Links to Consider, 7/15

Discussion of the economics of religion; Simon Cooke on the Tories; Quico Toro on the French election; Ed West on same; Noah Carl on North Koreans' IQ

On Tuesday, July 30, at 3 PM New York time, Anthony Gill and I will be discussing The Divine Economy, Paul Seabright’s book on how religions compete. On Zoom, free of charge, but advance registration is required.

Simon Cooke writes,

Conservatives should use this time to rebuild the party as what it has always been, the party of union, community and tradition. It seems there’s an initial choice between a leader who wants to lead Reform UK or a leader who wants to lead the Conservative Party. This should be easy but there’s a risk that the party will choose to reclaim those ‘lost’ Reform voters by simply adopting the same politics but without Farage’s charisma. The effect of this is to marginalise the party - the very opposite of what is needed.

Cooke’s paean to old-fashioned Toryism cuts against the mood among many of the folks I follow. It is like trying to make a case for establishment Republicanism in the U.S. At NatCon24, Suella Braverman heaped such praise on Nigel Farage that I thought she was preparing to switch parties.

On the French election, Quico Toro writes,

uniting to stop the Right overlooks the reality of how extreme the French left is…

The biggest party in this space, though, is unquestionably Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise (France Unbowed) and its ascendancy over this space is clearly down to Mélenchon’s own charismatic leadership. In fact, Mélenchon probably has more say than any single other person over who becomes France’s next prime minister. What kind of leader is he, exactly?

One former advisor, speaking to Politico, described him as “a scale model of a charismatic dictator,” luxuriating over his explosive temper and sporadic excursions into conspiracy theorizing.

In short, the French center, personified by Macron, sided with a Bolshevik in order to freeze out a “far right” party. To me, it looks like a monumentally stupid choice. You don’t bring Bolsheviks inside the tent!

Ed West offers a take on the French election.

The centre still view the National Rally as beyond the pale, which is why they did a deal with the Left, although as far back as tsarist Russia liberals have had a tendency to turn a blind eye to revolutionary excesses out of a naïve belief that they are ultimately on the same side. In reality the hard Left will always consume and victimise them, because they deeply detest liberals.

And if they don’t succeed, the radical Left’s excesses pave the way for the Right, as they did in the past when the rise of fascism would have been impossible without the terror induced by communist violence.

Noah Carl writes,

Under the environmentalist theory, which insists that genes make no more than a trivial contribution to group differences in IQ, you’d expect North Korea to have a low IQ. That’s because North Korea is one of the poorest, most isolated countries in the world – and it’s generally assumed that lack of material resources is the main obstacle to cognitive development.

But he points out that there are indicators suggesting that group IQ is reasonably high in North Korea. Thus, the environmentalist theory seems contraindicated.

substacks referenced above:

@

North Korea's IQ

@

In France, the Far Left Is King

@

Enemies to the Left

@

The Conservative Party has always been a 'One Nation' party - it is nothing when it isn't