The brilliant but relentlessly optimistic Steven Pinker offered today a link to a brief article about a new cross-cultural study of human morals. The article, which you can read here, lists seven moral rules that seem to be universal to all cultures. They are: 1) Love your family. 2) Help your group. 3) Return favors. […]
It was only yesterday that I mentioned Jonah Goldberg’s latest book, Suicide of the West, and mentioned in passing Paul Gottfried’s critique of Mr. Goldberg’s earlier money-maker, Liberal Fascism. Well, just today Professor Gottfried has published a review of Goldberg’s book over at VDare — and as you might imagine, it is not favorable. Read […]
From Spandrell: here, here, and here are three posts outlining an idea — “Bioleninism” — that seeks to explain the steady movement leftward of political systems, and the shift, beginning in the 1960s or so, from economic to cultural Marxism as the vehicle for that movement. The model seems coherent and plausible. It also has […]
Jonah Goldberg has a new book out, called The Suicide of the West. (I don’t know why he felt he had to swipe the title of James Burnham’s monumental assault upon the modern liberal order, but it would’ve been nice if he hadn’t.) I haven’t read the book, but I know Jonah Goldberg’s oeuvre well […]
I’m driving all day, but for now here’s a brief item on the political consequences of shifting American demographics. Rising diversity at national scale increases tribalism, destroys cohesion, diminishes liberty, and fosters divisive competition that throughout history always tends toward fission and violence. What fools we are.
Houseguests this weekend. Back in a bit.
Next stop on the road to Utopia: if the NAACP has its way, you will have your thoughts examined on suspicion of “implicit bias”. (This is because you might, in the tenebrous recesses of your reptilian brain, harbor the monstrous notion that some things are generally different from others, in ways that occasionally matter.) “The […]
President Trump yesterday announced that the U.S. would no longer consider itself bound by the deal his predecessor had made with Iran. His critics, both here and abroad, are writhing and hissing like Gollum with the Elven-rope around his neck: To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, only someone with a heart of stone could witness their pain […]
I commented a few days back about “incels” having risen to virality (though not, of course, to virility, which would make the whole topic moot). A point I didn’t make, though, was that the collective shudder on the Left at the sight of these wretches, and the equally collective wish to make them go away, […]
From ‘Mencius Moldbug‘: Since the reality of political history is that all polities of nontrivial size are controlled by organized minorities, all nontrivial democracies are pseudo-democracies. They are all different, however, since every organized minority is different. Every government flavored with democracy is irredeemably foul, but broadly the 20th-century pseudo-democratic regimes can be separated into […]
My friend Bill Vallicella, having read our recent post and comment-thread on Rod Dreher’s essay on Marx (see Bill’s recent post on the same article, here), noted my formulation of the consistent principle of our opponents in the current culture war: Defend your people, always. Attack the enemy with whatever comes to hand, always. (The […]
The term of the moment is “incel”, which is short for “involuntarily celibate”. It rose to virality after a young man associating himself with the “incel” movement ran down a crowd of pedestrians in Toronto last month. The young-adult liberal website Vox explains the term here. There is now a bit of a reaction underway […]
I’ve just read a response by Rod Dreher to a recent NYT op-ed, by Jason Barker, praising Karl Marx. Mr. Dreher grants to Marx a correct understanding of the revolutionary power of capitalism: Capitalism ”” for Marx, the merchant class (the “bourgeoisie’) were the carriers of capitalism ”” turns everything into a market. Capitalism is […]
Here’s something worth reading: an interview with the anonymous traditionalist “Wrath of Gnon”. (For those of you not familiar with the neoreactionary term “Gnon”, you should imagine it as meaning something almost exactly congruent with Kipling’s “Gods of the Copybook Headings“: the enduring truths of Nature, or Nature’s God, that periodically render a pitiless judgment […]
There’s been an interesting discussion over at Bill Vallicella’s Maverick Philosopher website about the Constitution’s prohibition, in Article VI, of a “religious test” for public office. The discussion, with an anonymous Canadian philosopher (although, as was said once of Newton, “we recognize the lion by his claw”), spans several posts. In the first post in […]
Here’s a good piece, of unspecified age, describing the cult of climate change. (The author chooses to call it a “cult” because the belief-system isn’t old enough to qualify as a “religion”.)
April 27, 2018 – 11:15 am
I’ll be driving all day today, but before I go I want to pass along this long report by Representative Louis Gohmert on the character and professional history of Robert Mueller. (A hat-tip to our e-pal Bill Keezer for this.) Caveat lector: I haven’t had time to read it all myself yet, or to vet […]
April 26, 2018 – 12:37 pm
You’ve probably heard about the Alfie Evans affair in England, in which Her Majesty’s Government, having decided that a young boy in a persistent coma ought to be dead, has been trying to kill him, and has prevented his parents from taking him elsewhere for treatment. It’s a disgusting and horrifying story, and should remind […]
April 26, 2018 – 12:05 pm
Over the transom today: It’s “ethically inappropriate’ for government and medical organizations to describe breastfeeding as “natural’ because the term enforces rigid notions about gender roles, claims a new study in Pediatrics. “Coupling nature with motherhood”¦ can inadvertently support biologically deterministic arguments about the roles of men and women in the family (for example, that […]
I’ve been busy catching up with work, and have no time for writing just yet. But I do have something good for you to read: a substantial essay by Toby Young on heredity and heresy, and the scientific denialism of the progressive Left. It’s so good that I won’t excerpt it: you must go and […]
April 24, 2018 – 10:00 pm
Several readers have written to ask me to report on our visit to Austria last week. Mostly we were visiting with my daughter, her husband, and our little grandson, but we did get out and about a bit. Here are some thoughts and recollections. First of all, Austria still retains, as far as I can […]
April 23, 2018 – 10:38 am
Did I miss anything? We had a splendid time overseas, but home is best. I have a busy couple of days ahead, picking up the threads of ordinary life. Things should get back to normal here shortly.
April 12, 2018 – 11:52 am
Things may be a little quiet here for a fortnight or so: the lovely Nina and I are off to Austria to visit our daughter, her husband, and our wee grandson Liam. I’m disinclined to keep too close an eye on the news while we’re traveling; frankly I could use a break. I may post […]
Here are three takes on the Michael Cohen raid, and the Mueller probe generally: by DiploMad, Alan Dershowitz, and Dymphna.
April 11, 2018 – 11:16 am
From Twitter today: Your great-grandmother: 12 kids Your grandmother: 6 kids Your mother: 2 kids You: pic.twitter.com/foxFyXJ17P — Tradical (@NoTrueScotist) April 11, 2018 Cosmologists wonder about a thing called the “Great Filter“. It may be as simple as this.
The scales have fallen from Rod Dreher’s eyes. Commenting on Harvard’s decision to suspend and defund a campus religious organization, he says that his belief in “compatibilism” — the idea that it is possible for orthodox religion to coexist peaceably with the modern liberal state — is over. Regarding the new liberal order, he notes […]
Here’s a disturbing pattern: 1) We lean toward a stand-down in Syria. 2) Spooks and hawks object. 3) A chemical-weapons attack is reported. It is blamed, on scant evidence, or no evidence at all, on Assad and the Russians. 4) Women and other tender-hearted types throughout the West weep over looping news footage of suffering […]
April 10, 2018 – 11:05 am
Google honors the Egyptian roué and occasional actor Omar Sharif with one of its worshipful “doodles” today (because “diversity” or something, I guess). Here’s a recap of his life.
A habit of mine is to get outside to walk a few miles every day; it lifts the spirit, and clears the mind. Usually I am in one of Cape Cod’s remoter precincts, so I walk a favorite hilly trail in the pine-woods; but sometimes I am in New York, and I take my walk, […]
This video is everywhere today, and I’ll do my part to make sure everyone sees it. The speaker’s name is Mark Robinson: Robinson nails the essence of anarcho-tyranny in a brief and powerful sentence: speaking of the law-abiding citizens of America (and I’ll note that his remark applies to all the decent, diligent, and docile […]
Continuing the discussion of David Reich’s book on human genetics, here’s Steve Sailer with an essay on the populations of India and China. The gist: compared to India, which has maintained genetically distinct (and stratified) subgroups for millennia, China is highly homogeneous. Mr. Sailer is a man of broad erudition, penetrating intelligence, and roving curiosity. […]
I have a question about the Skripal poisonings, allegedly ordered by Vladimir Putin: Why aren’t the victims dead?
This is quite possibly the best thing I have ever read: the story of how a young man was banned from a hotel for 18 years. It involves a flock of seagulls and a suitcase full of pepperoni. Here.
Last Saturday’s post was about the scuffle between Sam Harris and Ezra Klein over the role of genetics in the varying distribution of cognitive, behavioral, and personality traits in distinct human populations (and over Mr. Harris’s association with Charles Murray, whom people like Klein accuse of peddling racism and “pseudoscience”). I linked to Andrew Sullivan, […]
Several people have sent me links to an article by Rod Dreher on the narrowing of acceptable public opinion, and the suffocating and isolating effect it has on speech and social interaction. When we have an opinion that might run afoul of Cathedral orthodoxy (and there are fewer and fewer opinions one might have nowadays […]
The secularist writer and podcaster Sam Harris has got into a public scuffle with Ezra Klein, “editor-at-large” of the young-adult news website Vox, over Harris’s recent interview with Charles Murray, and the more general question of the role of genetics in the distribution of traits in distinct human populations. The absolutist “blank-slate” view of human […]
Making a bit of a splash at the moment is a new book by the Harvard geneticist David Reich, Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past. (Any book that says anything truthful about heredity and human groups is going to attract attention these days, […]
According to this report, the Obama administration suspended the mechanism whereby employers are notified that the Social Security numbers used by their employees don’t match the employees’ names. This sensible cross-checking had been used to catch both fraud and clerical errors, and had prevented millions of citizens from losing Social Security benefits they were entitled […]
It appears that my blog-posts are now appearing again in Google searches. I don’t know if this was due to a re-indexing after the blog’s title change (perhaps the blog’s title carries more weight in Google’s world than for other search providers), or whether it might even have been thanks to some behind-the-scenes assistance from […]
With a hat-tip to our reader and commenter “Whitewall”, here’s a depressing item: German Defense Minister Seeks ”˜Reconciliation’ with Taliban It is difficult to read this without thinking that such a story simply cannot be true: that it is completely beyond all credibility that anyone not a child or an imbecile could possibly imagine that […]
In the news today: Al Sharpton’s half-brother charged in murder after marching against guns I have to admire Rev. Glasgow for going the “extra mile” to demonstrate how dangerous guns are, but I do think he and his pal might have asked Breunia Jennings for her permission before drafting her to participate in such a […]
Here’s a response, by Stephen Moore and Arthur Laffer [cue ad-hominem attack in comment thread in 3…2…1…], to Hillary Clinton’s insulting remarks the other day about winning the “dynamic” states, and losing the backward ones. I will confess that I hesitated before mentioning That Woman’s name in print. As Richard Wagner is said to have […]
March 26, 2018 – 11:38 am
With a hat-tip to our e-pal Bill K., here’s Richard Fernandez on our psychotic media environment: With misinformation as with miseducation the public sees, but not in due proportion. Its calculations are put all out of reckoning. The image of world is presented like a reflection in a fun house mirror, with certain aspects greatly […]
March 25, 2018 – 11:26 pm
A great way to prevent mass shootings is by avoiding civil war.
I’ve been unable to turn on the news over the past 24 hours without immediately hearing about yesterday’s protests against “gun violence”. The news agencies have clearly learned a trick or two from their show-biz colleagues who call themselves “illusionists”: if these protests were about “violence”, the marchers would surely have something to say about […]
March 24, 2018 – 11:13 pm
As occasional leavening for the steady diet of politics and reaction I’ve been posting up here for years now, I think I’ll begin revisiting my other life: decades spent recording and mixing music. (Because so many of the recordings I’ve worked on are now on YouTube, it’s easy posting.) I’d say about three-quarters of the […]
“Continental breakfast” is to breakfast what Continental philosophy is to philosophy: something to chew on, but devoid of nourishment.
March 23, 2018 – 12:48 pm
In a comment to my previous post, reader Asher says that Leftism, rather than rejecting the supernatural, locates it in Man himself. I think this is almost right. But it is subject to an important objection: if Darwinian Man is nothing more than a part and product of Nature, then locating the “supernatural” in Man […]
Our friend Bill Vallicella has posted an interesting essay on the Left’s attempt to maintain a doctrine of transcendent egalitarianism while scraping away the transcendent. He describes the problem as follows (after noting that our academic institutions have become “Leftist seminaries”): What explains the fervor and fanaticism with which the Left’s equality dogma is upheld? […]
We’ve been hearing a lot about the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook data-mining story, in which personal information about Facebook users was scooped up by a firm working for the Trump campaign. The media have been all over it. It’s been terrible PR for Facebook, and the company’s stock has dropped sharply. The media response was not, however, […]