September 29, 2022 — Steven Hayward
William Galston, the liberal columnist for the Wall Street Journal‘s editorial page (they always like to have one around) writing every so gently yesterday on the need for Democrats to pay attention to the legitimate grievances of populism lest they get buried in a populist electoral tide: “Powerful forces in the Democratic coalition oppose crafting the sort of moderate policies that could win back these [working class] voters. But if
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September 29, 2022 — Steven Hayward
What if we applied anti-trust principles against concentration in industry and market collusion to higher education? We might very well conclude that the ivy league should be broken up. The figure below, from Nature magazine, shows that a tiny handful of universities produce the large majority of college professors today. What this means for intellectual diversity, and the competition of ideas and methodologies, is pretty clear, since most academic departments
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September 28, 2022 — Steven Hayward
The speculation about whether the United States might somehow be hurtling toward a second civil war is usually dismissed because there doesn’t exist a clean sectional or geographic split as we had in 1860. But this misses the point. This passage from Harry Jaffa in 1964 would seem to apply very well to our current moment: “The Civil War is the most characteristic phenomenon in American politics, not because it
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September 28, 2022 — Steven Hayward
I borrow today’s chart from a recent presentation from Peter Thiel (who I am having dinner with tonight in Palo Alto, as it happens). A close look reveals that the previously “red hot” housing market in California actually lags the truly dynamic metro areas of the country by a lot. In his full talk at the link, he explains how progressive “tolerance” of California’s homelessness and crime actually serves the
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September 28, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Who blew up the Nord Stream pipelines? Your guess is as good as mine. It does seem peculiar to think Russia would have blown up their own pipeline, but it is not inconceivable that a faction of Russia’s military is trying to sabotage Putin as a prelude for ousting him, or that Putin sees it as a kind of “Cortez burning his ships” moment to indicate that he is all-in
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September 27, 2022 — Steven Hayward
“Racial preferences should now be thought of like chemotherapy, a cure that can cause side effects that should be applied judiciously. We’ve applied the cure long past that point, and have drifted toward an almost liturgical conception of diversity that makes less sense by the year.” —John McWhorter, NY Times
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September 27, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Everyone recall’s Rahm Emanuel revealing the core tactic of progressivism, which is never letting a crisis got to waste in service of extending government power, and as such the global COVID pandemic was the dream crisis for the Davoisie’s dream of “the Great Reset.” We can see the concrete result: a diminution of economic freedom as measured by the Fraser Institute’s fine annual report on Economic Freedom in the World.
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September 26, 2022 — Steven Hayward
If you thought the whole idea of “race science” went out of fashion with eugenics, you’d be wrong. The University of California at Santa Cruz (where Angela Davis remains a tenured professor) is currently looking to hire a professor of “Critical Race Science,” which is no doubt the best kind. Here’s some of the job listing: Critical Race and Ethnic Studies: Assistant or Associate Professor Critical Race Science and Technology
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September 26, 2022 — Steven Hayward
We’re getting another confirmation today of a key definition in Power Line’s Lexicon of Leftist Terms: ‘”Populism” is when the wrong person or cause wins a free election”.’ The corollary is that every Republican candidate for president is Hitler, and now we learn that every Italian conservative is Mussolini. On the other hand, I can see why the authoritarian elites of the European Union, who have made vague threats against
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September 26, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, writing at Heterodox Academy last week: Universities can have many goals (such as fiscal health and successful sports teams) and many values (such as social justice, national service, or Christian humility), but they can have only one telos, because a telos is like a North Star. It is the end, purpose, or goal around which the institution is structured. An institution can rotate on one axis
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September 26, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Everyone remember back to The Population Bomb of the 1970s? It turns out the story of the second half of the 21st century may be the world’s population starting to crash. China’s population in 2100 may be below 500 million, less than half the population today. The projections below show in graphic form why China abruptly ended its rigid one-child policy a few years ago.
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September 26, 2022 — Steven Hayward
• Like the best comedy, there’s a serious point behind this David Deeble observation: No doubt the expert explicators of the hermeneutics of neoliberalism will have an explanation for this. Or perhaps leftists are just plain crazy. • Speaking of predictable leftist twitter mob actions, the New York Times reports on the about-face of the film world when an acclaimed documentary film with a sympathetic portrayal of jihadist detainees at Guantanamo,
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September 25, 2022 — Steven Hayward
John notes below the latest “mainstream” polls showing both Biden and the Democrats reaching the burnt toast stage of this election cycle, but amidst the lingering questions about the accuracy of polling these days, it should be noted that the outcome of the midterms presents a huge dilemma for Democrats no matter how the election turns out. If Democrats get drowned in a wave, they face the serious problem of
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September 25, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Next year Duke University Press is scheduled to publish Marx For Cats: A Radical Bestiary, by Leigh Claire La Berge, who teaches at Free University of Berlin. Here’s a sample from the introduction (which you can access here if you are a glutton): Like any text in the Marxist tradition, Marx for Cats gestures in two directions at once. In asking how our society is structured and for whom, Marxism turns toward
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September 24, 2022 — Steven Hayward
So this turns out to be a real thing: When is the IPO happening? I want to be in on the ground floor for this one. Certain to be the next Facebook.
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September 24, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Having hosted Troy Senik on the mid-week podcast, I’m now back to checking on his Kite and Key Media offerings more regularly. Their latest offering, below, explores a subject that has tended to be ignored or dismissed by our public health and social policy establishment, because it runs counter to the imperatives of liberalism to embrace every possible “crisis” no matter the evidence: Mass Psychogenic Illness. The problem is likely
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September 24, 2022 — Steven Hayward
You know a political stunt has landed when the new news cycle and the more important memosphere are still obsessing over it a week later. And by the way, what’s wrong with stunts? In football, a stunt by the defensive line confuses the offense and often leads to a broken play, and if there’s anything we want to break these days, it’s the Biden Administration playbook. So more flights to
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