Pro-life loses all meaning, when anti-racism fails, and Catholics and Trump | Readings

We live in a partisan age, and our news habits can reinforce our own perspectives. Consider this an effort to broaden our collective outlook with essays beyond the range of our typical selections.

FROM THE LEFT

From “It’s Time for Progressives to Recommit to Academic Freedom,” by Tascha Shahriari-Parsa in The Nation at tinyurl.com/4sdbx6zt.

The context, from the author: Last November, The Nation published an article titled “The Harvard Law Review Refused to Run This Piece About Genocide in Gaza.” I am the Harvard Law Review editor who commissioned that piece.

The excerpt: Many of my peers offered an additional justification for censorship, one that progressive students have popularized: that we must protect ourselves, and each other, from harmful speech. That if your friend alerts you that certain words make them feel unsafe, you should listen to them. That your responsibility, as a progressive, is to prevent those words from being heard. During the 20th century, many progressives embraced academic freedom as a core principle. But in recent years, we changed tack and encouraged the suppression of conservative voices on our campuses. Now, the same justifications we once offered to restrict conservative speech are being used to silence us. It is time for progressive students to reclaim our commitment to academic freedom.

From “The Dead End of ‘Anti-Racist’ Discrimination,” by Dustin Guastella and Jennifer C. Pan in Jacobin at tinyurl.com/2hhruybr.

The context, from the authors: What a failed racial equity program for farmers tells us about the pitfalls of race targeting.

The excerpt: In this context of economic scarcity and sustained insecurity, policies designed to exclude one group or another, based on characteristics no person can choose or change, are guaranteed to breed resentment. Avoiding this sort of political catastrophe in the future requires rejecting two animating theories of liberal governance that continue to inform progressive policy making. First, we have to reject the zero-sum theory that past discrimination can only be redressed by current discrimination — even if that discrimination is supposedly anti-racist. And, second, we have to reject the “disparitarian” logic that seeks only to ensure that certain racial groups aren’t disproportionately subject to economic hardship, as opposed to seeking to eliminate that hardship itself.

From “Trump Distancers?” by Massimo Faggioli in Commonweal Magazine at tinyurl.com/xbyy4ufc.

The context, from the author: Some conservative Catholics seem to be reassessing support for former President Donald Trump.

The excerpt: Trump’s amorality has always been evident, but now that he has dropped the pretenses that were necessary in appealing to religious voters in 2016 and 2020, it seems to have some conservative Catholics recalculating their relationship to him. It isn’t explicitly an anti-Trump or “never Trump” response. It’s more like a purposeful “non-Trump” posture. Disavowing Trump and Trumpism now is perhaps a way to avoid being associated with the developments of recent months, or of being seen as complicit with what a second Trump term could bring. It may also be a way to get positioned for a possible post-Trump era. Either way, it could accelerate recent ideological shifts among right-of-center Catholics and neo-Catholic intellectuals looking for a new collective cultural and theological identity.

FROM THE RIGHT

From “Julian Assange’s Plea Deal Is a Tragedy,” by Noah Rothman in The National Review at tinyurl.com/2j6kwhbj.

The context, from the author: Julian Assange’s “crime” was not limited only to the publication of documents that explicitly imperiled U.S. interests and provided insurgent organizations with actionable intelligence on military bases, prisons, and the movement of U.S. troops and local security forces. It was to facilitate the pilfering of those documents in the first place.

The excerpt: So many of Assange’s defenders have confused reportorial best practices with activism. Not just any activism, in this case, but acts of criminality designed to imperil U.S. interests and put American soldiers in additional danger. It’s perhaps too much to ask that American journalists display a modicum of patriotism, but it’s not a big ask to demand that they observe the laws meant to keep America’s men and women in uniform safe.

From “How ‘Pro-Life’ Lost all Meaning,” by Charles Sykes in The Atlantic at tinyurl.com/mr3evmy8.

The context, from the author: The pro-life movement may have won the battle two years ago with the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, but they’re losing the war — and turning an entire generation away from their cause.

The excerpt: I saw all of this play out as a longtime supporter of the pro-life movement. ... For nearly 50 years, I was politically aligned with the folks who celebrated their victory in the Supreme Court. But I watched as a movement that should have championed compassion for women and young children instead tightened its ties to those who embraced performative cruelty, including forced family separations at the border. As I wrote two years ago, the court’s ruling plunged “a fateful (and deeply personal) choice into the cauldron of the culture war at a moment of maximum demagoguery, extremism, disinformation, and bad faith.”

From “Surgeon General’s ‘Public Health Emergency’ Is Anti-Second Amendment Scaremongering,” by David Harsanyi in The Federalist at tinyurl.com/ebm7pt3y.

The context, from the author: The U.S. surgeon general wants to take gun ownership “out of the realm of politics and put it into the realm of public health.”

The excerpt: Fortunately, the Constitution already has purview over the individual’s right to own a firearm. But setting aside the fact that (Surgeon General Vivek) Murthy’s goal is unconstitutional, the premise of his report is also highly misleading. For starters, like most anti-gun activists, Murthy dishonestly conflates suicides (a mental health issue) with homicides (a criminality issue) to make sweeping contentions about firearms. Murthy even throws in incidents where guns are used in self-defense as a “harm” plaguing the nation’s health. But that’s just the beginning.