My Birthday Wish

I think I insulted my 88 year old mother today. I called her today (it's my birthday) and told her that I like being out in the world. I told her that I like it better out here than being in the womb, which was too dark and there was no furniture, no museums, no running paths. And my prefrontal cortex was paltry back then.

On a serious note, here is what I want for my birthday: I'd like everyone reading this to go find someone they disagree with and have a heart-to-heart conversation on a difficult topic. For those who voted for Biden, for example, you could visit with a neighbor or relative who voted for Trump. Ideally, this should be a conversation that involves a lot of listening so that you come away from it with a better ability to see the world through that other person's eyes. If this sounds scary, I'd doubly recommend it. If you do this right, you will come away from it with a gift of your own.

This is not just a good idea. I believe that it's the only way forward. "Love your enemy" is a good idea for all of us, not only Christians. You'll find more resources from two of my favorite organizations: Heterodox Academy and Braver Angels. Good luck. Be brave!

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Eric Barker: How to Make Emotionally Intelligent Friendships

Eric Barker is back with another episode, offering us psychological insight and analytics into friendship. He summarizes some fascinating research, including the work by Robin Dunbar, making his entire article well worth a visit. That said, here are Barker's take-aways on how to make and sustain emotionally intelligent friendships:

  • Stay in touch: Friendship is not an arena where you want to play hard to get. What are you, a carnival prize?
  • Gratitude: If we’re more kind to strangers than to friends, we are definitely doing something wrong.
  • Quality > Quantity: Share emotional experiences. That’s the secret to those friendships where you can just pick up where you left off.
  • Budget appropriately: Time is limited. Allocate it wisely. And this is yet another reason to ditch the jerks in your life.
  • How to party: Eat. Laugh. Reminisce. Avoid small talk. The more the merrier. (And maybe a bit of booze.)
  • Make your best friend better: You influence each other more than you know. Make yourself better and help make them better, because, in the end, those two are the same thing.

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A Non-Carpenter Looks Closely at Carpentry

My deck boards kept rotting through, so I decided to switch to "no maintenance" composite decking, which comes with a 25 year guarantee. I fix a lot of things at my house, but I suspected that the joists were rotted out and that work is over my head. Luckily, my favorite carpenter, "Matt," had a couple days open. He allowed me to be his carpenter's helper for 12 hours yesterday.

It's amazing to watch a professional carpenter solve challenge after challenge, many of them not obvious to non-carpenters until pointed out. This was notably imperfect existing construction that needed to be torn out. I helped to cut material, make runs to the hardware store, and carry around a lot of material, including 60 lb joists. I was mesmerized by Matt's physical stamina and his thought process as much as his skills in fitting things together into a rock solid new deck and perfect new set of stairs. Even setting up requires unloading and moving probably 700 pounds of equipment off the truck. It also involves significant planning, because getting the job done uses up lots of supplies, including blades and bits. He needs to stock an entire workshop on his truck, including backup tools.

I got back to my routine today, but Matt does this every day. His job requires skills honed over a lifetime and constant physical exertion where mistakes can be expensive and sometimes dangerous. So kudos to those of you who do physically demanding high-skill work. These are people (including carpenters, plumbers, electricians, auto mechanics and many others) with a central role in keeping this country running. Maybe it's time to set aside a day in their honor . . .

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Christopher Rufo: What to Do About the Rapid Spread of Critical Race Theory Throughout the United States

Christopher Rufo summarizes the spread of critical race theory, characterizing these stories as the tip of the iceberg. His article: "The Courage of Our Convictions: How to fight critical race theory."

What does critical race theory look like in practice? Last year, I authored a series of reports focused on critical race theory in the federal government. The FBI was holding workshops on intersectionality theory. The Department of Homeland Security was telling white employees that they were committing “microinequities” and had been “socialized into oppressor roles.” The Treasury Department held a training session telling staff members that “virtually all white people contribute to racism” and that they must convert “everyone in the federal government” to the ideology of “antiracism.” And the Sandia National Laboratories, which designs America’s nuclear arsenal, sent white male executives to a three-day reeducation camp, where they were told that “white male culture” was analogous to the “KKK,” “white supremacists,” and “mass killings.” The executives were then forced to renounce their “white male privilege” and to write letters of apology to fictitious women and people of color.

This year, I produced another series of reports focused on critical race theory in education. In Cupertino, California, an elementary school forced first-graders to deconstruct their racial and sexual identities and rank themselves according to their “power and privilege.” In Springfield, Missouri, a middle school forced teachers to locate themselves on an “oppression matrix,” based on the idea that straight, white, English-speaking, Christian males are members of the oppressor class and must atone for their privilege and “covert white supremacy.” In Philadelphia, an elementary school forced fifth-graders to celebrate “Black communism” and simulate a Black Power rally to free 1960s radical Angela Davis from prison, where she had once been held on charges of murder. And in Seattle, the school district told white teachers that they are guilty of “spirit murder” against black children and must “bankrupt [their] privilege in acknowledgement of [their] thieved inheritance.”

I’m just one investigative journalist, but I’ve developed a database of more than 1,000 of these stories. When I say that critical race theory is becoming the operating ideology of our public institutions, I am not exaggerating—from the universities to bureaucracies to K-12 school systems, critical race theory has permeated the collective intelligence and decision-making process of American government, with no sign of slowing down.

The woke-infested media has, for the most part, given CRT advocates a free pass regarding the real-world affects of CRT. Rufo proposes asking that CRT advocates be forced to answer these questions:

Critical race theorists must be confronted with and forced to speak to the facts. Do they support public schools separating first-graders into groups of “oppressors” and “oppressed”? Do they support mandatory curricula teaching that “all white people play a part in perpetuating systemic racism”? Do they support public schools instructing white parents to become “white traitors” and advocate for “white abolition”? Do they want those who work in government to be required to undergo this kind of reeducation? How about managers and workers in corporate America? How about the men and women in our military? How about every one of us?

Rufo suggests advocating "excellence" rather than "diversity":

In terms of principles, we need to employ our own moral language rather than allow ourselves to be confined by the categories of critical race theory. For example, we often find ourselves debating “diversity.” Diversity as most of us understand it is generally good, all things being equal, but it is of secondary value. We should be talking about and aiming at excellence, a common standard that challenges people of all backgrounds to achieve their potential. On the scale of desirable ends, excellence beats diversity every time.

When we tell the story about the United States, we need to tell the whole story, the moral arc:

[W]e must promote the true story of America—a story that is honest about injustices in American history, but that places them in the context of our nation’s high ideals and the progress we have made toward realizing them.

Fighting back will require that good-hearted thoughtful people stand up to waves of abuse:

Above all, we must have courage, the fundamental virtue required in our time: courage to stand and speak the truth, courage to withstand epithets, courage to face the mob, and courage to shrug off the scorn of elites.

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