FRIDAY short TAKES.

Watch Buckwheat spin developments as "anti-fascist."  "Joe Biden’s inability to resolve a labor dispute since spring only speaks to his ever-present incapacity to serve as president."  Government is the problem.  "Standing at the head of that government and lashing out at your political enemies isn't how the president of the United States convinces people otherwise. Instead, it makes an already unpopular political figure look desperate, unhinged, and potentially the very danger he insists is posed by others."  Politics divides.  "With all due respect to both the current and former presidents, which isn't much, what differentiates them, and their political organizations, isn't the degree of their adherence to the Constitution and liberal norms, it's the branding on their disdain for those things."

How many ways do Our Intellectual Betters destroy things?  "Disordered public aesthetics contribute to disordered public morals."  That's before breakfast:  "Government officials broke the world, and we’re all paying the price."  Fewer people are working now than before Fauciism began.

The weekly roundup of pithy elaborations of traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

1.  The soft bigotry exists.  "If you routinely expect poor academic achievement, don’t be surprised when that’s what you get."

2.  Fake News CNN has higher standards than Harvard.

3.  They don't show their work.  "Television news is terrible at offering context."

4.  Creative destruction brings destruction.  "[I]f you’re concerned with preserving technological and social dynamism, you have to take seriously the discontent [The Graduate] represents."  Note also: "better" is in the eye of the beholder.

5.  Self-despising academic administrators, step out of line and disappear.  "[I]f they really believe what they’re saying, [about institutional racism] they should resign."

6.  Bourgeois norms find a way, even around truly destructive Maoist taxation.  "[T]he transmission of human capital within families—knowledge, ideas, and cultural values—is a key factor."

7.  They're not going to like the new rules.  "[T]here's a big difference between protesting peacefully—free speech peacefully—and showing up for harassment with a gun at somebody's house in the middle of the night, constantly coming by and yelling."

8.  AOC, MTG, well placed where they are.  "That’s not patriarchy; it’s taste."

9.  How many times must I remind you about the problem of aggregating preferences?  "Perhaps coalition government produce the same kind of Aristotelian moderation that our two-party system is said to produce with its harmonizing aspects, but I am not so sure."  Not much harmonizing in these United States, let alone in a Sweden that is becoming less Swedish.

10.  Bingo.  "The Senate should never have been turned over to the popular vote."

11.  Deconstruction is a wholly destructive philosophy.

12.  Indeed.  "[Railroads] can ill afford a second wave of crew shortages and crummy service."

13.  Undermine them with mockery!  "It’s important to keep in perspective the pure clownery that are the people attempting to change societal norms. They don’t deserve your respect or your tolerance—they never did."

14.  No "champion" will come for us.  "Americans once understood that no one is fit for power; the powers granted to the state and its political leaders must be limited and checked."

15.  Sanctuary cities ... aren't.  "The squirming, deflection and projection is glorious."  Eventually, the bills come due.

16.  Why I write of "fifty of the claimants":  "[T]here’s just something basically silly about the implied precision of the rankings: a whole host of institutions that produce basically similar outcomes for most of their students end up sorted into immense hierarchies that imply vast distances between them."  Worth reading in full, particularly if you have college-age spawn.

17.  Another reason to Turf Democrats Out.  "Lockdown politicians should be made to answer for their folly again and again."