Surrendering judgement

Gary Saul Morson, on a consequence of short (or no) historical memory:

A zombie is haunting America, the zombie of communism. Pronounced dead and discredited after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it is back. ....

...I cannot help wondering: How is this possible? Do these people really have no problem with the history of the ideology they’re claiming? With Joseph Stalin’s Gulag that took the lives of millions, his artificially induced famine that deliberately starved several million peasants, and the secret police’s form of interrogation that routinely included torture? Do they actually want to revive Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution and the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror that claimed the lives of a quarter of Cambodia’s population?

Three quarters of a century ago, questions like these led to one of the most important volumes to emerge during the Cold War. Now largely forgotten, The God That Failed (1949) was once so widely read that the volume’s title became a catchphrase for any movement that attracted intellectuals to a quasi-religious ideology claiming infallibility.

The God That Failed brought together several prominent European and American writers who had once either been members of the Communist Party or sympathetic to the Soviet Union, but had eventually grown disillusioned. Each writer explained what initially attracted him to, and what eventually repelled him from, communism. The star-studded cast included Arthur Koestler, an Hungarian-born British writer now best known for his brilliant novel about communism, Darkness at Noon; French novelist André Gide; the Italian Ignazio Silone, author of Bread and Wine; British poet Stephen Spender; and two Americans, journalist and author Louis Fischer, and African American writer Richard Wright. ....

The supreme virtue of the Soviet Union was called partiinost (partyness). Partyness begins with the readiness to give up one’s own judgment—not only about politics but also about people, including one’s most intimate friends—whenever it conflicts with the judgment of the Party. Slogans and formulas became the means to this end, wielding hypnotic power when repeated over and over again, especially in the presence of others doing the same thing. This approach puzzled the authors of The God That Failed: They wanted to conclude on their own that communism is true, but they were told that one must only see what the Party saw and think what it thought. ....

Several of The God That Failed contributors remark on a particular moment that should have given the game away. When Silone, as part of an Italian delegation to the Soviet Union, asked to read a document he was told to condemn, he was told: “You haven’t yet understood what politics are all about.” Surprised at how the word “Trotskyite” was thrown around, Wright asked a communist man: “‘If you found me reading Trotsky, what would that mean to you?’ ‘Comrade, you don’t understand,’ he said in an annoyed tone. That ended the conversation.”

They had not yet “understood” the Leninist idea of truth: There is no such thing as neutral, objective truth, irrespective of political interests. Truth was whatever was useful for the Party to regard as true. “This way of thinking canceled out all experiential objections,” Spender explains: “The thousands of people in prison camps.... Do these exist? Whether or not they do, it is bourgeois propaganda to maintain so. Therefore one must deny that there are any slave labor camps in Russia,” and that’s all there is to it. .... (more)

Gary Saul Morson, "The Return of the God That Failed," The Free Press, July 24, 2026.

Dangerous dreamers

Patrick Kurp begins his post today quoting Samuel Johnson:

How small of all that human hearts endure

That part which laws or kings can cause or cure!

Still to ourselves in every place consign’d,

Our own felicity we make or find.

Kurp continues:

A reader complains about the absence of politics at Anecdotal Evidence, and I thank him for noticing. It’s not a compelling subject. Busybodies with big ideas, unafraid to impose them on others, are dangerous. In Reflections on a Ravaged Century (2000), Robert Conquest — poet and historian, Jeremiah of Communism and its evils — writes:

[I]t is no part of its culture that a government elected by a bare majority, or even by a fairly large majority, is thereby empowered to totally reconstruct the social and political order by sacrificing the minority. That great political philosopher Michael Oakeshott notes that for some people government is ‘an instrument of passion; the art of politics is to inflame and direct desire.’ For others, which is to say, in general, for those who have a traditional regard for the unity and continuity of a culture, the business of government is something different: ‘to restrain, to deflate, to pacify, and to reconcile; not to stoke the fires of desire, but to damp them down,’ on the grounds that, as Oakeshott puts it, ‘the conjunction of dreaming and ruling generates tyranny.’

Conquest is quoting Oakeshott’s Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (1962; rev. 1991). .... (more)

A contemporary example: "I Was in the DSA. Here’s What They Really Believe"

Patrick Kurp, "The Conjunction of Dreaming and Ruling," Anecdotal Evidence, July 21, 2026.

Five cups a day...

Good news! Perhaps my healthiest beverage:

There is good news for coffee drinkers: Up to five cups of the brew a day are safe for most adults and may even have benefits for heart health, according to a new scientific statement by the American Heart Association.

Downing between about three to five 8-ounce cups of joe daily, or around 400 milligrams of caffeine, is linked to a lower risk of heart disease, heart failure, stroke and Type 2 diabetes, according to the AHA’s statement, which was published Monday in the journal Circulation. ....

The potential benefits of coffee, however, can be diluted or eliminated by the stuff many people add to it, the authors said, like sugar, syrups and creamers with a lot of saturated fat. .... (more)

Andrea Petersen, "Five Cups of Coffee a Day Is Fine for Most Adults, Heart Association Says," The Wall Street Journal, July 20, 2026.

Drifting away

Ryan Burge, who does statistical research about religion in America, was curious about why individuals become "nones." Once it seemed politics was the most important reason, but now not so much. The quotations below are from his conclusions based on the research. The article includes statistics and additional charts like the one above. Burge:

In the late 1990s, about 15% of liberals were nones compared to 5% of conservatives—a clear divide, but not an impassable chasm. That’s no longer true. Now, 43% of ideological liberals say they have no religious affiliation compared to just 12% of conservatives. A ten-point gap has tripled in size, and there’s no evidence these trend lines will converge anytime soon. ....

Among Catholic “stayers,” 39% are Republicans and 36% are Democrats. For Protestants who stuck around, those numbers are 47% and 29%, respectively. But among those who switched from Protestant to Catholic or Catholic to Protestant, a clear pattern emerges: switchers inside Christianity are consistently the most Republican of any subgroup examined here. ....

And here’s where I had a “holy cow” moment. The types of nones who are the least Democratic are those who have been non-religious their entire lives. Only 38% say they are Democrats, 42% identify as politically Independent, and 20% align with the GOP. In contrast, among ex-Christians who become nones, roughly 45% say they are Democrats—seven points higher than the “always nones.”

This is fascinating because it suggests a mismatch between what drives people to leave Protestantism or Catholicism and what it means to have never been religious at all. People who actively exit a faith tradition aren’t just drifting; they’re making a decision, and that decision appears correlated with a particular political worldview. Leaving a church isn’t religiously neutral; for many people, it seems to be a political act.

The “always nones” tell a different story. They weren’t pushed out of anything; they simply never had a religious identity to begin with. Without that experience of exit, there’s no corresponding political signal. They’re secular by default rather than conviction, and their politics reflect that—more Independent, less reliably Democratic, and harder to categorize. ....

...[A]mong those born in the 1990s and 2000s who left Christianity behind, only about a third identify as Democrats. The political premium that came with religious exit has nearly vanished. These younger “dechurchers” don’t look like political refugees; they look more like people who simply stopped going—gradually, quietly, without it meaning much ideologically one way or the other. ....

The story of the nones, in other words, has changed. The first wave left with conviction. The second wave just drifted out the door. (more)

Ryan Burge, "The First Wave Left with Conviction. The Second Wave Just Drifted," Graphs About Religion, July 16, 2026.

Mistaking suspicion for sophistication

Bryan A. Garner agrees that conspiracies do happen, but:

For some people, a bad outcome is never just a bad outcome, and a coincidence is never just a coincidence. There must always be a hidden hand behind it, coordinating events that, on the surface, look random or trivial.

Not long ago, this instinct seemed like harmless eccentricity. Conspiracy theorists lived at the margins, alongside doomsayers and end-time prophets. Most people treated them as curiosities rather than participants in serious argument. Today, though, that boundary has eroded. Conspiracy thinking hasn’t just survived into the present — it has moved into the mainstream of political and cultural life, shaping how large numbers of people interpret ordinary events. ....

Conspiracy thinking didn’t become mainstream because people suddenly became irrational. It became mainstream because habits that once signaled intellectual seriousness — skepticism, independence, distrust of authority — have mutated into forms that are less disciplined and less self-correcting.

Consider skepticism in its healthier forms. A skeptic is supposed to withhold belief until evidence justifies it. But conspiracy thinking often inverts that discipline. Official explanations are treated as suspect by default, while unofficial ones are treated as credible precisely because they’re unofficial. The burden of proof is quietly upended. Instead of asking what would make a claim true, people ask what would disprove it — and the claims are structured to resist disproof.

A healthy mind doesn’t begin with suspicion; it arrives there. It starts with a provisional willingness to accept ordinary explanations, then shifts toward doubt only when specific features of the evidence justify it — persistent anomalies, independent corroboration of misconduct, patterns that resist simpler accounts. Suspicion is an earned response, not a default posture, and it remains tethered to standards that allow it to be revised or abandoned when contrary evidence appears. Conspiracy thinking breaks from this discipline by treating suspicion of traditional sources as the starting point and then insulating that mindset from the kinds of evidence that would ordinarily dispel it.

What makes this especially strange is that conspiracy thinking often presents itself as the most skeptical stance available. Yet it routinely demands greater leaps of faith than the explanations it rejects. ....

Conspiracy thinking isn’t going away. It’s too deeply rooted in how human beings respond to uncertainty, scale, and loss of control. The real question isn’t whether it will persist but what conditions we might normalize around it. A society that mistakes suspicion for sophistication, and disbelief for intelligence, may feel more critical, but it’s actually becoming easier to persuade with less and less evidence. (more)

Bryan A. Garner, "The Heart of Conspiracy," National Review, June 11, 2026.

Hell on earth

In a previously posted and increasingly relevant review of the writings of Mao and Robespierre, John Kekes described why seeking heaven on earth results in something more like hell. Why immanentizing the eschaton doesn't, and never will, work:

Maximilien Robespierre led the phase of the French Revolution called the Terror. It lasted a little over a year. He gave the orders that resulted in beheading, drowning, shooting, or burying alive about 20,000 men, women, and children. Mao Zedong ruled China between 1949 and his death in 1976. During his tenure, his followers murdered, on a low estimate, 20 million people. These two men were among the handful of great mass murderers of modern times, in the same class as Hitler, Lenin, Pol Pot, and Stalin.

Both Robespierre and Mao seized control of and radicalized revolutions that they did not start. In each case, the revolution destroyed the previous corrupt regime and replaced it with hell on earth. Instead of their predecessors' venality, Robespierre and Mao sought ideological purity, and they had a cold impersonal hatred of those whom they suspected of not sharing their crazed theories. This hatred brought them to murder people indiscriminately, not for what they did but for what they were. Innocence was no part of Robespierre's or Mao's vocabulary; the notion that punishment should be for real crimes, both men thought, was subversive of the grandiose project of achieving happiness for all. Their ideologies dictated the only way to reach that lofty goal; those who disagreed with their ideologies became enemies of mankind, deserving only extermination. ....

In view of the past, present, and no doubt future horrors that ideologues will inflict on the world, it’s important to understand their mentality. What are they thinking when they order the killing of untold numbers of innocents? Don’t they see the bodies? Are they devoid of all feeling for human suffering? The answer is that they view the facts through the grotesquely distorting prism of ideology. They see, not mangled bodies, but dead enemies; not innocent victims, but obstacles to universal bliss. And in themselves, they see not monstrous evildoers, but benefactors of humanity. 

They can believe such travesties because their ideologies offer a misguided explanation of why the world is as it is, rather than as it ought to be. Often, as everyone knows, we fail to get what we deserve; good people come to bad ends, and bad ones die in comfort. Justice doesn’t reliably prevail; reason doesn’t always guide key decisions; and even the best-laid plans may fail, thanks to stupidity, indifference, and selfishness. Ideologies explain why this happens and, more important, they promise that human life can escape these defects. The world isn’t as it should be? Blame bad political arrangements—poverty, injustice, fear, and poor education. The way to make the world better, therefore, is to change those bad political arrangements radically. Only force—revolution—can bring that radical change about. After a revolutionary cleansing, people will no longer be corrupt, evil will disappear, and justice and universal happiness will prevail. ....

If ideologues were reflective, they would realize that bad people are what cause bad political arrangements. Ideologies rest on the mistaken assumption that changing political arrangements will change people. But human nature remains what it always was; only the ways it expresses itself change. Good and bad motives, virtues and vices, excellences and defects—all have characterized and will continue to characterize human beings. The ideologues’ efforts to change human nature aren’t just futile; they’re also calamitous, since they’re marked by the very flaws that they seek to eradicate. The gruesome crimes of Robespierre, Mao, and other despots testify to this truth. .... (more)

 John Kekes, "Words to Die By," City Journal, Feb 20, 20007

“If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?”

Robert Hasler is a Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) pastor participating in a forum considering the future of his denomination and, more generally, of Christianity in America. We "Boomers" are passing from the scene. Succeeding generations seem less attached to denominationalism, but the "none's" seem to have peaked. How should the Church approach the new environment? In "Antifragile Ministry" he suggests that Psalm 11 shows the way:

Whereas the “spiritual-not-religious” were primarily fascinated with Christianity as a means of preserving what they liked about the current world order, I want to suggest to you that our future might be one of “religious-not-spiritual” men and women (and men in particular) fascinated with Christianity because of its potential to fix what they perceive are modern liberalism’s failures. ....

Whereas the “spiritual-not-religious” were drawn by the prospect of achieving personal moral integrity; the “religious-not-spiritual” are far more interested in Christianity’s prospects for civilizational integrity and renewal. ....

Just yesterday I preached from Psalm 11 to our small church plant in Abilene, and it struck me afterwards how much the passage speaks to this challenge in particular.

“If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” This is the question posed to David — one that expresses the sense of hopelessness in the face of physical, emotional, moral, spiritual, and, yes, civilizational uncertainty. It’s not that dissimilar to the question Gen Z is asking. ....

Importantly, Psalm 11 doesn’t besmirch utilitarian motivations for seeking refuge in God. It just won’t let you stop there. Listen to the last verse: “For the Lord is righteous, he loves righteous deeds, the upright shall see his face.”

Psalm 11 directs us past the important desire for earthly safety and justice and peace and order and to that which all things are properly ordered — to the ultimate telos of human life itself: the beatific vision, to see our God and Maker face to face, without a veil, and to enjoy him forever. .... (more)

Robert Hasler, "Antifragile Ministry," Mere Orthodoxy, July 7, 2016.

Laughter

This reminds me of many pastors I have known, including several relatives. A story about two Christian preachers, Spurgeon and Cuyler:

Rev. Theodore L. Cuyler, the celebrated Brooklyn divine, was visiting the famous London preacher, Rev. Charles H. Spurgeon. After a hard day of work and serious discussion, these two mighty men of God went out into the country together for a holiday. They roamed the fields in high spirits like boys let loose from school, chatting and laughing and free from care. Dr. Cuyler had just told a story at which Mr. Spurgeon laughed uproariously. Then suddenly he turned to Dr. Cuyler and exclaimed, "Theodore, let’s kneel down and thank God for laughter!" And there, on the green carpet of grass, under the trees, two of the world’s greatest men knelt and thanked the dear Lord for the bright and joyous gift of laughter.—Pacific Baptist

The Sabbath Recorder, 1 February 1915, on page 157, at the foot of the right column.

"Indivisible, with liberty and justice for all"

The first few sentences descibe my experience, but about a decade earlier. From Caitlin Flanagan, "The Indivisible America":

.... Each week there was a different Pledge of Allegiance monitor, and that person walked importantly to the front of the room and stood beneath the flag. The monitor’s hand was placed (more or less) over the monitor’s heart, a signal for all of us to look alive. A single clap rang out as 22 small hands clapped (more or less) over 22 hearts. The monitor started, and we all joined in.

We looked at the flag and said the Pledge, and it was similar to saying prayers you’ve learned by heart. Any single day might not have an effect, but day after day, the words soaked into me. They taught me that I was an American; that America was a good place; and that the flag—our flag—was to be respected.

This wasn’t taking place in some deep red state; this was Berkeley, California, in 1968. ....

People often felt then the way we sometimes feel now: that the country would unravel altogether, victim of more hatred than one nation could stand. That assumption was then as it is now: juvenile. America is good at hanging on until better days come around. It’s written throughout our history. ....

The first version of the Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1885 by George Thatcher Balch, who had been a Union officer himself and went on to write a book about teaching patriotism to children. Seven years later, it was revised and promoted by a Baptist minister named Francis Bellamy. Why would this weird little sentence (6-year-olds pledging themselves to the state?) have seemed so important that it quickly spread to American public schools? Because it was written a few decades after the end of the Civil War, and it included the word that so few children understand but that everyone who said it each morning remembers all of their lives: indivisible.

When I see our flag flying, at the post office or the library or any kind of civic building, it means that America is still steady, that the world is still in its place.

I grew up around plenty of people who believed the flag’s presence was oppressive, possibly even fascist. But the time to worry isn’t when you see the American flag flying at parks and DMVs and hospitals. The time to worry is when you don’t see any American flags at all. .... (more)

The illustration by N.C. Wyeth is from a 1918 schoolbook. I'll fly my flag on the Fourth because of the principles expressed in the words of the Pledge:

"I PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE TO THE FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

AND TO THE REPUBLIC FOR WHICH IT STANDS,

ONE NATION UNDER GOD, INDIVISIBLE,

WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL."

Caitlin Flanagan, "The Indivisible America," The Free Press, July 2, 2026.

Another Glorious Fourth

Allen C. Guelzo:

‘How long ago is it—80-odd years?” Abraham Lincoln asked the crowd that had marched to the White House to celebrate the twin Union victories in the Civil War, at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. When he stood on the portico of the executive mansion to ask that question on July 7, 1863, it had actually been 87 years “since on the Fourth of July for the first time in the history of the world a nation by its representatives, assembled and declared as a self-evident truth that ‘all men are created equal.’ ” Now, he wondered, wasn’t there something almost providential to be seen in how “a gigantic Rebellion...which is an effort to overthrow the principle that all men were created equal,” had met with two stunning defeats on that anniversary? ....

“When we were the political slaves of King George, and wanted to be free, we called the maxim that ‘all men are created equal’ a self-evident truth,” Lincoln wrote in 1855. No longer. Although the Fourth of July “has not quite dwindled away,” he wrote, now it is good for nothing more than “burning fire-crackers!” As he said in 1857, what was the point of celebrating the Fourth if the Declaration was now treated as “mere rubbish—old wadding left to rot on the battlefield”?

But then, in quick order, came Lincoln’s election to the presidency in November 1860, the secession of the slave states to form the Southern Confederacy, and the attack on the U.S. garrison in Fort Sumter. When Lincoln called Congress into special session in 1861 to deal with the emergency, the date he selected for its assembling was July 4. And no wonder, since the Confederacy represented a direct repudiation of everything the Fourth of July once stood for. The war, he said at the special session, “presents to the whole family of man, the question, whether a constitutional republic, or a democracy—a government of the people, by the same people—can, or cannot, maintain its territorial integrity, against its own domestic foes.”

No wonder Lincoln was so jubilant in 1863 when news of the Union triumph at Gettysburg (on July 3) and the surrender of the Confederate citadel of Vicksburg (on July 4) clustered around the Fourth. The rebellion that denied “all men are created equal” had now “turned tail and run,” as Lincoln said during his July 7 speech. But the ultimate vindication of the Fourth of July would come four months later, at the dedication of the national cemetery at Gettysburg for the Union dead of the battle....

From the moment of the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln made it clear that Americans trace their origin not to a race, a heritage or a religion, but to the creed enunciated on the Fourth of July—that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The close of the Civil War was, in large measure, Lincoln’s victory. But it was also the victory of the Fourth of July, and that victory is with us still. (more)

Allen C. Guelzo, "Abraham Lincoln Remade the Fourth of July," WSJ Opinion, July 1, 2026.

Half educated

I taught secondary U.S. History in public schools for thirty-five years. When I started, we did teach subject matter that slighted things like racism, labor strife, and the more unsavory aspects of American colonialism. It got better, though. Textbooks improved, but, more importantly, teachers learned, and teaching became more balanced. But then the pendulum swung too far, became far too cynical...and it hasn't swung back yet. Howard Zinn was part of the problem — his textbook, A People's History of the United States, became for many the textbook. From WSJ Opinion today: 

...[I]ts message could be summarized in two words: America stinks. The author believed most history textbooks offered only a whitewashed “nationalist glorification of country,” he told the New York Times. In response, he oversimplified the story in the opposite direction. America’s Founding Fathers? Just wealthy white men guarding their fortunes. Abraham Lincoln? A half-hearted abolitionist who was concerned about protecting “the interests of the very rich.” World War II? Sure, the Nazis were bad, Zinn concedes, but the U.S. and her allies didn’t really “represent something significantly different.”

A People’s History reads like a cross between a children’s book and a prosecutor’s brief. America’s downtrodden masses are uniformly brave and heroic; its leaders are one-dimensional villains. The author catalogs our nation’s every moral failure and unfulfilled promise. Every American should know about the evils of slavery and other stains on our past. But Zinn’s indictment scrupulously avoids the positive parts of the story. Other historians, including many on the left, slammed the book’s lack of context or nuance. "A People’s History is bad history, albeit gilded with virtuous intentions,” wrote historian Michael Kazin. “What he did was take all the guys in white hats and put them in black hats, and vice versa,” added Princeton’s Sean Wilentz after Zinn’s death in 2010. ....

[A]dherents to Zinn’s ideology flatter themselves that they bravely see through the pro-American propaganda on which they were raised. That’s a joke. The era of simplistically patriotic textbooks ended decades ago. It takes no courage to spout the anti-American platitudes of A People’s History or the 1619 Project. That worldview is now the default for most half-educated young Americans.

Recently, this America Worst sentiment has grown white hot on the left. ....

But the populist right marinates in anti-Americanism as well. Tucker Carlson boosts vile claims that the U.S. government engineered the 9/11 attacks even as he defends Vladimir Putin. Podcast bros revive Zinn’s old debate about whether the Allies were the real villains of World War II. At both extremes, America’s enemies get a more sympathetic treatment than the U.S. itself does. .... (more)

James B. Meigs, "Howard Zinn’s Horrible History," The Wall Street Journal, July 2, 2016.

Law, not partisanship

My impression is that those who passionately disagree with Supreme Court decisions do so usually because of their policy preferences, not the law. And that is true of partisans on both the left and the right. In "The Greatness of the Constitution Shines in the Birthright Citizenship Case," law professor Jed Rubenfeld considers the arguments made by both the majority and the dissenters in that case, as well as some of the other cases decided recently. If you are inclined to celebrate or deplore the consequences of the decisions, but not consider the reasoning by which they were found, I commend his summary of the arguments.  Toward the end, he writes:

I hope that even those who disagree will see Barbara as a victory for the country and the Constitution. Democrats have declared a constitutional crisis since Trump’s first days in office. They ceaselessly portray the Supreme Court as kowtowing to the administration, giving the president unlimited power to run roughshod over constitutional rights.

Barbara shows once again that American constitutionalism is strong. There is no crisis. As it did in the tariffs case, the Court stood against the president on one of his signature measures. And it did so on a matter of core constitutional principle. I have no doubt that the administration will obey the Supreme Court’s command, as it has in every case thus far.

Since Monday, the Court has issued a spate of important decisions, and for anyone not blinded by partisanship, those decisions show the justices working diligently and effectively to honor the rule of law.

Yesterday, in the mail-in ballots case, the Court again rebuffed the president, allowing states to accept ballots up to five days after the election. The right was furious. In Slaughter, the Court embraced the concept of the “unitary executive,” giving the president the power to fire any agency commissioner at will. The left was infuriated. But in Cook, the Court refused to let the president define as he pleases the kind of “cause” that justifies the firing of a Federal Reserve member. Critics will tabulate only whether the Court came out their preferred way. But all these decisions were rooted in close readings of statutory and constitutional language. I don’t agree with all these decisions, but I see law in them, not partisan politics, and that is a great thing for the country.

On Tuesday, in addition to Barbara, the Court ruled that states may ban biological males from competing on girls’ sports teams, and it found that certain campaign finance restrictions applied to political parties violated the First Amendment. For myself, the trans cases are a victory for common sense and for girls, while the campaign finance case mistakenly conflates money with speech. But even when we disagree with the Court, I hope—on this last decision day of the Supreme Court’s term, and as we celebrate 250 years of American independence—we can see and respect the genius of American constitutionalism. .... (more)

Jed Rubenfeld, "The Greatness of the Constitution Shines in the Birthright Citizenship Case," The Free Press, June 30, 2026.

Reading Narnia again

I have begun to re-read the Narnia books, beginning, of course with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, not, as the current collections begin, with The Magician's Nephew. Alister McGrath, in my opinion, argues persuasively for for the publication order, with LWW first:

.... The most significant difficulty concerns The Magician's Nephew, the last in the series to be written, which describes the early history of Narnia. To read this work first completely destroys the literary integrity of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which emphasises the mysteriousness of Aslan. It introduces him slowly and carefully, building up a sense of expectation that is clearly based on the assumption that the readers know nothing of the name, identity, or significance of this magnificent creature. In his role as narrator within The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Lewis declares, "None of the children knew who Asian was any more than you do." But anyone who has read The Magician's Nephew already knows a lot about Asian. The gradual disclosure of the mysteries of Narnia—one of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe's most impressive literary features—is spoiled and subverted by a prior reading of The Magician's Nephew.

Equally important, the complex symbolic structure of the Chronicles of Narnia is best appreciated through a later reading of The Magician' Nephew. This is most helpful when it is placed (following the order of publication) as the sixth of the seven volumes, with The Last Battle as the conclusion. .... (Alister McGrath, C.S. Lewis - A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet, 2013.)

The first set of the Chronicles I bought (I own several), published by Macmillan in 1966,  used the original order. At the bottom of the cover above, it reads "Book 6 in the Chronicles of Narnia." At some point, that changed. In the more recent collection I own, published by HarperCollins, the Narnian chronology is used, with Magician first.

"Something more than nostalgia"

From Ben Mankiewicz in "Hollywood’s Golden Era Still Has Lessons for America":

Think of Hollywood’s Golden Age as the era from 1930, when the full takeover of sound technology in movies made silent films essentially obsolete, to 1959, when the collapse of the studio system became inevitable.

To call this a critical three-decade era in our collective history is a vast understatement. It encompasses the Depression and World War II; the postwar reentry into civilian life of more than a million men who’d seen combat; the creation of the economic engine that transformed American life in the back half of the 20^th century; the start of the Cold War; the seismic shift into Dwight Eisenhower’s America and the expanse of a suburban society; and of course, the dawn and rapid ubiquity of television. And it’s fair to say that most Americans, certainly tens of millions, came to frame what all this meant to us by what they saw in the movies. ....

Everybody like me who loves these movies from Hollywood’s Golden Age knows they’re flawed. The pervasive racism—both in the depiction of black characters and the denial of opportunity to black actors—was grotesque. The sexism—narrowing women to, in broad terms, characters who needed either to be saved for their virtue or slayed for their villainy—was an embarrassment (and we’re not even discussing what happened if actresses had the audacity to turn 40).

While we need to be open about those cracks in the framework of classic films, we should never lose sight of what continues to make these movies so relevant, so watchable, whether they’re 50, 75, or 100 years old. In addition to giving us a desperately needed sense of our civic responsibility to the nation and to each other, they function, I believe, as vitally important hybrid documentaries. ....

Their documentary-adjacent status rests in the details surrounding the characters: their clothes and hats, their manner of speech, the cadence of their humor, the cars they drive.

You want to know what it looked like to leave Oklahoma during the Depression and drive your family to California? Watch The Grapes of Wrath. How did a U.S. senator orchestrate a filibuster to make a point about decency and honesty in 1939, and what did the chamber look like? Watch Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. How did small-town America react as the country let out its collective breath after World War II? Check out It’s a Wonderful Life. If you’re interested in the same thing but in a bigger city, then see The Best Years of Our Lives. That’s our shared history, right there in black and white, and sometimes in color. ....

There is something worth recalling about that time. Something more than nostalgia. Something magical. We understood there was a foundation to what we were, what we stood for, what we were willing to fight for. That foundation is still there, but I think we all feel it giving and hear it creaking.

I’m not saying watching Casablanca, Sullivan’s Travels, The Ox-Bow Incident, Red River, 12 Angry Men, Out of the Past, The Narrow Margin, and Letter to Three Wives is the solution. But it certainly wouldn’t hurt. (more)

Ben Mankiewicz, "Hollywood’s Golden Era Still Has Lessons for America," The Dispatch, June 26, 2026.

"Envy has displaced gratitude"

From Patrick Kurp's post yesterday:

I encountered this in [Sir Thomas] Browne’s “A Letter to a Friend” (written in 1665, published posthumously in 1690):

Let Age, not Envy, draw Wrinkles on thy Cheeks: be content to be envied, but envy not, Emulation may be plausible, and Indignation allowable; but admit no Treaty with that Passion which no Circumstance can make good. A Displacency at the good of others, because they enjoy it, altho we do not want it, is an absurd Depravity, sticking fast unto humane Nature from its primitive Corruption ...

Again: “which no Circumstance can make good.” Politics today seems driven overwhelmingly by envy. People want what others have, whether or not they worked for them or otherwise deserve to possess them. Envy has displaced gratitude for what is already ours.

Patrick Kurp, "An Absurd Depravity," Anecdotal Evidence, June 23, 2026.

Self esteem or self-respect?

I've been reading Theodore Dalrymple on Agatha Christie and the Metaphysics of Murder. The book is really a close reading of only one of Christie's books, but rewarding nonetheless. The result is a series of essays reacting to her descriptions of characters and conversations. He finds Christie well ahead of her time. Miss Marple's conversation with a doctor treating young offenders who believes the main thing they lack is self-esteem causes the author, who himself served as a prison doctor for many years, to offer this:

The cult of self-esteem was reminiscent of the facilely optimistic method of Emile Coue in the early part of the twentieth century, according to which someone who was worried about his health had only to repeat "Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better" to feel much better. But Coue's method was at least harmless, unless it induced people to disregard symptoms of a dangerous but curable illness, and may even have done some people some good, whereas the cult of self-esteem is pernicious. The quality of self-esteem is but tissue-paper thickness away from that of self-importance. It demands nothing of anybody but an ability to puff out his chest and preen himself mentally if not physically (the latter requiring some discipline), while demanding, as of right, the recognition by others of the exceptional value of his person. It is essentially solipsistic: there need be no objective correlative for its occasion. It is a quality that accords with the psychology of the so-called real me, that inner person of goodness and perfection that subsists when all the dross of the merely apparent me or outer me — the one who is selfish, lazy, coarse, dishonest, cruel, and so forth — is disregarded or stripped away, The beauty of the real me excuses everything in advance, and by doing so increases the quantity of what there is to excuse.

A certain degree of self-confidence is necessary for any kind of achievement, but it ought always to be balanced by a certain degree of self-doubt, like the clown or jester who reminded the emperor that he was mortal, like all humans. And self-esteem must always be contrasted with self-respect. The former is inward-looking and self-regarding, the latter outward-looking and other-regarding. The former requires nothing but an attitude, the latter a discipline. If one compares the mode of dress of each, self-esteem suggests that others must accept me as I am, however scruffy that may be, and not judge by appearances. It gives me license to take the line of least resistance and make no effort, in dress as in everything else. Self-respect, on the other hand, imposes on me the duty to see me as others might see me. It requires me to straighten my tie, which might be uncomfortable, and polish my shoes, which is a bore. This may all go too far, but virtues can always go too far and become vices. Self-respect in dress may descend into dandyism, which comes full circle to self-esteem. Self-respect carried too far may impose an inflexible and tyrannical etiquette, breach of which may induce hasty and cruel adverse judgment of others. But if you walk in the street of almost any city in the Western world, you will see how far we are from self-respect carried too far, and how near to universal self-esteem we are, carelessness of dress being almost de rigueur. Here I am, everyone seems to be saying, you must accept me as I am. There is a certain hypocrisy in this equality of carelessness, however: it disguises the fact that no one wants to be equal in all other ways, for example, in the amount of money that he has.

Theodore Dalrymple, Agatha Christie and the Metaphysics of Murder, Criterion Books, 2026, Chapter XIII, pp. 123-124.

A drift from decency?

To what extent do poll results reflect what people actually believe? From "What Do Americans Think When No One Is Watching?":

On Monday, The Free Press launched The Honesty Project, a series of surveys we’re conducting through November to understand what our fellow Americans truly believe—and the size of the gap between those true beliefs and their publicly stated views. To pull it off, we’ve partnered with Populace, a leading, Boston-based think tank. The key to our surveys is a system that asks sensitive questions, along with a group of less controversial ones, letting respondents signal their answers without stating them directly. (You can read more about the full methodology here (pdf).)

Not surprisingly, we find a massive gap between what people say publicly and what they believe privately. In public, for example, 28 percent of Generation Z believe that we “may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.” In private, that number rises to 39 percent. It’s only away from prying eyes that many young Americans reveal how far they’ve drifted from decency. ....

[T]his support for political violence wasn’t the only finding to cast doubt on our shared faith in American democracy, and in one another. Our poll also found that 62 percent of Americans privately believe the greatest threat to our nation comes from their own countrymen. That number rises to 86 percent among liberals, and 74 percent among Democrats and independents.

Meanwhile, we find that Republicans who question the integrity of elections may not be doing so sincerely. In public, only 40 percent of Republicans and 37 percent of conservatives agree that U.S. elections are free and fair. Yet in private, the share rises to 61 percent among Republicans and 57 percent for conservatives.

The brightest spot in our results regards the question of patriotism. Seventy-one percent of Americans say they are proud of their country in public. Best of all, the share of people expressing national pride rises in private among nearly every group. .... (more)

And, also from The Free Press, including the results of the first survey:

Political correctness, party loyalty, and other factors drive many respondents to hide their true feelings. About two-thirds of Americans believe that most people lie in political surveys, according to one 2020 poll.

As a result, politicians and the media constantly misread the actual views of the public. Shallow spasms of groupthink are mistaken for deep shifts in the popular will. And real, slow-moving changes in American values are often missed entirely.... (more, scroll down for the survey results).

The Editors, "What Do Americans Think When No One Is Watching?," The Free Press, June 21, 2026.

"Cool the day before yesterday"

Upon encountering a Pride month notice board for a Church of England parish, Carl Trueman wonders, "What Is the Church of England For?":

H. Richard Niebuhr famously denounced the liberal church of his day, summarizing its theology in a single withering sentence: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.” What he did not note—but perhaps implied—is that such theology typically manifests in worship that is infantile, offering a pastiche of the wider culture’s predilections that would qualify as kitsch, if its purveyors had the wit to see it as such. The progressive church is always a poor imitation of what the world considered cool the day before yesterday. ....

Another irony is that churches that try to ape the tastes of the day in order to speak to the times typically fail to do so. They simply offer the standard fare of the surrounding culture in a cringe-inducing religious idiom and often with an enthusiasm that aspires to be shocking but is merely out-of-date. ....

Further, under the guise of prophetic courage, these churches are actually demonstrating cowardice, preferring to affirm the fashionable falsehoods of the sexual revolution to the truths of the faith they claim to adhere to. Christianity does not affirm the values of the earthly city, left or right, and then seek to blend them seamlessly into celebrations of the most disruptive moment in human history—the incarnation of God himself. Instead, it points beyond, to things above, to something better. Rather than calling people back to a true vision of humanity, progressive churches offer the fraudulent answers of a culture that will do anything but face up to its mythology—the cult of human autonomy, expressed most pungently in the sexual revolution. This is not the gospel of Christ; it is the mendacity of the age. .... (more)

Carl R. Trueman, "What Is the Church of England For?," First Things, June 18, 2026.

Soccer or football?

Alan Jacobs follows the sport. I don't, but then I don't pay much attention to sports at all (apart from the Packers). The arrival of the World Cup has, though, impinged upon my consciousness. Jacobs has found the Brits' commentary on the games particularly annoying. From "Pot, Kettle, Soccer, Football":

I just saw a Brit on BlueSky mocking “an actual respected American online news commentator” for pronouncing “Macron” to rhyme with “Ramone.” My first thought: Pronounce the word “Paris” for me. .... Brits can look down their noses at Americans for many things, but when it comes to mispronouncing foreign words, they are the undefeated world champions. ....

...I have had to stop consulting the Guardian’s World Cup coverage. I typically find their soccer coverage the best available, but these days virtually all their commentators feel the need to belittle everything American at every opportunity — they seem to be under some compulsion to shoehorn the belittlement in even when it’s irrelevant....

...[H]aving the World Cup in the USA has, inevitably, revived British hatred of the word “soccer” — which is a British word. And isn’t it also odd that the regular denunciations of stupid Americans for saying “soccer” aren’t accompanied by denunciations of the Irish for doing the same thing? (In Ireland “football” means “Gaelic football,” so, like Americans, the Irish need a different word for what’s going on now in the World Cup.) As Paul Rouse, a historian of sport at University College Dublin, has pointed out,

The word [soccer] can be found in the title of a book written by one of the iconic personalities of the sport in England – Jimmy Hill – who published Striking for Soccer in 1961.

In England, for most of the 20th century, the words “soccer” and “football” were used interchangeably. Perhaps the best example of this is the title of the former Manchester United manager Matt Busby’s autobiography in 1973, Soccer at the Top: My Life in Football.

On another level, of 75 Annuals listed in a compendium as being published for the children’s market in England between 1949 and 1995, 29 contained the word “soccer” in the title and 32 contained the word “football”.

It wasn’t until the 1990s that the British use of “soccer” began to disappear. The Brits mocking Americans for using the word are ignorant across both space and time. ....

Thanks to all this, it has been great fun to see all these foreign visitors being fascinating and delighted by a country they’ve been taught to despise: I could choose a hundred such stories, but here are one, two, and three. It’s been rather heartwarming to hear this refrain from so many strangers: “I feel like I’ve been lied to all my life about America.” ....

Alan Jacobs, "Pot, Kettle, Soccer, Football," The Homebound Symphony, June 20, 2026.

"Miserable offenders"

In "Confessing Sin, Then and Now," an Anglican pastor dislikes some modern liturgical innovations. I think he's right. The "updates" are unnecessary, and the changes inferior.  On the "Confession of Sin":

For the General Confession of Sins at Morning and Evening Prayer [BCP, 1662], we are given this prayer:

Almighty and most merciful Father, We have erred, and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep, We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts, We have offended against thy holy laws, We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, And we have done those things which we ought not to have done, And there is no health in us: But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us miserable offenders; Spare thou them, O God, which confess their faults, Restore thou them that are penitent, According to thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesu our Lord: And grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake, That we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life, To the glory of thy holy Name. Amen.

This is an all-time classic, and parts of it are now being used by other denominations besides Anglicans. It is both theologically well-rounded and liturgically sonorous. .... At Morning and Evening Prayer, the 1979 BCP has this confession of sins:

Almighty and most merciful Father, we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep, we have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts, we have offended against thy holy laws, we have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done. But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, spare thou those who confess their faults, restore thou those who are penitent, according to thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesus our Lord; and grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake, that we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life, to the glory of thy holy Name. Amen.

The language here is largely unchanged. It’s got “thy” and “thou.” There’s even still the potentially tongue-tying alliteration of “spare thou those.” None of that was a problem. But what’s different? There’s nothing added. But there is something missing.

Miserable Offenders. That’s been cut. The older BCPs read, “Have mercy upon us miserable offenders.” Now it’s just “have mercy upon us.” We can only presume that the 1979 American liturgists read C.S. Lewis’ essay on this line and chose to do the opposite of what he recommended. Fearful of misunderstanding or perhaps simply because they no longer felt quite so miserable, that line had to go. It was a tragedy then, and it’s a tragedy that has stuck with Anglicans, even of the more conservative variety.

Another cut is the removal of the line “there is no health in us.” Lurking behind this is surely the same sort of combination of confusion about the meaning of the words and possibly also a disbelief in the full reality of sin. There’s gotta be “some health” in us, right? A full humiliation and abasement is simply off-putting to the modern American mindset. .... (more, and some of the other modifications are worse)

Steven Wedgeworth, "Confessing Sin, Then and Now," Mere Orthodoxy, June 17, 2026.