Essentially, Woke are building a movement to subvert the Left and render it powerless in the face of its very real theocratic and fascist enemies. They pit men against women, heterosexual and cisgender against queer, black against white, and the working class against the intellectual class. They denigrate science with various offshoots of a meaningless pseudoscience called “critical theory.” “Critical theory” is such a rigorous field that one of its leading journals published a (fabricated) paper purporting to document endemic rape culture in dog parks.(1) But above all, the Awakened are teaching their young, idealistic students that they should seek refuge in a “safe place” rather than learning how to overcome their fears and their enemies.
It’s as if our enemies invented this thing.
(1) Lindsay, James, Peter Bogasian, and Helen Pluckrose. “Academic Grievance Studies and Academic Corruption.” AleoFebruary 10, 2018.
This one comes from Jonathan Lipow. Public Policy for Progressives2023.
Jonathan is a professor of economics at the Naval Postgraduate School, and although he is in a different department than me, we have been colleagues for many years.
Jonathan is a progressive and he wants to talk to other progressives who think he needs to hear his economic message. Of course, Jonathan and I don’t agree on everything — keep in mind that he’s a progressive — but we do agree on some things.
I’ll have a few more posts about the contents of his book over the next week or so.
For now, here is another excerpt and a short comment from me.
But as we will see, logic and evidence strongly suggest that some of the policies currently popular among the American left, such as charter schools and opposition to nuclear energy, are, quite literally, absurd. Meanwhile, other policies widely supported by progressives, such as a $15 minimum wage, are not absurd, but much of the evidence indicates that they are ineffective and basically a waste of time. (DRH note: I wish those policies were just a waste of time, rather than policies that make it harder for young, unskilled workers to get on the first rung of the economic ladder.) Meanwhile, readers may be pleased to learn that progressives’ instinctive support for universal health care (DRH note: hmm) and liberal immigration policies (DRH note: I’m in favor) is amply supported by both logic and evidence.
More to come later.
postscript: this is post In 2016 I commented on the good things Jonathan had written about me in an earlier book, in order to argue that my libertarian views might not work as well in the world as I thought they would.
