Links to Consider, 7/17
Yuval Levin on party breakdown; Matti Friedman on antisemitism; Rob Henderson's NYT video; Kevin Corcoran on institutional Gresham's Law
You would think that party elites would have grasped the error of their ways by now, since those ways have driven three decades of failure. We have had two minority parties in America since the middle of the 1990s, neither able to hold a meaningful majority coalition together for more than one election cycle. But the deadlock itself has kept the parties from seeing that they are failing by choice. They have abandoned their core purpose (which is to win general elections on behalf of their coalitions) and their core work (which is to select winning candidates for office).
Now we have arrived at an election in which one party’s candidate is psychologically unfit to be president, the other’s is physically and mentally unfit to be president, and both are intensely unpopular. Will that be enough to hammer home the lesson that what the parties are doing isn’t working?
The original Constitution had many checks and balances, including checks against popular democracy.
at no point in my education did anyone ever sit me down and say something like the following: it is historically quite common for members of a society to identify the evil that preoccupies them and to conflate that evil with Jews, then declare that acting against evil means acting against Jews—and you must be aware that this will happen again in your lifetime.
If you have not already, watch Rob Henderson’s five-minute video, made for the NYT. To illustrate his concept of luxury beliefs, the video juxtaposes the slogans of the wealthy young social justice activists with the reality in areas of policy.
Anthony de Jasay described Institutional Gresham’s Law as the tendency for bad institutions to drive out good ones over time.
Institutions that prioritize their own growth and survival over being socially beneficial will drive out institutions that prioritize being socially beneficial over their own growth and survival.
Corcoran applies this idea to social activism. Over time, activists who try to solve social problems will be driven out by activists whose primary motive is to remain in the spotlight.
Solve for the equilibrium.
substacks referenced above:
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Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people:
First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization.
Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself.
The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
Matti Friedman basically says that Holocaust education has failed. He does not provide exact recommendations on why and how Holocaust education should be changed, but he hints that it often centers around the question of how Jews were murdered, rather than addressing why Jews were murdered. I regularly read Israeli media, and the topic of why Holocaust education has failed is a common one. Different articles offer different answers and solutions, but it is a popular topic in Israel. It is a dead end.
I am speaking from a European perspective, and in European countries, there is a clear trend: right-of-center parties tend to be more pro-Israel, while left-of-center parties tend to be more pro-Palestine. I come from Eastern Europe, where the public and politicians are, on average, more pro-Israel than in Western Europe. And Eastern European countries are generally more right-leaning than Western European countries in all dimensions: social issues, economic issues, and foreign policy.
General picture applies to all of Europe: the right-of-center is more pro-Israel, and the left-of-center is more pro-Palestine.
If Friedman and others are correct that there is a problem with Holocaust education, they should also explain why there is such a clear left-right divide on this issue. Are right-of-center Europeans better educated about the Holocaust? I don't think so. Are left-of-center Europeans less educated? I do not think so either.