Homer, Hopkins, and Humans

“There’s No Place Like Home.” Eric Adler praises Patrick Deneen’s new book on how Homer’s Odyssey reveals the character of America’s tensions: “Even before their country’s founding, Deneen suggests, Americans have been torn between a restless longing to wander and a desire for a homecoming. Although he recognizes the existence of these conflicting impulses in all human beings, Deneen considers them especially germane to the foundation of the United States. After all, the European explorers who ventured to the New World beginning in the fifteenth century could portray their travels as daring exercises in adventurousness aimed at expanding human knowledge. And yet most Europeans who traveled to America did not endeavor to explore; rather, they wanted to find a home.”

“For the Love of the Game.” Happy Birthday to Orange Blossom Ordinary! Elizabeth Stice reflects on the project after two years: “So far, we’ve stayed true to our mission. We post twice a week. We edit everything before we publish it. We avoid the culture wars. Quite a few people have written for us. And we’ve improved on the original concept. The website is much sharper than it was in 2024. Author interviews are a more important part of what we do. We have book clubs. We have a flâneur page now. And we just started offering some downloads. You can keep up with these things if you subscribe to our substack. Doing things for love doesn’t bring in good money, but it is good. Whether it is successful or not, the stakes are the right kind of low.”

“The Social Security Reckoning Is Finally Coming.” Marc Novicoff looks at the various options—and their political viability—for balancing Social Security: “Pretty soon, politicians won’t be able to kick this can down the road anymore. Senators elected this November will be in office in 2032 [when the trust fund runs out]. So will the next president. They will have no choice but to come up with a way to save the federal government’s largest and most popular program, lest they be blamed for its partial collapse. The available solutions are politically tricky but not particularly mysterious. They involve raising taxes, increasing the national debt, and cutting benefits, or some mix of the three. Even if our leaders settle on a way to keep Social Security solvent, however, they are unlikely to address the deeper problem underlying the budgetary one: A program designed to reduce poverty has morphed into a transfer of wealth to the richest members of our society.”

“A Review of Call Out Coyote by Seth Wieck.” Sarah Ashbach revels in Wieck’s verse and vision: “Something of Hopkins’s compressed, dazzling language is felt in Wieck’s collection. It’s directly evident when you compare lines such as, ‘Glory be to God for dappled things,’ and, ‘Gavel gather our Order of the Dung Beetle,’ but Hopkins, whose love and language could both be called attention, lingers behind the whole book. Wieck teaches us to see that even in dusty West Texas, ‘The world is charged with the grandeur of God.’”

“Pleading the Fifth Won’t Spare Fauci from the Truth.” Eli Lake takes stock of what the Fauci hearing this week accomplished: “Since 2021 Senator Paul has been asserting that Fauci lied to the American people. There is nothing that Fauci could say at this point that might persuade his Republican accusers. Wednesday’s hearing was not a courtroom where both sides were given the opportunity to plead their case. Rather, it was a spectacle designed to make the bad guy squirm. Yet Fauci deserves to squirm.”

“Will MAHA Candidate Zach Lahn Stand Up to Big Ag in Iowa?” Gubernatorial candidate Lahn has staked out some very encouraging positions on agricultural issues, and Lisa Held looks at his past to try to judge whether he’d follow through on them if elected: “This election cycle, issues relating to the ways corporations have impacted farmers and the health and quality of life of all Iowans are more central than in elections past. Pollution in Iowa’s drinking water is increasingly widespread, and cancer rates in the state are rising. Positions for governor, senate, and secretary of agriculture are all in play. In that political context, Lahn’s message is not surprising. However, based on his history in business and politics, Lahn as the messenger is.”

“Sell the Company for $400 Million? He’s Giving It Away Instead.” David Gelles profiles the owner of the boat-building company Grady-White, who is giving his company away: “At a time when billionaires are shunning the Giving Pledge and artificial intelligence start-ups are minting thousands of new millionaires, Mr. Smith’s forfeiture of wealth stands out as an act of principled rebellion. . . . In recent weeks, he transferred Grady-White’s voting stock, which is a small percentage of the company’s overall shares, to a legal entity known as a purpose trust. The trust will hold those shares in perpetuity, ensuring that Grady-White remains independent and can never be sold — and continues to operate in accordance with Mr. Smith’s values, including profit-sharing.”

“Big Tech’s War on Human Achievement.” Gregory Conti envisions the depressing world that AI’s builders want to usher in, a world after the end of history and the end of meaningful work: “Communism is not going to overrun America, the recent electoral surge of the DSA notwithstanding. But the grand ambitions of our Silicon Valley tycoons very well may do so. For despite a recent attempt to turn the messaging more upbeat as AI takes a pummeling in public opinion, the fact is that the architects of artificial intelligence explicitly envision a world from which distinctions based on effort and ability are absent. Their stated mission is to create artificial general intelligence: an AI system that is more capable than human beings along most or all cognitive dimensions and that is able to perform the vast bulk of economically useful work. In other words, a world in which there is no opportunity for individuals to distinguish themselves via skill and effort, because these things will have been rendered irrelevant.”