The Road to Censorship
“What if human beings are merely creatures that take whatever shape is imposed on them by the impress and promptings of the culture in which they are situated? If so, then controlling the culture becomes imperative. And politics must saturate every nook and cranny of life. And this saturation will, inevitably, mean controlling what people say and hear and read and think and teach. Shaping the consciousness of the people — purging the people of what Marxists call “false consciousness” — becomes the great, the encompassing political project.”
The Aftershock
The media, apoplectic for weeks from hatred displayed in Charlottesville in 2017, lack the same outrage at the depth and scale of the hatred that followed the Hamas attack on October 7. It is worth noting how often the cry against Zionism quickly turned to plain hatred of Jews. It has always been a false distinction. Jewish sympathizers for these attacks on Israel are progressive kapos, selling their soul hoping the alligator eats them last.
Cancelling Cancel Culture
I always thought identity politics would end badly. The reaction will not be just about the tolerance of anti-Semitism but will address all the other values that embraced it.
History Moves On
“The mystery is why the Palestinians continue to put up with it, and have for so long. They don’t need “days of rage.” They need property rights, free enterprise, the rule of law, and decent government. And nobody would be better pleased to see them have these than the Israelis. “
When Woke Broke
Social justice grifters in all their forms were easy prey for the Jew haters. It was just the next logical step. Periods of revisionism and moral ambiguity are breeding grounds for antisemitism and other forms of social and moral rot.
Marxian Anti-Semitism
“Democratic political leaders, who have credibility on elite campuses their Republican colleagues lack, have a duty to denounce these spineless university presidents and fomenters of anti-Israel bigotry. Jew-hatred among the cognoscenti has a history of spreading faster than anybody expected.”
Thoughts on October 7
If Israel and the Jews disappeared tomorrow, do you seriously think this hatred will dissipate and they will peacefully attend to the grinding work of building a civil society? Who will they then blame for their dysfunction and misery and how will they react? Do you think their animosities will be contained in their region?
Capitalism is Cooperative
“We free-market types like to talk about competition—and competition is important—but capitalism is profoundly cooperative: This marvelously productive worldwide economy is something we all do together. “
We The People
“That’s the real conservative sensibility at work: If progressivism is about making incremental improvements in the direction of utopia, conservatism is about avoiding catastrophe. And if democracy is a hedge against Caesarism, constitutionalism is a hedge against democracy—against the horrifying things that the people will do when you give them political power without checks and accountability.”
Overstating Economic Influence
“But history doesn’t wait for anybody to vote on it. That affects everything, including the economy.”
The Coolidge Tax Cuts
“Thus, total individual tax receipts ballooned by 70% from 1924 to 1928; and, throughout the 1920s, the share of income taxes paid by earners of over $100,000 a year doubled. Meanwhile, Coolidge held spending constant, allowing him to eliminate nearly a quarter of the national debt and leave it fully 29% smaller than it was when Harding took office.”
Gray Swans
Small firewalls that contained corrections were being dismantled, leading to larger, far more damaging crashes. Part of this was the result of greater connections from travel and communications, but a great part is the result of central powers believing they can control macro markets when they cannot. There is just too much dispersed and unarticulated knowledge for anyone or any administrative bureaucracy to accomplish this.
DEI and Anti-Semitism
DEI is just an institutionalized form of political correctness. It is intolerant and anti- intellectual and when these two vices combine we know what is to follow.
The Durham Report
“Likewise, we now know a lot of the Democrat congressmen on television were lying about information. They were fed falsehoods from the deep state and regurgitated them without basis on television. The entirety of the bureaucracy not just picked a partisan side but then weaponized their powers to undermine a President.”