In her book Never Enough, Jennifer Breheny Wallace examines what she calls the “toxic achievement culture” of upper-middle-class American parents, where children are pushed hard from a tender age not just to get good grades, but to get stellar grades, acquire impressive extracurricular skills, and distinguish themselves in every way in preparation for their college applications. Naomi Schaefer Riley writes in her review:

Twenty pages before the end of Never Enough, Wallace describes a visit to Saint Ignatius, an all-boys Jesuit school in Cleveland. “What these priests undoubtedly knew, and what research shows us,” she writes, “is that living a life according to a value system that balances others’ needs with our own boosts our well-being.” Wallace, who has made no mention of faith or religious communities before this point, says that “part of the reason religion has been found to enhance mental health is because it reduces self-centeredness and creates a sense of belonging to a larger whole.”

In fact, what makes Saint Ignatius and other religious communities different is not merely an emphasis on community service—one that has been replicated by schools across the country—but a fundamental idea about the human person. That is, that human beings have inherent worth, no matter how they perform in school or what college they get into. Wallace writes: “We are in a crisis of the self. The formative years are when a child builds a stable foundation for a secure, sustainable adult identity. What we are doing instead is sending a devastating message: in order to be valued you must audition for it, work for it, and keep earning it. Only then will you matter in this house, at this school, in this world.”

Teaching kids that they matter is hard to do in a vacuum. You can tell them that they are loved, of course. But as children get older, they will inevitably wonder what makes them worthy of love. That they are nice? That they are smart? That they are attractive? Only by offering them an overarching theory about human dignity will they be able to understand their own value. But that is not the subject of this book. And most of the prestigious colleges to which they might be admitted will never tell them.

If Iran succeeds in obtaining nuclear weapons, the war in Gaza, let alone the protests on college campuses, will seem like a minor complication. Jonathan Schachter fears that this danger could be much more imminent than decisionmakers in Jerusalem and Washington believe. In his view, Israel seems to be repeating the mistake that allowed it to be taken by surprise on Simchat Torah of 2023 and Yom Kippur of 1973: putting too much faith in an intelligence concept that could be wrong.

Israel and the United States apparently believe that despite Iran’s well-documented progress in developing capabilities necessary for producing and delivering nuclear weapons, as well as its extensive and ongoing record of violating its international nuclear obligations, there is no acute crisis because building a bomb would take time, would be observable, and could be stopped by force. Taken together, these assumptions and their moderating impact on Israeli and American policy form a new Iran concept reminiscent of its 1973 namesake and of the systemic failures that preceded the October 7 massacre.

Meanwhile, most of the restrictions put in place by the 2015 nuclear deal will expire by the end of next year, rendering the question of Iran’s adherence moot. And the forces that could be taking action aren’t:

The European Union regularly issues boilerplate press releases asserting its members’ “grave concern.” American decisionmakers and spokespeople have created the unmistakable impression that their reservations about the use of force are stronger than their commitment to use force to prevent an Iranian atomic bomb. At the same time, the U.S. refuses to enforce its own sanctions comprehensively: Iranian oil exports (especially to China) and foreign-currency reserves have ballooned since January 2021, when the Biden administration took office.

Israel’s response has also been sluggish and ambiguous. Despite its oft-stated policy of never allowing a nuclear Iran, Israel’s words and deeds have sent mixed messages to allies and adversaries—perhaps inadvertently reinforcing the prevailing sense in Washington and elsewhere that Iran’s nuclear efforts do not present an exigent crisis.