Pun Salad

For some reason, this popped up in my Twitter:

Finland knows that Socialism works.

They house all the homeless people, and have the least in the world.

They closed all paid Education in 1976 and now have the best education system in the world.

They are the happiest country in the world.

Be like Finland.

— BladeoftheSun (@BladeoftheS) November 2, 2025

I almost replied… and then noticed that there were already 1.5K replies. (It's since added hundreds more, and who knows how many there will be by the time you read this.)

So, I'll make my reply here:

How "Socialist" is Finland? The go-to source is the Fraser Institute's most recent annual report, Economic Freedom of the World. They put Finland in 15th place among the 165 jurisdictions ranked, tied with Germany, slightly ahead of Japan, slightly behind Costa Rica and the UK. (The US is #5.)

In a solid last place (#165): Venezuela. (For some reason, no socialism fans point to Venezuela as their Edenic utopia.)

It's true that Finns self-report a very high life satisfaction: 7.74 on a 0-10 scale. (Americans are slightly more sourpussed: 6.72.)

We could slice-and-dice more stats, but you can probably do that yourself. A good place to start is Daniel J. Mitchell's International Liberty site.

But… OK, just one more: Wikipedia puts Finland's per-capita GDP at (according to the IMF) at $56,084. Compared to the US's $89,599.

If Finland were a US state, that would put it worse off than every other state, save for Mississippi ($53,061).

So: don't be like Finland: be like (um…) Switzerland!

[Headline explanation: as reported back in July: "Wolverines are making a comeback in southern Finland, where they were wiped out in the 19th century."]

Also of note:

• It's not a pretty picture, Emily. But Jon A. Shields, Yuval Avnur, and Stephanie Muravchik have a suggestion at the Free Press: Want to See Campus Bias? Open the Syllabus.

  We just completed a study that draws on a database of millions of college syllabi to explore how professors teach three of the nation’s most contentious topics—racial bias in the criminal justice system, the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the ethics of abortion. Since all these issues sharply divide scholars, we wanted to know whether students were expected to read a wide or narrow range of perspectives on them. We wondered how well professors are introducing students to the moral and political controversies that divide intellectuals and roil our democracy.

  Not well, as it turns out. Across each issue we found that the academic norm is to shield students from some of our most important disagreements.

  Their first example:

  Consider, for example, Michelle Alexander’s important 2010 book, The New Jim Crow. Alexander argued that mass incarceration emerged after the collapse of the Jim Crow system in the South, largely as a way to reestablish the subjugation of black Americans. It would be hard to overstate its influence. Ibram X. Kendi called it “the spark that would eventually light the fire of Black Lives Matter.” And on college campuses, it became assigned reading. On the topic of race and the criminal justice system, no other work is more popular in the syllabi database; it appears in more than 4,000 syllabi in U.S. universities and colleges.

  As soon as it was published, The New Jim Crow stirred contention within academia. The most prominent critic was James Forman Jr., a professor at Yale Law School. In a seminal working paper, Forman challenged Alexander’s thesis. Among other shortcomings, Forman wrote that The New Jim Crow “fails to consider black attitudes toward crime and punishment, ignores violent crimes while focusing almost exclusively on drug crimes, obscures class distinctions within the African American community, and overlooks the effects of mass incarceration on other racial groups.” Forman’s work culminated in a book titled Locking Up Our Own, a well-regarded work that won the Pulitzer Prize.

  How often is Forman’s book assigned along with Alexander’s? Less than 4 percent of the time. Other prominent critics—like Michael Fortner, John Pfaff, and Patrick Sharkey—are assigned even less often. Fortner’s important book The Black Silent Majority, for example, is assigned with The New Jim Crow less than 2 percent of the time.

  I don't know how to find syllabi at the University Near Here, but The New Jim Crow is one of the featured books named (twice) on the Racial Justice Resources site maintained by the UNH library. ("Once in a great while a book comes along that changes the way we see the world and helps to fuel a nationwide social movement.…") Nothing by Forman, Fortner, Pfaff, or Sharkey.

• Pop quiz, hot shot. Which President said of his opponents: "They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred." The answer may surprise you!

  Or maybe not. You're pretty well-read.

  Anyway, that's what came to mind when reading Jonathan Turley: “We’re Coming After You” — How Some on the Left Found Peace Through Hate.

  In Shakespeare’s Richard III, Queen Elizabeth — whose husband King Edward IV was overthrown and her twins taken to the Tower — asks the older Queen Margaret (widow of the murdered King Henry VI) to “teach me how to curse mine enemies.” The Queen responds that it is easy: “Think that thy babes were sweeter than they were, And he that slew them fouler than he is.”

  The lesson: The key to hate is to decouple it entirely from reason and reality. Only then can you hate completely without restraint or regret.

  It seems that the left has learned how to hate. Hateful speech is in vogue as Democratic leaders ramp up violent rhetoric and political violence rises. The key is to get voters to hate your opponent so much that they forget how much they dislike you.

  The irony is crushing. For years, liberals have sought to criminalize hate speech while expanding the range of viewpoints considered to fall within this category. Democratic leaders, from senators to former presidential candidates, have falsely claimed that hate speech is not protected under the First Amendment.

  Jamie Lee Curtis appears later in Jonathan's column, so you'll want to check that out.

• It's time to quit the tribe when… … the WSJ editorialists start writing about some of your tribemates: The New Right’s New Antisemites. (WSJ gifted link)

  An old political poison is growing on the new right, led by podcasters and internet opportunists who are preoccupied with the Jews. It is spreading wider and faster than we thought, and it has even found an apologist in Kevin Roberts, president of the venerable Heritage Foundation.

  On Thursday Mr. Roberts released a startling video to oppose the alleged “cancellation” of Tucker Carlson and even of Hitler fanboy Nick Fuentes, whom Mr. Carlson had hosted for a chummy podcast interview.

  “I want to be clear about one thing: Christians can critique the state of Israel without being antisemitic,” Mr. Roberts began, sounding like what William F. Buckley Jr. used to call “a pyromaniac in a field of straw men.” This is what Hamas supporters on the left say: What do you mean? We were only criticizing Israel. Not exactly.

  On Monday’s Carlson show, Mr. Fuentes assailed “organized Jewry” as the obstacle to American unity and “these Zionist Jews” as the impediment to the right’s success, while calling himself a fan of Joseph Stalin. Even while toning it down for the largest audience he’ll ever have, Mr. Fuentes still came off as an internet mashup of the worst of the 20th century.

  Fuentes is a creep, and I have no idea what worms have taken residence in Tucker Carlson's brain. I was never much of a fan, and started noticing his wheels coming off back when everyone else did.

• Hey, some people are voting today! For her substack headline, Allison Schrager embraces Mencken-style cynicism, the last three words of his famous quote: "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it Good and hard."

  To outsiders, it may seem strange that the center of capitalism is about to elect a proud, self-described Democratic Socialist. I’m sorry, I just can’t get over the Mamdani plan to apply a flat 2% extra tax to anyone who makes more than $1 million. Not a marginal tax — a flat tax. I know this may seem small compared with everything else at stake in economic policy, including a four-year rent freeze on private property. But the fact that if you earn $1 more than $999,999 you’d owe $20,000 is just amateurish tax design — like something an eighth grader would come up with. It points to outright economic illiteracy — or that no one with even a passing familiarity with tax policy reviewed it.

  And it’s not a small thing — this is how he expects to pay for free bus rides, childcare, food, and whatever else. It suggests a lot hasn’t been thought through. The fact that people are relying on Kathy Hochul to be the adult in the room is some level of cope.

  So we'll see how good and hard NYC's citizenry get it.