Tag: military

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 254

The less time­ly stuff is up top this time and there are a lot of mag­ic videos at the bot­tom.

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. What Unites Most Grad­u­ates of Selec­tive Col­leges? An Intact Fam­i­ly (Nicholas Zill & Brad Wilcox, Insti­tute for Fam­i­ly Stud­ies): “… even after con­trol­ling for par­ent edu­ca­tion, fam­i­ly income, and stu­dent race and eth­nic­i­ty, being raised by one’s mar­ried birth par­ents pro­vides an addi­tion­al boost to one’s chances of get­ting through Prince­ton.”
  2. What Chris­tians Must Remem­ber about Nuclear Weapons and Arms Con­trol (Peter Feaver & William Inbo­den & Michael Singh, Prov­i­dence): “Before embrac­ing calls for the abo­li­tion of nuclear weapons, thought­ful Chris­tians must con­front two uncom­fort­able facts. First, we live in a fall­en world in which the threats we face are chang­ing, and arguably grow­ing. Sec­ond, the enve­lope of peace and secu­ri­ty in which free soci­eties have thrived for the past eight decades is not self-sustaining—one need only view the recent decline of democ­ra­cies and rise of author­i­tar­i­an threats from Rus­sia and Chi­na. One can detest nuclear weapons and still see their strate­gic val­ue.” The authors are, respec­tive­ly, a pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at Duke, a pro­fes­sor of pub­lic pol­i­cy at UT Austin, and a senior fel­low at a think­tank.
  3. Peer Review (Rod­ney Brooks, per­son­al blog): “I came to real­ize that the editor’s job was real, and it required me to deeply under­stand the top­ic of the paper, and the bias­es of the review­ers, and not to treat the ref­er­ees as hav­ing the right to deter­mine the fate of the paper them­selves. As an edi­tor I had to add judge­ment to the process at many steps along the way, and to strive for the process to improve the papers, but also to let in ideas that were new.” The author is a pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus of robot­ics at MIT.
  4. JK Rowl­ing Writes about Her Rea­sons for Speak­ing out on Sex and Gen­der Issues (JK Rowl­ing, per­son­al blog): “…I refuse to bow down to a move­ment that I believe is doing demon­stra­ble harm in seek­ing to erode ‘woman’ as a polit­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal class and offer­ing cov­er to preda­tors like few before it.”
  5. More on the NY Times tan­gle last week and what it reveals about our soci­ety
    • Amer­i­ca is chang­ing, and so is the media (Ezra Klein, Vox): “The news media likes to pre­tend that it sim­ply holds up a mir­ror to Amer­i­ca as it is. We don’t want to be seen as actors craft­ing the polit­i­cal debate, agents who make deci­sions that shape the bound­aries of the nation­al dis­course. We are, of course. We always have been.”
    • The Still-Vital Case for Lib­er­al­ism in a Rad­i­cal Age (Jonathan Chait, NY Mag­a­zine): “…it is an error to jump from the fact that right-wing author­i­tar­i­an racism is far more impor­tant to the con­clu­sion that left-wing illib­er­al­ism is com­plete­ly unim­por­tant. One can oppose dif­fer­ent evils, even those evils aligned against each oth­er, with­out assign­ing them equal weight.”
    • Why every­one hates the main­stream media (Andrew Pot­ter, Pol­i­cy for Pan­demics): “It’s not a coin­ci­dence that lawyers, jour­nal­ists, and politi­cians are rou­tine­ly ranked as the most dis­liked pro­fes­sions in the world. It’s because the law is not about jus­tice, pol­i­tics is not about democ­ra­cy, and the news is not about infor­ma­tion. But in each case, that is what emerges, by har­ness­ing the sta­tus-con­scious com­pet­i­tive natures of the par­tic­i­pants.” The author is a for­mer jour­nal­ist and edi­tor.
  6. Thoughts on race and racism:
    • George Floyd and Me (Shai Linn, Gospel Coali­tion): “Though I’m deeply griev­ed, I am not with­out hope. Per­son­al­ly, I have lit­tle con­fi­dence in our gov­ern­ment or pol­i­cy­mak­ers to change the sys­temic fac­tors that con­tributed to the George Floyd sit­u­a­tion. But my hope isn’t in the gov­ern­ment. My hope is in the Lord.”
    • Amer­i­can Racism: We’ve Got So Very Far to Go (David French, The Dis­patch): “If polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect pro­gres­sives are often guilty of over-racial­iz­ing Amer­i­can pub­lic dis­course, and they are, polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect con­ser­v­a­tives com­mit the oppo­site sin—and they fil­ter out or angri­ly reject all the infor­ma­tion that con­tra­dicts their the­sis.”
    • This moment cries out for us to con­front race in Amer­i­ca (Con­doleez­za Rice, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Still, we sim­ply must acknowl­edge that soci­ety is not col­or-blind and prob­a­bly nev­er will be. Progress comes when peo­ple treat one anoth­er with respect, as if we were col­or-blind. Unless and until we are hon­est that race is still an anchor around our country’s neck, that shad­ow will nev­er be lift­ed. Our coun­try has a birth defect: Africans and Euro­peans came to this coun­try togeth­er — but one group was in chains.” She is, of course, a fel­low believ­er and also a Stan­ford pro­fes­sor who will soon be the direc­tor of the Hoover Insti­tu­tion. 
    • Our Present Moment: Why Is It So Hard? (Kevin DeY­oung, Gospel Coali­tion): “I’m think­ing more broad­ly about why race in this coun­try is so dif­fi­cult, and in par­tic­u­lar dif­fi­cult even between peo­ple of good will, between peo­ple in your church of a dif­fer­ent col­or. I’m think­ing about peo­ple who agree on so many oth­er things. And you sing the same songs and you real­ly love Jesus togeth­er. And you read the same Bible, and you real­ly are togeth­er for the gospel. So why is it so divi­sive?” Some real­ly good thoughts in here.
  7. On the protests
    • The protests start­ed out look­ing like 1968. They turned into 1964. (Omar Wasow, Wash­ing­ton Post): “For a grow­ing inter­na­tion­al move­ment try­ing to draw atten­tion to the long his­to­ry of racist and bru­tal polic­ing, non­vi­o­lence in the face of police repres­sion is an exceed­ing­ly dif­fi­cult strat­e­gy to sus­tain. Evi­dence from the 1960s, how­ev­er — and per­haps this month, too — sug­gests using such tac­tics to gen­er­ate media cov­er­age of a press­ing social prob­lem can be a pow­er­ful tool for build­ing a coali­tion for social change.”
    • We often accuse the right of dis­tort­ing sci­ence. But the left changed the coro­n­avirus nar­ra­tive overnight (Thomas Chat­ter­ton Williams, The Guardian): “Two weeks ago we shamed peo­ple for being in the street; today we shame them for not being in the street.”
    • Trib­al­ism Comes for Pan­dem­ic Sci­ence (Yuval Levin, The New Atlantis): “These pub­lic health pro­fes­sion­als are sim­ply admit­ting that their views on the health risks of large gath­er­ings depend on the polit­i­cal valence of those gath­er­ings. Rather than com­part­men­tal­ize their pro­fes­sion­al judg­ment from their polit­i­cal pri­or­i­ties — explain­ing the risks of large protests regard­less of their polit­i­cal con­tent and then sep­a­rate­ly and in a dif­fer­ent con­text express­ing what­ev­er views they might have about that con­tent — they open­ly deny not only the pos­si­bil­i­ty but even the desir­abil­i­ty of detached pro­fes­sion­al advice. This kind of atti­tude inevitably makes it much hard­er for the pub­lic to assess sci­en­tif­ic claims about the pan­dem­ic through any­thing oth­er than a polit­i­cal lens.”
    • The Grow­ing CHAZm in Seat­tle (Jon­ah Gold­berg, The Dis­patch): “It took activists less than 24 hours to dis­cov­er that even their make-believe Duchy of Grand Fen­woke relies on the basic build­ing blocks of any poli­ty. If Seattle’s supine and sausage-spined polit­i­cal lead­er­ship allows this exper­i­ment to con­tin­ue, pret­ty soon you can expect the emer­gence of cur­ren­cy, tax­es, even some kind of char­ter or con­sti­tu­tion. It wouldn’t shock me if they end­ed up cre­at­ing rudi­men­ta­ry courts or even a jail.” Gold­berg is an expert at the mean­der­ing rant. 
    • Anar­chy In Seat­tle (Christo­pher Rufo, City Jour­nal): “The Capi­tol Hill Autonomous Zone has set a dan­ger­ous prece­dent: armed left-wing activists have assert­ed their dom­i­nance of the streets and estab­lished an alter­na­tive polit­i­cal author­i­ty over a large sec­tion of a neigh­bor­hood. They have claimed de fac­to police pow­er over thou­sands of res­i­dents and dozens of businesses—completely out­side of the demo­c­ra­t­ic process. In a mat­ter of days, Antifa-affil­i­at­ed para­mil­i­taries have cre­at­ed a hard­ened bor­der, estab­lished a rudi­men­ta­ry form of gov­ern­ment based on prin­ci­ples of inter­sec­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and forcibly removed unfriend­ly media from the ter­ri­to­ry.”
    • A Dark Cloud For Democ­ra­cy (Carl True­man, First Things): “…this does not entire­ly explain why Min­neapo­lis and not Hong Kong has grabbed the imag­i­na­tion of British youth. After all, Hong Kong is a much more recent part of the British nar­ra­tive; one can watch the dis­man­tling of Hong Kong’s con­sti­tu­tion online and on the tele­vi­sion; and an extreme­ly good case can be made that the British gov­ern­ment is more respon­si­ble for that mess and its poten­tial ame­lio­ra­tion than for the chaos in the Min­neapo­lis police depart­ment. After all, the British can actu­al­ly do some­thing about it—as Boris Johnson’s pledge on immi­gra­tion to the U.K. from Hong Kong indi­cates. So why Min­neapo­lis, not Hong Kong?”
    • If we want bet­ter polic­ing, we’re going to have to spend more, not less (Megan McAr­dle, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Reform is thus more like­ly to stick if we co-opt the unions rather than try­ing to break them. Instead of ‘defund the police,’ what if we offloaded the non­ju­di­cial parts of their work, like deal­ing with the home­less and the men­tal­ly ill, to social work­ers, and then ‘stuffed their mouths with gold’ to reform the polic­ing part? We could offer a sig­nif­i­cant salary boost in exchange for accept­ing stricter stan­dards and over­sight, which wouldn’t just ease the polit­i­cal obsta­cles, but pos­si­bly attract high­er-qual­i­ty can­di­dates to the police force.”
    • Most Amer­i­cans Want Police Reform But Don’t Back ‘Defund The Police’ (Ariel Edwards-Levy and Kevin Robil­lard, Huff­in­g­ton Post): “A near-uni­ver­sal major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans sup­port at least some changes to polic­ing in the Unit­ed States fol­low­ing the death of George Floyd in the cus­tody of Min­neapo­lis police, a new HuffPost/YouGov poll finds. There is major­i­ty sup­port for pro­pos­als cir­cu­lat­ing in Con­gress to ban choke­holds and make it eas­i­er to track and charge offi­cers accused of mis­con­duct. But the idea of ‘defund­ing the police’ has lit­tle sup­port from the pub­lic.”
    • Police Bru­tal­i­ty: The Fer­gu­son Effect (Robert Ver­bruggen, Nation­al Review): “There’s a temp­ta­tion in some quar­ters to think this issue is like gay mar­riage or mar­i­jua­na legal­iza­tion, where there’s a turn­ing point in pub­lic opin­ion and a rapid shift in pol­i­cy and then every­one won­ders what the big deal ever was. See, for exam­ple, Tim Alberta’s piece in Politi­co today, which bizarrely claims we may be see­ing the ‘last stand’ of law-and-order Repub­li­cans and draws those two par­al­lels explic­it­ly. But crime isn’t like that. When the streets become unsafe, pub­lic opin­ion shifts back in favor of the folks who stand between the inno­cents and the bad guys.”

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 The Prob­lem with Dull Knives: What’s the Defense Depart­ment got to do with Code for Amer­i­ca? (Jen­nifer Pahlka, Medi­um): “I have a dis­tinct mem­o­ry of being a kid in the kitchen with my mom, awk­ward­ly and prob­a­bly dan­ger­ous­ly wield­ing a knife, try­ing to cut some tough veg­etable, and defend­ing my actions by say­ing the knife was dull any­way. My mom stopped me and said firm­ly, ‘Jen­ny, a dull knife is much more dan­ger­ous than a sharp knife. You’re strug­gling and using much more force than you should, and that knife is going to end up God Knows Where.’ She was right, of course…. But hav­ing poor tools [for the mil­i­tary] doesn’t make us fight less; it makes us fight bad­ly.” (some empha­sis in the orig­i­nal removed). High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. First shared in vol­ume 155.

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 240

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. I often bury my per­spec­tive, but here is my two ¢ on the Coro­n­avirus: Amer­i­ca is respond­ing to this dis­ease so bad­ly that I find it hard to believe. Giv­en the amaz­ing­ly com­pe­tent peo­ple who pop­u­late this coun­try, our col­lec­tive inep­ti­tude is stag­ger­ing.
    • Deal­ing With a Once-In-A-Cen­tu­ry Pathogen (Claire Lehmann, Quil­lette): “In ear­ly Octo­ber 1918, when the Span­ish flu hit the east coast of the Unit­ed States, the health com­mis­sion­er of St Louis, Max Starkloff, ordered the clo­sure of schools, movie the­aters, saloons, sport­ing events and oth­er pub­lic gath­er­ing spots. While the mea­sures were protest­ed by some cit­i­zens, the quar­an­tine went ahead. A month lat­er, as the pan­dem­ic raged on, he ordered the clo­sure of all busi­ness, with a few excep­tions, such as banks. While dras­tic quar­an­tine mea­sures were being imple­ment­ed in St Louis, the health com­mis­sion­er of Philadel­phia, Wilmer Krusen, gave per­mis­sion for a parade for the war effort to go ahead in his city. It is report­ed that with­in 72 hours of the parade, every bed in Philadelphia’s 31 hos­pi­tals was filled, and in the week end­ing Octo­ber 5th, 1918, 2,600 peo­ple in Philadel­phia had died, with the fig­ure almost dou­bling a week lat­er. At the end of the out­break, St Louis had the low­est record­ed death rate in the US, while in Philadel­phia mor­tu­ar­ies over­flowed and ‘bod­ies [were] piled up on side­walks.’”
    • Coro­n­avirus: Links, Spec­u­la­tion, Open Thread (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “If we hadn’t let our cul­ture reach the point where gov­ern­ments ban things by default and review at leisure, and where indi­vid­ual ini­tia­tive is frowned upon in favor of wait­ing for offi­cial per­mis­sion to do the right thing, we could have recov­ered from all of these mis­takes. Hos­pi­tals would have used their exist­ing tests which they already have more than enough of, doc­tors would have had per­mis­sion to test sus­pi­cious cas­es at their dis­cre­tion, and we would have had a chance to catch infec­tions ear­ly before they could spread. If the gov­ern­ment didn’t already reg­u­late adren­a­line, bus­pirone, insulin, and genet­ic test­ing to the point of near-unavail­abil­i­ty, maybe peo­ple would have thought it was weird­er, or raised more of a fuss, when they start­ed doing it for coro­n­avirus tests.”
    • Exclu­sive: The Strongest Evi­dence Yet That Amer­i­ca Is Botch­ing Coro­n­avirus Test­ing (Robin­son Mey­er & Alex­is C. Madri­gal, The Atlantic): “Test­ing is the first and most impor­tant tool in under­stand­ing the epi­demi­ol­o­gy of a dis­ease out­break. In the Unit­ed States, a series of fail­ures has com­bined with the decen­tral­ized nature of our health-care sys­tem to hand­i­cap the nation’s abil­i­ty to see the sever­i­ty of the out­break in hard num­bers.”
    • Before and after: coro­n­avirus emp­ties world’s busiest spaces  (Agence France-Presse, The Guardian): “Emp­ty pub­lic squares, a high­way with no cars on it and desert­ed holy sites – a series of strik­ing satel­lite images have revealed the impact of the coro­n­avirus epi­dem­ic on some of the world’s busiest spaces.”
    • Prepar­ing Your Church For Coro­n­avirus (Lyman Stone, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “Thus, Chris­tians have two cru­cial duties. First, not to use plague, and the fear of the death of the body, as an excuse to aban­don our God-giv­en duties. We must care for the sick, both the sick in soul and in body. Where dis­ease kills par­ents, we must care for the chil­dren. Where dis­ease kills chil­dren, we must tend to the wounds of the fam­i­ly. Where dis­ease spreads fear, we must be bold in faith. But we should not be idiots. We have a moral oblig­a­tion to pro­tect oth­ers by lim­it­ing the spread of dis­ease. To ignore that duty mur­ders our neigh­bors.” A bit long but excel­lent. 
  2. Men Too Eas­i­ly For­got­ten (Greg Morse, Desir­ing God): “Real men do not bul­ly. Real men do not watch porn. Real men do not abuse women. Real men do not live at home after col­lege play­ing video games in their parent’s base­ment. Amen to what real men are not, but what, then, is a real man? Can we not say more than just a male who doesn’t do bad? We need men who not only avoid evil but embody what is good. There is a pro­found dif­fer­ence. One sees man­hood as an incur­able ill­ness of soci­ety to be man­aged; the oth­er, a pil­lar to build civ­i­liza­tion upon.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  3. Low-Income Col­lege Stu­dents Are Being Taxed Like Trust-Fund Babies (Eri­ca L. Green, New York Times): “In the past, a stu­dent from a house­hold with a joint income of $50,000 who was award­ed a schol­ar­ship that cov­ered $11,500 in room and board would be taxed at their par­ents’ rate of 12 per­cent. Under the new law, that mon­ey would be taxed up to 35 per­cent.” This is a few months old, shared with me by a stu­dent. For the record, this is insane.
  4. The oth­er way to lose a war (Ed Fes­er, per­son­al blog): “Some crit­ics like to chalk up pro­longed Amer­i­can engage­ment in places like Afghanistan and Iraq to war­mon­ger­ing or realpoli­tik or some oth­er sin­is­ter moti­va­tion. In my opin­ion, that is the reverse of the truth. The fault of those who advo­cate such engage­ment isn’t world­ly cyn­i­cism, but oth­er­world­ly ide­al­ism.” Thought­ful and thought-pro­vok­ing. Rec­om­mend­ed. 
  5. My Same-Sex Attrac­tion Has an Answer (Rachel Gilson, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “For peo­ple like me who expe­ri­ence same-sex attrac­tion, the world begs us to believe that our authen­tic selves are only found in giv­ing in. It promis­es hero sta­tus if we sub­mit to our attrac­tions. Our desires whis­per, like a ser­pent in a gar­den, that there is no death in going against God’s Word.”
  6. The lure of ‘cool’ brain research is sti­fling psy­chother­a­py  (Allen Frances, Aeon): “…I can affirm con­fi­dent­ly that there are no neat answers in psy­chi­a­try. The best we can do is embrace an ecu­meni­cal four-dimen­sion­al mod­el that includes all pos­si­ble con­trib­u­tors to human func­tion­ing: the bio­log­i­cal, the psy­cho­log­i­cal, the social, and the spir­i­tu­al. Reduc­ing peo­ple to just one ele­ment – their brain func­tion­ing, or their psy­cho­log­i­cal ten­den­cies, or their social con­text, or their strug­gle for mean­ing – results in a flat, dis­tort­ed image that leaves out more than it can cap­ture.” The author was chair of the psy­chi­a­try depart­ment at Duke. 
  7. Let’s Decon­struct a Decon­ver­sion Sto­ry: The Case of Rhett and Link (Alisa Childers, Gospel Coali­tion): “Our cul­tur­al moment is a caul­dron of infor­ma­tion and celebri­ty wor­ship in which the cult of per­son­al­i­ty can fer­ment and grow. With every hit of the ‘like’ but­ton, the per­son­al­i­ties we’ve sub­scribed to have become our author­i­ties for truth.”
    • Red Flags in the Spir­i­tu­al Decon­struc­tion of My Old Friends Rhett and Link (Shel­by Abbot, per­son­al blog): “After they left staff with Cru, I kept in touch with the guys for a few years. But time and life hap­pened, and my com­mu­ni­ca­tion with them fad­ed. Every now and then I’d send a mes­sage, but both Rhett and Link stopped rec­i­p­ro­cat­ing. I fig­ured they prob­a­bly changed their num­bers and email address­es, or had too many DM’s from fans to find my ran­dom mes­sages say­ing hel­lo. [After hear­ing their] per­son­al spir­i­tu­al decon­struc­tion sto­ries. It sud­den­ly made a lot sense to me why I nev­er heard back from them.”

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 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 155

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 Prob­lem with Dull Knives: What’s the Defense Depart­ment got to do with Code for Amer­i­ca? (Jen­nifer Pahlka, Medi­um): “I have a dis­tinct mem­o­ry of being a kid in the kitchen with my mom, awk­ward­ly and prob­a­bly dan­ger­ous­ly wield­ing a knife, try­ing to cut some tough veg­etable, and defend­ing my actions by say­ing the knife was dull any­way. My mom stopped me and said firm­ly, ‘Jen­ny, a dull knife is much more dan­ger­ous than a sharp knife. You’re strug­gling and using much more force than you should, and that knife is going to end up God Knows Where.’ She was right, of course…. But hav­ing poor tools [for the mil­i­tary] doesn’t make us fight less; it makes us fight bad­ly.” (some empha­sis in the orig­i­nal removed). High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.
  2. Num­ber One in Pover­ty, Cal­i­for­nia Isn’t Our Most Pro­gres­sive State — It’s Our Most Racist One (Michael Shel­len­berg­er, Forbes): “If racism is more than just say­ing nasty things — if it is, as schol­ars like James Bald­win, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Michelle Alexan­der and count­less oth­ers have described, embed­ded into socioe­co­nom­ic struc­tures — then Cal­i­for­nia isn’t just the least pro­gres­sive state. It’s also the most racist.” Annoy­ing­ly split into sev­en sec­tions, but worth­while. The author was a guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date, but he did not make the gen­er­al elec­tion.
  3. This week the Supreme Court, in a 7–2 deci­sion, vin­di­cat­ed the Col­orado bak­er who refused to bake a cake for a gay wed­ding. A lot of ink was spilled in response:
    • Col­orado Made the Mas­ter­piece Case Easy for the Court (Robert P. George, New York Times): “This much, how­ev­er, is clear: Busi­ness own­ers and oth­ers have no oblig­a­tion under the Con­sti­tu­tion, nor can one be imposed by statute, to con­fine their reli­gion to the pri­vate domain. On the con­trary, they have the con­sti­tu­tion­al right to pro­claim and act on their reli­gious beliefs in the pub­lic domain, includ­ing in the domain of com­merce.” The author is a law pro­fes­sor at Prince­ton.
    • Sym­po­sium: Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop — not as nar­row as may first appear (Dou­glas Lay­cock and Thomas Berg, SCO­TUS­blog): “The Supreme Court has announced a pow­er­ful ide­al. Even when a law has no explic­it excep­tions, hos­tile enforce­ment is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. Sin­gle-issue agen­cies that enforce state civ­il-rights laws must approach claims to reli­gious exemp­tions with tol­er­ance and respect. And this is appar­ent­ly an absolute rule; the court does not con­sid­er whether hos­til­i­ty might be jus­ti­fied by some state inter­est, com­pelling or oth­er­wise.”
    • Social Con­ser­vatism After Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop (Sohrab Ahmari, Com­men­tary Mag­a­zine): “Reduc­ing tra­di­tion­al beliefs to a mat­ter of reli­gious free­dom car­ries oth­er risks. It allows pro­gres­sives to frame tra­di­tion­al posi­tions, which are root­ed in rea­son and nat­ur­al law, as a kind of idio­syn­crasy or super­sti­tion…. Defend­ing tra­di­tion­al moral­i­ty on the basis of reli­gious lib­er­ty alone, in oth­er words, risks cor­ner­ing reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tives in the long-term. The alter­na­tive, of course, isn’t to give up on reli­gious free­dom. That defen­sive bat­tle must con­tin­ue to be fought. But reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tives should also go on the offen­sive and once more for­mu­late a sub­stan­tive pol­i­tics of the com­mon good.”
    • In Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop, Jus­tice Kennedy Strikes a Blow for the Dig­ni­ty of the Faith­ful (David French, Nation­al Review): “the Court did not issue the sweep­ing free-speech rul­ing that many advo­cates hoped for and oth­ers feared. Instead it issued a rul­ing that remind­ed state author­i­ties that peo­ple of faith have the exact same rights — and are enti­tled to the exact same treat­ment — as peo­ple of dif­fer­ent faith or no faith at all. And it did so in an opin­ion that deci­sive­ly reject­ed the exact talk­ing points so favored by the anti-reli­gious left.”
    • No Vic­to­ry For Reli­gious Lib­er­ty (Darel E. Paul, First Things): “Only pro­found naïveté can spin the major­i­ty deci­sion as a vic­to­ry for reli­gious lib­er­ty.”
    • Against The Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop Killjoys (David French, Nation­al Review): a strong response to the above piece and a few oth­ers.
    • Why The Mas­ter­piece Rul­ing Is Tru­ly A Major Win For Reli­gious Lib­er­ty (John East­man, The Fed­er­al­ist): “In short, Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop is the first post-Smith Free Exer­cise deci­sion where the Supreme Court applied strict scruti­ny to a neu­tral, gen­er­al­ly applic­a­ble law that was not designed to tar­get reli­gion. Rather, strict scruti­ny was trig­gered because of how the law was applied against reli­gious objec­tors.” The author is a law pro­fes­sor at Chap­man Col­lege and a senior fel­low at the Clare­mont Insti­tute.
    • This has not set­tled the issue, though. Reli­gious Lib­er­ty: Not A Piece of Cake (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “we have our first court rul­ing on reli­gious lib­er­ty since Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop. An Ari­zona appeals court even cit­ed the rul­ing in its own rul­ing against two Phoenix cal­lig­ra­phers who said that doing same-sex wed­ding invi­ta­tions was a vio­la­tion of their con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly pro­tect­ed reli­gious beliefs.” This will no doubt be appealed, but is inter­est­ing nonethe­less. There is mas­sive hos­til­i­ty in some cir­cles against reli­gious free­dom in gen­er­al and specif­i­cal­ly against the free­dom of evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians and tra­di­tion­al Catholics to pub­licly live as though their faith is true.
  4. In relat­ed news: Cross­Fit Just Fired Its Spokesper­son Who Said LGBT Pride Is A “Sin” (Stephanie M. Lee, Buz­zfeed): “Berg­er had also said, ‘The tac­tics of some in the LGBTQ move­ment toward dis­sent is an exis­ten­tial threat to free­dom of expres­sion.’ In response to a Twit­ter user who pushed back, he wrote, ‘Thank­ful­ly I work for a com­pa­ny that tol­er­ates dis­agree­ment. I have homo­sex­u­al cowork­ers who I love and respect, and as far as I am aware, they aren’t demand­ing I be pun­ished for my views.’”
    • In response, The Green­gro­cers Of Cross­Fit Gyms (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “Gay activists and their sup­port­ers among the gym’s employ­ees destroyed this Christian’s busi­ness, not because he wouldn’t allow gays to work out at the gym, but because he would not per­mit them to cel­e­brate gay Pride there. They shat­tered his busi­ness overnight with­out fil­ing a charge or a law­suit, but sole­ly by using the pow­er of stig­ma and col­lec­tive action.”
  5. Read­ing Dan­ger­ous­ly (Ian Mar­cus Corbin, Week­ly Stan­dard): “I cur­rent­ly split my pro­fes­sion­al life between acad­e­mia and the Boston art world, the most lib­er­al cor­ners of the most lib­er­al state of the union. I can’t speak strong­ly enough about the beau­ty and kind­ness of the black, Jew­ish, His­pan­ic, gay, trans­gen­der, fem­i­nist, social­ist peo­ple whom I count as col­leagues and friends here. They are deep, sen­si­tive, search­ing souls. As a straight, white, able-bod­ied male, though—one who has even occa­sion­al­ly vot­ed for Republicans—I am, on paper, a per­fect storm of priv­i­lege and prej­u­dice. Per­haps shock­ing­ly, my col­leagues and I have man­aged to treat each oth­er with respect and at times even deep friend­ship and care.”
  6. Iden­ti­ty Ques­tions (Ron Bel­gau, Spir­i­tu­al Friend­ship): “ ‘Iden­ti­ty’ is bor­rowed from the sur­round­ing sec­u­lar cul­ture. It has dis­placed terms, like ‘nature’ and ‘call­ing,’ which have deep roots in the Bible and in the his­to­ry of Chris­t­ian thought. This dis­place­ment has made it more dif­fi­cult for Chris­tians to think clear­ly about what it means to be trans­formed in Christ.” This is from sev­er­al years ago and was brought to my atten­tion via a Twit­ter thread. Bel­gau is a fas­ci­nat­ing guy — a for­mer soft­ware engi­neer turned philoso­pher who is attract­ed to oth­er men and is con­vinced those temp­ta­tions are sin­ful.
  7. When The Pun­ish­ment Feels Like A Crime (Julia Ioffe, Huff­in­g­ton Post): “Dauber may be a hero to many Stan­ford stu­dents, but when I vis­it­ed the cam­pus in April, I dis­cov­ered that much of the fac­ul­ty does not feel the same way. Twen­ty-nine Stan­ford Law pro­fes­sors have signed a let­ter against the recall.” This is a long and amaz­ing arti­cle about the Per­sky recall cam­paign writ­ten before the vote.
    • Relat­ed: The recall of the judge who sen­tenced Brock Turn­er will end up hurt­ing poor, minor­i­ty defen­dants (Rachel Mar­shall, Vox): “…in this coun­try, we have an epi­dem­ic of wrong­ful con­vic­tions, yet nev­er have I heard of a pub­lic out­cry to recall or vote against a judge who presided over a case in which an inno­cent client was con­vict­ed or sen­tenced. In con­trast, as we have just seen, a sen­tence per­ceived as too light not only will make head­lines but could cost a judge his job.” The author is a Stan­ford Law School grad.
    • In case you missed it, Per­sky was recalled in the elec­tions this week.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • This guy is a chef in the White House (twit­ter). This is real. Google for “jacked White House chef.” Wow. Every out­landish action-adven­ture movie premise just became more plau­si­ble.
  • Great Chuck Nor­ris Facts (imgur): I know these jokes have been around for years… but some here are new to me. My favorite: “Chuck Nor­ris and Super­man once fought each oth­er on a bet. The los­er had to start wear­ing their under­wear on the out­side of their pants.”
  • Moron or Genius? (Pearls Before Swine)

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The Land of We All (Richard Mitchell, The Gift of Fire), an essay  built on this insight: “Think­ing can not be done cor­po­rate­ly. Nations and com­mit­tees can’t think. That is not only because they have no brains, but because they have no selves, no cen­ters, no souls, if you like. Mil­lions and mil­lions of per­sons may hold the same thought, or con­vic­tion or sus­pi­cion, but each and every per­son of those mil­lions must hold it all alone.” (first shared in vol­ume 2) This is one of the more impor­tant things I’ve shared. 

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 103

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. Praise & Ques­tions: How Kendrick & Chance Talk to God in Dif­fer­ent Ways (Migueli­to, DJ Booth): “I’ve encoun­tered two dif­fer­ent kinds of reli­gious believ­ers, gen­er­al­ly speak­ing. The first are those who focus on the gifts of God and the bless­ings in their life and take an opti­mistic approach to human­i­ty. The oth­er group is made up of those who become gripped by the mys­tery sur­round­ing such a fig­ure and keep an air of skep­ti­cism about them.”
  2. How Oxford and Peter Singer drove me from athe­ism to Jesus (Sarah Irv­ing-Stone­brak­er, Ver­i­tas): “I grew up in Aus­tralia, in a lov­ing, sec­u­lar home, and arrived at Syd­ney Uni­ver­si­ty as a crit­ic of ‘reli­gion.’  I didn’t need faith to ground my iden­ti­ty or my val­ues…. [how­ev­er, while at Oxford] I began to realise that the impli­ca­tions of my athe­ism were incom­pat­i­ble with almost every val­ue I held dear.” The author is a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at West­ern Syd­ney Uni­ver­si­ty.
  3. Lis­ten­ing: An Anti­dote to the Mod­ern University’s Inco­her­ence (Dominic Bur­bidge, The Pub­lic Dis­course): insight­ful break­down of the three sub-uni­ver­si­ties we dwell with­in: the uni­ver­si­ty of ratio­nal­ism, the uni­ver­si­ty of rev­o­lu­tion, and the uni­ver­si­ty of sub­jec­tivism. The author is an admin­is­tra­tor at Oxford.
  4. Won­der Woman and the Gen­der Wars (Rus­sell Moore, per­son­al blog): “Won­der Woman does indeed rep­re­sent pow­er, but she also is, in every iter­a­tion, designed to be sex­u­al­ly attrac­tive to men. The 1970s-era tele­vi­sion series not­ed in its theme song, ‘Fight­ing for your rights, in your satin tights, and the old red, white, and blue.’ The rights and the tights were both part of the package—and, from the looks of things, still are.” This piece is quite good.
  5. The Marines Can Treat Women Hon­or­ably With­out Putting Them in the Infantry (David French, Nation­al Review): “The women-in-infantry debate is the lux­u­ry of a soci­ety that hasn’t fought a large-scale ground war in gen­er­a­tions, and a seri­ous mixed-gen­der exper­i­ment wouldn’t sur­vive first con­tact with a well-equipped and well-trained oppos­ing force.” The author is both a vet­er­an of the Iraq war and a grad­u­ate of Har­vard Law School. A short but thought­ful response to the wide­ly-shared Vox arti­cle The Marine Corps has a “tox­ic mas­culin­i­ty” prob­lem
  6. If you haven’t seen it yet, there’s quite the con­tro­ver­sy at Ever­green Col­lege. There’s a good sum­ma­ry at The blas­phe­my case against Bret Wein­stein, and its four lessons for pro­fes­sors (Jonathan Haidt, Het­ero­dox Acad­e­my): “I gen­er­al­ly oppose zero-tol­er­ance poli­cies, but if we are to have one, it should be for vio­lence and intim­i­da­tion on cam­pus.” And this is a good op-ed on the sit­u­a­tion: When the Left Turns on Its Own (Bari Weiss, NY Times): “Lib­er­als shouldn’t cede the respon­si­bil­i­ty to defend free speech on col­lege cam­pus­es to con­ser­v­a­tives. After all, with­out free speech, what’s lib­er­al­ism about?”
  7. I’ve seen lots of opin­ions about Trump pulling Amer­i­ca out of the Paris cli­mate agree­ment. I was most struck by these two reac­tions that both grant that the agree­ment was in some sense just for show but arrive at dif­fer­ent con­clu­sions from that premise:
    • From the right: The Place­bo Pol­i­tics of Paris (Jason Willick, The Amer­i­can Inter­est): “Pres­i­dent Trump’s repu­di­a­tion of the agree­ment… delights his nation­al­is­tic base and sends his inter­na­tion­al­ist-mind­ed crit­ics into parox­ysms of rage and despair—all with­out actu­al­ly doing any­thing, because the Paris agree­ment con­sists sim­ply of vol­un­tary, unen­force­able emis­sions pledges that are already being flout­ed.”
    • From the left: The Odd Kabu­ki of the Cli­mate Pact With­draw­al (Eric Pos­ner, per­son­al blog): “[the pact] was mean­ing­ful-sym­bol­ic rather than mean­ing­less-sym­bol­ic. Mean­ing­ful-sym­bol­ic means that the coun­tries were tak­ing a first step toward actu­al­ly reduc­ing green­house gas­es rather than a first step toward pre­tend­ing to reduce them.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.