The first contradiction is the drive to greater democracy while driving more policy making to unelected administrators. Progressive thinkers like Goodwin, Wilson, and Dewey had a faith that bureaucrats would better serve the public interest objectively than elected officials. They replaced the separation of powers with the separation of politics from administration. Their belief that administration would not be subject to political partisanship seems naive today.
Read MoreTheodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson turned this upside down, contending that property rights should be determined according its ability to serve the greater good, the general will. This shift of the Progressive Era from the primacy of minority rights to a majoritarian will defines the progressive shift in American politics. The question is who or what determines the will of the majority. For Wilson it was the president as the sole official elected by all the people.
Read MoreA mechanical view is not an obstruction to progress. An organic view is less flexible in its design than we need and it depends on an expertise and competency that is illusory.
Read MoreSo for a high premium price the Ivy League provides negative value. Students are either coddled or cowards. Getting expelled may increase your job value. Woke is a liability in the job market outside of academia and a few government positions.
Read MoreThe media would be better to trust their users than to damage their own credibility. The rules should be clear and simple about what is allowed and should be followed strictly regardless of content. No one who is suspended should be surprised and a suspension should not be judged by a board that will only likely reflect an organization’s internal bias.
Read More“You consider their motivations, their ideological biases and their conflicts of interest. You interrogate their advice, and weigh it against that of their critics. You exercise diligence. You ask questions. You trust in evidence, not in people. You think for yourself.”
Read More“We need mediating institutions, because human beings are capable of extraordinarily evil things and very much prone to banal evil and petty corruption — and easily seduced by the crude stimulation of mere novelty.”
Read More“In other words, you must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. “
Read MoreThe fact that the history of the Tulsa massacre is such an outrage is because it is so rare today; indicative of the phenomenal progress we have made. We cannot change the past but we can impact the future. That means reckoning with the past honestly but also reckoning with the present honestly. In Discrimination and Disparities Thomas Sowell addresses several other causes of inequities other than discrimination in the past and the present. Real progress requires honesty more than outrage.
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