2. Ignore the usual graduation exhortations! "At least, please don’t try to change the world in the way that such a challenge is typically understood."
3. The administrative state is not omnipotent. "If the [Centers for Disease Control] cannot be trusted to give Americans sound advice, it surely cannot be trusted to give them orders."
5. Deconstruct this. "We struggle to answer the question of what is right, because we have lost our grasp on the tools to determine what is true."
6. "Do-nothing President" might be desirable. "Every day that Biden’s most-covered comment is about chocolate-chip ice cream is another day that his most-covered comment is not about building support for any particular legislative proposal."
7. Making the best of a bad situation? "I remain rather bemused that universities, let alone elite ones, are hiring people without terminal degrees or a record of scholarly publication—or, indeed, having previously served as full-time academics—as tenured professors, it’s apparently a thing in non-academic departments." How bad is the situation? "[North Carolina] now escapes the burden and liability of a tenured [Nikole] Hannah-Jones. Howard University gains a trophy appointment of a chaired professor whose notoriety as a fabulist will never go away."
8. Don't drive like a Loonie. "When I moved to the Twin Cities, and first encountered metro drivers, I wanted to keep some sort of document that proved I knew how to drive, too."
10. Undermine them with mockery! "For republican Americans to shield ourselves and restore our liberties, we must specify and explain that disrespect with regard to every part of the oligarchy. Unlike Trump, we must assert and explain the falsehood of claims to superior knowledge and morality, and build on these explanations by organizing and supporting popular acts of collective disobedience."
11. The world the Anointed made? "Urban Progressive Privilege means never having to feel awkward about the devastation your policies inevitably lead to."
12. The case for separating school and state? "An effort by Roman Catholics to obtain a share of state educational spending for the network of parochial schools they were developing, in reaction to the overt Protestantism of public schools, served as the impetus for these measures."
13. Model Cities, anything but! "What finally killed Greenwood wasn’t an angry racist mob, it was the federally-funded interstate highway system. Coupled with urban renewal, highways built through North Tulsa’s Greenwood neighborhood in the late 1960s did what the Klan and white racists couldn’t do: demolish the and depopulate the place."
14. Weaponized government failure. "Somewhere along the line, the urban Democrat machine politicians realized that running cities badly enough would chase off the middle class and leave them with a thin crust of wealthy people over a large mass of the poor." See also, "Then came the one-two punch of the Great Society agendas of upper-middle class, white liberals and the pernicious social and cultural legacy of Sixties—abortion on demand, promiscuity, rejection of religious faith, single-parent family, drug use, and crime and violence as revolutionary acts. That neutron bomb was dropped on the black community but without compensatory resources of the white suburbanite."
15. The limits of expertise. "Governments of all stripes pass many well-intended rules that thwart the achievement of our full economic potential." (Strikeout added by the Superintendent.)
16. "National service" is coerced cheap labor for inefficient use of resources. "That’s the euphemism for conscripting them to work on projects the politicians like." The idea gets some support from so-called national greatness conservatives, which means be alert for claims of "bipartisan support" for the latest incarnation of the subbotnik.
17. Faith traditions don't always come with testaments or scrolls. "Any philosophy that says 'and it’s invalid to disagree with us. And if you express an opinion/idea/analysis contrary to ours you are a hater who hates' is a totalitarian philosophy." Or, you might be arguing with somebody who doesn't understand his side of the case very well.
18. The conflict of interest that is state-sponsored (or establishment foundation sponsored) research. "The corporate university has turned former professional sceptics and intellectual rabble rousers into automata and shills for the funding classes. The research-publishing-funding cycle drives all academic behaviour now."
19. Abraham Lincoln spoke of kings, he could also be speaking of Platonic guardians. "You will find that all the arguments in favor of king-craft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people, not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden."
20. Betsy McCaughey: "Let's get real. HR 1 is a corrupt scheme to make cheating widespread." I hope to weigh such claims in a future longer post.
21. South Park, Barstool? "So yeah, Republicans, if being the 'Barstool Party' means celebrating individual achievement, the private sector, and telling the leftist culture Stasi where to put it, then let’s give a big 'Hell yeah!' to that."
22. "Which party, if either, will grow up first?" Maybe, with "college sophomore" appearing to be the default setting of "politically active" types of whatever stripe (yes, even those ancient faculty activists), that's asking too much. "Democrats have been allowing players with adolescent mindsets to determine their policies, and Republicans have been embracing a leader with adolescent behavior control problems. It's time for the parties to grow up and pay attention to the signals and cues voters are sending them in the political marketplace."
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