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Title IX’s Collision Course with Reality
[H5] Scott Yenor

[IMG: Title IX’s Collision Course with Reality]

[H2]
The Thinker Who Foresaw Pope Leo’s Critique of AI
[H5] Geoff Shullenberger

[IMG: The Thinker Who Foresaw Pope Leo’s Critique of AI]

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[H2]
Post-Literacy Raised the Stakes of the Odyssey Debate
[H5] John Byron Kuhner

[IMG: Post-Literacy Raised the Stakes of the Odyssey Debate]

[H2]
The Cheap Tradsploitation of ‘Yesteryear’
[H5] Julia Yost

[IMG: The Cheap Tradsploitation of ‘Yesteryear’]

[H2]
The AI Serpent in the Literary Grove
[H5] Ernest Jesuyemi

[IMG: The AI Serpent in the Literary Grove]

May 28, 2026

[H2] Title IX’s Collision Course with Reality

[H5] Scott Yenor

[IMG: Title IX’s Collision Course with Reality]

May 27, 2026

[H2] The Cheap Tradsploitation of ‘Yesteryear’

[H5] Julia Yost

[IMG: The Cheap Tradsploitation of ‘Yesteryear’]

May 26, 2026

[H2] Post-Literacy Raised the Stakes of the Odyssey Debate

[H5] John Byron Kuhner

[IMG: Post-Literacy Raised the Stakes of the Odyssey Debate]

May 26, 2026

[H2] The Thinker Who Foresaw Pope Leo’s Critique of AI

[H5] Geoff Shullenberger

[IMG: The Thinker Who Foresaw Pope Leo’s Critique of AI]

May 22, 2026

[H2] The AI Serpent in the Literary Grove

[H5] Ernest Jesuyemi

[IMG: The AI Serpent in the Literary Grove]

May 22, 2026

[H2] Gen Z’s Incompetent Converts

[H5] Stephen G. Adubato

[IMG: Gen Z’s Incompetent Converts]

May 21, 2026

[H2] What the Right Can Learn from the Frankfurt School

[H5] Paul Gottfried

[IMG: What the Right Can Learn from the Frankfurt School]

May 20, 2026

[H2] Thomas Massie’s Dead-End Libertarianism

[H5] Daniel McCarthy

[IMG: Thomas Massie’s Dead-End Libertarianism]

May 20, 2026

[H2] The Emerging AI Policy Consensus

[H5] Jared Hayden

[IMG: The Emerging AI Policy Consensus]

May 19, 2026

[H2] American Empire Is Here to Stay

[H5] Ralph Leonard

[IMG: American Empire Is Here to Stay]

May 18, 2026

[H2] Pope Leo vs. the Machines of Loving Grace

[H5] William Jones

[IMG: Pope Leo vs. the Machines of Loving Grace]

May 15, 2026

[H2] Did Christianity Inspire North Korea?

[H5] Benjamin R. Young

[IMG: Did Christianity Inspire North Korea?]

May 14, 2026

[H2] The Bizarre Theory Behind RFK’s Attack on Vaccines

[H5] Alexander Riley

[IMG: The Bizarre Theory Behind RFK’s Attack on Vaccines]

May 13, 2026

[H2] What’s Behind the Gerrymandering Arms Race

[H5] Jacob Eisler

[IMG: What’s Behind the Gerrymandering Arms Race]

May 12, 2026

[H2] Who Benefits from Urban Poverty?

[H5] Helen Andrews

[IMG: Who Benefits from Urban Poverty?]

In his posthumously published final book, The Rivers North of the Future, the social critic, philosopher, and renegade Catholic priest Ivan Illich argued that humanity’s relation to technology had undergone a profound shift in the late twentieth century. In the era stretching from the late Middle Ages through the Industrial Revolution, technologies had been understood as tools subordinate to human intentions—as “something … that can be picked up or not picked up by a person.” But cybernetic technologies, Illich argued, were upending this relationship. “A hammer,” he said, “doesn’t make me into part of the hammer,” but when it comes to computer systems, the user “by the logic of the system, becomes part of the system.” As a consequence of this shift, Illich went on to argue, humanity was “moving … into what I would call an a-mortal society.” For one, the body, as apprehended through the computerized systems deployed by the medical profession, was no longer perceived as mortal in any absolute sense, but as a bundle of signals and values to be registered, manipulated, and adjusted. Death could be reimagined as something akin to a computer crash. This outlook elided the fact that man was fallen and destined for death. In this regard, said Illich, “thinking about the body as a system is a way of hiding sin.”Now the institution with which Illich maintained a complex lifelong relationship—the Catholic Church—has weighed in on the technological transition that interested him in his later years. In his heavily anticipated encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XIV has staked out a position for the Church in the battle over artificial intelligence and its social and political consequences. In an echo of Illich, Leo writes that today, “technology is not simply a tool” but instead has become “the standard by which everything is judged.” “There is nothing accidental about this reversal of means and ends.”There is nothing accidental about this reversal of means and ends. Cybernetic systems are designed to subordinate human users to machinic purposes, turning them into just one source of input. The AI industry has been deeply influenced by the prophets of the “Singularity,” who take this logic to its ultimate end. In the most radical variant of this outlook, humanity is reduced, in the immortal phrase of Elon Musk, to a “biological bootloader of digital superintelligence.” Likewise, in his youthful accelerationist phase, before he reversed course entirely, the AI guru Eliezer Yudkowsky declared the achievement of artificial superintelligence to be the “Interim Meaning of Life” and the “temporary definition of the Good.” The new encyclical has been treated as an extension of the tradition of Catholic social teaching, which surely has renewed relevance at a moment when tech elites speak blithely of the looming emergence of a “permanent underclass” due to automation. But the document is just as importantly preoccupied with the account of human ends encoded in the newest technologies. The prophets of AI, as Leo seems to recognize, are driven by their own vision of the Good and of human transcendence that contests and competes with the one articulated by the Church. “In the promises of transhumanism,” writes Leo, “we recognize a yearning that is of concern to us, namely the need for a fuller life, less exposed to limitations and suffering.” The pursuit of technological self-enhancement, in other words, speaks to the human impulses—a recognition of human frailty and a desire for transcendence—that also animate Christian believers. But whereas “old and new ideologies alike urge humanity to overcome limitations through technology,” what the Church teaches is “the mystery of the Son of God entering into our human condition.” Inverting the transhumanist vision of mere mortals ascending to digital godhood, Christ “takes upon himself our weakness and transforms it into a setting for salvation.” Here, the debate replays earlier fights against heresy, notably that of St. Augustine (Leo’s theological lodestar) against Pelagius, who like today’s transhumanists saw human beings as perfectible.  Leo addresses himself “to all the Catholic faithful, to all Christians and to all men and women of goodwill,” suggesting that nonbelievers might also find value in his message. Some probably will: Liberals otherwise wary of religion have lately found strategic value in the moral stature of the Church when it comes to, say, opposing Donald Trump’s military adventures. But noncommittal endorsement of Magnifica Humanitas may allow secular AI skeptics to put off clarifying their own answers to the vital questions the encyclical addresses: What is the Good? What are the ultimate ends of humanity? Those pursuing the Singularity have their answers, as does the Church. In contrast, mainstream anti-AI thinking adds up to little beyond what Lionel Trilling (impugning midcentury conservatism) described as “irritable mental gestures”: data center NIMBYism, incessant parroting of the phrase “stochastic parrot,” vague worries about water, unemployment, and misinformation. The poverty of the liberal imagination when it comes to current technological debates is one of the most acute indicators of our postliberal condition.     Illich foresaw much of this when he suggested that the conflicts defining our time were fundamentally religious ones. “Modernity,” he argued, “can be studied as an extension of Church history.” The questions at stake in disputes over technology extended theological debates that could be traced back over a millennium; the crises afflicting liberal institutions were continuations of those that had also afflicted the Church. This is why, Illich said, “I do not believe this is a post-Christian world”; on the contrary, it is “the most obviously Christian epoch.” He didn’t find this reassuring, arguing that it meant we lived in “an apocalyptic world.” The broad resonance of Magnifica Humanitas suggests he was onto something.

Beginning in 2028, the University of Nebraska will sponsor women’s flag football as a varsity sport. The NCAA now officially recognizes women’s flag football as an Emerging Sport, with the promise of an NCAA championship in the near future if more schools adopt it. No men’s flag football programs exist in the NCAA, though men and boys make up the lion’s share of flag football players in all recreational leagues. The reason for this is simple: Title IX demands that schools have as many female athletes as the female proportion in the student body. If women are 59 percent of the student body (the national average), then 59 percent of the athletes must be women too if schools want to be in the “safe harbor” for Title IX compliance. Nebraska was about 53 percent male in 2000, but is now split 50-50. This presents a problem. Roughly 53 percent of Husker athletes are men, according to its 2025 Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act (EADA) report. Its 155 football players stifle the creation of other male sports and oblige Nebraska to fund women’s sports like flag football, beach volleyball, bowling, rifle, soccer, swimming and diving (without male equivalents). Nebraska had fifty members of its female basketball team in 2025; the men’s team had only eighteen. Nebraska cut men’s swimming in 2001 under such Title IX pressure. It hasn’t added a men’s sport since 1993. Even with all these changes, Nebraska is not in Title IX’s “safe harbor.”

Hollywood has always taken a permissive approach to adaptations. When Sam Zimbalist, an MGM producer, wanted a new movie of Lew Wallace’s 1880 novel Ben-Hur, he summoned Karl Tunberg to his office. Tunberg had served as president of the Screen Writers Guild, and Zimbalist wanted him to do the script. Tunberg demurred, saying he knew nothing about Ben-Hur. He hadn’t even read it. Sam waved him off. “Don’t worry about that,” Sam barked. “It’s a classic! That means nobody’s read it! We can do what we want with it!”The system generally worked, even if it meant that you couldn’t watch the movie in order to pass your test in English class. Boris Karloff’s monosyllabic monster wasn’t the Milton-analyzing literary whiz of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but he was iconic all the same. The Philip K. Dick story about memory implantation featured no Martian syndicate selling air, no rebels, no vanished alien civilization, not even a single scene on Mars—but the 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle Total Recall did it a sleazy kind of justice anyway. Producers weren’t selling faithful literary adaptations. They were selling the magic of Hollywood. There were some clunkers, but audiences bought in. If you loved Shakespeare, you were excited to try Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes. It was freewheeling but you expected nothing else. If you loved the Iliad, you wanted to go see Troy, even if it was absurd to see Menelaus killed dishonorably by Hector a third of the way in. That was part of the fun: You had no idea what crazy thing the screenwriters would do with the story.