URLs du Jour

2018-12-24

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  • Jonah Goldberg's G-File this week (actually last week, sorry) muses on Conservative Facts -- Many Toss Facts & Embrace Meanness. This is … perceptive:

    There was always a yin-yang thing to conservatism. Its hard-headedness and philosophical realism about human nature and the limits it imposes on utopian schemes appealed to some and repulsed others. For those who see politics as a romantic enterprise, a means of pursuing collective salvation, conservatism seems mean-spirited. As Emerson put it: “There is always a certain meanness in the argument of conservatism, joined with a certain superiority in its fact.” That’s what Ben Shapiro is getting at when he says “Facts don’t care about your feelings.” The hitch is that the reverse is also true: Feelings don’t care about your facts. Tell a young progressive activist we can’t afford socialism and the response will be overtly or subliminally emotional: “Why don’t you care about poor people!” or “Why do you love billionaires!?”

    The problem conservatism faces these days is that many of the loudest voices have decided to embrace the meanness while throwing away the facts. This has been a trend for a long time now. But Donald Trump has accelerated the problem to critical mass, yielding an explosion of stupid and a radioactive cloud of meanness.

    As Jonah (almost) says: just because Hillary and her ilk think you're deplorable, it doesn't mean you actually have to be deplorable. That's an overreaction.


  • At Quillette, Robert Precht discusses American Universities' China Problem.

    According to a report released last month by a group of distinguished China scholars, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) uses vague threats to induce US professors and students to avoid topics that might offend Chinese government sensitivities—research or discussions on Tibet, Taiwan, Xinjiang, human rights, and Chinese politics, for example. It denies visas to scholars who criticize the regime, uses Chinese students in the US to inform on one another, and punishes universities for hosting controversial speakers. After a university hosted the Dalai Lama, Beijing retaliated by banning Chinese students and scholars with funding from the Chinese government from attending the university. When the institutions we entrust to pursue the truth start avoiding the truth—particularly academic research that few of us can do on our own—we all suffer.

    The report linked to is from the Hoover Institution; somewhat suprisingly, it doesn't recommend the closure of Confucius Instututes at universities (like the one Near Here) "as long as several conditions are met." The conditions seem (to me) to be unlikely to be met, but I'm just guessing.


  • Ann Althouse asks the musical question: Women are generally more liberal than men, so why is there a "reverse gender gap" on marijuana legalization?. I'll answer: "liberal" is not synonymous with "libertarian".

    I will get in big trouble if anyone notices me saying this, but: women are (statistically) more bossy than men, less tolerant of misbehavior.

    But Ann makes a point I've seen her make before:

    I've observed over the years that researchers tend to explain any gender difference in a way that makes whatever is true of women good. [The WaPo story in which the pot research is discussed] is an interesting example of that. You can see that they're presenting the independence and courage of men as "risk taking," "deviance," and insensitivity to "morality." I'm intrigued by the presentation of women as pushed by the Democratic elite. Is being a follower regarded as a positive quality (when you follow the Democratic elite)?

    Yeah, just ask Carol King who visited New Hampshire for the Obama campaign in 2008, and…

    “And then to Barack,” King said softly, “we’d say, ‘Where you lead, I will follow, anywhere that you tell me to ... .’”

    Yeah, that's creepy. But please cast my sexist comment above in a form that makes it a compliment.


  • Slashdot reports: 51st Known Mersenne Prime Number Found. It's

    282589933-1

    It has slightly under 25 million decimal digits. I'm old enough to remember when they found the 24th one, which was a big deal at my alma mater.


  • The Google LFOD Alert rang for the Union Leader and Mike Cote's Business Editor's Notebook: The greatest Christmas gift for NH businesses would be more workers.

    New Hampshire’s three-year streak of unemployment below 3 percent hit a milestone last month when it dipped to 2.5 percent — the first time the Granite State recorded a jobless rate that low since George H.W. Bush was elected President.

    That's good news for employees, but (see the headline) businesses are having a tough time hiring.

    Mike's bottom line contains the LFOD instance:

    Maybe we should replace “Live Free or Die” as our official motto with this one until we solve our worker shortage:

    “New Hampshire: We’re hiring!”

    My first New Year Prediction: Mike Cote will not find employment in the comedy field in 2019.


Last Modified 2024-01-24 11:52 AM EDT