An Afghan national attacked National Gaurdsmen in D.C. This is, Pinkoski writes, the consequence of importing “people shaped by the global war on terror, shaped by the electric age.” Beyond the event, Pinkoski makes the larger point that terrorism is shaped by technology: “Just like Western youth in the megacities, Afghan youth in the urban areas were mesmerized by their own set of viral videos. Except theirs were of ISIS suicide bombers.”

For further reading: Technology shapes modernity. Mary Harrington gave an expansive, radical account of that shaping in the August/September issue: “The King and the Swarm.” For Pinkoski on a different, though deeply related topic: “Actually Existing Postliberalism” (November 2024).

Luma Simms was divorced and remarried. Then she joined the Catholic Church. She wrote about the experience in 2014 (“My Plea”) and returns to the topic today to discuss a recent statement by Pope Leo XIV. She writes that “true mercy is always an affirmation of truth.”

For further reading: Gerhard Cardinal Müller wrote in 2018 about Pope Francis’s Amoris Laetitia: “Development, or Corruption?”

Here’s a very short and very brutal poem by the Scottish poet Hollie McNish, written in 2019 and titled “Conversation with an archaeologist”:

he said they’d found a brothel
on the dig he did last night
I asked him how they know
he sighed:
a pit of babies’ bones
a pit of newborn babies’ bones was how to spot a brothel

The above is how Louise Perry begins her famous 2023 essay, “We Are Repaganizing.” One of First Things most popular articles, Perry argues here that Christianity protected the West from, among other things, the mass murder of infants so common in the pagan world. As Christianity recedes from swaths of the West, we will once again find pits of babies’ bones.

Upcoming Events

• December 12, 2025: The January issue goes live.
• February 1, 2026: Second Annual Neuhaus Lecture at the New College of Florida | Sarasota, FL. Details coming soon.

Until next time.

JACOB AKEY

Associate Editor