Links to Consider, 8/24
Glenn Reynolds on neurotic politics; Bronski vs. Hanania; Robin Hanson on fertility decline and innovation; Rachel Lu on Freedom Conservatism
Making the populace (especially women) more fearful, depressed, and neurotic is undoubtedly bad for societal wealth and happiness. But does it yield votes for Democrats? Clearly yes. Are they doing it on purpose?
He cites the trends, which we have seen, for neurosis to increase among young, liberal women. Are politicians fomenting fear deliberately to try to create this neurosis? But is fomenting fear such a new behavior for politicians? It seems to me that they have always done so
This is a vital part of the picture Hanania presents: everything is woke because the woke care more in general, by their nature, and thus engage in politics more at the highest levels, causing over-representation. But this picture is inaccurate. Recent spending shows a Trump effect. General spending is roughly equal between camps. Institutions lean conservative except for academia. Liberals are louder, but when you average out political behavior over the past 5 years, conservatives engage about as much, and get better results given they dominate governments with less popular vote, they dominate the military and police, and they dominate the corporations.
A better picture is this: roughly consistent with mutational load theory, that the right half of the political distribution dominates relative to the left half, because the right half is more functional. The left half only dominates the most dysfunctional, pointless, and powerless of the major institutions: academia.
Bronski does not mention K-12 education, the entertainment industry, the media, or the government bureaucracy. I don’t think he is steel-manning Hanania here.
If the world economy reaches a peak and then falls to a level that is only X% of that peak, but stays in the same growth mode, then at that point the rate of innovation would be no more than X% of the prior peak rate. Fewer than X% of N typical innovations would be found per year. In a shrinking economy, innovation grinds to a halt.
He is referring to population growth. Some economists argue that innovation increases as population increases, so that low fertility will reduce innovation. It seems to me that this is an awfully simplistic model of innovation to draw such a strong conclusion.
Recent years have amply demonstrated that the fusionism of Buckley’s day was much more than just an anti-communist contingency plan. American conservatism needs its traditionalists, and also its classical liberals; each group has some important gifts, but also some potentially-debilitating weaknesses that the other is equipped to address. They need each other. This was always the point of fusionism.
She signed the Freedom Conservative statement of principles. I thought that the statement was too broad for more tastes. Apparently, being general was part of the idea. The signatories position themselves in contrast to the New Right, which is prepared to read other folks out of the conservative movement.
Ms. Lu will be joining me and Matt Continetti in September 20 to discuss Up From Conservatism, a book of essays from the New Right. You can register here for the discussion.
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Far from steel manning Hanania, it seems Bronski hasn't spent much time in the US for perhaps the past five years. Large corporations have become very leftist in their policies, and sometimes their out and out cultural efforts. The military has been actively purging right wing members and promoting their LGBTAPLHABET activities. Federal institutions like the FBI have increasingly been shown to target right wing individuals and officials. There is basically all of tech pushing hard left. Many churches in town around here fly pride flags.
Am I missing anything?
I am no fan of Hanania, but claiming that everything except for academia leans conservative just seems bonkers to me, unless one's yardstick for conservatism is "Late 80's early 90's Democrat." Then maybe.
Arnold quotes Glenn Reynolds:
"Making the populace (especially women) more fearful, depressed, and neurotic is undoubtedly bad for societal wealth and happiness. But does it yield votes for Democrats? Clearly yes."
H. L. Mencken on this:
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”