Why have these things happened?

Right-wingers puzzle over how to explain liberalism and the Left. Where do they come from—a sheltered upbringing, arrested emotional development, scientism, a general lack of realism, managerial class self-interest? Some even look at modern culture and politics and conclude that the love of equality is simply the love of degradation and death, so it’s the … More ...

Zen and the art of antiliberalism

Liberalism can be understood as a view that evolved and triumphed in a contentious political environment through a sort of philosophical jiu-jitsu. It wins all arguments by not arguing but rather using its opponents’ own force against them. Liberalism claims it has no points of its own to make, it accepts all your points … More ...

Race and American identity

A correspondent raised the issue of the historic identity of the American people, and whether it depended on the exclusion of nonwhites and in particular blacks. He suggested (a bit modishly, I thought) that to the extent concrete ethnicity became less important during the course of our history a sort of constructed pseudo-ethnicity based on … More ...

Justice and the ABA

The ABA already has rules that keep judges from belonging to organizations that think there are differences between men and women that matter in personal and social interactions and that adjust their practices accordingly (that “discriminate based on gender”). Now they’re talking about extending that rule to organizations that believe sexual oddities and perversities could … More ...

Will humanity be checkmated?

Modernity attempts to achieve control through formalization. The great triumphs of modern natural science have come from exact measurement and mathematical modelling. Similarly, modern political and social systems substitute the simple and abstract concept of preference—the tendency of actors to choose some things over other things—for the more complex and subtle concept of the good. … More ...

Liberal leftism and left leftism

A friend sent me a copy of a note he had written arguing against the neoconservative claim that the liberalism dominant today in the academy, the Democratic Party, and the New York Times is the illegitimate result of smuggling (bad) Leftism into (good) pre-60s liberalism. My response:

I agree with your overall argument. The distinction

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