The Facebook deputy and the Twitter sheriff

I often foolishly read comments that I know will annoy me. I almost always refrain from commenting myself. About online behavior:

Like you, I’ve been watching friends and acquaintances go after one another online with the same recycled takes on the latest predictable—or conveniently manufactured—controversy. Each current event becomes a referendum on national decline. Any headline can morph into amateur constitutional law. Takes on DEI, foreign policy, vaccines—nothing is too complex to be resolved in 280 characters, preferably accompanied by moral urgency and a link to a partisan source no one will read.

The cynic in me asks: Who appointed you? Who authorized you—doomscroller, catechized by cable news—to determine when immigration becomes immoral, how election security is assessed, which historical narratives deserve canonization, or which media outlets are to be labeled heretical? What, exactly, qualifies someone for this level of cultural adjudication?

One possible answer: Dwight K. Schrute.

Rainn Wilson’s portrayal of Dwight on The Office is brilliant precisely because Dwight is so convinced of his own authority—and so oblivious to its absence. ....

But here’s the uncomfortable possibility: what if we’re more like Dwight than we think? What if we’re not in on the joke—but are instead unwittingly the punchline?

To be clear, many issues matter deeply. Addressing them is not the problem. It may be morally necessary. The problem is something closer to the Dunning–Kruger effect: low ability overestimating itself; armored with confidence, baptized in moral language, and amplified by platforms that reward certainty and drama rather than wisdom. What we are witnessing in public is not merely division but deformation—of judgment, discourse, and the virtues required for social cohesion.

This is the rise of the Facebook deputy and the Twitter sheriff: self-nominated authorities armed with fragments of information and an audience just large enough to feel consequential. ....

It may offend modern sensibilities to say this, but it remains true: not all opinions are created equal. People share equal dignity, but public judgments are not equally credible. If everyone is an expert, no one is. We can be sincere and yet wrong. Passionate and ignorant. Some speak because they have something to say; others speak because they simply have to say something. .... (more)

The whole essay is an enjoyable (to me anyway) and instructive read.

Justin D. Detmers, "We Are All Dwight Schrute Now: The Rise of the Facebook Deputy," Mere Orthodoxy, March 9, 2026.

What about evolution?

A recent article at Mere Orthodoxy describes the results of a "Pew Religious Landscape Survey" on American beliefs about evolution. The choices offered were:

1. Humans have evolved over time due to processes such as natural selection; God or a higher power had no role in this process. (“pure evolution”).
2. Humans have evolved over time due to processes that were guided or allowed by God or a higher power. (“intelligent design”).
3. Humans have existed in their present form since the beginning of time. (“creationist view”).

Breaking it down:

The article, "What to Learn from the Decline of Young Earth Creationism" intends to be read as analysis rather than advocacy. But it does advocate tolerance among Christians of varying views:

It seems that a central argument of some young-earth creationists is this: “If you deviate from the panoply of interpretations we offer on Genesis 1-11, it is because you are succumbing to secularism and downgrading the authority of the Bible.” But, as soon as you find Christians who deviate from their interpretation, but have demonstrably not been animated by secular science nor have abandoned their high view of Scripture’s authority or the historicity of the miraculous…then the argument starts to fall apart. If young-earth creationists want to regain ground on this issue with the wider culture, it might, paradoxically, come from being more open-minded towards other Christians who disagree with them.

When Copernicus and Galileo strove to demonstrate that the earth revolved around the sun, not the other way around, the church was able to provide sophisticated (if not convoluted) Biblical and naturalistic arguments to refute the claim. But they were wrong. And, in time, the Church realized this and adopted heliocentrism. This wasn’t a concession that science had more authority than God's Word, but an admission that they had simply interpreted the Bible incorrectly.

This realization did not diminish what God’s Word told us about the rising and setting of the sun or the foundations upon which the earth rested, but it moved us closer to seeing what the author originally intended when he used those word pictures. Similarly, if we approach Genesis 1 assuming that its primary function is to refute figures like Darwin, we will miss the meat and marrow of what the Divine Author intended for us to receive from His Word and therefore may fundamentally misunderstand His world. (more)

Marc Sims, "What to Learn from the Decline of Young Earth Creationism," Mere Orthodoxy, March 6, 2026.

The loud and troublesome insects of the hour

This post from some time ago has recently reappeared in the "popular posts" section of this blog. I appreciate the reminder, especially in times like these.

From Farnsworth's Classical English Metaphor: Edmund Burke in 1790.

Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field; that, of course, they are many in number, or that, after all, they are other than the little, shriveled, meager, hopping, though loud and troublesome, insects of the hour.

Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790.

Gateway to history

I have commented before about historical novels I have enjoyed. I dislike those that take liberties with what is actually known about real people and events, but the good ones don't. The Telegraph presents a selection of "The 20 greatest war novels." The writer, himself the author of historical fiction, introduces his choices with reference to one of my favorite historical novelists:

As a boy, I devoured the historically accurate and side-splittingly funny Harry Flashman novels by George MacDonald Fraser, which track the disgraceful adventures of the notorious Victorian soldier-cad as he skulks and whores his way through the major conflicts of the 19th century. They stayed with me. And so shortly before writing my first novel, Zulu Hart, set during the Anglo-Zulu conflict of 1879, I interviewed Fraser. “Do you ever manipulate historical facts to suit your plot?” I asked.

“I try not to,” he replied. “The trick with real historical figures is to be honest and stay true to their spirit.” One of the few times he broke his rule was not being “quite fair” to Otto von Bismarck, the architect of German unification, in Royal Flash, the second of the Flashman series. “But he was such a swine anyway,” explained Fraser, “that I figured that was all right.”

To me, a good war novel should do exactly this: remain faithful to history while taking canny artistic licence to create convincing characters. It should rattle along at a decent pace and contain universal truths, jeopardy (no outcome is inevitable), and act as a gateway for readers to explore “proper” history. ....

Most of the twenty fictions are more serious than this one, but Fraser's ability to entertain made learning history fun:

Flashman (1966) by George MacDonald Fraser

Presented as the discovery of the long-lost Flashman Papers (a literary device that even deceived some American academics at the time), this hilarious, superbly researched book chronicles the army career of the notorious bully from Thomas Hughes’s popular Victorian novel Tom Brown’s School Days. Expelled from Rugby School for drunkenness, young Harry Flashman joins the infamous Lord Cardigan’s 11th Hussars and later becomes a reluctant secret agent in Afghanistan. Somehow our cowardly anti-hero emerges from the disastrous Retreat from Kabul with his skin intact, his reputation enhanced and his eye for the ladies unimpaired.

Saul David, "The 20 greatest war novels," The Telegraph, Feb. 28, 2026.

"That'll be the day..."

Re-posted:

Philip Jenkins on why we are certain March 1 was the day the patron saint of Wales died and why "death days" were so important:

St David's, Pembrokeshire, Wales

  

March 1 is the feast of David, the early medieval bishop and missionary who became patron saint of Wales. We actually know strikingly little of David apart from that date, of March 1, but I’m going to suggest that represents a good deal in its own right. .... 

A death about 590 is a reasonable guess, but we could easily slip fifty years either way. Oddly though, we can be sure that he died on March 1, whether in (say) 532 or 632 AD. Through the Middle Ages, hagiography was a vast area of cultural effort, when almost any outrageous achievements could be credited to a saint. (No, David did not really make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where he was ordained by the Patriarch). The one thing that we know these writers did keep faithfully was the death day — the date not the year — because that marked the hero’s ascension to glory, the promotion to heaven. In a particular church or community, those days were critical, as marking the annual celebration of the beloved local saint.

Argue as much as you like, then, about precise years, achievements, martyrdoms and areas of activity, about the number of lepers cured and tyrants opposed — but don’t quarrel with death days.

Death days.

It’s an interesting term. I know my birthday. I also know that at some future point I will die, and that that will befall on a particular date. Let me be optimistic and assume that it will be a distant event, say on July 23, 2049. Each year, then, I pass through July 23 happily unaware that I am marking my Death Day, surely as significant a milestone as my birthday, but not one I can ever know with certainty until it occurs. Nor is it something we really ever contemplate, as we all know, in our hearts, that we are immortal.

I suppose though that it is something we can learn from those medieval monks, that the Death Day is not just a key event in anyone’s life, but literally the only one we can take with absolute confidence.

THAT’LL BE THE DAY THAT I DIE