Saturday Good Reads

I was a teenager when Chairman Mao unleashed the Cultural Revolution on China, so I’m old enough to remember the reports that initially drifted out and then were later fully reported on and documented. The reasons Mao did this are inscrutable, but many think it was an attempt to consolidate power and control over the Chinese Communist Party. While the reasons and motives may be obscure, we do have a good idea of what happened.

Universities and high schools essentially stopped functioning, as students turned themselves into mobs. Teachers and professors were humiliated, hounded, and physically attacked. Anything “western” was suspect; anything anyone called “western” was suspect. Anything not in line with correct thinking, “thought crimes,” was in line for abuse and destruction. Tens of thousands of intellectuals, academics, government workers, and others were sent into the countryside to labor in fields. Many people died. Those who survived saw their careers destroyed. 

Anastasia Lin writes in The Wall Street Journal (reprinted on a friend’s blog) that she suspects the Cultural Revolution has come to North America. No one’s died, but people have been attacked on American college campuses. The revolution is also alive and well in Great Britain, where a leftist reporter distorted something Sir Roger Scruton said in an interview and then crowed about how the Tories had dismissed Scruton from a government commission. 

This is not going to end well. 

More Good Reads

Life and Culture

Notre Dame should be rebuilt as it was – Francesco Bandarin at The Art Newspaper.

The City of Europe’s Future – Ben Judah at The American Interest.

Poetry

In the Wind – Chris Yokel.

Whatever It Is – Wendy Videlock at Johns Hopkins University Arts & Sciences.

Justice is a River – Joe Spring.

Writing and Literature

T.S. Eliot, Crime Fiction Critic – Curtis Evans at CrimeReads.

Fantastic Writing Advice – Dean Wesley Smith.

Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Mysterious Author – Craig Pittman at CrimeReads.

Next-Level Writer: Plan and Persist – Ann Kroeker.

Faith

Eight Steps Along the Path to Wisdom – Dr. Art Lindsley at the Institute for Faith, Work, & Economics.

When Christian Controversy Loses the Gospel – Cody Cunningham at Notes from the Grace-Paved Path.

Capitalism is killing the small church – Melissa Florer-Bixler at Faith & Leadership.

Christian Discourse in an Age of Outrage – Nick Kennicott at Tabletalk.

Art

Argenteuil: the Parisian commune beloved by the Impressionists – Alice Dunn at Spectator Life.

American Stuff

Three Themes in Thomas Kidd’s New Two-Volume American History Textbook – Justin Taylor at The Gospel Coalition.

“Good bye from your soger boy”: One Last Letter before the Wilderness – Sarah Kay Bierle at Emerging Civil War.

News Media

The Guardian actually makes money now – Joshua Benton at Nieman Lab.

You Say – Lauren Daigle

Painting: Old Man Reading, oil on canvas (1605-1607) by Federico Barocci.