Jonah Goldberg:
I often roll my eyes when young people claim that older people “just don’t understand” this or that. We know what it was—what it is—like to be young; we just also know what it’s like not to be, too.
I’d say, “We know what it was like to be young when we were young. We know – in part – what it’s like to be young today”
Damon Linker:
Beginning with September 11, we entered an era shaped decisively by militant populism and disruption. From Occupy Wall Street and Bernie Sanders’ 2016 insurgency to Donald Trump’s hostile takeover of the GOP to the Women’s March and George Floyd protests to the insurrectionary riot of January 6, 2021 and Trump’s 2024 re-election and so many other, smaller examples, both here and around the world—militant populism and disruption targeting establishments and the people who run them have become the predominant fuel for politics, as well as the lens that at once focuses and distorts our public life. …
We now live in a world shaped by constantly churning popular anger and grievance arising from the periphery and directed at the perceived core of power. Those in genuine positions of authority can try to suppress the fury through acts of repression. But such efforts often just end up fueling the next round of outrage from outside and below. The outraged, meanwhile, aim above all at provocation. Their primary goal is to embarrass and shame the powers that be. Hence the popularity of “owning the libs” on the American right and, on the left, of denouncing racists and xenophobes. …
— a form of politics motivated above all else by the compulsion to take the other guys down a peg.
Too many essays about [name your American institution (in this essay, it was scouting)] end with the same refrain: It isn’t what it used to be, so I’m leaving. Sometimes, that’s the right decision. Institutions can lose their way, and there are moments when fidelity to conscience requires us to walk away. But increasingly I wonder whether our first instinct has become departure rather than stewardship. Progressives are often criticized for believing institutions can simply be rebuilt from scratch. Yet conservatives sometimes make the opposite mistake: assuming that once an institution has changed, it is beyond salvaging. Both forget that institutions become what people make of them. Stated simply, institutions endure only when people remain long enough to preserve what is good and patiently reform what is not.
Can Scouting Still Raise Boys?, LuElla D’Amico, The Dispatch, July 6, 2026
Here’s a sweet remembrance of Robert Coles, one of America’s great champions of children, written by one of my favorite photographers, Alex Harris. A Wikipedia article about Coles is here.
Worth your time. Noah Eckstein, Harvard 2026:
The older concepts of civic virtue emphasized self-mastery, conquering your impulses to serve a higher cause. Today’s politics treats self-mastery as suspect, a form of fakery or selling out, while asinine self-exposure is proof of depth and authenticity. The older republican tradition asked whether a man could govern himself before entrusting him with power. The new authenticity politics asks whether he seems sufficiently ungoverned to be trusted. [See, e.g., Graham Platner]
“Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law” is the line from “America the Beautiful.” That idea is a joke…, increasingly, in Washington.
A very David-French-y column (that’s a positive adjective in my personal dictionary):
In fact, as the show [Hacks] illustrates, concentrating on differences and even mutual interests is a bit beside the point. The question isn’t “How much are we alike?” Rather, it’s “Can I appreciate and even love the person you are?”
Matthew Crawford, via Damon Linker
Capital is concentrated to the point that it operates in quasi-governmental ways, abetted by ever more powerful information technology. Arguably, one of the most important functions of the (actual, elected) government, now, is precisely to restrain and regulate the explosion of unaccountable governmentality in our dealings with outsized commercial enterprises.
Ah! If only…
" … there are these rules that we think of with literature, but in picture books they’re all broken. The main character can be eaten in the middle.”
“What Adults Lose When They Put Down Children’s Books” by Anna Holmes, The Atlantic, May 9, 2026
Moment by moment by moment, lived gracefully and honorably, makes a life.
