“Last Boys at the Beginning of History.” This essay by Mana Afsari defies summary. Let me just say it is very good: “I was begging to be given values, community, a purpose, a vocation—and found none. Instead my teachers repeated what they’d heard on the news. In due time, by forcefully pursuing what was left of a liberal arts education at a large research university, I met professors who were eager to teach me. My entire life I had been told that conservatives, religious people and men were monsters, idiots, abusers or dangerous bigots. The very first conservatives I’d ever met, it turned out, were among the few faculty at my university who took their disciplines seriously on their own terms, at least during Trump’s first term. Whether philosophy, literature or ancient languages, the few conservative, apolitical or moderate professors I worked with on campus never asked me where I stood, but how I thought. They saw a young woman, choosing to study the liberal arts on scholarships, and gave me an education.”
“The Tyranny of Now.” Nicholas Carr gives a wonderful and insightful survey of Harold Innis’s work on media: “Near the end of ‘Minerva’s Owl,’ in a rare moment of concision, he summed up his view: ‘Enormous improvements in communication have made understanding more difficult.’ With that one startling and seemingly paradoxical sentence, he called into question a foundational assumption of modern media and, indeed, modern society: that an abundance of information brings a wealth of knowledge. Information and knowledge, he saw, could be adversaries.”
“Re-enchanting Meat.” Christine Jeske describes how raising pigs led her to explore how the act of killing animals for meat became institutionalized and how we might regain the practice and attitude of reverent gratitude for the lives on which we depend: “Is disgust the voice of some primordial conscience telling us to all become vegan? Or is something more complicated happening at the cultural and even spiritual level? Are there ways we could interact with animal bodies that foster greater love and honour for animals, humans, and God?”
“Labour Claims of Record Support for Farming ‘Categorically Untrue.’” Will Humphries talks with James Rebanks about why so many British farmers are upset about policy shifts and officials’ refusal to be honest about the new reality: “During the budget in October the chancellor announced a surprise cut of 79 per cent to these payments. A farmer receiving £62,000 last year was expecting £38,000 this year, but will now be getting £7,200. This is coupled with the government’s plan to levy a 20 per cent inheritance tax on agricultural businesses worth more than £1 million, which the NFU says will affect 75 per cent of commercial family farms and force many to be sold because they would no longer be financially viable.”
“Cargill Reaches $32M Settlement in Turkey Price-Fixing Lawsuit.” Sarah Zimmerman reports on Cargill’s recent settlement: “The lawsuit, which encompasses meatpacker activities from 2010 to 2017, alleged that companies kept production intentionally low during a period of high demand in order to reap more profits. The meat producers named in the suit controlled approximately 80% of the wholesale turkey market, according to the complaint.”
“Halting the Assembly Line Life.” Sarah Reardon reviews Nadya Williams’s recent book: “As much as we might like a grand, systemizing answer to the problems of the age, we must, as Williams reminds us, begin in our own lives to properly value the imago Dei. For most of the time that I read Williams’s book, my newborn baby slept on my chest. Williams’s words did not merely teach me about the ancient world’s disregard for human life and its corollaries today. Her words ultimately encouraged me to love the child in my arms, even if I cannot change the broader culture around me.”
“‘A prince of the English language.’” Adrian Rutherford gathers tributes to the great poet from Northern Ireland, Michael Longley. As Claire Hanna testifies, “Wherever in the world his career took him, he always remained a Belfast man at heart and you can see that in much of his work.”
“Trump Is Uncool. And That’s a Good Thing.” Peter Savodnik contrasts the cool vibe of Obama’s neo-liberal era with the unhip brawling style of Trump. In many ways, neither is particularly responsible: the way Savodnik presents the options, either you can pretend place and history and community don’t matter, or you can rebuild institutions in hopes of achieving an hubristic vision of self- and space-colonization: “My answer: We live in serious times, and we have two paths, and we can and should argue about the particulars, the policies, the legislation, who is best fit to lead, but we should be crystal clear about the stakes. Either we succumb to our proliferating woes, or we revitalize our institutions, right the ship, become the country that will enable future human beings to colonize the solar system, achieve ourselves, reclaim what for so long has felt God-given.”
“How Long Can the Alliance Between Tech Titans and the MAGA Faithful Last?” James Pogue details these fissures, ones that Savodnik mostly ignores, that divide Trump supporters who, in the words of J.D. Vance, care about “Home first,” from those who see a future defined by AI, crypto, and space travel: “But the core of the aspiring Trumpian aristocracy are still reactionaries and nationalists aching to restore an American way of life thought to be lost after decades of what they see as globalist technocracy. They are often deeply skeptical of the idea that the innovations promised by tech companies represent progress, and they describe America as ‘not just a country, not just an economy but a people with a common history,’ as Jeremy Carl, a deputy assistant secretary of the interior in the first Trump administration and a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, told me. The tech figures who came to the movement in 2024 were often sympathetic to Trumpian nationalism. But they tended to be more interested in making money and launching a new era of American dynamism.”
