‘He Himself Carried the Fire’ by Kevin D. Williamson

‘He Himself Carried the Fire’

But step away for a moment from the manger scene at the Christmas pageant, which surely does not smell like a real barn smells, and dwell for a moment in the world of real people: the terrified young woman, her uncertain husband-to-be, the worried politician, the simple shepherds and great holy men alike wondering in the backs of their minds if they were maybe kidding themselves, if they might possibly have it all wrong, if they’d misunderstood something along the way. “Be not afraid.” 

Beautiful retelling of an ancient story with a message for me in my own fear and insecurities.

Why There Is Never A Flight 93 Election For Faithful Christians by Lyman Stone

Why There Is Never A Flight 93 Election For Faithful Christians

Now, particularly in this Advent season, faithful Christians basically have one, and only one, eschatologically important task: wait! There is no further war to fight. Christ is coming back, and when he does, it will be like bringing a nuke to a knife-fight. There’s just no contest against the agent of all creation.

For a Christian, there are no stakes in a cosmic sense for anything we observe in the news: Christ will come victorious. Our job is to endure in hope, and share that hope with others.

This is a necessary correction to my personal temptation to become overly invested in politics.

Black Protest Has Lost Its Power by Shelby Steele

Black Protest Has Lost Its Power

What they missed is a simple truth that is both obvious and unutterable: The oppression of black people is over with. This is politically incorrect news, but it is true nonetheless. We blacks are, today, a free people. It is as if freedom sneaked up and caught us by surprise.

Once again Shelby Steele speaks needed truths in this day of racial tensions.

24 Quality Christmas Books To Read Instead Of All The Smarmy Garbage by Anna Mussmann

24 Quality Christmas Books To Read Instead Of All The Smarmy Garbage

Of course, taste in picture books is somewhat subjective. None have lasted through the centuries yet. My criteria is as follows:

1. The author should (clearly) love the English language...
2. The illustrations should demonstrate skill and care...
3. The books should avoid dumb inaccuracies...
4. The books should convey truth, not sentimentality or mush...

Good stuff to keep in mind for the future grandkids!

The World Might Be Better Off Without College for Everyone by Bryan Caplan

The World Might Be Better Off Without College for Everyone

Lest I be misinterpreted, I emphatically affirm that education confers some marketable skills, namely literacy and numeracy. Nonetheless, I believe that signaling accounts for at least half of college’s financial reward, and probably more.

A college professor who believes the main value of a college degree is signaling to employers that this person has the requisite characteristics and says nothing about the requisite knowledge. Hmmmm....Is college just an expensive, giant "ticket" to a job?

There will be no winners in the Supreme Court’s wedding cake case by Greg Weiner

There will be no winners in the Supreme Court’s wedding cake case

In Masterpiece Cakeshop , LGBT advocates can hope for a pyrrhic victory at best. Conscientious objectors to same-sex weddings may be pressed into service, but only at the long-range cost of intensifying their opposition. A vindication of religious liberty, meanwhile, would tarnish that value, however unfairly, with the taint of discrimination.

A plea for civility and humanity in the midst of the chaos where all sides lose.

Sex Assault Claims Don’t Prove Male Toxicity, But The Absence Of Masculinity by Robert Tracinski

Sex Assault Claims Don’t Prove Male Toxicity, But The Absence Of Masculinity

So we see some poor guy in the New York Times limp forward for the ritual self-flagellation of telling us that the problem is “the nature of men in general” and specifically “the often ugly and dangerous nature of the male libido” which requires “strenuous repression.” I always suspected the cultural left would circle back to Puritanism in the end. What strikes me about most of the allegations so far, however, is how unmasculine the men are. If there is a crisis of masculinity here, the crisis is its absence.

Brilliant analysis of the #MeToo focus on bad male behavior.

Human Dignity or Sexual Exploitation: We Can’t Have Both by Rob Schwarzwalder

Human Dignity or Sexual Exploitation: We Can’t Have Both

We cannot have it both ways. Our families are frayed and fraying more and more, even to the point that the very foundation of family — one man and one woman, married and faithful, for life — is being denigrated and redefined, both. Our society exalts sexual intimacy like the ancients exalted temple prostitution. Sex becomes a form of worship — worship of the self, a worship expressed in the employment of another solely for pleasure.
Our society proclaims equal dignity even as it strips women of it.

Needed truth in our #MeToo era.

With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit by Jean Twenge

With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit by Jean Twenge

What happened so that so many more teens, in such a short period of time, would feel depressed, attempt suicide and commit suicide? After scouring several large surveys of teens for clues, I found that all of the possibilities traced back to a major change in teens’ lives: the sudden ascendance of the smartphone.

Fascinating insight into today's youth. Smartphones and mental health. Some powerful conclusions here.

Taking the Catholic Out of Catholic Universities by Anne Hendershott

Taking the Catholic Out of Catholic Universities

Nowadays, however, rather than embracing the good, the true, and the beautiful, Catholic universities have adopted the same curricular fads as their secular peers, hosting departments of gender studies, black studies, ethnic studies, and gay and lesbian studies.

If this is what is happening on supposedly Christian campuses, where will it end?

Watch Shelby Steele Explain Race Issues in America by Ginni Thomas

Watch Shelby Steele Explain Race Issues in America

Steele’s advice to open-minded Americans beginning to reject group identity politics is simple – “You are free. There are no posses or lynch mobs after you. You are free.”

Refreshingly honest conversation on race.

Inside America’s Largest Religious Revival You Know Nothing About by Heather Smith

Inside America’s Largest Religious Revival You Know Nothing About by Heather Smith

Unquestionably, the ongoing success of Athletica is rooted in its centrality to the lives of its devotees. As Christianity fades in the West, dying from a desire to be like everything else except itself, Athletica has risen to the ascendance as the self-assured, pervasive cultural influence. Where the Judeo-Christian world has laid down its mantle, Athletica has picked it up, unwittingly following the directives of the Hebrew Bible to teach tenets of the faith to their children, “Talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.”

Sports worship is a rare, acceptable form of idolatry within the church.

Race and America’s Soul by Myron Magnet

Race and America’s Soul by Myron Magnet

What gives Gene Dattel’s Reckoning with Race: America’s Failure its special power is that, even after its bracingly original and thoroughly researched account of the racism of the abolitionist North from the late eighteenth century until long after the Civil War, the book nevertheless does not shrink from laying the ills of today’s black American underclass not at the door of a painful history, with ample blame for northern as well as southern whites, but squarely at the feet of black Americans themselves. Yes, shameful, deeply shameful, were slavery, Jim Crow, and northern racism, and who can doubt that they left grievous scars? Still, America fought a war to end the evil institution, had a civil rights movement to try to erase its malign remnants, and spent decades on affirmative action and other nostrums to expunge even the faintest remaining traces. Whatever white Americans could do to atone for and repair the damage they caused, they have done, as much as imperfect humans in an imperfect world can do. Now, Dattel argues, it’s up to black Americans to save themselves.

This is a powerful antidote to the current call for constant white guilt. 

Trump Has Broken the Apology Hypnosis on Race by J.B. White

Trump Has Broken the Apology Hypnosis on Race by J.B. White

Donald J. Trump, simultaneously as Deprogrammer-in-Chief and Liberator-in-Chief, was able through skillful utilization of his brilliant and relentless laser (yes, by this I mean his Twitter account) to break the apology hypnosis that was strangling the dominant ethnic group in the nation. It was no surprise when a majority of white males voted for him to be president in the general election.

Without the ability to shame whites into constantly feeling guilty and apologizing, the power of the Left may be finally broken.

The Surprising Revolt at the Most Liberal College in the Country by Chris Bodenner

The Surprising Revolt at the Most Liberal College in the Country by Chris Bodenner

This school year, students are ditching anonymity and standing up to RAR in public—and almost all of them are freshmen of color. The turning point was the derailment of the Hum lecture on August 28, the first day of classes. As the Humanities 110 program chair, Elizabeth Drumm, introduced a panel presentation, three RAR leaders took to the stage and ignored her objections. Drumm canceled the lecture—a first since the boycott. Using a panelist’s microphone, a leader told the freshmen, “[Our] work is just as important as the work of the faculty, so we were going to introduce ourselves as well.”

Hopefully we are finally seeing the tide turn on the college bullies. 

The Next Lost Cause by Michael Brandan Dougherty

The Next Lost Cause by Michael Brandan Dougherty

It is easy to imagine a writer who grew up reading Ta-Nehisi Coates on “the First White President” looking back at Bouie’s assertion that we have statues to Jefferson on account of his authorship of the Declaration of Independence with a jaundiced eye. That future man of letters will observe that the Declaration’s invocations of liberty and its pretensions of universalism were merely Whig propaganda against a King. He will assert that Jefferson did not actually believe that all men were so endowed by their creator. He will hasten to add that as America achieved the political sovereignty, Jefferson became more convinced of white supremacy, more secure in the view that white liberty could be guaranteed only through black bondage. Many reading this argument will conclude that by raising statues to Jefferson we are crediting him only for his hypocrisy, a privilege only white racists and slavers get in America. They will conclude, in other words, that America has spent centuries sanctifying its foundational hypocrisy. Land of the Free, home of the enslaved.

For Conservatives, the slippery slope is real and we are rapidly headed down it. 

John Locke, Closet NeverTrumper? by Mike Sabo

John Locke, Closet NeverTrumper? by Mike Sabo

Hazony argues Locke “asserts that universal reason teaches the same political truths to all human beings.” But he overlooks the crucial caveat that Locke recognizes: while such truths are accessible to anyone capable of reason, not all men have an equal capacity to use their reason. Locke would have thought it preposterous to think that the use of human reason would be widespread throughout a single civil society, much less worldwide. This is why he argued that religion, civil society, and a public sentiment that supports reason are all crucial to the perpetuation of human life. Vague hopes that the proliferation of human reason alone is enough to maintain civil society are folly—and something Locke clearly rejected.

Interesting rebuttal to the Hazony article. 

The Primal Scream of Identity Politics by Mary Eberstadt

The Primal Scream of Identity Politics by Mary Eberstadt

Anyone who’s ever heard a coyote in the desert, separated at night from the pack, knows the sound. Maybe the otherwise-unexplained hysteria of today’s identity politics is just that: the collective human howl of our time, sent up by inescapably communal creatures who can no longer identify their own.

This brilliant, (and long) article just nails what is going on in our nutty culture today!

Shootings, Wildfires, And Hurricanes Remind Us It’s Foolish To Put Safety First by Anna Mussmann

Shootings, Wildfires, And Hurricanes Remind Us It’s Foolish To Put Safety First by Anna Mussmann

Our culture values safety above all things. In the end, this teaches us to value only ourselves. The real tragedy is that as we rush about protecting our bodies, we are losing our souls.

We are worshipping at the altar of Safety with dire consequences.

Weinstein Sex Scandal Dunks Celebrity Trump Critics In Shame by David Marcus

Weinstein Sex Scandal Dunks Celebrity Trump Critics In Shame by David Marcus

Alas, the late-night comedians, the great arbiters of how we ought to live, they get quiet about Harvey. He grabbed a t-t. But he gave millions to Planned Parenthood, and hates the NRA. Kimmel and Eminem and Meyer and all the rest are complicit. I’d say shame on them, but they bask in shame. It is the water in which Hollywood celebrity swims.

The hypocrisy of Hollywood continues to stun.

Is ‘Classical Liberalism’ Conservative? by Yoram Hazony

Is ‘Classical Liberalism’ Conservative? by Yoram Hazony

The differences between the classical-liberal and conservative traditions have immense consequences for policy. Establishing democracy in Egypt or Iraq looks doable to classical liberals because they assume that human reason is everywhere the same, and that a commitment to individual liberties and free markets will arise rapidly once the benefits have been demonstrated and the impediments removed. Conservatives, on the other hand, see foreign civilizations as powerfully motivated—for bad reasons as well as good ones—to fight the dissolution of their way of life and the imposition of American values.

Brilliant insight from someone outside America who can point out what we cannot often see. 

Paying the price for breakdown of the country's bourgeois culture by Amy Wax & Larry Alexander

Paying the price for breakdown of the country's bourgeois culture by Amy Wax & Larry Alexander

All cultures are not equal. Or at least they are not equal in preparing people to be productive in an advanced economy. The culture of the Plains Indians was designed for nomadic hunters, but is not suited to a First World, 21st-century environment. Nor are the single-parent, antisocial habits, prevalent among some working-class whites; the anti-“acting white” rap culture of inner-city blacks; the anti-assimilation ideas gaining ground among some Hispanic immigrants. These cultural orientations are not only incompatible with what an advanced free-market economy and a viable democracy require, they are also destructive of a sense of solidarity and reciprocity among Americans. If the bourgeois cultural script — which the upper-middle class still largely observes but now hesitates to preach — cannot be widely reinstated, things are likely to get worse for us all.

These two are giving the answer for what ails us. Unfortunately, it cannot be said in today's culture.

Blaming Columbus Misses the Lessons of History by Patrick Mason

Blaming Columbus Misses the Lessons of History by Patrick Mason

Columbus Day is a day for us to remember that bold and courageous voyage in 1492 that lead to the first sustained contact between two very different worlds. It is a day to remember the many good things that have come out of that contact, such as the founding of the United States, the first lasting democratic-republic.

From someone with Native American heritage, he makes great points.

How Smartphones Hijack Our Minds by Nicholas Carr

How Smartphones Hijack Our Minds by Nicholas Carr

Scientists have begun exploring that question—and what they’re discovering is both fascinating and troubling. Not only do our phones shape our thoughts in deep and complicated ways, but the effects persist even when we aren’t using the devices. As the brain grows dependent on the technology, the research suggests, the intellect weakens.

It's worse than we thought...

The Blade Runner Curse and the Overestimation of Corporate Might by Jonah Goldberg

The Blade Runner Curse and the Overestimation of Corporate Might  by Jonah Goldberg

For all their alleged power, big corporations are often powerless when it comes to the simple task of surviving. As Williamson notes, “Only 67 of the firms in the Fortune 500 in 1955 remained there by 2011.”

Blade Runner apparently "curses" companies that appear in it as big, evil corporations. It seems they almost all have gone out of business. Maybe it's just the creative destruction of capitalism!

Why I Prefer Baseball by Daniel Henninger

Why I Prefer Baseball by Daniel Henninger

The road up in baseball is different. Promising teenagers go from high school into baseball’s minor leagues. They play for teams in places like Delmarva, Clinton and Greenville. They travel by bus and play before crowds not much bigger than what they had in Little League. They rise from A ball to AA (say, the Trenton Thunder) then AAA teams, which are in places most people have heard of, like Toledo, Fresno or El Paso.

Not only a good repudiation of the ungrateful football players, but an unintended criticism of the college pipeline for football players. Lots to think about there. 

I Understand Why They Knelt by David French

I Understand Why They Knelt by David French

So, yes, I understand why they knelt. I understand why men who would never otherwise bring politics onto the playing field — and never had politicized sports before — felt that they could not be seen to comply with a demagogue’s demands. I understand why even owners who gave millions to Trump expressed solidarity with their players. I understand why even Trump supporters like Rex Ryan were appalled at the president’s actions.

I hate that I have to agree with this, but David French is right.

Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder

Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder

What goes unexplored in Nomadland are the economic consequences of the cultural transformations that have shaped American life in the last 50 years. Bruder’s subjects are like a roadmap of that transformation. We’ve made divorce easy and more socially acceptable, but perhaps failed to warn people that it can “devastate your wealth,” as sociologist Jay Zagorsky noted in 2005 research published in the Journal of Sociology. “If you really want to increase your wealth, get married and stay married,” Zagarsky wrote. Bad marriages will happen, of course, and some really do need to end, but the financial consequences of these events are not the fault of the American economy—as the stories of Bob and Don illustrate. Similarly, we now know that the surest way into poverty, especially for a woman, is to have children without a husband, and to do so without completing high school. Some 40 percent of women living under such circumstances are in poverty—and they face a formidable array of obstacles to climbing out of the economic cellar. Can we assign blame for this to the American economy—or does the stark rise in the number of children born out of wedlock bear the real blame?

Interesting review of a book that purports to dive into the lives of those unfortunate "disadvantaged" while blaming America and its economic woes. 

“Human Life Is Punishment,” and Other Pleasures of Studying Latin by Frankie Thomas

“Human Life Is Punishment,” and Other Pleasures of Studying Latin by Frankie Thomas

English is constantly on my mind in Latin class. Unlike non-dead languages, Latin places no pressure on the beginner student to outgrow the training wheels of one’s native language. Spontaneous conversation is not the goal, and thank the gods for that. Even at the highest levels, all Latin study is undertaken with an eye toward translation. In this respect, it hardly qualifies as “learning a language” at all; it has more in common with my mother’s addiction to those maddening cryptic crosswords in The Nation. Or, for that matter, her fondness for the crime novels of Walter Mosley and Michael Connelly. Every Latin sentence is a mystery to be solved, and the joy of translation, as with all detective fiction, is the promise that life can be untangled and reorganized into something neat and orderly.

Beautiful defense of learning Latin.

An Open Letter to Ta-Nehisi Coates by Jason Hill

An Open Letter to Ta-Nehisi Coates by Jason Hill

I am saddened by your conviction that white people wield such a great deal of metaphysical power over the exercise of your own agency. In making an enemy of the Dream that is a constitutive feature of American identity, you have irrevocably alienated yourself from the redemptive hope, the inclusive unity, and the faith and charity that are necessary for America to move ever closer to achieving moral excellence. Sadder still, you have condemned the unyielding confidence in self that the Dream inspires.

This is probably the most well-reasoned defense of the American Dream I have ever read.

Straight Talk for College Women by Jennifer C. Braceras

Straight Talk for College Women by Jennifer C. Braceras

Workshops and training sessions will also do nothing to keep students safe if those sessions ignore the elephant in the room: the hookup culture. Academics and college administrators today operate under the assumption that alcohol-infused sex between virtual strangers is a matter of “private choice.” They fear that any warnings to avoid such risk-fraught encounters will be lambasted as old-fashioned or, worse, judgmental. They live in fear that if they tell the truth about alcohol and hookup culture, they will be accused of “blaming the victim.” So they refuse to give you tips that might actually keep you safe...

Wow. Refreshing dose of common sense, that apparently isn't so common.

'It Is Chilling to Hear...' by WSJ editorial board

'It Is Chilling to Hear...' by WSJ editorial board

It is chilling to hear from a United States Senator that this might now disqualify someone from service as a federal judge. I ask you and your colleagues to respect those in whom “dogma lives loudly”—which is a condition we call faith. For the attempt to live such faith while one upholds the law should command respect, not evoke concern.

We are starting to see a war on religious faith from the very top. What was once thought unthinkable in America is now happening.

How a Generation Lost its Common Culture by Patrick Deneen

How a Generation Lost its Common Culture by Patrick Deneen

Our students’ ignorance is not a failing of the educational system – it is its crowning achievement. Efforts by several generations of philosophers and reformers and public policy experts — whom our students (and most of us) know nothing about — have combined to produce a generation of know-nothings. The pervasive ignorance of our students is not a mere accident or unfortunate but correctible outcome, if only we hire better teachers or tweak the reading lists in high school. It is the consequence of a civilizational commitment to civilizational suicide. The end of history for our students signals the End of History for the West.

We need classical education more than ever. Our very existence depends on it.

Virtual Virtue by Victor Davis Hanson

Virtual Virtue by Victor Davis Hanson

In sum, the more prominent persons voice virtual virtue at no cost, the quieter ones know better and make the necessary adjustments that fit what they see and hear and conclude. The result of our two worlds is that the virtual virtue signalers grow ever louder only to reach deaf ears; while the quieter become even more cynical and detached in having to live what increasingly seems a charade.

The Left's version of cheap grace.

Here’s The Answer Rob Bell Won’t Give Aaron Rodgers About Salvation For People ‘In A Remote Rainforest’ by Peter Burfeind

Here’s The Answer Rob Bell Won’t Give Aaron Rodgers About Salvation For People ‘In A Remote Rainforest’ by Peter Burfeind

If indeed Christ proclaimed the gospel in Sheol/Hades to those who never heard in the Old Testament age, that would explain how “God overlooked” their ignorance. He didn’t excuse it or ignore it. He deferred it until the time his son would give them a chance to repent. I argue for a place in Sheol called Hyperidon (Greek for “overlooking”), distinct from Abraham’s Bosom and Gehenna, reserved for those who neither received nor rejected the Word, but simply never heard. God overlooked their ignorance until the proper time, when Christ preached to them.

Brilliant theological insight into the old conundrum about the Pygmy in Africa...

From Cicero to Trump, They’re All in Plutarch’s ‘Lives’ by Rebecca Burgess and Hugh Liebert

From Cicero to Trump, They’re All in Plutarch’s ‘Lives’ by Rebecca Burgess and Hugh Liebert

Plutarch also wrote his lives in parallel: He paired Greeks and Romans, concluding each presentation with a short “comparison” that prodded readers to decide which of the two was superior and in what respects. The point wasn’t to show that the Greeks were better than the Romans or vice versa, but to reveal the character of the competitors and nudge readers to form judgments about virtue.

This is why I love classical education so much!

Those Who Commute Deserve a Salute by James Bruce

Those Who Commute Deserve a Salute by James Bruce

That includes the small town in Arkansas where I live. I walk to work, which isn’t without hazards. One time I was bitten by a duck overeager (in my estimation) to protect its nest. But, overall, it’s wonderful. Yet I know how much I depend on you, the big-city commuters: You set up my retirement account, approved my mortgage application, and routed my new shirt from a distribution center to my doorstep. So thank you—and have a safe trip home.

Sweet shout-out to the commuters.

Our War against Memory by Victor Davis Hanson

Our War against Memory by Victor Davis Hanson

The strangest paradox in the current epidemic of abolitio memoriae is that our moral censors believe in ethical absolutism and claim enough superior virtue to apply it clumsily across the ages — without a clue that they fall short of their own moral pretensions, and that one day their own icons are as likely be stoned as the icons of others are now apt to be torn down by black-mask-wearing avengers.

Another insightful and thoughtful piece from VDH.

Chicago Vandals Burn Century-Old Bust Of Abraham Lincoln by D.C. McAllister

Chicago Vandals Burn Century-Old Bust Of Abraham Lincoln by D.C. McAllister

Judge him as you will for this, but until you’ve walked in a man’s shoes, I’d advise you to keep silent. Imposing modern sentiments on historical figures, expecting them to act like perfect characters in a book instead of the flawed human beings they were, is never wise.

We need to be careful as we seek to destroy figures from the past. Our own sins will find us out.

A Time to Scatter Stones and a Time to Gather Stones Together by Michael Ward

A Time to Scatter Stones and a Time to Gather Stones Together by Michael Ward

Neither Peter nor Paul was an end in himself. Each was a servant of Christ. The two pointed to the One, the unity beyond themselves. And that greater unity, that final or ultimate re-ligamenting, is why it’s so fitting that Hillsdale’s new chapel will be known as Christ Chapel, for Christ is the one in whom “all things hold together” [Colossians 1:17], both the tightening and the loosening, both the rock and the rocking.

Such a beautiful analysis when breaking ground for the new Christ Chapel at Hillsdale. So insightful and full of wisdom.

19 Is the New 60 by Lenore Skenazy

19 Is the New 60 by Lenore Skenazy

Correlation isn’t causation, but Mr. Gray makes a persuasive casethat kids lose their “locus of control” when adults take over more of their time—driving them, teaching them, watching them. But during free play, the kids make the rules and decisions. There’s a strong connection between happiness and feeling in control of life.

Great idea to keep schools open until 6:00 to allow a safe place for kids to run around and be kids!!

Are Conservatives Really Just Liberals? by Elliot Kaufman

Are Conservatives Really Just Liberals? by Elliot Kaufman

Behind every conservative embrace of liberalism, there is a prior and pre-liberal commitment. We are for liberal free speech, but with a prior commitment to decency. We support liberal democracy, but with a prior commitment to justice, not just conflict de-escalation. We praise liberal education, but to save it from undermining itself with skepticism, we need a prior commitment to Truth.

Fantastic defense of true Conservatism!

It’s Time For Millennials To Rise And Claim Their Inheritance by Ben Domenech

It’s Time For Millennials To Rise And Claim Their Inheritance by Ben Domenech

This is an American inheritance, but it is not a birthright. It must be claimed. And it is an open question whether the children of the children of those who rescued the old world will claim it. Today they are the most risk-averse generation in the history of this new world. The optimism of their youth has faded into a crippling fear of failure. The easy opportunities they were promised by their baby boomer matriarchy have turned out to be vapor. Their soma is better, and the lure of a lifetime spent as a student, a renter, an uncommitted ironist are tempting indeed. Just be sure to only Instagram your successes.

Prescient take on today's generation.

We All Need to Admit that America Has a Tattoo Problem by Mark Hemingway

We All Need to Admit that America Has a Tattoo Problem by Mark Hemingway

Along these lines, I refuse to believe even a sizable percentage of tattoos have been worthy decisions. For some select people, maybe tattoos are small part of their grand plan to live life to the fullest. But the vast majority of people should be encouraged to lead exciting and meaningful lives without needing to, in some cases literally, tattoo their personal vanity and insecurity right on their forehead. Fortunately, for now forehead tattoos still make you a bit of a pariah—after all, even the Air Force still has some standards.

My thoughts exactly!

Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? by Jean M. Twenge

Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? by Jean M. Twenge

Psychologically, however, they are more vulnerable than Millennials were: Rates of teen depression and suicide have skyrocketed since 2011. It’s not an exaggeration to describe iGen as being on the brink of the worst mental-health crisis in decades. Much of this deterioration can be traced to their phones.

This the voice of one crying the wilderness. Will she be heard?

What if the South had won the Civil War? 4 sci-fi scenarios for HBO's 'Confederate' by Allen C. Guelzo

What if the South had won the Civil War? 4 sci-fi scenarios for HBO's 'Confederate' by Allen C. Guelzo

The Confederate government centralized political authority in ways that made a hash of states’ rights, nationalized industries in ways historians have compared to “state socialism,” and imposed the first compulsory national draft in American history. If Benioff and Weiss are successful in creating an alternative world in Confederate, it will shock us fully as much as Game of Thrones has — not for how much of the Confederate future we avoided, but how little.

I read a book on Lincoln by this author that was given to me at a Hillsdale conference. So to see his name here, I definitely give him credibility. Very interesting take on who actually won the Civil War.

Our Cultural Waterloo by Carl R. Trueman

Our Cultural Waterloo by Carl R. Trueman

In such a world, arguments, even irrefutable arguments, will not suffice. We need something more comprehensive, something to capture imaginations. We need a philosophy of undergraduate education that offers visions of beauty, that connects the fields of knowledge our modern world has torn apart and isolated, and that speaks to the human desire for meaning.

Somehow, we need to connect with the next generation or risk losing so much.

The Fifth American War by Victor Davis Hanson

The Fifth American War by Victor Davis Hanson

Now we are engaged in yet a fifth revolutionary divide, similar to, but often unlike, prior upheavals. The consequences of globalization, the growth of the deep state, changing demographics, open borders, the rise of a geographic apartheid between blue and red states, and the institutionalization of a permanent coastal political and culture elite — and the reaction to all that — are tearing apart the country.

When VDH talks, I listen.

A Mother and Father Say Goodbye to Their Fierce, Stillborn Daughter by Jeremy Lott

A Mother and Father Say Goodbye to Their Fierce, Stillborn Daughter by Jeremy Lott

Like so many other things about this pregnancy, Cecelia’s end surprised me. I had assumed that she faded away. But like philosophers, we writers imagine and mothers know better.Anj tells me it was a bang, not a whimper. As so many things failed her, Cecelia gathered up all of her strength and kicked really hard, in protest, one last time. It was the internal equivalent of “That one left a mark.” And after that, she was gone.

 How can you not weep at this touching story?

How Evangelicals Invented Liberals’ Favorite Legal Doctrine by Matthew Lee Anderson

How Evangelicals Invented Liberals’ Favorite Legal Doctrine by Matthew Lee Anderson

The value of such an account is that it requires a more complicated assessment about who is to blame for various features of our culture war. Describing the progressive Left as the “aggressors” in the culture war has the dual effect of preserving the Religious Right’s purity and establishing its victim status. Yet Compton makes it clear that on at least one of our deepest culture war fronts—theories of constitutional interpretation—matters are far more complicated than that simplistic narrative allows. The idea that the progressive Left invented the doctrine of the living Constitution ex nihilo in the 1920s plays well, but only at the expense of letting our own history and tradition off the hook.

Good cautionary tale to be careful of what you wish for. Christians can be just as guilty as the Left in pursuing Utopia, with the resulting bad effects.

We can’t save the public school system. We can only save our children from it by Matt Walsh

We can’t save the public school system. We can only save our children from it by Matt Walsh

The proof is in the pudding. The typical young adult in today’s society — aside from being barely sentient, as we’ve already covered — has given up on marriage and religion, has no discernible skills, has been an avid porn user since middle school, and spends ten hours of his day playing video games, watching Netflix, and scrolling through Snapchat and Tinder. This is not only the fault of public school, but it is not a coincidence that the public school system seems dedicated to producing exactly the sort of people it does in fact produce. 

Ouch. He pulls no punches, and I'm afraid he's right. I recently said, "We give students textbooks they don't read, and ask them to answer questions we don't grade, and we give them tests they don't pass. We call that 'education'."

The Conscience of a Valet by Mike Kerrigan

The Conscience of a Valet by Mike Kerrigan

Only now do I realize the question is irrelevant. Only now do I know why Sean smiled. He wouldn’t even have minded getting stiffed. Sean had already made up his mind when he started running. His character wasn’t for sale.

Love this awesome display of character!

Student Riots Slashed Mizzou Enrollment 35 Percent In Two Years. Watch For More by Joy Pullman

Student Riots Slashed Mizzou Enrollment 35 Percent In Two Years. Watch For More by Joy Pullman

Normal people watching this saw some of the most privileged teenagers in the world — Yale undergraduates — scream cursewords and vicious accusations at professors, and their university, purportedly one of the nation’s leading institutions, reward the tantrum-throwers for “improving race relations” after quietly letting the professors go. They saw students chase down and attack an elderly campus guest and professor, giving the professor whiplash, then menacingly thump their SUV and roll concrete traffic weights in their way as they attempted to get away from the bedlam. They watched students at a public college menacingly circle a professor and scream racial epithets at him, march around campus shouting “Black power” with fists pumped, barricade public buildings against police, and hold the college president hostage while presenting him their “demands for racial justice.”
At Pomona College (and elsewhere), students in their demands claimed that the concept of truth is itself racist.

People are noticing that the colleges are cesspools. Some good news for a change!

Trump’s Anti-Cairo Speech by Victor Davis Hanson

Trump’s Anti-Cairo Speech by Victor Davis Hanson

In sum, Trump’s anti-Cairo message is that only a disciplined, strong West — confident in its past and sure of its present success — will deter enemies, appeal to neutrals, and keep friends. Trump should not have had a need to deliver such a self-evident but now rare message. That he alone had the courage to state the obvious — and was criticized for doing so — reminds us that the corrective to our Western malady is seen as the problem, not the cure.

While the article has obvious political implications, the heart of it is a defense of Western Civilization.

Parenting: Are We Getting a Raw Deal? by Rhonda Stephens

Parenting: Are We Getting a Raw Deal? by Rhonda Stephens

We just don’t have the cojones our parents had. We aren’t prepared to tell our kids that they won’t have it if they don’t work for it, because we can’t bear to see them go without and we can’t bear to see them fail. We’ve given them a whole lot of stuff; stuff that will break down, wear out, get lost, go out of style, and lose value. As parents, I suppose some of us feel pretty proud about how we’ve contributed in a material way to our kid’s popularity and paved an easy street for them.

This is spectacular. In education, there is a lot of talk about instilling "Skills for the 21st Century: problem solving, creativity, analytic thinking, collaboration, communication, ethics" (which are really the same skills they wanted in the 19th and 20th Centuries, maybe for all the centuries). Perhaps, schools can only do so much when parents work overtime to undermine those very skills. I'm just as guilty as anyone of wanting to smooth the path for my kids. But how can we raise "problem-solvers" when we never give them a problem to solve?

Yes, They Really Do Despise Their Civilization by Rod Dreher

Yes, They Really Do Despise Their Civilization by Rod Dreher

Don’t misunderstand me here. The West is certainly no utopia, nor ever has been. It is necessary to criticize ourselves constructively, for the sake of growing in virtue. But that is not what these people are doing. By anathematizing any and all who cherish the culture and history of the West, they will ultimately force conservatives to embrace Reaction as the only bastion of resistance to their nihilistic crusade. But they don’t see it anymore than the Social Justice Warriors grasp that their militant illiberalism is calling up and equal and opposite reaction from the people they have demonized.

We are losing our minds!

The Dangers of Arrogant Ignorance by Jonah Goldberg

The Dangers of Arrogant Ignorance by Jonah Goldberg

It is a common human foible to think you know more than you do and to assume that when someone, particularly someone you don’t like, says something you don’t understand that the fault must be in the speaker, not the listener. “It’s a universal law — intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education,” observed Alexander Solzhenitsyn. “An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.”

This is why I teach history. I think it's the single most important subject to creating good citizens!

A Love Letter to America by Annika Hernroth-Rothstein

A Love Letter to America by Annika Hernroth-Rothstein

I know what happens when government trumps the individual, I know what it means when you apologize for the values that built your land, and I have seen the horrific results of a nation equating exceptionalism with brutality and deeming values moronic and obsolete. And I know one thing especially well: If you grow up in a country that doesn’t ask anything of you, you end up living an entire life without asking anything of yourself — expecting nothing, excelling at nothing, with no repercussions for failure and no incentive for growth. And it kills your very soul.

If we don't teach our students love of country and the duty they owe it, we will kill the soul of our country as well as the soul of our kids.

Francis Chan Goes Into Detail With Facebook Employees on Why He Left His Megachurch by Sheryl Lynn

Francis Chan Goes Into Detail With Facebook Employees on Why He Left His Megachurch by Sheryl Lynn

Today, Chan leads a house church movement in San Francisco called We Are Church. There are currently 14 to 15 house churches, he said, and 30 pastors (two pastors per church) — all of whom do it for free. Each church is designed to be small so it's more like family where members can actually get to know one another, love one another and make use of their gifts.

I love everything about Francis Chan's take on church.

A Blue-Collar, Middle-Class Truck Driver’s Rant On America’s Health Care Mess by Matthew Garrnett

A Blue-Collar, Middle-Class Truck Driver’s Rant On America’s Health Care Mess by Matthew Garrnett

I’m a truck driver who spends his weeks away from his family to earn a living wage. Yet if one of us gets really sick, we’re sunk. Dying slowly in America has become a very, very expensive proposition. What’s more is, I fear this has all been concocted by design. The only thing that makes a lick of sense is that this is a gargantuan transference of wealth. It is not robbing the rich to give to the poor. It’s not even robbing the middle-class to give to the poor. It’s robbing the middle-class to keep politicians elected for “doing something” that somehow constantly seems to make the problems worse.

This guy for president!

How Vacation Bible School Drove Millennials Away From Church by Peter Burfeind

How Vacation Bible School Drove Millennials Away From Church by Peter Burfeind

Seen as a critical tool for outreach, the eternal hope is that congregations will recruit little salespeople as kids go home celebrating all the fun things they did at that church up the street. Unchurched parents, meanwhile, with faint memories of grandma’s faithful church attendance, love the free child care. Rarely does a biblical image so singularly justify a church practice as the seed imagery does for VBS, because as an outreach strategy, VBS is usually a flop, but still the chorus echoes across the country, “At least we planted the seed.”

Are VBS weeks planting the seeds of faith or doubt? Interesting iconoclastic take...

Teaching Truth-and Goodness and Beauty by Lindsey Brigham

Teaching Truth-and Goodness and Beauty by Lindsey Brigham

But to teach truth alone is to usher students into a world of firm foundations, pure proportion, and stately symmetry with no color or sound or scent—the world of the fable above. This world lacks all that makes the truth homey and habitable, lovely and lovable; little wonder that students tire of it, poke fun at it, seek to move out of it. It cannot be home for their souls, for it lacks goodness and beauty.

We cannot leave beauty out of our teaching. It is essential to fully forming human beings.

The Threat to Free Speech by Christina Hoff Sommers

The Threat to Free Speech by Christina Hoff Sommers

It is hard to know how our institutions of higher learning will find their way back to academic freedom, open inquiry, and mutual understanding. But as long as intersectional theory goes unchallenged, campus fanaticism will intensify.

She gets the danger we face as we try to shut down free speech.

Addicted to the Apocalypse by Ben Shapiro

Addicted to the Apocalypse by Ben Shapiro

When people who have never seen war begin championing wartime tactics with such alacrity, they bring actual violence closer. But this isn’t The Walking Dead. It’s not a Batman movie. It’s a constitutional republic with a social fabric that frays every time we jettison traditional morality for wartime tactics. I have to agree with Ben about toning down the rhetoric if we are going to actually be more effective.

From Americans to Americans by Kevin D. Williamson

From Americans to Americans by Kevin D. Williamson

If we follow the course we are on, we will see more unhappiness, more violence, more repressive national-security policies, less prosperity, less freedom, and less of anything that looks like the quite-good-enough America we already have.

If the right matches the left's rhetoric, we may get a real, and violent, civil war on our hands. Then our values will not be furthered but there is a real risk we will work against our own values.

The Funeral of a Great Myth ('Popular Evolution) by C.S. Lewis

The Funeral of a Great Myth ('Popular Evolution) by C.S. Lewis

In the science, Evolution is a theory about changes: in the Myth it is a fact about improvements. Thus a real scientist like Professor J.B.S. Haldane is at pains to point out that popular ideas of Evolution lay a wholly unjustified emphasis on those changes which have rendered creatures (by human standards) ‘better’ or more interesting. He adds, ‘We are therefore inclined to regard progress as the rule in evolution. Actually it is the exception, and for every case of it there are ten of degeneration.’ But the Myth simply expurgates the ten cases of degeneration. In the popular mind the word ‘Evolution’ conjures up a picture of things moving ‘onward and upwards’, and of nothing else whatsoever. And it might have been predicted that it would do so. Already, before science had spoken, the mythical imagination knew the kind of ‘Evolution’ it wanted. It wanted the Keatsian and Wagnerian kind: the gods superseding the Titans, and the young, joyous, careless, amorous Siegfried superseding the care-worn, anxious, treaty-entangled Wotan.

Lewis, at his clear-eyed best, slaying the dragon's of a false religion.

Why History Will Repay Your Love by Peggy Noonan

Why History Will Repay Your Love by Peggy Noonan

Knowing history will make you a better person. Mr. McCullough endorses Samuel Eliot Morison’s observation that reading history improves behavior by giving examples to emulate. He quotes John Adams: “We can’t guarantee success [in the Revolutionary War], but we can do something better. We can deserve it.” 

What a wonderful case for the study of real history!

Carpe Diem: U.S. Students Revive Latin and Greek by Nina Sovich

Carpe Diem: U.S. Students Revive Latin and Greek by Nina Sovich

Latin and Ancient Greek, once the purview of elite private and Catholic schools, are showing up in public school classrooms across the country. From 2000 to 2016, the number of students taking the National Latin Exam, has increased roughly 30% to 142,271 from 110,015, according to Clement Testing Services. Nevada and New Mexico showed the biggest recent growth.

So cool!

Sunday Schooling Our Kids out of Church by Tim Wright

Sunday Schooling Our Kids out of Church by Tim Wright

...by segregating our kids out of worship, we never assimilated them into the life of the congregation.  They had no touch points.  They had no experience. They had no connection with the main worship service—its liturgy, its music, its space, its environment, and its adults.  It was a foreign place to them.  And so…once they finished with the kids/or youth program, they left the church.

Definitely something worth thinking about. 

Be Careful The Trend You Set When Removing Confederate Monuments by Brad Schaeffer

Be Careful The Trend You Set When Removing Confederate Monuments by Brad Schaeffer

Think hard before moving forward. You may find yourself more in a more Orwellian place than you ever imagined. Whoever controls the present controls the past. It is a responsibility not to be taken lightly.

As a lover of history, I hate to see it desecrated. No one is perfect, but we lose sight of that when we condemn those of the past for failing to live up to our modern standards. History teaches us to learn from them, not to relegate them to a dustbin.

How College Summer-Reading Programs Are Failing Our Students — and Our Culture by Mark Tapson

How College Summer-Reading Programs Are Failing Our Students — and Our Culture by Mark Tapson

Disturbingly, however, students for decades now have been too often brainwashed into shunning the wisdom of Dead White Males, disconnecting themselves from our common culture, and instead, embracing a historical narrative of oppression and victimhood that molds a false identity for them based on tribal classifications of skin color, class, and gender. That way lies the death of the individual, of culture, and of civilization itself.

Sigh. More of the same insanity. 

Promoting ‘Captain Underpants’ To Reluctant Readers Doesn’t Help Them by Jessica Burke

Promoting ‘Captain Underpants’ To Reluctant Readers Doesn’t Help Them by Jessica Burke

A person’s imagination is a door of sorts to his soul. Michael D. O’Brien says in his book “A Landscape with Dragons” that the imagination is “a faculty of man’s soul that would help him to comprehend the invisible realities.” Children use their imaginations to help them begin to understand good and evil, right and wrong. We need to build our children’s imaginations up with stories of hope, nobility, and courage so that they will have a fountain of goodness to draw from for the trials of life.

Word.

American Retail’s Fast, Furious Decline by Kevin D. Williamson

American Retail’s Fast, Furious Decline  by Kevin D. Williamson

It often has been observed that the real value of a first job is not the money earned in that job: The real value of the first job is that it leads to the second job, and the third...But the decline of retail will mean fewer stores and fewer starting jobs at those stores, constricting the path from unskilled hourly worker to richly remunerated manager. Fewer people will have the opportunity to learn and to demonstrate those basic elements of personal accountability — keeping a schedule, making peace with difficult customers...

Kevin Williams is always original in this thinking and his take on the decline of retail is a case in point.

Your kids bored at school? Tell them to get over it by Laura Hanby Hudgens

Your kids bored at school? Tell them to get over it by Laura Hanby Hudgens

Unfortunately in a consumer-oriented educational system, words such as habit and discipline have all but gone by the wayside. We emphasize concepts like differentiation, higher-order thinking, cooperative learning and data-driven instruction over student responsibilities like organization, perseverance and hard work.

This woman is speaking my language!

Thinking Christianly about the Liberal Arts by Robert Woods

Thinking Christianly about the Liberal Arts by Robert Woods

A human who has reaped the full benefits of a liberal arts education knows how to recognize the true even when swimming in a sea of propaganda. He knows the good even in an age that humorously declares there is no good. The privileged human who has received that rarest of education will know and treasure the beautiful in an age of crass consumption.

Christianity and the liberal arts go perfectly together and is a great antidote for what ails our culture.

The Factor Behind Rising Child Suicide Rates That No One Wants to Talk About By Susan L.M. Goldberg

The Factor Behind Rising Child Suicide Rates That No One Wants to Talk About  By Susan L.M. Goldberg

Research by Jay Belsky in the 1980s showed that children who spent more than 20 hours per week in child care away from their primary caregiver before they were a year old were more aggressive and prone to behavioral problems in preschool.

Could suicide, depression, and ADHD be linked to the increase in child care? Wow

The True Purpose of the University by Heather MacDonald

The True Purpose of the University by Heather MacDonald

A postmodern theorist, the prime product of today’s university culture, would immediately object that there is no such thing as neutral knowledge. But this hyper-sophisticated critique is irrelevant to the problem of widespread student ignorance. There exists a bedrock of core facts and ideas that precede any later revisionist interpretation. They would include, at a bare minimum: the events that led to the creation of the nation-state in Europe; the achievements of Greco-Roman civilization; familiarity with key works of Shakespeare, the Greek tragedians, Twain, Dickens, Wordsworth, and Swift, among others; an understanding of genetics and the functioning of neurons; and the philosophical basis for constitutional democracy, among hundreds of other essential strata of the human geology.

Imagine if universities actually taught knowledge and not victimhood!