying at age 110—a num­ber con­sid­ered ‘per­fect’ by the Egyp­tians. In ancient Egypt­ian doc­trine, the phrase ‘he died aged 110’ was actu­al­ly an epi­taph com­mem­o­rat­ing a life that had been lived self­less­ly and had result­ed in out­stand­ing social and moral ben­e­fit for oth­ers. And so for both Joseph and Joshua, who came out of the Egypt­ian cul­ture, quot­ing this age was actu­al­ly a trib­ute to their char­ac­ter. But, to be described as ‘dying at age 110’ bore no nec­es­sary rela­tion­ship to the actu­al time of an individual’s life span.” You will not agree with every­thing in this arti­cle, but it is full of fas­ci­nat­ing insights. (first shared in vol­ume 51)

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 152

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. Love, Again: on a celi­bate breakup and what hap­pened after. (Wes­ley Hill, Com­ment Mag­a­zine): “For a long time, I found absti­nence rel­a­tive­ly easy. It’s not trendy to admit this, but I didn’t expe­ri­ence a sex­less adult­hood to be a fate worse than death, in part, per­haps, because I tried not to rev up my libido by see­ing how close I could get to the line of inter­course with­out step­ping over it…. What I didn’t real­ize, though, is that, for the inten­tion­al­ly absti­nent, giv­ing up sex is only part of the deal, and there’s more than one line you can step across.”
  2. Let’s Not For­get How Wrong Our Crime Data Are (Cathy O’Neil, Bloomberg): “A year after Trump was elect­ed, the num­ber of report­ed rapes among the Lati­no pop­u­la­tion of Hous­ton declined by 40 per­cent, a strong indi­ca­tion that peo­ple became afraid to report the crimes. Police often don’t take rape vic­tims’ reports seri­ous­ly, a prob­lem that is prob­a­bly even worse for male vic­tims. So how can we get a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the under­ly­ing rate of crime? Sur­veys typ­i­cal­ly don’t help: Peo­ple who get away with com­mit­ting seri­ous offens­es aren’t like­ly to admit it, even if they’re guar­an­teed anonymi­ty. The one notable excep­tion is mar­i­jua­na use, which — though still ille­gal in most places — is mild and social­ly accept­able enough that peo­ple are will­ing to tell the truth. Hence, if we com­pare the report­ed rate of mar­i­jua­na use to the arrest data, we can gain some insight into how use­ful the lat­ter real­ly is. The pic­ture isn’t pret­ty. The lat­est gov­ern­ment sur­veys, for exam­ple, sug­gest that black and white Amer­i­cans use mar­i­jua­na at about the same rate. Yet blacks get arrest­ed about four times more often than whites — and 15 times more often in Man­hat­tan, accord­ing to a recent New York Times analy­sis.” The author has her Ph.D. in math­e­mat­ics from Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty.
  3. This week the US moved our embassy in Israel to Jerusalem on the 70th anniver­sary of Israel’s mod­ern instan­ti­a­tion. Vio­lence ensued.
    • Israel faces out­cry over Gaza killings dur­ing Jerusalem embassy protests (Oliv­er Holmes and Hazem Balousha, The Guardian): “Gaza has had its blood­i­est day in years on Mon­day after Israeli forces shot and killed 58 Pales­tini­ans and wound­ed at least 1,200 as tens of thou­sands protest­ed along the fron­tier against the open­ing of the US embassy in Jerusalem.”
    • The Real Dis­pute Dri­ving the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian Con­flict (Yos­si Klein Hale­vi, The Atlantic): “Abbas’s speech only con­firmed for many Israelis that this con­flict isn’t pri­mar­i­ly about redress­ing the Pales­tin­ian griev­ances over the con­se­quences of the events of 1967—the occu­pa­tion of the West Bank and Gaza—but of 1948: the cre­ation of Israel. Even if we were to uproot every last set­tle­ment and with­draw to the 1967 lines, some Israelis say, it won’t bring us any clos­er to peace, because the real Pales­tin­ian griev­ance is Israel’s exis­tence…. Israelis and Pales­tini­ans are caught in what could be called a “cycle of denial.” The Pales­tin­ian nation­al move­ment denies Israel’s legit­i­ma­cy, and Israel in turn denies the Pales­tini­ans’ nation­al sov­er­eign­ty. The cycle of denial has defined this shared exis­tence since the cre­ation of Israel 70 years ago.”
    • Pulling an arti­cle I first shared back in vol­ume 5: What The Media Gets Wrong About Israel (Mat­ti Fried­man, The Atlantic): “…one of the most impor­tant aspects of the media-sat­u­rat­ed con­flict between Jews and Arabs is also the least cov­ered: the press itself. The West­ern press has become less an observ­er of this con­flict than an actor in it, a role with con­se­quences for the mil­lions of peo­ple try­ing to com­pre­hend cur­rent events, includ­ing pol­i­cy­mak­ers who depend on jour­nal­is­tic accounts to under­stand a region where they con­sis­tent­ly seek, and fail, to pro­duc­tive­ly inter­vene.”
    • Israel’s Mas­sacre of Pales­tin­ian Civil­ians Should Spark Horror—and Action (Ian S. Lustick, The Nation): “As doc­u­ment­ed by the Israeli mil­i­tary, there are now more Pales­tini­ans under the con­trol of the Israeli state than there are Jews. Indeed, for all intents and pur­pos­es the Pales­tini­ans of Gaza and of the West Bank are already with­in the Jew­ish state. They are cit­i­zens of no oth­er coun­try, no oth­er rec­og­nized state. As mea­sured by how much impact the State of Israel has over the inti­mate details of their lives, and indeed over whether they will live at all, they are as much inhab­i­tants of the State of Israel as black slaves were inhab­i­tants of the Unit­ed States or as Africans in the Ban­tus­tans were inhab­i­tants of apartheid South Africa.” The author is a poli sci pro­fes­sor at Penn.
    • Israel Has the Right and Oblig­a­tion to Defend Its Bor­der with Dead­ly Force (David French, Nation­al Review): “What would you have Israel do when thou­sands of peo­ple march on the bor­der, some armed, some not? What would you have Israel do when you know that ter­ror­ists are cer­tain­ly mixed in that crowd, peo­ple who’d glad­ly shoot or stab Israeli civil­ians if they were ever to gain access to Israeli towns?”
  4. Basic Income, Not Basic Jobs: Against Hijack­ing Utopia (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex):  “I grudg­ing­ly for­give cap­i­tal­ism the mis­ery it caus­es, because it’s the engine that lifts coun­tries out of pover­ty. It’s a pre­con­di­tion for a free and pros­per­ous soci­ety; attempts to over­throw it have so con­sis­tent­ly led to pover­ty, tyran­ny, or geno­cide that we no longer believe its pro­po­nents’ earnest oaths that this time they’ve got it right. For right now, there’s no good alter­na­tive. But if we have a basic jobs guar­an­tee, it will cause all the same mis­ery, and I won’t for­give it.“ This is a long arti­cle — skim it. Over­all a very strong argu­ment.
  5. An athe­ist Mus­lim on what the left and right get wrong about Islam (Sean Illing, Vox): “I think the left has a blind spot when it comes to Islam and the right has a blind spot when it comes to Mus­lims.” This arti­cle is an inter­est­ing mix of insight and fol­ly.
  6. Inter­est­ing obser­va­tions from a polit­i­cal sci­en­tist (Cor­rinne McConaughy, Twit­ter): “How hard is it to reach into pol­i­tics and say simul­ta­ne­ous­ly that you are owed more and less than you have been giv­en? Like, that’s a hard argu­ment to make—so hard that the elites try­ing to explain this sort of ten­sion keep whiff­ing past it.” She is a polit­i­cal sci­en­tist at George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty. I don’t know if she is a Chris­t­ian, but the way she word­ed that bit was very gospel­ish.
  7. The Fall of The Ger­man Empire (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “And think­ing about the Euro­pean Union this way, as a Ger­man­ic empire as well as a lib­er­al-cos­mopoli­tan project, is a help­ful way of under­stand­ing how it might ulti­mate­ly fall…. if the test of Europe’s uni­ty feels like a test for lib­er­al democ­ra­cy, it’s a mis­take to see it only in those terms. It is also a strug­gle of nations against empire, of the Continent’s small­er coun­tries against Ger­man mas­tery and North­ern Euro­pean inter­ests, in which pop­ulist par­ties are being elect­ed to resist poli­cies the cen­ter sought to impose upon the periph­ery with­out a vote.”

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 20 Argu­ments For God’s Exis­tence (Peter Kreeft, per­son­al web­site): “You may be blessed with a vivid sense of God’s pres­ence; and that is some­thing for which to be pro­found­ly grate­ful. But that does not mean you have no oblig­a­tion to pon­der these argu­ments. For many have not been blessed in that way. And the proofs are designed for them—or some of them at least—to give a kind of help they real­ly need. You may even be asked to pro­vide help.” I was remind­ed of this by a con­ver­sa­tion with an alum­nus. The author is a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor at Boston Col­lege. (first shared in vol­ume 116)

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 151

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 Bombs Led Me To Christ (Kim Phuc Phan Thi, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “You have seen my pic­ture a thou­sand times. It’s a pic­ture that made the world gasp—a pic­ture that defined my life. I am nine years old, run­ning along a pud­dled road­way in front of an expres­sion­less sol­dier, arms out­stretched, naked, shriek­ing in pain and fear, the dark con­tour of a napalm cloud bil­low­ing in the dis­tance.” WHOA.
  2. If I Were 22 Again (John Piper, Desir­ing God): “There have been about 18,340 days since I turned 22, and I think I have read my Bible on more of those days than I have eat­en. I have cer­tain­ly read my Bible on more of those days that I have watched tele­vi­sion or videos.… Read your Bible every day of your life. If you have time for break­fast, nev­er say that you don’t have time for God’s word.” This whole thing is real­ly good. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.
  3. What Hap­pened To Alan Der­showitz? (Evan Man­dery, Politi­co Mag­a­zine): “Talk­ing to him, it’s not hard to get the impres­sion that expos­ing that truth—the hypocrisy of both sides—may be his ulti­mate project. As he sees it, the best way to achieve his goal—and to get it the atten­tion it deserves—is by defend­ing the most odi­ous clients in the most provoca­tive pos­si­ble way on the very prin­ci­ples lib­er­als claim to love.” I real­ly liked this arti­cle.
  4. A Mus­lim Among Israeli Set­tlers (Waja­hat Ali, The Atlantic): “Ever since the cre­ation of the mod­ern state of Israel—a mir­a­cle for the Jews, the Nak­ba (‘cat­a­stro­phe’) for the Palestinians—Jerusalem’s dai­ly weath­er fore­cast could be described as sun­ny with a slight chance of apoc­a­lypse.”
  5. Give Amnesty for Col­lege Writ­ings (David Lat, Wall Street Jour­nal): “Col­le­giate scrib­blings from decades ago should have no bear­ing on one’s fit­ness for pub­lic office, and mak­ing an issue of them is bad for the coun­try. Col­lege is tra­di­tion­al­ly a time of exper­i­men­ta­tion and explo­ration. We adopt and dis­card ideas and try out dif­fer­ent iden­ti­ties, some­times in rapid suc­ces­sion. These iden­ti­ties often bear lit­tle resem­blance to our mature selves— Hillary Clin­ton was once a ‘Gold­wa­ter girl,’ while Clarence Thomas was a Black Pan­ther sympathizer—but explor­ing them is how we learn about our­selves and acquire wisdom—how we grow up.”
    • Speak­ing of col­lege writ­ings, here are two pieces by Stan­ford stu­dents. They are pre­sent­ed with­out any impli­ca­tion that these are views the authors will lat­er recant; rather, by putting them here as sub-bul­let points I can tell myself I lim­it­ed myself to sev­en top­ics this week.
    • Think the Right Cares About Free Speech? Not Always. (Anni­ka Nordquist, Stan­ford Review): “With­in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics, free­dom of speech is a top­ic of great self-right­eous­ness on both fronts. As the Left adopts an increas­ing­ly politi­cized def­i­n­i­tion of ‘hate speech,’ includ­ing even the most mun­dane top­ics like ‘microag­gres­sions,’ the Right pats itself on the back for defend­ing nat­ur­al lib­er­ties. Yet in Poland, where pro­gres­sives have been vot­ed almost entire­ly out of gov­ern­ment, the Right instead restricts the speech of the Left.” That’s our very own Anni­ka.
    • The Orig­i­nal Sin of Stan­ford Din­ing (Andrew Fried­man, Stan­ford Review): “Cur­rent­ly 12 admin­is­tra­tors run R&DE, along with numer­ous assis­tants. If admin­is­tra­tors object to turn­ing the school’s food ser­vice into a land­lord, it is like­ly because they know leas­ing space to third par­ty ven­dors, besides being bet­ter for every­one else, could be done by a sin­gle per­son, with­out the bureau­crat­ic bloat of the cur­rent sys­tem.”
  6. A real-life Lord of the Flies: the trou­bling lega­cy of the Rob­bers Cave exper­i­ment (David Shari­at­madari, The Guardian): “The ‘Rob­bers Cave exper­i­ment’ is con­sid­ered sem­i­nal by social psy­chol­o­gists, still one of the best-known exam­ples of ‘real­is­tic con­flict the­o­ry’. It is often cit­ed in mod­ern research. But was it sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly rig­or­ous? And why were the results of the Mid­dle Grove exper­i­ment – where the researchers couldn’t get the boys to fight – sup­pressed? … [The researcher’s method was] think of the the­o­ry first and then find a way to get the results that match it. If the results say some­thing else? Bury them.”
  7. A Design Lab Is Mak­ing Rit­u­als for Sec­u­lar Peo­ple (Sigal Samuel, The Atlantic): “Rit­u­al Design Lab has its roots in Stanford’s Insti­tute of Design, where Ozenc and Hagan both teach. In 2015, they pro­posed a new course on rit­u­al design. To their sur­prise, more than 100 stu­dents signed up. Most were sec­u­lar.” I large­ly agree with Rod Dreher’s take: New Rit­u­als For Self-Wor­ship

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 Let­ter To My Younger Self (Ryan Leaf, The Player’s Tri­bune): “Con­grat­u­la­tions. You offi­cial­ly have it all — mon­ey, pow­er and pres­tige. All the things that are impor­tant, right?… That’s you, young Ryan Leaf, at his absolute finest: arro­gant, boor­ish and nar­cis­sis­tic. You think you’re on top of the world and that you’ve got all the answers. Well I’m sor­ry to have to tell you this, but the truth is….” Such a grip­ping let­ter. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. (first shared in vol­ume 99)

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 55

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues, with a pref­er­ence for con­tent from aca­d­e­mics and influ­en­tial voic­es. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Articles I Found Interesting

  1. Britain vot­ed to leave the Euro­pean Union.
  2. Relat­ed To Orlan­do:
    • Omar Mateen’s Mul­ti­ple Motives (Kirsten Pow­ers, USA Today): “Almost as quick­ly as the mas­sacre of inno­cents in Orlan­do unfold­ed, Amer­i­cans retreat­ed to their ide­o­log­i­cal cor­ners to inter­pret the moti­va­tions of the mass mur­der­er, Omar Mateen.”
    • FBI Inves­ti­ga­tors say they have found no evi­dence that Orlan­do shoot­er had gay lovers (Mol­ly Hen­nessy-Fiske, LA Times): huh. This is still a devel­op­ing sto­ry, do not assume this is the final word.
    • The Gun Con­trol We Deserve (Patrick Blanch­field, n+1): “As many crit­ics have observed, we would be naïve to think that heavy-hand­ed gun con­trol mea­sures would not involve the same dis­pro­por­tion­ate racial tar­get­ing and police vio­lence we right­ly con­demn in the War on Drugs and in every­day encoun­ters in places from Bal­ti­more to Fer­gu­son to Cleve­land to Oak­land.” A very thought­ful piece.
  3. Elon Musk Is Wrong. We Aren’t Liv­ing In A Sim­u­la­tion (Ric­car­do Man­zot­ti and Andrew Smart, Vice): “The world we live in is made of real stuff. Sim­u­la­tions are things made of the same stuff. Musk’s argu­ment does not show that we are get­ting any clos­er to pro­duc­ing an alter­na­tive real­i­ty. Rather it shows that we are get­ting bet­ter and bet­ter at shap­ing the phys­i­cal world.” The authors take unwar­rant­ed pot shots at dual­ism, but make very good points over­all. Relat­ed: SMBC “Heap Prob­lem.”
  4. The Sotomay­or and Kagan Dis­sents in Utah vs Stri­eff (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “If out­stand­ing war­rants were few and far between and dis­trib­uted more or less ran­dom­ly the case would have been wrong­ly decid­ed but of lit­tle prac­ti­cal impor­tance. Out­stand­ing war­rants, how­ev­er, are com­mon and much more com­mon in some com­mu­ni­ties than oth­ers. As I wrote in 2014, in Fer­gu­son, MO a major­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion had out­stand­ing war­rants and not because of high crime:”
  5. Ban the Box or Require the Box? (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Sad­ly, a pol­i­cy that was intend­ed to raise the employ­ment prospects of black men ends up hav­ing the biggest pos­i­tive effect on white men with a crim­i­nal record…. Poli­cies like ban the box try to get peo­ple to do the ‘right thing’ by blind­ing peo­ple to cer­tain types of infor­ma­tion. But blind­ed peo­ple tend to use oth­er cues to achieve their inter­ests and when those oth­er cues are less infor­ma­tive that often makes things worse.”
  6. I’m A Sin­gle-Issue Vot­er On Mul­ti­ple Issues And So Are You (Den­ny Burk, per­son­al blog): “Sin­gle-issue vot­ing is not the idea that being right on any sin­gle issue qual­i­fies a can­di­date for office. Sin­gle-issue vot­ing is the idea that being wrong on a sin­gle issue may dis­qual­i­fy a can­di­date from office.”
  7. My Holy Land Vaca­tion (Tom Bis­sell, Harpers): “I excuse myself and stroll out­side. I notice that some­one else has also walked out ear­ly: Pas­tor Mar­ty. He tells me that he was trou­bled by the vio­lence of the Israeli Redneck’s speech. I tell Pas­tor Mar­ty that I don’t fault a man who’s fought in four wars for sound­ing like a lunatic. What both­ers me is the way peo­ple were applaud­ing him.” High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.

A Quote To Ponder

“Stan­ford stu­dents are good at being good at things. Your Chris­tian­i­ty can’t just be one more thing you’re good at. To be good miss­es the point. The point is not what you do but what Jesus has done.” Seth Vil­le­gas

Something Amusing To End On

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 21

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.

To that end, on Fri­days I’ve been shar­ing articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al and soci­etal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). May these give you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar. Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links

With­out fur­ther ado, I give you the inter­est­ing things:

  1. How big of a deal do you have to be for POTUS to inter­view you? Pres­i­dent Oba­ma & Mar­i­lynne Robin­son: A Con­ver­sa­tion In Iowa (NY Review of Books). You might recall that Robin­son is speak­ing at Stan­ford soon and also that I men­tioned her essay “Fear” a few emails back.
  2. Won­der­ing why peo­ple are flee­ing Syr­ia? Check out Syria’s War: A Five Minute His­to­ry (a Vox video). This is real­ly well-done. 
  3. There is also vio­lence erupt­ing in Israel. For­eign Pol­i­cy asks Can Any­one Pre­vent A Third Intifa­da?  Inci­den­tal­ly, if you won­der why peo­ple are skep­ti­cal of the way news con­cern­ing Israel is report­ed, take a look at Return­ing to the Copy Desk, Briefly (Kevin Williamson, Nation­al Review). It is a take­down of a NY Times arti­cle show­ing how much bias can creep into an appar­ent­ly objec­tive arti­cle (this is from the right cri­tiquing the left — for coun­terex­am­ples search for clips from the Dai­ly Show). Bot­tom line: it’s real­ly hard to find trust­wor­thy news about Israel.
  4. Lying About Our Reli­gion, and Oth­er Prob­lems With Polling (Reli­gion Dis­patch­es). There real­ly is a prob­lem devel­op­ing with polling, which is bad news because we rely upon polling in our nation­al life to tell us what the pub­lic thinks. Nate Sil­ver is also wor­ried about this — Polling Is Get­ting Hard­er, But It’s A Vital Check On Pow­er (FiveThir­tyEight).
    • An insight­ful obser­va­tion from the “Lying About Our Reli­gion” arti­cle: “In a democ­ra­cy with hun­dreds of mil­lions of peo­ple, how do you know what the pub­lic thinks and wants? How do you fig­ure out what binds them togeth­er, besides an annu­al oblig­a­tion to the IRS and a love of fire­works? In short: how do you know what the pub­lic is? Like many hard ques­tions, these prob­lems have been ren­dered large­ly invis­i­ble, in no small part because “The Pub­lic” and “The Amer­i­can Peo­ple” are favorite fic­tion­al char­ac­ters for politi­cians and jour­nal­ists, who speak of them with­out a trace of pre­ci­sion. So let’s indulge in a quick real­i­ty check. The Super Bowl—that nation­al spec­ta­cle that unites us around the flick­er­ing LCD hearth—had 115 mil­lion view­ers in the Unit­ed States last Feb­ru­ary; in oth­er words, near­ly two-thirds of us weren’t watch­ing it. The most-viewed polit­i­cal spec­ta­cle of the year, the State of the Union address, draws around 10% of the pop­u­la­tion. Barack Oba­ma won the 2012 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion with 62 mil­lion votes, mean­ing that few­er than 20% of us vot­ed for him. The peo­ple have spoken…kind of.”
  5. Quick links:

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.