Tag: politics
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In response to a critique of “On being seen”
After writing this, I thought better of it and never published it, which is why it cuts off abruptly. The person was arguing that I wasn’t understanding Cornell West or his points and thus my criticism had no relevance. They also made some allusions to the Navi from Avatar and their ideas of collective social…
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Why fear differences?
People today, for all their talk of equity, inclusion, and diversity seem to be doing so because they’re actually terrified that there might be real, substantive differences between people. Much as the European reaction to nationalistic fears in the postwar period led to a drive toward the dissolution of borders and differences of nationality in…
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Doing something
One thing that often gets forgetten in the rush to take action and the moral pressure to “do something” is the historical reality of how much of what we think of as the terrible crimes of the past were committed out of a similar desire to take action and do the right thing. It’s very…
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Hesitation and caution in fighting back
I recently watched a video of Peter Bogosian, Douglas Murray, and Dave Rubin talking about the ongoing fight against postmodernism, wokeism, and critical theory. The overall tone was hopeful, ebullient. The fight is going well, they said. Lies were being exposed, dangers were being recognized, prejudices were being revealed, sense was being restored. And this…
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On Borders
I think the real question about borders is permeability. You want borders because you want to select what crosses them. The state is like a living organism. Living organisms have cell membranes and cell walls. That’s one of their defining, necessary features. And there’s a selectivity that allows certain things in and certain things out,…
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Could anarchy work?
The answer is no. Boom, done! Fun talk. The thing about most political questions is that you don’t need a huge social experiment or tons of theory to answer most basic questions. All you need is a single complete unit to study. Enter, one human family. All government is just a scaled up version of…
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Third time is the charm
This is a series of stabs I made at responding to criticism of “on expectations and minority experience”. The objection raised was essentially this: “Imagine a situation where you are good at things but no one ever gives you a chance and you get rejected entirely because of prejudice. And everyone is racist, and that’s…
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On Camille Paglia and Christina Hoff Summers
https://youtu.be/zxWOsUOsDyU I love these women. I grew up surrounded by smart, confident women. You can’t help but love and respect them, even when you do disagree. They’re both a delight, but Camille consistently makes me laugh out loud. She is one of rhe most entertaining people you could possible watch. I think if there’s any…
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On expectations and minority experience
When I walk into a gym, no one assumes I’m a professional basketball player. And they’re right. There aren’t a lot of short, Dutch basketball players. When my wife and girls show up somewhere wearing lovely and stylish outfits, people don’t assume that I bought them and put them together. And it’s very likely that…
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Why politics is a male epiphenomenon
Males and female territories differ, and the way they police those territories differs. Men maintain wider territories but police them at a lower level of detail, but do so more confrontationally. Women maintain a smaller territory but at a very high level of detail, and do so with “soft power”, leveraging influence at many complex…
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