by Henry Oliner | Jul 23, 2019 | Politics, Progressivism
From Kevin Williamson’s book The Smallest Minority released today: If we are willing to give a hypothetical evil a moral weight equal to that of an actual evil, then there is no limiting principle at all that is possible, because it is easy to construct an...
by Henry Oliner | Jul 19, 2019 | Uncategorized
In modern democracies, where majorities rule and the poor are far from a majority, the poor are not the principal beneficiaries of a redistributionist state. At first, perhaps, the middle class is. But any attempt to impose upon society a politically determined,...
by Henry Oliner | Jul 19, 2019 | Economics
The vocabulary of economics, like other specialized vocabularies, is enriched by coinages and borrowings: the Laffer curve, the affluent society, the agency problem. Contrary to a widespread impression among noneconomists, though, understanding the vocabulary of...
by Henry Oliner | Jul 18, 2019 | Politics
I never liked the ‘love it or leave it’ response to the Vietnam era protesters. It was a resignation of thought and debate to raw tribalism. Accusations of racism are similarly used; if every problem can be traced to racism, and if every person who disagrees with open...
by Henry Oliner | Jul 15, 2019 | Politics
Kevin Williamson has a book coming out next week, The Smallest Minority. This article in NR is an excerpt. A Herd Has No Mind We think in language. We signal6 in memes. Language is the instrument of discourse. Memes are the instrument of antidiscourse, i.e.,...
