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 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.
Read MoreModern Critical Race Theory is sin with no redemption. Redemption of any sort would excise the political power from the movement. As it is practiced the movement depends more on appeasing white liberal elites than empowering Black individuals and communities.
Read More“The Founders understood this, which is why they wanted a republic that was designed to filter and check populist passion when necessary. That’s why we have institutions and mechanisms that are supposed to ensure the survival of liberty and liberalism when populist passions are empowered by democratic majorities. The notion that one person can be evil, idiotic, ignorant, or irrationally angry, but a million people can’t, strikes me as logically absurd.”
Read More“I’m a big fan of reason, but Saul (and Schumpeter, Deneen, et al) have a point. Making reason the only criteria for a decision cleanses society of the nooks and crannies of meaning that make life worth living and the pursuit of happiness possible. The purely rational soldier will not fight, Chesterton observed. The purely rational man will not marry.”
Read More“Like the gnosticism of the first century, this gnosticism brings damnation not salvation. It posits that justice and reality are shaped by power. Whoever controls words, controls reality. Critical theory believes all the world is about power and the map of that power flows through intersections of race, ethnicity, sex, gender, sexual orientation, religion, “ableism,” etc. Doubt is elevated over truth and exceptions become the rule while the rule becomes the exception.”
Read More“What we have instead today is the inclination on both right and left to make it as easy as possible for us to live as strangers to one another. “
Read MoreThe systemic racism canard is not accepted because it delivers justice to minorities but because it serves the agenda of rich white elites. Serving the wishes of wealthy elites may satisfy the media, but it will not be readily accepted by the working class minorities. Attacking Tim Scott will only drive more minority votes to the GOP.
Read MoreThe Civil Rights movement of the 1960s sought an equality that is distinctly different from the identity politics of today. No longer seeking to be ‘as good as’, identity politics seeks to be ‘better than’. In the binary classification between the oppressed and the oppressor there is no equality.
Read More“Federalism and localism aren’t aesthetic preferences or ideological leanings that come out of nowhere — they are peace-keeping mechanisms necessary to the stable functioning of a diverse society.”
Read More“We know public schools have failed because more than half of new students at community colleges require remedial courses in math, English or both. “
Read More“While believers in the unconstrained vision seek the special causes of war, poverty, and crime, believers in the constrained vision seek the special causes of peace, wealth, or a law-abiding society. “
Read More“This understanding prompted the Town Square Test I use to distinguish between free societies and fear societies: Can you express your individual views loudly, in public, without fear of being punished legally, formally, in any way? If yes, you live in a free society; if not, you’re in a fear society.”
Read MoreWhen you have delegitimized the opposition so severely, and when you are think your power is permanent you create powers that will easily be used against you. Burning the Reichstag was not an act of fascism, the reaction of squelching freedom of the press and other civil liberties clearly was.
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