Friday roundup

 Glenn Harlan Reynolds has a thought-provoking take on the Harrison Butker dustup at Instapundit:

Speaking to a graduation crowd at conservative Catholic Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, Butker took on Joe Biden’s performative faux-Catholicism, transgender ideology and – most shockingly – suggested to female graduates that they would find a better, more rewarding, and more productive life as wives and mothers than in corporate-style careers.

For this, he received a standing ovation from the crowd. (The full speech is here.)  The wider world, however, was not so appreciative. . . 

Unlike Harrison Butker, I’m not holding myself out as a role model here.  When I married Helen she was finishing her Ph.D., and I don’t think I ever had a single serious girlfriend who wanted to be a stay-at-home mom.  (And we only had one – terrific – kid, though we in fact wanted to, and tried to, have two or three, something that alas wasn’t in the cards.)

But what I want or favor isn’t the point here.  The point is that the population collapse that I was writing about nearly 20 years ago, and that Philip Longman was writing about in Foreign Affairs even before that, has now become obvious to everyone.  We’re headed for the biggest global population drop since the Black Death, and that’s going to produce dramatic social changes.  (As indeed did the Black Death.)

The future does belong to those who show up, and those who show up are likely to have the attitudes that caused them to do so.  So is Harrison Butker a harbinger?  Quite probably.

At Public Discourse, Nathaniel Peters asks "Why Should a Christian Study the Humanities?"   He offers several reasons, including this one:

. . . to cultivate a disposition of wonder, thanksgiving, and praise. These are the proper responses of rational creatures to the creator God. We should study so that when we encounter an equation or sculpture of great beauty, or an exquisitely crafted sentence, our response is one of praise or thanksgiving. So often in the academy, we’re trained to critique, to put ourselves over another author or book or work and make judgments from a position of superiority. This is necessary at times, but when it becomes our default, it can keep us from enjoying a work and allowing it to move us. A properly Christian kind of study leaves room for that vulnerability and enjoyment, for cultivating wonder and praise. After all, praise of God is at its heart restating the truth about who God is and what he has done. Study of the truth should lead to richer, more sustained praise.

"Two Reflections On the State of the Soul" by Darren Jonescu is good stuff:

Nothing is sadder than a profound statement reduced to popular cliché. “The unexamined life is not worth living” spouted by a million undifferentiated graduate students, as if “the examined life” were the simplest thing on earth, rather than Socrates’ final statement of defiance to a world he believed largely incapable of taking up the challenge. “What does not kill me makes me stronger” issuing from the lips of every infantile adult facing the abyss of a break-up after a two-month sexual relationship, or every student who suffers the indignity of a B grade on a test. Such reduction indicates the stifling of a liberating idea by a method far more complete and effective than the mere refusal to listen, namely by the absorption and normalization of the shocking and strange within the unobtrusive soundscape of comforting truisms, the voice of the rousing gadfly transformed into a soothing lullaby. Socrates warned that the voice of reason could not be heard amid the crowd. But his warning was less a lament than an enticement to the alternative setting, the realm of private conversation or quiet contemplation. When that realm itself has been conquered and converted into just another subsection of the popular space — when the language of wisdom has been reduced by the dynamic compression of technological democratization into just another shade in the general array of lifeless colors — then Socrates’ ironic stand against the chatter of the crowd, or Nietzsche’s brave acceptance of his spiritual agony before mankind’s approaching nihilism, become superficial routines, and the world, in turn, becomes an infinitely darker place.

At Firebrand, Rachel L. Coleman looks deeply into the significance of story, of narrative:

our Story is the story of the God who works redemptively in history, and it is centered upon the person and work of King Jesus. As Nijay Gupta (2024) puts it, “The crucified Christ is the vivifying center of our Story” (Galatians, 2). We are invited into this grand Story not just as readers but also as participants, equipped by the Spirit of God to join God in his redemptive work. Think of how many of the significant smaller narratives that make up the Story have open endings—Jonah, Mark’s Gospel, Acts. The very design invites us to step in and “complete,” as it were, the narrative.

The urgency of this is that we all, both as individuals and as communities, are shaped by a Story (big S), and if it is not the grand Narrative of Scripture, there will be other big Stories that usurp its formative and transformative role. These Stories are alternative ways of answering the fundamental questions human beings ask, and they can be so subtly and deeply woven into the generational and ideological fabric of our communities that we are not even aware of their controlling power. N.T. Wright and Michael Bird (2024), in a chilling phrase, call these alternative Stories “idolatries too large to be noticed by those who hold them” (Jesus and the Powers, 100). Their keen insight is a flashing yellow light for the church, calling us to the difficult and vulnerable work of examining our controlling narratives.

Wesleyan scholar Ken Collins calls this phenomenon “narrative displacement” or “narrative drift,” the shoving aside of the biblical Story by another controlling narrative. When this happens in our communities of faith, consciously or otherwise, the result is that we no longer interpret the world through the lens of the Story of Scripture; instead we read Scripture through the lens of whatever narrative has displaced the biblical Story. The results of this narrative drift are catastrophic for both discipleship and mission. As far back as 2008, Australian sociologist John Carroll painted a stark picture of the consequences, which have become ever more visible in the intervening years. As an outsider (not a professing Christian) looking at the decline of the church in the West, Carroll diagnosed the root problem as the church’s amnesia about its Story: “The Christian churches have comprehensively failed in their one central task—to retell their foundational story in a way that might speak to the times” (The Existential Jesus, 7). I encourage you to read that line again, allowing its gravity to sink deeply into your mind and heart. This Story-telling failure stands in sharp contrast to what we see in the pages of the New Testament.. As Wright and Bird put it:

Paul [and this could be said of all the apostles] was not a travelling evangelist, offering people a new religious experience, but an ambassador for a king-in-waiting, establishing cells of people loyal to this new king, and ordering their lives according to his story, his symbols and his praxis, and their minds according to his truth (21, emphasis added).

This would be a good point for each reader to do some clear-eyed diagnostic work, preferably in the company of trusted brothers and sisters. Can you identify the competing big Story (or Stories) that usurp the place and power of the biblical Story in the minds and hearts of your community of faith? What are those stories? Where do they come from? How are they shaping the beliefs, thinking, attitudes, and actions of people in your church and community? 

Ben Sears's weekly "POETS Day!" installment at Ordinary Times always provides fresh insights into the greatest craftspersons of that particular kind of writing.  Today he looks at Philip Larkin:

n the introduction to Philip Larkin: Poems Selected by Martin Amis, Amis writes of the poet, “Larkin is not a poet’s poet. He is of course a people’s poet, which is what he would have wanted. But he is also, definingly, a novelist’s poet.”

Larkin had a knack for evocative images. In a tight phrase, he could suggest a lifetime. The above poem, “Afternoons”, has one of what I consider the best examples with “And the albums, lettered/Our Wedding, lying/Near the television.” Like in the shortest story often attributed to Hemingway, “Baby shoes, for sale, never worn,” loose details leave much to us. It’s slight of hand, a storyteller’s trick, because when we give flesh to the tale we’ll do so with scenes that already resonate with us. There’s little risk in not relating to a reader that makes his own conveying connection. The talent is in knowing how to spur us to imagining. Larkin knew how.

He gives us a destination and a starting point and we don’t know the interim, but we do. There’s a couple that was full of hope and expectation, indulging in possibility, frozen and bound in a flash. What would be a cherished heirloom under different circumstances shares space with a box for watching other people’s lives. Captured images on the tv screen and in the book are a fantasy; unreal. It doesn’t matter what circumstances relegated the wedding album. There’s room for all manner of possibilities because it isn’t the story of one couple. There’s “An estateful.”

Amis highlights “mugfaced middleaged wives/Glaring at jellies” from “Show Saturday.” I know those women, and I suspect you do too. Larkin is brilliantly acerbic. He cuts cruelly because he cuts directly when mockingly describing habits and rituals of life he finds silly or undignified. When that insight is used to address his own shortcomings and failings, resulting circumstances, and his attempts to cope with them he’s often resigned and bitter.

Finally, I've been busy over at Precipice. A few recents:

 

What My Day Was Like the Day of the OJ Verdict folds the looming death of my beloved dog, ten hours of establishing a working relationship with a photographer with whom I'd been paired on a magazine assignment, watching the OJ verdict with a crowd in the lobby of the Circle Theater in downtown Indianapolis, witnessing, quite by surprise, a summit of two great jazz musicians, and much more.

On April 25, I looked at the consequences of Extolling Amnesia as a Virtue:

f the notion that the human being can define - indeed, invent - himself or herself continues to prevail, the most feral kind of defined self will be the one that holds sway. This will occur because self-defense in a state of lawlessness will return us to pre-human behavior such as traveling in packs and disregard for any kind of rules when it comes to such basics as obtaining food and a warm place to sleep. We’re already seeing some of the traveling-in-packs phenomenon with the degree to which militant identity politics has permeated everything.

In Friendship, I look at how our notions of what that term means change throughout the seasons of our lives. 

It looks to be a hammock kind of weekend. You now have an abundance of reading material for the occasion. 

 

 

 

 

Good Mike, bad Mike

 On the heels of doing the obviously right thing in getting an aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan passed - and garnering worldwide accolades for doing so - House Speaker Mike Johnson makes it apparently every bit as obvious that he is a drool-besotted throne-sniffer who is tying his ambitions to the fate of the Very Stable Genius:

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) survived a bid by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) to oust him from the speakership thanks to Democrats killing her effort, but some may be having second thoughts.

Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) told NBC News he believes Democrats made a mistake by killing the motion to vacate against him, arguing Johnson’s visit to former President Donald Trump’s trial in Manhattan has exposed the House speaker’s “true colors.”

“It showed his true colors and why, with good intentions, we made a mistake in strategically saving his job,” Connolly said. “Because now we have enabled him to act with impunity like he did.”

The effort to oust Johnson was tabled by an overwhelming majority in a 359-43 bipartisan vote, with most Republicans and Democrats electing to keep Johnson in power rather than risk another long, bitter speaker election like in January and October 2023.

The House speaker told the outlet he does not think he will face another motion to vacate this year, noting how most members want a “functioning Congress.”

“What I think most people in this building recognize is that the nation desperately needs a functioning Congress right now,” Johnson said. “These are very dangerous times in which we are living. We have hot wars going on around the globe. And we have all the unrest. Even here domestically, we’ve had the open border, so we have a potentially very dangerous situation here on our own shores.”

Johnson was one of several Republicans who have made the trek to Manhattan to support Trump as he attends his hush money trial.

Other Republicans who joined Trump in New York City included Gov. Doug Burgum (R-ND) and Sens. Rick Scott (R-FL), Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), and J.D. Vance (R-OH), along with Reps. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY), Byron Donalds (R-FL), and Cory Mills (R-FL).

As I wrote at Precipice yesterday,

. . . doesn’t it look a little incongruous for House Speaker Mike Johnson, who makes a point of putting his Christian faith front and center, to make the prosecution’s zeal the main point? Yes, there is a solid rule-of-law angle to this, and precedents could be set that would subject future presidents to ever-more-frivolous legal challenges . . . but come on, nobody doubts that Trump had a tryst with Stormy Daniels (the included a bonus spanking with a rolled-up magazine) or a months-long affair with Karen McDougal, all while Melania was home with an infant Barron. Nobody doubts there were other dalliances as well.

For the I’m-not-voting-for-a-pastor crowd, I’d ask how confident they are that things would go well on a policy level in a. second Trump administration.

The Speaker needs to ask himself if his choice to hitch to this wagon really glorifies the Creator he claims to put first.

 

 

History will not look kindly on Biden's treatment of Israel

 The president's pause in shipment of a new round of munitions for Israel betrays one of the United States's closest allies and ups the imperiling of the West to a new level.

As is often the case when someone is trying to morally justify an untenable position, in his interview with CNN's Erin Burnett, he pretty much acknowledged -whether he meant to or not - that he knows the bombs in question will achieve the very aim Israel is pursuing:

“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers,” Biden told CNN’s Erin Burnett in an exclusive interview on “Erin Burnett OutFront,” referring to 2,000-pound bombs that Biden paused shipments of last week.

“I made it clear that if they go into Rafah – they haven’t gone in Rafah yet – if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities – that deal with that problem,” Biden said.

The president’s announcement that he was prepared to condition American weaponry on Israel’s actions amounts to a turning point in the seven-month conflict between Israel and Hamas. And his acknowledgement that American bombs had been used to kill civilians in Gaza was a stark recognition of the United States’ role in the war.

Biden - and the peaceniks and antinomians with a morbid fascination with jihad with whom he's trying to curry favor - act like the IDF gives no attention to the effectiveness of its strikes, that it gives no thought to collateral damage.

Actually, the held-up munitions are the most advance way to achieve the aim with minimal impact on civilian life:

Last week, the administration’s line was that it needed to see a plausible evacuation plan from Rafah—a statement indicating that it still supported the overall aim of eliminating Hamas and that the problem going forward was primarily logistical. So that might simply have been a lie. It’s no secret Biden doesn’t want Israel to conduct a full-scale war operation in Rafah, but the administration made it sound as though that was entirely on humanitarian grounds.

But if his primary aim is to limit civilian casualties, his methods of doing so are insane. The munitions he is holding back would in part allow Israel to hit sites and areas in Rafah with great precision. That is how you limit casualties. Which leads me to believe that Joe Biden is literally trying to freeze the conflict in place permanently—for his own reasons. Those reasons are bad, and stupid, and feckless, and self-defeating. For Israel cannot stop the war. It can’t. If it does, Hamas wins—at which point Israel will begin a new period of mortal peril perhaps more threatening to its future than any period in its past. The Israeli public will not stand for it. Because of what Biden is doing, the war will be bloodier and more costly for both sides, and will take much longer. How on earth will that help him?

Think about what kind of cackling and rubbing together of hands is going on in the inner governmental chambers of Iran, Russia, China and North Korea. The debacle at the Kabul airport in August 2021gave our foes a strong signal that Biden had no consistent foreign policy vision. This seals the deal.

And the shipment of bombs and ammunition had already been approved by Congress. How is this different from Trump holding up aid to Ukraine in an attempt to motivate Zelensky to dig up dirt on Biden (a move the got him impeached)?

A fine state of affairs. A US president mishandles a crucial moment when a ringing victory for the West is at hand.

This is why, since 2016, I have not bought the binary-choice argument.

The Very Stable Genius, who we now know likes to be spanked by his casual sex partners, is an obvious thumbs-down.

But this current guy? He's forever stained himself with a shame that will impact us all.

 

The contemptibles are not going to quietly accept yesterday's defeat

         Last September, I wrote a post at Precipice titled "My Personal Struggle With Contempt."  It riffs off of 

an essay at Law & Liberty by John O. McGinnis entitled “Is Civic Decline an Existential Threat?” It really doesn’t cover any ground that hasn’t been covered before. It notes the three main components of our present crisis: decline of education, decline of civic associations, and the transmutation of the religious impulse. McGinnis even shares my inclination toward pessimism about our prospects for any kind of civic restoration.

McGinnis is properly aware of how tough it is to surmount ill will given the array of obsessions the Left has imposed on society as a whole:

As McGinnis points out, climate alarmism, which demands a halt to human advancement regarding such modern blessings as safety, comfort and convenience, is something that we ought not to abide by. He also notes the normalization of the Howard Zinn’s and Nicole Hannah-Jones’s view of America’s essence, and this likewise falls outside the parameters of “just one of many viewpoints we ought to consider in our nation’s classrooms.”

I would add to his enumerations the mainstreaming of historically unprecedented notions of human sexuality, such as the expansion of the definition of marriage to include unions of two people of the same sex, and the legitimization of self-identification with the sex opposite one’s DNA and genitals. Carl Trueman is exactly right in asserting that, of all the bizarre novelties we’re living with, this one takes us into realms devoid of reference points. In combination with artificial intelligence, it has the capacity to completely untether us from assumptions we as members of the species Homo sapiens have held since our arrival among the planet’s life forms.

And then there is the septic infection on the Right:

Conversely, the fact that well over half of those who identify with one of the nation’s two major political parties intend to vote for the most unfit, vulgar and infantile person to ever enter US politics, even after two impeachments, four indictments, and the increasingly unhinged nature of his social-media blurtings cannot be permitted to be seen as a new normal.

Along those lines, New Right abandonment of the free-market component of conventional conservatism’s vision erodes the overall centrality of human freedom on which that vision rests. Some very smart people have gone in for this. It seems they have lost sight of what Adam Smith, Frederic Bastiat and Henry Hazlitt had to say about how an individual’s freedom of choice about what to own, buy, sell, invent and market is a divinely granted gift. This one really does boil down to a binary choice. One is either free to come to an agreement with one’s fellow human being about the value of a good or service being considered for exchange, or we’re talking about central planning. Prattle about “settling for imperfect arrangements” that compromise this freedom of choice, this personal sovereignty, stinks of rudderlessness.

This is what I mean by inhabiting an ever-narrower sliver of terrain. There is no space in our public square for a healthy prescription for peaceable co-existence.

I then publicly forced myself to be real about my reaction to the lay of the land, and its spiritual implications:

That said, all the destructive devotions I’ve discussed here are embraced by my actual various fellow human beings, and I have to figure out how to hold them in some kind of basic regard. I pass them on the sidewalk. I host them for Thanksgiving dinner. They’re colleagues at the university where I teach. I have them as social-media friends. 

If I hold them in contempt, which Merriam-Webster defines as “the feeling that a person or a thing is beneath consideration, worthless, or deserving scorn,” I cage myself in a kind of isolation in which productive existence becomes impossible. 

More fundamentally, in so doing, I sin. No matter what they have proclaimed or done, they were created by the same God who fashioned me, and have the same right to breathe and pursue happiness that I have.

The struggle hasn't abated. That has been brought home to me as I encounter the Trumpist response to the excellent victory for the international rules-based order achieved yesterday in the House of Representatives.  

The Federalist, a perfect example of a once-actually-conservative site that has been wholly given over to MAGA-ism, has among the daily sewage it's inflicting on the world this morning Shawn Fleetwood's piece in which he trots out the by-now-disgustingly-familiar look-Ukraine-can't-possibly-decisively-defeat-Russia-so-instead-of-shoveling-more-money-at-the-Ukrainian-resistance-to-being-invaded-we-ought-to-be-moving-toward-a-'realistic'-end-game angle. Not a word about the fierce determination of the Ukrainian people and leadership to reassert the country's sovereignty. Oh, and also that disingenuous zero-sum horseshit about the US southern border.

At the similarly septic American Conservative, Bradley Devin, in a piece titled "What's Next After the Ukrainian Mistake?" the author makes the help Johnson got on the House floor yesterday his focus, with a strong implication that Johnson was driven by a cynical foremost motivation of keeping his Speaker job.

Utah Senator Mike Lee, who is a prime example of this sepsis consuming a once-honorable-Constitutional originalist with a mainstream Rightist set of principles, decided to post on Twitter (X, if you must), a hey-look-we-got-'em-now reaction to the package's passing that lists objections of varying degrees of speciousness, such as - well, he starts out with that always-handy red herring, the US southern border - and including funding for gender advisors to the Ukrainian army and humanitarian aid to Gaza.

From his choices of objections and the way he words his screed, it's obvious he's reaching, while the sane majority - well, maybe it's just a plurality - of Westerners are celebrating the assertion of national sovereignty for three important West-inclined nations.

The Washington Examiner has a roundup of explanations from House Republicans who voted against the aid package. They strike a similar tone to the foregoing:

“I stand with the Ukrainian people in their fight against Russia, but not at the continued expense of hardworking American taxpayer,” Rep. James Comer (R-KY) wrote on X. “The United States cannot continue to spend blindly when those funds could be better utilitzed right here at home. As Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, I made a commitment to safeguard taxpayer funds from waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement.”

“For the Swamp, it’s Ukraine First and America Last,” Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC) wrote. “Gleefully waving Ukrainian flags as the American people suffer under Biden’s border invasion.”

“We must be thoughtful and strategic with our dollars and put Americans first, which is why I voted to send funds to our borders, Israel, and Taiwan, and not send dollars to Ukraine until we have a strategic exit plan with quantifiable metrics,” Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-WI) wrote in a statement.

Last month at Precipice, I wrote a post looking at a number of laudable, indeed noble, efforts of people who to some degree hang onto a self-identification as Republicans to plan for a time when the Trumpist infection passes out of the party. (In the process, I date myself as Boomer.) 

 

 

Some are more effective than others. I’ve written before about how Heath Mayo, founder of Principles First, badly dented his movement’s raison d’être by chiding Republicans for not signing on to legislation codifying same-sex marriage, calling such legislation a “no-brainer” that would strengthen the family unit. Such a position is a de facto resignation to secularization. Acknowledgement of a transcendent order becomes a quaint notion our society has outgrown if we listen to such an argument. 

Most self-identified conservatives can’t accept that.

Among publications that have sought to clearly repudiate the MAGA impulse, some have admirably continued to hew to a recognizable conservative vision (think The Dispatch) and some have bought into the binary-choice framing, which has made them Democrats for all intents and purposes (think The Bulwark; I was particularly dismayed to learn that Mona Charen had deemed the stay-home and consideration of a third party options as “the coward’s way out”).

The publication that has conferred Senior Freelance Contributor status on me, The Freemen Newsletter, has spawned an interesting undertaking. I’m not exactly clear on whether it’s going to be called the Reagan Caucus or the New Reagan Caucus, but a number of younger folks who appear on the masthead are having lively discussions on Twitter (X, if you must) and Slack regarding mission, tactics and standards for alliances.

The Freemen founding editor, Justin Stapley, laid out his druthers about the enterprise in a recent piece entitled “DeTrumpification of the GOP.” He sets the table by resolutely proclaiming what I assert above - namely, that despair is not an option, that our conservatism obliges us to see this as a universe of possibility. (He does so by taking issue with a 2021 Dispatch piece by Jonah Goldberg, someone high in Justin’s pantheon of good guys - and mine) in which Goldberg looks seriously at the third party option.)

Justin sees a Reagan Caucus thusly:

Taking Reagan as a symbol of an old-school approach to Republican politics and a commitment to conservative principles unstained by the reactionary nature of Trump’s brand of nationalist populism, this Reagan Caucus is declaring an intention to engage in the GOP's primaries and processes to push back against MAGA’s control of the party, and pledges to withhold their support of Republican candidates who embody or acquiesce to the toxic nature of the MAGA movement.   

If non-Trump conservatives take this path, it can solve several of the problems with the third-party route:   

• We could still participate in the Republican Party and wouldn't further abandon the party to the very forces we wish to curtail.  

• We would be encouraging more participation in the party processes instead of further enabling control of the processes by those we oppose. 

• We wouldn't be seen as a rival or spoiler political party.  

• We wouldn't be operating from the get-go as a spoiler effort.  

• We would have clear organizing principles and, especially, could demonstrate a contrast to the party's current direction given that the actual “agenda” of Trump and MAGA changes at his whim (TikTok).

• We could both endorse acceptable Republican primary candidates and actively work to get them through the process.   

• There would be nothing keeping us from endorsing acceptable Republican candidates who lost in the primaries as independent candidates should the eventual nominee prove to be wholly unacceptable, or throwing our support behind other independents or even third-party candidates.  

• The caucus's declared values would hopefully keep members from being less inclined to support Democrats unless the Democratic candidate moved to accommodate us as a more moderate alternative in the mold of Manchin or Sinema.  

I think this approach has a good shot at accomplishing what Jonah proposed in 2021 while answering the concerns many had with his proposal, including myself. There have long been various caucuses within both political parties and many other organizations and lobbying entities that support or withhold their support of party nominees based on declared principles.

So, the Reagan Caucus is not going to be doing anything new or threatening, and it could engage in ways that would still accomplish the goals that Jonah put forward, arguably in more effective ways given that we'd still be engaging in the GOP itself without other Republicans easily dismissing us as a rival or spoiler party. We could force a genuine debate on principles and vision that could transcend Trump and Trumpism instead of becoming a reflexive opposition that loses its intellectual grounding in the struggle of the general election. 

And besides, even most Trump voters still love Reagan, and this effort could be an effective way to provide a better contrast between an actual conservative vision and the angry, unprincipled direction that Trump has taken the party.

His optimism is enviable. Maybe he has an ear closer to the ground than I do, although I know a lot of local Republicans. Maybe that ground is more arable in Utah, where he lives, than it is here in Indiana.I think of my state’s gubernatorial race. There are four Republican candidates. The television ads of three of them try to outdo each other in boasting of the Trump connection. The fourth candidate has chosen a noteworthy departure, framing himself as being in the lineage of Reagan and Mitch Daniels, a universally admired Indiana native who served as everything from governor to president of Purdue University to president of the Hudson Institute to head of Eli Lily’s North America operations to Reagan’s OMB director. I don’t know much more about that candidate, but I’d still want an answer to the question of who he intends to vote for for president come November.

As I say, the folks who are fired up about this project are, from this Boomer’s perspective, young pups, and they are already setting about taking concrete actions - becoming Precinct Committeemen, running for office, deciding how to structure the project organizationally.

In their back-and-forths, they demonstrate a grounding in that which they ought to be grounded in. They know who Russell Kirk, Fredrich Hayek and Frank S. Meyer are. 

Two things: I hope they understand the ferocity with which the Trumpists will attempt to stomp them into the dust, and the challenge they’ll face maintaining their standards for forming alliances. I’m already seeing arguments along the-tent-must-be-big-enough-to-bring-in the-less-ate-up-Trumpists lines. That could muddy the mission from the get-go.

Please note the phrase about ferocity in the last paragraph of the above excerpt. And note how quickly the Trumpists went to work upon the passage of yesterday's aid package.

I have real trouble forgiving them for what they've done to conservatism's prospects. They're proud of their incoherence and their vaunting of stubbornness as a primary admirable basis for political engagement.

I'm trying really hard not to let this post become a venomous rant, but I can say that actual conservatives remain mired in a two-pronged existential battle: against a Left working overtime to impose climate alarmism, militant identity politics, and wealth redistribution, and a Right wholly given over to worship of the least savory traits human beings are capable of exhibiting. 

At this point, I still intend to stay home the first Tuesday in November. 

 

 

 

The rules-based international order just got some much-needed breathing room

 The House just passed an aid package that accomplishes the following:

The House passed the Israel Security Supplemental with a vote of 366-58.

Here's what the package includes:

• $26.4 billion to aid Israel
• $4 billion for the Iron Dome and David’s Sling missile defense systems
• $1.2 billion for the Iron Beam defense system
• $4.4 billion to replenish defense items and services provided to Israel 
• $3.5 billion for the procurement of advanced weapons systems and other items through the Foreign Military Financing Program
• $9.2 billion in humanitarian assistance – including emergency food, shelter and basic services – to populations suffering crises

It would also:

• Provide additional flexibility for transfers of defense items to Israel from US stockpiles held in other countries 
• Prohibit sending funds to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency

and 

The House passed the Ukraine Security Supplemental Appropriations Act with a vote of 311-112. One member – GOP Rep Dan Meuser – voted present.  

Democrats cheered and waved Ukrainian flags during the vote.

The $95 billion package contains $61 billion for Ukraine and regional partners.

One of the bills would provide nearly $61 billion to assist Ukraine and others in the region fight Russia – about the same that was included in the Senate bill.

Of that total, about $23 billion would be used to replenish US weapons, stockpiles and facilities, and more than $11 billion would fund current US military operations in the region. 

Nearly $14 billion included in the bill would help Ukraine buy advanced weapons systems and other defense equipment. 

and

The House passed the Indo-Pacific Security Supplemental bill with a bipartisan vote of 385-34 plus one present vote: Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib. 

Here's what the package includes:

• $8.1 billion to counter China’s actions in the Indo-Pacific region
• $3.3 billion to develop submarine infrastructure
• $2 billion in foreign military financing for Taiwan and other key allies
• $1.9 billion to replenish defense items and services provided to Taiwan and regional partners

I hope that my feelings about Mike Johnson reflect that balance and nuance one ought to bring to historic moments where courage was the essential ingredient for insuring that the right thing was done. Yes, I have problems with his young-earth creationism and his election denialism. (I don't have any problems with his understanding of humans sexuality, an understanding most of humankind had until five minutes ago.) He's yet another Republican who has made the trek from a 2015 position of Trump lacking "the character and the moral center we desperately need again in the White House" to serving as a member of the Very Stable Genius's legal defense team during both impeachments.

But what he's done here - breaking with those in a position to imperil his Speakership, pressing ahead in the most precarious of circumstances - is the act of a man who mustered utter clarity about what the moment required of him.

This disseminates a couple of important messages on the world stage, to allies and enemies alike. First and foremost, it says that the United States - for the time being, anyway - is still willing to be the guarantor of a post-1945 order predicated on the idea that force can't be used to change the borders of sovereign nations. It also gives a strong indication that the legislative branch can still act decisively and morally, even when the executive branch's vision of the world stage is muddled.

So, kudos to those who voted in the affirmative on these measures.

The darkness still hasn't overcome the light.

 

 

DEI jackboots would have had Richard Slayman die

 I just had to click when I saw the title of Heather MacDonald's latest piece for City Journal: ""Kidneys Don't See Color."

I've seen a fair amount of coverage of DEI encroachment on hard sciences, and I know the diversity racket is MacDonalds's beat, so I had an inkling that this would be about medicine - probably surgery. 

That was indeed the case. MacDonald, after introducing Slayman, the recent recipient of a genetically modified pig kidney that allowed him to get off dialysis, gives an impressively thorough account of the history of surgical transplants. I recommend it. It's a very interesting tale of various developments over the last century-plus.

So what's not to like about Mr. Slayman's story?

According to STEM diversity dogma, however, none of this should have happened. Slayman is black; his transplant surgeons were not. The scientists who pioneered the biological and surgical advances that made the transplant possible were also nonblack. Worse, before the mid-twentieth century, those pathbreaking scientists were overwhelmingly white.

These demographic facts mean, according to today’s medical establishment, that Slayman was at significant risk of receiving substandard care from a medical and scientific enterprise that is racist to its core.

According to the National Academies of Science, America’s most prestigious science honor society, “systemic racism in the United States both historically and in modern-day society” produces “systematically inequitable opportunities and outcomes” in medicine. Such medical racism privileges white patients and white doctors, explains the National Academies of Science, and is “perpetuated by gatekeepers through stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination.” The Journal of the National Cancer Instituteand its sister publication, Journal of the National Cancer Institute Spectrum, blasts the “systemic and institutional racism within health care” responsible for “inequities” in medical outcomes.

The best way to guard against such inequities, according to the STEM establishment, is to color-match patients and doctors. Similarly, the best way to advance science is to select scientists on identity grounds. The National Institutes of Health, which funds biological research, argues that a “diverse” scientific workforce will be better at “fostering scientific innovation, enhancing global competitiveness, [and] improving the quality of research” than one chosen without regard to racial characteristics. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, another federal funder, seeks scientists of the right color to “develop a highly competent and diverse scientific workforce capable of conducting state-of-the-art research in NIAID mission areas.” It is a given, per the National Academies of Science, that “increasing the number of Black men and Black women who enter the fields of science, engineering, and medicine will benefit the social and economic health of the nation.”

Slayman’s transplant surgeons—Leonardo Riella, Tatsuo Kawai, and Nahel Elias—came from non-European, non-white countries: Brazil, Japan, and Syria. Don’t think that those surgeons count as “diverse,” however. In the scientific establishment, as in all of academia, diversity at its core refers to blacks, with the other “underrepresented” minorities—American Hispanics and Native Americans—occasionally thrown in for good measure. When medical associations, medical schools, and federal agencies conduct diversity tallies (which they do obsessively), their primary concern is the proportion of blacks in medical education and practice. The American Medical Association’s chief academic officer, Sanjay Desai, is scandalized that “only” 5.7 percent of doctors identify as black, though blacks make up over 13 percent of the population. The American Society of Clinical Oncology’s March 23 bulletin complains that only 3 percent of practicing oncologists identify as black. By contrast, nearly 90 percent of hospital leadership “self-identify as White,” according to doctor Manali Patel. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases sees a crisis for medical science in the fact that “only” 7.3 percent of full-time medical faculty come from “underrepresented backgrounds,” though those “underrepresented backgrounds” constitute 33 percent of the national population.

The team leader in the Slayman transplant, Riella, directs a kidney transplantation research lab at Mass General. Its members look like a United Nations gathering, with researchers from Turkey, Lebanon, China, Spain, Japan, and other non-U.S. countries. Though white Americans are a small minority in the Riella Laboratory, it would not count as “diverse” for purposes of science funding or political legitimacy, because it has no blacks in it. We are to believe that this absence of blacks comes from white supremacist machinations, though those backstage white supremacists didn’t do a very good job of maintaining numerical advantage in the lab. And without blacks, the Riella Laboratory has never functioned at the highest levels of scientific achievement, according to diversity thinking.

Slayman may have had a positive outcome this time, despite being treated by nonblack transplant surgeons, but other black kidney patients have no guarantee that they will be as lucky in the future. In early April, the New York Times wrote about new techniques for keeping donated organs functioning outside of a body before transplant, a process known as perfusion. The transplant doctors whom the paper quoted—Daniel Borja-Cacho (originally from Colombia), Shimul Shah, Shafique Keshavjee, and Ashish Vinaychandra Shah—also don’t resemble the members roster of a Greenwich, Connecticut, country club, circa 1955. The Times undoubtedly tried to find a black source. Its inability to do so reflects a medical ecosystem that, according to the establishment, lacks diversity and, as such, puts black lives at risk.

This is the kind of jettisoning of not just compassion and medical ethics but basic common sense that has led to puberty blockers and teenage mastectomies.

Kudos to MacDonald for bringing this to our attention, but I think you know what LITD thinks the diversity jackboots who had a problem with this remarkable step forward deserve..