“Neither the inflation of the 1970s nor the transformation of America’s industrial heartland into its Rust Belt was inevitable, she argues. Both were direct, foreseeable consequences of short-sighted choices: demanding that monetary policy accommodate irresponsible fiscal policy, and labor and management agreeing to enrich one another by fleecing customers and shareholders ever more brazenly.”
Read More“So those who believe in science as philosophy are increasingly estranged from science as an institution.”
Read More“So critical race theory, protesting the old injustice, embraces its lie. This is not progress but revenge. The motive is not justice but payback, lex talionis—an understandable, if Balkan, impulse. Beware a hedgehog claiming the immunities of an innocent victim. Beware when victimhood is his One Big Thing.”
Read More“Hiring practices and workplaces should be fair and welcoming to all, employees say, but mandatory diversity training premised on the ubiquity of “unconscious racism” and “white fragility” is coercive and insulting.”
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 MoreAs Mr. Scott put it, “It’s wrong to try to use our painful past to dishonestly shut down debates in the present.” But this is precisely what narratives do—and in fact are meant to do.
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 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.
Read More“Calling it progressive to send children of color the message that achievement is white is an irony lost on the woke. “
Read More“Fear instead of reason—fear of losing a job in the next Twitter eruption, fear of being knifed by ideologically obsessed colleagues—determines what you can see, hear or be taught in certain of our institutions. “
Read More“True conservatives tend to have a particular understanding of the fragility of things. They understand that every human institution is, in its way, built on sand.”
Read MoreI lament the subversion of ideas and policy to the passions of the electorate, but it is hard to escape that reality. The more distant we get from our founding principles, both chronologically and intellectually, the more divisive we become. When you do not know what you believe everything becomes an argument. Without the unity of commonly held ideas we descend into the combat zone of identity politics.
Read MoreThe mark of an intelligent mind is to hold two conflicting thoughts in your head at the same time. The voters said that character matters but not at all costs. They rejected Trump’s character but also rejected the extreme policy elements of his opposition. It became possible to reject Trump and still reject the woke zealotry of the left. A vote against Trump was not a vote for socialistic policies, defunding the police, or acceptance of America as permanently morally scarred by its past.
Read MoreScience begins with guessing and then proceeds to proof.
Scientists is a susceptible to cognitive biases as any human and must work to overcome them.
Separating the cranks from the visionaries requires judgment and patience.
“Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.”
Politics can and often do pollute science.
“Such cases show what happens when our heightened eagerness to take offense meets institutions’ innate desire to avoid trouble. If hearing a contrary opinion feels like a personal assault, then any potentially controversial statement is equivalent to shouting fire in a crowded theater. It’s much easier for a business or a school to avoid trouble, and potential liability, by shutting down discussion altogether.”
Read MoreThere will be no resolution of America’s many social problems if free thought and free speech are no longer upheld in our public sphere. Without them, honest deliberation, mutual learning and the American problem-solving ethic are dead.
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
Recent Comments