Good point via Amy's pal Randazza… It's never made clear sense why a 'hate crime' killing is worse than one from the usual murderous motives (money, sex, revenge, etc.).

This sound may not constitute "a whole new dimension"— I think the guy who writes these blurby tweets isn't a native English speaker. But it's worth a few second of your morning.

Personal call, and I'm not a fictiony kinda reader, but Replay may be my all-time favorite paperback. It aims for the middle and hits the bull's eye. If you were born 1958-1970, you'll like it. And it could be re-written every five years until the heat death of the universe, which is kind of meta.

Addendum to March 18, 2021 3:47 AM If you're going to read the book, stop reading the linked article halfway down, because they give away all the candy.

Vance is the second cousin of a friend. Soon, my access to the highest, most tentacled reaches if power will be direct & unhampered: You guys are so screwed.

Here's an interesting viewpoint from Jonah Goldberg on the rampant illiberalism pervading both sides of our political aisles.

Karen Stenner, an economist who studies authoritarianism, has identified what she calls an “authoritarian predisposition.” She is quick to note that authoritarianism isn’t synonymous with conservatism or any other ideological framework. Authoritarianism, she writes, “is a functional disposition concerned with maximizing ‘oneness’ and ‘sameness’ especially in conditions where the things that make us one and the same — common authority, and shared values — appear to be under threat.”

Historically, American conservatism has balanced conflicting impulses. It has been antagonistic to sudden, drastic, social change while at the same time it fully embraced — at least in theory — the free market. The problem is that economic liberty fuels change more than almost anything else. What Joseph Schumpeter called “creative destruction” constantly replaces old means of production with new ones. Moreover, most conservatives were defenders of existing traditional institutions and norms. This deference to courts, elections and the rule of law put structural limits on the reach of culturally conservative programs.

A similar uneasy fusion endured on the left. In economics, capitalism was seen as something that needed to be harnessed, controlled or even caged. But in the cultural marketplace, the left had its own version of creative destruction.

But both sides kept these internal tensions in check. Now the equilibrium is breaking down before our eyes. Both left and right have their own versions of “cancel culture” now. Leading conservatives routinely heap scorn on “market fundamentalism,” championing everything from protectionism and industrial planning to state meddling in social media platforms (despite the fact that the right dominates the very outlets they insist are “censoring” them). Prominent intellectuals flirt with authoritarianism, and even monarchy.

On the left, hostility to free speech and open debate is even more intense. In July, when a collection of mostly progressive intellectuals and writers issued an open letter calling for a renewed commitment to free speech, left-wing blowback was intense.

It’s not just on issues of expression that the left’s liberal consensus has come apart. Due process on college campuses is now scorned as reactionary. Religious liberty is tolerable, so long as it doesn’t conflict with progressive values. It is rapidly becoming a mainstream position on the left to favor packing the Supreme Court as soon as possible.

Ms. Stenner argues that the authoritarian predisposition is triggered when the settled order becomes unsettled and an instinctive panic sets in. Whatever the cause(s) of these chaotic times may be (I have my theories), I think the chaos has triggered vast numbers of people on the left and the right to embrace illiberalism.

Both movements share an antipathy toward the bedrock American and classically liberal right to be wrong, to live differently, to care about unfashionable things, or simply to not care about fashionable ones. Dissent is a kind of assault that must be policed and silenced, by state or cultural power — or both. Conformity must be imposed. The twin fads of socialism and nationalism are best understood as competing attempts to impose sameness and order on each side’s own terms.

In this climate, the new centrists can be ideologically conservative or progressive according to the old definitions, but east and west share a common discomfort with the constant demand to catastrophize our politics in order impose orthodoxy on everyone. And amid the cacophony, such centrism can be quite lonely.

"When someone demands blind obedience, you’d be a fool not to peek." ~ Jim Fiebig

If they can get away with this, then the backlash will begin:

https://twitter.com/pegobry/status/1372516169983389704

That is amazing Six.

It's L.A. Cridmo's

🎞𝑯𝑶𝑳𝑳𝒀𝑾𝑶𝑶𝑫 𝑴𝑰𝑵𝑼𝑻𝑬 ⏱

When the Chinese go woke, their government responds.

> the backlash will begin

I dunno. [1], the French aren't like normal people. [2], it would be more like an instance of engagement than backlash, which is more than we've had in the United States… (Unless you consider the Trump presidency to have been a meaningful counterstrike, which I do not: The monster roars ever-louder.)

Coney a bunch of thoughts, and not particularly sequential ones.

A model of left vs. right that I read a few years ago (and God knows where) suggests that you need the liberal openness to new ideas in order to innovate and create new enterprises. And then once the project is on its feet, you need a conservative frame of mind to tighten things up for competition and continuing profitability. Professionalism without disruption eventually demands too much tidiness, performance is choked, and the business is ripe for creative disruption, as when micros thrashed IBM, etc.

Goldberg is a favorite and it's a great passage, but he gives short shrift to the prevalence and growth of naivete and literal thinking in the popular mind, on both sides of the aisle. People need to be smart (and/or experienced) and calculating to participate productively in a democratic polity.

Here's a fun podcast/interview/whatever. Note the necktie: Kaus has been an admirer of Mead's for years and enjoys breezing through the considerable evolution of his thinking about American well-being. (It was great to hear him give explicit consideration to the now-indisputable heritability of intelligence as a factor in work success.)

Mead then makes a fascinating point about how the American agricultural economy, perhaps uniquely, taught voters to think clearly about political matters. Later (or elsewhere) he notes that our transition to a manufacturing + suburban economy was a spectacular success, and in no way foreseen, or commanded into existence, or guaranteed. Anyway, listening to the whole thing is recommended.

Goldberg is certainly correct that fear fuels authoritarians, and this doesn't flatter the Americans of our time (and perhaps of our generation).

Okay, chores now

We'll see if that's a PR stunt from the French. I mean, these kind of things always are but one can only hope.

Former president of Drag Queen Story Hour charged with child porn:

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/03/breaking-former-president-drag-queen-story-hour-foundation-childrens-court-judge-charged-seven-counts-child-porn/

Former President of Drag Queen story hour charged with child porn:

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/03/breaking-former-president-drag-queen-story-hour-foundation-childrens-court-judge-charged-seven-counts-child-porn/

Never quite understood why Drag Queens reading to kids was a good idea. Every drag show I've ever seen was pretty raunchy and rather misogynistic, though in an entertaining way. Fun for adults, nut really child appropriate.

I mean if the point is to get them to interact with gay or gender non-conforming people, I feel like there are a lot tamer people who could qualify...

"Former President of Drag Queen story hour charged with child porn" ~NicoleK

Not surprising at all. The ones who wanted to bring that junk here to Texas got busted for that too.

"I mean if the point is to get them to interact with gay or gender non-conforming people, I feel like there are a lot tamer people who could qualify..." ~NicoleK

Dear god yes. This was less 'lets be tolerant of gays' and more 'lets go poke those conservative evil guys in the eye'. Plus a healthy dose of xenophobia and condescension.

A model of left vs. right that I read a few years ago (and God knows where) suggests that you need the liberal openness to new ideas in order to innovate and create new enterprises. And then once the project is on its feet, you need a conservative frame of mind to tighten things up for competition and continuing profitability.

If I were twenty years younger I would have believe that right away.

In reality, it's a mix of things that happen by accident, plenty of free time to do random things for sh*ts and giggles; and of course, someone who realizes they could make money off it.

Coney— So when Goldberg says "American conservatism has balanced conflicting impulses," I hear echoes of Mead saying that having all these independent farming businessmen across the prairie, no matter how modest in their attainment, once made things go well. Because as Sowell says, "There are no solutions, only compromises," and these guys had a practical, visceral understanding of the grind of progress.

Last week Kaus was stunned by the media's disregard of Biden's doddering quill as his signature promises to restore Welfare as we knew it decades ago, before his hairplugs and other procedures. That's basically what my generation of big-D Democratic politics has bequeathed to our nation: A featureless blindness to fiscal realities and the human heart.

These people cashing stimulus checks, perhaps most regrettably the young, are being taught that money comes from gummint, whether D or R. The very young never have a chance to learn otherwise, especially when they can't go to schools, or libraries, or even small businesses to see what money really means.

Authoritarians promise solutions.

> free time to do random things
> for sh*ts and giggles

Youth, a famously lefty stage of life, often has that kind of time, at least in lefty households. Sh*ts and giggles isn't really a conservative pattern.

Shush! Listen carefully! Hear it through the whistle of wind past your window… Listen, beyond the valley over yonder…

Do you hear it?

It's the sound of my heartbreak at CNN's change of fortune.

Still can't hear anything?

Well how 'bout that.

A tale of American manufacturing might:

It was Saturday evening when Timothy Templet, the co-owner and executive vice president for global sales, saw a Washington, D.C., number flash across his cellphone. Giroir told Templet he needed about 100,000 nasopharyngeal swabs within a week. Templet told the admiral that wouldn’t be possible.

Libel law in Britain is tough, which is why their dailies are globally famous for tawdry content.

So this seems notable.

Delayed Y2K impacts.