WELCOME!
Welcome to this, my second newsletter for Align Family! You may know me from my Twitter account @keenanpeachy, or my regular column at The American Mind. I also have a new book coming out (June 2023, Regnery Publishing) about how to reclaim our identities and our families from a depraved culture by becoming more domestic—literally. It’s called Domestic Extremist—get it?
I hope to use this space to try and present other ideas for making parenting in a world gone mad just a tiny bit easier. Enjoy!
REINDEER GAMES
Happy December! I am slowly picking my way through the Christmas lists the kids made for Santa—using Google Docs. I already warned them Santa got hit pretty hard by inflation this year, so things are rough up at the North Pole. Santa just had to lay off a few thousand elves—mostly the ones who still insisted on working remotely. Last year the North Pole chapter of BLM looted Santa’s toy warehouse and made off with lots of goodies, and supply chain issues took out the rest. To make matters worse, he may not be able to afford enough gas to power the sleigh for the eight million mile journey he’s taking. (No, he can’t fly an electric sleigh—those things only have a 300 mile range!)
But, here are a few fun games that Santa may be able to find—and they’ll last longer than the toys you already forgot you bought last year.
NO DICE
Thanks to the infusion of progressive politics, even children’s games are now treacherous minefields. “The only solution is not to play,” as the W.O.P.R. computer wisely concludes in War Games.
My boys played Dungeons and Dragons with their friends for years—before Stranger Things made it trendy. Unfortunately, a few years ago the D&D parent company went wildly woke. The new books finally “confronted” the “problematic” race differences among fictional fantasy creatures like orcs and elves, and got rid of “evil” characters.
They sent out a hilarious press release announcing their predictable heel turn. “Throughout the 50-year history of D&D, some of the peoples in the game—orcs and drow being prime examples—have been characterized as monstrous and evil, using descriptions that are painfully reminiscent of how real world ethnic groups have been and continue to be denigrated.”
Sigh.
Older editions of the D&D books are probably fine, but they are also “correcting” and “reprinting” the older “racist” books, so if you want the old-school experience, find a set on eBay. If you don’t yet have any D&D books in your house, you could choose to introduce your kids to a similar game called Pathfinder, which seems to be free of enforced fantasy diversity quotas.
Even better, Pathfinder is open source, so you can access all of the materials for free online!
Of course, no matter which game you play, you will need nice shiny sets of dice, which you should buy from Gate Keeper Gaming, a small business run by a lovely Catholic dad named John Wrot, who I used to see every Sunday at our old mass. He sells an incredible collection of dice—and successfully completed a Kickstarter to launch several games of his own design! The company says, “We talk a lot about family here. Family is of prime importance to John, whose main goal in life since about 7th grade has been to be a good husband and father. His wife and kids are indeed his joy, and GKG is his full-time gig to support them. When you become involved with GKG, whether just by playing one of our games, reading a Kickstarter Advice Column, or helping out at a con, you are considered family—and will be protected as such. The Keeper of the Gate looks out for his own!”
CHECKMATE
I had given up hope that the older kids’ dusty chess set would ever get played with again until I heard the dulcet sounds of a young boy yelling “Haha, I checked you!” to his crying little sister a few weeks ago. This is the magic of leaving games like this around—when they’re bored of watching YouTube, they may discover a new, nonviolent way to beat their siblings!
This Christmas, I am thinking of buying a new set from a store called The Chess House. They sell everything from classic American Staunton sets to tournament-ready boards for your little chess masters. Here’s a bit of their philosophy: “In this tech-obsessed world, we encourage people to connect with each other over a great game. When you shop at Chess House, you receive more than a beautiful chess set. You practice a language that engages your mind in healthy ways and opens the door to positive personal connection. Imagine a generation of people who make better strategic choices, respect others, demonstrate gratitude and personal responsibility, and accomplish something selfless and remarkable.“
Sounds pretty good, I’ll take it!
AN ONLINE GAME YOU WON’T HATE
Roblox, Fornite, Minecraft, Super Mario—we barely survived them all. Fortunately we just discovered Sporcle, a free, web-based game company that makes educational games for all ages. They call themselves “the world’s largest quiz community.” The geography games are addictive—my 11 year-old has been quizzing himself on world geography and can now name every country in Asia. I took the “Name All 197 Countries of the World” quiz and, spoiler alert: I did not get all 197. Hey, I’m not a globalist, okay? I did successfully name 49 of the 50 states! Is it my fault Maryland is so utterly forgettable?
The quizzes seem refreshingly devoid of political bias (although they do consider Palestine a country, but not Scotland), but I’m not going to start an online jihad over it. There are also quizzes on art, history, sports, and more. I am not quite ready to take the “Name the Iberian Kingdoms in 1037” quiz, but I might do okay on “Monarchs of England.”
So far they do not offer a “Name all 136 Genders,” so I think we’re mostly safe on Sporcle for now. Good luck!
ADVANCED GAMER LEVELS: BUILD YOUR OWN PC
When a teenage LEGO builder grows up, his heart turns to thoughts of…building his own computer. When our cheap PC tower died this summer, one of my boys asked us if he could build his own PC. I thought, hey! What better way to teach STEM skills, personal responsibility, and how to use a screwdriver! Planning and designing the build took a few months and was carefully budgeted and shopped for using a helpful website called PC Part Picker. A great many YouTube tutorials were also watched, a great many debates over RAM and storage capacities were held. Each computer component arrived at the house with great fanfare and exultation. For the final piece, the empty case that all the computer pieces fit inside, we made a field trip to a giant nerd emporium called CompuSource. The build itself was finished in two days. He needed a little help installing Windows using just a DOS screen (remember those?), but otherwise the 15-year-old did it all on his own.
The total cost of the build was about what you would pay for a low-end gaming computer from BestBuy, and it’s much better quality, according to my son.
Play the Fertility Game
Over at RETURN, I wrote about natural ways to take charge of your fertility without resorting to chemical hormones or other risky interventions.
Thanks for reading!
— Peachy Keenan
Pre-order my book: Domestic Extremist: A Practical Guide to Winning the Culture War (June 2023, Regnery Publishing).
