While We’re At It

♦ One of the New Testament words for “freedom” is eleutheria. It appears in St. Paul’s formulation: “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free” (Gal. 5:1). The concept does not entail lack of constraint along the lines of many modern definitions of freedom. Here is Joseph Ratzinger’s gloss on the meaning of freedom: “It means the possession of full rights, full membership, being at home.” He goes on to say, “The free man is one who is at home, that is, one who really belongs to the household. Freedom has to do with being given a home.”

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♦ The culture of death marches onward. Here’s the summary of the State of Washington’s expansion of doctor-assisted suicide:

Washington SB 5179 Death with Dignity:
Increasing access to the provisions of the Washington death with dignity act. . . . Expands the health care providers authorized to perform the duties of the Death with Dignity Act to include advanced registered nurse practitioners and physician assistants. Reduces the required 15-day waiting period between the first and second oral requests for medications to seven days and eliminates the 48-hour waiting period for the written request. Permits medications dispensed under the Act to be delivered or mailed.

Other states are moving in the same direction.

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♦ Not only are young people killing themselves; they support others’ doing the same thing. Charles Camosy reports that recent polling in Canada shows that the younger generation (those eighteen to thirty-four years old) are more likely than their elders to approve of assisted suicide for those without terminal illnesses. Sixty percent in that age cohort think it’s okay for a disabled person to end his life; 41 percent endorse assisted death for a person in poverty. These are shocking numbers. As Camosy observes, the high levels of support among young people likely stem from deceptive propaganda. The Canadian establishment has a feel-good name for lethal injections. They call it “medical assistance in dying” (MAID). But a disabled person or a person in poverty is not dying. He is very much alive, and any program that facilitates ending that person’s life is properly described as killing. For this reason, Camosy proposes that we speak of PAK (“physician-assisted killing”), not MAID. He’s absolutely right.

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♦ National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan recently expressed doubt about the economic consensus that “markets always allocate capital productively and efficiently—no matter what our competitors did, no matter how big our shared challenges grew, and no matter how many guardrails we took down.” I wish he had the courage to see (and say) that the same is true for morality and culture. Liberation and “inclusion” are not always net gains for society. Taking down the moral guardrails has led to a great deal of misery.

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♦ On May 1 in New York City, Jordan Neely, a mentally ill man with a history of violent assaults, died while being restrained by Daniel Penny, a fellow subway rider, during a psychotic outburst. Heather Mac Donald offers an assessment:

All the pathologies afflicting American cities were present in that . . . fatal encounter and its aftermath: the grotesque parody of compassion that is conventional homeless policy; government’s elevation of the supposed interests of the anti-social and dysfunctional over those of the law-­abiding and hard-working; anti-white race-baiting and racial bathos.
     But the May 1 confrontation between the ex-Marine Daniel Penny and the mentally ill Neely stands for more than failed policy. Reaction to Penny’s intervention illuminates as well the war on manly virtues and their attempted replacement with an emasculated dependence on bureaucrats and social workers. 

The press became inflamed with outrage, depicting this tragic episode as an instance of lethal white supremacy. (Penny is white; Neely is black.) Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charged Penny with second-degree manslaughter. We have come a long way from 1964, when New York was horrified by reports that Kitty Genovese had been robbed, raped, and stabbed to death outside her apartment in Queens while dozens of people watched from their windows and did nothing. More than thirty years later, the popular TV show Seinfeld capped its long run with a finale that ended with all the characters imprisoned for violating a local Good ­Samaritan law. Today, authorities propose to imprison those who take the risk of intervening to protect their fellow citizens.

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♦ Commenting on the media consensus that Penny overreacted to Neely’s aggressive behavior, UnHerd columnist Kat Rosenfield notes an interesting contradiction in progressive attitudes. #MeToo adopts a hyper-vigilant attitude toward potential threats to women, even as we’re instructed to accommodate ourselves to potentially dangerous vagrants on public transportation.

To sum up: a man who reposts an off-colour joke is advertising his innate misogyny, to the point where women should feel uncomfortable sharing a workplace with him. But an agitated and clearly unstable man announcing to a crowded subway car — as Neely reportedly did — that he’s been pushed to the brink and is ready to die, or go to prison for life: why in the world would you find that menacing?
     This sudden rediscovery of the merits of resilience would have been almost refreshing, if not for the whiplash of its promotion by people who up until very recently were arguing that a tweet made them unsafe.

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♦ Liam Morrison was in his seventh-grade year at a public school in Middleborough, Massachusetts. One day, he wore a T-shirt to school emblazoned with these words: “THERE ARE ONLY TWO GENDERS.” School officials removed him from class and told him he could not return until he removed the shirt. The same school displays signs that say, “Rise up to protect trans and GNC students” and “Proud friend/ally of LGBTQ+.” The Massachusetts middle-school kerfuffle epitomizes our regime. You can burn an American flag, and those with power will rally to protect your right to do so. Question the rainbow flag, and you will be punished.

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♦ At a middle school in Burlington, Massachusetts, students tore down LGBTQ banners and chanted, “U.S.A. are my pronouns.” The school principal wrote to parents expressing her dismay. To tighten the grip on dissent, she promised to set up a procedure by which students could submit anonymous reports of “hateful incidents.” The school district’s superintendent denounced the student protest. A school board member said, “I didn’t think this could happen in Burlington.” One marvels at the incomprehension. Young children bombarded with pro-gay propaganda, shepherded into obligatory cheerleading for perversion, tutored in transgender ideology—who would imagine that they might bridle and resist?

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♦ Paul Kingsnorth’s account of his religious journey, “The Cross and the Machine,” is among the most read of our articles in recent years. Former junior fellow Hunter McClure recently sent me a poem by R. S. ­Thomas that evokes the dark abyss that Kingsnorth juxtaposes to Christ’s life-giving light:

‘The body is mine and the soul is mine’
says the machine. ‘I am at the dark source
where the good is indistinguishable
from evil. I fill my tanks up
and there is war. I empty them
and there is not peace. I am the sound,
not of the world breathing, but
of the catch rather in the world’s breath.’

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♦ In the early 1980s, Philip Glass visited my alma ­mater. As I recall, his small ensemble performed portions of “Music in Twelve Parts.” Glass’s rapid and repetitive music is both mesmerizing and infuriating, and I recall not being able to decide whether I liked or disliked it, or even whether it counted as “music.” So, I was delighted to read a detailed and thoughtful assessment in The Lamp, written by Aaron James. In James’s judgment, the best pieces by Glass express the repetitive monotony of mass consumer culture, and do so both as musical protest and aestheticized affirmation. In this way, Glass captured a paradoxical truth about the modern condition. James:

He saw something deeply contradictory and ambivalent in our relationship to modernity: we love the modern world and we hate it; we find it inhuman and alienating but can’t imagine ourselves apart from it; we rebel against it only to find ourselves more securely tied to it than ever.

Whether or not James is right about Glass, he’s surely right about our relationship to modernity. Even those among us who rage against its vain pomp and empty splendor cling to our smartphones and relish global travel.

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♦ A friend commented on New York’s policy of providing free pre-K for all children: “We’re living in a strange time. We de-institutionalize the mentally ill while rushing to institutionalize small children.”

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♦ Oliver O’Donovan writing in The Desire of the Nations:

The doctrine that We set up political authority, as a device to secure our own essentially private, local and unpolitical purposes, has left the Western democracies in a state of pervasive moral debilitation, which, from time to time, inevitably throws up idolatrous and authoritarian reactions.

Richard John Neuhaus founded First Things in order to ensure that our liberal and democratic regime would be leavened by a religious and metaphysical vision, thus remediating, as best we can, the moral debilitation of Western democracies.

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♦ Gene Outka died on May 1. For many decades he taught Christian ethics at Yale. I was among his graduate students in the 1980s. Gene was an exemplary mentor, indulging my intellectual (and verbal) volatility while gently reining me in. His moral seriousness and solidity of intellect were plain to his graduate students, which meant that his signature grimace always gave us pause. He was also a superb lecturer, as I learned while serving as his teaching assistant. On more than one occasion, the undergraduates gave him a standing ovation after a particularly stellar performance. I knew close to nothing about anything when I began graduate study at Yale. Gene’s seminars sent me in the right direction, and his example helped me understand what it means to be a university professor and a Christian, someone with exacting intellectual standards who, when all is said and done, answers to God, not the academy. I’m grateful to have fallen under his influence. May he rest in peace.

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♦ Calling all readers: New ROFTERS groups are forming!

Michael Krell of Falls Church, Virginia is convening a new group: michael[at]mkrell.com.

Eric Onderwater is heading up a new group in Toronto, Ontario: ericonderwater[at]gmail.com.

An active group in Spokane, Washington seeks new members. Contact Matthew Wood: mwood[at]gprep.com.

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♦ I’m happy to report that our spring campaign exceeded our expectations. We raised nearly $600,000 from more than eight hundred readers. We’re grateful for this outpouring of support. We have ambitious plans to expand our readership. Your commitment to First Things has been and will remain crucial for our success.