Mainstream news media seemed to be stepping all over itself this week. The New York Times published a story saying that the Trump administration had invented the surveillance state, forgetting J. Edgar Hoover, what happened during the Bush Administration after 9/11, Christopher Wray’s FBI monitoring of conservative Catholics and parents who protested at school board meetings, and its own reporting of government surveillance over the last 50 years. Then the BBC was discovered to have been using a “contributor” in Gaza who had said “we’ll burn the Jews like Hitler did.” And The Wall Street Journal heard from “a person familiar with the matter” that the Tesla Board of Directors had been looking to replace Elon Musk as CEO. Despite denials by both Musk and the board, the Journal published anyway.
He died almost 1,600 years ago, but almost no one since the time of Jesus and the apostles has had more of an impact on the church than St. Augustine. Regis Martin at The Imaginative Conservative reflects one the man he calls “one of the truly foundational figures of the Christian West.”
I have a Facebook friend who referred to the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 this way: “I know Hamas did some terrible things, but…” The “but” implied that Hanas was justified in the frenzy of murder, rape, and butchery it committed. Seth Mandel, writing at Commentary Magazine, looks at how Hamas and its Western supporters carefully orchestrated a “blame the victim” defense. Terrible ideas have terrible consequences, he writes, and he’s right.
More Good Reads
Writing and Literature
75 Years Ago, The Martian Chronicles Legitimized Science Fiction – Sam Weller at Literary Hub.
MWA Announces the 2025 Edgar Awards Winners – CrimeReads.
History of the Words: Utopia, Dystopia, and Cacotopia – Bradley Birzer.
America 250
Who really first the shot that started the American Revolution? – David Kindy at Washington Post.
On the Hinge of History – Michael Auslin at Law & Liberty.
The Militia Myth – Bert Dunkerly at Emerging Revolutionary War Era.
The War is Here: The Politics of Continental Army Dispositions on the Upper Ohio – David Ervin at Journal of the American Revolution.
The Battle of Lexington & Concord, 1775 – Ben Franklin’s World (podcast).
Faith
Crime and Redemption – David Banon at Front Porch Republic.
People Loved the Darkness Rather Than the Light – Mitch Chase at Biblical Theology.
Virtue Remains – Amy Mantravadi at Mere Orthodoxy.
Israel
What the Kibbutz Can Teach Israel on Its 77th Birthday – Matti Friedman at The Free Press.
Life and Culture
Are We in a “Soft” Civil War? – Matt Taibbi at Racket News.
Denounced, Cursed, and Ghosted: What Harvard’s Antisemitism Report Found – Maya Sulkin at The Free Press.
Antisemitism: The Modern Forces Fueling an Ancient Scourge – David Swindle at Real Clear Investigations.
Poetry
“Lord Lundy,” poem by Hillaire Belloc and “Written After Swimming from Sestos to Abydos,” poem by Lord Byron – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.
This Life – David Whyte.
Bring Praises – Matt Boswell, Matt Papa
Painting: A Woman Reading a Letter by a Window, oil on canvas (1664) by Pieter de Hooch (1629-after 1683); Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest.
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