Worldviews & the Political Order

35 items

Britain - Poorer Than Mississippi Income per person in the United Kingdom now ranks below every American state, and most Britons think their country would rank seventh. A quarter century of
China - The Temple and the Monks The temple is rich and the monks are poor. GDP as a quota that a dug hole and an empty tower both satisfy, a state that owns every plot of land and 99.5% of
DEI as Anti-Discrimination Diversity, equity, and inclusion programs are defended on two separate grounds. Six of the ten common defenses say the programs make organisations perform
Democracy as Sacred Cow Seven arguments for democracy are in common circulation. Five of them break outright or hold only for a limited period. Two are still standing at the end, and
East Asian Exams - The Arms Race One exam at about age 18 decides a Korean or Chinese student's university, and the university decides pay and senior posts for decades. Because the exam ranks
Europe - The Slow Agony In 2008 the European Union's economy was larger than America's. By 2025 it was ten trillion dollars smaller. The euro built against its own theory, the crisis
Financial Slavery Owning a person is illegal everywhere it was once legal. What the ownership produced is not illegal, because the prohibition attaches to the title and not to
Gender Ideology - The Override Claim The position under examination holds that internal identity takes precedence over biological sex where the two disagree. Which category someone belongs to
Genetics and Unequal Societies - The Distance Claim The claim that peoples sit far enough apart genetically to build different kinds of society, told in three shapes with no people named. The fixation index
Late Stage Feminism A mother who killed her three children was given more than $1 million by supporters, and a woman who carried six children out of a fire got $42,000. The road
LGBT - Permission vs Promotion Permitting something and promoting it are two separate acts, and each one needs its own justification. The arguments in general circulation establish
Mass Immigration - Cohesion Large-scale immigration is a question of who is admitted and whether the people admitted can share one settlement. The criterion is selection on capacity,
Moral Language as Leverage Moral language works as leverage when a moral vocabulary is used against the people who hold the commitments behind it, by people who do not hold those
Per Capita Per capita means per head. It is a count divided by the population the count came from.
Racial Egalitarianism - The Disparity Inference Groups differ measurably in income, education, and crime. All of those differences are averages. An average reaches no individual, who can sit anywhere in a
Racial Fatigue Racial fatigue is an exhaustion that has become common in people who have not been harmed by anything under discussion. It is not fear, because fear would be
Schooling - The Format Filter A seated school format filters by sex. Gender is the explanation given afterward, which says the fault lay with the boys who failed the format.
Single-Sex Spaces - The Asymmetry American courts opened every large men-only club between 1984 and 1996 under public-accommodation law, while women-only colleges, gyms, and a billion-dollar
Socialism - The Calculation Problem A planned economy has no prices to tell it what anything is worth, so every full attempt at state ownership ended in shortage, famine, or flight. The young
Socialism as Moral Correction Socialism is argued for as a repair. The argument starts from things that have gone wrong: a few people own most of it, work is priced below what it produces,
South Africa is a Warning to the West Twenty years ago South Africa had the strongest economy in Africa. Then the governing party put a president's allies at the top of the state's institutions.
The Civil Rights Act - Freedom of Association The Act is remembered as the end of legally enforced segregation, and it was that. Alongside that, it replaced one mandate about association with another
The Gen Z Gender War - The Split Young women and young men now stand about 30 points apart in politics across 30 countries, up from 6 in 2000, and they vote, date, study, borrow, and scroll
The Grooming Gang Cover-Up Organized sexual exploitation ran across dozens of British towns for two to three decades. The institutions built to detect that kind of offending produced
The Indictment of Europe Three charges are brought against European history, and they are brought against Europeans collectively: slavery, colonialism, and mass killing. Whether a
The Organized Minority In any society complex enough to require administration, an organized few govern an unorganized many. The numerical advantage of the many never turns into
The Woke Mind Virus Woke ideology teaches a young man that words are violence, that setbacks are oppression, and that his pain is an illness with a name. The position held here is
The Woke Retreat - The New Electorate Claim Between about 2014 and 2021 a set of cultural positions became standard on the American and British left: rules about pronouns, diversity training at work, men
Validity and Truth An argument has two separate places it can fail. Its premises can be false, or its conclusion can fail to follow from them. Those are different failures, and
What Faiths Demand of the State A faith that says anything about conduct ends up with a position on law, because law is where conduct is enforced. Those positions are presented as
What is the virtue of a proportionate response? The question is a line of screen dialogue. In 1999 a fictional president asks it of his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. The question is worth taking seriously
White Guilt People of European descent are said to owe a debt for what was done in the past in their name. The debt is usually treated as already proven, so the arguments
Who Gets Called Racist The word "racist" is used for two different operations. The first is a prediction about a person built from group features, made when no individual information
Women's Suffrage - The Substitute Husband Extending the franchise changed what the electorate wants, and the change has a direction. The claim here is not that the new voters vote badly in a general
Worldviews & the Political Order People argue over whether democracy is sacred, whether a gap between races proves racism, whether a man who feels he is a woman should count as one, and