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Some Non-Covid Links

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Gary Galles decries the distorted and distorting language used politically [2].

Paul Matzko reports on the so-called “Fairness Doctrine”‘s sordid history [3].

This excellent Arnold Kling line is reason enough to link to the post in which it appears [4]:

The worst intellectuals to put in charge of things are the ones who think that they should be in charge of things.

My Mercatus Center colleague James Broughel rightly criticizes the Biden administration’s attempt to pass off value judgments as science [5].

My intrepid Mercatus Center colleague Veronique de Rugy recently spoke with Ross Kaminsky about paid family leave [6].

Here’s a silver lining around the dark cloud of Covid Derangement Syndrome [7].

The great Bruce Yandle looks at the likely trade policy of the Biden administration [8].

My Mercatus Center colleague Dan Rothschild ponders liberalism after the events of January 6th on Capitol Hill [9]. A slice:

Today, ideas are far from the animating force of politics. Indeed, it’s hard to name a single original or even newly refreshed idea that animated the 2020 election.

On the right, the only real question was personal fealty to President Trump. Recall that the GOP platform [10] was simply a one-page resolution that recited grievances against the media and proclaimed allegiance to the president. Democrats were content mostly to push to expand existing spending and entitlement programs while embracing illiberal ideas of racial essentialism and ahistorical revisionism.

Ideas still matter, of course, and there’s no shortage of them coming from academics, think tanks, journalists, pressure groups, unions, business lobbies and more. It’s just that these ideas are not what animate citizens and their public servants.

We’ve seen a similar debasement in the power of words. In the 1990s, Republicans and late-night talk show hosts were afflicted by paroxysms of heartburn and howls, respectively, over President Bill Clinton’s under-oath exegesis on the third-person singular present-tense form of “to be.”

It’s now an article of faith among much of the left that “hate speech” is not constitutionally protected and that words are violence—while at the same time slogans such as “defund the police” don’t really mean what they say, and anyone who suggests they do is acting in bad faith. This summer, many ostensibly serious intellectuals of the left beclowned [11] themselves comparing self-described antifascist activists (fact check: they were hard-left authoritarian rioters assaulting police, intimidating civilians and destroying property) to the men who stormed Normandy, defeated the Axis powers and liberated the concentration camps because both, after all, were against “fascism,” as if that word meant nothing.

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