Learn sumthin’. I dare you!

If you’ve been bored lately, why not click away from TikTok and learn something new or refresh your knowledge of an old favorite? Maybe take a class with a friend?

Before I restarted my formal education I took some free courses from Hillsdale College. They were so darn good I was motivated to go back to school full time. Yep. At my age. And yes, that does take a big set of balls. Moving on.

You? Yes, in the back. Before you raise your hand and object, I cheerfully acknowledge that Hillsdale College has a decidedly conservative philosophy.

So what?

How ya going spin the history of classical music or chemistry?

You can’t.

So get over yourself. View life as a buffet: a few courses from Hillsdale, a couple from the Young Commies Guild, pretty soon your life is fun and full.

Woke Capitalism Against America | Vivek Ramaswamy

The author's bio is a treat:

Charles S. Faddis served for 20 years as an operations officer in the Central Intelligence Agency, including as a department chief at the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center and as a chief of station in the Middle East. He earned his B.A. from Johns Hopkins University and his J.D. from the University of Maryland Law School. He is the author of several books, including Willful Neglect: The Dangerous Illusion of Homeland Security and Beyond Repair: The Decline and Fall of the CIA.

I wonder what he identifies as the failures of the CIA? Let's see:

The CIA had no sources inside Al Qaeda to tell us about the 9/11 plot.

The CIA didn't immediately attribute COVID-19, known to be descended from bat-borne coronaviruses, to the bat coronavirus gain-of-function research in the Wuhan lab.

Bureaucracy and a risk-averse culture.

Loss of skills, but also loss of mystique: "The people who run our government [...] have done their best to turn the CIA into just another federal agency. [...] We act as if anyone can be taught to conduct espionage—as if this is no longer an arcane craft to be practiced by a select group of unique people."

"The CIA has proved unable to put a source inside a Chinese bio lab, within the leadership structure of the Taliban, or next to Vladimir Putin."

The CIA has been politicized: backing Hillary Clinton in the Benghazi inquiries, aiding the Trump dossier investigation, and former intelligence officers decrying the Hunter Biden laptop as Russian propaganda.

The first point is transparently false; read the 9/11 Report and you will learn that the CIA had "real-time intelligence" on Bin Laden as early as 1996, with a plan to capture the known terrorist financier in place by the fall of 1997. That Bin Laden was planning to hijack civilian airliners was known as early as 1998.

The second point is still a matter of contention.

The third point is true of every part of government, but is especially true in international politics, geez.

The fourth point makes Charles Faddis sound like he's been reading too many spy novels where there's no risk of war from getting found out.

The fifth point is false as to Al Qaeda and laughable as to Putin. And if the CIA had any assets in Wuhan, their existence would be so totally classified that the CIA would hesitate to use their information in public, because the CIA prefers to not have its spies tortured and executed.

The sixth point reads like the seething cope of a man whose ideology is opposed by the Deep State, whether or not his facts are right. It is incredibly ironic that he complains that the CIA, which historically reported only to the President, was a political tool of the presidential administration of a Democrat.

So what does he identify as solutions?

Fire a lot of people.

"Recruiting must be completely revamped. Quotas are absurd. Focusing on color, gender, and sexual orientation is at best irrelevant. We want the best, and that means those people who possess the unique blend of skills and abilities that enable them to do what everyone else considers impossible."

Make training tougher.

Flatten the org chart and make it all about ops, not about analysis or support.

... for a man complaining that the CIA wasn't able to put spies in specific locations, he seems awfully invested in removing the ability of the CIA to recruit people who will blend in in those locations due to their color, gender, and sexual orientation.

Slayton Arboretum, Hillsdale Michigan

"The Rise and Fall of the Roman Republic" by Hillsdale College

Another fantastic documentary series, covering the history of the late Republic, both good and bad. First class history teaching.

It's Time to Rediscover the Power of Poetry by Ellen Condict

It’s Time to Rediscover the Power of Poetry Memorizing it has become a lost art in the age of the iPhone, but it can still awaken us to a deeper understanding of our world.   by Dr. Ellen Condict   In a world that seems increasingly disturbing and even violent, we desperately need an antidote for our despair. We need a daily dose of beauty, and Pinterest and Instagram won’t suffice. We need…

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This is incredible and something MUST be done before the works as we know it stops.PERIOD!

Science, the Transgender Phenomenon, and the Young | Abigail Shrier

Christopher Rufo is a known transphobe, but I read this essay in Hillsdale's Imprimis, adapted from a speech that Rufo gave, and burst into laughter.

The essay contains many serious issues, including:

Uses trans people's post-transition names, but misgenders them in the most amazing ways: "[so-and-so] now identifies as non-binary and uses they/them pronouns. [...] She works as...."

Talks about "the transgender movement" as if it was something that only started in the late 1980s

Says that the transgender activists are trying to use transgenderism to support a Marxist revolution, and then does not try to split this gender-political coalition, thereby ceding ground to his ideological opponents

Discusses percentage-based demographic statistics without talking about population sizes

Hypothalamus-produced hormones are effectively the divine spark which grants life and humanity

Describes the evils of minimally-invasive robot surgery

There are also some things which I applaud this essay for:

Discusses MTF, FTM, and non-binary perspectives

Liberally quotes trans and non-binary writers

Provides the first mainstream citation for "nullification" surgery that I've yet seen

But that's not the funny part.

The funny part is Rufo's analysis of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

In [Susan] Stryker’s best-known essay, “My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage,” he contends that the “transsexual body” is a “technological construction” that represents a war against Western society. “I am a transsexual, and therefore I am a monster,” Stryker writes. And this monster, he continues, is destined to channel its “rage and revenge” against the “naturalized heterosexual order”; against “‘traditional family values’”; and against the “hegemonic oppression” of nature itself. [...]

In 1818, Mary Shelley wrote the famous novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. The premise of the book is that modern science, stripped from the constraints of ethics and nature, will end up creating monsters. “Trans-affirming” doctors are the post-modern version of the book’s protagonist, Doctor Frankenstein. [...] Jennifer Pritzker, Maureen Connolly, Blair Peters, and their ilk occupy the heights of power and prestige, but like Doctor Frankenstein they will not be able to escape the consequences of what they have created. They are condemning legions of children to a lifetime of sorrows and medical necessities, all based on dubious postmodern theories that do not meet the standard of Hippocrates’ injunction in his work Of the Epidemics: “First, do no harm.” Although individuals can be nullified, nature cannot. No matter how advanced trans pharmaceuticals and surgeries become, the biological reality of man and woman cannot be abolished; the natural limitations of God’s Creation cannot be transcended. The attempt to do so will elicit the same heartbreak and alienation captured in the final scene of Mary Shelley’s novel: the hulking monster, shunned by society and betrayed by his father, filled with despair and drifting off into the ice floes—a symbol of the consequence of Promethean hubris.

Did Rufo even read Frankenstein? The tragedy did not come from the creation of The Creature, who Dr. Frankenstein and society shunned because of his looks. The tragedy was engendered by social rejection, and by physical attacks upon The Creature. It was this violence that led The Creature to swear revenge on Frankenstein and humanity, not some quirk of monstrous morality.

If Rufo wants to avoid the tragedies brought by shunning and rejection, instead of demonizing trans people and their sculptors, he should advocate for acceptance of ugliness, and for improvements in surgical technique to avoid that rejection.

Free Lecture Series Explores the Inklings

If you would like to learn more about C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and their fellow Inklings, a free series of five lectures has just been produced. I am in the midst of the first, introductory lecture, and am eager to listen to the entire series. You can receive links to the series from Hillsdale College by completing a small form at this link. The subjects addressed in the series…

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I have the suspicion that Hillsdale College is a cesspit of conservative ideology devoid of reason and openly hostile to facts.

This is only an assumption.

I have yet to Fuck Around.