Weekly Roundup

Reading, watching, & listening list

The Path to Healing a Nation

For FAIR’s Substack, Julian Adorney offers a reflection on our current political landscape and how Terry Szuplat's latest book can help us understand the path forward.

This is an especially important message given the upcoming presidential election. So many of us are terrified of our political opponents: over 70 percent of partisans across the political spectrum agree that members of the other party represent a "clear and present danger" to our great nation. That terror can transmute into anger, and we can end up bullying and intimidating our fellows across the aisle; either as an outlet for our overwhelming fear, or because we tell ourselves that scorched earth politics are justified as a way to keep Those Awful People™ from winning another election. But this is not Szuplat's message. Szuplat's creed is that we should remain grounded in our common humanity; that the people across the aisle are living, breathing human beings who love their children and want to leave our great country better than they found it. Both in the runup to the election and once we have the results, we should let the reality of our common humanity guide our actions towards reconciliation rather than division. 

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Is it time for a second look at virtual education?

For the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, FAIR Advisor Robert Pondiscio writes about the promise and problems of virtual schooling.

But there are serious questions about the validity of these comparisons, which Kingsbury suggests are based on a flawed understanding of the differences between virtual and traditional students. As Scafidi put it, “When your child is born, what percent of Americans say, ‘I can't wait till they grow up and we send ‘em to a virtual school!’ Probably close to zero, right?” His research shows students in virtual schools are far more likely than their brick-and-mortar school peers to report incidents of bullying, trouble with teachers, or their academic needs not being met at their previous school. “So virtual schools are often for people who need a safety valve,” Scafidi observes.

Gender Clinicians Needs to Stop Politicizing the Research

For her Substack BROADVIEW, FAIR Advisor Lisa Selin Davis writes about the increased politicization of gender medicine research.

In a polarized world, in which each side believes the other is not only wrong but bad, almost all of liberal America believes questioning or objecting to the gender-affirming model is wrong and bad. Politicizing the science hides the truth, and the scientists are acting like politicians.

My advice to the politicians and clinicians who don’t like the bans: Halt transition care temporarily. Conduct follow-up. Gather data. Listen to those who’ve been hurt, as well as helped. Stop censoring. Be completely transparent. Get the whole picture, and let all of us see it, too.

Three Questions That Probably Doom California’s Reparations Push

For National Review, FAIR Advisor Wilfred Reilly writes about the implausibility of a reparations plan.

The last question waits in the shadows: Who’s next? Largely because of some historical actions of General Sherman, Americans think of reparations as a “black thing.” However, at some level, Native Americans probably faced more specific and remediable harms — including broken treaties that had promised tribes certain tracts of land, for example — than any other group across the sweep of American history. Beyond Native Americans, there seems to be no reason other groups might not qualify for a “stimulus package.” This is certainly the case if, as in California, reparations are tethered to the simple reality of past abuses rather than specifically to slavery or war. In that context, descendants of the Appalachian bondsmen who were brought here on “white guinea-men” and who long “owed their soul to the company store,” the Chinese railroad workers bound by some of history’s most dubious contracts and long denied full U.S. citizenship, and the Mexican Bracero Program peons would all seem to have a solid claim. Women might as well. As any feminist friend will gladly remind you, women only obtained the vote in 1920, and rape by husbands was not made nationally illegal until 1993.

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Things Worth Remembering: What Salman Rushdie Doesn’t Want to Talk About

For The Free Press, Douglas Murray writes about how Salman Rushdie’s warning not to take liberty for granted.

“There seems to be a growing agreement, even in free societies, that censorship can be justified when certain interest groups, or genders, or faiths declare themselves affronted by a piece of work,” he observed.

“But great art—or let’s just say, more modestly original art—is never created in the safe middle ground but always at the edge,” said Rushdie. “Originality is dangerous. It challenges, questions, overturns assumptions, unsettles moral codes, disrespects sacred cows, or other such entities. It can be shocking, or ugly, or, to use the catch-all term so beloved of the tabloid press, ‘controversial’. . . . But if we believe in liberty, if we want the air we breathe to remain plentiful and breathable, this is the kind of art whose right to exist we must not only defend, but celebrate. Art is not entertainment. At its very best, it’s a revolution.”

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