Author: Bo Winegard and Ben Winegard

The Twilight of Liberalism?

Published by Bo Winegard and Ben Winegard

The place and the object gave ample scope for moralizing on the vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave; and it was agreed, that in proportion to her former greatness, the fall of Rome was the more awful and deplorable. ~Edward Gibbon Is liberalism dying? Thirty years ago, those words would have provoked hearty laughter. Its chief ideological competitor, communism, had just collapsed, leaving it without serious rival. Some optimistic thinkers asserted that we had reached an ideological “end of history” and that, having triumphed over all viable alternatives, liberalism would govern “the material world for the long run.” Today, however, few are so optimistic. The rise of populism, of Trump, of opiate epidemics, of bitter polarization, and of yawning economic inequality have tempered the triumphalism of those who once celebrated the inevitable victory of markets and democracy. The good news is that this growing pessimism has compelled reflection and reanalysis; the bad news is that plausible solutions remain out of …

In Defense of Scientism

Published by Bo Winegard and Ben Winegard

I hear the jury’s still out on science. ~Gob Bluth In science, the jury is always out. This is because science is a methodological approach to the world, not a set of inflexible principles or a catalog of indisputable facts. Truth is always provisional. Science does not hold something to be incontrovertibly true. It says, “This appears to be true according to the best available theory and evidence.” On science, the jury long ago returned a verdict: it is awesome. It has conquered deadly diseases and eradicated oppressive superstitions. It has increased human flourishing and extended life expectancies. It has put humans on the moon and many fathoms under the ocean’s surface. It has uncovered the forces that guide the crudest motions of matter and those that govern the most exquisite processes of life. In short, it has vastly improved human existence while dramatically increasing our knowledge of the universe. Despite all this, skeptical philosophers and pundits continue to forward arguments against scientific “arrogance”—or against what they see as science’s hubristic attempt to crowd out …

The Preachers of the Great Awokening

Published by Bo Winegard and Ben Winegard

“Yea, on the contrary, Justice calls aloud for an infinite Punishment of their Sins.” Jonathan Edwards From the sun-blanched beaches of California to the snow-covered cities of New England, a religious fervor is sweeping the United States. PhD-toting preachers spread the faith with righteous zeal, denouncing those who violate its sacred principles. Sinners are threatened not by an angry god, but by a righteous mob. The impenitent among them are condemned to be outcasts, while the contrite, if they properly mortify themselves and pledge everlasting fealty to the faith, can secure enough lost status to rejoin society, perhaps forever marked by a scarlet epithet. Racist. Sexist. Ableist. This is the religion of Wokeness, and this is the era of the Great Awokening. In the following article, we will explore this quasi-religion, Wokeness, as a status system that functions predominantly to distinguish white elites from the white masses (whom we will call hoi polloi). It does this by offering a rich signalling vocabulary for traits and possessions such as education, intelligence, openness, leisure, wealth, and cosmopolitanism, all …

The Haunted Mind: The Stubborn Persistence of the Supernatural

Published by Bo Winegard and Ben Winegard

It is wonderful that five thousand years have now elapsed since the creation of the world, and still it is undecided whether or not there has ever been an instance of the spirit of any person appearing after death. All argument is against it; but all belief is for it. ~Samuel Johnson. The Union cemetery in Easton Connecticut is haunted. Many witnesses have seen and heard mysterious phenomena there, from inexplicable orbs of light to eerie apparitions. The most famous supernatural resident is the mysterious woman in white, a black-haired spectre clad in a flowing white diaphanous dress. Various tales explain her haunting. Perhaps the most popular contends that she roams the cemetery searching for her dead son. Ed Warren, a self-taught demonologist, claims that he has seen the lady in white and that he even captured her on camera. According to him, one of the most popular tales about her is that she will appear in the middle of the road right in front of a vehicle. Then, when the distraught driver gets out, believing …

A Tale of Two Bell Curves

Published by Bo Winegard and Ben Winegard

“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic” ~ John F. Kennedy 1962 To paraphrase Mark Twain, an infamous book is one that people castigate but do not read. Perhaps no modern work better fits this description than The Bell Curve by political scientist Charles Murray and the late psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein. Published in 1994, the book is a sprawling (872 pages) but surprisingly entertaining analysis of the increasing importance of cognitive ability in the United States. It also included two chapters that addressed well-known racial differences in IQ scores (chapters 13-14). After a few cautious and thoughtful reviews, the book was excoriated by academics and popular science writers alike. A kind of grotesque mythology grew around it. It was depicted as a tome of racial antipathy; a thinly veiled expression of its authors’ bigotry; an epic scientific fraud, full of slipshod scholarship and outright lies. As hostile reviews piled up, the real Bell Curve, a sober and judiciously argued …

The Rise of Donald Trump

Published by Bo Winegard and Ben Winegard

I. Since early February, Donald J. Trump, a brash and boorish businessman with a spotted past and tenuous fidelity to American conservatism, has dominated the Republican primaries, winning victories across states as disparate as Vermont, Hawaii, and Alabama. His opponents and much of the GOP establishment argue that he is vulgar, ignorant, and xenophobic—a comically stupid and coarse would-be Fascist who has no place in American politics. But to his many fervent supporters, these criticisms are at best irrelevant; at worst, they demonstrate the supercilious despair of the establishment and add to Trump’s outsider appeal. In the face of such denunciations from the powers that be, Trump keeps winning. At the ballot box—winning. On television—winning. In Twitter battles—winning. And the polls suggest he will keep winning so long as his rivals remain divided. To some, his rise is evidence of the racism that hides beneath the veneer of polite society in America. Certainly, he has voiced some disconcerting opinions; and he has aroused the support of some unsavory political figures. Quite possibly he is, in …

The Kids Are All Right

Published by Bo Winegard and Ben Winegard

Loudly chomping on a stick of gum, Emily finished the last few words of her barely comprehensible text message: “BTW..that shit was cray. WTF!! : )” She laughed, and slid back into her seat to listen. The professor droned on about some dead playwright named Shakespeare. Who cares? The monotone began to recede as she opened her laptop and checked her Instagram, eagerly eyeing the number of “likes” her latest selfie had obtained. One thousand and twenty two! This thrilled her. However, her cheer temporarily soured as she remembered that her BMW was in the shop. How unfair. Now she had to ride home with her roommate Rebecca, a nerd who would force her to listen to pretentious “indie” bands on the drive home. Ugh. Her aged, out of touch, and pedantic professor finally ceased speaking of something called Hamlet and dismissed the class. Excitedly, Emily stood up, pulled down her pink “I love me” shirt, and walked out of the classroom. As she entered the hall, she quickly turned up the volume of her …