Tweet [1]
David Harsanyi calms Americans’ fears about our “crumbling infrastructure [2]” (almost always pronounced in America today as if it’s one word: ourcrumblinginfrastructure).
Steven Pinker argues, in the Wall Street Journal, that the enlightenment is indeed working [3]. A slice:
The poor may not always be with us. The world is about a hundred times wealthier today than it was two centuries ago, and the prosperity is becoming more evenly distributed across countries and people. Within the lifetimes of most readers, the rate of extreme poverty could approach zero. Catastrophic famine, never far away in the past, has vanished from all but the most remote and war-ravaged regions, and undernourishment is in steady decline.
Gary Galles is correct that today’s protectionists have much to learn from Henry George [4].
Alberto Mingardi remembers the late Nick Phillipson [5].
When I was growing up, in the 1940s and 1950s, parents and teachers commonly taught children the venerable saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” Judging by all the news articles I read about snowflake youth, it seems that the tables have been turned on the old aphorism. You may now bomb people back into the stone age, but never, never refer to them with an unwelcome pronoun.
Rich Karlgaard interviews George Gilder [8].
The great Sheldon Richman rains on Trump’s military parade [9].