A roundup of news and commentary from around the interwebs.
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For those of you following the battles over race, wokeness, and Trump within American evangelicalism, this breakdown by Samuel D. James is nuanced and helpful.
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For those wondering how the advocates of a post-liberal order are responding to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, here’s Gladden Pappen on how this conflictot illustrates that we are now at the end of globalization.
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Canada is (again) experiencing a surge in sexually-transmitted diseases—this time, the incredibly dangerous syphilis. From the National Post:
Syphilis is now hitting older people. It’s hitting all groups. There were 9,382 confirmed cases in Canada in 2020, up from 1,749 in 2011, according to a new report on the rising syphilis rates in Canada. While gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men still represent a higher proportion of cases, syphilis is shifting towards heterosexual populations, particularly women. Rates have increased in every age group, especially in females aged 15 to 39. Canada reported a 740 per cent increase in infectious syphilis in women from 2016 to 2020, with the highest rates among women of childbearing age. And with that increase has come a parallel increase in babies with syphilis.
The one solution you won’t hear? Get married and be monogamous.
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This, from Wesley J. Smith in National Review, illustrates where we are headed in Canada with assisted suicide:
Sisters Lila Ammouri and Susan Frazier who died by assisted suicide in Switzerland had been healthy and happy prior to their death, their brother says. Cal Ammouri, 60, told The Independent he last spoke to his sisters a few weeks before they travelled to Switzerland on 3 February, and there was no indication they were about to end their lives. He said he had been kept in the dark by US Consular services about the cause of death . . .
Lila Ammouri, 54, a palliative care doctor, and Ms Frazier, 49, a registered nurse, flew from Arizona to Switzerland via Chicago on 3 February without telling friends or family. When they didn’t didn’t show up for work at Aetna Health Insurance on 15 February, colleagues raised the alarm, fearing they may have been kidnapped or held hostage.
Their death was confirmed by the US Consulate in Switzerland on 18 February. Basel-Landschaft Public Prosecutor’s Office spokesman Michael Lutz told The Independent the sisters had died with the help of an assisted suicide organisation.
Two healthy sisters died together by suicide with the assistance of doctors and without the knowledge of their family. Awful. Just awful.
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Yet another data set highlights the growing number of Americans abandoning Christianity. The most worrisome number: only 40% of Gen Zers see raising children with religion as a good thing.
