Nonprofit digital comms | Independent scholar | With Madeleine McDowell, wrote Pity for Evil | Studying Elizabeth Sherman Cameron (1857-1944)
California
Joined August 2010
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The book I wrote with my sister, Dr. Madeleine McDowell—Pity for Evil: Suffrage, Abortion, and Women’s Empowerment in Reconstruction America—was published by @EncounterBooks in November. This 🧵lists reviews and other published mentions of the book. encounterbooks.com/books/pit…
Monica Klem retweeted
It's a little early for Advent, but I wrote about how feasting without fasting just makes us sick & how we might teach ourselves to be content with the Little House on the Prairie Christmas: "a tin cup, a peppermint stick, sugar cakes, & a shining penny": christianitytoday.com/2026/1…
This discussion has been making me think about the implications of belief in the general judgment for scholarship and for biography in particular. (But also, public figures, like anyone, have some level of control over some parts of the record they leave, as well.)
I mean, do you genuinely believe a public figure completely forfeits any and all right to privacy, even regarding things not per se sinful, simply by virtue of speaking and writing publicly? Especially when we think about what we owe each other as brothers and sisters in Christ (since you want to bring in this element explicitly)? Because that seems quite a bold stance.
Monica Klem retweeted
By this argument, we would not write or read biography at all. The task of biography is to examine the available material "without fear or favor," and make it accessible to those who don't have time or resources to get into the archives and consist the interviews themselves.
Monica Klem retweeted
Important detail in the WSJ piece on Harvard great books course: "It’s also a lot of work. The professors all attend every lecture and must lead seminars on books they may not have previously read, and from other disciplines. Essentially, they are students too." @second_sailing
Monica Klem retweeted
"What the pro-surrogacy public relations campaigns never mention is this: no one has a right to a child. It doesn’t matter if that person is heterosexual, gay, in a couple, or single."
"The problem is not just that progressivism has offered a false account of the good life. It is that our culture as a whole has neglected the formation that each of us needs to choose well among competing goods."
In @firstthingsmag today, I reflect on the Rochester convention, and why building a classical school and a large and happy family has inspired in me a persistent hope that ...
firstthings.com/we-can-build…
Monica Klem retweeted
"I’d like to propose that the core of the women’s movement should rest in this call. To ask the question: what would it take to create a world in which every baby is welcome, without this coming at the cost of his or her mother’s personhood?"
Monica Klem retweeted
Chesterton's famous quote about needing to blow your own nose and write your own love letters is part of his spirited defense of democracy.
We must learn to govern ourselves, and we can't shuck off this duty of self-formation anymore than we should hand over our parenting.
ALT This is the first principle of democracy: that the essential things in men are the things they hold in common, not the things they hold separately. And the second principle is merely this: that the political instinct or desire is one of these things which they hold in common. Falling in love is more poetical than dropping into poetry. The democratic contention is that government (helping to rule the tribe) is a thing like falling in love, and not a thing like dropping into poetry. It is not something analogous to playing the church organ, painting on vellum, discovering the North Pole (that insidious habit), looping the loop, being Astronomer Royal, and so on. For these things we do not wish a man to do at all unless he does them well. It is, on the contrary, a thing analogous to writing one's own love-letters or blowing one's own nose. These things we want a man to do for himself, even if he does them badly. I am not here arguing the truth of any of these conceptions; I know that some
Monica Klem retweeted
got some mint tea. its the best. guy says he cant drink it, it tastes like toothpaste. let big dentistry colonize a whole domain of taste for him. toothpaste tastes like mint - mint doesn’t taste like toothpaste. some people really live in the simulation.
Monica Klem retweeted
this narrative evolving feels like a good sign... like we can let people be multiple things, something less possible in years past
Monica Klem retweeted
It’s a weird time to be a woman.
But, thankfully, a bandied crew of thinkers, writers, scholars, artists, and doers are charting a better way forward.
My latest @thedispatch
thedispatch.com/article/femi…
"Restoring a moral framework from which to explain why certain beliefs and behaviors are either good or bad would make us better at holding our institutions — and one another — accountable." Thank you, @ChristineEmba!
Wrote about Cornell: nytimes.com/2026/10/08/opini…
Monica Klem retweeted
Mint itself is a loan from Greek into Latin, and attested as far back as Linear B (mi-ta on the Mycenae spice tablets). One of the longest-attested words still in common use, I would wager.
Monica Klem retweeted
Everyone begins as a philosopher.
Kids start sincerely asking big questions early. The challenge is helping them retain that sincerity and urgency.
(And you’re going to be doing philosophy anyway when you do lit, just implicitly)
Monica Klem retweeted
"The loss of the will to live is not a fixed state. It fluctuates. It can be treated. And it can be misread."
teapaw.org/RBMD1982/status/210725…
“A society that permits assisted dying should also ask whether it has done enough to help people sustain their sense of dignity and meaning in life. Death must not become the only kind of relief people can imagine.” nytimes.com/2026/10/05/opini…
