Interesting perspecives on issues of the day.
The Perverse Panic over Plastic. The plastic panic has never made any sense, and it’s intensifying even as evidence mounts that it’s not only a waste of money but also harmful to the environment, not to mention humans. It’s been a movement in search of a rationale for half a century.
The Case for Professors of Stupidity. One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision. By now this phenomenon has been demonstrated even for everyday tasks, about which individuals have likely received substantial feedback regarding their level of knowledge and skill. Humans have shown a tendency, in other words, to be a bit thick about even the most mundane things, like how well they drive.
Reaching Peak Progressivism. Barack Obama recalibrated the Democratic Party’s liberalism into progressive radicalism. He opened the border and all but dismantled existing immigration law. Sanctuary cities sprang up with impunity. Executive orders bypassed the Congress. Obama sought to nationalize healthcare. The concept of “diversity” replaced affirmative action by redefining racial oppression as distinct from historical grievance and economic disparity and instead lumping together 30 percent of the population as nonwhite, and thus antithetical to the new buzz construct of “white privilege.” The Coming Violence of the Left. As Eric Hoffer pointed out, mass movements need an enemy and the Left has always had the struggle as an essential element of their identity. It’s why they have invented things like institutional racism and white privilege. Lacking anything resembling actual racism in modern America, and faced with a tsunami of anti-white sermonizing, they have been forced to invent a boogeyman. Like shamans of the past, the modern Left warns about evil spirits, but now they are called unconscious bias and extremism. Truth, beauty and the creeping hand of totalitarianism. The witch-hunting of Scruton. Notre Dame is as beautiful as anything anyone has built since in the West. It’s clear that in what we call the Middle Ages they knew things we have forgotten; like the effect of beauty and nature on people’s spirits. They built garden courtyards into hospitals where people could sit as they struggled with illness. They knew that our surroundings can make us feel more well, or less ill; plants, gardens, waterfalls, greenery, colour, beauty in general.