Juliette Sellgren talks with economist Stan Veuger about a variety of things.
Nick Gillespie talks with the inimitable and always-wise David Boaz.
Arnold Kling riffs on “creative types and management types.” Here’s his conclusion:
My main point is that one should not think simply that creative types are good and management types are bad, or conversely. For startups, creativity is most important. But as a firm matures, it needs solid management. The transition is often painful and unpleasant. A firm will last longer if it can manage the transition from novelty-seeking to process reliability without completely losing its ability to foster creativity.
Gale Pooley reports on the tremendous improvements over the past half-century in commercial aviation.
Magdalene Horzempa explores “the dollars and cents of DEI” and finds them to be excessive. (HT George Leef)
Liberal democracies should avoid the temptation of using illiberal means, even when they confront views and positions that are forthrightly hostile toward liberal democracy itself. I worry about some of the court cases against Trump. While they might be technically legitimate, some involve offenses that happened years ago and for which he was not charged at the time. Would he have been charged for these were he not the controversial political figure he is today?
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As I write in my new book, “Age of Revolutions,” the new populist right’s disdain for liberal democracy is frightening, constituting the gravest threat we face to our political future. But the left also has its excesses in this direction. Many “want to dispense with some of liberalism’s rules and procedures. … They want to ban those who have ‘wrong’ ideas from speaking. They want to achieve racial equality by quota or decree. They want to use education or art to achieve political goals rather than educational or artistic ones. Convinced of the virtue of their ideas in theory — say, the rights of asylum seekers — they are comfortable pushing this abstract notion of virtue onto a reluctant society. But top-down revolutionary actions, from the uncompromising left or the reactionary right, often cause more turmoil than progress.”
Donald Trump’s brand of right-wing populism is illiberal and xenophobic and takes America into dark dead-ends. But the way to defeat it in a liberal democracy is not by using legal mechanisms that take him off the political playing field and canceling those who support him. Rather it is to debate his allies, to put forward powerful and persuasive positions that show Americans that you can address their concerns, and to confront Trump on the political battlefield — and beat him.
I’m always happy to be a guest of Dan Proft.
Here are some new and worthwhile reflections from Bob Graboyes.
According to Fitzhugh, the North’s comparative liberalism produced a culture that was at war with nature itself. In Cannibals All!, Fitzhugh fleshed out this argument by appealing to Aristotle (as did many slavery defenders), declaring that liberal theorists “propose to dissolve and disintegrate society; falsely supposing that they thereby follow nature.”
spiked tweets: (HT Jay Bhattacharya)
Nick Cave is right – there is nothing right-wing or reactionary about opposing wokeness. Woke is a cruel and dogmatic creed. It seeks to destroy people’s lives without mercy. The fight against woke is a fight for tolerance, reason and sanity.
