Thomas Sowell: Tragic Optimist
In his 2000 memoir A Personal Odyssey, Sowell recounts a parable that was read to him as a young boy and which he never forgot.
Samuel Kronen
· 29 min read
Politics
A collection of 718 posts
Raising Beef Cattle
It’s hard to imagine a more inaccurate description of the peace and contentment so apparent in this pastoral scene.
Tom Blanton
· 16 min read
Oscar Wilde’s Utopia
The great conflict within the Left during the 19th century was between anarchist and statist visions for socialism (this was the bone of contention between Bakunin and Marx, and for many revolutionaries long after).
Jared Marcel Pollen
· 11 min read
The Delusions of Crowds—A Review
Published in 1841, Mackay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is as amusing a survey of human folly as has ever been written.
Clayton Trutor
· 8 min read
A Return to Tradition: Creating a Post-Trump Conservatism
The survival of the American Republic might just depend upon it.
Bo Winegard
· 14 min read
Freak Power: The Ballot or the Bomb—A Review
Freak Power is a fascinating look into the heart of a grassroots political campaign during a violent era in American history, as one man channelled the rage and confusion of a maligned subculture into a surprisingly coherent and subversive political movement.
David S. Wills
· 8 min read
Kin, Tribes, and the Dark Side of Identity
A politics based on membership in a particular religious, racial, or social group rather than broader groupings of people with the same political views was a dubious luxury that our species can simply no longer afford.
Robert Lynch
· 15 min read
America Has Serious Problems. It’s Time to Stop Blaming Them on ‘Trumpism’
It is always tempting to portray one’s political opponents as consumed by some inveterate flaw or social contaminant that marks them as fallen creatures.
Quillette
· 10 min read
The Search for a Politics of Community
What’s now being sought is a system in which power is exercised by representatives of those who constitute a majority.
John Lloyd
· 13 min read
Racial Justice: Don’t Abandon the Incrementalist Approach
Another reason that many liberals have increasingly rejected incrementalism is that racial disparities appear to be unchanged.
Robert Cherry
· 7 min read
What Divides Us Is Class, Not Race
What we need are policies—including trade and immigration policies—that help us carve up the economic pie in a way that sees all workers get their fair share, no matter what their ethnicity.
Jeff Rubin
· 10 min read
The End of the Islamic Republic of Iran?
The regime is a victim of its own fanaticism, corruption, and incompetence.
Shay Khatiri
· 7 min read
I Was Invited to Testify on Energy Policy. Then Democrats Didn't Let Me Speak
What, exactly, had I said that was so dangerous as to lead Democrats to engage in character assassination and undermine liberal democratic norms? Nothing I hadn’t already said last January when I testified before Congress about climate change and energy.
Michael Shellenberger
· 6 min read
The Great Awokening and the Second American Revolution
The past is raked over for imperfections as left-modernist ideologues render the most grievance-based interpretation of history imaginable.
Eric Kaufmann
· 22 min read
From India’s Himalayan Border to Our Local Cell Networks, It’s Time to Push Back Against China
The Indian border is only one of the many fronts on which China has been taking advantage of the worldwide economic downturn and political paralysis caused by COVID-19 to move aggressively—an ironic result given the source of the disease.
Cleo Paskal
· 8 min read