“The more elite institutions fail to do their basic jobs, and the more they abuse their positions at the commanding heights, the more room they create for populist demagoguery..”
Read MoreThe term ‘Progressive’ has come to mean something Theodore or Franklin Roosevelt would never recognize. A pejorative for dysfunctional policies detached from any accountability or reason. While I have come to appreciate the aims of Progressivism at its inception, I still recognize the inevitable flaws of permanent government solutions to every conceivable social problem. Perhaps this ‘woke’ bastardization of the term ‘progressive’ was the inevitable outcome from a movement that was incapable of articulating any limits on government power.
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“In such an environment, being “wrong” isn’t just wrong in some factual or analytical sense. It’s sacrilegious. “
Read MoreTrump will not go away because 1) despite his flaws he reaches a demographic no one else reaches and 2) the left will not want to give up the lucre of Trump click-bait.
Read MoreThe 1619 Project is shoddy history and shoddy journalism, debasing an honest accounting of slavery and racism in America; rewriting history to support a narrative rather than illuminating a problem. As we have progressed in racial understanding we seek to slay smaller and smaller dragons. Magnifying these dragons does not make them larger; it only appears so.
Read More“Properly understood, the “1619 Project” isn’t about black history. It’s about today’s racial disparities. It’s about applying current ideologies to past events, in the continuing attempt to blame the past actions of whites for the current problems of blacks.”
Read More“Slavery required a culture that held labor in contempt. The North, with its celebration of labor, especially working for money, became even more different from the lazy, slaveholding South. By the 1850s, the two sections, though both American, possessed two different cultures.”
Read MoreThus 1619 Project from the NYT is the opposite of history; it is anti-history. Instead of studying the past to learn about the present, it projects current passions on the past. Confirming events are generalized to be the sole motivation, non confirming events are ignored or minimized as inconsequential.
Read MoreThe frustration of our democracy has many reformers wishing for a benevolent dictator. The problem is that when they cease being benevolent, they remain a dictator.
Read MoreThe meritocracy sounds good but like all centralized policy is subject to overemphasize some objectives and disregard ingredients that have more influence than they realize. Intelligence may be an important attribute but there are other character traits that may be responsible for the outcome we attribute to intelligence. Steve Jobs was not the result of an IQ test.
Read MoreIn the past the media had lost respect because they were in a bubble and the world they reported did not match the experience of many of the readers and viewers. The election of Donald Trump incited such a rage that they abandoned all precedence of journalistic integrity as long as the outrage of the day fit their narrative. Their bias became obvious and crippling.
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