I am an American in my Principles and wish we would let them alone to govern or misgovern themselves as they think proper.”
With these politically incorrect words, written in a letter to Baron William Mure of Caldwell during the turmoil of 1775, the Scotsman David Hume (1711-1776) forever became an honorary American citizen. And by his influence, he became an uninvited but welcomed delegate to the American Constitutional Convention.
Hume’s good friend and executor of his literary estate, Adam Smith wrote about political leadership in a time of “turbulence and “disorder.” It is a brief passage and one quite applicable to Americans in the early twenty-first century. Smith tells us in the mid-eighteenth century there are two types of political leaders in any society: one is a person of the “system” while the other is a person of the “public spirit.” The man of the “system”:
holds out some plausible plan of [social] reformation which, [he] pretends, will not only remove the inconveniences and relieve the distresses immediately complained of, but will prevent, in all time coming, any return of the like inconveniences and distresses. . . . The system man is intoxicated with the imaginary beauty of this ideal system, of which they have no experience, but which has been represented to them in all the most dazzling colors in which the eloquence of their leaders could paint it.
Contrarily, the man of the “public spirit”:
will accommodate, as well as he can, his public arrangements to the confirmed habits and prejudices of his people; and will remedy as well as he can, the inconveniences which may flow from the want of those regulations which the people are averse to submit to.
These descriptions are not just the chronologically bound musings of an eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher but observations that can be applicable to twenty-first–century American political society. Smith describes American “intoxicated idealistic” activists who want to “immediately” eradicate, eviscerate, and expunge anything that offends their sensibilities. We live in an age “drunk” with political power.
David Hume was a “public spirit” man through and through, and wrote reflectively, systematically, and widely to this end. He left a body of substantial work that effectively combats the age of dictatorial rationalism from a secular vantage point. Hume’s writings provided political guidance, social security, and economic direction for America’s Founding Fathers as they created a constitution (with all its flaws) for a new and more just Republic. Hume’s ideas, which were so influential to the colonials can still provide guardrails for contemporary American political discourse. David Hume’s influence in the shaping of American political society from its very beginning codification will be shown and his benefit for contemporary American society to preserve our union will become evident.
In eighteenth-century America, Hume’s seminal works were read by college students and young leaders throughout the colonies. The colonials wrote in Humean phraseology, presumably to those who also understood Hume’s thought. Hume’s notions of experience and skepticism, the uniformity of human nature, commerce, culture, factions, interests, customs, social institutions, and most importantly, the “science of politics,” were avidly studied, absorbed, and promulgated by the leading colonial minds. As Jeffry Morrison put it, “the ideas and language of Hume were in the colonial air.”
Hume’s political writings fit the pragmatic temper of the new Americans. From every state at the Constitutional Convention his ideas found purchase in the delegates’ debates, letters, and essays. What the Founding Fathers found attractive in Hume was his Scottish common sense, and his freedom from political and religious mysticism and convictions. Hume’s powerful practical intellect grounded in experience resulted in political compromise, the art of the experience. It is no paradox that Americans have always continued to have faith in their religion but skepticism in their politics. That is, we Americans expect our religion to be metaphysical, but we expect our politicians to be very physical. Thus, there is a sense in which Hume’s religious “mitigated skepticism” has its political application in the American civil experience.
As diesel fuel prices rise across the country, the Department of Homeland Security is fielding requests for Jones Act waivers. While the government should approve these waivers, it seems likely that it will pursue a more permanent solution — to repeal the law altogether.
Otherwise known as the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, the Jones Act requires that any cargo carried between domestic ports must be transported on American-manufactured ships flying the American flag and manned by a mostly American crew. Initially aimed at protecting the U.S. shipping industry from foreign competition, the act artificially limits the supply of cargo ships, making it more costly to transport refined diesel fuel across the country. When energy shortages arise, governors often apply for waivers to get fuel delivered to their states from domestic refineries without having to wait for American ships to become available. Such waivers would not be necessary if the law were permanently revoked. Thankfully, there are strong indications that the Jones Act is facing a final repeal.
Although the law is not without its die-hard defenders:
Jones Act lobbyists have knives out to defend their pet policy. In 2020, the Marine Transportation System National Advisory Committee, an organization that includes cargo ship owners and builders, sent an email to a government agency recommending that “all past and present members of the Cato and Mercatus Institutes” be charged with treason. Their crime? Advocating the repeal of the Jones Act. Such extreme defensive measures show how vulnerable Jones Act supporters feel — clearly, proponents of the act sense that the political tide is turning against them.
It’s about time, too. The only reason it has lasted this long is that the benefits of the Jones Act are highly concentrated within small groups such as ship owners, ship manufacturers, crew members, and the unions that represent them. These groups have a huge incentive to lobby the government to keep it. And because they work closely with each other, they’re also easy to organize into groups such as the Marine Transportation System National Advisory Committee. Meanwhile, the marginal cost to everyone else has been negligible enough that it hasn’t been worth the time and effort it would take to lobby against the act — until now.
Pence doesn’t say. Instead, he focuses on the challenges to the electoral vote count in Congress, which he would preside over on Jan. 6. Pence writes that he “welcomed” Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., co-sponsoring objections from House Republicans “because it meant we would have a substantive debate,” adding, “Without a senator’s support, I would have been required to dismiss House objections without debate, something I didn’t want to do.”
You see, Pence tries to have his cake and eat it, too. He says he supported “debate” around the “concerns” about the election — but doesn’t actually address the substance of those concerns or the purpose of the debate. Hawley may have avoided endorsing any of the conspiracies Trump was spreading directly, but he also had to know that Trump was the source of the vast majority of the concerns in question. It was all an exercise in self-promotion, not an attempt to clarify the record, and Pence should know that.
This is gonna leave a mark:
. . . let’s not even touch on the conversation with Trump that Pence recounts at the end of the op-ed, except to say that I haven’t read an epilogue that self-indulgent since the seventh “Harry Potter” book.
Ian Bogost's piece at The Atlanticentitled "We're Witnessing the End of Social Media" is garnering a lot of buzz right now, and it is worthy of discussion. He applauds the recent misfortunes of Twitter and Facebook, saying that they have mutated the way human beings are designed to interact and form communities:
t’s over. Facebook is in decline, Twitter in chaos. Mark Zuckerberg’s empire has lost hundreds of billions of dollars in value and laid off 11,000 people, with its ad business in peril and its metaverse fantasy in irons. Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter has caused advertisers to pull spending and power users to shun the platform (or at least to tweet a lot about doing so). It’s never felt more plausible that the age of social media might end—and soon.
Now that we’ve washed up on this unexpected shore, we can look back at the shipwreck that left us here with fresh eyes. Perhaps we can find some relief: Social media was never a natural way to work, play, and socialize, though it did become second nature. The practice evolved via a weird mutation, one so subtle that it was difficult to spot happening in the moment.
The shift began 20 years ago or so, when networked computers became sufficiently ubiquitous that people began using them to build and manage relationships. Social networking had its problems—collecting friends instead of, well, being friendly with them, for example—but they were modest compared with what followed. Slowly and without fanfare, around the end of the aughts, social media took its place. The change was almost invisible, but it had enormous consequences. Instead of facilitating the modest use of existing connections—largely for offline life (to organize a birthday party, say)—social software turned those connections into a latent broadcast channel. All at once, billions of people saw themselves as celebrities, pundits, and tastemakers.
A global broadcast network where anyone can say anything to anyone else as often as possible, and where such people have come to think they deserve such a capacity, or even that withholding it amounts to censorship or suppression—that’s just a terrible idea from the outset. And it’s a terrible idea that is entirely and completely bound up with the concept of social media itself: systems erected and used exclusively to deliver an endless stream of content.
But now, perhaps, it can also end. The possible downfall of Facebook and Twitter (and others) is an opportunity—not to shift to some equivalent platform, but to embrace their ruination, something previously unthinkable.
At the Washington Free Beacon, Aaron Sibarium alerts us to a particularly insidious bank-loan concept: looking at how borrowers measure up in terms of diversity practices when deciding whether to lend them money:
Amid an uptick in race-conscious hiring programs throughout corporate America, many prominent businesses are now writing racial and gender quotas into their credit agreements with banks, tying the cost of borrowing to the companies’ workforce diversity, a Washington Free Beacon analysis found.
Over the past two years, each of those companies has secured a lending agreement, known as a credit facility, that links the interest rate charged by banks to the company’s internal diversity targets, creating a financial incentive to meet them. If the business achieves its targets, it won’t have to pay as much interest on the loans it takes out; if it falls short, it is required to pay more.
Under the terms of BlackRock’s $4.4 billion credit facility, for example, Wells Fargo will lower the firm’s interest rate by 0.05 percent if it hits two benchmarks—a 30 percent increase in the share of black and Hispanic employees by 2024, and a 3 percent increase in the share of female executives each year—or hike the rate by the same amount if it misses both.
The agreements, which typically involve multiple banks, are effectively credit cards for businesses: Rather than make a onetime loan, lenders extend a continuous line of credit that companies can dip into at will, either to cover operating costs or as a rainy day fund for emergencies. That means changes in a facility’s interest rate—even modest ones like BlackRock’s 0.05 percent diversity adjustment—can have an appreciable effect on a business’s bottom line.
Companies have advertised these agreements as proof of their progressive bona fides. Trimble CEO Rob Painter, for example, said the company’s credit facility—which conditions interest rates on the percentage of female employees—illustrates Trimble’s "commitment" to "gender diversity in the workplace." In press releases announcing their own credit facilities, executives at BlackRock, Prudential, and Definity say the agreements demonstrate their commitment to "accountability."
But critics see something far more sinister: a form of blatant discrimination that will harm consumers, credit markets, and the rule of law.
"If a bank penalized a company's credit rating because it had too many women or was too racially diverse, we would be appalled," said one senior government regulator, who managed a nine-figure credit facility as a lawyer in private practice. "This is the exact same thing, except the penalized target is white men."
Who originated DEI? Why DEI and not another set of laudable values? Does “equity” refer to opportunity or result? How do those of mixed race fit in diversity assessments? Is the goal of racial representation proportionate to that of the population, the history of marginalization, or something else? DEI terms are defined so obtusely that they can refer to a spectrum of policiesfrom mere platitudes to radical agendas including litmus tests and racial quotas.
The older I get, the more reluctant I am to lend any writer or thinker with whom I'm currently resonating my full enthusiasm. I've been burned too many times. But Andrew T. Walker, who teaches Christian ethics at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, is currently addressing things that need broader discussion. In his latest piece for World, entitled "Why Is America Coming Apart?", he takes dead aim at what is really going on:
What would have been revolutionary in 2008, like “gay marriage,” seems almost “traditional” to many Americans in 2022, by the sheer force of its cultural normalization in America. Drag Queens dancing in front of children is as recreational as baseball in some parts of the country, or so it seems. Mainstream medical guilds now suggest that confused children and teens mutilate their bodies to tranquilize the mind. Public schools when I grew up might have been secular, but they weren’t morally insane or propagandizing students in cultural self-hatred like I routinely hear about now. Major media outlets are entirely compromised by a groveling deference to wokism and identity politics. The left once called for abortion to be “safe, legal, and rare,” but the move to de-stigmatize abortion and gloat about it has moved the needle in a ghoulish direction.
The surrealism of our simmering unrest is explainable, I think, in the near total collapse of Christianity as America’s underlying public ethic. At least for the moment, put away questions about Christian Nationalism. What I’m observing is the final stripping away over the last few years of the last thin layer of Christian veneer. No secularist will say this out loud, of course. Because that would mean restoring virtues that figures like former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy believe are incompatible with liberty. Such virtues can only be grounded in a transcendent account of the universe.
At Medium, Drew Shepherd looks at how a Christian might address the charge of hypocrisy:
. . . if we stick to the notion that Christianity should be dismissed because its followers act contrarily to their claims, we must first go to the source to see what those claims actually are.
Because if you’re looking for biblical evidence that says Christians never do wrong, you’re out of luck:
For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do — this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. (Rom. 7:18–21 NIV)
These verses describe the apostle Paul’s struggle with sin in his life. And if the man who wrote a large chunk of the New Testament admitted he was a “hypocrite”, it’s no surprise that other Christians face the same problem.
Ecclesiastes also presented this truth in the Old Testament:
Indeed, there is not a righteous man on earth who continually does good and who never sins. (Eccles. 7:20 NASB)
And the apostle John followed with the same idea:
If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. (1 John 1:8 NIV)
No matter how clean some Christians appear or how outspoken they are, they will always contend with a form of evil in their life.
So since this problem is common among all Christians — even the ones who should know better — you’d think God would be angry at us all the time. At least that’s how most people think of God: as a harsh, unforgiving, ban-you-to-hell-because-of-what-you-did-in-second-grade Person. But these next verses from the book of Psalms paint a different picture:
Just as a father has compassion on his children, So the LORD has compassion on those who fear Him. For He Himself knows our frame; He is mindful that we are but dust. (Psalm 103:13–14 NASB)
God knows everything about our fragile makeup and the condition of our nature — He has compassion on us because of it.
He knows the Christian life involves doing the unnatural. And He knows we would never succeed without His help.
And my latest at Precipice is about how it's time for me to realize I'm no longer a fledgling Christian and that I can and need to engage the world with the assurance of someone whose been at this faith-walk thing a while.
There. That ought to keep you out of mischief this weekend.
You didn't think I was going to change my mind when the day arrived, did you? The choices before me were a little like those before Poland in late summer 1939: would you rather be occupied by Germany or the Soviet Union?
As I've mentioned before, a number of people in my own city had implored me to at least weigh in at the polling place on some local races, particularly for school board. And, indeed, those races, as was the case with school board races around the country, were ground zero for some key culture-war issues. And in our city, the not-with-my-kid's-noggin-you-don't folks lost to the progs. Not surprising. It's very much a flyover community: a manufacturing-based economy, high population of people whose families have been in the area since the nineteenth century, a tendency to vote Republican generally speaking. But it is also the world headquarters of a Fortune 200 company that is, as they all are, ate up with DEI and climate alarmism. Mainline Protestant churches, whose own congregations are bleeding membership to the point that one has closed its doors, have an outsized presence in civic affairs. So, count me dismayed but not surprised.
But let's broaden our scope to the national level.
The surest way to lose in these midterms was to be a politician endorsed by Trump.
This is not hyperbole.
Except for deep red states where a Republican corpse would have beaten a Democrat, voters choosing in actually competitive races — who everyone expected would behave like midterm voters usually do and lean toward the out party — took one look at Trump’s hand-picked acolytes and gagged.
Okay, that handles that factor.
Why are the results still so messy two days out? Why hasn't the Arizona governor's race been decided yet? Why is a runoff for the Senate race in Georgia going to be necessary? Why was the Senate race in Wisconsin such a squeaker?
It's a reflection of our national disunity. The United States is a big, messy complex country that no longer has a common culture to bind it. Nothing rallies us around the flagpole anymore.
DeSantis, of course, has proved himself to be the most successful Republican governor who has aspirations beyond his present position. He won handily.
I would advise him to now focus on the more mundane victories he's racked up in Florida so far, such as property insurance reform. Yes, voters have indeed been on his side on the culture-war stuff, such as education, and even his dustup with Disney. But as he maneuvers onto the national stage, he's going to encounter the Left's vitriol big-time if he puts those issues front and center.
Would I vote for him in 2024? That probably depends on how he handles himself over the next year-plus, both as Florida governor (he handled Hurricane Ian well and got right on this current storm as well) and as a presidential candidate, should he choose to be one. (Will he have what it takes to deal with what the VSG would certainly dish out?) If he comports himself well, I might be willing to overlook his endorsement of some of this cycle's losers.
Now, let's cross the border to the north and look at the state of Georgia. Georgia, it seems to me, reflects the national messiness I alluded to earlier. Brian Kemp has been a solid governor (albeit with a little of that gotta-be-on-my-party's-bandwagon mentality that I loathe). Brad Raffensperger has been likewise an exemplary secretary of state. He handled that hour-long-call with the VSG on January 2, 2021 superbly. But what is up with Marjorie Taylor Greene's district? There's clearly still a concentration of people in at least one place who didn't, to use Podhoretz's term, gag. But given the rest of the state's fairly level-headed voting behavior on Tuesday, I suppose it's to be expected that Warnock and Walker, both of whom are, shall we say, unpalatable to all except the ate up on the Left and Right, would be neck and neck.
So the whole thing gives us a pretty accurate snapshot of post-America in the present moment.
I'm just glad the eternal record book shows I didn't contribute to either kind of damage to our beleaguered land.
The president waded into unforced-error territory with this outburst:
President Biden said Friday that all of the country’s coal plants should be closed because they’re too costly to operate and can’t be relied upon as a dependable energy source for future generations. “Wind and solar” will replace them, he said.
He unabashedly went all in on a central-planning approach:
“So it’s going to become a wind generation. And all they’re doing is it’s going to save them a hell of a lot of money and using the same transmission line that they transmitted the coal-fired electric on,” he said. “We’re going to be shutting these plants down all across America and having wind and solar power, also providing tax credits to help families buy energy efficient appliances, whether it’s your refrigerator or your coffee maker, for solar panels on your home, weatherize your home, things that save an average, experts say, a minimum of $500 a year for the average family.”
Isn't the choice of what energy forms to use the purview of the free market - that is, the sum total of the choices made by consumers and producers of the various forms that are available?
Post-America is so far gone, though, that Biden's ignorance of economic basics may not register with a lot of people.
What does, though, is the political fallout from his utterance. Three key battleground states in the heartland have a lot at stake in discussions of the future of coal:
Pennsylvania has 24 plants, Ohio has 15 plants, and Michigan has 13 plants.
Centrist Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) criticized President Joe Biden for recent comments he made about shutting down coal plants across the country, decrying the idea as being “divorced from reality.”
“President Biden’s comments are not only outrageous and divorced from reality, they ignore the severe economic pain the American people are feeling because of rising energy costs,” Manchin said in a statement. “Comments like these are the reason the American people are losing trust in President Biden and instead believes he does not understand the need to have an all in energy policy that would keep our nation totally energy independent and secure.”
It surely wasn't wise for Biden to let loose with this less than a week out from the elections. I guess we shall see Tuesday night which base - that of the overall Democrats, or that of voters in the mid-American coal-producing states - has more influence.
On October 23, I published a Precipice post entitled "Just Can't." It really didn't cover new territory; it just offered the most recent substantiations for why I won't be voting next Tuesday. Here are some of the most glaring:
Now, a refutation of the idea that, say, the recent Reawaken America rally held in Manheim, Pennsylvania, is representative of the center of gravity of the GOP can be made. That was quite a sea of Kool-Aid those people were swimming in. But it’s flimsy in the same way that saying that the average Democrat is not an AOC tells us nothing about the locus of influence on the left.
But last month’s NatCon pow-wow was only a few degrees less non-conservative than the full-blown nutterism on display in Manheim. Speakers - up to and including sitting Florida governor Ron DeSantis - declared that it was time to employ the full coercive power of government to combat “wokeism.” (I personally hate that term, for reasons including its lack of specificity; I prefer to enumerate the identity politics militancy, climate alarmism and wealth redistribution that inform 2022 progressivism.)
At The Federalist, John Daniel Davidson acknowledges that the term “conservative” doesn’t fit neo-Trumpism. He’s a slick one, that Davidson. He says all the right things to appeal to citizens who may not avail themselves of think-tank papers and conference proceedings but have their barometers in working order. Progressivism is indeed poisoning our culture, our government, our civic institutions and our economics. But he concludes his piece by offering the same prescription as the NatCon speakers.
The characteristics of that era almost seem quaint now, shrouded in the mists of antiquity.
Shasta County, California residents are answering their doorbells to this:
The canvassers in California's Shasta County in September wore reflective orange vests and official-looking badges that read “Voter Taskforce.” Four residents said they mistook them for government officials.
But the door knockers didn't explain where to vote or promote a candidate, the usual work of canvassers ahead of a big election.
Instead, they grilled residents on their voting history and who lived in their homes, probing questions that might have violated state laws on intimidation and harassment, according to the county's chief election official.
At one house, they interrogated a couple about the whereabouts of their adult daughter. At another, they listed names of registered voters and demanded to know if they still lived at the address.
The incidents highlight how a once-routine staple of American elections -- door-to-door canvassing -- has been adopted by former U.S. President Donald Trump's supporters since the 2020 election to prove his baseless claims of voter fraud, or potentially disenfranchise voters by stoking doubts about voter registration books.
A black Jeep crept along Coury Avenue on Wednesday night, rolling by one of the many ballot drop boxes collecting early votes for the midterm elections.
The driver, a man who declined to give his name, said he had made a pass at the box as part of a volunteer effort to stop a certain type of voter fraud that has captivated the far right, even though there is no evidence of its actually happening. He said it was the second night in a row he had driven by the box, this time after he had just taken his two children, who remained in the back seat, out for a sushi dinner.
He said he hoped to catch someone dropping off “100 ballots or 50 ballots.” No one did.
On Wednesday night, NBC News counted at least nine people watching the ballot drop box in Mesa, a small part of what has become a growing effort by some conservatives to monitor ballot drop boxes in hope of catching election fraud. Some people have stood watch at the drop box while wearing military-style fatigues and masks over their faces, prompting complaints to the Arizona secretary of state. NBC News did not observe any weapons.
No such drop box fraud has ever been found in significant numbers. But that has not stopped conspiracy theories about “ballot mules” — who supposedly secretly drop off hundreds of fake ballots in the middle of the night at drop boxes or election sites nationwide — from taking hold on pro-Trump parts of the internet. The conspiracy theory got its biggest boost from the widely debunked propaganda film “2,000 Mules,” which alleges such mules somehow changed the outcome of the 2020 election, even though repeated hand counts of ballots recertified the results.
The conspiracy theories have inspired action. Users on the Twitter-like platform Truth Social, which is owned by Trump Media & Technology Group, have discussed forming “mule parties” or “drop box tailgates” since at least late July, looking to organize volunteers to surveil drop boxes. On that platform, the former president’s account has shared posts by users advocating for drop box surveillance, including the Mesa drop box.
One organization, Clean Elections USA, has been pushing for Trump supporters on Truth Social to create “ballot tailgate parties” to monitor drop boxes nationwide for suspected “mules” since August.
The man who spoke with NBC News said that he spoke to two women who were watching the drop box for suspicious behavior and that they told him to sign up for a time slot online through Clean Elections USA.
he image was of a pair of underwear with a hammer, and the caption said, “Get it now: Paul Pelosi Halloween costume.” After a friend sent me the link, I was almost shaking with rage. Within an hour or so, Donald Trump Jr. would post the same image with a similar message, but it was the first one that left me angry—because it was posted by someone who claims to be a follower of Jesus Christ.
Keep in mind what we have witnessed this week: A man with a history of following conspiracy theories—including 2020 election denial—broke into the San Francisco home of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, took a hammer, and beat the Speaker’s husband until he needed critical surgery.
Police report that the man went through the house, yelling “Where’s Nancy?” The language is a direct echo of screams from insurrectionists on January 6, who swarmed outside the Speaker’s office after attacking and ransacking the Capitol.
Within hours of the Pelosi attack, the typical internet mobs spread lies and conspiracy theories about the event, some of them too vile and obviously fabricated to even mention here.
A friend asked why I was so upset about the allegedly evangelical man who posted the “joke” about Pelosi’s attempted murder. After all, we’ve seen for years his troll-like behavior on and off social media. “Why are you surprised?” my friend said. “That guy has shown who he is for years. I feel sorry for him.”
But that’s the point. This is not an isolated incident from one sad, angry, and “extremely online” guy. It reflects an increasing trend among some Christians.
Take for example Charlie Kirk, who responded to the Pelosi attack by saying, “If some amazing patriot out there in San Francisco or the Bay Area wants to really be a midterm hero, someone should go and bail this guy out. … Bail him out and then ask him some questions.” That’s the same Kirk who claims to be a born-again Christian and whose name was merged with that of Jerry Falwell Jr. into the “Falkirk Center” at the nation’s largest Christian university (until Falwell’s departure).
While all of this is going on, hordes of online commenters and conspiracy theory websites either deny the attack happened at all—as a “false flag” by the Deep State—or positively delight in the humor of it all. Many of them have “Christian. Husband. Father” or some similar designation in their social media bios.
All of this would be bad enough if it were simply happening in the “fog of disinformation.” But even after the official Department of Justice affidavitwas released with details from the police officers’ interview with the alleged assailant—who admits to breaking into the Pelosi home to harm the Speaker—where are the apologies for spreading the lies? Where is the shame at delighting in what could easily have turned into murder?
When looking at some of the responses to the Pelosi beating,Mona Charen asked, “What the hell is wrong with these people?” The answer, of course, is hell.
We see the opinion editor of Newsweek trying to foment trouble in the aftermath of Brazil's election, even as Bolsonaro has, at least grudgingly, acknowledged his loss to Lula. His time-to-pay-attention-to-what-is-happening-in-Brazil tweet has engendered a thread replete with yay-rah affirmations from both post-Americans and Brazilians.
Okay, that's a lot of keystrokes devoted to the hopelessly toxic state of the Republican Party.
But the Left has its own issues with political violence, as demonstrated by the beating a Rubio canvasser took in Florida, as well as this incident in North Carolina:
The FBI have launched an investigation after a gunman shot into the North Carolina home of relatives of a Republican running for Congress - with the bullet landing just feet away from where the candidate's children had been sleeping.
The shooting transpired on October 18 in Hickory at a home belonging to Republican Pat Harrigan's parents, as he fights for an open seat in the famously liberal 14th Congressional District, in a contentious race.
The congressional candidate's daughters, aged 3 and 5, were asleep in the bedroom directly above the room where the shooting occurred, with the bullet coming from a densely wooded area behind the house, piercing a window but not waking the girls.
I'm really not interested in getting mired in whataboutism regarding political violence, though. My problems with the Democrat party, and progressivism generally, arise at the policy level.
Let me reiterate the areas in which leftist policy is driving the stake through post-America's heart: wealth redistribution, climate alarmism and identiy politics militancy.
One sees, with some frequency, social-media remarks about how those terrible Republicans want to end Social Security and Medicare. That's a fair accusation to lob at any wacko-type Republican, of which there are plenty, who doesn't flesh out an actual plan to deal with the abrupt jolt a lot of post-Americans would experience in the wake of such a move. But I don't see a damn thing from Democrats about how they would put those programs on a footing of solvency and avoid a situation in which interest on the national debt crowds out the government's ability to fund basics like defense.
The Inflation Reduction Act did nothing to reduce inflation.
Student loan forgiveness has eroded post-Americans's notion of personal responsibility, and done nothing to address the administrative bloat at the nation's higher-education institutions.
We are sitting on an abundance of dense, readily available and relatively inexpensive energy, but progressivism won't let us touch it.
Then there is identity politics militancy.
Race hustlers are still at it, insisting that we sit down for yet more rounds of "difficult conversations," their euphemism for having those not yet on board shut up and be told why they are evil if they don't bring an awareness of color to every damn interaction they have with every one of their fellow human beings.
What would have been revolutionary in 2008, like “gay marriage,” seems almost “traditional” to many Americans in 2022, by the sheer force of its cultural normalization in America. Drag Queens dancing in front of children is as recreational as baseball in some parts of the country, or so it seems. Mainstream medical guilds now suggest that confused children and teens mutilate their bodies to tranquilize the mind. Public schools when I grew up might have been secular, but they weren’t morally insane or propagandizing students in cultural self-hatred like I routinely hear about now. Major media outlets are entirely compromised by a groveling deference to wokism and identity politics. The left once called for abortion to be “safe, legal, and rare,” but the move to de-stigmatize abortion and gloat about it has moved the needle in a ghoulish direction.
A red wave next Tuesday seems pretty certain. Leftist pundits' never-mind-the-polls-can't-you-feel-the-energy exhortations have a distinct whistling-past-the-graveyard feel to them.
And it comes down to one basic factor: a backlash against the coercive nature of the Left's attempt to impose what's described in the previous nine paragraphs.
Education is a driving force in this. It's why local school board races are particularly hot in this election cycle. A whole lot of post-American parents are saying, "Not with my kid's noggin, you don't."
But you can't make a binary choice in this state of affairs. If you are a legitimately concerned parent, or say, a small business owner fairly far down the supply chain getting told by your customers that, in addition to quality assurance, you have to prove you're actively taking measures to implement DEI, are you really willing to let the likes of Kari Lake, Tim Michels or Marjorie Taylor Greene take the lead in the effort to do something about it?
I say the following having given considerable thought to whether it's responsible for me to go on record saying so:
Both of our major political parties are irredeemably toxic. Neither one can provide a way out of our nation's grim situation.
You do you next Tuesday, but know this: however you vote, all you're doing is gratifying your desire to see yourself as an agent of positive development. You're not really moving the needle. It changes nothing. Our descent into a very dark time will continue and accelerate, in one form or the other.
It's been a while since LITD has served up a smorgasbord of recent attention-worthy essays I've come across.
Herewith is rectification of that paucity.
At U Discover Music, there's a great look at what made Rudy Van Gelder such a legendary recording engineer:
Blue Note’s founders, Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff, signed some of the most brilliant musical minds in modern jazz. From Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis toJohn Coltraneand Ornette Coleman, they recorded the music’s best and biggest names. But arguably, the most significant person they got to work for the company wasn’t a musician at all. He was, when they first encountered him, a part-time, self-taught sound engineer named Rudy Van Gelder. A professional optometrist by day, at night Van Gelder, also a jazz fan, recorded musicians in a studio he had set up in the living room of his parent’s home in New Jersey. It was in that house, located at 25 Prospect Avenue, Hackensack, that what we now know as the Blue Note sound was born.
Blue Note had been operating for 13 years when Alfred Lion met Van Gelder in 1952. Lion had been impressed by the audio quality of a session by saxophonist/composer Gil Mellé, recorded by the engineer at his Hackensack studio. Lion wanted to replicate the album’s sound at the label’s usual recording home, WOR studios in New York City, but was told by its resident engineer that it wasn’t possible and that he should contact the person who made the Mellé recording. And that’s how Blue Note found the man who would give them their classic sound.
Blue Note began recording exclusively at Hackensack from 1953 onwards, and the impeccable sound quality of their Van Gelder-engineered sessions – defined by clarity, depth, warmth, and sonic detail – didn’t escape the attention of other jazz labels. In fact, rival jazz indie Prestige, run by Bob Weinstock, also began hiring Van Gelder’s studio and services in an attempt to emulate the Blue Note sound. But this didn’t trouble Blue Note – rather, the improvement in audio quality benefitted jazz as a whole, and the label’s albums still sounded unique. That was a result of Alfred Lion being particular about what he liked. Evidently, as a producer he was more specific than Weinstock – he liked the music to swing, for one thing – and, consequently, was more organized. Lion had clearly focused goals in mind and paid the Blue Note musicians for several days’ rehearsal before the sessions. In contrast, Weinstock and Prestige just brought the musicians in cold to the studio to jam without much prior preparation. There was a gulf in quality that gave Blue Note an advantage.
I have sympathies with some of the ideas commonly associated with Christian nationalism. I understand and appreciate the unique role that Christianity played in shaping our nation’s tradition and values. Neither do I want that Christian influence to recede. As a conservative, I believe resolutely in the need for traditions to shape our common culture. Cutting a culture off from its good roots is nothing less than cultural self-hatred. Moreover, apart from a transcendent foundation for law and morality, no nation can long survive. I want a public morality influenced by Christianity but done so organically from the bottom up by the genuine and voluntary religious commitments of its people.
I also have major concerns with Christian nationalism. As a Baptist, I am convictionally opposed to identifying regeneration with nationhood. The Christian faith comes down to personal salvation and regeneration. The apparatus of government is ill-equipped to promote the supernatural end of man even if government requires supernatural foundation to keep it accountable (“In God We Trust” works for me). Whatever the personal faith of the office holder, I am opposed to magistrates as magistrates dictating theological matters for others.
Interspersed among the usual directives about the need to pressure political leaders, her message was more radical and more militant than it has been in the past. There is no “back to normal”, she told us. “Normal” was the “system” which gave us the climate crisis, a system of “colonialism, imperialism, oppression, genocide”, of “racist, oppressive extractionism”. Climate justice is part of all justice; you can’t have one without the others. We can’t trust the elites produced by this system to confront its flaws — that’s why she, much like Rishi Sunak, won’t be bothering with the COP meeting this year. COP itself is little more than a “scam” which facilitates “greenwashing, lying and cheating”. Only overthrow of “the whole capitalist system” will suffice.
. . . the reality is that presidents generally don’t have that much real authority to shape a major university. They’re constrained by a board of trustees, faculty governance, entrenched campus power centers, endowment rules, major donors, and sprawling bureaucracies.
The day-to-day of the job tends to be dominated by its ceremonial, political, and money-chasing dimensions, with the president responsible primarily for fundraising, forging relationships with public officials, and serving as the public face of the institution. If one wants to get comprehensive, the job also includes financial management, working with the governing board, and leading the executive team.
Once upon a time, things were different. A half-century ago, it was expected that college presidents would be public intellectuals. They wrote influential books, gave major speeches, and were seen as major national voices. Today, it’s safe to say that most Americans would have trouble naming a single university president. Moreover, presidents just don’t have much day-to-day influence over curriculum, hiring, or what gets taught. And, as should be obvious, their views on same-sex marriage, gun control, and abortion don’t have much impact on campus life.
At Glenn Loury's Substack, he and John McWhorter have one of their customary rollicking conversations, the kind that one can only have with good buds who understand each other well. This one focuses on the upcoming Supreme Court decision about affirmative action. Along the way, they talk about the problem they both have: their books, regardless of subject matter, getting relegated to the "black studies" sections of bookstores:
. . . you're going to go to something called a “bookstore” if it still exists. And you know where they're gonna put it. They're gonna put it in “African American Issues,” “Black Studies,” as if that's all that you are. I've seen some of my books put in the black section that weren't even about race, just because my name is mine. And that's the way it would be. Even on websites: “black books.” That's where they're gonna put you, and that's where they would put me, as if that that sums up our entire existence.
At Merion West, Matthew Wardour asserts that, while we generally elevate authenticity as a virtue, those who have gained their celebrity with some degree of fakery have a lesson for us:
Many of us also like impostors because, deep down, we understand that to exist only matter-of-factly, without fiction, would be intolerable. Sir Walter Scott in his Journal, one of wisest autobiographies ever written, wrote that “Life could not be endured were it seen in reality.” People with no feeling of the romance of the world are among the people I least trust. Possibly their plainness ought to be interpreted as honesty, but I fail to see it—quite the opposite, in fact. I have sometimes reflected that Jesus’ desire not to reveal himself publicly until a later date has a jolly, even playful quality that makes him, paradoxically, more trustworthy and believable. This humble hoaxery distinguishes him, as far as I know, from any other god-figure.
Carl Trueman has a piece at Worldon the cost our society is paying for putting a higher priority on identity politics than on public health:
There are so many predictable aspects to this debacle. There is the obvious subordination of public health to identity politics. This is not the first time this has occurred. Who can forget the fact that churches meeting during Covid were considered highly controversial because of the risk of spreading the disease, while Black Lives Matter protests were seen as legitimate? This exposes the duplicitous rhetorical imperative, “Follow the science.” Following the science is always an empty term because science is descriptive, not prescriptive. It can tell you how to save a life, but it cannot tell you why a life is worth saving.
In short, science is not, in and of itself, a social policy. Social policy surely takes account of science but then must be formulated in terms of other factors, such as risk assessments in the light of a hierarchy of social goods.
Further, we see the lengths to which the modern world will go in its desperate need to keep alive the myth that sexual activity is a cost-free recreation. For many years, society has taught us that, if all participants are in agreement, no particular sexual act or pattern of behavior can be rejected as wrong. Now it seems that this type of political judgment is to be extended beyond morality to matters of health as well.
And finally, my latest at Precipiceis actually something that first appeared at Medium five years ago. I hadn't looked at my archive of pieces there for a long time. I thought this essay on profanity, entitled "Expletives and Blasphemy: As With Pungent Seasonings, Easy Does It," merited a re-up. Hey, our culture sure hasn't become any less coarse in the last half-decade.
