Developing Culture
Recruiting and Training an Intellectual Minor League Team
Welcome to another edition of The Mueller Report!
Updates
I’m writing on the road again. Travel picks up for me this fall with multiple trips in September and in October. I’m reminded of the costliness of travel thinking about how I left my house over four hours ago and the plane is only just now taking off…
Still, I can’t complain too much. Many of the trips have fun and productive elements to them. And the rest of the time my work is very flexible – which allows me to pursue other interests and be involved with family activities and running The Abbey. We finally sold our NJ house last week after many inconveniences and a process full of transaction costs. I’ll have a column discussing the experience and related policy issues coming out this Friday.
Writing
Things have picked up again on the writing front. Besides last week’s newsletter, I had two other pieces come out:
-The Fed’s Balance Sheet Feeds Bailout Culture
-A Harris Administration Will Create the United States of California
I’m shopping around a piece about Volkswagen’s woes and how they relate to German and European policy errors – errors that are sadly being championed by the two major presidential candidates here in the U. S. I also have a “Bread and Circuses” column looking for a home. Several more pieces are in various stages of development.
Last week I also had four media appearances. Here are the more substantive two:
-Washington Watch on economic policy
Reflection
I wrote a couple months ago about how trees are a good metaphor for friendship. This week I want to explain why I think the idea of building a farm or minor league baseball team is an excellent metaphor for what I (and a few others) want to do in Leadville over the next couple of decades. We want to build a dynamic community of intellectuals, theologians, entrepreneurs, and artists.
First, I should note that I don’t have delusions of grandeur. We’re not going to build a flagship world-class university in a semi-remote town of less than 10,000 people. Not only are we not gunning to win the World Series, I have no expectation that we will build a major league team. That being said, I believe we can pursue excellence, beauty, and joy in deep ways. And like baseball farm teams, I expect that we will interact with some of the major league teams and that some folks from our community will enter the academic big leagues themselves.
We are also at an early stage. We don’t have a complete team to field yet. A few of us have gotten together to be players, recruiters, and coaches of this intellectual farm team, but we are just starting the process of building it. We are scouting who might want to play on our team and be a part of our intellectual community. We are looking for (building) interest locally. And we are looking for (building) talent locally. But we also want to recruit talent from outside Leadville to come make our team better.
If you know people who have a sense of adventure and ambition who might be interested in joining our team, please connect them with me!
I had a conversation with a friend last week about the intellectual retreats/conferences I want to host in 2025. She asked tons of good questions about scope, content, audience, and purpose. And I told her that part of why I want to bring outside scholars to lead and participate in these events is because big league players have a lot to offer less experienced players. These events are mini-versions of a sports “clinic” where experts spend time sharpening the skills of new players. And not only sharpening skills, but also inspiring them in their craft.
The analogy of fielding a minor league intellectual baseball team can run in many directions. What kinds of training equipment should we invest in? What drills should we run? How do we build general fitness? What positions do we need to fill? When and how do we “compete?”
I won’t attempt to answer these questions this week, but I expect you will see this analogy again in later newsletters.
Bookshelf
A couple weeks ago I read Mark Hall’s Who’s Afraid of Christian Nationalism? It’s a nicely written book (and not long) about how much of the reporting and conversation around Christian Nationalism of the past two decades is either wrong or greatly exaggerated. With polite, but devastating, analysis and commentary, Hall shows how several frequently cited alarmist books criticizing Christian Nationalism are hack jobs.
These authors tend not to know what Christian Nationalism is, how many people support it, or how limited its influence is. They project Christian Nationalism onto movements, events, and people they don’t like. For example, several critics claim that Christian Nationalism was a key part of the Jan. 6th riot and trespassing in the U. S. Capitol. Yet there is nary a flag to be found among the rioters, and hardly any can be seen among the much larger demonstration.
Looking at detailed survey data, Hall argues that alarmist claims that 40% or more of the population identifies as Christian Nationalists are clearly wrong. Many of the survey questions used simply screen for religious belief or conviction, not Christian Nationalism. Furthermore, Hall argues from other surveys that sympathy for Christian Nationalism is not identical to being a Christian nationalist. He points out that only one member of Congress, Marjorie Taylor Greene, publicly claims to be a Christian Nationalist – hardly evidence that Congress is about to be run by Christian Nationalists.
Hall also claims that most Christian Nationalism, while naïve and misguided in several ways, hardly amounts to a hotbed of racism, sexism, or patriarchal white supremacism – which are exactly the kinds of labels people in media readily ascribe to Christian Nationalists. If anything, the leading advocates of Christian Nationalism make a modest, if jumbled, case for it based largely on the precedent of magisterial Protestantism in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. But even that is watered down by modern sensibilities, ‘Of course we don’t think blasphemers should be put to death or that infidels should be jailed until they convert!”
In addition to revealing how shoddy much of the reporting and “scholarship” about Christian Nationalism is, Hall makes a theological case in his last chapter for why Christians should not be Christian Nationalists. I found that chapter the weakest and least persuasive. Certainly, I agree that political magistrates should not arbitrate or enforce ecclesiological or theological doctrine and positions. But I do think local magistrates can exercise more robust governance and guidance on issues of public morality – something I think Hall too quickly concedes as parochial religious imposition.
Furthermore, I am not persuaded that foregrounding Christian tradition, and even some practices, is problematic. While religious minorities should be protected and recognized, it seems absurd to suggest that a town or county that is well over 50% Protestant Christians and less than 1% Sikhs, Jews, or other religious minorities should for some reason pursue perfect neutrality in how they address religious tradition, custom, and observances.
But despite my reservations about the final chapter, Who’s Afraid of Christian Nationalism remains a fine book worth reading – if only to clear the hysterical fog and hyperbole that surrounds Christian Nationalism.
Game Corner
When I was in Colorado Springs a couple weekends ago, we played a game called Splendor. I’ve owned the game for a long time, but it is always fun to pull out again Your goal is to reach fifteen points first. There are three rows of resource cards (red, green, blue, brown, and white jewels) to purchase with different combinations of colored jewels. Most cards in the cheapest row are not worth any points while cards in the most expensive row are each worth three to five points.
On your turn you can select up to three jewels of different colors to add to your resource pile – with a cap of ten jewels total. You can also “reserve” a card to buy later. When you reserve it, you get a wild (gold) resource token. Once you have the right kinds of jewels, you can purchase resource cards from the rows. Each resource card serves as a permanent supply of one color of jewel. As you can imagine, the game increases in speed as players accumulate resource cards.
One more wrinkle in the game is the existence of a few noble tiles. These noble tiles are each worth three points. You gain them instantly (without having to use an action) when you have the number of resource cards to match the tile (i. e. 3 blues, 3 greens, and 3 whites). These tiles enter later in the game. While it is possible to win without gaining any noble tiles, it’s quite unusual.
This game plays quickly with very short turns. It is also easy to grasp and doesn’t require any reading – which means even young children can learn to play it. It is also easy to learn which makes it a great game to pull out for friends who are not as gung-ho about strategy board games.
Enjoy the rest of this week!