The view from 1804 is still pretty bleak, but things in 2019 don’t look all that cheery, either. Here are some of the news stories we found when we crawled up out of the archives this week:

Will the real conservative please stand up? Prof. Patrick Deneen reviews George Will’s new book at WaPo.

Animated by a conservative skepticism of the belief in sufficient human knowledge to control circumstance, and a pessimism about the capacity of human beings to consistently act from noble intentions (or that such noble intentions are likely to lead to noble ends), Will calls for a minimalist state allowing for maximal expression of “spontaneous order.” . . . Nowhere to be found in the 538 pages of text is a discussion of conservative commitments to the unborn, the threats posed by the advance of the sexual liberation movement, and commitments to religious liberty. It is as if the book was written in 1944…

A billionaire offers a new way to give teachers a raise, at Forbes.

An interview with historian Darren Dochuk about his new book, Anointed with Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America, at R&P.

Amid jungles of derricks and refining fires, risk-filled labor and violent swings of fortune, oil-patch Christians embrace a cataclysmic view of the here and now and of life beyond, as well as a dependency on an all-powerful being who gives and takes and tests his people but is always there.

Why are radical creationists so upset about men in heels? Here at ILYBYGTH.

It’s not Darwin they’re worried about, it’s “Sparkle Leigh.”

Can a professor teach a class about conservative thought? Portland State says no, at IHE.

How did Teach For America get tied up with charter schools? An expose at Propublica. HT: MM

Liberty U. cuts divinity program, at IHE.

Did anyone think we were done with all this? Trump, Falwell, Cohen, and the “Pool Boy,” at NYT.

That backstory, in true Trump-tabloid fashion, features the friendship between Mr. Falwell, his wife and a former pool attendant at the Fontainebleau hotel in Miami Beach; the family’s investment in a gay-friendly youth hostel; purported sexually revealing photographs involving the Falwells; and an attempted hush-money arrangement engineered by the president’s former fixer, Michael Cohen.

…and boom goes the dynamite. At MH.

Three photographs have been seen by the Herald, however. They are images not of Falwell, of but his wife in various stages of undress. It is not known who took the photographs or when they were taken, and the Herald was not given the photographs and therefore, has not been able to authenticate them independently. Two of the photographs appear to have been taken at the Falwells’ farm in Virginia, and a third at the Cheeca Lodge.

Curmudgucrat Peter Greene tells arrogant ed-reformers what they’ve always needed to hear:

We told you so. . . . Before you launch your next bright idea to reform education, talk to actual professional educators first. You don’t have to talk just to teachers. But talk to teachers (and not just ones that have been carefully vetted to be sure they’re aligned with your values). Every dollar and hour wasted, every fruitless crappy reform idea of the last twenty-some years could have been avoided if people had listened to actual teachers. There’s the lesson that everyone, even exceptionally smart and respectable former Presidents, needs to learn.

• What President Obama’s defection means to the charter-school movement, here at ILYBYGTH.