Maybe some seriousness is in order
Distraction and frivolity are going to be the death of us
Not a lot of time this morning. Several things I want to take care of before I get ready for church, but I feel compelled to check in with you about the gravity of the moment.
I will try to find time, maybe today, to flesh out more fully the sum total of the implications of the developments currently on the nation’s plate, but it’s time to take inventory.
A day after Jewish college kids found it necessary to barricade themselves inside a library in the center of Greenwich Village while a mob of repugnant terrorist lovers banged on the locked doors trying to get at them, the message is being broadcast that, on this Sabbath, Jews in Brooklyn had better remain at home.
Stay inside.
Lock the doors.
A pro-Palestinian protest is scheduled for 3 p.m. Saturday in front of the Brooklyn Museum.
That’s a mile from 770 Eastern Parkway, the headquarters of the largest ultra-Orthodox sect in the world, the Lubavitch Hasidim.
Roughly 20,000 observant Jews live around 770, in the neighborhood called Crown Heights.
“Jews should definitely avoid the area,” an ultra-Orthodox news site called COLlive.com said a “security source” had advised them and the Shmira, the local Jewish self-defense association.
“There’s no intel at this time in which direction the protest will head. Locals should definitely stay away from Eastern Parkway in that area.”
The Jews of Brooklyn feel they are at risk, and — this is the implicit corollary — they cannot be protected.
NATO’s least reliable member has outdone itself:
Turkey's president appears to have threatened to intervene in Gaza in an impassioned speech at a pro-Palestine rally this evening.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan delivered a speech to a rally this afternoon in which he told attendees Israel was responsible for war crimes, and framed Hamas as "freedom fighters".
In comments that have prompted Israeli outcry, and led the country to withdraw its diplomatic presence, president Erdogan suggested assaults on Gaza constituted a "massacre".
In the same speech, he reportedly said that Turkey can "come at any night unexpectedly” to ecstatic reception from hundreds of thousands of attendees.
The footage, which is currently circulating on X, formerly known as Twitter, purportedly showed the pro-Palestine crowd responding with the chant: “Turkish military to Gaza.”
The United States does not have the right to get involved in problems between China and the Philippines, the Chinese foreign ministry said on Thursday, as tensions simmer over conflicts in disputed waters of the South China Sea.
"The U.S. is not party to the South China Sea issue, it has no right to get involved in a problem between China and the Philippines," said ministry spokesperson Mao Ning at a regular press briefing when asked about the U.S. saying it will defend the Philippines.
China and the Philippines have had several high-profile confrontations in the South China Sea, most notably in disputed waters around the Second Thomas Shoal, part of the Spratly Islands.
Last Sunday, a Chinese vessel collided with a Philippine boat, with Manila condemning "in the strongest degree" the "dangerous blocking manoeuvres" of the vessel.
"The U.S. promise of defending the Philippines must not hurt China's sovereignty and maritime interests in the South China Sea, and it also must not enable and encourage the illegal claims of the Philippines," Mao said.
And two other US adversaries seem to be solidifying their commitment to each other:
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has met North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Russia's foreign ministry said on Thursday, as the two countries forge closer ties in the face of what they see as a hostile and aggressive U.S.-led Western camp.
Russia's state-run TASS news agency reported that Lavrov's meeting with Kim had lasted over an hour but the ministry did not provide further details.
Lavrov, who arrived in Pyongyang on Wednesday, earlier thanked North Korea for backing Russia's military actions in Ukraine and pledged Moscow's "complete support and solidarity" for Kim, Russia's foreign ministry said.
Meanwhile, in post-America, the solipsistic immediate past president, who has a decent chance of regaining his job, grows more unhinged by the day:
despite threats of further punishment, Trump completely lost it on social media Saturday morning over Judge Engoron’s decision that Ivanka must testify in person, which she is appealing.
On his Truth Social platform, Trump raged at Engoron and repeated other attacks about the trial:
My daughter, Ivanka, was released from this Fake Letitia James case by the Court of Appeals, but this Trump Hating, Unhinged Judge, who ruled me guilty before this Witch Hunt Trial even started, couldn’t care less about the fact that he was overturned. I also won on Appeal on Statute of Limitations, but he refuses to accept their decision. I truly believe he is CRAZY, but certainly, at a minimum, CRAZED in his hatred of me. This case should have never started, but now must be dismissed. Financial Statements were LOW, NOT HIGH, had a 100% Disclaimer Clause, Banks were fully paid, “on time, on schedule,” with never even a minor default, there was NO VICTIM, EXCEPT ME. Any other Judge in the Country would have thrown this case out on day one. He’s an out of control “Nut Job,” who fined me $10,000 over a ridiculous Gag Order so that the publicity for the day would take over from the fact that Racist James and the Judge’s Star Witness admitted LYING TO CONGRESS on the stand – CASE OVER!
Judge Engoron vociferously denied a motion to dismiss the case based on Trump’s claim about Cohen, which is what led to him storming out of court.
So what can be done?
It’s sure not obvious, given the deliberately created dearth of intellectual and spiritual resources we have to work with:
My students are know-nothings. They are exceedingly nice, pleasant, trustworthy, mostly honest, well-intentioned, and utterly decent. But their brains are largely empty, devoid of any substantial knowledge that might be the fruits of an education in an inheritance and a gift of a previous generation. They are the culmination of western civilization, a civilization that has forgotten nearly everything about itself, and as a result, has achieved near-perfect indifference to its own culture.
It’s difficult to gain admissions to the schools where I’ve taught – Princeton, Georgetown, and now Notre Dame. Students at these institutions have done what has been demanded of them: they are superb test-takers, they know exactly what is needed to get an A in every class (meaning that they rarely allow themselves to become passionate and invested in any one subject); they build superb resumes. They are respectful and cordial to their elders, though easy-going if crude with their peers. They respect diversity (without having the slightest clue what diversity is) and they are experts in the arts of non-judgmentalism (at least publically). They are the cream of their generation, the masters of the universe, a generation-in-waiting to run America and the world.
But ask them some basic questions about the civilization they will be inheriting, and be prepared for averted eyes and somewhat panicked looks. Who fought in the Peloponnesian War? Who taught Plato, and whom did Plato teach? How did Socrates die? Raise your hand if you have read both the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Canterbury Tales? Paradise Lost? The Inferno?
Who was Saul of Tarsus? What were the 95 theses, who wrote them, and what was their effect? Why does the Magna Carta matter? How and where did Thomas Becket die? Who was Guy Fawkes, and why is there a day named after him? What did Lincoln say in his Second Inaugural? His first Inaugural? How about his third Inaugural? What are the Federalist Papers?
Some students, due most often to serendipitous class choices or a quirky old-fashioned teacher, might know a few of these answers. But most students have not been educated to know them. At best, they possess accidental knowledge, but otherwise are masters of systematic ignorance. It is not their “fault” for pervasive ignorance of western and American history, civilization, politics, art and literature. They have learned exactly what we have asked of them – to be like mayflies, alive by happenstance in a fleeting present.
Our students’ ignorance is not a failing of the educational system – it is its crowning achievement. Efforts by several generations of philosophers and reformers and public policy experts — whom our students (and most of us) know nothing about — have combined to produce a generation of know-nothings. The pervasive ignorance of our students is not a mere accident or unfortunate but correctible outcome, if only we hire better teachers or tweak the reading lists in high school. It is the consequence of a civilizational commitment to civilizational suicide. The end of history for our students signals the End of History for the West.
During my lifetime, lamentation over student ignorance has been sounded by the likes of E.D. Hirsch, Allan Bloom, Mark Bauerlein and Jay Leno, among many others. But these lamentations have been leavened with the hope that appeal to our and their better angels might reverse the trend (that’s an allusion to Lincoln’s first inaugural address, by the way). E.D. Hirsch even worked up a self-help curriculum, a do-it yourself guide on how to become culturally literate, imbued with the can-do American spirit that cultural defenestration could be reversed by a good reading list in the appendix. Broadly missing is sufficient appreciation that this ignorance is the intended consequence of our educational system, a sign of its robust health and success.
We are on the shakiest imaginable ground.
Behold the fruits of squandering the greatest birthright a civilization has ever had bestowed on it.