Pun Salad

George F. Will knows it when he sees it: The Trump administration is pure progressivism in action (WaPo gifted link). Lightly edited to HTMLize GFW's list:

GFW goes on to outline possible political futures. He's not a fan of J.D. Vance, who (he says) "shares the current president’s comprehensive hostility to actual conservatism: government limited by respect for its Madisonian architecture — the separation and enumeration of powers, and judicial review."

Also of note:

• An amusing juxtaposition. Philip Greenspun digs out the quotes I couldn't lay my hands on yesterday: Media that isn’t state-affiliated can’t survive without state funding.

  NPR in 2023, about quitting Twitter over being labeled (first) "state-affiliated media" and (then) "government-funded media":

  The news organization says that is inaccurate and misleading, given that NPR is a private, nonprofit company with editorial independence. It receives less than 1 percent of its $300 million annual budget from the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

  That was then. This was two days ago:

  [Trump's executive order defunding NPR] threatens the existence of the public broadcasting system, upon which tens of millions of Americans rely for vital news, information, and emergency alerts.

  "How much do you need for just the emergency alerts?"

  I looked, and (indeed) NPR hasn't posted to Twitter since April 2023, when it breathlessly covered Alvin Bragg's indictment of Donald Trump and Disney's live-action remake of Moana.

• Gutsy move. Steven Kurtz takes to the NR Corner to write Harvard University Is Illegitimate: A Reply to Steven Pinker.

  This past Sunday’s New York Times opinion section featured a long op-ed by Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker in defense of his university. A frequent internal critic of Harvard, Pinker acknowledged real problems at the school. Yet he also went after those supposedly afflicted by what he calls Harvard Derangement Syndrome, a disorder that causes critics to lose all perspective, seeing only evil where a mixture of good and bad exists.

  Pinker’s piece is heartfelt, thoughtful — and off target. Harvard has rightly lost legitimacy in the eyes of a goodly portion of the American public. The school has betrayed its very motto and purpose — the search for truth, veritas. Harvard has become an effectively partisan institution, undeserving of public support.

  This does not mean that important scientific research and valuable, apolitical instruction in introductory languages and basic sciences does not also take place at Harvard, as Pinker says. Nor does it prevent the occasional plucky conservative student from running the gauntlet of opposition and emerging the better for it. The existence of these goods may pose practical challenges to a complete cutoff of federal support. Yet none of that gainsays the fact that Harvard has sacrificed its legitimate claim on the public purse.

  I'm sure I've said this before, but you know that concept of "separation of church and state"? That's a pretty good idea. And the same argument holds for the separation of education and state. It's something to strive for generally, rather than targeting one lousy hive of scum and villainy.

• But if you do want to target that hive of scum and villainy… Tyler Cowen has a suggestion: There’s a Better Way to Fight Harvard.

  If you hold some grudges against Harvard, what else might you do instead of trying to wreck it? How about trying to beat it for influence?

  You could support institutions of higher education that deviate from the standard orthodoxy, such as the University of Austin, the departments of economics and law at George Mason University, or Francisco Marroquín University in Guatemala (disclaimer: I have affiliations with all three).

  Or how about right-leaning podcasts and YouTube channels? They too compete with Harvard, and very often they have more influence on how people actually think. Comedy is another institution that often is right-leaning. I’ve also spent significant time with the leading AI models, and find they are considerably more centrist and objective than our institutions of higher education.

  Interesting! Especially the AI part.

• The Antiplanner has a plan. Specifically, one for California high-speed rail: Give It to Brightline.

  He links to recent advocacy to keep throwing money at the project, and his response is golden:

  Are these people on the payroll of the companies earning millions in profits building rail lines that few people will ever use? Or are they just train lovers with no conscience who think everyone else owes them a heavily subsidized ride on trains that will travel less than half as fast as and cost more to ride than airliners?

  Never mind that costs have quintupled. They admit they don’t care how much cost they are imposing on taxpayers. Neve mind that ridership estimates for the California line are at least four times too high. They don’t care if anyone else rides it; they just want to be there for the first trip. Never mind that the steel, concrete, and petroleum required to build it spews trillions of grams of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. If it will get just one car off the road, one advocate told me, it will be worth it.

  Advocates act like fiscal conservatives have some sort of double standard when it comes to rail vs. roads. But 96 percent of the cost of driving is paid for by the users while only half the cost of Amtrak, and far less than half the cost of high-speed rail, would be paid for by riders. Don’t forget, the same fiscal conservatives who oppose California high-speed rail also opposed things like the Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska.

  If a (semi) private firm like Brightline can't make it work, the Antiplanner suggests perhaps "it could be used as special truck lanes for moving produce out of the Central Valley."