Last week, the social-media outrage of the moment focused on Elizabeth Bruenig, a left-wing and devoutly Catholic New York Times columnist who wrote an article discussing her satisfaction with her own decision to have a child at the relatively young age of twenty-five. Examining the angry reaction at Bruenig’s benign personal essay, Ross Douthat reflects on what it says about the growing suspicion—and sometimes outright hostility—toward religion among certain segments of the highly educated elite:

Under current circumstances there are social and professional costs for the public expression or endorsement of a few particularly unpopular, understood-as-bigoted teachings that are common to Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. But those same costs don’t apply to practicing and participating in those traditions, even in their more conservative expressions. Whereas under the emergent, new-progressive circumstances, . . . the costs would increasingly apply more broadly: thus simply to attend Mass, even under the auspices of a liberal Catholic chaplaincy, would become an act of association with bigotry.

But I think it isn’t a coincidence that so many readers (or at least Twitterers) took an essay written by a Catholic woman that conspicuously did not champion specifically Catholic ideas about family and marriage, but merely described a way of being in the world that’s clearly influenced by the author’s faith, and read into it some sort of . . . chauvinism against other women’s choices. I think that kind of reading-into is an expression of the [a] tendency . . . in which you are judged by the progressive reading of your faith tradition’s doctrines, their unacceptable conservatism or misogyny or patriarchy, rather than anything you yourself have explicitly said or done.

Thus a lot of anti-Bruenigism boils down, basically, to this: You say you’re just describing your own experience, but you’re a practicing Catholic so we know what you really think—about this and everything else—and we’re going to punish you for that.

Except that at this point Bruenig’s punishment is—being offered a job at the Atlantic. . . . So whatever is happening around her on the Internet is not the dominant force in elite liberalism as yet. But can trends on Twitter or in the academic hothouse suddenly stage a larger takeover? Yes, we know they can. So does the tendency bear watching? Yes, I think it does.

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.