Nov
27
2025

Thanks

Kevin D. Williamson has a long, personal essay at the Dispatch and it's highly recommended, reminding us that We Are Pilgrims, Still. You should subscribe! But if not, here is your (archive.today link). Starting from two lines of that hymn they (allegedly) played on the Titanic as it sank.

Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee!
E’en though it be a cross that raiseth me.

Easy to sing. Hard to mean.

Hard, that is, if you think about it and take it seriously. One of the things that put me off of Christianity when I was young (beyond an intellectual vanity that was out of place) was that the greater part of Christian conversation and teaching, in my experience, had been intended to keep us from thinking about it too hard or taking it very seriously. Simple faith. That old-time religion. Just believe. Most of us have met That Christian—I sat next to her at my local café earlier in the week, and she was trying to convince her college-age children that there were no dinosaurs. “You have to ask yourself who pays for those studies,” she said. “I just believe the Bible.” I tried to concentrate on my eggs. 

But what I wanted to tell her is that there is an interesting concurrence between certain implications of evolution and the plainest kind of Christianity. From evolution, we learn that our bodies and our behavior were shaped by natural pressures to maximize our chances of survival in ancestral conditions of radical scarcity and, hence, we could reasonably assume that at least some of our modern problems—the prevalence of obesity and anxiety, for example, in the rich, digitally saturated world—are the result of living in an environment that is radically different from the one for which we were optimized by evolution. From Christianity, we learn that man is fallen and out of step with his intended place in creation, that we have been separated from that condition for which we were fitted. And at whatever level of literalism you wish to apply to Genesis and whatever degree of sophistication you can bring to bear on your biological analysis, there is a point of commonality:

This is not the world we were made for. We are outcasts and misfits—or, if our separation is sanctified, we are pilgrims. 

For the nth time: I am not very religious. But…

Also of note:

  • Quitcher bitchin', OK? Megan McArdle also has thoughts on this day: How to pay this great American inheritance forward. (WaPo gifted link)

    This year, however, I’ve been reflecting on another thing we ought to be more grateful for: America herself. We have been taking her too much for granted recently, assuming that she will keep showering her gifts upon us without so much as a thank-you note. We’re like trust-funders who slander capitalism and squander their incomes, secure in the knowledge that the checks will keep coming.

    They will not, unless we once again start treating America as something we have to earn, rather than something we’re entitled to.

    A point well taken, Megan.

  • Also thankful is … Veronique de Rugy! She is Giving Thanks for Our Sometimes-Maligned Constitution and Creed.

    Thanksgiving invites us to pause and consider the gifts we often overlook. This year, at a moment of rising political unease and ideological confusion, I am especially grateful for one extraordinary inheritance: a nation and its creed brought into being by the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.

    Why, in addition to family, friends and a feast, is this on my mind today? In certain circles, especially among "postliberal" thinkers on the right, it's now fashionable to claim that the Constitution has failed. Some argue that the country's founding was overly individualistic or insufficiently moral, that our constitutional structure prevents the pursuit of a unified national purpose, or that what we need instead is a more powerful state headed by a muscular executive and a more cohesive cultural or religious identity enforced from above.

    Vero was born in France, and became an American in 2012. We are lucky to have her.

  • On a less thankful note. New Hampshire's own Jason Sorens observes that Thanksgiving traffic shows the Highway Trust Fund is running on empty.

    The American Automobile Association predicts that nearly 82 million Americans will travel more than 50 miles from home over Thanksgiving—a new record if it pans out. Almost all the travel increase, it projects, will be by car.

    Whether you take a train, plane, or automobile to your holiday festivities, your income tax dollars are subsidizing drivers on the road. Most Americans assume that gas taxes and tolls fund highways. That used to be the case, but it's no longer true.

    Gas taxes and user fees haven't fully funded the federal highway system since 2007. In 2021, Congress authorized roughly $181 billion in transfers to the highway account—money paid for by debt and general revenues.

    Even with that added cash, the federal Highway Trust Fund (HTF) will run out of money again in 2027. By 2033, it will need an extra $250 billion from taxpayers. That's nearly $2,000 per American household over the next eight years.

    Jason's libertarian credentials are impeccable, but he realizes that if we're gonna have roads and highways, the more equitable way to fund them would be to raise the gas tax.

  • Like I ignore Season Five of Justified… Jeff Maurer thinks The Next President Should Ignore Trump's Ukraine "Peace Plan"

    Neville Chamberlain gets a bad rap: We think of him as the doe-eyed naif who got suckered by a tyrant, but he’s really a doe-eyed naif who got suckered by a tyrant. What happened to him happens all the time – the historical examples of leaders blowing off international agreements are too numerous to count. World War I started when the German Chancellor dismissed the treaty that said “No starting a World War I” as “a scrap of paper”; the treaty that supposedly ended the Vietnam War just let the NVA break for lunch before pushing on to Saigon. Often, international agreements are like traffic rules in Boston: violated so egregiously that you wonder why they exist at all.

    If Trump strong-arms Ukraine into accepting his “peace plan” – which, in its initial form, would really be a surrender – the next president should not consider themselves bound by that agreement. You might be surprised to hear me say that, since LOLing at a treaty is usually the provenance of dictators, not pointy-headed liberals. But I think it’s time for liberals to wake up and acknowledge the way that treaties are and always have been used.

    I think Jeff might be skimming over the difference between a (hypothetical) "agreement" and a full-fledged treaty ratified by Congress, which becomes the Law of the Land. Still, check it out.

  • What, again? According to Yuval Levin, the GOP is Limping into Another Health Care Debate. (archive.today link) He notes "two kinds of problems" that Republicans have in the area:

    The first is just the sheer absence of any Republican health care agenda, which has been a persistent problem for more than a decade now. Republicans have honed the habit of starting sentences they can’t finish when it comes to health care, promising all sorts of action if only they could get the leverage to advance it, but then turning out to have no particular policies in mind — or at least none they agree about.

    […]

    The second problem revealed by the Republican fight over health care is one the GOP has been even more eager to obscure this year. It is the great and growing frustration with the Trump administration among congressional Republicans.

    At this point, I'd be happy (and thankful!) if the GOP just managed to avoid making things worse.

  • In case you thought cancel culture had run its course. Jonathan Turley notes that its alive and well in one of the its strongholds. “Fight Fiercely Harvard”: Harvard Club of New York Cancels Dershowitz Book Event.

    The Harvard Club of New York is being accused of censorship after abruptly cancelling a book event featuring famed Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz. In a statement, Dershowitz says that invitations were sent out and the event was approaching when he was suddenly told that the Harvard Club would have none of it. He blamed his representation of President Donald Trump for the cancellation.

    For a club that bills itself as offering “unique experiences,” it appears that hearing from opposing or different views is not one of them.

    Dershowitz has been associated with Harvard for over 60 years and remains one of its best known law faculty members.

    Jonathan doesn't mention Dershowitz's connection to Epstein, which might also be a factor.