If something isn't working, stop doing it. "The international community is an elite, a clique, even something like a religious sect." Falsity defines our politics. By their fruits? "We are using unqualified midwits and lackwits from the bowels of the Democratic foreign policy intelligentsia instead of legitimately smart people." Elite anxiety is the root of modernism at its worst.
Speaking of unqualified midwits. "Biden has had, by most standard measures, a pretty successful presidency. But he’s being blamed for high inflation, the U.S. troops withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza." What does that success look like? "Big government is likely to achieve big progress, that incentives are of second-order importance, that the title of a bill need not reflect its contents, and that profits are glorified theft by private business from workers and consumers." Thus does the decline continue. Losers in life never accept personal responsibility. Why accept, when you can deflect? "Better leaders would take responsibility for their errors in addition to asking that others be held accountable for theirs. Unfortunately, we've only got the conveniently selective memories of Trump and Biden." We're noticing. "Nowadays the only truly unbelievable conspiracy theory is the one that assures us the people who are running things are honest, and know what they’re doing. "
A self-reinforcing feedback loop deepens. "One of the strange paradoxes of academia today is that the fierce competition for academic jobs and pressure for university departments to climb up the coveted U.S. News rankings actually stifles innovation and risk-taking within many disciplines." That hive mind infects other Influential People. "From the takeover of cities by activists to the unquestioned origins of COVID-19 to the normalization of men competing as women in women's sports, we all sat back and watched once-vaunted pillars of journalism in our country, such as the Times, The Washington Post, NBC and CBS repeatedly telling us there was nothing to see there." It's not working out well. "Nost of the recent efforts to undermine constitutional norms, hallowed traditions and customs, and the normal symmetrical application of the law have originated with bicoastal political, media, and academic elites." Garbage elites, that is. "While Biden and De Niro keep making this election about Jan. 6 and democracy, voters seem much more concerned about other things, such as affording food and housing for their families."
You can't save democracy by destroying it first. How many people is Mitch "Shot in the Dark" Berg speaking for? "Congrats, Dems. You did it. You dragged me, kicking and screaming, into supporting Trump. Let’s make America a constitutional republic with the rule of laws, not men, again."
I want better choices. "After four dour years of continual crises abroad and inflation at home, does sunshine now remind voters of Trump?" Should it? "Many libertarians support the Libertarian Party precisely because they do not trust ether Biden or Trump to avoid destroying the country; in fact, some of the most anti-libertarian policies have advanced under both Republican and Democratic administrations, from runaway federal spending to government surveillance to public health tyranny."
The weekly round-up of pithy elaborations on traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.
2. Progressives are an unhappy lot. Everyone else thus must be unhappy. "The modern left—you might call it the New New Left—prefers a disruptive hermeneutic hostile to the traditional symbols of American piety."
3. Reality is socially conservative. "Leadership can be restored only by the slow and painful process of developing moral gravity and intellectual seriousness turning back to the strength of traditional doctrines."
4. Punishment cycles escalate. "In an escalatory spiral, urgency is usually a conspirator against good sense: because the stakes are so high, just this time we should act heedlessly, without paying attention to the consequences. The whirlwind awaits."
5. Justice Sotomayor. “Government officials cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors.”
6. There is nothing normal about Joe Biden or his misbegotten presidency. Including his speech at Morehouse. If this wasn’t the worst commencement speech in American history, it wasn’t for lack of trying.
9. Chortle. "Remember whose name adorns one of the three grand facades of Lincoln Center—not Soros, but Koch."
10. Undermine the contemporary left with mockery. "The spectacle of their blended pathologies will be, and already is, their discrediting and their undoing."
11. Fight cultural appropriation! "The use of an old historic flag by a new group does not necessarily drain that flag of all other meanings."
12. The cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon. "The career-first approach did not work for men who missed key moments in life to appease corporate overlords, and the push to model young women into the molds of our absentee workaholic fathers of yesteryear should be challenged."
14. Why Our Intellectual Betters aren't. "While whoever proposes the Next Big Thing may tell us that this time it will be different, it’s important that we take a hard look at the fundamentals."
15. Enough said. The airport is owned by the federal government.
16. The fruits of the administrative state and the cult of the presidency. "The choice isn’t between democracy and authoritarianism; it’s between their authoritarianism and ours."
17. Exactly. "We insist on spending more money for worse outcomes, a hallmark of ridiculous affluence combined with hubris."
18. Indeed. "Why are we forgiving student loans for people that go to Harvard?"
19. Bidenomics. "Virtue-signal shopping is a luxury less affordable during inflationary times."
20. Kinsley Gaffe! "We've been calling out how Biden's administration is loaded with affirmative action picks from the beginning, but it is something to see him admit it, particularly as he attempts to woo black voters back into his column."
21. Natura non facit saltum. "We are talking about a not very large change occurring over a century."
22. He came up short.
23. A country to buy into, and a country that buys into its immigrants? "First World economies can readily absorb far more migrants, and that First World cultures can readily assimilate the migrants’ children. Not perfectly in either case, but amazingly effectively."
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