37 Comments

The weakness that Jan 6 showed is not that X number of people succeeded in breaking into the Capitol, its that Y number of legislators agreed with them and voted not to certify and that z% (of citizens not hugely less than 50%) agree with them.

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As is well understood, I think, degree requirements are what has replaced rigorous interview systems for job filling and promoting. You have to have something that correlates with mental and emotional competency, and we have chosen the Rube Goldberg process that is most expensive because it places multiple layers of people between the applicant and the person telling them they aren't getting the job because they are too stupid and dangerous to have around in the work place. This worked for a number of decades, but then the quality of the degree programs has gotten so bad that having acquired one is no longer much of a signal beyond noise.

My real fear for the future is that the people who keep a modern infrastructure working are less and less a fraction of the actual population. "Idiocracy" wasn't parody- it was a prediction for what the world is going to look like in about 25 years at the rate we are going.

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Thanks for linking to my column!

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"It is a bracing essay, but I agree with a commenter who is skeptical about whether legislators are the ones to fix academia."

Ah, but they are.

They can reverse the Clinton policy of making student loan debt undischargeable in bankruptcy.

Woke BS only exists b/c there's too much money available for people who shouldn't be in higher education, both students and educators.

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I have translated two short posts made this week by a prominent Russian ultra-nationalist intellectual, which are a sort of mirror image of this post: https://candide3.substack.com/p/the-year-of-fukuyama-as-seen-through One is a grudging encomium to the hated Anglo-Saxons, the other is an assessment of Russian purported traditionalism in which certain right-wing thinkers like and want to believe. I have also reposted a couple of my 2014 posts about Russia which, if I may say so, have held up pretty well.

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If Jan 6 was on the other foot, with Democratic supporters protesting a Trump election that involved unsecured ballot boxes and strange, after midnight, vote counts, we would have very different reporting. In particular, we would know all about FBI and DHS personnel at the rally and we would know what commands were given by whom to open doors.

And we would never have a Jan 6 political committee completely biased to deny presentation of alternative evidence.

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Hanania is wrong about the woke. He himself explains why:

> it [wokism] i a tax that we can afford to pay as long as we still have a stable government and a functioning market economy.

But wokism is a movement that attacks both capitalism constitutional government (and America ain't going to invent a stable alternative in a hurry).

It becomes an mere "tax" only if contained. That battle is underway and far from won.

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Loosely related to Matt Goodwin's comments about Zoomers, Rob Henderson writes that Boomers let the Zoomers get away with everything because they don't want to be seen as old:

https://www.persuasion.community/p/adults-today-care-too-much-what-young

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I find Shamplings argument that degree requirements be set at a legislative level a bad idea. Businesses fully can and do determine what credentials and requirements are appropriate for a job. I agree strongly with Caplans argument that higher ed is nearly all just signaling, but businesses have every incentive to not demand higher degree requirements for jobs (they almost always correlate with an automatic expectation of higher salary). Why then do companies use credentials as a requirement? Are they lazy and the lost cost isn't worth it worth the time of filtering candidates? Are they unable to use Cowens talent interview method? It just seems like if it really is all signaling then businesses should from a cost efficiency perspective pretty quickly say nah, your masters or PhD in whatever isn't worth it we will go with this highschool grad who is just as capable but cheaper (that being said...getting a job in a tech field has been harder with a PhD than a masters so maybe there is some level of this effect going on in some fields).

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COVID de-legitimized all East Asians. It's worse in China, but it's not like Japan, Korea, or Taiwan are handling it well as societies. Combined with rock bottom birth rates, and I think its fair to just declare East Asians as being unfit for modernity regardless of political system.

Hanania has an an excellent podcast on the Ukraine war out as well. The jist is that western economic and military support is what is winning the war in Ukraine, not gay Ukrainian conscripts. When Russia had an artillery advantage, it was winning. When the US gave Ukraine artillery that outranged Russian artillery, it started winning. US satellite intelligence also allows for recent Ukrainian breakthroughs.

It's a lot like lend/lease and strategic bombing in WWII. Without it, Russia doesn't defeat Germany (I leave it to the reader that maybe both lose). Russia winning WWII didn't prove the superiority of the Communist model. Any more than Ukraine winning a proxy war would validate whatever Ukraine is supposed to represent in that narrative.

Cowen's performance during the COVID/Woke freakout was de-legitimizing as well.

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Respectfully, Hanania is given to just as much hyperbole as the people he's criticizing. What does America's stability at the start of the industrial revolution have to do with today? Nothing, that's what.

My observation is that If you go to Russia or China (obviously 'unfree' countries) daily life doesn't look too much different. People still go about their business and live their lives. What keeps a regime stable is maintaining a functioning economy and not starting wars (which are explicitly attempts at regime change in the grand scheme of things).

Russia started a major war. China flirts with it and has imposed so much COVID insanity that it's economy is in peril. The US... well, we flirt. with this kind of stuff, but I don't know that I think the big talkers on the left would like it very much or for very long if they actually pull the trigger.

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