Dear Weekend Jolter,
At the turn of the century, Simon Winchester wrote a splendid book about the making of the Oxford English Dictionary titled The Professor and the Madman (actually, it had a much loftier-sounding title when first published in England, but, as with the American Office, U.S. sensibilities made a British product better). The book documents the involvement of William Chester Minor — the “madman” — a Civil War vet who, while in a psychiatric hospital for shooting someone, contributed profusely to the dictionary.
The word “woke” could use a William Chester Minor.
From both the left and now the right (from Trump, to be specific), the term is getting disparaged as an empty slur with no true meaning. “Half the people can’t even define it,” Trump recently griped. This was a slap at woke-warrior and 2024 rival Ron DeSantis more than anything, considering Trump himself is so liberal with the word he’d show no compunction about applying it to tacos that aren’t in bowl form. Regardless, Trump was only repackaging progressives’ complaints.
A CNN opinion piece in April declared, “The fight against ‘woke’ is really conservative gaslighting.” Back in 2021, an MSNBC piece warned, as many have since, that the term was being “weaponized” by the Right.
Rich Lowry, in the course of knocking down Trump’s argument, writes:
As we saw in the debate over critical race theory, as soon as the Right adopts a term that has purchase, the Left denies that the underlying phenomenon exists. There have been numerous reports in the press about how no one can define “woke,” while left-wing commentators and academics have been saying that the use of the term is, of course, itself racist.
“Official” definitions of the word, of course, exist. Merriam-Webster says it describes being “aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice),” while having negative connotations suggesting said beliefs aren’t genuine or reasonable. Dictionary.com refers to “an active awareness of systemic injustices and prejudices, especially those involving the treatment of ethnic, racial, or sexual minorities,” while noting the word’s “disparaging” usage referring to liberal orthodoxy, “especially promoting inclusive policies or ideologies that welcome or embrace ethnic, racial, or sexual minorities.”
But that’s not quite it. The term, in the modern context, describes a set of beliefs that depart from general support for equal rights and diversity promotion. A reliable definition is needed — yet is far from impossible to articulate.
Rich notes the word has replaced “political correctness” but refers to something deeper than “hypersensitivity.” It’s a critique, he writes, “of American life as fundamentally racist, sexist, homophobic, and transphobic.”
Wilfred Reilly boiled it down in an NRO piece back in March:
A “woke” person, or “social-justice warrior,” is someone who believes that (1) the institutions of American society are currently and intentionally set up to oppress (minorities, women, the poor, fat people, etc.), (2) virtually all gaps in performance between large groups prove that this oppression exists, and (3) the solution to this is equity — which means proportional representation regardless of performance or qualifications.
Princeton’s Robert P. George offered his own definition — too tendentious for the dictionary, perhaps, but concise:
The attitude of a person who regards his or her opinions as so obviously correct and so profoundly enlightened that they may not legitimately be doubted or challenged, and that only hate or bigotry can explain others’ holding different beliefs.
Jay Nordlinger posed the question “What’s ‘Woke’?” in a Corner post last weekend. He sought to answer it not with a definition but with examples:
At an American university, a conductor rehearsing a chorus said, “Now, ladies and gentlemen, please turn to Section B,” or whatever. A student reported him to administration. Administration gave him a warning. . . .
My colleague David Mastio worked at USA Today for a long while. At some point, a group of activists at the paper decided that “pregnant women” would no longer do. It had to be “pregnant people.” Mastio observed that the “people” in “pregnant people” are also known as “women.” The activists demanded that he be fired. Instead, he was demoted.
However one defines “woke,” contra Dictionary.com, it goes beyond having an interest in historical prejudices and a welcoming attitude toward minorities, attributes possessed by most people.
* * *
In other news, Trump has been indicted again, and, right before he was apparently informed of this, the sky turned orange. And it’s hard not to see that as some kind of portent.
NAME. RANK. LINK.
EDITORIALS
On the latest 2024 candidates: Chris Christie’s Redemption Tour and Mike Pence’s Leap of Faith
On a silly tantrum: The Self-Defeating House Conservative Rebellion on Gas-Stove Legislation
On a betrayal: PGA’s Shameless Cave to the Saudis
ARTICLES
John McCormack: Pence’s Only Hope: Iowa, Iowa, Iowa
Andrew Follett: How Defunding the Police Defunded the Economy
Megyn Kelly: Why I’m Done with ‘Preferred Pronouns’
Rich Lowry: DeSantis Exposed
Ari Blaff: Grammarly Wants to Make You an Ally, Whether You Like It or Not
Sahar Tartak: The Education Department’s Baseless Crusade against a Georgia School District
Eric Hogan: The Angels of Omaha
Noah Rothman: Tim Scott’s Happiness Is a Problem, Apparently
Noah Rothman: The Destruction of the Ukrainian Dam Is an Atrocity, Not a ‘Disaster’
Ryan Mills: Owner of Two of San Francisco’s Largest Hotels Pulling Out of City
Jeffrey Blehar: Cambridge University’s Anglo-Saxon History Department Decides Anglo-Saxons Never Actually Existed
Jim Geraghty: Saudi Arabia Purchases the Sport of Golf
Jonathan Nicastro: Nearly a Third of Adults under 30 Support Government Surveillance in Their Homes
Luther Ray Abel: Canada Must Pay: Environmental Reparations Now
CAPITAL MATTERS
Scott Howard puts a timely spotlight on the debt-free approach to living: The Wisdom of Dave Ramsey
Chelsea Follett & Vincent Geloso, with your periodic reminder that life isn’t as bad as the dominant narrative says it is: The Global Inequality Gap Continues to Narrow
LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW.
A David Lynch documentary explains how the surrealist followed the yellow brick road. From Armond White: David Lynch’s Political Surrealism
Brian Allen says Greenwich’s Bruce Museum nailed it with this exhibition: At 95, the Fabulous Lois Dodd Gets Her Place in the Sun
FROM THE NEW, JUNE 26, 2023, ISSUE OF NR
Andrew Stuttaford: How Poland Sees the Ukraine War
Jim Geraghty: Notes on Fatherhood
Katherine Howell: The Gift of a Good Father
Dan McLaughlin: The DeSantis Campaign So Far
EXCERPTS, FOR THE SOUL
The new issue of National Review is a Father’s Day special. Mark Wright will walk you through it right here. The features are about boys and men — and why the progression from one into the other is important. But if you’re looking for a place to start, Katherine Howell’s tribute to her own father is the perfect one to bookmark for next Sunday (or to read now):
The ability to protect others is often described as a particularly masculine virtue. Usually, it’s associated with a man’s greater physical strength, or with his provision of material support. But a more important sort of protection, and a rarer one, is the kind created by a man’s faithfulness to the people in his care. In practice, it requires channeling strength into self-restraint and self-denial.
By “protection” I don’t mean warding off all the bad things that naturally happen in life. A father can’t do that. But being loved by a good man whose fidelity remains unbroken confers a kind of psychic protection. It serves as an inoculation against all that the world can throw at you, and it prevents you from being fooled by counterfeit forms of masculinity.
My dad was a tall man with a long, propulsive gait and a booming voice. When I was young, he was a little imposing. Later, as a grandfather, he visibly softened. He had a bone-dry sense of humor and a keen ability to savor the follies of his fellow man, which served him equally well in the practice of law and in the raising, with my mother, of four children.
The only memories I have of him getting angry with me as a child relate to instances when I demonstrated a lack of integrity. Once, when he’d rebuked me for doing something I shouldn’t have — I don’t remember what — I replied with a phrase that I’d picked up somewhere and thought sounded impressive: “What does it matter, in the grand scheme of things?” He let me know in no uncertain terms that this was exactly wrong, that nothing matters more, in the grand scheme of things, than our words and actions.
In his own life, he seemed incapable of doing anything as if it didn’t matter. This was evident in his professional work, and in little things, like the care with which he researched trails and wrote out notes for the hikes he intended to take (he summited all 48 of the 4,000-footers in New Hampshire’s White Mountains); or the time he spent attempting to calculate on graph paper the exact angle and height at which a basketball hoop should be mounted on our garage roof using a series of wooden wedges and blocks.
He used to wash the family’s dishes and clean up the kitchen every night. Performed to his standards, it was a long and exacting operation. (My mother always did the cooking; that was the division of labor in our house — through strategic incompetence, my siblings and I got out of helping clean up.) He had a system for loading the dishwasher, with an internal logic of its own, and if you just stuck a plate in anywhere it fit, he’d swoop in to rearrange it. My earliest memories are suffused with the comforting sounds of waking up to his slippers shuffling in the kitchen, the grinding of coffee beans, and the clanking of plates as he unloaded the dishwasher. I remember almost pitying him at times for the Sisyphean nature of these chores. Eventually, I understood that his daily performance of mundane tasks was not mere drudgery but a foundation of our family’s well-being.
John McCormack spoke with Mike Pence about his now-official 2024 presidential bid. Here’s what he said:
If Pence is to pull off an astonishing upset and become the 2024 nominee, Iowa is a must-win. To achieve that objective, Pence is highlighting his full-spectrum conservatism — which ranges, as he described in an interview with National Review, from a “commitment to strong national defense to limited government and traditional values” and to a “commitment to the ideals of our Founders and the principles enshrined in the Constitution.”
One thing Pence has going for him in Iowa is his strong record as a social conservative. Evangelical Christians played a decisive role in delivering Iowa to Ted Cruz in 2016, to Rick Santorum in 2012, and to Mike Huckabee in 2008. Pence has long been a leader in the pro-life movement. Asked about Donald Trump’s statement that pro-life “heartbeat bills” are “too harsh,” Pence says that “now is not the time for leaders in our party to shrink from the cause of life or to try and relegate it to a states-only issue.” Asked about Nikki Haley’s highlighting how unlikely it is that a federal limit on abortion passes the Senate, Pence says that “part of leadership is casting a vision.”
“I have no question that all the great movements in the history of this country have required leadership,” he adds.
Pence may have the strongest record as a social conservative of any GOP presidential candidate, but his approach to the culture war differs from both Trump’s and DeSantis’s. “I fully supported Florida’s efforts to protect children under third grade from being exposed to this left-wing agenda,” Pence says of Florida’s law banning classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in public schools. But he says that, as a limited-government conservative, he opposes DeSantis’s attempts to go after Disney in response to the corporation’s opposition to the law. “Whether it’s Florida going after Disney, or whether it’s California going after Walgreens for refusing to sell abortifacient pills in states where it’s prohibited, I just can’t endorse state action against corporations that oppose state policy in the political realm,” Pence says.
If DeSantis’s war against Disney is the wrong way to fight the culture war, then what’s the right way? “I’m actually very heartened to see the public response to Bud Light’s recent actions and marketing, and the way parents are rallying in response to Target’s overreach,” Pence says. “There’s nothing more powerful in America than the voice of the American people. And there’s nothing more powerful than the free market.”
Speaking of “woke” . . . Ari Blaff finds out what happens when you run NR copy through Grammarly’s euphemism-favoring filters:
As part of its premium package, Grammarly offers twelve customizable “inclusive language” settings that aim to root out bias against the disabled, racial minorities, and LGBT people. The application even has a special setting specifically designed for flagging “alternatives to terms with origins in the institution of slavery,” though it offers no similar carve-outs for terms that may affect victims of the Holocaust or other genocides.
National Review editor Rich Lowry ran grievously afoul of Grammarly’s inclusivity algorithm in his February 2023 column, “No, Slavery Didn’t Create Capitalism.” The algorithm objected to Lowry’s use of the words “slave,” “slaves,” and “slave owner,” finding that the terms made the essay’s “delivery” worse.
“The term slaves may be considered dehumanizing. Different wording may help to acknowledge the humanity of enslaved people,” the program reminds us. Similarly, a “word other than slave owner in this context may help to acknowledge the humanity of enslaved people.”
Submissions that are run through the program are assigned a score of 0 to 100 and gain points when their writers assent to Grammarly’s Orwellian suggestions. In Lowry’s case, full-scale adoption of inclusive language boosts the article’s score from 84 to 87 and resolves any outstanding “delivery” issues.
A similar process unfolds when analyzing an essay by NR’s Maddy Kearns titled “Trans and Teens: The Social-Contagion Factor is Real,” which was bumped up from 88 to 92 after removing multiple references to “transgenderism,” one usage of “transsexuals,” and one gendered pronoun. “Some readers may consider the term Transgenderism outdated or clinical. Different wording may be more effective.”
And, while Lowry and Kearns are not likely to be swayed by hostile artificial intelligence, the scoring system may be influencing student behavior: The Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at Iowa State University encourages instructors to require students to “check their work in Grammarly before turning it in . . . to focus more on higher-level issues such as critical thinking, creativity, and demonstration of learning.” Similar testimonials have been offered by Cal State LA, Middle Tennessee State University, and Illinois State University.
ICYMI, we ran an adaptation earlier this week of Megyn Kelly’s recent podcast monologue explaining why she’s “done” with preferred pronouns. A snippet:
We moved to Connecticut in 2021, and that was the year the floodgates really opened. Hardly a day went by over the next two years without another story in the news of the trans madness sweeping the nation: female inmates being raped by male sex offenders who had conveniently declared themselves trans right before heading to prison; female cyclists losing titles to grown men who declared themselves trans and absconded with the prize money; professional psychiatric associations adopting “gender-confirming care” as the only acceptable option for children suffering any hint of gender confusion; a boy in a dress sexually assaulting a girl in a Virginia school bathroom while administrators covered it up; a teenage volleyball player severely injured by a trans player who spiked the ball so hard the girl suffered permanent damage; hospitals bragging about how much cash they were making on cross-gender procedures, including on teenagers; pictures online of young women’s gutted forearms where flesh was harvested to build a grotesque phony phallus that no one would ever mistake for an actual male sex organ; high-schoolers celebrating “top surgery” in which their breasts were amputated before their 16th birthday, forever eliminating their ability to breastfeed; kids pumped full of puberty blockers and then cross-sex hormones, rendered sterile and incapable of ever reaching sexual climax — all while their parents and doctors maintained this was all by “informed” consent.
One by one we met the detransitioners — those brave enough to admit their gender changes had been a mistake. Kids who were just unhappy, anxious, or perhaps on the autism spectrum had been rushed to transition by a system that seemed more about a political agenda than about addressing the patient’s mental health. These voices were promptly ignored or shamed by the very same community that had love-bombed them to begin with, earlier touting surgery, hormones, and the trans lifestyle as a kind of panacea.
And then came Lia Thomas. An obvious male, towering over his female competitors, crushing them in the pool by several body lengths. The spectacle of this swimmer, ranked in the mid-500s as a male, annihilating women in race after race, heading to the NCAA finals where he emerged a champion was for many of us the last straw.
Shout-Outs
Kevin Ryan, at UnHerd: Why Putin will use nuclear weapons
Tim Alberta, at the Atlantic: Inside the Meltdown at CNN
Chip Cutter and Lauren Weber, at the Wall Street Journal: Companies That Embraced Social Issues Have Second Thoughts
CODA
I’ve sampled from this album before, but after finally finding and picking up an old vinyl pressing, at an always-reliable shop in Philly, I’ll sing praises once more for Jeff Beck’s Truth. If you know, you know. The 1968 lineup essentially constituted a supergroup, counting the cameos across various tracks — Beck, Rod Stewart, Jimmy Page, Keith Moon, and others — and their sound is just unrestrained and soulfully satisfying blues rock. Here’s “Rock My Plimsoul.”
Enjoy, and thanks for reading.