Political tribalism

Patrick Kurp, quoting Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), just as sadly relevant today as in 1717:

Men’s very natures are soured, and their passions inflamed, when they meet in party clubs, and spend their time in nothing else but railing at the opposite side; thus every man alive among us is encompassed with a million of enemies of his own country, among which his oldest acquaintance and friends, and kindred themselves, are often of the number; neither can people of different parties mix together without constraint, suspicion, or jealousy, watching every word they speak, for fear of giving offence, or else falling into rudeness and reproaches, and so leaving themselves open to the malice and corruption of informers, who were never more numerous or expert in their trade.

Patrick Kurp, "To Have Something to Say," Anecdotal Evidence, Dec. 31, 2025.

A New Year hymn

Found at Conjubilant With Song:

O God, whom neither time nor space
Can limit, hold, or bind.
Look down from heav'n, Thy dwelling place
With love for humankind.

Another year its course has run,
Thy loving care renew;
Forgive the ill that we have done,
The good we failed to do.

In doubt or danger, all our days,
Be near to guard us still;
Let all our thoughts and all our ways
Be guided by Thy will.

O help us here on earth to live
From selfish strife set free;
To us at last in mercy give
Eternal life with Thee.

Horace Smith, 19th cent.; alt.
Tune Scottish Psalter, 1635

Conjubilant With Song: Another Year Its Course Has Run

Good health to you!

Wassail, wassail, to our town,
The cup is white, the ale is brown;
The cup is made of the ashen tree,
And so is your ale of the good barley.
Little maid, little maid, turn the pin,
Open the door and let us come in.
God be here, God be there,
I wish you all a happy New Year.

Note The Wassail Cup was a wooden cup (one rhyme says "made of the rosemary tree") of spiced ale, apples and sugar, which they drank at the New Year. The word Wassail comes from the Anglo-Saxon Waes hal! be whole! — that is to say, good health to you! Children carried round a bunch of evergreens hung with apples, oranges and ribbons, called a Wessel-bob. "Turn the pin" means "unfasten the latch".

Cicely Mary Barker, The Children's Book of Rhymes

The indispensable virtue

Re-posted from a few years ago. From "Quiet Hope: A New Year’s Resolution.":

.... What Leon Kass calls the “higher cynicism” has left many adrift, without recourse to the traditions of wisdom that might provide direction and guidance for life. ....

Despair is the unforgivable sin, for the despairing conclude that God will not or cannot act, that the universe is fundamentally unfriendly and inhospitable to the true, good, and beautiful, and that humanity has lost the imago Dei. To judge in this way is to deny the goodness of the world and its Creator and sustainer, and that is the sin of all sins. ....

...[T]he most indispensable virtue is hope, which is not optimism or a vague sentiment, but a disposition that all will turn out well in the end. ...I would add that this disposition is convinced that God does not fail to keep his promises. Kass insists, wisely, that hope is not hope for change, but rather an affirmation of permanence, of the permanent possibility of a meaningful life in a hospitable and meaningful universe. ....

My resolution for 2020 is to learn a quiet hope. It would do me well. ....

A good resolution for 2026, too, and every other year.

Quiet Hope: A New Year’s Resolution - Public Discourse

"Children tend not to enjoy hectoring"

From "Kids Deserve Beautiful Books":

By now perhaps you’ve heard that America’s children aren’t interested in reading and aren’t capable of digesting books befitting their grade levels. A litany of articles and national report cards testify to the crisis. But the fight for young minds is being lost even earlier than most appreciate and long before a child sets foot in a school.

The first frontier is children’s literature: chapter, picture and even board books. There are thousands of children’s books that train the ear in language and form the moral imagination, narratives that help children place themselves in the larger human story. But many are now hard to find, and most of the latest titles can be fairly described as awful. ....

American families do still read some good books to young children. But it’s typical now in bookstores to find children’s books browbeating kids about why Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a girlboss or how all the animals will soon be extinct because of human rapaciousness. One title I encountered recently at a store was about an ocelot separated from another cat by an evil wall on the southern border.

The nation’s most prestigious honor for children’s literature, the Randolph Caldecott Medal, once went to powerhouse titles like The Little House and Chanticleer and the Fox, the latter a spin on the Canterbury Tales. In 2024, the winner was an “emotional exploration of being big in a world that prizes small.” In 2021, the Caldecott went to a tale about how “water is the first medicine.” ....

The books aren’t compelling. They teach through lectures about self-confidence or managing emotions, instead of rich stories that stir a heart to ponder characters and lessons. Children tend not to enjoy hectoring, and who can blame them? ....

Alas, most public libraries have abandoned their role in providing equitable access to excellent books. My local library features staff book lists for children, and what’s on offer? Books on “divorce and separation”; books on “mindfulness for kids”; “Feelings: Shelf-Help for Littles”; “funny picture books to make you LOL.” There’s also a list dedicated to gender issues and identities for “younger readers,” including a book about a kid who “has always been a boy, even if the world sees him as a girl.” ....

This Christmas, I’m reading aloud to my family perhaps the best story for children ever written, published 75 years ago this fall: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. I figured the falling snow outside was an evocative moment to invite the children to imagine a world where it’s “always winter but never Christmas.”

Wardrobe is a masterpiece precisely because it doesn’t hammer readers with a simple lesson or obsess over the inner emotional monologues of the four protagonist children, even as they encounter a sometimes frightening world. There’s more to absorb in that short story about emotional courage, justice and a healthy sense of identity than you’ll ever find in today’s hackneyed books for children. (more, but likely behind a paywall)

Kate B. Odell, "Kids Deserve Beautiful Books," The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 22, 2025.

A journey to faith

From another review of Charles Murray's Taking Religion Seriously:

At the heart of Murray’s argument are two points that I find particularly compelling. Like Cardinal Newman and C.S. Lewis (from whom Murray draws abundantly), Murray believes that there is a nonarbitrary “Moral Law” manifest in human conscience that reveals the nature of good and evil and encourages us to “do the right thing.” With Lewis’s help, Murray sees through facile moral and cultural relativism. Even in the midst of genuine diversity of mores and practices, what Lewis called “the Tao” can still be seen. Where on earth have an entire people or culture esteemed in principle faithlessness over loyalty, murder over the obligation not to kill, falsehood over truth, cowardice over courage, rank selfishness over the common good? No, all human cultures at their core see themselves as morally bound and morally guided. ....

Murray has therefore arrived at a position that is not merely theistic but genuinely Christian. With due modesty, he has come to believe that we live in an “intentional universe” and have access to a binding “moral bedrock” amid the chaos of “tumultuous changes in the secular received wisdom about what is right and wrong, good and evil.” He has also come to believe in the reality of sin, as well as in the life-transforming “forgiveness of sins” through the offices of a just and merciful God as proclaimed and made manifest by Jesus Christ. Given Murray’s personal starting point and scientific credentials, the witness of his journey to faith is all the more winsome. One could see him as the antitype and antidote to those, like Richard Dawkins, who speak of a “universe of ‘no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.’” (more)

Daniel J. Mahoney, "Charles Murray, in Good Faith," National Review, Dec. 18, 2025.

Character counts

I liked this review of History Matters, a collection of David McCullough's essays and speeches on the subject.

Many, if not all, of the chapters in this book reinforce the message of the title: History Matters. Along with the ways in which history is important to the body politic, McCullough always emphasizes the personal ways in which we are all enriched by history. For example, in 1995 remarks, he told an audience: “I’m convinced that history encourages, as nothing else does, a sense of proportion about life, gives us a sense of the relative scale of our own brief time on earth and how valuable that is.” This book is a cri de coeur for a discipline too often neglected by undergraduates. The rise in historical illiteracy was very concerning to McCullough....

Again and again, we see the importance of character for McCullough. It was not only seemingly one of his criteria for writing a biography, but it is perhaps the chief lesson he hopes we will draw from history. He writes that “character counts in the presidency more than any other single quality. It is more important than how much the president knows of foreign policy or economics, or even about politics.” McCullough once began working on a biography of Picasso, but ceased his labors because Picasso was not an admirable person. In contrast, McCullough was well-known for his admiration of Harry Truman, Abigail Adams, and George Washington, among others. ....

In all his work, David McCullough’s approach to the past demonstrated the possibility of clear-sighted patriotism. Not every American was a hero, Trumbull’s paintings were inaccurate, George Washington’s false teeth included the teeth of other people, Teddy Roosevelt’s childhood asthma attacks were likely caused by anxiety—but you can still respect character when you see it and appreciate courage and believe in values that can transcend times. You do not have to deny that Harry Truman had ties to the Pendergast machine in order to appreciate Truman’s strengths. This clear-sighted patriotism is why McCullough could maintain some optimism about America’s future. The good parts of our past were not built on perfect people. .... (more)

Elizabeth Stice, "Why History Matters," Mere Orthodoxy, Dec. 19, 2025.

God bless you, every one!

 

Remembering Christmas past

From Dickens' Pickwick Papers.

...[N]umerous indeed are the hearts to which Christmas brings a brief season of happiness and enjoyment. How many families, whose members have been dispersed and scattered far and wide, in the restless struggles of life, are then reunited, and meet once again in that happy state of companionship and mutual goodwill, which is a source of such pure and unalloyed delight; and one so incompatible with the cares and sorrows of the world, that the religious belief of the most civilised nations, and the rude traditions of the roughest savages, alike number it among the first joys of a future condition of existence, provided for the blessed and happy! How many old recollections, and how many dormant sympathies, does Christmas time awaken!

We write these words now, many miles distant from the spot at which, year after year, we met on that day, a merry and joyous circle. Many of the hearts that throbbed so gaily then, have ceased to beat; many of the looks that shone so brightly then, have ceased to glow; the hands we grasped, have grown cold; the eyes we sought, have hid their lustre in the grave; and yet the old house, the room, the merry voices and smiling faces, the jest, the laugh, the most minute and trivial circumstances connected with those happy meetings, crowd upon our mind at each recurrence of the season, as if the last assemblage had been but yesterday! Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days; that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth; that can transport the sailor and the traveler, thousands of miles away, back to his own fireside and his quiet home! ....

Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, Chapter 28.

If we don't believe, what is it we disbelieve?

From Dorothy L. Sayers, "The Greatest Drama Ever Staged":

.... What think ye of Christ? Before we adopt any of the unofficial solutions (some of which are indeed excessively dull)—before we dismiss Christ as a myth, an idealist, a demagogue, a liar or a lunatic—it will do no harm to find out what the creeds really say about Him. What does the Church think of Christ?

The Church's answer is categorical and uncompromising, and it is this: That Jesus Bar-Joseph, the carpenter of Nazareth, was in fact and in truth, and in the most exact and literal sense of the words, the God "by Whom all things were made." His body and brain were those of a common man; His personality was the personality of God, so far as that personality could be expressed in human terms. He was not a kind of dæmon or fairy pretending to be human; He was in every respect a genuine living man. He was not merely a man so good as to be "like God"—He was God.

Now, this is not just a pious commonplace; it is not commonplace at all. For what it means is this, among other things: that for whatever reason God chose to make man as he is—limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death—He had the honesty and the courage to take His own medicine. Whatever game He is playing with His creation, He has kept His own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that He has not exacted from Himself. He has Himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair and death. When He was a man, He played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worth while. ....

Now, nobody is compelled to believe a single word of this remarkable story. God (says the Church) has created us perfectly free to disbelieve in Him as much as we choose. If we do disbelieve, then He and we must take the consequences in a world ruled by cause and effect. The Church says further, that man did, in fact, disbelieve, and that God did, in fact, take the consequences. All the same, if we are going to disbelieve a thing, it seems on the whole to be desirable that we should first find out what, exactly, we are disbelieving. Very well, then: "The right Faith is, that we believe that Jesus Christ is God and Man. Perfect God and perfect Man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting. Who although He be God and Man, yet is He not two, but one Christ." There is the essential doctrine, of which the whole elaborate structure of Christian faith and morals is only the logical consequence. ....

Dorothy L. Sayers, "The Greatest Drama Ever Staged," Creed or Chaos? 1938.

"Just another Mary"

From The Wall Street Journal a few years ago:

The first person ever to hear that Jesus is the Son of God was a low-income teenage girl in an obscure backwater of the Roman empire. She went by the most common name for Jewish women of her time and place: She was just another Mary. But then she claimed an angel had appeared to her and told her she would give birth to the Son of God. From the perspective of both Jews and Romans in the first century A.D., her story was completely unbelievable. How has it lasted for 2,000 years?

Today, Mary’s claim to have met an angel is part of what makes her story hard to believe. We imagine angels like the fairy on top of the Christmas tree, only bigger, so Mary’s story feels like a fairy tale. But angels in the Bible aren’t remotely fairylike. They’re terrifying messengers from God. ....

“Do not be afraid, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end!” (Luke 1:30-33).

.... Doubtless Mary had a lot of questions for the angel, but she asked just one: “How will this be, since I’m a virgin?” Mary knew the facts of life. The title “Son of God” could technically just have meant the Messiah. Perhaps she thought that Joseph, her betrothed, would be the father of this longed-for King. But then the angel dropped another bomb:

“The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God” (Luke 1:35).

.... But why would God become a man? Why would he live in poverty and die in agony? Why would the King of all creation come not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many? According to the Christian story, it was because of love for every human being, rich or poor, weak or strong, enslaved or free. He paid the price for human sin—a word we may not choose to use but a reality we hit upon when we bewail injustice in this world and wonder why it seems so hard to fix. Christians believe that the Son of God was born to die, so that all who trust in him could live as sons and daughters of God—wrapped up more tightly in his love than the newborn Jesus was wrapped up by Mary in his swaddling clothes.

When Mary met the angel, she was a no-name girl from a disempowered people in a seemingly inconsequential place. Today, if you worry that you might be insignificant—unknown, unloved and unimportant in this world—perhaps this Christmas you will hear her message with fresh ears. If she was right about her son, then you are worth the birth and life and death and resurrection of the Son of God. (more)

Rebecca McLaughlin, "When Mary Met the Angel," The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 24, 2022.

Sabbath

Before his murder, I had paid little attention to Charlie Kirk. I largely dismissed him as just another part of Trump world. So I was surprised to learn that the book he wrote during his final year was non-political and about the Sabbath. An excerpt was recently published at The Free Press, introduced by his wife, who wrote, "...the Sabbath is the one commandment that if you choose not to do it, you are the one who’s missing out on the blessing. Not God. Even if you don’t believe in God, you still have to rest." From "Charlie Kirk’s Final Message to America":

If taking one day off makes you anxious or ashamed, then you must ask, What am I really worshipping? No idol condemns rest like the idol of productivity. This is the golden calf of the modern age. We bow to output, chase metrics, and sacrifice our joy on the altar of efficiency.

But our identity must be anchored in something far greater than toil. Work is good—it reflects God’s creative nature. But rest is holy—it reflects His sufficiency. The same God who calls us to labor for six days also commands us to rest for one. That’s not weakness; that’s worship. ....

In Exodus, we’re called to rest because God rested. In Deuteronomy, we’re commanded to rest because only slaves work without stopping. God links Sabbath to freedom. To resist the Sabbath is, in essence, to flirt with slavery again—not the kind imposed by Pharaoh, but the kind we willingly chain ourselves to through unrelenting busyness, performance, and obligation. ....

Rest is not about perfection—it’s about intention. The goal isn’t to follow a legalistic rule, but to cultivate a sacred rhythm of freedom and trust. Sabbath is not a burden. It’s a gift. And like all good gifts, it requires humility to receive and courage to protect. ....

We’ve been conditioned to believe that our worth is tied to our availability, our output, our visibility. But Sabbath teaches us that your value is not measured by your responsiveness or productivity. It’s measured by your belonging—your rootedness in God’s love.

When you power down your phone, you’re not “missing out.” You’re entering a different kind of time, what the rabbis call “sacred time.” Time that doesn’t drain you but restores you. You begin to see things more clearly—your thoughts settle, your heart slows, your conversations deepen. And most importantly, you remember who you are apart from the endless stream of noise.

Don’t be afraid to turn off your phone. You’re not falling behind—you’re catching up to what matters most. The people in front of you. The presence of God. The peace you’ve been craving. .... (more)

Charlie Kirk and Erika Kirk, "Charlie Kirk’s Final Message to America," The Free Press, Dec. 8, 2025.

St. Nick

Of all the portrayals of the modern St. Nicholas,  Santa Claus — this is my favorite. From the cover of St. Nicholas magazine, December, 1916:

The GOP and MAGA

I've been interested in politics since I was in elementary school. I studied politics in college and graduate school. I taught high school students politics and international relations for thirty-five years. So I've been interested in the study of the subject, but also involved in the practice of it for a long time. Less so for the last ten years or so. I consider myself a Reagan conservative. That means I'm not at home in today's GOP. Nick Catoggio in "The Invaders" describes two GOP factions, with one of which I am not comfortable. The other worries me even more:

Broadly speaking, the current GOP coalition consists of two groups, according to the Manhattan Institute report. Roughly two-thirds of the party are “Core Republicans,” loyalists who’ve been voting for Team Red since Trump’s first run in 2016 or earlier. But a sizable minority of 29 percent are “New Entrants,” people who voted Republican for president for the first time only recently.

Those groups have very different beliefs.

Not about everything. Both strongly support Trump, both favor “peace through strength,” both want to deport illegal immigrants, both overwhelmingly think Western society is too “feminine.” But on practically everything else, the latecomers to the party are conspicuously distinct. And not in a good way: “The … New Entrant bloc is more likely to express tolerance for racist or antisemitic speech, more likely to support political violence, more conspiratorial, and—on core policy questions—considerably more liberal than the party’s traditional base.”

One of the splashiest results came when respondents were asked about common conspiracy theories involving six topics: the 2020 election, the September 11 attacks, the moon landing, the Holocaust, whether vaccines cause autism, and whether COVID leaked from a lab. Among Core Republicans, just 11 percent believe in at least five of those six. Among New Entrants, 34 percent do.

The gap was even wider on the question of whether political violence is sometimes justified. Core Republicans split 20-80; New Entrants split … 54-46. The newbies are also far more prone to hold prejudiced opinions (or to admit it, at least). Fully 32 percent cop to expressing racist views versus 8 percent in the Core Republican group. Reading that might lead you to assume that New Entrants are a horde of Bircher-type radical reactionaries galvanized by Trump’s ascendance in the GOP. Not so. They’re actually more likely than Core Republicans to support increasing high-skilled immigration and less likely to favor deporting illegals; banning diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives; and fighting for “traditional values.” They’re far more liberal on whether children should be eligible to receive transgender medical procedures, with 49 percent opposed to the practice versus 83 percent of Core Republicans. And they’re much more likely to favor raising taxes over cutting spending, splitting 48-47 on that question compared to 26-71 among longtime party stalwarts.

All told, compared to traditional conservatives, they’re a considerably better bet to be kooks, bigots, and, er, progressive. They’re also “younger, more racially diverse, and more likely to have voted for Democratic candidates in the recent past,” in the Manhattan Institute’s words. .... (more)

Nick Catoggio, "The Invaders," The Dispatch, Dec. 5, 2025.

I'm back

After a series of very expensive mistakes with my computer—all of which were due to my not knowing the consequences of the choices I made—I am in the process of rebuilding, restoring, and carefully reinstalling various pieces of software. I lost almost all of my Windows documents, unless there is a backup somewhere I haven't yet found. And I'm having to re-collect my email Contacts list. I fear I have lost connections that I value. I've learned a lot, not least having become aware of all the things I can do on my phone in the absence of a PC.