Glenn Loury and Reihan Salam; Armin Rosen on the human rights movement's disarray; Richard Hanania's taste; Some Rob Henderson linkgs; Coleman Hughes on colorblindness;
Re: Hong Kong, it is worth thinking about previous cases where we stood by and did nothing, because there was (arguably) nothing we could really do, while a superpower crushed the liberal aspirations of people on its periphery. Think of Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968, for example. What did US institutions do right in those cases, and what did they do wrong, and what lessons can we learn?
With respect to "It is sobering that we did so little when China crushed that country." I feel it’s good practice to use words precisely. First, China did not crush the country; they did suppress anti-government protests. Second, HK is not a country. It is a city within China, under Chinese control but with more liberal local government dispensations.
Going past the wording, the sentiment is as empty as the exhortation to “honor the sacrifice” of HK. Assuming we means the USA, once confrontation, violence, and force made their way to the fore, I don’t see anything that the US could have effectively done to change the balance of the conflict. There is no possible scenario where China would not have the means and the will to maintain control over HK. If the US wanted to do something more for HK, it would not have used its government and non-government influences to stoke the flames of confrontation. Instead, it decided to use HK as a pawn in US China cold war and the US got their propaganda win. A shame about that little self-determination loss for others.
Moving on to: “Powerful bad people are defeating powerless good people, just as they have for millennia.” I am going to speak realistically to this statement and its emotionalism, in the single context of China. It is poor thinking to characterize sides as having either good people or bad people. In the China HK context, there are some bad people and a great many good people on both sides. I believe I have met some of the good people. Unfortunately, the sides have different visions for society. Despite living between China, HK, and Taiwan for almost all of my adult life, I don’t happen to know what vision is best for any of those Chinese societies and I find it distasteful that western funded activists are plying their trade to reify the one correct vision that Mr. Rosen subscribes to. Those countries will develop in their own time according to their cultural sentiments, population characteristics, and internal pressures.
Mr. Rosen strikes me as one of a kind with the type of people that decided to bring “Laws, values, and idealism” to places like Iraq and Afghanistan. The powerful good type of people with bullets and worse. The type of people who have ideals to remake the world, but can’t say in advance what kind of world their ideals will make.
Neil Postman has a useful insight on this topic: can you do anything about it, and does it do anything material to you? If not, and likely you cannot in any meaningful way, consuming engaging news, regardless of accuracy, will only serve to enrage or entertain. But you as an agent will have little to no impact the situation, or will not be impacted by it. Thus in most cases its just a distraction that reduces your time and cognitive bandwidth to adjust things in your life you can change and do have material and direct impact on you. See amusing ourselves to death for his full thesis, which touches upon the more pernicious ways mass consumption of news has negative personal and societal effects.
Mr. Hughes is of course correct. I think it's obvious, though, that the flipside where we give ourselves license to make all of our decisions based on race isn't a recipe for peace and harmony, either, whether we're talking the philosophy of Jim Crow or our latter day identitarian movements. It turns out people get upset when you don't treat them as individuals, but instead as mere representatives of a group they were born into, rather than having chosen to affiliate with.
At the same time of course, criticizing someone (at least for now) for wanting to date/marry within their own ethnic group strikes most people as insane; we recognize that as a valid personal decision. It would be nice if we could have a discussion around where and when such valid personal exemptions might apply and where they shouldn't, but we can't do that anymore, if we ever really could.
Absent the context, Salam's point is totally obscure. It this is supposed to be a teaser to encourage listening to the podcast, it does not work for me.
It’s hard to make any human rights points about China when spurious issues like jobs steeling and trade deficits are in the air. Offering unrestricted immigration from HK (mutually beneficial to the immigrants and extant US residents) is about the most we can do.
Hanania: These are folks that I don’t follow anyway, and I don’t think “annoying Hanania” is a great criteria for deciding whether to do so. Maybe if he had offered a correction (not just a pot shot) of one of their mistaken opinions, would have been more helpful.
Not having any consideration of inequality as part of one’s objective function is I think a huge mistake. Giving it too much weight in specific circumstances is also a big mistake, but no guidance here for when one or the other kicks in.
Good statement by Bitton on the goal of universities.
Re: Hong Kong, it is worth thinking about previous cases where we stood by and did nothing, because there was (arguably) nothing we could really do, while a superpower crushed the liberal aspirations of people on its periphery. Think of Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968, for example. What did US institutions do right in those cases, and what did they do wrong, and what lessons can we learn?
With respect to "It is sobering that we did so little when China crushed that country." I feel it’s good practice to use words precisely. First, China did not crush the country; they did suppress anti-government protests. Second, HK is not a country. It is a city within China, under Chinese control but with more liberal local government dispensations.
Going past the wording, the sentiment is as empty as the exhortation to “honor the sacrifice” of HK. Assuming we means the USA, once confrontation, violence, and force made their way to the fore, I don’t see anything that the US could have effectively done to change the balance of the conflict. There is no possible scenario where China would not have the means and the will to maintain control over HK. If the US wanted to do something more for HK, it would not have used its government and non-government influences to stoke the flames of confrontation. Instead, it decided to use HK as a pawn in US China cold war and the US got their propaganda win. A shame about that little self-determination loss for others.
Moving on to: “Powerful bad people are defeating powerless good people, just as they have for millennia.” I am going to speak realistically to this statement and its emotionalism, in the single context of China. It is poor thinking to characterize sides as having either good people or bad people. In the China HK context, there are some bad people and a great many good people on both sides. I believe I have met some of the good people. Unfortunately, the sides have different visions for society. Despite living between China, HK, and Taiwan for almost all of my adult life, I don’t happen to know what vision is best for any of those Chinese societies and I find it distasteful that western funded activists are plying their trade to reify the one correct vision that Mr. Rosen subscribes to. Those countries will develop in their own time according to their cultural sentiments, population characteristics, and internal pressures.
Mr. Rosen strikes me as one of a kind with the type of people that decided to bring “Laws, values, and idealism” to places like Iraq and Afghanistan. The powerful good type of people with bullets and worse. The type of people who have ideals to remake the world, but can’t say in advance what kind of world their ideals will make.
Speaking of Adam Mastroianni, I just interviewed him: https://youtu.be/M409oKluPYc
Uhh, re Mastronianni, maybe there are a lot of things going on that you should be outraged about, even if some are fake.
Neil Postman has a useful insight on this topic: can you do anything about it, and does it do anything material to you? If not, and likely you cannot in any meaningful way, consuming engaging news, regardless of accuracy, will only serve to enrage or entertain. But you as an agent will have little to no impact the situation, or will not be impacted by it. Thus in most cases its just a distraction that reduces your time and cognitive bandwidth to adjust things in your life you can change and do have material and direct impact on you. See amusing ourselves to death for his full thesis, which touches upon the more pernicious ways mass consumption of news has negative personal and societal effects.
Mr. Hughes is of course correct. I think it's obvious, though, that the flipside where we give ourselves license to make all of our decisions based on race isn't a recipe for peace and harmony, either, whether we're talking the philosophy of Jim Crow or our latter day identitarian movements. It turns out people get upset when you don't treat them as individuals, but instead as mere representatives of a group they were born into, rather than having chosen to affiliate with.
At the same time of course, criticizing someone (at least for now) for wanting to date/marry within their own ethnic group strikes most people as insane; we recognize that as a valid personal decision. It would be nice if we could have a discussion around where and when such valid personal exemptions might apply and where they shouldn't, but we can't do that anymore, if we ever really could.
Absent the context, Salam's point is totally obscure. It this is supposed to be a teaser to encourage listening to the podcast, it does not work for me.
It’s hard to make any human rights points about China when spurious issues like jobs steeling and trade deficits are in the air. Offering unrestricted immigration from HK (mutually beneficial to the immigrants and extant US residents) is about the most we can do.
Hanania: These are folks that I don’t follow anyway, and I don’t think “annoying Hanania” is a great criteria for deciding whether to do so. Maybe if he had offered a correction (not just a pot shot) of one of their mistaken opinions, would have been more helpful.
Not having any consideration of inequality as part of one’s objective function is I think a huge mistake. Giving it too much weight in specific circumstances is also a big mistake, but no guidance here for when one or the other kicks in.
Good statement by Bitton on the goal of universities.