1. Daniel Schwammenthal: To America, From a Worried European Friend

America can’t remain the leader of the free world if it is itself no longer free. To be the guarantor of Western security requires military and economic power, but also a sense of mission. And right now Americans are committing mass character suicide. If the country goes beyond acknowledging that racism and inequality persist and must be fought, and instead convinces itself that it’s inherently and irredeemably racist, it can’t possibly continue to believe that it has any right to lead.

2. Jordan Ballor & Eric J. Hutchinson: Forgiveness as a Political Necessity

As the political philosopher William B. Allen has noted, America itself is well understood as a “love story,” which includes “a moral commitment between the people and the government.” Forgiveness is the foundation of any true love story. Cancel culture necessarily ends either in self-immolation or in reeducation camps and gulags, creating its own kind of hellish existence—documented so powerfully by Solzhenitsyn. Forgiveness, by contrast, forges new beginnings and opens up new possibilities.

3. CNN: This single, working mom says remote learning will mean having to choose between her child or job

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4. Josh Hawley: Judicial Nominees Must Explicitly Acknowledge That Roe Was Wrongly Decided

Roe is central. Roe is a window into the constitutional worldview of a would-be justice. It is a measure of their sense of what a justice should be. If you believe that Roe was rightly decided, then there just is no two ways about it: you are a judicial imperialist. If you believe Roe was rightly decided, you believe that unelected judges should have the power to enact their own social views, to promote their own social agenda, regardless of what the Constitution says or what we the people have expressed preference for, voted for, and enacted into law.

5.

Christopher Lasch in The True and Only Heaven writes how fatherhood led to his disillusionment with liberalism and its obsession with progress. Read it all: pic.twitter.com/Tbb1d08wiU

— Tyler Fagan (@tylerafagan) July 30, 2020

6. Arthur Brooks: ‘Success Addicts’ Choose Being Special Over Being Happy

As I once found myself confessing to a close friend, “I would prefer to be special than happy.” He asked why. “Anyone can do the things it takes to be happy—going on vacation with family, relaxing with friends … but not everyone can accomplish great things.” My friend scoffed at this, but I started asking other people in my circles and found that I wasn’t unusual. Many of them had made the success addict’s choice of specialness over happiness. They (and sometimes I) would put off ordinary delights of relaxation and time with loved ones until after this project, or that promotion, when finally it would be time to rest.

But, of course, that day never seemed to arrive.

7. Chris Arnade: Our Educational Colonialism

What we have now is a top-down educational system that intellectually strip mines America and humiliates everyone. What we need is a democratic educational system that provides pathways to dignified lives for everyone. That provides Shakespeare and differential topology to those who see the beauty of each, but also provides skills to those who would rather focus on things like music, mechanics, nursing, parenting, farming, or whatever.

8. Melania Trump: ‘Be Best’ is Advocating that Every Child Find a Loving, Safe and Forever Family

9. Catholic News Agency: Congressional hearing highlights case of missing Chinese Catholic bishop

“What have you done in secret to this extraordinary man of God? And why does a powerful dictatorship fear peaceful men and women of faith and virtue?”

Bishop James Su Zhimin of the Diocese of Baoding, in China’s Hebei province, was arrested by Chinese authorities in 1997. He was last seen by family at a hospital in 2003 while he was in government custody.

10. Michael Lewis: Confessions of a California Covid Nurse

Her job, as she now sees it, is to keep the door to the Public Health office open, until the American public is ready to be saved from itself. “There will come a time when their minds will be changed,” she said. “Once the reality hits them — when they see a friend of theirs die. Or someone young die. I don’t want them to feel confrontational. I want them to know I’ll be here for you. I’ll take your call even though you treated me like dirt.”

11. Nick Ripatrazone: Wander the World

Walking, as “a form of active idleness,” creates the perfect circumstances for creative thinking: “it is directed action and focused, but walking allows the mind to wander easily” – to go on an adventure within parallel to the adventure without.

12. USA Today: Georgia sheriff’s office thanks 3 inmates for saving deputy: ‘They didn’t hesitate’

13. Crux: After over four months, public Masses can resume Aug. 3 in Leicester, England

14.

In this lecture, Prof. @CRPakaluk unpacks St Edith Stein’s ideas of the two-fold vocation of woman, the three-fold vocation of marriage, the essence of woman and concludes with a brief exposition on St Catherine of Siena.

The lecture is available here: https://t.co/uJhPEdYkcP. pic.twitter.com/ajVCyGWxaO

— Thomistic Institute (@ThomisticInst) July 31, 2020

15. Denver Catholic: Northern Colorado’s Chesterton Academy to offer free tuition this fall

What can you say in this instance except that God is good?” said Blaise Hockel, Headmaster of the Chesterton Academy of John Paul II. “I think that what [we] want people to know has been made evident by these anonymous donors’ gift to us: that Catholic education has been so desperately waited in northern Colorado, that we are here to stay, and we have the community’s full support… People see the inherent value of what we have to offer.”