Weekly Roundup
Reading, watching, & listening list
A Case for Christian Liberalism
For FAIR’s Substack, Julian Adorney reviews Jonathan Rauch’s Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain With Democracy.
Rauch argues that "thick" Christianity can fill the holes in our lives that liberalism cannot. He holds up as an example the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, whose members go on mission trips, volunteer, care for each other, and spend hours every week pouring over theological texts. They live in close-knit communities whose members rely on each other and freely give to each other, all wrapped in a faith that offers them meaning and hope for what happens after they die. All of this helps them to live happy and joyful lives. People living happy and joyful lives, in turn, are much less eager to wage war on the liberal order in which they live.
The Problem with ‘Harvard Derangement Syndrome’
Harvard professor Steven Pinker tells Quillette podcast host and FAIR Advisor Jonathan Kay why Donald Trump’s campaign against his university’s ‘woke’ policies goes too far.
Transgenderism Won’t Let Girls Say No
For the Wall Street Journal, Leigh Ann O’Neill and Jessica Hart Steinmann write about two girls in an Oregon track meet who tried to protest when forced to run against a boy.
Too often, this injustice hides behind slogans like “be kind” and “be inclusive.” But it isn’t kind to lie to girls or inclusive to force them to act agreeable while their achievements are taken by someone who doesn’t belong in their lane. And it isn’t only a policy failure—it’s a moral failure by adults who know better and who countenance injustice out of malice or cowardice.
This movement doesn’t only undermine fairness—it reduces womanhood to a costume. It says a boy in spikes belongs on a girls’ podium with a girl who’s trained for six years. But truth still matters. Under federal law, especially Title IX, no school receiving public funding may allow males to compete in female sports.
Music after DEI
For The New Criterion, Don Baton presents an agenda for classical music in the wake of DEI.
But ever the optimist, I believe that correcting the missteps on the foregoing list can form the foundation for a post-DEI agenda for classical music. In that spirit, I am setting forth eight agenda items that I believe our industry should pursue to heal its self-inflicted DEI injuries and return to health and relevance. C. S. Lewis famously wrote that “if you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.”
Trump Is Right About Affirmative Action
For The Atlantic, Thomas Chatterton Williams writes about why Trump is right about affirmative action—but for the wrong reasons.
The cliché that Trump has the wrong answers to the right questions has again proved convincing. His administration’s campaign against affirmative action, DEI, and civil-rights law more broadly has been ill-conceived and poorly executed. Weaponizing a reactionary politics of white grievance and hobbling some of the world’s greatest universities because of a personal vendetta is appalling. So, too, is trampling on the laws that have made American society more equal. But it is also undeniable that systematically failing to treat people as individuals doesn’t help Black or Latino people—or anyone else, for that matter. It has entrenched the rancid notion of innate racial hierarchy, and ultimately rendered the nation weaker and more divided.
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