One Unicorn could be just a figment of your imagination. Herd several together, and you get a Blessing of Unicorns upon your day. This week’s Unicorns consider the love of home, kids doing chores in the neighborhood, the anti-human and anti-God arrogance of AI, and a lot more!
***
Ivana D. Greco makes her Front Porch Republic debut this week with this piece: “There’s No Place Like Home.” A particularly key paragraph as a taste before you go read this in full:
Re-prioritizing the home and family is a cultural project, one that so far much of popular media seems disinclined to tackle. The rise of “tradwife” Instagram influencers is perhaps a dysfunctional attempt at filling this gap. If we’ve lost our cultural memory regarding how to create a good home, scrolling through (sometimes fake) pictures of one on social media can seem appealing. Additionally, there is much policymakers could do to help. But addressing this problem requires a bipartisan recognition that the home still matters. Politicians and economists have long focused on policy steps to increase GDP and workforce participation rates. These are worthy goals, but they discount the critical work that goes into making home and family life. Changing this dynamic requires a shift of perspective by elites that while career and marketplace consumption remain important, what we “produce” at home—family dinners, holiday get-togethers, tucking little kids into bed—is critical.
***
One great way for kids to participate in the life of the neighborhood is to do chores to help out not only at home but also for neighbors, argues Dixie Dillon Lane in this delightful essay. A taste:
To increase neighborhood connectedness and safety—and to encourage confidence and self-regulation among children—I suggest a return to the practice of letting our kids “work” the neighborhood.
There are countless small jobs that need to be done in a neighborhood that are well-suited to children’s skills and maturity levels. In my neighborhood, a 50-year-old subdivision on the outer edge of a small town, we have a wide variety of residents of different ages, family compositions, and professions. These neighbors have yards that need mowing, leaves that need raking, toddlers that need minding, dogs that need walking, mail that needs collecting, flowerbeds that need weeding, snowy driveways that need shoveling, and stomachs that are hungry for sugar cookies sold by child-bakers. It is a veritable cornucopia of opportunity for industrious children. And not only are kids fully capable of performing this type of work, but neighbors who no longer have children of their own at home often respond with enthusiasm to child entrepreneurs. They don’t want the neighborhood children sitting inside staring at screens. They want the kids running lemonade stands on the corner instead, and they are ready to put money on it!
Indeed, there is a real thirst out there—among my neighbors, at least—to support kids who are doing good things. Not everyone wants to hire a teen to mow their lawn and not everyone will buy my kid’s homemade cupcakes, but my family has found that many of our neighbors really do want to do these things.
***
Jeff Bilbro’s newest reflections on AI in Christianity Today highlight the false nature of its promises in theological terms: Not only is AI anti-human, it is anti-God. A taste:
As was made clear when he healed the centurion’s servant from afar or fed the 5,000, Jesus could have performed miracles at scale during his earthly ministry. He could have eliminated all suffering, oppression, and every other effect of the Fall. He could’ve more than fulfilled each promise Andreessen and his ilk now make on behalf of AI, transforming the cosmos into a perfectly functioning machine.
But he didn’t. Instead, the ministry of Jesus was reliably marked by an inefficiency and partiality that can be maddening to those of us who dwell in a machine age.
***
Switching gears, Rachel Lu’s retrospective on William F. Buckley Jr.’s 1951 God and Man at Yale is really fun. A taste:
It’s just too delicious. As an Ivy League alum myself, I could not help musing as I read: Is it sinful to enjoy a book this much? God and Man at Yale is the ultimate conservative-nerd revenge fantasy.
Buckley deserved the honor. I cannot really begrudge it. Even if he had not yet proved himself at age 24, he would richly demonstrate in later years that he was the rhetorical prankster the Right needed, able to lunge and parry without losing his charm or his integrity. Buckley had a mischievous spirit, and he gloried in controversy, but he never allowed the thrill of trolling to steal away his honor. It’s an interesting fact that God and Man at Yale, his first book, remains his most famous, though he was extremely prolific and appears to have gone on writing quite literally through the hour of his death. For some writers, that might look like evidence of undeveloped promise. For Buckley it seems fitting, a testament to the youthful energy that drew so many conservative luminaries to him and persuaded them that it could again be morning in America. This was his David moment, when he stood tall on the field of battle, savoring his strength and sense of mission.
***
Also philosophical, but in a different way, Daniel Fitzpatrick’s Socratic dialogue “On the Nature of King Cake” is just the thing you didn’t know you needed (or, at least, that was the case for me). A taste from the beginning:
Adeimantus: Tell us once more, Socrates, whether it was through investigations of your own or some undertaken in company that you divined at last the nature of king cake.
Socrates: And were you, Adeimantus, and Glaucon with you, not present at the festival of the gods when I described these discoveries once before? Or have you forgotten these matters already?
Adeimantus: You know, Socrates, that we are not as you are, retaining the knowledge of the gods without effort. We need constant reminding, and to hold the arguments you put forth ever in mind, repeating them as incantations.
Socrates: By the dog, my friend, let us speak truly. For if I had acquired knowledge of the gods, you can be certain that I would spend no speech on matters of mortal food. Nonetheless, the poets tell us that even the gods indulge in the best and sweetest of foods, and this I found king cake to be. I will tell you once more, then, and this time, hold these things in mind. It may be the will of the gods that I be with you but a little longer now.
***
Leah Libresco Sargeant unveils her 2025 reading list! To be clear, if you know Leah, she reads about ten times more than what she puts on this list, but it’s her “set in stone” list, whereas everything else may get added more dynamically, as new books come out etc.
***
Last but not least, if you know any college students (or happen to be one yourself) who are interested in growing as writers, Plough has two wonderful opportunities this summer that are currently accepting applications: the Publishing and Agriculture Internship and a Young Writers Weekend.