Positions

Where the whole sits

• Measured against opinion today, these positions sit near the middle, and measured against opinion twenty years ago they would read as left of centre, because the range of opinion that counts as normal has moved further in that time than the positions have.
• Pro-America, in the sense of America as it has traditionally been, a country that is not perfect and is still better than the other countries available.
• Generally in favour of Trump’s MAGA movement, without supporting all of it.
• On gun control, no strong view either way.

Belonging

• Mass Immigration - Cohesion — The people who came into the United States in the wave of immigration that began in 2020 under the Biden administration should be sent back, and people who arrive should not get a vote over local policy. Whether someone who arrives belongs depends on how far they have taken on the American way of life, so belonging comes in degrees rather than being a yes or a no. The argument against mass immigration that works in public is that it pushes down wages for the people already in the country, and a person can make that argument without being against business. The page asks who gets let in and whether they can live under the same rules once they are in.
• The Civil Rights Act - Freedom of Association — Nobody should be forced by law to do business with anyone, because being free to associate means being free not to associate, and the act ended that freedom in order to end people refusing to do business with others because of their race. The page weighs what was ended against what was gained.
• The Woke Retreat - The New Electorate Claim — Since 2024 the American left has been backing away from the positions it held in the 2010s, such as pronoun rules and men in women’s sport, and one claim says the immigrants of those years caused that retreat by rejecting those positions and now deciding elections. The order is the reverse of that, since the groups that do not take on the American way of life vote for the Democrats because the Democrats tolerate that, which means the party’s permissiveness comes first and the vote follows it. The page tests the claim and finds no link between the immigrants and the retreat.

Gaps, and what gets read into them

• Racial Egalitarianism - The Disparity Inference — A gap in outcomes between two groups does not, on its own, show that anyone discriminated against the group that did worse, because most of such a gap comes from differences in culture, in what families expect and in what people value. The page examines the step from a gap in outcomes to an accusation of discrimination.
• DEI as Anti-Discrimination — Hire and promote on merit, and drop the diversity, equity, and inclusion programs that hire and promote by race, because a fix that sorts people by race in order to undo sorting by race keeps race as the thing that decides, and so it produces more of what it was meant to end. The page weighs the business case for those programs and the moral case for them separately.
• White Guilt — Nobody is guilty for what their ancestors did, because guilt comes from what a person does, and what a person can do is something they build in their own lifetime, so it cannot be handed down any more than a skill can. Guilt by descent is unfair, and beyond that it does not make sense. The page asks whether an inherited debt of that kind can make sense at all.
• Who Gets Called Racist — Calling someone racist is mostly a way of ending an argument rather than a description of the person. The page looks at what the accusation does and what answering it takes.
• The Grooming Gang Cover-Up — Gangs of men abused girls across British towns for twenty years, and the police, the social services, and the prosecutors hid it, because anyone who named the men’s ethnic and religious background lost their job, so nobody named it and the record stayed empty. The British press stayed quiet for that same reason, the loss of a job for anyone who named the background. The page traces why staying silent was rewarded and what it cost.
• Moral Language as Leverage — Moral words only move people who still hold the values behind them, and on anyone else they have no effect, whoever is saying them. The page is about how a society keeps order with moral words.
• Schooling - The Format Filter — Sitting still at a desk all day suits girls better than it suits boys, and when boys fail at it, schools blame the boys rather than the way the day is built. The page follows what a school day built that way taught each sex about the other.
• The Woke Mind Virus — Woke ideology damages the young men it takes hold of, by teaching them that words are violence, that setbacks are oppression, and that their pain is an illness with a name. Worldviews are generated from self-talk, and self-talk is the basis of mental health and one of the primary forces on it. The page sets that against every measurement, including the ones that cut against it.

Faith

• What Faiths Demand of the State — The question that matters about a religion is what it would have the state do, more than whether the religion is true. These positions come from someone who is not Christian, who is secular and agnostic, and who holds that some Christian values are good ones even without the belief behind them, and a quote from the Bible does not count as an argument here. Islam’s reformers are worth watching for the same question of what they would have the state do, and a non-Muslim can watch that from outside the faith. The page sets out what Christianity and Islam each ask of the state.

Money and the state

• Socialism as Moral Correction — Socialism points at real problems, such as low wages and people left behind, and then answers them by making the state bigger, even though the state is what caused those problems. The page takes up the moral case for socialism that underlies the economic one.
• Financial Slavery — A debt that pays the lender more when the borrower misses a payment, and that bankruptcy cannot cancel, is a way of taking people’s work without owning them. The page describes how that works across a whole population.
• The Organized Minority — No settled position, because whether an organized few always end up in control is still an open question, though the page argues that they do.
• The top and bottom two percent. If the two percent of a society who are most able are removed, the society stops working, and if the two percent who take the most and give the least are removed, the society does better on income, on crime, and on how much people give. No page yet.

Pages with no position

• Democracy as Sacred Cow — No position. The page finds that two of the reasons given for majority rule are sound, namely that elections measure which side would win a fight without the fight being fought, and that one vote each is the only scheme in which nobody has to decide whose vote counts for more.
• The Indictment of Europe — No position. The page answers the three charges brought against European history, which are slavery, colonialism, and mass killing, and asks whether any of the three is true of Europe alone.
• Racial Fatigue — No position. The page is about how a demand that never ends, the demand to keep attending to black Americans’ grievances against the country, wears people out.
• Validity and Truth — No position. It is the method page by which the other pages in this list are read.
• Per Capita — No position. It is a reasoning tool about rates and totals.
• What Is the Virtue of a Proportionate Response — No position.

Positions with no page behind them

• Being American. Being American comes from what a person holds and does, which means someone whose parents came from somewhere else can take it on.
• Givers and takers. America has people who give more than they take and people who take more than they give, and the difference between them is what a person wants to do, so a person can move from one to the other and neither giver nor taker is a fixed kind of person.
• Who a person is. Who a person is gets acquired through what they learn to do rather than fixed by what they were born as, and nothing a person acquires can be inherited by anyone else.
• Abortion. Stop abortion after the first trimester rather than ban it outright, while still disliking it.