Links to Consider, 11/18

A high school memory; Frank Furedi on multiculturalism; Matt Goodwin on same; Simon Cooke on Matt Goodwin; Bari Weiss on the new war with terrorists; Peter Gray on teens and social media

I went to high school in the small, wealthy St. Louis suburb of Clayton, Missouri. We had no wealth, because my father was afraid to buy a house. But we were never poor.

The guy who had it all my senior year was Tom. Intellectually, he was in the same classes as me (except he dodged AP Chem). But unlike me, he was popular in many social circles, including the all-important athlete/cheerleader clique.

Our senior year, Tom was elected student body president. And he had a girlfriend. That put him way ahead of me.

Tom’s girlfriend was named Connie. I barely knew her, but she seemed intelligent and very even-tempered.

One fall day during our senior year, Tom said that he was tired of filling out college applications, and he handed me the application to Swarthmore College. I ended up rejected almost everywhere else, but I aced the Swarthmore interview, thanks to having watched the interviewer’s son in a very dramatic state championship wrestling match.

Tom went to Yale. By and by, he and Connie broke up. She wound up back in Clayton. She became a physician, married to an attorney named Altman. Sadly, he died a few years ago.

I have only kept track of Tom indirectly, through mutual friends. He has done well for himself. He ended up in the Bay Area, as a lawyer for a leading VC firm.

I have not kept track of Connie at all, except that she appeared in a couple of news stories this year. The news stories in which Connie appeared were ones in which reporters were curious to find out more about her son. Sam Altman.

Frank Furedi writes,

the fragmentation of many Western and especially European societies is not because they are multiethnic – it is because they have come to be dominated by the ideology of multiculturalism. Multiculturalists have consciously divided society into self-standing ethnic-identity groups. And this has accentuated, cultivated and inflamed differences between people. In this way, multiculturalism has undermined and impeded the development of any genuine sense of solidarity among citizens.

This thesis seems overstated. There has always been considerable friction between ethnic groups. The most that I would say about multicultural ideology is that it does not help matters. The way that I see things, it’s the loss of national purpose and the loss of confidence in liberal values that are the core problem with the West these days.

Matt Goodwin writes,

Her criticism of mass immigration. Her criticism of a policy of multiculturalism which is visibly failing. Her criticism of the ‘luxury belief class’. Her criticism of the blatant ideological bias in many of our institutions, including among police. Her unbridled support for the Rwanda scheme (which, by the way, more Brits support than oppose and several European countries are now trying to emulate). And her continued call for stronger borders and tougher action to end illegal migration.

All these things, all these positions, put Braverman on the wrong side of the new elite, a ruling class which is comfortable with mass immigration and does not really see it as an issue, which is simply incapable of tolerating any criticism of the broken policy of multiculturalism

I had to look up Rwanda scheme on Wikipedia. “people who the United Kingdom identifies as being illegal immigrants or asylum seekers will be relocated to Rwanda for processing, asylum and resettlement.”

Simon Cooke writes,

What, however, conservatives should be bothered with is in protecting their ideas from the sort of ‘know-nothing’ nativism that is characterised by Braverman, the ERG, Nigel Farage and those like Matt Goodwin who are more bothered about where someone went to school than whether they do their job well. None of these people are conservatives. David Cameron is a conservative.

Bari Weiss said,

The difference between 9/11 and 10/7 was that the catastrophe of 10/7 was followed, on October 8, by a different kind of catastrophe. A moral and spiritual catastrophe that was on full display throughout the West before the bodies of those men and women and children had even been identified.

People poured into the streets of our capital cities to celebrate the slaughter.

…in the span of a little over 20 years since Sept 11, educated people now respond to an act of savagery not with a defense of civilization, but with a defense of barbarism.

As you read her address, note, as Russ Roberts and Scott Sumner have pointed out, how neatly the October 7 pogrom has divided people along the conservative and progressive languages that I sketched out ten years ago. Civilization vs. barbarism as a framing for conservatives, and oppressor vs. oppressed for progressives.

But I insist that in this case the progressives are just flat-out wrong. Civilization vs. barbarism is not the right axis, either. Instead of sticking rigidly to a single axis, look at the issue in all its characteristics.

The pro-Hamas case is built on layers of lies. Almost all of the reporting out of Gaza is polluted with Hamas propaganda. If you want to know the truth of what is going on there, your best choice is the Israeli Defense Forces Twitter feed. It’s not that I don’t listen to what the anti-Israel people are saying. It’s not that I don’t read the headlines in the NYT and WaPo. It’s not that I don’t listen to what the UN officials are saying. It’s not that I don’t listen to what the self-styled moderates are saying. It’s just that they all come across to me as delusional.

I like nuanced thinking as much as anyone. But in this case, the anti-Israel nuances are not what matter.

Back to Bari Weiss, what was the difference between 2001 and 2023? Was it the fact that Israel and not the United States was the target? Or was it 22 more years of the moral rot that Furedi and others have observed? I think it’s the latter. I don’t see this as a resurgence of antisemitism. I see it as part of a mass outbreak of stupidity and mental illness.

Peter Gray continues to take a position contrary to Haidt and Twenge.

The general finding, supported by essentially all the reviews, is that, taken as a whole, research suggests a very small negative correlation between social media use and teens’ mental wellbeing. Reviewer after reviewer, however, points out that the effect is too small—for either boys or girls or both combined—to account for a meaningful portion of the variance among teens in mental wellbeing. Moreover, researchers regularly point out that whatever negative correlations are found could be the result of depression or anxiety causing increased use of social media (perhaps as a way of coping with distress) rather than the reverse.

…In recent decades, however, teens, as well as younger children, have been increasingly deprived of opportunities to get together in physical space away from direct adult surveillance and interference...

Under these conditions, social media is a saving grace. It provides a substitute means for teens to keep in touch with one another.

substacks referenced above:

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For conservatives, people should matter more than policy

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https://petergray.substack.com/p/benefits-and-challenges-of-socia

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What Suella's Sacking Means

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Bari Weiss: You Are the Last Line of Defense