The latest on the podcast network: on Creedal Catholic, Casey Chalk and I continued our five-part series on TULIP with a discussion on Unconditional Election, and Josh Goldman and I continued our deep dive into Breaking Bad.
Good Monday!
I don’t know about you, but I always have a hard time at this point in the year: our midsummer holiday (July 4th) has come and gone, and now we have many weeks of grueling hot temperatures and no holiday reprieve—the doldrums of summer. And this year, the pandemic has forced the cancellation of many summer vacations (not to mention the closure of public pools!). Here’s to cooler temperatures for you and fun summer activities in which you can rest and decompress.
Speaking of pools, here’s a natural mountain pool that I happened upon on my Mt. Elbert excursion. Living in Colorado is 👍👍.
One Big Thing.
A couple of weeks ago in this space I talked about the narrowing of the Overton Window and the rapidly growing—in reach and ferocity—urge to “cancel” voices that dissent from the New Orthodoxy.
This past week Thomas Chatterton Williams, a black man who is known for rejecting the neat racial narratives of mainstream discourse, spearheaded a letter in Harper’s Weekly warning that “the free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted.”
A Letter on Justice and Open Debate by multiple authors (Harper’s Weekly)
This stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vital causes of our time. The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation. The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away. We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom, which cannot exist without each other. As writers we need a culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk taking, and even mistakes. We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences.
Signing the letter were 153 leading journalistic, cultural, and literary figures, including Noam Chomsky, Margaret Atwood, Steven Pinker, Dexter Filkins, Caitlin Flanagan, Atul Gawande, Salman Rushdie, J.K. Rowling, Damon Linker, Yascha Mounk, and Matthew Yglesias. Most (if not all) of the signatories are from the political left—some classical liberals, some progressive ideologues, but all concerned about the chilling effects of our current discourse.
Predictably, the signatories’ political and ideological bona fides were not enough. More than one hundred and sixty journalists published an open rebuke of the first letter in a rambling screed that reaches almost 3,000 words (the original letter was just over five hundred words—shorter than the average newspaper opinion editorial). This second letter focuses mainly on three things: 1) the original letter’s lack of detailed examples of “cancel culture” (I’m not sure what level of detail was expected in only 500 words), 2) the supposed hypocrisy of the original letter’s authors, and 3) the “transphobic” tendencies of some signatories. In other words, it’s not a substantive response, which is impressive given its length.
That isn’t to say that I think everything in the second letter is worthless. Its main contention—certainly worth exploring and rectifying—is that minority writers have been and frequently are sidelined or systematically disadvantaged by their employers. But this letter’s focus on these ideas smacks of whataboutism, in which the response to the claim that “the free exchange of ideas is threatened” is not really a response at all. Rather, the second letter is essentially saying, “nothing you’ve written is demonstrably untrue, but minority writers everywhere are being systematically oppressed—and also, you people are bad!”
Hilariously, one of the signatories on the response letter was also a signer of the first letter—Kerri Greenidge recanted her signature on the first letter as soon as the backlash started. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa…
One Interesting Thing.
Several of the signatories on the Harper’s Weekly letter above, including Yascha Mounk and Thomas Chatterton Williams, have launched Persuasion, a̶ ̶r̶e̶w̶r̶i̶t̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶J̶a̶n̶e̶ ̶A̶u̶s̶t̶e̶n̶ ̶n̶o̶v̶e̶l̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶1̶8̶1̶7̶ a writing project led by self-described philosophical liberals that aims to “defend the values of a free society.”
The Purpose of Persuasion by Yascha Mounk (Persuasion)
But the erosion of values like free speech and due process within mainstream institutions does put philosophical liberals at a unique disadvantage. It is difficult to convey just how many amazing writers, journalists, and think-tankers—some young and some old, some relatively obscure and others very famous—have privately told me that they can no longer write in their own voices; that they are counting the days until they get fired; and that they don't know where to turn if they do. (Astonishingly, a number of them are far enough to the left to have supported Bernie Sanders in the primaries.) . . . But, if this situation helps to explain the collective lack of confidence among the advocates of a free society, it also points the way to an obvious solution. Instead of lamenting our loss of control over the establishment, we should follow the lead of other movements that have successfully built their own counter-establishment institutions.
That is the goal I had in mind in starting Persuasion.
I’m intrigued! If you’re interested, you can sign up here. You can also hear Yascha talk more about the project on this podcast.
Also interesting: Mounk’s piece in the Atlantic on the very real and human costs of the new Wokeism.
One Tech Thing.
The viral sensation TikTok has been in the news because of its extensive access to a user’s on-device data and the company’s ties to China. The Department of Defense has been implementing policy limiting or restricting its use since late last year; Wells Fargo just announced a ban on the app, and Amazon did the same before reversing its decision on the same day. A New York Times technology reporter has endorsed the theory that the fear of TikTok is simply racist and xenophobic (this is complete nonsense); that same reporter argues that losing the app would be nothing short of “devastating” for many young people:
To which I say: if our young people are indeed that dependent on a piece of cellphone software, let’s get rid of it. And while we’re at it, let’s ax the anxiety factories known as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
PSA: Ben Thompson and James Allworth of Exponent discussed TikTok on their podcast last week. Ben’s point was really interesting—the biggest concern about TikTok is not the data it collects but the algorithms it uses to choose what content to serve you. For example: at the height of the pro-democracy Hong Kong protests, Ben was only able to find one TikTok post about the protests (and that one post was pro-PRC and anti-protester).
One Historical Thing.
Ferdinand Foch and the Principles of War by Michael Shurkin (War on the Rocks)
You can count on War on the Rocks to consistently have the best writing on war, strategy, and armed conflict—both modern and historical. This is no exception:
. . . at the heart of Foch’s thinking about war is a Romantic interpretation of “modern” warfare that owes a lot to Clausewitz as well as ambient French Romanticism, which encouraged rejection of materialist or positivist philosophies and valorized spirit and will . . . he was a conservative Catholic who lost his first teaching job at the École de Guerre as part of an anti-clerical purge, and he was almost certainly anti-Dreyfus. But like many conservative Catholics he nonetheless saw in the revolution an important world-historical event, which he celebrated in his Principles as a triumph of the spirit. It was the birth of France as a nation, which he conceived of in terms of a spiritual community in a manner akin to the Romantic Johann Gottlieb Fichte, as opposed to the more rationalist and positivist Ernest Renan. The revolution was also, to borrow a late 20th-century term, a revolution in military affairs. The nation at arms, supercharged by spirit, swept aside the professional armies of the old monarchical regimes of the 18th century.
One Fun Thing.
I went down a little bit of a YouTube rabbit hole last week after I read that Vox article about optical illusions, and found this really fun video on audio illusions. My favorite part starts at 2:09 and illustrates the Shepard Tone Illusion.
Presented without comment.
Okay, sorry—just a brief comment. This reminds me of the time that the New York Times said that Easter was when Christians celebrate the “resurrection of Jesus into heaven,” or when (my personal favorite), they described the staff of John Paul II as a “crow’s ear.” (The correct term is is crozier.) Or when they misunderstood a Notre Dame priest’s comments about saving the Blessed Sacrament from fire and somehow turned it into saving a “statue of Jesus.” Or the fact that even the New York Post article about the Times gaffe misrepresents the Catholic belief in the real presence: the host doesn’t merely contain the Body and Blood of Christ; it is the Body and Blood of Christ.
Zoom Out: I wish the fourth estate was better at understanding Christian thought.
The Afterword
Thanks to Nathan H. for pointing out the error in last week’s newsletter—Frederick Douglass’ What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? speech was delivered in 1852, not 1952. In case you were wondering how a centenarian could deliver such a rousing marvel of rhetoric, wonder no longer.
Have a great week!